Chapter Four: Play the Game the Right Way
Revised and updated | Hire Train Monitor Motivate: Build an Organization, Team, or Career of Distinction in the Transformational Workplace
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Chapter Four
Play the Game the Right Way
A simple question for any stakeholder of an organization, whether the owner, donor, senior executive, administrator, supervisor, or staff:
Assuming there is genuine interest or need in the related products or services and they are at full market value, do you or would you consider involving friends or loved ones in any of your organization’s offerings?
If the answer is a clear “yes,” the rest of this chapter is a review of what you already know. Hesitation in answering the question is a sign that action is needed.
The successful organization, team, or individual of distinction embraces six key cultural realities essential for long-term sustainability.
New customer acquisition is the driving force behind the organization.
Product or service quality shapes the organization.
Collecting receivables enables paydays.
Regulatory compliance: do it correctly or face failure.
Financial stability drives the organization’s economic engine.
Customer satisfaction serves as the ultimate measure of success.
An organization that adopts these six mantras at the corporate, administrative, department, team, and individual levels is—as often said in professional baseball—playing the game the right way.
Delivering operational excellence throughout the organization is crucial for long-term success. Just as in competitive sports, elite performance starts with understanding and then mastering the fundamentals.
New Customer Acquisition Powers the Organization
At nearly every organization, whether it’s for-profit, nonprofit, or public service, nothing occurs until someone purchases a product, uses a service, donates, or pays their taxes.
Unless the sales or fundraising teams acquire new customers, finance cannot fund clients, engineering cannot improve products, accounting cannot collect receivables, customer service cannot handle inquiries, and the executive team cannot manage its budget in real-time. Cost-effective marketing, combined with ethical new or repeat customer sales, drives the organization, enabling everyone else to perform their essential work: serving the needs of customers and other relevant stakeholders.
Product or Service Quality Shapes the Organization
During a media interview after taking over Apple for the second time, Steve Jobs stated that his dedication to developing innovative devices prioritized the product over the process.
His focus was on the qualities of the product and the professionals who created it, rather than on corporate processes or procedures. Considering the state-of-the-art products Apple has released since the mid-1990s interview, Jobs’s theory has had a significant impact.
Due to the many regulations and industry standards that organizations face today, process-driven teams have become the new norm, often pushing product and service development or improvement into the background. Customer acquisition, raising financial capital, regulatory compliance, expense management, accounts receivable, legal adherence, human resource policies, customer retention, and other process-focused—though necessary—activities can overshadow the essential role that quality products or services play in a successful organization or team culture.
The quality of a company’s goods or services directly affects its reputation in the community. Up-to-date products or amenities delivered with excellence impress customers, employees, regulators, and competitors, and generate positive influence on elected officials, mainstream media, and the public.
Organizations and teams that focus on delivering superior products and services build outstanding reputations in the marketplace. When the pursuit of excellence in products or services is neglected or overlooked, problems often follow. Perhaps the new normal in competitive local and global economies emphasizes the importance of quality above all else. A positive reinvention of universal consumer perceptions is at stake.
Collecting Receivables Makes Paydays Possible
Any business or organization, regardless of tax status, depends on collecting receivables for financial survival. Effective accounts receivable management is the lifeblood of the organization’s existence as a stable economic entity.
The accounting team, or its equivalent, is responsible for collecting and posting receivables in accordance with applicable regulations and procedures. While this vital task is everyone’s concern, as receivable collections make paydays possible, each employee or team member is somewhat accountable for this process. Clearly, only authorized personnel process and post actual collections; however, other employees play a role by default.
Strong administrative skills in accounts receivable, combined with ethical collection practices—and satisfied customers—often result in low bad debt, a key financial indicator of a well-managed operation. Active participation from all team members at approved levels is a reliable sign of effective collection processes.
Conversely, a lack of discipline, consistency, or ethics in collections activity often causes customers with outstanding accounts to become complacent.
When given the chance to help with your organization’s collection process, think about the customer’s well-being and your paycheck. Collecting receivables makes both achievable.
Regulatory Compliance: Do It Right or It’s Game Over
“Live by the sword or die by the sword” is a timeless saying rooted in the business world. “Those who hold the gold make the rules” is another classic and relevant phrase.
Demonstrate negligence of laws and regulations, even if unintentional, and it’s game over for the guilty organization. Operations that are noncompliant face the potential of a regulatory death sentence. The message is clear: play the game right or stop playing.
Regulatory compliance in all forms—whether international, federal, state, local, accreditation, industry standards, or an organization’s written policies—always remains a top priority for the group. To take advantage of these rules, your training emphasizes how to follow them. It is well established and, for the most part, not open to negotiation. The alternative is the classic penny-wise but dollar-foolish omission, a common practice in today’s highly competitive global sharing economy.
The choice is simple: follow the rules or face removal from the game. Questioning non-negotiable laws, regulations, standards, or policies is a fool’s errand. Adhering to them is essential for survival. Prioritize management or compliance with regulations as a key focus of your organization, team, and career.
Customers and other stakeholders may benefit from the renewed dedication to doing things the right way.
Financial Stability Fuels the Economic Engine
Achieving or surpassing reasonable financial goals is the lifeblood of any organization’s economic engine, whether it functions as a for-profit, nonprofit, or public service entity.
The distinguished team exceeds the financial goals set for both current and ongoing operations through various commitments. These include contributing to research and development, funding marketing strategies, covering the cost of goods sold, hiring and training new employees, investing in facilities and equipment, meeting payroll obligations, reducing debt, or making interest payments.
I sometimes see people in the nonprofit or public service sectors overlook financial scrutiny due to their nonprofit status. Still, not-for-profit means tax-exempt status, not an exemption from fiscal responsibility.
And not to let for-profit enterprises off the hook, as excessive profit margins call for price reductions to benefit consumers or investigations into monopolistic or anti-trust violations on behalf of the public.
Regulatory protection is at risk partly due to the current divided US political landscape, as shown by the sharp division among voters after the Great Recession. This polarized environment has led the far right to advocate for fewer regulations and the far left to support increased regulatory oversight. Where is the moderate center when it is most needed?
When such political extremism moderates as leaders prevail, rules that benefit everyone may provide our struggling free-market capitalist system—which led to the Great Recession—a needed correction toward fair market capitalism’s balanced economy.
Populist movements could steer the economy toward greater upward mobility, benefiting future generations of the twenty-first century. Such efforts might resemble the government-initiated redistribution of excess wealth after the early twentieth-century industrial revolution and again after World War II, which both resulted in increased prosperity for the middle and working classes.
Until then, the organization—regardless of tax status—must follow a model of ethical financial stability for its stakeholders by adhering to a reasonable mix of international, federal, state, local, and industry regulations. The successful organization will succeed by hiring, training, monitoring, and motivating quality teams and individuals who play the game the right way.
Customer Satisfaction Is the Ultimate Report Card
Successful new customer acquisition, quality products and services, diligent collection of receivables, practicing dynamic regulatory compliance, and improved financial stability are meaningless for the organization if there is no substantial customer contentment.
Teams and individuals of distinction view customer satisfaction as the ultimate report card. Without motivated buyers of its goods or services, the organization no longer has all its necessary resources and has stopped following the right way to play.
An organization’s ultimate success depends on its thorough assessment of its customers’ happiness. Without satisfied customers, all other metrics lose significance.
Treat customer satisfaction as your ultimate measure of success. You are guaranteed to succeed in all five of the other cultural realities and to sustain a distinguished organization, team, or career in the transformational workplace.
Individuals Working as a Unified Team
At its core, baseball is about individual athletes driven by stats working together as a team to win games and championships. This same dynamic exists for any team, no matter the industry.
Stakeholders within the organization are evaluated on individual performance, but each must play the game ethically by working together as a unified team. By driving sales, financing customers, developing and delivering quality and relevant products and services, collecting receivables, managing regulations and industry standards, providing strong financial results, and creating satisfied customers, the team—and its members—have the chance to win the game.
The new standard in the twenty-first-century workplace is to approach the game with passion and a desire to succeed, combined with a noble purpose and a lifelong commitment to sustainable products and services. This model fosters workforce development and socioeconomic progress, ultimately benefiting the broader public.
Next in Hire Train Monitor Motivate | Chapter Five: Leadership and Teamwork by Inclusion
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