LEADERSHIP:THE SERVICE “PARTNER CHAIN”
The Service "Partner Chain"
There is a growing understanding of the need to delight customers who, because of global trade patterns, have more options than ever before to take their business elsewhere. Winning executives think beyond traditional customer service rhetoric—expanding their focus to the entire “Partner Chain” .
They know that in order to delight customers they must meet the ongoing needs of each contributing link; funding partners (banks and investors), external partners (suppliers, distributors, and other contractors), and internal partners (employees, supervisors, managers, and executives). If any part of the chain’s needs go unmet, the flow of human and financial capital will be disrupted—and without investment, there’s no hope of keeping up.
In this fast-paced world (that futurist David Houle has labelled the “shift-age”), people from all parts of the chain are being called upon to influence others in order to serve the customer. But chains are only as strong as their weakest link—each link must TRUST the other. This reality places more of an onus on leading people. An additional complication is that rigid structure and exclusive ownership are giving way to the formation of strategic alliances. This introduces yet another reason to adopt a trust-building leadership process—to accommodate the forming, managing, and disbanding of transient teams.
These and other market forces are transforming the role of people traditionally thought of as followers. To succeed all the partners must have sufficient trust before they will risk innovating around the margins of their assignment. Today, leadership is about trust building—and that makes leadership everybody’s business.