Introduction
Bob Matha and Macy Boehm (2008) believe in the power of communication to drive leadership strategies in organization. However, these authors noted that any leaders face communication hurdles when they use convoluted, evasive or empty terms when communicating. This habit affects organizational abilities to achieve strategic objectives and wreck leaders and employees in a similar manner. On the other hand, effective communication drives results in an organization.
An Action Equation can help leaders to overcome communication challenges. The Action Equation identifies key elements that leaders need to communicate to their employees.
Project: Restructuring Retail Bank Division
The aim of the restructuring project is to streamline the bank, enhance efficiency and effectiveness and align products to customers’ needs.
Do
- Focus on driving growth of the new Retail Banking and Distribution and meet the needs of over 42 million retail customers with banking centers, online, mobile, and ATM/VTM banking services
- Drive customer services and operations by consolidating all issues that relate to fraud, customer experience, call centers and claims for the mass market, home loans and small business
- Focus on integration of Home Loans, Consumer and Small Business Banking for efficiency and cost-saving
- Train and empower employees to deliver values to customer, develop new product and optimize product and service distribution for customer acquisition and retention
- Achieve strong financial results every quarter with a projected growth of 15 percent
- Provide constant oversights on business continuity, vendor activities, issue management and operation controls and their related impacts on the business
Know
- The Retail Banking Division needs to expand its distribution channels, develop new products and acquire new customers so that it can achieve a sustainable growth of 15 percent every quarter
- Bank of America is in a service-oriented business. Therefore, the customer-facing team must enhance efficiency by solving customers’ queries immediately, escalate issues to senior executives, provide feedback and possess product knowledge.
- Bank of America needs to expand, focus on profitability, reduce operation costs, train employees and invest in solutions that enhance efficiency in customer service and operation management
- The Retail Division must enhance sales of all retail banking products and services to existing customers and potential customers every quarter
Feel
- Bank of America has the best products, franchise, abilities and the largest customer base in the financial sector
- The restructuring of Retail Banking Division is consistent with the bank’s goal of streamlining operations and enhancing efficiency to customers. These changes will put the bank in a position of accelerated growth and give employees opportunities to grow their portfolios, be a part of the team, and implement their ideas
The Conversation Platform
Five elements of the Action Equation
- Enhance customer care
- Integrate products and services
- Focus on customer needs
- Develop new products, distribution channels, and train employees
- Teamwork and effective leadership throughout the organization
The core message
It is imperative to provide seamless experience to Bank of America’s customers in the retail and small business sector across all product and service portfolios by integrating the bank’s Home Loans and Consumer and Small Business Banking products and services. To achieve these objectives, the customer care will identify customer needs, the product team will develop the right products for the market, distribution systems will offer alternatives for customers in term of product and service delivery while the entire bank will focus on risk management, business continuity, and optimization of the business model with absolute support from senior executives.
Teamwork will drive the business and ensure continuity
- Customers recognize the bank as Bank of America and not as different business units
- Bank of America believes in a collective participation across all different units of the organization
- The bank encourages various departments and teams to recognize that they would be working as a team in all future projects, decision-making, strategic goal setting and executing organizational strategies
- Employees must facilitate knowledge gathering and sharing across all departments
- The bank notes that goals are cooperative and facilitated by active, open communication at all levels
- Despite different roles and assignments, all employees have the same goal of ensuring success of the bank
The Leadership is here to support employees
- Bank of America has effective, active leadership to support employees in daily job-related decision-making processes
- Senior executives take part in day-to-day business challenges and inspire employees to achieve their best
- Bank of America leadership inspires and challenges employees to take worthy risks, rise above the expected in their departments
- The bank’s leadership recognizes that it is not always the innovator and gives employees a chance to generate, innovate, and adopt new ideas and methods in business operations
- The leadership foster positive interaction among employees
Bank of America believes in seamless operations and customer convenience
- The bank’s distribution channels will be spread nationwide
- Leverage technology to solve customer complaints quickly and efficiently
- The bank will accommodate all future demands of its growing customer base
- The bank emphasizes availability at banking centers, online, and on mobile platforms
- Bank of America focuses on 24/7 customers
Employee training and develop
- Employees will acquire the necessary knowledge and skills through training to do their jobs and enhance performance
- The bank focus on career develop and personal growth of employees with work-life balance strategy
- Employees will work on various projects in different business units
- The bank will provide technology to facilitate work completion and efficiency
- Employees will learn how to work in a supportive and highly interactive atmosphere
People Channel Dynamic
Senior leadership
- David Darnell – Co-Chief Operating Officer
- Walter Elcock – Co-Chief Operating Officer
Managers
- Curtis Anderson – Banking Center Channel Central Region
- Jill Calabrese Bain – Strategy, Planning & Enterprise Solutions
- Susan Faulkner – Consumer and Small Business Products
- Mary Kanaga – Home Loans Business
Frontline Supervisors
- Tim Huval – Service & Operations
- Titi Cole – Retail Products
- Matt Vernon – Home Loans Sales
- Chip Rossi – Preferred Products
Frontline employees
- Laurie Readhead – Consumer Market and Distribution Optimization
- Bob Kelly – Business Controls & Integration
- Allen Jones – Consumer Customer Experience
- Bob Shiflet – Fraud
- Randall King – Contact Center and Service Operations
Communication Channels
Intranet
Only employees of Bank of America can use the intranet to gain access to information and application software. It offers access to information and acts as a central point for gaining access to organizational data. This platform can accommodate any form of data that Bank of America wishes to host and publish to employees.
Employees can rely on familiar Internet tools like Web browsers, newsreaders, and e-mail to gain access to the intranet.
The intranet would result in significant returns on investment (RIO) for the bank by making information readily available to employees.
Bank of America uses the intranet for diverse purposes. For instance, it uses the intranet to enhance information access, create, share, and use information across different business units. The bank has deployed the intranet to enhance accuracy, improve speed of communication, indicate information details, retrieve important data to support customer service, provide current information and save costs among others.
Internal Memo
Bank of America communicated the restructuring agenda to employees through an internal memo with clearly indicated areas of focus. This mode of communication proved useful in supporting decision-making processes and highlighting possible areas of weaknesses in the bank.
E-mails
Bank of America has used e-mail communication widely to communicate with employees. It has eliminated challenges associated with logistic and synchronization among different branches of the bank. Hence, it has enhanced productivity at work.
Face-to-face
This is a common form of communication between frontline employees and their supervisors at a branch. Employees discuss issues that require immediate attention from their supervisors.
Meetings
Bank employees engage in different forms of meetings, such as ad hoc, board, management, work, and team among others to communicate different business information to employees.
Why do effective leaders need an Action Equation?
An Action Equation helps leaders to organize their messages to employees. In this context, leaders can evaluate ideas and identify what employees must do in order to achieve strategic objectives of an organization.
The method allows leaders to identify what employees must know and feel to allow them to choose the right strategies and subsequent actions.
The method focuses on what is relevant for communication to employees. Therefore, it eliminates irrelevant information that may waste time or be counterproductive to organizational goals and outcomes.
The Action Equation allows leaders to research and analyze their messages before communicating them to employees. Therefore, the ultimate aim of the Action Equation is to deliver effective communications, which ensure that employees execute strategies and realize results.
What are the advantages of narrowing strategic messages into a conversation platform?
The strategy ensures that messages convey their intended purposes. For instance, the use of an internal memo enhances the delivery of key points that employees should learn in a project. A Conversation Platform ensures that messages are clear to the intended audience and drive conversations on strategies.
The method ensures brevity and relates all objectives and activities, which an organization must concentrate on to realize its goals.
Employees can interpret, assess and comprehend messages on the Conversation Platform and relate them with the aims of an organization and actions they must take to achieve them.
Matha and Boehm note that the Conversation Platform is an imperative communication tool because people rely on conversations to communicate effectively (Matha and Boehm, 2008). Moreover, it enhances information accessibility and usability. At the same time, it provides opportunities for different teams and leaders to focus on specific issues, establish a ground for training and promote discipline in the day-to-day communication in an organization.
The main aim of using the Conversation Platform is to ensure that messages drive results in an organization.
Why is the People Channel critical to effective leadership communication?
Employees rely on directions, answers, perspectives, and clarity from their superiors. Therefore, if any different message originates from another senior manager, but not a line manager of employees, then such a message is likely to fail.
The support from a line manager is critical for effective communication. Thus, if a message receives a weak support from such managers, then employees are not likely to support such a message. Consequently, business activities related to customer service, brand development, product distribution and process improvement among others might fail.
People Channel asserts that people, in this case senior executives, managers, frontline supervisors, and employees, are the most vital means of communication available.
The People Channel creates an interactive communication platform and promotes knowledge transfer among employees and senior executives. It eliminates a passive form of communication.
The People Channel offers tools and processes that allow employees and leaders to engage in constant conversations regarding goals. Hence, employees and leaders will have opportunities to enhance their levels of understanding of organizational goals. At the same time, people can provide their feedback for improving and executing goals.
The People Channel ensures that the message remains relevant when communicated through different traditional communication channels, such as intranet, conferences, satellite broadcast, and newsletters among others. While these modes of communication are important, they are not the center of attention. Therefore, various modes of communication channels only support people to communicate effectively with others in an organization. Various modes of communication channels help in information distribution to different units of an organization. This helps leaders to deliver their messages fast and efficiently.
The People Channel ensures that leaders know how to communicate, what to communicate, but they must receive training to do so.
Leaders are also privy to important information before other members of a company can receive it. Therefore, they have opportunities to review the content and prepare adequately for subsequent communication.
The ultimate goal of the People Channel is to ensure effective communication for driving results.
Reference
Matha, B., and Boehm, M. (2008). Beyond the Babble: Leadership Communication That Drives Results. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.