No, I’m not objectifying women body-parts because its an acronym, but it got your attention, yes? As I’ve given credit to a few very special people in helping me realize how to embrace and implement personal change, I wanted to also discuss how organizations, groups, or companies should be given credit for providing personal change. Not only providing opportunities for change to each employee, but what can manufacturers do to evaluate, determine, and show gratitude for change opportunities others can provide. So, this is where I started a very entertaining, yet enlightening, discussion with one of the hardest working people I know: my dad.

My dad was in the lightning industry for 20+ years in various managerial capacities and helped his company through some very tough times that turned into very rewarding experiences. And, obviously, I liked to get some sense knocked into me by him from time-to-time. Our similar personalities, his excruciating wisdom, and…well…he’s family make it easier for me to listen compared to some others. Plus, he also provides an insight to the leadership and business management mindset of the generation that is running our industries currently. Being exposed to that perspective makes it easier to understand, empathize, and communicate more effectively with that demographic for a strong-willed millennial like myself. And as I’m describing to him more about where I want to make a positive impact within the business environment using a more social approach, the inevitable question came up: what’s the ROI on these changes?

I totally understand and agree with the purpose of establishing a measurement to better evaluate what changes are making a positive difference. You can’t manage what you can’t measure, right? And you can’t measure emotions, so there isn’t any value in taking into account how your leave your customers and employees feeling based on all the combined efforts, initiatives, programs, or other “warm fuzzies” a company participates in to increase their corporate social responsibility impact, right?

WRONG!

Introducing the brainchild my dad and I have decided to call Total Impact Template Score or a.k.a.: TITS. Albeit childish, it’s the tits. Literally. Our scoring system idea is meant to capture the indirect financial return a company can gain from valuable actions that indirectly impact the bottom line by keeping turnover low and increasing revenue through greater customer satisfaction. However, some actions are hard to capture, measure, and monitor since there isn’t, again, a direct impact association with the bottom line. This measurement would be helpful or useful in the current customer service and marketing departments. But, based on the direction the business with a social age mindset are taking, the traditionally silo-ed and hub-and-spoke company structures are being revamped where departments like quality, customer service, personal relations, and others are being encouraged to be everyone’s responsibility, not just a select few. This change in duties and functions within a group can be hard to capture in the traditional ROI measurement calculation. Instead, companies can self-define their scoring system that takes employee and customer input on their perception of the company, its values, and its total impact to provide a measurement that indicates how much your company is the “TITS.” (Insert inappropriate joke here).

Each company/manufacturer is going to be different depending on the market they cater to and their service/product, so the recommendation would be to generate your own internal TITS scoring system. But, what’s the use of measurements if you can’t use them to compare to others? To keep it simple and easy to understand, I’d have your score based on a 1-to-10 scale so other companies may be able to compare their TITS to yours based on their own internal score on the same scale. Or we could make this even more inappropriate and do a letter scaling system, (i.e. A to DDs, but I’d say lets KISS). Next question: where would you start in creating your internal TITS tracking system? First, ask the simply important question: Do your employees enjoy coming to work everyday and how likely would they be to recommend your company to work for or buy from? Maybe the easiest and simplest way to capture this is to create the 1-to-10 scale again. Have your employees regularly answer these questions and give instantaneous feedback to the company on areas for improvement to drive up your TITS score. And, based on the values and goals of your company, generate additional questions and measurements to capture those values and goals into an easily interpretable score that you can use to continuously evaluate the progress of your companies implemented changes and use that score to compare to and share with your community.

This new scoring system will have your company considering the human side of business more to integrate a compassionate and adaptable side of your organization that will help differentiate your team from the rest of the industry.

Tell me about a company you’ve heard that has implemented a self-evaluation system beyond just monitoring ROI on change projects. Any assumptions or measurements I’m not taking considering that I should?

Photo credit: http://memesvault.com/we-are-an-awesome-team/