Leadership shouldn’t ignore the Voice of the Customer - their people

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Earlier this year, Gershon Mader and Josh Leibner of Quantum Performance wrote on Workforce.com about how Great Leadership Traits Can Squelch Employee Commitment.
Grand vision, great confidence and eloquent communication skills are certainly leadership traits to admire. But in times when a company or a business function within it must change course dramatically, leaders who take those traits to excessive ends will find few employees who will truly get on board.
+ Z# J. D6 v) Z1 GLetting the management team (and even workers below) help craft the vision, admitting that one doesn’t have all the answers, and speaking genuinely will go much farther in getting employees to embrace and adopt the strategy.
: U+ c. g$ |9 t, E, p: v, _To me what they’re really talking about here is the old Six Sigma adage of Voice of the Customer, check out my other topic about this. In this case the voice of the customer is a companies own employees.
& j+ r5 J$ Q3 XIn any effective strategy, implementation, or change management initiative you need to include the voice of your customer in whatever context. This ensures that the impact of the work will be better received and adopted simply because the employee base had a voice. They contributed their thoughts, ideas, and concepts to the direction and execution of the strategy.
There are multiple ways to ensure you have tapped into the voice of your customer. Surveys, focus groups, stakeholder meetings, Six Sigma tools like QFD and others. The vehicle and method is not as important as the concept. Understand what your customers want, allow them a channel to input their perceptions, and listen to their voice.