I recently pulled some Reserve duty (yes, after all these years, I still do that), and one of the things that always seems to strike me (yes, after all these years, it still strikes me) is what often comes off as a complete lack of CX focus among military folks whose job is literally “support” for troops. Now, that’s not everybody, and in fact, it’s not the case with my current duty station; there, the support folks are top-notch and very helpful. But I’ve been in a long time, and I’ve had very different experiences in different units over my years.
What I mean (at least, as I was reflecting on some previous units to which I’d been assigned), is the spirit in which some of these support organizations go about their job when it comes to keeping us all ‘in the green.’ By green, I mean that we have obligations to stay current in a lot of different areas: health, fitness, ancillary training, and the like. Readiness is the key to the realm in the military as we have to be ready-to-go at a moment’s notice. Maintaining that readiness entails periodic training, demonstrations of efficiency and health, and many other aspects of what makes us impactful in such an instance. So, there are entire offices within each organization (these Command Support Staff) who are responsible primarily for keeping not only records of each members’ currency but also to make sure we each get those tasks completed.
And therein lies the rub: Far too few members of some Command Support Staff teams (with fabulous and remarkable exceptions, to be sure!) see their job as much more than taskmasters…keep on top of everybody in the unit to ensure they’ve gotten their [ahem, stuff] done on time.
Now, it’s no treat for the members of the CSS that every time they interact with unit members, they’re welcomed not as a helpful reminder but rather a distraction from any one of us simply trying to get our own jobs done day-to-day. In fairness, also, they’re only doing their jobs by way of keeping us on task for the sake of our own (and our unit’s) readiness. But still. If you ever were to ask one of these folks: Do you consider the primary point of your job to be getting everybody to comply?, Or do you consider it making it easier for everybody to comply?, I’m sure they’d probably pick the former…likely because they’d never even considered the latter.
The funny thing is, though…if they took that second option, they’d probably come up with clever and useful ways that make it easier for the rest of us to all stay in compliance, thus obviating the need to have to do much hounding us to get stuff done. If they spent at least as much time devising ways to make it easier for us to do the things we need to do, we’d be more prone to get them all done in time, and they’d have to spend basically no time at all chasing us all down for our own compliance.
Okay, in fairness, it’s a different environment from corporate CX, and attracts a different type of personality…complaints about a process or system being inefficient or lacking a human touch are rarely met with open ears, and often lodged with a cynicism that is fostered by an environment whose organizational response is usually, “Thanks for your interest in national security,” and a pat on the head.
So, when I compare my experiences in uniform with my experiences as a CX executive, I have to shift gears somewhat.
But still, even ‘out here’ in the civilian world, I’m amazed by brands that consider the mission of their “support” functions as ensuring compliance instead of easing burdens of that compliance itself.
I wrote a while back about whether your support functions consider themselves to be “gate-keepers” or “problem solvers.” But depending on your business model, your support services may have to ask themselves this question as well: Are we “taskmasters” or are we “problem solvers”?
