Earlier this month, I attended a leadership conference put on by the Association of Educational Service Agencies (AESA) and had the opportunity to listen to some CEOs speak about the lessons they've learned while building successful, growing companies. They spoke about the many qualities that are vital to a successful company, and I'm proud to say that most of those organizational qualities deemed to be important are the same ones we continually focus on at Heartland AEA. For example, they all spoke of the importance of building culture and maintaining positive relationships. Our mission, values and work at Heartland AEA all speak to the importance we place on being proactive, developing caring relationships and collaborating with others.
Our Denison Culture Survey metrics over the past six years have shown steady growth in the cultural health of our agency. In fact, our Denison data is derived from a comparison of our organization to roughly 1,500 other companies, from all areas of business, and we score well into the top quartile in every quadrant of the circumplex. Many of our cultural characteristics rank above the 90th percentile when compared to these other companies. This is something worth celebrating and is a testament to every person who works at Heartland AEA. So, I want to thank every one of you for doing your part to make this a positive and collaborative place to work. We aren't perfect, and we still have a ways to go, but I firmly believe that we are working together to build an organization that values collaboration and relationships.
It's reassuring to know we are doing many things well, but I also learned other things from these presentations--things that were very simple upon reflection--but that I really hadn't understood prior. I learned that successful companies keep an unrelenting focus on customer service. They are intentional and systematic about keeping up with the current needs of their customers as well as working to understand their future needs (but that's a topic for another time). Successful companies always base their services on what the customer needs first, and as a result, the nature of their services frequently evolve or change. Successful service companies ask questions of their customers such as, "What is it you are trying to accomplish and are having trouble doing?" I wrote that question down and keep coming back to it because it's so much better than the question I have grown to rely on in recent years when trying to ascertain customer needs: "How can I help you?"
It's probably important to better define what I mean by the term "customer." A customer is anyone we serve. Sometimes our customer is a teacher, parent, student or school administrator. Other times, however, we serve our co-workers or fellow team members. Remember, it's as important to serve each other as it is to serve our local districts and families. I believe that whenever we interact with anyone we are serving, we should first think about their aspirations and their pain points. "What is it you are trying to accomplish and having trouble doing?" That's the question that says, "I want to help you with your work." Because we have so many talented experts in our agency, it's easy to fall into the "here's what I can do for you" trap. We all do it. We want to talk about our work, about what we can do. That tendency comes from a good place. We've worked hard to build our expertise and to develop quality services. The problem with leading with our expertise instead of asking and listening is two-fold. When we lead immediately with our own expertise instead of with a willingness to listen, we rob ourselves of not only an opportunity to learn more about our customer's problem, but also an opportunity to build a stronger relationship with that customer.
So this year, I challenge us to really, intentionally re-commit ourselves to service first and expertise second. And while we are on the topic of asking questions and listening to the answers, let's ask ourselves some important questions such as, "Am I listening to and serving my colleagues?" And perhaps most importantly, "Am I doing this work because I want to be a servant or because I want to be an expert?" As I told our new staff, if you weren't an expert, you wouldn't be working here--but make sure you know why you do the work. Seek to be a servant first and an expert second. I've seen people start out in education with little to no expertise, but with the heart of a servant, end up changing the world. I've also seen some very smart experts make a much more marginal impact. This message is intended for all of us and is a reminder, not a criticism. The truth is we all vacillate between the role of expert and that of servant. I think I needed a reminder of that, so I thought I would remind you, too. As we kick off the 2018-19 school year, let's go serve.
- Jon
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