Relationship Granularity
Measuring Relationships With Granularity Supports Positive Psychology
Many successful organizations promote customer-centricity in their strategy by talking about “Raving Fans,” being “Customer Obsessed,” or achieving “Net Promoters.” This is good. Organizations exist to serve people in all cases and those who only exist to serve their shareholders don’t seem to maintain their margins for very long.
Teams that break the relationship up into observable segments are able to see their customers move up a “ladder” with more granularity and even measure those movements through the observation of behaviors. I recommended breaking the movement up into three segments “trust, loyalty, and advocacy.” If you create a system like this in your organization, you can use different words, but having a system with levels of granularity that is valuable for teams of people because relationship building is a long game.
You will quickly recognize that moving everyone in your ecosystem into an advocacy relationship is nearly impossible. People are complex, value different things, and are otherwise occupied with their lives. We have found that there will always be some people whom you may never get to the level of advocacy. That is ok, as long as you can identify those who can and you focus on those folks.
Segmenting the measurement of relationships into multiple steps gives us “relationship granularity” that allows us to see progress at lower levels. Since this is a long process that takes time to achieve, having some level of granularity is valuable for the team to see the progress of each relationship and to see their progress at scale.
This is a positive psychology approach to leading a business. Martin Seligman’s work on optimism and its importance to human flourishing has been applied, even in military settings, to improve the outcomes of teams. It is a good thing to have trust, a better thing to have loyalty, and the pinnacle of a business relationship to achieve advocacy. It is also a great thing to have the language to identify those folks that might be below the trust threshold on the relationship ladder. Having awareness allows you to create plans and have powerful conversations around the folks who linger near the bottom.
Susan David, Ph.D., in her book Emotional Agility, talks about the importance of emotional granularity in human happiness. the same concept applies to relationship granularity in business. Teams that can see how well they are building and maintaining relationships in the context of their work are happier, more productive, and keep their focus on the long game vs. making detrimental short-term decisions that damage relationships.
REFERENCES:
Raving Fans, by Ken Blanchard (1998)
Secret Service, by John DiJulius (2003)
The Ultimate Question, by Fred Reicheld (2011)
The Relationship Ladder, by Me (2016)
The North Star, by Me (2020)
Flourish, by Martin Seligman (2011)
Emotional Agility, by Susan David, PhD (2016)
