Designing Love (and Purpose) Into the Experience

Since most leaders will have far more interaction with their teams than they’ll likely have with the majority of the clients they serve, we’ll go work through that in far more detail soon. But designing love and purpose into how our organizations operate will most definitely spill over into what each individual we serve experiences. And if we’re intentional about it, we can design just as much love and purpose into what anyone we interact with experiences!

As part of a recent session with our IMPACT Leadership Academy, we challenged each participant to detail how their daily activities tied back to and exemplified the mission, vision, and values of their respective organizations. Since this was something so few companies dig into at all, let alone routinely or in any real detail, it wasn’t easy but everyone wasn’t able to get there. From there, we asked if the clients they served knew their companies’ values and could see them represented through their behavior. That got a little tougher!

In chapter eight of What’s KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!), I share something John Maxwell said I’d need to do if I was going to use his material. He said that “80% of the population falls short of what’s expected of them. Around 15% do just what’s expected and stop right there. Only around 5% will ever do what’s necessary to exceed expectations.” He closed that part of the conversation by asking that I always work to exceed expectations anytime I used the material he had put his life into.

That was in August 2015 and I’m confident that the eighty percent he referenced then has grown. In fact, I shared John’s number with a friend recently and he referenced this post-Covid era as “The Great Incompetence.” I won’t detail our entire conversation here but I can assure you that I can see exactly why he’s come up with that phrase - and ties right back to more than eighty percent falling short of expectations and even less than five percent being willing to exceed expectations!

Now let’s connect all that to the experience we provide for the clients we serve… I believe we should be talking about our values constantly, with everyone we interact with. I also believe that we should be tying those values to the behaviors we use and the behaviors our team members use - both good and bad; how they model those values or how they aren’t congruent with our values. In doing this, we should also be intentional about identifying what our clients expect from us. If they expect something that’s just not what we’re equipped to provide, we need to make sure they understand that. But we can provide what they’re looking for, it’s our chance to exceed their expectations. This may be in terms of the specific product or service we deliver, or maybe it’s just in how we go about delivering it. 

When we can keep our values visible and be sure anyone we deal with understands how the actions we take tie to those values - and connect with our clear purpose - we’ll be well on our way to creating an experience that exceeds expectations, one a customer can truly love! And while we’ve looked at quite a few reasons so far detailing why having that clear purpose is so important, we haven’t really dug into how we identify our own definite major purpose so we’ll work through that soon!