Chris revisits the key points made by Emily Chang, adds his own insights and gives listeners some suggestions for practical actions they can take immediately to help them get where they want to go.
Welcome to every one of our Perspectives from the Top community of listeners around the world to “Reflections on the Top”. And through your support and sharing with friends it is around the world as Perspectives from the Top now has listeners in 42 countries, on every continent. “Reflections” is to help you get the best from the series by me reviewing the key insights from our latest guest. You will get much more out of Reflections key points if you have listened to the guests interview and heard the broader discussion.
Our last guest was Emily began her career in Procter & Gamble, then in Apple, where she led Retail Marketing across APAC, as the brand entered China before becoming Chief Commercial Officer of InterContinental Hotels Group, Greater China, where she was responsible for all commercial functions across 320+ hotels, six hotel brands, three loyalty programs, and a Sales & Marketing team of 5,200. Emily then became Chief Marketing Officer for Starbucks China, where she led customer engagement and the digital ecosystem. She is now CEO of McCann Worldwide, the Marketing Agency, for China leading a team of 400 launching McCanns new China presence. But Emily also found time to write an great book – “The Spare Room” – which looks at how we optimise our social legacy by identifying what we offer in resources, experience and capability and what inspires us. Its woven around Emilys own legacy of caring for 17 disadvantaged children in her spare room over 22 years, as well as stories of others in different stories of others in different walks of life.
One of the interesting elements of Emily's interview was her insights of working in very varied organisations across different sectors which we have seen in other guests. That this variety seems to enable significant agility in both thinking and working. Emilys first job at Procter and gamble demonstrated that you need to be good with both the figures or technicalities of your role and with people to be successful. She said that as a sales organisation P&G was very focused on the figures but what was recognised was that to deliver the figures it all start with your people who interact with your clients. She mentioned an interesting test of leadership success, which I have used as an indicator myself in major organisations in the past, which is who does the talent want to work for? Why is that so important? Simply because talented people want to be able to do a good job, want to be in an environment where they grow and develop, realise their own value. They are intolerant of poor leadership which is likely to inhibit their ability to do that job, to grow and develop, and advance their careers. From my experience across whole sectors for C suite you could describe talent as your advanced warning system of problems with leadership - they will be the first to speak out and the first to leave.
But for everyone listening, whether you view yourself as talented or not, you are talented in some way and everyone has the right to expect their organisation to provide good quality leadership to enable you to give your best and focus that onto what delivers success.
At Apple China Emily joined an organisation with significant opportunity but which was not performing well in comparison with other regions. As she mentioned a lower Net Promoter score than other markets. For those of you listening unfamiliar with Net Promoter score in simple terms it is an assessment of the views of customers about how much they enjoy their experience with the organisation and whether they are likely to promote it to other people. So it really is a critical measure in terms of how your brand is viewed and potential for growth.
Interestingly as with many situations the answer to the question when asked why your figures are lower than others came back as the usual – “well it's a different situation”. But in this case as Emily said humans are humans and therefore their experience in store could be improved, which she proved because within two years the NPS in China was the best in the world. An interesting perspective on both Emily's ability but also the ability to fall into the trap of self justifying poor performance even in an organisation such as Apple. But I think for everybody listening worth remembering that it's also about interactions inside the organisation. Particularly if you're a leader just to remember that humans are humans as we've discussed before.
Emily success was also driven by her focus on working with people to create a truly inspirational vision, what does amazing look like, and then working back to create a plan to make that a reality. Which sounds complex but really all she was doing was putting herself in the shoes of the customer and asking the simple question - what would I want to experience? But equally I would flip exactly the same question around to any leader listening, and their organisation, in respect of employee experience to engage and inspire people. But Emily herself confirmed that principle - her people needing to feel good to enable customers to feel good.
Emily's move to International Hotel Group as chief commercial officer meant that she wasn't only dealing with the branding and marketing elements, but looking at the whole commercial picture. In simple terms was the organisation operating in a way to make as much money as possible. Again Emily focused on the figures and on the people. But Emily also mentioned an interesting strategy that she uses when entering a new role - her hypothesis journal - where when she arrives she writes down her initial thoughts about what she thinks is going on; what is going well, what isn't going so well, what could make a real difference, what needs to be changed or improved. Then over the next three months walls she would go out into the organisation and listen to people, with humility as she put it, each day updating her journal based on what she had seen and heard to fine tune her judgement about what needed to be done. This, after the three months, how to this turned from hypothesis to action plan. It also applied to the data where she was taking on new perspectives that what had gone before. To make this really become reality she created a business intelligence unit that was able to look at the strategic big picture of what was going. That was key as individual hotel leadership was totally focused on day to day management and rarely on the big picture.
But what that emphasises is that for any organisation and any leader listening if you just focus on the day today and do not look at the big picture you can end up going in the wrong direction, missing opportunities, or missing small problems which could grow into a perfect storm and cause severe damage. As I've said before one of the key metrics on which I have regularly judged leaders on their ability to go further in the organisation is their ability to not only deal with the day today but also understand the big picture both in terms of aligning their day to day activity to strategic objectives but also in building the future with their teams.
Unsurprisingly within ING Emily picked up that it's quite easy for long serving people, not just leaders, to fall into historical patterns of thinking and working. The “as long as it works okay why bother to change it” attitude where you don't look for opportunity, wider connection, or challenge the status quo.
For everybody listening, even if you're not a leader, it's really important that you regularly look outside your day to day job activity to what's going on in the wider organisation, the wider sector, and even into other sectors finding out about what the leading edge people and organisations are doing, that helps you see opportunities and how disruption is developing elsewhere. In terms of innovation and these disruptions I think everybody listening would find something interesting on a website I enjoy which is www.springwise.com. I'm not going to say anymore but just check it out.
Emily then moved to Starbucks as chief marketing officer and had the challenge of taking Starbucks 4000 outlets in China upper gear in terms of customer experience, as she puts it ensuring online meets offline, and all touchpoints with the customer which determine their view of the brand are as positive as possible. I think it's really important for everybody listening, leaders in particular, that you realise have a brand with everybody you come into contact with. To ask “What are the touchpoints I have with other people, and what is their experience of me and how does that impact the way they think about me, are they prepared to work with me and potentially help me. And with both Emily Starbucks customers and with the people you work with it is about creating a positive experience that makes people feel good.
For those of you who are C suite listening I want to pick up a point that Emily made about handwritten notes to people that she felt had done an amazing job. The fact that people she worked with in previous organisations who subsequently joined her at McCann still have the notes that she sent them years ago is really powerful. Ive interviewed Paul Polman when chief executive of Unilever who said when he was a young leader he received a note thanking him from his chief executive and he never forgot that. So as CEO of Unilever he wrote at least five handwritten notes a week to people out across Unilever who done a great job or perhaps needed support in difficult times. A message from the CEO to an employee is extremely powerful but a handwritten note is so much more powerful than an email.
When asked to become CEO of McCann China Emily effectively had a blank sheet. Also because McCann is a PR company it's about ideas and people, there is nothing else. So for Emily the imperative was to find the right people, to develop them, and to then unleash their potential. And that is effectively what is the heart of leadership is about - unleashing the potential of others to enable the organisation to be successful. Her strong view that, as CEO, she is there to support all her people to be inspired, feel a sense of belonging, and truly enjoy their work. She described her head office team as being the “enabling team”. And that comes right back to what we have discussed many times before, the role of the leader as an enabler of their people to deliver what needs to be done, servant leadership, going back to my experience of being trained as a British Army officer, the motto of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, serve to lead, that leadership is about inspiring your people and enabling them to be successful, knowing that with enable you to be successful as well.
Its also true that interaction with other people creates a social legacy that you leave, which links to Emily's book, the spare room, where she talks about the social legacy all of us leave in some way or another, but that our legacy is much more powerful and greater where there is congruence between our skills, our experience, our efforts and what we really want to achieve and leave as our legacy. And she tells this story about the 17 vulnerable and marginalised children who she and her husband have cared for since 1999 in their spare room and poses the question what is in your spare room? What is your legacy for the people around you and others? Emily mentioned the idea that this is about comfort for the spirit, such that you create an environment both at home and work for people where there is a foundational relationship based on trust and mutual respect where people feel good. And at work isn't that really what leadership is about?
So are the things you should take away from what Emily said?
Three actions from Emilys interview I would suggest are those that she mentioned
But I'd also put in the interesting idea of the hypothesis journal if you go into a new job, the idea of questioning yourself in terms of what is your brand with other people based on the touchpoints that you have. Because even if you haven't thought about this you already have a brand out there with other people, it's what they say and think about you, the question is are you making sure that is positive? And perhaps also for C suite think about writing a few handwritten notes to people who deserve it.
All of us can do at least do one of these from tomorrow – so pick on now and do it! Can you imagine the amazing impact if everyone did these as of tomorrow! How great work would be?
With the previous guests and now Emily hopefully you are seeing a pattern of simple actions you can take to be more successful. Share these interviews colleagues who would benefit so they can grow and develop with you. Certainly I will be using these powerful points in my speaking and Masterclasses in the future.
If you have any thoughts or questions contact me on LinkedIn or via email as detailed on the Perspectives website. don't forget to sign up to Perspectives from the Top. It's free, so you don't miss any of the more than 25 great episodes in the future.
That’s it for now, so onwards and upwards until our next episode!