Customer Reviews

Firing Up the Front Line

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Jon R. Katzenbach is ex-director at McKinsey & Co. and Senior Partner of Katzenbach Partners; Jason A. Santamaria is Business Analyst at McKinsey & Co. and previously with the Marine Corps. This article was published in the Harvard Business Review of May-June 1999.

"If there is one challenge that confounds the many organizations that depend on frontline workers, it is how to engender their emotional energy." Reason is that the impact of these frontline employees on the customer's experience and profits is enormous. McKinsey & Co. have done three years of research at 30 companies, which was complemented with the U.S. Marine Corps. The research team "concluded that the Corps outperformed all organizations when it came to engaging the hearts and minds of the front line." The authors describe the five managerial practices that the Marines use to engage the emotional energy of the front line, which the authors term the "mission, values, and pride" (MPV) path to a high-performing workforce. The first practice is the overinvestment in inculcating core values at the outset: "Businesses also might assign training to their most experienced and talented managers and increase the length of training programs." Practice Two: Prepare every person to lead, including frontline supervisors. Practice Three: Distinguish between teams and single-leader work groups. The authors complement this practice with an useful comparison between teams and work groups. Practice Four: Attend to the bottom half. Although the impact of this principle is powerful, "most business managers resist devoting time and talent to the bottom. They believe it's easier and cheaper to replace any underperformers than to rejuvenate them." Practice Five: Use discipline to build pride. This discipline is seen as an enermy of empowerment, but self-discipline gets frontline employees to set and beat their own high standards for performance. Katzenbach and Santamaria conclude that organization should use these five managerial practices to energize their front lines and convert ordinary workers into an extraordinary workforce.

Nice comparison between business and army practices, which provide us with good insights and tools to improve frontline workers. The main difference is the time taken out for training and education. Jon R. Katzenbach is author of several excellent books and articles on teamwork. This article is very useful for all people involved in management and uses simple business US-English.