Bill Keen is the Founder and CEO of Keen Wealth Advisors and the Best-Selling Author of Keen on Retirement.
At my company, we pride ourselves on being perceptive, personalized and precise. However, recently, our team put out a social media post that contained a misspelled word. Just a few days later, invitations to a large event we’re hosting went out with an incorrect date listed.
On the surface, neither of these mistakes is earth-shattering. A simple misspelled word and an inaccurate date can both be remedied. But when you dig a little deeper, these mistakes point to something serious: a problem with our processes. They also–and this is the most important takeaway from the whole situation–indicate an opportunity for improvement.
Seeing mistakes as opportunities has been integral to our company’s culture from the beginning. When I started my company (a fiduciary investment advisory firm), I knew building trust with our clients was imperative. We handle people’s money, after all–often their entire life savings. As a result, I was committed to building an organization that inspired confidence, which meant creating a culture of proactive and relentless improvement.
You may not run a wealth management firm, but no matter what industry you’re in, building trust with your customers is crucial. Here’s the thing, though: Without a culture of continuous improvement, trust is almost impossible to achieve. Mistakes are going to happen; if you don’t continually seek to address errors and prevent future ones, your customers will lose faith in you.
If building that kind of culture feels easier said than done, I invite you to consider implementing the following strategies. They’ve helped us create a culture of continuous improvement, and they may help you, too.
Own every mistake.
As a business owner or leader, culture starts with you. If you want to create an organization that continuously improves, it’s crucial that you own all the mistakes that get made, whether or not you’re directly responsible for the error.
Taking ownership of mistakes has two important benefits. First, it reduces the likelihood that you’ll fall into the trap of responding to mistakes with punitive action. Second, it helps encourage the other people in your organization to own their mistakes. Both of these outcomes are foundational for creating a culture of continuous improvement.
It’s unrealistic to expect that mistakes will never be made. We’re all human; we all mess up from time to time. But when someone owns their mistakes, they can make improvements. If they make excuses, on the other hand, or blame someone or something else for what went wrong, things will never improve.
Bottom line, when people hold themselves to high standards, an organization can achieve far better results. But remember, it all starts at the top.
Create and refine your processes.
Even though none of us are perfect 100% of the time, strong processes can help us get close. Now, I know that perfectionism often gets a bad rap. But I truly believe striving for perfection is worthwhile–no matter what industry you’re in. For example, we manage clients’ assets on a discretionary basis. That means that our clients have faith in our ability to manage their retirement by allowing us to make financial decisions on their behalf based on the goals they have expressed to us.
When clients hold you to this level of trust, especially when it involves their financial future, you have to be precise. It’s not enough to get close; you have to be exact. In other words, you must be perfect… and that means you must implement robust processes.
What do I mean by “robust processes”? Create written processes for every task, and make sure they include cross-checks. If you already have checks and balances in place, consider whether they need to be made more rigorous.
By owning mistakes and building processes to prevent the mistakes that do occur from happening again, you will build trust among your customers and a culture of continuous improvement among your staff.
Treat your organization like an airplane.
When I was getting my pilot’s license, one of the most important lessons my instructors drilled into me was the importance of carefully checking every detail. There are no exceptions; before and during every single flight, pilots review a detailed checklist to ensure they are doing everything safely and properly.
Flight checklists have redundancy built into them. Anytime you do something, you review your action against the checklist, and then you review it again. If you have a co-pilot, they’re also involved in the checks. These multiple checks are key to ensuring a safe, smooth and comfortable flight.
Treat your organization’s processes the same way. Build redundancies into them and teach your people to review them regularly; doing so will help reduce the number of mistakes that are made. And remember, if an error is made, rather than simply punishing the person who made it, treat it as an opportunity to examine and improve the redundancies in your existing processes.
There’s one other thing to remember here: Your processes must evolve as your organization does. Just like I wouldn’t use the same checklist for the airplane I fly today as I did for the one I flew 20 years ago, you can’t expect the same processes to work as you grow and scale. That’s why it’s crucial to regularly examine them and update those that are outdated or no longer functioning optimally.
Maintain a growth mindset.
Building a culture of continuous improvement starts with taking accountability and building robust processes with built-in redundancies. But there’s one more piece to the puzzle: Every single team member must have a growth mindset. In other words, they must be committed to constantly growing and learning.
It doesn’t really matter what that growth looks like. What matters is that your people have the internal drive to better themselves. If they don’t, you’ll struggle to get them to buy into the kind of culture you want to build. With that mindset, though–and accountability and strong processes–your organization will be unstoppable.
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