Below is an Autogenerated Transcript

Hello. My name is Ron Kaufman and I’m the author of the New York Times best-selling book UPLIFTING SERVICE. But you may know me better as the founder of the company called UP YOUR SERVICE because you’re one of the leaders of the organizations that we work with all around the world. 

Now, what your service does is helps organizations make a fundamental shift from a confused service culture to what we refer to as an aligned service culture. How do we make that shift? How can you as a leader talk about service to help your colleagues also make this shift in culture and an understanding? Well, let’s go back to the confusion and what’s the source of that. You see, in any large organization, you’re going to have multiple areas of focus and concern. Some people will say sales, that’s what really matters. Others will say well, sales and cost because profits that’s what we should focus upon. But then you’ll have other people say “No, no, no, it’s the introduction and manufacturing of new products”. And then you’ll have someone else say, ‘its distribution, that’s what we should be focusing on getting to a wider base”. And then of course, some people will say, it’s really all about the employees. Service then shows up as just one of those arrows. And it’s often the one that only comes to attention when someone complains to the top CEO, and it trickles down through the organization. What we’re saying is that making the shift from a confused service culture to an aligned service culture requires a fundamentally different way of thinking about where service fits within this set of arrows.

It’s not one of the arrows. It’s the foundation for the full set of arrows, of concerns, of areas, of interest. If you will, it’s the umbrella under which everything else occurs. Now how can it be that way? Because of our fundamental definition of service, which I’m sure you will recall. 

What is service? Service is taking action- the purpose of the action- to create value. For who- for someone else. With this definition, Service is taking action to create value for someone else then all of the confusion goes away. Because, what is the purpose of sales? It’s to be able to create that dialogue, that exchange conversation, where our customers and clients get value and where we as the organization also receive value. And what is the purpose of profits? It’s a way of tracking how much value are we creating, how competitive and successful are we in the market. What’s the purpose of manufacturing and distribution of new products? Well, to create more value. It is to continue to step up and create more value for the people that we serve. And distribution? Well, the focus of attention there is reaching more people, making it more convenient and easier for them to obtain value from the organization. What about employees? Everything an employee does inside the organization with a colleague or in the ecosystem of suppliers and vendors and distributors and resellers or ultimately with our end customers clients, members, visitors, guests. All of those conversations and interactions are intended to create more value. 

So then, service is not one of these confused arrows. Service is the fundamental foundation, on which all of the arrows sit or if you will it’s the umbrella for the culture of the entire company. It’s vitally important that you, as a leader in your organization speak about service this way. Use this definition regularly in meetings with your colleagues, as you’re thinking things through to help everyone where you work to get aligned and build a stronger, more uplifting, aligned culture of service.