5 Key Performance Metrics

June’s PCT Top 100 Awards Ceremony and Executive Summit in Orlando was more than just a celebration of business success. During the course of two days, attendees networked with peers, participated in discussions on issues impacting their businesses and heard from top business minds, both in the pest control industry and from outside the industry.

A highlight of the Syngenta-sponsored event was a presentation titled “Leading a Peak Performance Culture” from communication and organizational expert Dave Mitchell. Mitchell, who has consulted for clients such as AT&T, Allstate Insurance, Citi Group, Universal Studios and Walt Disney World, shared five metrics he uses with his clients to evaluate how their companies are performing:

Horizontal Alignment. Mitchell said it’s important to gain as much knowledge about environments you operate in as possible, including your potential customer base; cost of entry; competitors; future demographic projections; the level of income in your market, etc.

Vertical Alignment. This includes evaluating the fiscal success of your organization; the operational success of your organization (e.g., avoiding the mistake of counting on robust demand to reach your fiscal goals); and the stakeholder satisfaction success of the organization (measuring the happiness of ownership, customers and employees).

Leadership Ideology. When Mitchell works with clients, one of the first things he does is examine if they have a very distinct core ideology that they live by — an ideology that “is not just marketing but living. This is who we are.”

Customer Experience. Mitchell has consulted for Disney and he says one of their practices is journey mapping — putting one’s self in the shoes of a customer and tracing the customer experience journey. He recommends PCOs do the same, asking questions like “Where do they experience us? Do they call and make an appointment? Who do they talk to and how do those conversations go? When [a technician] goes out to their house, are they knocking on their door an introducing themselves?”

Employee Experience. Mitchell says where employers go wrong is using yearly employee opinion surveys to measure employee happiness because this process “is not a collective. It’s an individual. It’s a series of individual experiences.” What employee A wants out of his job is not what employee B wants, Mitchell said. Instead, Mitchell recommends management talk to employees monthly in a casual setting, like taking them out for a cup of coffee and asking questions like: What things are frustrating about your job? What do you need to make it easier to do your job? How can I better communicate with you?

Mitchell left attendees with one final take: Don’t be afraid to use your employees to drive change. They are the ones who have those daily touch points with customers. One of the problems with leadership, Mitchell says, is that the higher and higher you go, the further and further away you are. “So, we start making decisions from a distance that is away from the impact,” he said. “We’ve got to make sure the people with the authority like you still are connected to the people that are close to impact, like your employees.”

What follows is a photo review from the event.

The author is lead news editor of PCT.