So here we are - a room full of people with our eyes closed pointing where we think north is - hands pointing in every direction. Andy Brierley, Project Director of De La Rue, is up on stage, telling us that our random and varied pointing about sums up De La Rue’s customer focus strategy before they embraced the (Net Promoter Score) NPS.
Andy’s talking about how they have harnessed employee ideas to dramatically improve customer experience reflected in turnaround in NPS figures (UK) from -34 to +34, and made productivity gains of £38m in two years (global). Wow.
De La Rue’s “My Contribution” initiative is an employee scheme that invites employees to identify business improvement solutions, implement them as projects, and get rewarded for them. Focus is to be on solving customer, employee (or shareholder problems).
Andy has put up a De La Rue ‘jam’ of the classified ad that Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton took out to recruit for an expedition
“Men Wanted for Hazardous Journey. Small Wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and Recognition in case of Success."
The challenge for De La Rue has been to embrace empowerment (allowing employees to drive the program), permission (turning employees into stakeholders for project implementation) and measurement.
“My Contribution” Program success is measured in terms of improvements to customer NPS and value of initiatives implemented. Key factors in making “My Contribution” work include
- Communicating program effectively across business
- Creating program champions in each site
- Training - giving employees problem solving, project management and facilitation tools
- Peer review of suggested ideas - rank, rate, comment
- Reporting and demonstration of successful projects
- Rewarding employees - “Spotlight” initiative where project managers of top project present their initiative to senior management
- Getting critical mass in terms of contribution
Andy’s is a refreshing jargon-free zone - but can’t help thinking that his “My Contribution” program is a gold standard exercise in applied Wikinomics - using mass collaboration and collective intelligence to drive customer experience - NPS - and therefore growth. Wow. Wow. Wow.
Final flourish - chart of De La Rue stock price over the period "My Contribution" has been delivering results, massively outperforming competition. I am inspired.
