My Window to the Top Office of Any Company (We All Have One)

As I was writing a blog post about organizational culture for Cherry Logistics Corporation, I was reminded of a principle that I learned early on in my varied career: If you really want to learn something about the leadership of any company, look no further than their front-line employees—not so much in what they may tell you as in what they will show you. They are indeed your window to the top floor.

I learned this principle firsthand, while carrying out many different roles, both personally and professionally. Before I continue, a bit of background is in order. I have been a citizen of small corporate America for over three decades now. Without exception, every position I have held has been with privately held, growth-oriented companies. When you work for growing businesses that are too small to have silos yet, you find opportunities to do things for them that haven't been done before. To cite a few examples, I have written volumes upon volumes of assorted internal and external content for my employers (I literally wrote the book on Customer Service twice), established new departments complete with policies and procedures, purchased millions of dollars in goods and services, executed new direct marketing strategies, conducted market research, oversaw the development of several new websites and intranet sites, and even designed a hot air balloon ad concept. Some days I did several of these things at once. Such is the nature of small business.

In the process of doing so many neat little things, I got to know quite a few people from companies large and small and in many industries. Here is what I learned. Regardless of how many levels of management may exist in an organization, that which you encounter consistently on the ground floor, good or bad, has inevitably trickled down from above. That's why they call it leadership. The key word here is consistency. Remember, anybody can have an off day. But when every day seems to be an off day, no matter which individual picks up the phone, there is a bigger issue at hand. And if leadership simply isn't aware of the problem, then shame on them. Conversely, when every encounter comes off on a positive note, even when things go wrong, you can bet there is something fundamentally right with the big picture in that organization.

Of course, individual performance comes into play—for better or worse, some employees will always stand out—but I'm talking about something that's inherent in a company's culture, which flows from leadership in a top-down fashion. Have you ever noticed that after just a few encounters with a company, you can sense whether everyone there is rowing in the same direction or not? That's coming from the top. Pay attention to what happens when something goes wrong. Does the front line seem to intuitively know that you will be cared for? A company's front-line employees may be empowered to ensure customer satisfaction, but it's the leadership that does the empowering. Or not. Have you ever experienced a situation where something went awry and the people trying to help you seemed more concerned with avoiding losses than with making things right?

I was once expecting a truckload of customized, private-labeled first aid products that was to arrive in Chicago on a certain Friday, in order to be broken down and distributed the following Monday for a very important corporate client. On that day, when the shipment had not arrived by early afternoon, I reached out to the manufacturer and was told our order would not be arriving as planned because it was not yet ready to be shipped. This was bad news, a failure of epic proportions, the kind of situation where presidents of companies feel the imminent need to talk. But before my own company's leader could call in the flying monkeys, the owner of that manufacturing firm phoned me from his office in Kansas City and said, "Mike, I only want to know one thing: will somebody be at your warehouse at 6:00 AM tomorrow to receive your shipment?" After we discussed the arrangements, he asked to speak to my president. Both companies then worked together, with everybody rowing in the same direction to ensure that our corporate client had nothing less than a seamless, positive experience.

You needn't be in a corporate setting to experience this principle firsthand. I purchased a new propane grill from a big box home improvement retailer last week. From the moment I said, "I'll take that one," everything that could go wrong did go wrong. What should have been a fifteen-minute transaction took ninety. My preassembled grill had to be partially disassembled, outside in the dark, before it would fit in my van. Things didn't get better from there. Every single person who had tried to help that night really tried to help; they simply encountered one unfortunate circumstance after another. The next day, I sent an email to the company, commending the store's staff for trying to make a bad situation right, but also detailing the end result, which had been anything but a trouble-free experience. By the following day, I had another, fully-assembled grill dropped off at my home, along with a complimentary accessory, and the original grill, still in pieces, taken away. I received apologies from three different individuals and a follow-up from the corporate office. A multilevel response of such magnitude is not a matter of luck or happenstance, but rather the result of an empowered culture, clearly made possible by the people on top.

I chose to share stories with a happy ending here, but could easily have filled pages with stories of the other sort. I was once greeted by an individual for the first time with the question, “What’s the problem?” That set the tone for everything that followed. I have heard customer service representatives announce, “That wasn’t my fault,” as a form of resolution. I assure you the same principle was at work.

A company’s front line, those whose job it is to interface with the outside world, will generally give one a good look at their top office. It’s like looking through a window.