Translate management jargon into work ethics

Corporate principles and values are terms that we often come across on glossy corporate brochures and websites. Are these just the so-called soft aspects of a company or do they represent something real and fundamental?

Can these concepts be brought into practice, resulting in better performance, more profits and sustainable growth? I believe they can, provided they are translated from management jargon into the day-to-day work ethic of the company.

If these are communicated and internalised right across the organisation, over time, these principles can become the very culture of the company. Surveys conducted across the world show that the most commonly expressed corporate principles are: customer orientation; quality; growth orientation; open to learning and change; high ethical standards, and employee orientation.

How can you follow these principles in your day-to-day management of the company?

Client Focus: Everyone says they are client focused, and yet the legion of dissatisfied customers is ever-growing! What does client focus mean? It means identifying your important clients are, and then getting to know them well.

"Know" in this context means acquiring a good understanding of the clients business, profitability, critical success factors and future plans. An important aspect is getting client feedback on your own performance, particularly feedback on shortcomings and suggestions for improvement. Real client focus is much more than a buzzword.

Quality excellence: Adopting a corporate principle should mean that it gets reflected in everything the company does. Therefore excellence must be found in everything - in processes, products, services, controls and governance. From the receptionist answering routine calls to the CEO handling complex issues. In other words, quality at every step.

For employees, it must become a habit. When excellence is truly internalised by everyone in the company, it will benefit directly as all its stakeholders will see the company as an excellent organisation. This is what builds reputation and brands.

Quality and excellence do not come merely by saying so. It has to be actively promoted, by setting high standards every day and in every way, monitoring performance and providing an enabling environment.

There should be specific incentives and rewards to recognize excellence, not just the usual "Employee of the Month" type of award but also tangible, material benefits to openly acknowledge and encourage excellence. Conversely, a work environment that does not tolerate sub-standard performance usually prompts employees towards improving themselves.

Creating growth: Many companies call themselves "growth oriented". They believe that sales driven growth is the way to gain customers, market share, brand strength and geographical footprint, all of which will result in higher profits and profitability.

This argument will hold only if the growth is sustainable. While opportunistic growth is fine, long-term growth is possible only if the entire organisation — and not the front-line sales staff only — is growth oriented.

This means many things: training and enabling sales staff; strengthening back office and operations functions to support higher sales; benchmarking yourself constantly to competition; putting in place controls and internal audit; upgrading systems to cope with higher volumes and new products; and ensuring that financial resources are planned for and available at the right time and cost.

If growth orientation is your guiding principle, you will succeed only if all the measures listed above are implemented.

Clearly, corporate principles are not fuzzy ethereal concepts but a clear statement of how the company wishes to conduct its business. They in effect dictate the way in which products are made, services are delivered and how all members of the company behave.

In other words, corporate principles define the culture of the company. It is important to repeatedly communicate these principles to all employees for them to internalise, and to external stakeholders so that they have the right image of your company.

Vision, mission, values or principles — these are the guiding lights that determine what a company is — but only if translated into action. Otherwise these will remain on websites and its glossy corporate brochures.

The writer is the manager director of Salvus Strategic Advisors JLT.