JUDGMENT ON THE FRONT LINE

The front-line employees who deal directly with customers are the face of your organization. Not only do they have the most impact on how your company and brand are perceived, they are also your most valuable source of insight into what your customers want and how to give it to them.

So why don’t companies emphasize the importance of front-line leadership? As management experts Chris DeRose and Noel Tichy explain, organizations just don’t know how to evaluate the risk of giving employees more autonomy and judgment. Even many of those who are willing to try it haven’t invested resources in ensuring that—once the shackles are off—front-line employees make good judgments (and make the company look good in the process). Pushing judgments to the front lines requires a few critical ingredients: • A relentless customer focus that starts with senior management • Values and environments that foster individual actions and risk-taking • Technology and tools that free up front-line workers to focus on and be knowledgeable about the customer • Teaching people how to make good judgments Innovative companies that are experimenting with this are big and small, old and new, for-profit and not-for-profit. When given the tools and freedom to take sensible risks, front-line leaders at companies like Amazon, Google, Zappos, and Pepsi are finding breakthrough ways to delight customers and create new profit sources. The authors draw on their own research to provide detailed strategies for organizationsthat want to make the most of the power of front-line leadership. Noel M. Tichy is the author of Judgment, Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will, The Leadership Engine, The Cycle of Leadership, and many other business bestsellers. He is a professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and advises CEOs around the world. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Christopher DeRose is a consultant in the area of organizational change and leadership. He teaches Executive Education with Noel Tichy at the Business School. He has consulted and taught around the world with companies such as Royal Dutch/Shell, Ford Motor Company, Agilent, 3M and HP.