Human Sigma: Managing the Employee-Customer Encounter

by Jim Asplund

Six Sigma changed the face of manufacturing quality. Now, HumanSigma is poised to do the same for sales and service organizations.Human Sigma offers an innovative, research-based approach to one of the toughest challenges businesses face how to effectively manage the employee-customer encounter to drive business success. Based on research spanning 10 million employees and 10 million customers around the world, the Human Sigma approach combines a proven method for assessing the health of the employee-customer encounter with a disciplined process for improving it. Human Sigma is based on five rules to bring excellence to how employees engage and interact with RULE #1: E Pluribus Unum. Employee and customer experiences must be managed together — not as separate entities. RULE #2: Feelings Are Facts. Emotions drive and shape the employee-customer encounter. RULE #3: Think Globally, Measure and Act Locally. The employee-customer encounter must be measured and managed at the local level. RULE #4: There Is One Number You Need to Know. Employee and customer engagement interact to drive enhanced financial performance. And this interaction can be quantified and summarized with a single performance metric. RULE #5: If You Pray for Potatoes, You Better Grab a Hoe. Good intentions alone do not constitute a plan of action. Sustainable improvement in the employee-customer encounter requires disciplined local action coupled with a companywide commitment to changing how employees are recruited, positioned in roles, rewarded and recognized, and importantly, how they are managed. Essential reading for global business leaders, Human Sigma shows how sales and service companies can flourish in the new global economy. It reveals a profoundly different method for managing human systems for growth. Blending strategic analysis with hands-on, practical steps and advice, Human Sigma will change how you view your work, your employees and your customers forever.

Genres: Business, Management, Nonfiction, Leadership, Buisness

321 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 28, 2007

Reviews

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently after learning about Gallup's Q12 employee engagement research, I'm a big fan of their approach to quantifying the human-emotional elements of organizational success. It provides a way to talk about the intuitive, "touchy-feely" stuff that drives so much of people's behavior in the workplace using terms and data that satisfy the less "touchy-feely" among us. Human Sigma does the same thing for customer engagement, providing a solid footing for the assertion that customers form connections and relationships with people, not organizations.

[Sarah Weisman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Human Sigma is a great concept and it definitely redefines the way need to manage our teams, the main issue I've found when trying to implement the learning is that most of senior managers seem to be stuck in time and don't want or don't see the need to change our approach to management and leadership to improve efficiency.

[Mercer Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an extremely dense book, but useful. The learnings in this book would take years to put into place, even at a company that is already prepared to do so. With that, I’d say this is probably a text to revisit over and over again, and perhaps only super valuable at the executive level or at a small, flat startup. You would need to have organization buy-in to put these things in place.

[Ahmad El-Saeed · Rating 4 out of 5]

الكتاب اكثر من رائع، يتعامل مع ستراتيجيات التعامل مع الموظفين واهميتهم داخل المؤسسة واهمية فرق العمل واحترام العاملين داخل الشركات واستهداف ادارة وتمكين الموظفين داخل المؤسسة حتى يستطيع الموظف ان يقوم بعمل ما يمكن في مراحل الابداع والتطوير واتخاذ عمليات التطوير والتقييم وتفعيلها.

[Melissa Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for my business book club and glad I did! I read 12: The Elements of Great Managing first and that introduced me to the concept of how to better manage for engaged employees. This book took it a step further for me and talked about how creating engaged employees is the best way to engage your customers. It talked about how these two elements -- engaging customers and employees work together to increase profitability. I also like what another review wrote:

"This is a great book for challenging much of the status quo in modern management. If you feel in your gut that there is a better way to manage or run a business than the modern approach that views employees as interchangeable cogs and customers as numbers, you'll be glad to hear that empirical surveys by Gallup agree with you. So give this book a read and see why engaged employees and customers are exactly what your business needs to move to the next level of maturity and profitability."

Good stuff! I took a lot of tidbits away from this read that will help me to be a better manager and business owner.

[Mike Gibbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book for challenging much of the status quo in modern management. If you feel in your gut that there is a better way to manage or run a business than the modern approach that views employees as interchangeable cogs and customers as numbers, you'll be glad to hear that empirical surveys by Gallup agree with you. So give this book a read and see why engaged employees and customers are exactly what your business needs to move to the next level of maturity and profitability.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful business book. Here it is in a nutshell. The key to success is customer engagement. To get that, you need to ensure your employees are engaged. When they are engaged, the customers are more likely to be engaged, and then you'll make more money! The. End.

[David Reber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like most lean manuals it was very dry and and I had a difficult time staying interested.

[Ridwan · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the end, the management is all about treating other people fairly: employer, employee and customer.
It is about akhlakul karimah!

[Sergio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gestionar la interacción con el cliente la clave del futuro en las organizaciones.