I have been in the field of training, leadership, and organizational development for over 20 years. Through all these years, I have heard a one message (and complaint) from practitioners, consultants, authors and gurus: for cultural change to succeed, top leadership must support it. It’s amazing. This message is so consistent. And there is so much evidence to prove it!

Yet the issue persists as a key barrier to successful culture change.

2011 was an extraordinary year. There were more revolutions around the world, violent and otherwise, than we’ve seen in many years. These dominated local and global news channels, political and business conversations, and the attention of people everywhere. Even Time magazine acknowledged the Protester as the Person of the Year.

Some of these revolutions were due to growing frustration at their countries’ dysfunctional systems, some were more forward looking. Most began as independent affairs, not creations of specific political parties. Many were enabled by easy access to—and the global reach of—technology (social media in particular).

They all had one thing in common – millions of people were committed and involved. These revolutions were not triggered by inspirational leaders with answers to problems – in fact, very few people even knew the solution, the sentiment that mattered was ‘I know what I don’t want’.

We regularly work with CEOs and senior leaders to help them build uplifting service cultures and improve service performance. Most leaders understand their roles and are eager to provide direction and support to transform their culture.

However, given their intensive schedules and responsibilities, it’s unreasonable to expect high-level leaders to know the details of all service improvement and culture-building initiatives. While they meet to review initiatives periodically, the Ultimate Question 1.0 can significantly leverage their time and commitment every day.

Ultimate Question 1.0: What is your team’s best idea to improve service today?

Let me begin by thanking you; thanking you for taking the time to read our blog, for your passion for service. Allow me to tell you how much WE appreciate YOU.

I had the opportunity, recently, to read the most beautiful note of appreciation that was sent to Ron Kaufman. The writer of this note, expressed his gratitude in such a tender, heart-felt way, not from a standpoint of attempting flattery, but spoken from his personal experience. This most wonderful note gave me pause to consider the gifts contained within gratitude.

Over the many years of working with organizations to help them become ‘customer centered’, I have witnessed a number of successes as well as failures. By understanding why these well-intentioned initiatives fail and looking for common causes we are able to address them early in the planning process for future initiatives and thus increase the odds of success.

The six most common reasons for failure I have seen throughout my career are these:

At UP! Your Service, we work with clients around the world who want to create positive cultural change by building an Uplifting Service Culture. While these clients vary from global, multi-national organizations to government agencies, our experience shows that leadership is always a vital predictor of success.

We note three characteristics of successful personal change that also apply to leading cultural change in a large organization.

The immediate assumption when we talk about “improving customer service” is that we refer to the activities of customer-facing team members who directly “serve” our external customers, clients, buyers, suppliers, guests, users, attendees, diners, students, patients, etc.

And in fairness, most service education is indeed intended for those who “face” customers – improving the quality of service for those who pay for our services.

But seeing service improvement as mostly a frontline, customer-facing issue will not foster the development of an uplifting service culture where all employees embrace the goal of constantly adding value for others.

In the world of uplifting service culture, we put the needs of our customers as our highest priority. Entire systems and ways of interacting, are based upon “the care and feeding” of our most valuable resource…the customers and colleagues we serve.

So what should you do when a customer surfaces who is mean-spirited, abusive, or accusatory? What happens when you clearly know that a customer is not being honest?

Few leaders ‘meet employees where they are’ and effectively translate scores and targets into the ideas and actions employees care about.

To help your employees understand and care about quantitative measures, consider and then take these five steps:

Step One: Identify and quantify the changes you want to achieve
Step Two: Design and deliver effective communications
Step Three: Measure intent first, not outcomes
Step Four: Design effective systems and processes for support
Step Five: Realize your managers are more important than you

Businesses and communities for years have developed countless theories and ‘best practices’ to either Get Employees Who Care (Service Recruitment – Building Block #3) or to Get Employees To Care (Rewards and Recognition – Building Block #5)

Increasingly, compensations and appraisals are now being tied to % improvements in service indexes.

Here’s the problem:

Employees don’t live in the world of index improvements. Many may not even understand it.