When everything is louder than everything else, you can’t hear a thing. Top businesses know they must turn their myriad messages down in order to make major improvements. There may be a chance to focus on an area that is a true opportunity because it has not been a strong point in the past. If companies don’t turn the intensity of some messages down, there won’t be room for a new one. Their people won’t function in the desired way.
“Everything Louder Than Every Else” is an unattainable rock-and-roll paradigm from the vernacular of the road. If it is possible for a statement that makes no sense to have meaning, then this is one. It postulates that all things deserve to be loud, but also that all things ought to be heard. If you listen to hits on the radio, you know that through the magic of compression, many recordings now sound like everything is loud, even the quiet parts. This is supposed to provide more energy when it is blaring from your speakers or ear buds. But it ends up being hard to listen to after a while.
In business, it is important for an organization to be able to multi task. There is no time to let down on service, cost management, product innovation, developing employees, or identifying new markets.
So, if an organization is going to concentrate on something new, something else needs to get dialed down. Identifying that factor is just as important as the new one.
I know one organization that was focused on building service levels, but they kept talking about cost management like it was the most important thing to them. Which it was. Their service levels did not increase because their people paid attention to the behavior of the organization.
I know another organization that wanted to sell more to its existing customers, so they reduced their traditional focus on training and customer relations, except where it related to this new main priority. Once they got the result they wanted, they brought back the multi-focused message.
Can you think of a time in your organization where an initiative would have worked better if it had not been lost in the multiple messages that were being delivered?
