Value assessment

But what's the dollar value of this change? According to Freek Koopmans, Stryker EMEA vice president and CFO, it's too soon to tell how internal customer service is paying off. But the subtle behavioral shifts are, he says, inherently valuable. "It's really setting us up strategically to drive this division in a better direction," Koopmans says. "ICE is a good way of measuring if you're doing the right things."

There are several signs that ICE is helping Stryker EMEA do the right thing. Everything Stryker EMEA does is meant to maximize growth. As Ken Royal, a Gallup principal and engagement manager for Stryker, says, "At Stryker, it's twenty percent growth forever. If you miss by four percent, next year you'll [need to] grow twenty-four percent." The business units with the best ICE scores also have the best or fastest improving employee engagement scores.

More telling, the departments that have the highest CE¹¹ scores give the highest ICE scores to colleagues. What that suggests is that customer-facing employees who have the highest regard from clients also feel the highest regard for their colleagues. Clearly, the support they get from their coworkers translates into better customer engagement.

But ICE has had an effect that may be impossible to measure. "Departments really align, particularly through the ICE survey but also through the Q¹², because they're getting engaged and better informed," says Koopmans. "They really become part of the whole solution of getting a better business."

Being part of the solution plays out in subtle ways. For instance, leaders of organizations that emphasize internal fairness, keeping promises, and respect tend to face less fallout when they do the things that make people mad -- budget discussions leap to mind. But Stryker's business units are now more likely to listen and cooperate. Since 2004, they've been treated with respect, and they've seen that every unit is working to align and increase the whole organization's performance.

Sales in the spotlight

Because Stryker EMEA is a sales organization -- all manufacturing is done elsewhere -- sales are necessarily the division's primary focus. The inherent danger in such organizations is that the back-office functions not only feel less important, but actually become so.

"In fast-moving sales-led organizations like Stryker, central functions are often seen primarily as the supporting cast to the sales team, rather than [as] adding a lot of value in their own right," says Green. "Within Stryker, there has been a growing awareness of the importance of the central functions and the critical need for clear alignment of purpose and activity to drive best overall performance."

Yet no engagement program is worth the money unless it helps drive sales. "ICE does align the business properly behind what's important," says Koopmans. "It drives HQ beyond HQ, to [the realization that] it's a service and a support function that needs to add value to the business and the sales force."

But it works both ways. Royal was there the day the function leaders first received their ICE scores at a meeting with the sales leader peers. Great salespeople are motivated by concrete results; they tend to see any program from HQ as an obligation -- if not a burden -- unless they believe that it will increase their sales.

How or whether ICE would increase sales wasn't initially apparent, but when Royal explained that the service the function teams provided to the sales teams could be proven to affect external customer service and sales, the sales team perked up. "And when the functional leaders saw their ICE scores, some of them even apologized to the sales leaders," says Royal.

As Koopmans pointed out, ICE is part of strategizing for the future, and that's an issue Stryker EMEA takes very seriously. Most of its employees are fairly new; 69% have been there five years or less. For these young lions to acclimate themselves, they have to absorb the culture, highly decentralized as it is, fast and well.

"At Stryker, if you can't work with and through the businesses and clearly add value in your own right, forget about being seen as a successful leader," says Green. "ICE has started a process of internal dialogues that is changing the way business is done at Stryker, and all the indications are that business is now being done better. If new employees don't learn how to provide great internal customer service, how can you expect them to develop the right habits that deliver great external customer service on a consistent basis?"

Advanced

As we all know, some of the most important things in life, as in business, seem intangible. But some are tangible, if a business looks closely enough -- or has the right measures. So it's no surprise that Stryker EMEA sought and found a way to measure the seemingly intangible while limiting the potential side effects. Stryker EMEA's thermometer permits business leaders to detect small shifts in internal customer service that can lead to big changes in organizational performance. And that's a remarkable advance.

Copyright Ó 2008 The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ.  All rights reserved.  Reprinted with permission.  Visit The Gallup Management Journal at http://gmj.gallup.com/

Article from The Gallup Management Journal