Standards Have Slipped: Why Leadership Needs to Step Up

Standards are essential for successful, growing brands. 

But here’s the real question: what are your standards?

Can your people clearly explain them?

Do they know what ‘good’ looks like day to day?

And are those standards actually being maintained or quietly ignored?

In this episode of The Reality of Business, Bob and Jeremy talk honestly about why standards have slipped across sales, service and leadership and why this is a leadership issue, not a people problem.

They explore how ‘expectations’ have replaced standards, why remote and hybrid working has made things harder to spot and enforce and how flexible management can drift into avoiding accountability altogether.

You’ll also hear why:

• Standards need to be visible, not just written down
• Leaders must enforce them, not hope for the best
• Metrics without behaviour attached can do more harm than good
• Customers now expect more than many organisations are delivering

Most importantly, they ask the question many businesses avoid: where do we start?

If you care about quality, consistency and protecting your brand as you grow, this episode will give you plenty to think about and act on.

For more info, free resources, useful content & our blog posts, please visit realitytraining.com.

Reality Training - Selling Certainty

Transcript

Why Standards Are Slipping

Jeremy Blake 0:25

Hello, you're listening to The Reality of Business with Bobby Morel and Jeremy Blake. And today we are going to talk about standards. Standard. The standard.

Bob Morrell 0:39

Why are we talking about this, Jay? Why have we hit upon this as a subject matter for a podcast?

Jeremy Blake 0:44

Because I was coming out the tube the other day and the bloke winds standard. And I said, Oh, that's good. Let's do an No. Um because well, there's a few reasons. We have been a little exasperated by some of the things we've discovered doing research to help clients about the level, the standard that they are seemingly thinking is partable. We don't think it's a standard. We also think standards have slipped considerably. Yes. And when I say that, I do want to caveat that that I think every generation says this and says, oh, standards have slipped from my day, but I think they have, and I think they have since COVID. Um and that we can create a whole argument. Well, you you expand on that. Why we we both hit upon this and we thought we must do an episode about standards. What were some of the other reasons we thought it's so essential?

Leadership’s Role In Standards

Bob Morrell 1:41

Well, we can go into the various ways that standards have slipped, but in the end, it feeds on from a recent series we've done about team leadership. It is the fault of leadership when standards slip. Because part of leadership is being able to maintain and enforce a high standard of whatever it may be, whether it's manufacturing, customer service, leadership skills, whatever it is you're doing, if you are maintaining a high standard, then you should be rewarded by effectiveness, results, productivity, etc. Whereas if you've got poor leadership who are happy to let standards slip, actually, because if you're if you're not enforcing standards, you are slipping. You are eventually you are sort of uh even silently um accepting that it's okay for standards to to slip, and then get uh get annoyed when you have to bring that up with people, as if it's their fault and not yours. When standards slip, I think it's a massive fault of leadership. It really is.

Jeremy Blake 2:52

I also have let's just deal with a word for a minute. I also have a problem with language where I think a word that's overtaken standards and doesn't help the problem is expectations.

Bob Morrell 3:03

Yes.

Jeremy Blake 3:04

Because it's like, oh well, I did uh I didn't quite no, you didn't. Don't worry. It was an expectation. No, a standard means and I was thinking of all the other languages that come that comes with that. Um such and such offers you this, and if you buy from them, that comes as a standard. Oh wow, that's already the level I'm expecting. Um I thought of I thought of a a place in Oxford where I used to have curry as a student called the Royal Standard. And already before we went in, we were going, ooh, this is all right, you know, we're gonna be having the Royal Standard. Um it set it sets out at the start a level of um service or receipt or quality or value or behaviour that you should you should be in receipt of as a customer. Yeah. Um and I I think I think standards have slipped. And if we look at the fact we're all from home, the standard you must uphold, or not we're all at home, but a great number are, is you've got to deliver your service, your sales, your interactions with customers and with each other through remote channels like Zoom teams, etc. We have an increase in contact centres and also work from home type people. So a lot of the standards that must be uphold are now being enforced by remote leadership. Bob made the point that it's the often the fault of leadership. So you've got to up your game to withhold some of the standards because they seem to be slipping.

Bob Morrell 4:31

Um, there there are other reasons. Okay, so you could go macro and just go, look, the economy's up the spout and we're all paying higher tax and less turnover, GDP's falling, Brexit has crucified the economy, and you know, there's all sorts of reasons why, and COVID and what have you. Okay. I I of course there are economic reasons as to why things aren't as good as as they should be. However, if we think about fundamentals, that's uh that that then then that's no reason why you should you know say, well, it's okay for us not to be very good at what we do, we'll get away with it. That's just laziness, it's just it's just pure laziness. And I think there's a few things we can point at which all help.

Jeremy Blake 5:14

And if if you look, I was looking up this sort of the most famous standard type organizations in the world, and the BSI is one of them. Um, and that's 1901 that the BSI was founded. And if you think about why, in the manufacturing of certain items, products, the customer needed to be safe, things need to be made at a at a level that you knew that even if it was just a particular screw or or a component, that it was made to a standard so it would go into the rest of the machine or the bridge or whatever, and it would would stay up. And that is that is now in something like 191 countries or something extraordinary, that the BSI. But when you research standards for customer service organization sales, there isn't one. And that that's a very important fact is that you as a business have to set your own standards and uphold them. So, where should we go first? Should we look at uh a particular industry?

Bob Morrell 6:12

Well, you've just reminded me of one thing. I just want to have it noted on the podcast. So there is a thing in the UK called the apprenticeship levy, where large organizations pay money into the government to then draw on that money to take on apprentices and train them. Okay, now you would imagine that that would uh give rise to lots of people doing apprenticeships, which raises them to a certain standard um of whatever it is that they're that they're that they're learning. Now, we do know certain organizations who pay into that um that levy, but they just pretty much see it as a tax and rarely draw on it. But also, as far as I can see, and looking at all the research I've done, that intervention has done nothing to raise standards overall. Absolutely. So let's let's crack on. What's what what where have where have standards slipped? Let's think about it.

Standards Versus Expectations

Jeremy Blake 7:05

Well, I I think generally sales, sales skills, sales standards. Yeah, and again, we could cite all sorts of reasons for this, but that isn't necessarily going to solve the problem in that more and more young people coming into business have been staring at their phones for years and they've become socially disconnected and so on and so on.

Bob Morrell 7:24

Now that links to this shift towards automation and AI. Okay. Yeah. So that there's almost an acceptance that lots and lots of jobs are going to be automated and go to AI, and therefore we don't need to worry about improving or maintaining standards because we're all doomed. It's an incredibly fatalistic attitude. Whereas actually, what you what you're doing is thinking, how can I utilize this technology to improve the experience for the customer, and where it can't uh improve the experience of the customer, how can that person improve their standards to make sure the customer has the best possible experience? But no one wants to talk about that at the moment.

Jeremy Blake 8:02

Well, I also think the the detail of that is when you aren't good enough, your consumer, if we're talking about consumers and you're providing a service to consumers, your consumer will try other avenues because they have not been satisfied with you. And I think what what was initially born out of COVID is we we couldn't go to shops because they were shut. So we bought online, and many of us realize that the online purchasing marketing experience was as good, if not better, than when I went into a store who didn't add value. So all we know is that the younger generation have marched on in that and they were more comfortable with that, but there's still millions that want interaction. But what I find extraordinary is that there are certain people doing certain jobs with consumers where they aren't upping their game, as you say, to make them so differentiated from an AI bit of text that might come back at me with an idea. So they're almost, as you say, thinking, well, I'll only deal with the people who seriously want me and maybe seek me out. And so you're getting a reduction in circle rather than I'm really good, I'm gonna be at a standard.

Bob Morrell 9:12

You're filtering.

Jeremy Blake 9:13

You're filtering filtering more than ever before. Filtering, going, who's serious? What do you mean who's serious? Your skills are not very good. Who's serious? I'm only gonna give my time, I'm only gonna give my time to people who are serious. Well, right now, your time and the language you're using isn't good enough for people to want to give you their time.

Bob Morrell 9:30

Now, I want to pick up on something you said earlier because I think it's really important. Remote and hybrid work transition, especially over the last few years, is hugely left, okay. And as an employee, we all feel the benefit of this that we can work from home, we don't have to commute. There's all sorts of reasons why that benefits um everyone, actually, and you don't need such big offices and all that sort of thing. But I think the problem, the reason that standards have slipped in that regard is that no one understands how to lead and communicate with people who are working in a hybrid situation. So that's the first thing. There's no oversight at all. Okay, no oversight of what the person's doing. Occasionally something comes through, and I think, oh, they must be doing something, but we don't know what they're doing day to day, hour to hour. Now, not that we should be peering over their shoulders, but back to your point, there's no idea of what people are doing.

Jeremy Blake 10:30

I think we were talking about this on another episode recently, is that you used to be able to see people doing their work. Now, if that's somebody at a lathe making something, you would be able to say, that's great. That's that you're doing that as the leader with the experience helping the team make things. I don't really mind if you're making, talking, selling, serving. The problem with all the remote work is we can't see what you're doing. So we have hypothetical management discussions and meetings about what you're doing. Yeah, this morning I had a customer, did you? Because if I was with you in a contact center, I'd have heard that. And so huge wastes of time talking about what you may or may not have done. And so so what so what just on that point, one of the things we do in our work is we we can't eradicate that fact of human life. So that's why we are such advocates for coaching. Because if you might as well do coaching when you're with somebody, because that's something you can have a direct impact on their thinking and their behaviors, you can't, rather than having an hour-long discussion about uh a conversation they claimed to have had.

Bob Morrell 11:30

But I think the other point is that if you are a company that has gone through this transition and you've now got, let's say, 50-60% of your um colleagues regularly working from home, you would imagine that you would say, right, we need to completely restructure how we manage and lead those people given that change. And what most have done is try to continue to manage in the same way they did before, but with this new thing in place. It clearly doesn't work. And why are we so surprised that standards are going through the floor? Because nobody is being effectively led and managed. You know, it's as simple as that. And if you if the only way you see someone is through a digital screen a couple of times a week, that is not going to be the same. Now, I'm not advocating return to the office, by the way. Um, I I think that what there needs to be is a really good strategy put in place that manages people effectively remotely, and that takes work.

Jeremy Blake 12:30

I I would like to say on that, if you can work in your chosen environment and channel effectively, crack on. If you can't, you need to be in the channel that you can work in. Sure. So I I am convinced there are people who are home-based who've selected that channel, or their company have offered it to them, but it's completely the wrong way for them to work. They're ineffective in that. They need human interaction, they need leadership, they need inspiration, whatever. And that's where we've got millions of people average in the wrong work environment. And the leader can't get through to them, can't uphold them. Um, is it worth having the sidetrack conversation now? It was connected, is that millions of people who may not have wanted to have gone into a workplace for whatever emotions or challenges they had personally were able to do so for hundreds of years. Now they're based at home and often they're turning their cameras off, they're not getting up for work properly, they're not putting their game face on, and they're retreating even more. So if they had um challenges before and had to mask some of their behavior before, they did that for hundreds of years. Now they're not even doing that. So again, that means what they're prepared to do lessens. And if they're prepared to do less, then that's another strain on services, uh standards, isn't it?

Bob Morrell 13:59

Well, you could actually extend that into if you think that over the last five years there's been a huge loss of experienced workers, many of whom we've taken early retirement and um have just just stopped working after COVID or whatever. That experience and knowledge has been lost and has not been replaced.

SPEAKER_02 14:20

Yeah.

Bob Morrell 14:20

Okay. So then you've got um then you've got, as you say, these people working from home working in the way that they know how to work.

Jeremy Blake 14:30

Or they feel fit to work.

Bob Morrell 14:31

Or they choose to work from home. Now that butts up against rising customer expectations where we expect immediate responses, accuracy, availability 24-7. We're used to buying things online, we expect things to be working for us as customers really, really well. And then there's this skills gap between that and the people who are there to deliver it for us. Then they're not all working from home, some of them working ineffectively from offices, let's be honest. And I think that that's the problem that we're not we're not absolutely bridging that gap. Now, not by the way, uh extolling uh uh it purely as a training issue, which I think in many cases it is, but I think it's more than that. I think it's also companies not recognizing that there's this huge gap between the expectation that they as a company expect and their people's ability to deliver it uh under the current under the current uh pressures. And I think that there needs to be a again a management and leadership idea of okay, strategically, where are we going? Where are we going to? What are we heading towards? What do our customers expect? How far are we off away from that? And then how can we adjust what we're doing to get there?

Jeremy Blake 15:48

Now, I think if we go into sales, which is our core work, one of the things that we've talked about and the language we have used for years is we've used the word principles.

Bob Morrell 15:59

Yes.

Jeremy Blake 15:59

These are principles that you should engage in. But again, the problem with that word is we we imagine and have imagined for years that people will be principled and adopt those principles and execute them and do it. Again, that's different to standards. So interestingly, in the early 1900s, one of the most effective sales training um companies was the National Cash Register, which was run by a guy called Rob Patterson. And he had a whole set of principles that you must follow, but they were actually standards. That when you see a customer and you're selling them a cash register, he invented the receipt pretty much. When you're when you see a customer and you're selling them, you must do this or you must do this. He had boot camps where people were trained in being able to implement these principles. And so they were standards. What I think we've had now is people now think there's an expectation to do this. This is one of the principles I could adopt. But having recently listened to lots and lots of interactions and observed lots of interactions, I can see that people are not following them and and they're not enforced.

Bob Morrell 17:06

Um I think that absolutely extends into a lot of the stuff that uh we've done in the last few years. So uh listeners will be aware that we um have talked a lot about a thing called disloyal bonding, which was a term that Jeremy coined, and it's uh about the idea of people taking the side of customers against their own company. It's a very, very big issue. We have seen no lack of that in recent years. In fact, we've seen a huge increase in that from organizations that we work with. Now, why do we do that? Why do we side with the customer? As if we're ashamed of the company that we work for.

Jeremy Blake 17:48

Because then I don't have to uphold a standard, I just take a massive shortcut.

Bob Morrell 17:51

Absolutely.

Jeremy Blake 17:54

And I hope you like me and that you might transact.

Bob Morrell 17:56

I mean, it's and no one's no one's picking up on that. No leaders are going, why did you agree with that customer about that thing? No one's picking up on that. And again, we're allowing this shoddy way of communicating to become the norm, to become the habit. And again, it's it's bad leadership, bad management, and it's not taking responsibility for it. And I can't, of course, if I can get away with it, then I will.

Coaching And Managing Hybrid Teams

Jeremy Blake 18:23

At reality training, we spend a lot of time working with team leaders. Team leaders are a really important part of modern businesses. And if they're skilled at leadership, they can really create a high-performing, motivated and productive team. If they lack skills and knowledge, then that's where we can come in. We know what it is to be a successful team leader, and we've got a series of modules on areas like presentation skills, time management, running meetings, performance coaching, delegation, and how to manage remote teams and many more. These make a really big difference to your team leaders' effectiveness and the results they can produce with their people. We know that team leaders are essential these days, probably more than ever, and we also know how to make them really good at what they do. For more information on how we can help your team leaders transform your business, contact RealityTrading. Selling certainty. So let's take a focus. I know you found out some things about I I mean everybody concurs with I think the industries that you've looked into, which is retail and travel. So for years we went into shops, and that was our only method to purchase goods online has gone. But why why let's talk with retail first of all? And I think you've got something on travel, which again is under the microscope and challenging industry. Why have retail standards slipped?

Bob Morrell 19:56

Okay, the the the absolute reasons are Really straightforward, huge staff shortages. That's the first thing. There's almost never needs never seems to be enough people for those jobs. Um, that's because of huge pressure to cut labour costs. So every retail organization is absolutely cutting it to the core, skeleton staff to to sort of try and get along with the lowest possible uh uh financial costs. Yeah. Um now the other thing which I think is appalling, and you and I have had a conversation about this, you know, you go into a supermarket these days, the self-checkout.

Jeremy Blake 20:35

Okay, one person manages six to ten stations, and they're constantly firefighting because they still don't work, do they?

Bob Morrell 20:42

Oh, how how often have I shouted at the machine when it says you have not put that in the bagging area? I mean, I just want to throw the thing out the window. I have put it in. Um I think morale is very poor in retail overall, but I think some of that links to things we've been talking about. So staff shortages and poor training, let's be honest. Lots of people are employed and not trained.

Jeremy Blake 21:07

No, they're straight out.

Bob Morrell 21:08

Lots of cost cutting. Um what's interesting about travel, I think, is a really fascinating one, is that there's huge demand for travel after COVID. Everyone wants to go on holiday, everyone wants to um, you know, to go on long walks or uh do experiences and do adventures and all that sort of thing. But there just aren't enough people who are experienced and knowledgeable to talk to us about it and give us their expertise. So, what do we do? We go onto AI and we ask that for the for the um the advances and the solutions and the inspiration. Yeah. Um, and I think and I think this is the really good one, which I think actually summarizes what we've just been saying. The customer expectations for retail and travel and other um, you could say any kind of customer-facing consumer business, those expectations rose faster than service has recovered. Yeah. And if you don't acknowledge that and go, wow, we really need to maximize and increase our service levels, then you're always going to be suboptimal. You're always going to be, you know, try trying to catch up, and that's going to make you prey to all sorts of issues, AI being one of the big ones.

Sales Principles Reframed As Standards

Jeremy Blake 22:25

So the the other thing I'd say about standards. So if you're listening to this and you think, gosh, actually, what needs to happen as standard in an interaction, let's say a customer service interaction? Um I was reading about um I sort of thought I'd wonder if I'd look into complaints and I was looking up some big companies and thinking, what do they have as a standard of how they deal with when things go wrong? And interestingly enough, I looked up Starbucks and it's published that they have a method which spells latte, and it's pretty, pretty obvious. But um it it's it's listen, acknowledge, um uh take action, you know, whatever each letter stands on. But it's actually empathized, it's actually pretty simplistic. But if you had a major complaint and the staff have been trained in latte, you could expect a standard of complaint resolving. But I think that's training that's in a massive organization. I think loads of organizations have gaps where they don't have the training for the standard of what we do when things go wrong, let alone what should we do when we're having an inquiry and things could be going right. So I would urge people to get their heads together and think what should be standard, should come as standard, should be our standards of what every customer can expect to happen in an interaction or in a in a complaint. The next thing I think you need to design and do away with is to stop using metrics that don't help you. So if you take NPS net promoter score, which is whether or not a customer would recommend you to another, that can have absolutely no correlation between the experience and the fact that it was a good price, I liked it, I've got it, so I'll recommend it. It doesn't go back to measure your standards of service or sale. So it's it's a wholly incompatible metric with a set of standards.

Bob Morrell 24:20

Um there's a couple of other things I've got here, which I I mean, I've got a list of 10 things that companies should do, but I'm only going to give a couple here, but because they're the biggest ones. The first one is this lots of companies will write down their standards and then ignore them. They don't live them, okay? And that's because the leaders and managers are not trained in how to enforce them. There's an assumption that you give a manager a set of standards and they will enforce them. They've got no idea how to enforce them. They're not going to go to their team and go, we're way off these standards, guys, let's work towards them. They don't know how to do that. So that's the thing. Poor managers who cannot live the standards, that's absolutely appalling. Now, I can I must say this, I think it's very true. In many organizations, people are promoted because they're either good performers, they've been around the longest, or they're liked by senior people. Okay, but they're not particularly skilled in coaching, communication, conflict resolution, setting expectations, and holding people accountable, which is what a standard should be. Okay, so that is those are two things there linked entirely to leadership. Um, and then let's just deal with the thing we've just been talking about because it it it it is it. Most companies choose flexibility over enforcement because they think if we start to enforce this, we're gonna lose employees and the labor market's really difficult. We don't really want conflict because we've never been trained to manage it. Um, I want to I want to appear to be supportive to my people rather than leading them effectively. Um, and I'm really busy anyway, so I'd I'd rather allow a bit of flexibility rather than have to enforce something. That's it. Okay, that is what's missing.

Jeremy Blake 26:14

I I want to put forward something that I think is very controversial, but I really I really feel this now. So when people are good, they've always wanted rewards, bonuses, yeah? Yeah I'm really good and I get rewards. Now, some of the organizations in the world have great teams who are wanting rewards. Yeah. I think we're now in the world with teams that are poor and they don't get a reward. But you know the biggest problem? They don't lose anything. No, why don't we have a culture now when standards are not set set, you lose something? Because the problem is if there's nothing to lose, I'll just carry on. Because I'm not actually I'm not it doesn't affect me. I didn't do it. Yeah, I know, I know on that conversation I missed out six of the ten standards that we abide by, but never mind. So you could have a c conversation about this, but there's nothing to lose. What about if a certain amount of your remuneration is based on upholding standards? I think we must be at this point. Otherwise, we will have a load of AI creatures bots just taking you over because you've just given in.

Bob Morrell 27:22

So this links to what we talked about in the previous episode on team leaders about metrics need to be linked to culture. Yep. Absolutely. So if you're just organ if you're just monitoring sales, efficiency, and customer metrics, like MPS, but you're not measuring professionalism, team culture, leadership behaviour, and communication quality. If you're not and not just measuring it, but incentivising those things. Exactly. Um you know, if we have great professionalism, great team culture, great leaderships, and great communication, we are going to do brilliantly. Okay, regardless.

Disloyal Bonding And Accountability

Jeremy Blake 27:58

That's because people don't really people can't see that engagement is enablement. If I'm wholly engaged, I'm enabled. What's all this in you do enablement and but this the person's still misery guts and everything else? But if they're really engaged and you're engaging a great leader, they'll do it. So standards fits into that because you've then got something to back and to do.

Bob Morrell 28:18

Yeah, yeah. Um well, I'm I think this is a big issue. I think it's what we're going to return to. Um, I think uh over the next year or so, standards are gonna become essential for large organizations that want to absolutely grow. If that's what their their focus is, they won't be able to do it if they can't enforce really good quality standards. And I think we will return to this subject in due course. But for now, thank you for that, Jay.

Jeremy Blake 28:45

We've really got into a very, very, very, but I'll hold back.

Bob Morrell 28:49

Yeah, I think I think I I think we I think we've done a lot there, but let's let's get people talking on it. We'd love to hear from you, listeners, on about your company standards, how they work. Absolutely. Um, and we will um we'll return to this at another point. But for now, thanks for listening. We'll see you on another reality of business very soon.

Jeremy Blake 29:08

Bye for now.