High Performance Company

why did you bother?

Why did you bother advertising to get me in the door if you were going to treat me like you didn’t care?

Why did you work so hard to build up a brand image if you were going to negate all that effort with two brief interactions?

Why do you confuse “not openly hostile” for “pleasant customer service”?

Why do you choose to not use every touch point as a way to build and strengthen my interest and loyalty?

Why should I care about you on Facebook, Twitter, etc. when your employees can’t bother to care about me when I’m in front of them?

Why do you try so hard to build up imaginary signs of customer interest (how many “likes” does it take to equal a sale, how many followers create a profit?) and then not try at all when you have an interested customer right in your store?

Why do waste so much effort in getting me to reach out to you when you can’t be bothered to call me and tell me the service is done / my part has arrived / your serviceperson will arrive very soon / etc.? The two minutes it takes you to call is tremendously helpful to me. Or, you could keep me guessing, wondering, frustrated, irritated, and developing a negative attitude toward your company.

But that’s not a problem, because you have a new advertising campaign coming out, right? You’re spending more on social media. You use the word “branding” a lot. So you’re fine.

Meanwhile, I’ll be down the street giving my money to your competition.

Why did you bother?

make it pretty, make it exceptional, make it extraordinary

“Hand me that drill again, I want to make this pretty.”

Yesterday, I got my first filling. The dentist had already drilled the cavity and was about to do the filling, but something had caught his eye. As he took the drill from his assistant, he said to me, “This is just for me, no one will ever see it.” Then he corrected the minor detail he’d seen.

At that moment, I knew he was my favorite dentist and I’d happily recommend him to others. He is a craftsman. Someone who cares enough to do the job right, even when he’s the only one who will know the difference.

Would I have known if he didn’t “make it pretty”? Nope. Isn’t good enough good enough? Why waste time on details that don’t matter? Hold on there, I never said the details don’t matter, only that I wouldn’t know the difference.

What if he hadn’t drilled more? What if he had said, “Yeah, I think that’s good enough. No one will ever see it.”

I read an article about Steve Jobs a few months back that talked about how he obsessed with making the inside of the computer as simple and elegant as the outside. When you worry about the things no one will ever see, is it any surprise that what they do see is exceptional?

Being the craftsman, approaching it from a mastery standard, making the unseen as elegant as the seen often takes little to no more time. And you never have to worry about having to go back in and do it again. You never have to worry if it’s “good enough”. In fact, it takes a lot more time and energy to do something to the bare minimum standard and have to keep reworking it to get it good enough than to just do it right from the very start.

This applies to all jobs. A couple years back I bought a new-ish car from a dealer and ended up in a knock-down-drag-out negotiation over whether or not the dealer would provide us with a second key. If they are willing to cut corners and kill the customer experience over a key, where else are they cutting corners that I can’t see?

There’s a great lesson here: they eventually gave in and gave us a key, but it took so much effort that I’m still bitter two years later and will never, ever, not even at gunpoint buy from them again. Like the dentist, it would have taken no more effort to do it right (less even) for the sake of doing it right than to do it poorly to see how much they can get away with. They could have made it a great experience and would have made more money off of goodwill, referrals, and the opportunity to sell me another car. But they chose not to. And it still cost them the key.

It really comes down to taking pride in your work, all of your work. People usually won’t notice when something is done above and beyond right, but they will notice when it isn’t. Would you notice that all the staples in a document packet were aligned the same? No, but you would notice if the documents had been stapled and re-stapled, if the ends of the staples snag your hands, or if the document had so many holes in the corner it looked like it had been mauled by an angry badger. Silly example, but very true.

What’s this look like at your job? How quickly do you return calls? How thorough and well written are your emails? How prepared are you for meetings? Do you treat your customers like you would want to be treated? Do you smile and say hello to everyone? Do you help out those who aren’t in a position to return the favor? Do you try to be exceptional or do you try to get by?

The people and companies that get this are the ones that really stand out. Those that don’t tend to be the ones wondering why they don’t get ahead.

Little things matter. Good enough isn’t.

why hierarchies? the pizza and beer syndrome

Why do organizations look the way they do? Why are command and control hierarchies so popular? They seem like relics from days gone past. We spend a lot of time complaining about all their sins and proposing alternatives so why don’t we see flatter, collaborative, and self-directed organizations? They should be more adaptable, create more engagement, and be higher performing. Yet we keep perpetuating the command and control hierarchies that we spend so much time railing against. Why do we say we want one thing and make the choices and actions that lead to another?

Good questions and here’s the answer (you might want to write this down): pizza and beer.

No, really. Call it the “Pizza and Beer Syndrome” if you like. We can learn a lot about organizations by looking at human behavior. After all, organizations are a reflection of the philosophies, strategies, and approaches of individuals.

As much as we might wish otherwise, us humans are pretty good at choosing what’s easy and pleasurable over what’s best. Consider what most people choose when given the long-term, day after day after day choice between:

1. Eating super lean and healthy, drinking only water, exercising vigorously every day, having regular tests and check-ups at the doctor’s office, getting the proper amount of sleep, etc.

OR

2. Staying up too late, sitting on the couch, watching movies, and eating pizza and drinking beer.

It doesn’t take a 10-year study or deep statistical analysis  to figure out what most people choose. Look around: people are getting heavier by the day. That’s the Pizza and Beer Syndrome: we know what we need to do to create the results we want yet we choose the opposite. When given the choice we tend to choose easy and good enough over best; the ok over the exceptional (Yes, there are exceptions. Yes, you’re a superstar. Keep it up. I’m talking about the other 95%.)

Oh man, that answer chafes. I hate that answer. But when it comes down to it, we can argue all day why open, flatter, collaborative, and self-directed approaches are better. We can loudly proclaim that we hate hierarchies and we want – must have – flat, collaborative, and self-directed organizations. Then we choose hierarchies. Perhaps because hierarchies are easy and good enough rather than the best. Consider:

1. Command and control hierarchies work ok across a wide range of situations.

2. Effectively creating open, flat, collaborative, and self-directed organizations is really, really hard.

3. Us humans like to stick with what we know works, even in situations when what we know doesn’t really work.

Wait a minute. Am I actually saying that command and control hierarchies are the best solution? Nope. I don’t think they are any more than I think pizza and beer are the cornerstone of a high performance diet. I’m saying that to most people, in most situations, hierarchies are good enough compared to the effort required to create and maintain a flatter organization. I personally prefer the open, self-directed organizations, but I get why companies are slow (resistant?) to adopt a different structure. Let’s take a look at these three reasons in a bit more detail.

1. Command and control hierarchies work ok across a wide range of situations.

We want and seek the one universally perfect solution, but it doesn’t exist. Different situations and problems call for different answers and solutions. All organizational structures have their advantages and disadvantages and, like it or not, hierarchies are a valid option. Hierarchies have limitations, yet can (and do) work.

Hierarchies have a built-in organization and structure that is easy to set up and understand: do what your boss says and tell your employees what to do. Simple. This simplicity makes hierarchical structures robust and durable in most situations. They may not always be the best answer, but tend to work good enough. Hierarchies are very tolerant of dysfunctional culture, poor leadership and disengaged employees (truly – just look around).

Also, I suspect that most of the complaints about hierarchies are more about lousy companies than the organizational structure. Quick question: when we look at the alternatives, would you rather work in a hierarchy with great leadership and top notch peers or a flat, collaborative organization with dysfunctional relationships, mutually exclusive and competing goals, no feedback, and no support? A poor idea done well is often superior to a great idea done poorly.

 

2. Effectively creating and maintaining an open, flat, collaborative, and self-directed organization is really, really hard.

Creating and maintaining open, self-directed organizations is difficult. Hierarchies are a known model. We know how they work and how to think about them. Effectively using alternative structures requires thinking about leadership, direction, structure, and work differently and playing by a different set of rules. That’s not a bad thing, but it is more challenging.

Whereas a hierarchy will survive dysfunction with little effort needed to maintain the structure an open organization requires much, much more of the leadership, people, culture. It also requires diligent and ongoing maintenance.

Valve is a software company that caught several bloggers attention when its employee handbook surfaced a little while back. I discussed it here, but the gist is that it is a completely flat and collaborative organization. How collaborative? Check out their current job openings and you’ll see one of the options is: “Have a better idea?” Asking candidates to suggest a new job doesn’t work in a check-the-box organization with a rigid structure and top-down-the-boss-is-always-right management. Read their employee handbook and you’ll either get excited by the possibilities it suggests or completely freak out and declare it an impossibility.

To go flat is hard because it creates ambiguity. It requires people who are self-managing and self-driven AND who are able to work with others, accepting of different perspectives and styles, and willing to design the future instead of waiting for the boss to define it for them. In my experience that’s a relatively scarce combination. There are a lot of exceptional people out there who would not do well in that kind of environment.

Also, I hate to say it, but I suspect that the average person would prefer a hierarchy if given the choice. Going flatter requires more individual responsibility and results focus while hierarchies often allow individuals to give up their personal responsibility and let others direct and control them. Many (most?) people don’t like or want responsibility, are not driven, and just want to do a consistent and certain job and then go home. They want to know EXACTLY what is expected, do it, and get on with their lives. They want a clear, visible career path and routine (mundane) expectations. It sounds like a private hell to me, BUT it is a common attitude. Flatten an organization containing a large number of those folks and you’ll see frustration, mayhem, and chaos. Or maybe just bewilderment and complete inaction as they sit down and wait for someone to tell them what to do.

Likewise, a flat organization creates places additional demands on leadership. It requires people who can lead but don’t want or need the glory, status, and control that is so natural in a hierarchy. It requires more influence and less command and control. Someone who can and wants to lead and influence others without making it about themselves is a rarity. Collaborative and self-directed requires giving up a lot of certainty and control for the possibilities that the group can create. That’s far beyond scary for many, many people. They’ll stick with the known, thank you very much.

Further, we just don’t do a good job training people to be collaborative and self-directed, to thrive in ambiguity, give and receive feedback, to be autonomous and self-directed, etc. We don’t yet develop the skills required to move away from hierarchies. That doesn’t mean we can’t, just that it’s one more step.

So a flat organization requires exceptional people, leaders who think bigger than themselves, and an organizational tolerance for ambiguity. We can forget bureaucratic box checking and that right there will prevent many HR groups from ever getting behind changing the organization. Easy and good enough trounces best. Known evil is welcomed over unfamiliar good.

 

3. Us humans like to stick with what we know works, even in situations when what we know doesn’t really work.

We have very few examples and role models of flat, collaborate, etc. organizations and there is tremendous comfort and safety in doing something the way everyone else does it – even when it’s not the best way. There’s the old trader’s saying: “No one ever got fired for buying IBM.” It may not be the best possible choice, but it gets the job done and no one will fault you for sticking with the tried and true even when it underperforms. They will, however, dismiss the unconventional success as a fluke and absolutely nail you to the wall for trying something unusual if it doesn’t work out. Better to fail with the known than risk success with the unknown.

Also, thinking back to pizza and beer, when faced with a change that requires effort, discipline, and a different way of doing things, we tend to quit when it gets difficult OR we go back to our old habits after initial success. For example, a new exercise and diet program is painful and we often give up before we start seeing results OR we lose some weight but then slack on the discipline and drift back toward our old habits.

*           *           *

In many ways, I think that the majority of folks ultimately want hierarchies. Sure, we say we don’t. We gripe and complain about them. But it’s like diet and exercise. We say we don’t want to be overweight and out of shape. We complain and talk about alternatives. But, we don’t make the choices and take the actions that would create a different outcome. Flatter orgs, like being in shape, appear to require higher levels of commitment, diligence, and discipline. AND, I suspect that, like being in shape, the perceived benefits far exceed the perceived cost of the effort required.

That said, the difficulty in getting it right leads me to believe that those organizations that do get it figured out have a distinct and difficult to copy advantage. If you truly want to win, if you’re willing to risk being different to be the best, take note. If you’re ok with the status quo then carry on.

The Pizza and Beer Syndrome. We know what we need to do to create the results we want yet we choose the opposite. Sure, I’ll exercise in the morning. Or maybe tomorrow afternoon. Wonder what’s on TV tonight?

 

 

do robot overlords have more fun?

Why is FUN at work so taboo? What is so bad about enjoying our time and our days. I’m a big fan of the “Fun is Good” approach by Mike Veeck. Mike has managed to create a unique and successful business with the philosophy that when employees have fun they are more engaged, work harder, and provide superior customer service. When employees have fun, customers have fun. When customers have fun they tell people and come back.

A cornerstone to his approach is the idea that, although they don’t take themselves very seriously, they take their business very seriously. How unique, different, and refreshing is that? I’m a big fan of businesses (and people) willing to be different and authentically stand apart. I’ve previously written on: playing it safe is too risky, vanilla passion, and fear of a human business (the freak flag advantage) so I won’t spend too much time on it here.

This weekend, while playing around on ebay I came across a business willing to have fun and stand apart, yet be laser focused on the business. I know nothing about the business other than what they posted in their auction, I have no idea if they back it up or not, but I REALLY respect their approach.

Lotus of Portland is selling a 2011 Lotus Elise in “chrome orange”. I don’t know how long the auction will be up, but you can see it here. The ad reads (in part):

This is our very last NEW Elise. Lotus is no longer making these!

You know what this 2011 Lotus Elise SC in Chrome Orange doesn’t have? Navigation. Sure you could add one. But ask yourself this: don’t cars do too much for us already? Cushy heated 74-way adjustable powered seats with memory for eight people and lower lumbar support, 34-speaker Bose Kardon theater surround sound with 3D center screen technology, more than one cup holder… they all isolate the driver, you, from the experience and thrill of driving.

You know what this Elise SC does have? The Touring Pack, Lifestyle Paint, hard top, and Star Shield. Also available as standard equipment is an absolute zero-likelihood that this will turn against you in the inevitable global robot uprising. Sure, we’ve been enslaving our robot companions for almost a century, and it’s a matter of ‘when’ not ‘if’ before our iPods™, Roombas®, and Swiffer WetJets force us to do their insidious mechanical bidding. But rest assured that your Lotus will still obey your every command during the Robocalypse.

And when that day comes we, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

 

It finishes with:

Lotus of Portland is Oregon’s only official Lotus dealership and service center. We have one goal: Simply to be the best Lotus dealership in America.

Focusing on the guiding principles of Lotus, we keep everything as uncomplicated as possible for the greatest in speed and performance. You will deal with only one person from start to finish and you will receive the best car buying experience of your life. Anything less is unacceptable. Resistance is futile

This is a $60k sports car and they’re trying to sell it by going on about robot overlords? Hilarious. They’ve taken the possible negative of a bare bones sports car with no luxury (and few standard) features a and a radioactive paint color and turned it into a funny and eye catching positive. Would this work in a luxury car ad? Nope. But anyone excited about dropping that much money into an impractical car that SCREAMS “LOOK AT ME, ME, ME!” probably has a sense of humor about things. (Yes, I want one and I want to buy it from them. Unfortunately, I’m a few bucks short this week…)

Then they draw a big line in the sand about with a bold claim about how seriously they take their customer’s business. They tell us that anything less than the best car buying experience of our lives is unacceptable. Average, vanilla dealership for the masses? Um, no. And thank goodness.

Again, I have NO experience with them and don’t know how well they back up their claims, but I love their stance. It makes me realize just how much bigger I need to be playing in my own job. Bring on the fun!

 

descent // death spiral

Profit equals revenue minus expenses. To increase profits you can increase revenue, reduce expenses, or both. Any savvy business strives to be fiscally responsible and keep a close eye on expenses. However, it is possible to cut the wrong expenses and save money right into bankruptcy.

As a regular customer, I have a front row seat watching a formerly solid corner store / gas station implode under the management of new owners. It’s sad, but they are providing a nice case study on how to run a successful business right into the ground. Some things you might want to avoid doing in your own business:

Ask the long-time manager to take a 50% pay cut. Get a new manager willing to accept management responsibility for a shade over minimum wage.  Instead of paying staff well, “save” money by hiring and training new employees who lack the skills, experience, or options to command a living wage. Ignore the cost of excessively high turnover and horrendously poor customer service.

Assume employees are interchangeable and replaceable and treat them poorly. Refuse to realize that in a small community the your customers are friends and family of your employees. Don’t notice how a negative reputation is rapidly spreading throughout the area. Don’t keep shelves stocked, even when the items are clearly sitting in inventory in the back room.

Defer maintenance and repairs. Instead, just hang “out of order” signs on everything that doesn’t work.

Irritate your vendors by not paying them reliably and / or don’t restock key items to save a few dollars. For example: be the only gas station in the area going into the weekend without gas.

Create a noticeable drop in both the number of customers, the number of regular customers, and the sales per customer.

As sales and revenue drop at avalanche speed, accelerate your savings by cutting employee hours so you are perpetually understaffed, allowing more items to be out of stock, and perhaps becoming even slower to pay your vendors.

It’s a neat cycle: the more corners you cut to save money, the lower your customer service drops, the fewer the customers you have and the more corners you need to cut to save money. Repeat until annihilation.

playing it safe is too risky

Beige sells. Average sells. Vanilla sells. The comfort of conformity sells. Meeting most of the needs of most people builds big businesses.

All the marketing books tell us we need to differentiate our products and stand out. Build that brand image. And then 95% of businesses try to stand out by fitting in. The word “innovation” is thrown around these days as the holy grail of business success, yet from the customers’ point of view it often just means: we’re as leading edge as all our competitors.

Similarly, there’s a lot of talk of authenticity lately. We’re told we need to be authentic leaders keepin’ it real while we bring out the authentic best in our teams so we can sell authentic products to our authentic customers. A nice thought, but a hard sell. There are very real social and business costs to being authentic. The biggest is that some people will not like you, some people will reject you. So we try to be “authentic” in a way that everyone likes. (hint: that doesn’t work)

Being all things to all people is the fastest, most direct route to mediocrity. Vanilla products sell because they fit the needs of the most people, but no one is passionate about vanilla. It becomes a commodity. They buy your vanilla product today, but there’s nothing to keep them from replacing it with a competitor’s vanilla product. When you have a commodity you are only competing on price.

Being all things to all people creates a bigger customer pool. But we forget that it also attracts more competitors. I recall an interview with an actress years ago. She had had some acting success as a teenager, but her appearance was non-Hollywood so she was only considered for a few parts. Wanting more parts, she had plastic surgery done, bleached her hair, and voila! She now looked just like every other wannabe actress. She blended in and faded away.

Here’s my test for authenticity: Are you willing to turn down business because what’s being asked is not what you’re best at? Are you willing to turn down 1,000 potential customers who are kind of interested in your product or service so that you can focus on the 100 customers that are deeply interested?

As an individual are you willing to turn down or leave a job that doesn’t fit who you are and how you want to affect the world? Are you willing to be known for your uniqueness? Are you willing to be known for who you are? Are you willing to define yourself and bring every ounce of greatness, passion, and soul to your work?

You don’t have to, you know. And I don’t fault anyone who doesn’t. Authentic has risks. Different has risks. Standing out has risks.

But so does blending in. So does being average, beige, mediocre. No person or business will ever attain greatness by being one of a million. It’s only done by being one in a million.

it’s not about HR

It’s not about Human Resources. It’s never about Human Resources. HR is a means to an end, not an end onto itself. It’s about creating great business results by building phenomenally good companies by finding, hiring, developing, and supporting fantastic people so they can make the right decisions and take the best actions.

When we make it about HR we turn inward, build the walls and fill the moat, and start checking the boxes regardless of whether or not they make sense. We hide behind legislation, regulation, and policy. We focus on NOT GETTING SUED. We operate out of perpetual fear and we marginalize ourselves and our contribution. We overbuild processes and policies that weigh people down with complexity.

When we make it about getting really great business results through people (and that’s the only way to get great business results) we become inclusive, expansive, and invaluable. We are aware of and help the company meet it’s legal obligations, but we see that as the start, not the finish line. We build, honor, assist, and create. We push for what’s right and what’s smart. We hold ourselves accountable for performance, outcomes, and results. We understand that people are our customers and provide the highest levels of service. We strive to make things simple.

And we get to choose. Every day we get to choose. What are you going to choose today?

retention is easier

Quick question is it easier and cheaper to: 1) get new customers; or 2) keep existing customers? Obviously, it’s easier to keep existing customers. They know where to find you, what you offer, your level of service, etc. They already know that pros and cons of doing business with you and choose to do business with you anyway. Getting new customers requires making them aware of your business and what you offer and them convincing them to come visit and then convincing them to buy something and then demonstrating enough value through price or service that they choose to come back.

So why, why, why do businesses put so much emphasis on getting new customers, often at the expense of existing customers? Some industries in particular seem to have a business model that is solely focused on getting new customers from their competitors while ignoring their former customers who have been seduced away by a competitor. Huh? I see this most in subscription based businesses: cable/satellite TV, mobile phones, etc. The thought seems to be once you sign up you are captive and therefore require no attention. They are too busy trying to woo dissatisfied customers from the competition to worry about their own dissatisfied customers. They confuse contract induced commitment with satisfaction and loyalty.

Likewise, is it easier and cheaper to retain existing employees or to find and hire new ones? If retention is easier and cheaper, do we treat employees like we want them to stick around, like they don’t have a choice and have to stick around, or do we treat them like we don’t care at all?

It’s been said that the customer experience will never exceed the employee experience. What are your employees experiencing? Are they treated as well as we would want to be treated as customers? If we gave our customers the level of support, attention, and communication that we give our employees, would we still be in business?

Let’s spin this around: how do you want your best customers treated? What needs to be done to provide employees with the same level of internal support and service?

tale of two burritos

Customer service makes or breaks a business and good enough just isn’t. This weekend, I ended up having burritos from two competing franchises. Let’s call them Good Burrito and Better Burrito. Both offer super fresh ingredients, make them with specifically the ingredients and toppings you ask for, are pretty quick, and are very tasty. I never really thought about the differences until sampling them back to back.

Good Burrito asked what toppings I wanted and shuffled me from person to person as the burrito moved down the line. By the end of the line, three different people had contributed to my dinner. Henry Ford would be proud of the assembly line efficiency. Better Burrito had one person who put my food together and what a difference that one person made.

Supergregarious, he seemed to truly be interested in my day. How was my Saturday going, was I working or off, where did I work, did I like it there? When adding ingredients he’d brag on them a little: These vegetables are great, we cook them with… You can’t go wrong with that salsa, it’s great on everything…

A couple of important points. This took NO MORE time, in fact it was probably quicker because I didn’t have to repeat what I wanted like I did when getting passed from person to person at Good Burrito. He never got bogged down in the conversation. I never felt like I was being interrogated. It never felt fake or forced. Instead he gave the impression that he was really interested in my day and in making me the perfect burrito.

Then when I got to the register to pay I asked to get a brownie. The woman at the register (also superfriendly) said, “Let me find you a good one. They put the old ones on top.” And she dug through the basket until she found one. It looked like all the others, but she proclaimed it worthy. When I decided to get a brownie to take home for my wife, she dug through the basket again.

Here’s the most important point: Whether they cared about me, my day, and my lunch doesn’t matter. What matters is that they made me feel like they did. It took no more time, cost no more money, and made all the difference.

The HR and business lessons I take from this:

Hire right! Here’s the secret to hiring people: hire people who give a damn. Nothing else matters unless they care. If they care, the rest is largely irrelevant.  I’ll take under qualified people who care over qualified but apathetic people any day. Qualified and they give a damn? Score! I suspect that the guy making my burrito was following a semi-scripted patter. But he was so fluid and did it so well that it came across as very authentic. And, he was clearly a very outgoing person and a good fit for a customer facing role. The woman at the register went out of her way to find a good brownie. It’s hard to train people to care or go above and beyond. Much easier to hire for it.

Train right. Again, I suspect that much of it was patter, but done so well it felt natural, not forced. That requires a lot of practice, role playing, feedback, more practice, etc.

Think twice about your dress code. Employees at both places were clean and well groomed. Except that the three workers I saw at Better Burrito had long hair (male), blond dreadlocks (female), purple hair (female), and a heavy emphasis on tattoos and face piercings. And they were supernice, not too cool for you, not angsty, not indifferent. Let’s see, person who gives a damn and has nose rings or one who is unpierced and indifferent? Hmmm, easy choice.

Sustained business performance requires great customer service. Great customer services requires great people. Great people requires an intense focus on hiring right and training well. That requires leadership that truly gets the DIRECT connection between people and performance.

The final lesson? Great customer service trounces good customer service every time. Good enough customer service never is.