Improving corporate culture is a huge investment in both time and money. But at HORNE, we believe these investments are necessary to win the war for talent in the changing business environment. In Part 1 and Part 2 of this blog series, we focused on improving career/life integration, personal flexibility and workplace diversity. Today, lets discuss the impact of continuous feedback.
A few months ago, HORNE launched a feedback movement which included feedback training for all employees. The training emphasized how to receive feedback with the intent to help our team get comfortable with difficult conversations. Our goal is to move towards a continuous feedback culture that ensures everyone understands expectations and how to exceed them.
Although the goal was internal, it’s directly affecting our clients. As market forces and business circumstances evolve at a faster pace, our services and our team must move proactively to keep our clients successful and sustain our relevance. Constant feedback between our team members and the client ensures that we are focused on what’s important to them, and sometimes that feedback changes the scope of the engagement. But that’s okay! Scope creep and scope change conversations are difficult when feedback is sporadic and inconsistent, but when feedback is constant, scope conversations are just a part of meeting the client’s expectations. And most impressively, scope management is no longer just a partner/client topic of conversation.
Constant feedback means that EVERYONE is part of the feedback loop, and EVERYONE is working to understand client expectations and evolve to meet demands!
How does your firm’s culture impact your current clients and your potential clients? Are there things about your culture that are limiting success? Can you afford to ignore your culture’s effect on your client service and business development efforts?
About the Author
Jonathan is a partner at HORNE LLP where he works closely with government clients to design and implement federally-funded programs to recover from some of the country’s most devastating natural disasters. As a new father, he is defining career/life integration under his terms - allowing him to maintain a high level of commitment to his family, his team and his clients.