High Performance Company

HR math: CX<EX

For all the talk of customer experience, very little is given to the employee experience. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge believer in creating a great customer experience. It’s crucial for any kind of repeat business and long-term success, it’s critical for word-of-mouth endorsements and buzz, it’s a necessity to differentiate from competing businesses. And so what?

It’s been said that the customer experience never exceeds the employee experience. I shorthand that into a simple math formula: CX<EX. If the employee experience is unpleasant, micromanaged, and rigid I can hardly expect the customers to receive a warm, open, uniquely customized experience. On a scale of 1-10, if the employees have a “1” experience, the customers will NOT receive a “10” experience.

It’s funny how we talk so much about creating the customer experience, but the employee experience seems to be an afterthought or we take a shotgun approach.  We forget that, no matter what our intentions, strategy, or CX metrics, it’s the employees who deliver the customer experience. Yes, work has to be done, high standards need to be met (exceeded), profits must be made. But somewhere along the way we get confused and think that work, standards, and profits are at the expense of the employee instead of because of the employee.

The great thing about employee experience is that it doesn’t have to be based on hope, chance, or luck. We can actually design it. We can give focused intentional thought to the experience we want them to have and how to create it.

We don’t often think about creating an intentional employee experience, so if you want an easy place to start ask yourself this: What is our ideal customer experience? How do we want customers to describe their experience with us to their friends?

Now build that experience for your employees.

what do you mean it was a great meeting?

Compelling. Rejuvenating. Energizing. How often do people use those words to describe a daylong meeting focused on updating annual goals? How often do participants come away saying it was their best meeting all their years at the company? How often do they send thank you notes and stop the organizers in the hallway to say how fantastic it was?

Never? Exactly. A snowball’s chance as they say.

This week there was apparently a cold front blowing over the river Styx. Snowmen and downhill skiing in Hades and all that.

The company I work for is very big on goal setting and every June there is a meeting of roughly the top 20% leaders to look at internal and external factors that might require one’s goals to be updated/revised/changed. It’s an important event because it recognizes that the world is changing quickly and we need to adjust as needed. This year, the organizers took a big chance and shook things up.

Rather than talking about goals, goal setting, etc. the event happened like this: After a 30 minute kickoff, 15 teams of five people were given sealed envelopes with instructions for 8-10 out of 12 or so possible activities and turned loose. They got back together five hours later to debrief their insights from the activities and wrap things up. The activities ranged from looking at how competitors were using social media (in an industry that is very shy about such things), checking out internal learning resources available, going to the mall and seeing how a certain retailer is trying to rebrand itself, considering rapidly changing industries such as music and DVDs and how it might relate to our own, etc. They even decorated their own coffee mugs using markers (ala Pinterest) with how they were feeling about the near future. It all sounds campy and probably shouldn’t have worked. Amazingly (and thankfully) it did.

Why? I’m still not sure, but I have a few thoughts:

1. It was different and unexpected. People were planning on a long, dull day so the novelty was energizing and people appreciated the organizers taking chances with the meeting.

2. The teams were very cross functional across department, location, and level so participants got to know people they rarely work with or even speak to. There’s a lot of power and benefit in kicking at the silos.

3. People, even conservative people in conservative companies in conservative industries, want permission to play, explore, think, and discuss. They really don’t get a chance to do that.

4. The day was framed as being all about questions and possibilities. Participants were told up front that there were no answers to be given only exploration and discussion.

5. There was no right or wrong, just open ended questions. There was no looking at what the company needed to do better, no leading questions or judgment, just a lot of thinking about what was going on in a lot of different fields. The company has smart leaders and they were left to draw their own conclusions for moving forward.

6. When things didn’t work like the organizers had planned, they were very up front and shared it as a learning point for all the participants to benefit from.

7. The organizers didn’t apologize, hesitate, or doubt. Their words and attitudes conveyed that it was going to be a different, provocative, and fun day and the participants followed that lead.

 

In there is my own personal biggest takeaway: people want permission to think and play. Daily work, organizational politics and personalities, self-inflicted expectations, and fear of being different conspire to get in the way. Events that remove those constraints and create a safe zone for playing with ideas enable something pretty special to emerge.

new ideas wanted, creativity not allowed

Good and bad is rarely as black and white as movies depict. Simple distinctions make for easy storytelling, but miss the sloppymessines of humanity. Strengths and weakness are rarely opposites – it’s not one or the other, but one with the other.

I recall reading a sci-fi book as a teenager where humans had crated enormous self-contained and mobile cities – rolling fortresses. For protection and law and order, the computers controlling the cities had been programmed to expel undesirables. Convicted criminals were expelled first, then those with criminal tendencies, then those who might be commit crimes under the right circumstances (say, stealing bread to feed their starving children), then… Soon the cities were empty of all people.

Life is mostly grey, rarely black and white, and insisting on clear divisions carries consequences. The other day, Max Mckeown (@maxmckeown) noted this on twitter, saying: Removing troublemakers may also squeeze out idea creators… There is a lot in that simple sentence. The line between troublemaker and creator is blurry at best. Under the right circumstances creators are often considered troublemakers – they ask questions (sometimes very inconvenient questions), reject the status quo, suggest other solutions, ignore politics and power base, have little regard for tradition and legacy, etc. They can be a real thorn in the sides of those who like things just so and it would be easy to expel the useful with the counterproductive.

It’s a brilliant and important reminder that us humans don’t all fit into neat shinyhappy boxes and our strengths can come at a cost. In his book Dangerous Ideas, Alf Rehn (@alfrehn) noted that many companies say they want creativity and innovation, but they really don’t. Sure, they want the benefits of designing the next hit product, but they aren’t prepared to deal with the idiosyncrasies of creative people. It’s as though “creativity” is viewed as a skill that can be produced on demand and then put away when not needed rather than a completely different perspective and thinking process.

I suspect that often, leaders are excited about bringing really creative, innovative, daring, visionary people on board. Early on, they produce some really great ideas so we ignore their quirks, but after a while their eccentricities and unwillingness to be confined to the neat and tidy “employee” box stops being cute and starts to hurt their careers. So the leaders who were so excited about having creative, idea generators on board are soon expelling them. Or the creative folks get tired of rigid walls and move on. Either way, the company is left more dogmatic, less creative, less innovative, with fewer and fewer ideas. They now offer more of the same with nothing to distinguish them from the competition.

Remember the timeless advice: Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

the insanity of someone else’s problem

Photo: Prepare...Chances are we’ve all heard the quote from Albert Einstein: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Except some days I’m less convinced it’s insanity and more just a part of human nature.

When we separate ourselves from the outcome, when we don’t see the part we play, when we don’t ask questions (What could I do different?) we see no reason to do anything different. So we don’t. After all, it’s someone else’s problem.

Recently, my son participated in his second martial arts tournament. The officials called his sparring division to line up with two divisions before them. He went and sat with his group and patiently waited. And waited. Finally, his group was called up to begin. He sat on the edge of the ring as participants were called out two at a time to spar.

More waiting. Several kids had sparred two or three times but he still hadn’t been called up. As it looked like his group was wrapping up and he still hadn’t been called I went and asked one of the judges. They said he had sparred, I said he hadn’t. They showed me the card used to track participants. I reiterated he had not sparred yet. It turned out another kid with a similar sounding first name had mistakenly gone in my son’s place.

Uh, oh. This caused all kinds of problems with the tournament bracket. At first the officials thought everyone was going to have to spar again. Then they called my son and another out into the ring where they waited (and waited). Then the officials shooed them off and called out two other kids. And then… and then… Much huddled discussion from the officials. This was at least a 40 minute process with a group of 6 and 7 year olds waiting very, very patiently.

Then after all the havoc and confusion caused by a simple mistake, the officials did nothing to change the behavior that contributed to the mistake. In a gymnasium with the background noise of six event rings running simultaneously (some of them using music for their events), with a group of 1st and 2nd graders wearing protective gear over their ears, the officials continued to call participants out using only their first names. Even with obvious hesitation, even with adults asking for the last name, the officials (all very well-meaning people) never stopped to consider how using both first and last names would prevent confusion caused by using only first names. So they persisted in the insanity of SomeoneElse’sProblem.

I suspect the officials mentally dismissed it as a problem caused by kids not paying attention. So they never considered what they could do to minimize the chances of it happening again.

How often does that happen in business? How often do we assume that we aren’t the problem so we keep doing exactly what we’re doing exactly how we’re doing it? How often do we get frustrated by different people creating the same problems over and over?

How often do we consider how a small tweak would reduce the chances of others getting it wrong? How often do we design and test our processes to make it as easy as possible for others (customers, users, etc.) to get it right? How often do we intentionally design communication to minimize the chance of misunderstanding or misinterpretation? How often do we have someone unfamiliar with the work review or even pilot it to see what questions they might have?

How often do we look to get rid of the insanity simply by focusing on the user experience? How often to we consider how we can minimize problems?

Even when they are SomeoneElse’sProblems.

above the line HR

There are two basic approaches to Human Resources: above the line and below the line. The line has nothing to do with ethics, transparency, or straightforwardness. The line is simply the no man’s land between the two philosophies. The line represents: Things Are Ok.

If we talk about health and wellness, some consider a lack of disease to be healthy. Others insist that health and wellness is something more than not being sick: it’s vitality, energy, radiant well-being. The line between the two represents being ok. The first approach fixes things if they drop below the line – illness or injury – the second sees the line of being ok as a starting point and strives to move far beyond the line to increase wellness.

HR can be viewed the same way. One approach exists to prevent things from breaking (don’t get sued!) and fix them when they do. It’s a reactive approach that assumes that as long as the company is compliant with laws and regulations – as long as it doesn’t get “sick” – HR has done its job well.

The above the line approach sees this as the starting point. Yes, you should keep it legal and prevent leaders and employees from doing terminally stupid things – but that’s the bare minimum expectation. Above the line HR does more than prevents illness, it sees the opportunity to help the company excel much like a trainer helps athletes improve. A trainer doesn’t just keep the athlete from being sick, they push to create maximum wellness and physical performance. The trainer can’t do it for the athlete, but brings knowledge, process, and discipline to the athlete’s efforts. AND maximizing physical performance also means super disciplined nutrition, preventative care, and top notch medical attention – all of which prevent illness and injury. The above the line approach naturally addresses below the line concerns because it can’t improve performance unless it prevents and mitigates health setbacks.

Above the line HR is the same way. To help the company (athlete) get the most performance, it has to be really sharp and proactive about making decisions and taking actions and providing the training, tools, and processes that minimize the need for below the line approaches. For example, few, if any, “illegal” interview questions provide any information that leads to identifying high performance employees, so why ask them? Performance is performance whether it’s male, female, white, black, yellow, blue, or green, in a wheelchair, left handed, believes in nine gods or none at all, etc., etc., etc. Kneejerk management decisions that often get companies in trouble are avoided, prevented, or mitigated not just to prevent trouble but because stupid decisions get in the way of people being at their best and hurt the engagement and commitment of the most talented employees (the ones you want to keep around). The athlete may go against the trainer’s advice, but does so balancing the potential consequences rather than out of ignorance or narrow perspective. Likewise, HR can’t make business decisions for leaders but can do everything in its power to ensure leaders are making informed and (hopefully) better decisions.

Who has a bigger impact on your personal vitality – the doctor you see only when sick or the physical trainer and nutritionist you consult with regularly? If HR is not “at the table” (sorry, I hate that expression), chances are it’s because they are viewed as the doctor that only gets visited after the fact to cure illness and injury. Staying below the line ensures minimum influence and impact.

Two approaches. One keeps the company from not getting sick, the other pushes for maximum health and performance. One prevents bad, the other strives to create the most good possible. They are similar in wanting to protect the company’s health but very different in philosophy, approach, and outcomes.

Above the line, below the line. What thinks you?

time to talk

I am a big believer in leadership development classes, workshops, and seminars. I’ve witnessed (and experienced) so many of those “light bulb moments” where there is suddenly a huge shift in thinking that changes a leader’s approach, and results.

BUT. I wonder how much of it is the content of the class and how much of it is something else. Good content is important, yet the magic happens in the spaces between the tools and concepts. The class provides crucial time to think, reflect, and discuss. It gives time away from phones, email, customers, and employees and becomes a catalyst for dialog and insight that doesn’t happen on its own.

The class gets people together and gives them space and time to talk. The information, theories, tools, and approaches gives context and content for reflection, dialog, and sharing. The conversation lets people know that they are not alone in their challenges, and leading is sometimes difficult and lonely and sometimes a bit scary for everyone, and there are solutions.

It’s amazing what happens when leaders drop the charade of invulnerable infallibility and get human. Suddenly, there’s so much to teach and so much to learn. Building trust, exploring ideas, sharing and learning from each other’s joy and heartache doesn’t happen quickly. It takes time before the conversation gets deep enough and rich enough to matter.

Time that no one thinks they have – until they take it.

What thinks you?

 

helicopter human resources?

A weird question to start your week: Is it possible that a strong and effective Human Resources department or Learning & Development group could inadvertently reduce leadership effectiveness?

Both areas, when done right are a resource to help individuals and leaders improve performance and make better decisions. But is there ever a threshold point where that resource starts to function as a crutch or surrogate for leadership? Is there a point where managers start thinking, “It’s not my job to develop my people – that’s what the training department is for?” or “Don’t worry about the details, HR is great at cleaning up these sticky situations.”?

How do we provide great support and resources without crossing the line and becoming the helicopter parents of the organization?

What thinks you?

the fast and furious way to organizational shrapnel

Kris Dunn over at HR Capitali$t (you should be reading his posts daily) recently posted Is Giving Employees a Yes/No Vote in Firings a Better Way to Go? It’s an interesting piece about software company Valve’s unusual practice of terminating through employee vote.

It got me thinking about the danger of copying innovative pieces from other companies without also using all their supporting systems. Removing the key leadership responsibility of performance management from leaders and putting it into the hands of peers is a very good plan for disaster. It’s not too hard to imagine the workplace devolving into the Lord of the Flies anarchy of a 6th grade popularity contest.

It’s also pretty easy to make the mistake of off handedly dismissing it as “it’ll never work”. Remember Puttnam’s Law: It is more acceptable to fail in conventional ways than in unconventional ways. The reward for succeeding in unconventional ways is less than the risk of failing in unconventional ways. Us humans like to downplay and ignore innovative success despite evidence that it seems to be working.

Unless.

My only knowledge of Valve is from reading their Employee Handbook and their organization is completely unlike  99.99% of the companies out there. It is as flat of organization as you will find so the management structure as most of us know it simply doesn’t exist. In their structure, the employee vote doesn’t undermine performance management, it supports it. And it works because all the supporting systems work together. Analyzing or adopting this one component in isolation of the rest of the system is futile.

Consider it this way. Highly modified cars often have giant turbochargers, use nitrous oxide, run on exotic fuels (not available at your corner mini-mart) and can put out 4,5, or even 10 times the original power. But, installing a huge turbo or filling the trunk with nitrous bottles in your economy car after a marathon weekend of The Fast and the Furious is a quick shortcut to turning your engine into very expensive shrapnel. Yes, turbos, etc. can provide big-time power, but all the supporting systems (engine block and internals, transmission, differential, axles, etc.) must also but upgraded. Radically changing one component of interrelated systems rarely works.

What thinks you?

 

Conformity Now!

The other day I wrote conforming our way to greatness? about how it is impossible to stand out while blending in. You don’t need to go read the whole post (though I’d be happy if you did), but the conclusion was:

There is a choice to be made every with every decision and every action. Do you choose greatness or do you choose mediocrity? It sounds like an easy choice, but it really isn’t. Mediocrity comes with a map and endorsements and approval. Greatness comes with the big risks of never having a map, of letting go of the known, and with disapproval and criticism. If it works you’ll be attacked and if it doesn’t you’ll be ridiculed for trying. Yet…

If you’re doing the same thing as everyone else, you will never get better results than everyone else.

This fear us humans have is a noose on innovation and progress. It is barely discussed, yet I believe it’s one of the single biggest constraints facing business today. There is such tremendous pressure to not stand out, to not do different, to reinforce the norm as Right that this is an extraordinarily difficult choice to make and stick with. We use terms like “best practices” and “state of the art” to make it sound like we are blazing trails through the wilderness. (And if we really want to feel all George Jetson futuristic we’ll create “state of the art best practices”.)

Don’t believe the hype. “Best practices” and “state of the art” are synonymous with the “status quo,” “the norm,” and “the way we all do it.” Innovation, diversity of thought, and progress can’t happen when we stick to the “industry standard.” We simultaneously choke, bind, and hobble our individual, group, and organization’s potential while convincing ourselves how progressive we’re being.

Puttnam’s Law sums it up best: It is more acceptable to fail in conventional ways than in unconventional ways. The reward for succeeding in unconventional ways is less than the risk of failing in unconventional ways. In short, you can screw up with impunity so long as you screw up like everybody else.

Study, think about, maybe even memorize that. Puttnam’s Law is in effect any time two or more people get together. It’s in every team, organization, society, and country; every activity, sport, profession, and trade. And it’s holding us back.

Why do we conform? Simple. Reread the second sentence of Puttnam’s Law: “The reward for succeeding in unconventional ways is less than the risk of failing in unconventional ways.” Failing (or just being mediocre) like everyone else carries much less social risk than failing OR succeeding on your own path.

Failing together the way we’ve always done it is somehow safer and more comforting that succeeding in new ways. Yet, despite the reassuring solidarity, we’ve still failed.

What thinks you?