Practical

now that i know the answer, what was the question?

This week I turned 42, which, as two different people reminded me, is the answer to life the universe, and everything. In Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series a supercomputer determined that the answer to life, etc. was “42” and then suggested that if people didn’t understand what the answer meant perhaps they needed to figure out what the question was.

How often do we come to conclusions based on false assumptions, brought about by poor questions? Closed-ended questions, leading questions, questions that are very open to interpretation, and just garden variety misunderstood questions all provide answers. They just don’t give us information.

Better questions lead to better answers which leads to better decisions, better actions, and better results. Any guesses where poor questions lead?

quick review: The Strategy Book

“The Strategy Book” by Max McKeown – brilliant and practical. I posted a slightly different version of this over on amazon a few weeks back, but it’s worth repeating.

I had been following the author for a while on Twitter (@maxmckeown) and I ended up getting a copy of the book through a promotion. Once it arrived, I moved it ahead of the long list of books in waiting. Less than 30 pages in I was recommending it to others and I ordered several of the author’s books for our corporate library.

The Strategy Book

This is one of those books where, if I’d highlighted all the ideas that grabbed me, I’d have ended up with practically all of the book in yellow. The author is concise and down to earth, yet has a very engaging and conversational style. He does a great job of condensing big ideas into simple sentences.

Barely finished, I immediately moved his book “The Truth About Innovation” to the top of my reading stack. And then “Unshrink” (and my department is now reading it as part of our ongoing development). Next up, “Adaptability”.

Definitely my new favorite author. Track it down, read it, enjoy. Really, really great stuff.

More info: http://www.maxmckeown.com/thestrategybook

you say you want a revolution: three steps to changing culture

Company culture . Can’t escape hearing about it, but why is it important? Stripped of all buzzword mystique, culture is just “the way things are done” in the organization (or the team). It’s the personality of the company. Just like people, some are stiff and precise, some are loose and casual, and some are all over the board. We usually refer to the company, but culture also applies at the department or team level. Every group has its own feel or culture.

If the culture isn’t what you want, no problem. Changing the culture of a company, department, or even a team isn’t easy, but it is possible. It takes time, patience and persistence. There are three broad steps to reshaping the culture.

1. Decide what you want the culture to be. One way of thinking about culture is to consider it the default decisions and actions. When X event happens, we always take Y action. For example, “We have a culture of the highest integrity. When any dishonesty is discovered, we terminate the person immediately.” Or, “We are a customer service culture. When a customer wants to return an item, we always accept it, no questions asked, no hassle involved.”

So what do you want the culture of your team or company to be? What are the characteristics you would want anyone and everyone to use to describe the atmosphere?

Here’s the challenge: whether you consciously and deliberately choose a culture or not, there will be a culture. It will be whatever decisions and actions you support, reward, and tolerate.

2. Design processes and rewards to support that culture. If you’re trying to create a culture of high quality but the pay scale is based on volume, you will have a culture of volume – always. If you want a culture of simple, fast customer service but the processes are onerous, cumbersome, and unfathomable, you will continue to have a culture of complex and cumbersome customer service. If culture is the default way of acting, then the default way of acting IS the culture. Words won’t change it, only action. Different action = different culture. Same action = same culture.

3. Make selection decisions that support the culture. If you want a culture of outstanding customer service, don’t hire misanthropes. New hires should have the skills to do the job (duh!) but also the behaviors and inclinations that will allow them to both support and thrive in the culture you are creating. People who won’t support the desired behaviors/actions will be a continual drain on the culture. If they already exist in the team/company, they need to move along to a company with a culture better suited to them. NOTHING destroys attempts at shaping culture quicker than continuing to reward and employ people whose actions are in clear opposition to the intended culture.

For example, if you want a culture of integrity do not continue to employ people who clearly lack it just because, “they get results.” Doing so, only reinforces a culture of getting short term results by any means necessary.

There you go: know what you want to create, reward and support the necessary behaviors, and make selection (and de-selection) decisions that support what you want. Have patience and perseverance. It won’t change overnight, but it will change.

status quo?

“If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?” – Robert Anthony

 

Belief fuels action and habit, which creates a hard to break cycle. The more we do something, the more it becomes habit and the more of a habit it is, the more we do it. This penetrates every aspect of our lives.

Mr. Anthony refers to beliefs and it’s easy to think he is only talking about belief with a capital ‘B’: God, morality, religion, etc. That makes the power of his comment easy to miss. We have beliefs about every aspect of our lives. We choose our actions based on what we think will make us happy and successful (or at least happier or more successful than other choices), if only in the short run.

How often do we hear (or say), “I have to do it this way” or “Everyone does it like this” or “That’s just the right way to do it”? How often do we overjustify our actions without bothering to consider other possibilities (remember: we don’t want the best way, we want our way to be best)? How often do we use our beliefs to justify playing the victim?

We can try to make changes, but if we don’t change our beliefs, the changes will never stick. We’ll never, ever lose weight if we think we’re doomed to be fat. We’ll never get rich if we believe we were born to a loser’s life. We’ll never make good leadership decisions fueled by inaccurate beliefs. Too many times it’s been said:

  • “I can’t fire them, they are over 40.”
  • “I have no control over my employees’ motivation because I can’t give raises.”
  • “HR won’t let me fire them.”
  • “They’re doing a poor job, but I can’t fire them because I can’t have that position empty.”
  • “I spoke with them about that once, but it didn’t change so I’ve just learned to live with it.”
  • “I’m not a pleaser, I just don’t like people to be mad at me, but that’s ok, because no one does.”

Change the belief, change the action, change the result. Keep the belief, take the same action, get the same result. Your call.

the next small thing

I suspect that too often we are waiting for the next big thing when we would really benefit from looking for the next little thing. It is the little things that can make the biggest difference in our lives.

Buying groceries is about as mundane as it gets yet the grocery store is great fodder for the subtle differences between getting it right, getting by, and screwing it up. This weekend, after waiting forever in the checkout line I noticed that there wasn’t a bagger helping out the cashier. Yet there was a bagger standing around talking to the next cashier over whose line had just emptied.

An A-player would have looked over, seen that there was work to do, and gotten the groceries bagged as quickly as the cashier was scanning them. Instead, this bagger chose to wait until all the groceries were scanned and I was paying for them to come over and help the cashier bag everything up. The total time difference to me was probably about three minutes. Not a big deal, yet I left the store irritated at the indifferent service. And, multiply three minutes across all the shoppers and it’s no wonder the lines had been moving slowly.

Did the groceries get bagged? Yep. Did the bagger do their job? Good enough to stay employed. But keeping an eye out for the next opportunity to serve would make a big difference and take almost no more effort. The sad thing is they probably think they are doing a good job and will never understand why they aren’t getting ahead.

When we wonder why our businesses, departments, or teams aren’t as successful as they should be, when we wonder why our career seems to have stalled, is it possible that we are overlooking the simple things that open the gap between average and outstanding?

 

A-player opportunities rarely come to B-players. The best opportunities come to those who are already doing a great job.  And it is typically the little things that separate good from great. A question to be asking is, “What could I do right now to make things quicker, easier, or more pleasant for my customers?”

it’s the little things

I despise and resent pre-paying for gas. I find it to be a major pain in the rear. Either I pay at the pump with a card and then go in and pay again (because I’m probably going to get a snack or soda while I’m there), pay once and forego my snack, or make several trips back and forth and stand in line a few times.

It’s interesting how quickly we humans adjust to and even expect such poor service. With nearly 100% of gas stations now requiring pre-pay we deem such lousy treatment acceptable and the norm. Why?

Hmmm. That’s a bit tougher. Certainly we all understand that this prevents drive offs, but how big of a problem is it really? Imagine if you couldn’t try on clothes until after you’d paid for them because it helped prevent shop lifting. Makes sense, but is it an acceptable solution, and would anyone shop there? No. That’s why stores use other measures to prevent theft.

I’ll admit, this sounds like a silly point of contention if only because the pre-pay system is so prevalent. Aren’t their bigger injustices to rail against? Sure. But how many other industries could inconvenience their customers, treat everyone who shops there like a criminal, and still thrive?

I go out of my way to pay more for gas because there is a local convenience store that will let me pump first. That’s how strongly I feel about it. Not everyone feels the way I do, but I can’t help but wonder about other people’s pet peeves. I’m sure other examples abound of people accepting higher price or having to go a bit out of their way because they prefer the service, selection, product, whatever at a certain store.

The challenge is that when everyone’s doing it and customers don’t have a choice it’s hard to identify these areas. I remember when I first moved to the Midwest back in the mid-nineties. I was in a mildly rural area and customer service was horrendously bad. But it was so universally terrible it was simply a case of “it is what it is” and no one knew different or cared. Then the big box stores came in. Say what you will about them, they had much better service and forced all the other companies to play catch up. Within a few years, the overall customer service for the entire area had improved markedly.

You can really only compete on price or differentiation. Being lowest cost is a losing battle for most. That leaves differentiation which means providing a product or service different enough to be worth paying a little more for. That might be selection, customer service, outstanding return policy, unique product or knowledge, etc.

Whatever your business or field, I can spend five minutes on google and find someone offering it cheaper. Let’s put this in an HR perspective (please tweak to think about from your business/field’s point of view): it wouldn’t take long to find a vendor that I could outsource your entire HR department to for less than your company is paying for internal HR right now. Keeping HR internal is not the cheapest option. So what value are you providing that differentiates you from your competition?

Where are you making life more difficult for your customers because it’s more convenient for you? What are the things your customers really value? What could you do that would be free or low-cost that would make life easier for your customers? These questions are doubly valuable if you are in a support department and have internal customers. Without external options it’s easy to get slack. Try this on: if your internal customers had three other options for your product or service would they choose you? Why should they?

 

it’s not what you know…

Funny how people often lament that, “It’s not what you know, [say it with me everyone] it’s who you know.” People rarely ever says this when they benefit from a relationship, it’s always said to justify setbacks, as though knowledge/skill and relationships are mutually exclusive.

Why is it that this maxim is never taken to the logical next step? I’ve never, ever heard anyone say, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know so I better start getting out and meeting more people and really developing new relationships and strengthening my current ones.”

What if the what and who go together? Who you know will absolutely get your foot in the door and create opportunities, but those opportunities will start evaporating if you don’t bring the knowledge and skill to get the job done. On the filp side, demonstrating strong knowledge and skills will get the attention of people who can open doors and connect you with opportunities, but all the skill in the world won’t help much if you continually burn bridges and ignore the human side of it all.

Consider the possibility that your success is not based on what you know or who you know, but what AND who you know. That changes the game just a bit.

one basic tenant of business success

Technology should simplify and make things easier for the customer/end user. There’s really no other purpose. Technology for the sake of technology is, well, annoying at best. But then anything for the sake of itself is inefficient, ineffective, and dumb. Case in point: my  local newspaper recently ran an article on a program to encourage shopping at local businesses.  It sounded like a cool program, but if I wanted to find out more about how to participate or which businesses were involved I had to either go to a website or use my smartphone to scan a QR code. Dumb, dumber, and desperate. Too much, too late.

I get that this is a multimedia world, but there is one basic tenant of business success that should never be overlooked: make it as easy and simple as possible for customers to give you their money. Amazon, Apple, etc. are all great businesses, but their genius is (say it with me) making it as easy and simple as possible for their customers to give them their money. It’s not the books that set Amazon apart, and I’d argue that it’s not even really the prices (although those help), it’s that they make it really freakin’ easy to buy a book. Ditto iTunes. This is really what innovation is all about – making it easier for people to solve their problems (even the problems they didn’t know they had).

There is a minimart/gas station near my house that I buy 80% of my gas from even though it is 1) out of my way; and 2) more expensive. So what’s their competitive advantage? I don’t have to pre-pay. I can pull up to the pump, fill my tank, grab my favorite source of carbonated caffeine, pay all at once, and leave. Every other place makes me pay first, which means that I either have to do two transactions, and, if I’m paying cash, walk back and forth to the cashier a couple of times. I will pay more because they have made it as easy and simple as possible for me to give them my money.

So the newspaper, in a very misguided effort to be relevant, has made it more difficult for me to get the information I need. I instantly stopped caring about a program I’d otherwise be curious about. Them forcing me to go to my phone is just as silly as, say, Amazon’s Kindle telling me to go find a dictionary when I ask it to look up a word. But we can learn from this editor’s mistakes. In an ideal world, everyone would be forced to  voluntarily use their own products and services to experience it from the customer/end users point of view.

If you’re in HR, just how easy is it to apply for a job at your company? Are there any hoops you’re making folks jump through that could be put off until later? (For example, do you really, truly need to get everyone’s SSN on their initial application? Here’s a hint – the answer is no and you’re driving away top candidates if your automated process insists on it.) Do you actively seek ways to make it easier for candidates? Do you explain the process to them up front? Do you keep them informed and regularly updated on their status or do you force them to waste their (and your) time by initiating all communication with you?

If you’re a small business, do you accept all forms of payment? If you can’t process credit and debit cards, you’re not really serious about being in business. (No, seriously, these businesses exist.)

If someone calls your business, do they talk to a person who can actually resolve their problem/concern/request/order/desperate attempt to buy something from you? Or, and I’m thinking about the freight company that made a concerted effort to not deliver my new bicycle, do you have an automated voice “recognition” system that doesn’t actually recognize voice commands and eventually connects you with a minimally trained and hard to understand person who insists on reading the script even when the script doesn’t apply?

Does your website load superfast and is it easy to navigate? No matter how cool the graphics are, many of your potential customers have about a 1.6 second attention span. Too slow? Too hard to figure out how to get the right info? Good bye.

Examples go on and on. The principle is simple, but easy to get wrong when we think about what would make the shopping/buying/applying/etc. process most easiest for the company instead of what would make it most useful to the customer.