imperfect action beats perfect inaction

“I can’t remember how it begins.” My six-almost-seven year old son was warming up for his first martial arts tournament and he was pretty nervous. He had been practicing a form – a pattern of movements – for a couple of months, but he went completely blank.

One of his instructors pulled him aside and said, “When you get out in front of the judges, if you can’t remember what to do, just make it up. Just do some moves until you get to a part you remember. That’s better than freezing up.”

Great advice for life. You can stay frozen, not starting until you can do it perfect. Or, you can jump in, get moving, do what you think is right (or close), and correct on the fly. There are very, very few situations where doing nothing is better than doing something and improving as you go.

Words to live by: imperfect action beats perfect inaction.

your customers know, do you?

I was recently reminded (yet again) of the importance of experiencing our systems and processes from the customer’s perspective. Of really understanding the customer experience.

We think we know what our customer goes through, we design our processes and systems to serve them. After all, we use the process all the time. The challenge is that we know how it is supposed to work, we know all its subtleties and nuances, AND we know the shortcuts. In many cases, we never experience the systems and processes we require our customers to use.

A quick example from my own life. A minor part of my job is overseeing a small company library. Employees can find a book on our computer system, check it out, and it will be sent to them via interoffice mail.

So here’s my embarrassing confession. For all my harping on the world about the need for great customer service, I have apparently never actually used the system to check out a book. As the library is 20 feet from my office it almost seems silly to go through the whole process. Instead of going through the whole process, I’d just go grab a book and mark it checked out in the system..

Then, while fixing a minor glitch, I decided to see the whole process from the customer’s point of view. I discovered that the automated emails they received when checking out a book made absolutely no sense. The emails were based on templates used to sign up for classes so they had statements like: Your supervisor has approved you to attend The Strategy Book. Ugh! Their supervisor had nothing to do with it and they weren’t going to attend a book. Fail.

It has been corrected, but it really bothers me because I know better. I know to routinely test processes. But I didn’t. It’s an important reminder that the little things really, really matter.

Think about it:

  • When was the last time you applied at your company, set up benefits, tried to change important personal information? Not using your administrator rights, but the way an actual applicant or employee would?
  • When was the last time you experienced the sales process from start to finish? Not just your part, but right up to when the customer has it in hand. Have you ever tried dealing with your own customer service or returns departments?
  • When was the last time you tried to become a customer of your company? What barriers made it more difficult than it should be?

The only way to find the roadblocks, weirdness, and hassles is to go experience it ourselves. My own situation was minor, but served as a reminder that the only way you’re really going to discover the little things is to experience the process, not as the customer is supposed to, but how the customer actually does.

 

leadership tune up

Are your standards slipping? What’s the overall feel in your department or business? How’s the energy on a daily basis – good, bad, ok but a little low? Are you proud of the work your folks put out, concerned, or hoping and waiting for it to turn around and get better?

Once things start to slip a little, they generally continue to slip. Over time we tend to adjust. We stop striving, we coast a little, we put our attention on something else. We don’t notice it at first, but after a while we realize things are really out of sync and we wonder how it got so bad so quickly.

Well, it didn’t. People don’t suddenly stop caring either. They don’t just wake up one day and decide to never again give their full effort. But us humans will give 99% effort of the day before. Think about that. A difference of only 1% less effort, less energy, less engagement. That’s barely noticeable. In fact, if it went right back up to 100% the following day, we’d never even notice the blip. Likewise, if it drops another 1%, we’ll likely never feel it. Until we do…

My car started running rough a month or two ago. It started off intermittently. I thought it was just a bad tank of gas at first. It would hesitate, idle roughly, or even die at stoplights. Then it would be fine for a few weeks. But the gaps between kept getting closer and closer until, one day out of the blue (not really) it started to run poorly all the time.

At 80,000 miles I figured it was due for a tune up. The manufacture says it goes 100,000 miles before it needs spark plugs. The forums say real world is more like 60-80,000 miles. Theoretical is nice, but it doesn’t help my car run better. $20 worth of spark plugs and 30 minutes of effort and it’s running great again.

Most striking wasn’t that it was idling and accelerating smoothly again – I expected that. No, the biggest surprise was how much better it runs. It accelerates quicker and revs more freely. Going from bad to acceptable was expected. But the subtle yet noticeable difference between acceptable and really good was actually a bit astonishing.

It was that 1% difference. I never noticed when it slipped from great to good, but I did notice good to poor. That has me really wondering about my own leadership. I would notice if my area suddenly performed poorly, but would it really catch my attention if it gradually declined to acceptable?

Would I notice if the energy was consistently getting a little worse? Would I notice if overall customer service slipped a little? Could I tell the difference if my team had tapered over time to being mostly engaged?

I’m not so sure I could and that has me worried. Tuning up our leadership is not quite as easy as changing spark plugs, but probably needs to be done regularly. So what can I, you, or any leader do about it? Hmmm. A few thoughts come to mind and I’d love to get your perspective:

Discuss your vision and ideals. A lot. More than you think your need to. Your vision should excite you, so use that enthusiasm to get others on board and understand your expectations. They don’t have to have your passion (it’s nice if they do) but they do need to be completely clear on where you stand and the level of performance you want.

Be straight forward and tell the team your concerns that standards could slip over time. Tell them that you’ll be more involved and have more feedback. Not to be nitpicky or a micromanager, but because you care. You want them to be at their best. You want the team at its best. You want to be at your best.

Ask for feedback from the team about your own performance. Do you seem different lately? Do you have less energy or seem less engaged? Maybe they’ll tell you and maybe they won’t, but you owe it to them and yourself to ask. [Quick caveat: never ask for feedback if you are not 100% willing to consider it and do something about it.]

Shatter isolation by getting the team involved in cross-functional projects, both within the team and throughout the organization. It helps prevent a narrowing view and helps invigorate things with new ideas.

Ask the questions about what’s going great and what could improve regularly. Don’t expect people to come to you. Go to them.

What else?

technology has changed, humanity hasn’t… part 3

“Everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal. Anything created between birth and the age of 30 is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it. But whatever is invented after you’re turned 30 is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it – until it’s been around for about 10 years, when it gradually turns out to be all right really.”

~ Douglas Adams

 

“Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: 1) It’s completely impossible. 2) It’s possible, but not worth doing. 3) I said it was a good idea all along.”

~ Arthur C. Clarke

technology has changed, humanity hasn’t… part 2

“The world is too big for us. There is too much doing, too many crimes, casualties, violence, and excitements. Try as you will, you get behind the race in spite of your self. It is an incessant strain to keep pace and still you lose ground. Science empties its discoveries on you so fast that you stagger beneath them in hopeless bewilderment. The policical world witnesses new scenes so rapidly that you are out of breath tryingto keep up with them. Everything is high pressure. Human nature cannot endure much more.”

~ From the Atlantic Journal in 1837

technology has changed, humanity hasn’t…

“We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate……..We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.”

~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden

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?

asking different questions, solving different problems

The freaks, weirdos, and innovators – the people who stand out and stand different – are often different only because they are solving different problems than the rest of us. Put another way, their solutions are different because their goals and questions are different.

Southwest Airlines operates so differently from other airlines in large part because when they started out they were not competing with other airlines. Instead, they decided to compete against buses and trains and even cars. Their insight and innovations came from solving different problems.

When you look at all the different types of cars on the road it’s clear that different people are solving different problems. A turbodiesel pickup solves different problems than a sports car which solves different problems than a minivan or an SUV and they solve different problems than economy cars.

A few days ago a new car was released. It’s a performance luxury sedan that will accelerate from 0-60 in a hair under 4.5 seconds (that’s deep into sports car territory) and has a lower center of gravity and potentially better handling than any other sedan. The dealer and will come to the customer’s location for maintenance and can do a lot of repairs remotely using a built in wireless connection into the car’s computer. It costs about $55k – $105k depending on options and performance levels. This car clearly has BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar, Audi, etc. right in its sights. Oh, and it’s a new company based in the US which is a sister to an aerospace company. Interested? Appearance and performance alone got my attention, but the most intriguing part is that it is 100% electric.

Actually, that’s not true. I really like the car, or at least what the car potentially promises, but what I most appreciate is that this company – Tesla – chose to solve a completely different set of problems. Other electric cars choose to be funky looking, easily identifiable, and aimed at environmentalists and Hollywood activists. The emphasis is on “electric” and they designed to appeal to those who are most interested in demonstrating to the world how Green they are.

Tesla, on the other hand, appears to have decided to build a really great car, a car whose appearance, price, and performance would appeal to anyone seeking a performance luxury sedan. It just happens to have an electric motor rather than a gas engine. They see the electric motor as a solution to performance, not necessarily environmental, problems. As a result, this car is competing against gasoline engines, not other electric cars. And that has the potential to be a complete game changer.

I haven’t driven one, I can’t speak to whether or not it’s a good car, and this isn’t an ad for Tesla. I am, however, impressed that they chose to blow up the old business model and change the game. Perhaps the most significant thing they did early on was define their competition rather than letting their competition define them. Just as Southwest Air did 40 or so years ago, they asked different questions and got different answers.

This can be done in any business, but takes courage and a willingness to stand apart. We even see this in Human Resources. The traditional question is: How do we stay compliant? The game changing question (with all due credit to Jason Lauritsen) is: How will HR support and increase company performance?

What question will change things in your industry? At your company? In your career?