Customer Experience Crossroads

Designing Experiences: prototype, pilot, tweak and adjust

James Rait posted some interesting commentary in Design-at-the-Edge in response to my Curves pieces from last week. Mr. Rait's wife is a Curves member, at a location where they sometimes give away doughnuts. [I know, it's hilarious, except it illustrates just how difficult it is to manage services with consistency to standards.]

I had outlined some possible backfires to the adoption of RFID tags to plan and track individual goals and progress. These were: [1] staff having to take their own initiative to interact with clients, instead of being forced to do it by the operational routine; [2] two classes of member emerging; [3] clients losing the happy ritual of taking their pulse rate together.

Mr. Rait, a guy with serious industrial design credentials, proposes some interesting alternative solutions to these issues in his post, here.

He also suggests that running some live market tests would have uncovered the potential issues I mentioned. I would be amazed if they had not done live market tests, actually. The execs at Curves have strong marketing backgrounds, and with 10,000-plus locations, I assume their budget supports quite a bit of research.

Sometimes it takes a while to understand what is going on. Plus the hype surrounding new technology can generate enough excitement to mask the longer-term impact. These phenomenon would have been unlikely to come to light in a short test. And if the test markets were conducted with the very best franchises -- which is usually the case -- these individuals may well have responded differently than the average.

I suspect the social evolution is not yet done. [There's lots of observing still to do. Yippee!]

Mr. Rait's post made some other interesting points about design in general, which I'll pick up tomorrow.

If you go back to read the Curves posts, note the passionate comments from one fan of the company. This kind of evangelism is a huge asset to a brand.

The photo came from a film in the Prelinger Archive, Exercise and Health, 1949.

Idea City wrap-Up: Jane Juska on how to teach

Jane Juska is the author of a few books, but she made her mark as the woman who wanted to have a lot of good sex before she turned 67, after 30 years of celibacy, which she documented in her book, A Round Heeled Woman. A fabulous speaker at this year's Idea City, she reminded me a lot of June Callwood.

Jane teaches students to write by writing with them. When they are writing, she also writes. What an  amazing concept. Imagine teaching people how to serve customers by serving customers along side them, instead of giving them concepts in a classroom?

Something for next year

I plan to attend Idea City again in 2008. And I have a guerrilla plan. I'm going to tag things I think would make great topics, and then send a list to the event planners. You can help. When you see something worthy of the best conference you could ever imagine attending, tag it in Delicious "IdeaCity." And then you really should attend. TED may be sold out for 2008, but our homegrown version isn't.

Marketing to employees: McDonald's, Staples, Taco Bell, KFC

Lots of external advertising has a spill-over effect on employees, and sometimes this is deliberate. For one thing, it shows management believes what they are telling you in the internal communications. If you put the same stuff in TV commercials that you put in the procedures manual, you must really mean it.

The next step is to really try to build an employment brand.

Quite apart from being a good place to work, you also have to communicate this to prospective employees.  And you have to attract the kind of people you really want. Leveraging the tools of marketing is a very good place to start.

Richard Floersch of McDonald's, said in a recent BusinessWeek article that building an employment brand is absolutely critical. Staples VP of HR, Dave Almeda noted in the same article that "It's impossible to tell where HR ends and marketing begins."

How to get started:

1. Figure out why happy employees are happy. Find out why the people you like, like your organization. You've got it, I'm talking research. And you'd be surprised how much of this is going on at the world's leading organizations. If you're not doing any of this, no wonder you can't compete for the best employees.
2. Extract the core DNA of what your best employees love about you, and start building a creative brief. Yes, you will need help from the marketing department to do this. This is a good chance to demonstrate how cross-functional co-operation can really work.
3. Use professional messaging to get your story out. After you've gone this far, you can't just revert to stuffing ads in the careers section and doing PowerPoints on campus. You'll need to think much more carefully about recruitment materials, channels of information, and the communication package.
4. Avoid being seduced by expensive trinkets to recruit rock stars. Yes, this will get attention. We all love to get free stuff. But it's unlikely to close the deal for you with talent that has options. For that you'll need to demonstrate that you can deliver the employee experience.
5. Reinforce internally. After all this work, you can't have the dinosaurs stomping around and wrecking stuff. Follow up internally to reinforce that your culture at its best is helping you win the talent wars. Match your external communications with the internal experience. This probably means that things are different than when the current old boys and girls started. And thank goodness for that.

Resources: "It's Not a McJob, It's a McCalling", BusinessWeek, June 4, 2007  -- you'll need to scroll down a bit to see the article.

So you want innovative thinking...

If you want innovation in your organization, you need to give people clear instructions about where and how you want it. Not what you want ... but where and how. Permit me to explain.

I meet once a month with a few colleagues to talk -- we call it a think tank. This week one of the things we talked about is innovation, since both have been following my work on the innovation project at SEEC. And we are all obsessed with organization development in some fashion, so we talk about organizations a lot.

The startling realization...

Two of us have experienced life in a large organization first hand. We talked about our experiences in innovating, and came to a startling realization. We'd often had ideas we wanted to try, things we wanted to fix, but had NO IDEA what the process might be to put those ideas into the pipeline. We often weren't clear if we had the direct authority to act to make these changes. When we knew we didn't have the authority, we often weren't clear how to put forward a proposal.

What's really scary about this is that we were working for largely well run organizations. And this was not just our own experience. As outside consultants we see our clients struggling with the same problems.  For the really big stuff -- systems investments, acquisitions -- there are always formal business case processes. But few people outside head office would know what these processes are.

In short, there is no clear direction on how to make things happen, even though there is tremendous lip-service being paid to innovation.

By way of contrast...

I want to contrast this situation with something that just happened. I'm doing a podcast with Stephanie Weaver -- or rather, she is doing one, and kindly invited me to be her guest. Stephanie is an expert on process and experience design. So no surprise that she sent me a very clear tip sheet to confirm what will happen. It has instructions on how to set up for the podcast, tips to ensure we don't get interrupted by a ringing cell-phone, and similar clear direction.

These clear instructions will serve to relax her guests and put people at ease, knowing they are on the right track, doing just what they are supposed to do.

Five steps to kick-starting innovation in your organization...

Isn't it so often the case that we have clear processes for the small things, but lack all clarity on the really important stuff?  If you want some innovation in your organization, whether this is a small office or you are in charge of sweeping huge divisions, here's my advice:

1. Tell people where you want innovation and where you want them to just adhere to the current state of affairs. If you want innovation in purchasing but not in product design, say so. If you want innovation in product design, but not in purchasing, say so. If you don't say so, you are guilty of wasting everyone's time through your lack of clarity.
2. Tell people what the purpose of the innovating is. Is it intended to improve revenue? Market share? Customer satisfaction? Loyalty? Reduce expenses? Reduce time to market on new products?
3. If you aren't clear about where you want innovation, where you don't want it, and what you want your innovations to achieve, you need to have a little off-site with yourself and get clear. Then go back to step 1.
4. Tell people how you want them to make their proposals, if the innovation feels like it is outside their authority to just implement. Is it a memo? Do they need to have a bunch of cross-functional meetings to get buy-in? Is it a business case? What is the process?
5. Tell people how to get clarity around the process when they are confused. Can they float an idea informally? Who do they float it to? What's supposed to happen then?

Having done all this, now you can hold people accountable. If you don't see any action, you can legitimately ask why, and keep asking. But if you haven't done steps 1 - 5, any complaints you have about why your organization isn't more innovative are just so much blah-blah.

My bet is that if you start down this road, you're going to be drowning in ideas pretty quickly.

I'd love to hear what others' experience of this is. Call, write, send carrier pigeons, comment or trackback, but please add your views.

Research on Employee Burnout and Turnover: Don't diss the staff

"It is often not the job that burns you out, but the organization."

Difficult jobs become more difficult when people don't feel respected by managers and peers, according to new research published by Lakshmi Ramarajan at Wharton. This disrespect directly leads to burnout.

Past research has focused on employees' ability to manage their own stress level to avoid burn-out. ['It's your fault, you're just being negative'] Other research has pointed to the job itself as the culprit. ['Some jobs are just more demanding than others, there's only so much we can do about that']

But respect is pervasive and observed by everyone in an organization, according to Ramarajan:

"respect can be a powerful signal to individuals regarding their standing not only as employees but as people.... As information comes from a variety of sources, one's perceptions of respect and disrespect are not only based on how one views one's own treatment, but also by how others are treated. For example, when team members see someone else on the team being treated unfairly, they alter their own perceptions of the fairness of the team. Likewise, the extent to which others, not just the self, are treated ... can influence an individual's own perceptions of respect."

Read the Knowledge at Wharton article here. Download the whole research paper here.

Let's stop pretending committees are teams

Committees aren't teams. Teams win and lose together. Committees can function well or badly, but most committees in organizational life are actually competing to some extent, and co-operating to some extent. Rarely do they win and lose together, regardless of how many off-site team building sessions you engage in. [and we've all been there, right?]

Teamwork is one of those words that has assumed almost sacred proportions, as an end, not a means to an end. If someone disagrees, you can quickly cut them off at the knees by accusing them of lacking teamwork. Forcing consensus where none exists is not teamwork, but it gets trotted out that way often enough.

Alan Weiss brought this nicely into focus for me in this article: A Team Isn't Necessarily a Good Thing.

True teams, he says, have these characteristics:

• Self-directed in terms of setting goals and allocating reward within the team
• Rewarded collectively as a team
• Sharing of resources and information without reservation or condition, including budget
• Selects its own leadership and governance, including meeting style, format, frequency, etc.
• Can “sunset” itself and, in most cases, should do so

He suggests asking these questions before undertaking efforts to improve teamwork:

1. Is the organization’s best interests and strategic direction best served by teams or committees in the area of concern?
2. If teams are required, is the client prepared to correctly empower them, treat them, and communicate with them?
3. If teams are required, what is the correct duration and competition, especially in light of the criteria to be met?
4. If committees are the better alternative, does the client understand the differences and the appropriate dynamics?

Some nice clear thinking. Let's not force all committees to be teams -- they're not teams. They need to work well together and be effective.

Who's Your Chief Brand Officer? or Chief Culture Officer?

I was reading Ted Matthews' newsletter today. In it he discusses why CEOs need to be the chief brand officer for the company, embodying in their actions the promises that the brand fulfills.

Ted points to Clive Beddoe, CEO of WestJet, the Canadian version of Southwest, and in fact modelled on them. Clive's staff were caught with their hands in the cookie jar of competitor Air Canada's computers, checking their secret pricing and flight load data. More than a few times. It's not that they got caught that is the problem -- its that Clive didn't come clean when he found out about it.

Regrettably, he was one of the best, and I've heard this from WestJet flight attendants, in between their constant smiling, singing, joke telling and general good hosting. A client of mine once saw Clive saying hi to passengers and busing the plane as he walked down the aisle to the bathroom.

I have thought for some time now that the CEO's longest term work is to create a culture and organization that can fulfill the long term goals of the company. And brand is really part of that, isn't it? 

There are lots of stories of CEOs who left their organizations with their reputation in tatters. While thousands of people in these companies strive to make things happen every day for customers, for much less remuneration than accords a C-suite executive. It must be devastating for them when these things happen. Another good reason to take the CBO, CCO role seriously.

McDonald's McChronicles: Brand Loyalty in Action

There's a McDonald's in Rosemont Illinois, that has the current era version of a jukebox available to customers.  Plus, it's apparently the cleanest McD anyone has ever seen. This all according to McChronicles, a blog about McDonald's written from the customer viewpoint. 

These folks clearly love McDonald's, and are horror-stricken when standards fall.  Witness this post about people pawing through the straw dispenser.  There's also some thoughtful commentary about the vegetarian option (are these McChroniclers really qual researchers in disguise??) and what it takes to change customer perceptions.

I did not know that McD has a corporate blog related to social responsibility, but I found out at McChronicles.

And I was not aware of McD's standing offer to give them feedback, which is here. And unlike most of these forms, this one makes sense, and provides a great big space for commentary, as well as not asking you to classify your feedback or other irritating stuff.  Just tell us who you are and what you want to tell us.

Turns out that McD's is now offering an Arch card, a reloadable store payment card. That's the arch card up there in the picture. And what a good idea that is, even if it did take a while.

Continued browsing turned up a list of other McDonald's fanatics, like McKroes McPictures Blog where you can see pictures of McD's all over the world, and McDone Media, which posts news and photos of McD's around the world.

Now that's a brand. And whatever you may think about McDonald's recent history or future prospects, you have to admire the power in that kind of customer connection.

References:

Tip of the hat to Glenn Ross at www.allbusiness.com for the lead

Why marketing is more important than ever, but not in the marketing department

We have a paradox in front of us these days.

One group of people is decrying the problems of the marketing department, and talking about what the future marketing department will look like. 

The other group is saying how important customers are, and how the knowledge traditionally held in the marketing department is now critically important to business sucess. 

Both of these things are true.

Some of this came into focus for me recently while reading John Bradley's column in Strategy Magazine, "Balls, bollocks & cocks on the block". Bradley compares the performance of Shopper's Drug Mart (a large retail chain here in the great white north) with Kraft, and finds Kraft wanting.  Specifically, he sees Kraft attempting to build direct customer relationships via recipe delivery thingy "What's Cooking", and finds it problematic that they never bothered to close the feedback loop.  They didn't fine tune their recipe delivery based on his selections, and they didn't follow up when he unsubscribed. He attributes this to underfunding of a good idea.

On the other hand, he sees Shoppers Drug Mart as disciplined and integrated, having avoided the fight for resources that plagues organizations with multiple brands.  Here's the stuff I circled and tore out:

"In my experience, probably the biggest impediment to radical change in a business is the brand management structure. No surprise really. After all, it was invented for the express purpose of generating a Darwinian battle for resources; not for realigning organizations. And once a brand management structure is in place, the danger is that the rest of the organization thinks that marketing is something the marketing department does rather than something the business does, which makes single-mindedness even harder to achieve.

"The bottom line is that marketing-driven companies have the ability to push through and implement radical change; marketing department-driven companies don't. The clock is ticking as much on the traditional brand management model as it is on the big ad agency model."

All businesses have a larger service component than they did in the past, even manufacturers like Kraft. And services require integrated thinking because they involve delivery on an ongoing basis. Services are intensely operational.

When brand management was introduced to a lot of service companies, they brought this legacy of siloed thinking with them into the marketing department. We seem to finally be through that phase of evolution.

If you are in an industry where customer experience is a key differentiator, strategic marketing is going to be the job of every senior person: thinking about what customers to serve, and what the value proposition is. 

Tactical and functional marketing is what will be left in marketing: media buying, creative production, research co-ordination. But they are not going to be running the place.

References:

Another perspective on this issue is here at Church of the Customer

The Power of a Good Story

There's nothing like a good story to motivate people to act.

Stories are how we humans have communicated meaning for millennia. When we find out what whales are talking about, my guess is it will have something to do with story-telling.  When managing change, I encourage clients to figure out the story -- not the PowerPoint, not the business case, but the actual story that communicates what is changing and why it's important. The story you want repeated peer to peer, that crystallizes real meaning for people. 

John Wood, the guy who started Room to Read, and has now written a book about his experiences, reminded me of this. Room to Read is a charity dedicated to building schools and putting books in the hands of the world's poorest children. He's been profiled in FastCompany, and the organization has won all kinds of social capitalist awards.

His book, "Leaving Microsoft to Change the World", contains some interesting examples of change management and leadership.  Some of the things Wood thinks are important for success, like working ridiculous hours, probably aren't important.* But through luck or intention, he did a lot of things right.

Using a Good Story

Wood tells some great stories that illustrate the hunger for learning of children in developing countries, and the ingenuity and commitment of their families in acting as the charity's local partners. And he hears some pretty amazing stories, too, that people have told him -- because they saw someone they thought might be able to help. They didn't make the case for books -- they took him to visit a school that had none. 

If you want to change the culture in your organization, start by listening to the stories people tell, and listening to the stories you yourself tell -- you'll learn a lot about the culture, about what is important, and about what people are paying attention to.

"Nobody Ever Washed a Rented Car"

I'm not sure who said this first, but Wood says it again in his book, and he's so right.  For Room to Read, this means asking the local village to raise half the funds for a new school or library before construction starts.  These are called "challenge grants", and they give the village a commitment to the project that far exceeds what an outright gift would create. 

It works the same way in business. Ever wonder why so many head office projects die in the field?  Maybe it's because there was no room left to create. There is great joy in creating, in solving problems, in adding our own brushstrokes to a project.  If you let people do that, they have real ownership in both the project and the results. If it's all about you, your plan, your goals, your year-end bonus, why should anyone else care?

"Stop Talking, Start Acting"

Don't wait to get everything completely right.  Just get moving. This is one of the great lessons that Jim Collins told in Good to Great, and it comes up again in Wood's story. Once you know the direction, start building momentum. 

An executive I used to work with told me something amazing once. He said: "We'll figure out how to do it after we land the deal."   A great sales manager once joined my weekly sales team meeting. A couple of our reps didn't have a lot of appointments booked for the week.  His first question? "What are you doing this afternoon?"

I'm working on a book right now, and I can tell you something: there's no amount of planning that is a substitute for sitting at the keyboard and writing.   You want to make something happen?  Just start. 

Tying Investment to Results: the Donor Experience

I think most people who grew up in a large, successful corporation learned to stay on top of their numbers. I know I did. And Wood has brought this discipline to the charity, which tracks and reports how many schools, how many books, how many scholarships.

Even better, in the early days, if you gave them enough money to fund a school, they actually put your funds toward a specific school, which contained a plaque with your name on it.  Someday you might trek to it and have a look for yourself. This has been very important to donor motivation.

A look at their web site made me wonder if they are still doing that, and if they can still do that now that they are bigger.  It was a brilliant strategy and I'm sure was a factor in their early successes.

When you think about motivating your own team, consider whether they can see the chain that ties their efforts directly to results. The more visible the link, the more ownership you will have. No matter what the role, find the link to the big goals and results for the organization, and people will feel part of something more important that will help them survive the drudge that goes with all roles.

One definition of leadership is that a leader is someone to whom you will give your discretionary effort.  People need a reason to make that particular donation.  Did you give them one this week? 

"If you ask people to reach deep, to think creatively, and to produce extraordinary results, they usually will.  Too often in our modern world, they are simply not asked." 

                    ~ John Wood

References:

Wood, John. Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur's Odyssey to Educate the World's Children. Collins, 2006.

*Something about Wood's verbal style reminded me a lot of Bill Rancic, the guy who won the first Apprentice contest: it's that same frenetic optimism unsullied by irony, untouched by failure. Or perhaps I'm just jealous because I haven't founded a global charity success story, and haven't yet finished my own book.

Managing the Employee Experience

Organization effectiveness is the new six sigma, the new lean manufacturing, or the new balanced scorecard (pick one).  We're all starting to learn that no process can replace engaged people. 
And doesn't that just sound totally obvious when you say it out loud? Why did it take us so long to figure out?

A senior OD professional recently told me that she suspects there are more mandated coaching, leading and employee engagement activities in a manager's week than they have hours to work. So  the front-line staff may be happy, but their managers are drowning. 

Another executive wondered why their organization keeps building tools that head office think managers want, instead of the tools managers are actually asking for. 

A client is worried about engagement in their volunteer workforce, which numbers in the thousands, because they can't get along without all this free labour.

Everywhere you look, there is an item about the current and/or impending talent shortage. No one is talking about hiring boomers who want to work part-time, or will only take interesting work. I'm not so sure there is a shortage of that kind of talent. The articles are all about a shortage of entry-level professionals and knowledge workers, or mid-career managers. There aren't enough of those to go around now, and demographics suggests the problem will only get worse.

Add it all up, and you get a need to make organizations more effective at hiring, developing, deploying and retaining people. 

If this is your problem too, you might want to look at a report I read this morning published by Deloitte, which outlines the issue well, and offers some constructive ideas as well.  One of their ideas was to stop putting people in narrow confines of opportunity based on what they did in the past. I loved the examples they gave of successful executives who changed careers, the best of which was that David Ogilvy had no background in advertising when he started his agency.  And Ray Kroc sold milkshake machines.

• Deloitte Report: It's 2008: Do You Know Where Your Talent Is?  and Global Talent Pulse Survey: Becoming a Magnet for Talent

If need some fresh thinking, insight and inspiration on the general topic of people and their work, I can suggest visiting a couple of blogs that recently caught my attention: 

• Pamela Slim's Escape From Cubicle Nation had an amazing open letter to CEOs that is a must-read.  She followed it up with an open letter to employees that had a major dose of reality in it as well.

• The Alchemy of Soulful Work: Bailey WorkPlay blog, which recently had a truly inspirational post called The Greater Sin Is Not Dreaming Big Enough.

My own best tip?  If you don't truly love the people in your organization -- what one of my bosses used to call "the kids in the branches" -- you're sunk. No consultant in the world will be able to make your organization a great place to work. If you do love  them, start listening with your heart.

Del.icio.us Tags: managing employee experience
Add to: | Technorati |  Digg |  del.icio.us |  Yahoo |  BlinkList |  Spurl |  reddit |   Furl | 

How Many is Too Many? Optimum Workgroup Size

A partner of a very successful urban planning firm mentioned to me last week that the firm is being challenged by growth.  Growing the firm up to 200 people went extremely well.  But the latest addition of another dozen or so people has created cracks in the communication environment. 

His comment put me in mind of a similar discussion with Glen Mehltretter of PeopleFit and my colleague Herb Koplowitz recently. We were talking about how large a working group can be before things don't work well anymore.   It turns out that military organizations have worked on this problem a lot over hundreds of years. And that most military organizations have very similar sizes of work groups, and have had for centuries. 

In a military organization, you need to be nimble, be in touch, know the strengths and weaknesses of people and be able to mobilize quickly in order to stay alive. If the units are too large, life becomes dangerous; if the units are too small, the commanders will be stepping on each others toes. 

Essentially, you can directly manage as many people as you can keep in touch with and know reasonably well.  If there's relatively little coaching involved, and the work is routine and predictable, that number could be very high -- perhaps as many as fifty or sixty people. 

If there is a lot of interaction, such as with senior professionals like designers or analysts, where the manager also contributes to output, the biggest work group is probably going to be pretty small, maybe 2 or 3 or 5 people. 

Where things get interesting is at the level of the skip-level manager.  This person still needs to basically know everyone who is two levels down.  Maybe not know them well, but they need to recognize them when they bump into them, approve their merit increases and promotions, and generally have some knowledge of the larger team.  Turns out this number is around 250 or 300 people.  With more people than that, it's just too big to handle, and one is better off splitting into two units reporting to a manager one layer up.

So I told the urban planner that they might just have stepped over that magic line in their business.

I really wish I had known this some years ago, when the best advice I heard on this subject was "span of control" and "rule of six".  Turns out this was all started by somebody named V.A.Graicunas in the 1920's.

The point of all this is that you need to trust your judgment, and the judgment of people you work with.  And if you think the call centre is just too big, you're probably right.  It usually isn't life and death, as it is in the military, although it often feels that way.

Resources:
Glenn's company web site is a really great reference source on people management, with a lot of articles on selection and talent pool management.  I just took one of their courses, and it was also very worthwhile.  Regrettably, he's not paying me to say this.

Addendum March 18:

I think I may have been less than clear.  Graicunas (pdf article here) said the optimal maximum is 6 for anyone to manage.  Elliot Jaques and others (pdf here and link here) thought Graicunas was wrong.  In part, this was a result of observing examples in the military (see links above), as well as in business organizations.  When I look through the military structures, however, I see truth in both positions.  I see small work teams coordinated by team leaders who all report to managers one level up. 

And the work teams are hardly ever more than 8 or 10 people, even in the Roman Legion.  One could argue that the work of Legionnaires requires less collaboration -- or perhaps less independent work time -- than the work of programmers, for example. 

At one point in my career, I had four regional sales managers reporting to me, each of whom had about 6 sales reps.  It would have been a much better environment, and significantly less expensive, with no more than 2 regional managers, each with a dozen reps.  Of course, by the time I had figured this out, it was too late, and I was in another organization.   

How to Open a New Branch Location

Eight rules for opening a new location successfully, according to Bancography, a geographic market planning company:
[the rules are theirs, the commentary is mine]

1.  Hire and staff ahead of time

Get people out in the market networking and building awareness.  This is not the time to get cheap with your personnel budget. If you want these folks to be a team, start early.

2.  Measure initial sales in smaller increments

Catch problems early by monitoring activity daily and sales weekly

3.  Continuously reinforce sales training

Or as another wise person said, begin with the end in mind.  Start the way you plan to finish.  This is really important if the staff are all new to the organization -- but better yet, move experienced people into this market if possible.

4.  Follow up marketing for at least a year

This may be the biggest event in your life, but if you want the community to know you are there, you need to get repeat messaging out after the big opening splash.

5.  Direct market to the business community

Even if you're targeting retail sales exclusively, don't forget that businesses have staff.  They don't have to live in the area to be your customer. They do have to know you are there.

6.  Don't forget low-tech tactics

Not enough traffic?  Get out and meet some people.  Knock on doors, visit schools, barbecue hot dogs every Friday if you need to.  But don't sit in there and wait for the direct mail campaign to work.

7.  Find peer branch advisors

Put local staff in touch with stores in similar markets.  Encourage them to talk on a regular basis, do some visiting, share ideas.  This is particularly true when it's a new concept and there are still lots of bugs to work out.

8.  Promote at other branches and touchpoints

Don't lose loyal customers who want a more convenient location.  Plus what is better news than that a business is growing?  Tell people you are expanding.  Another good way to get some word of mouth started.

Full newsletter is available for download at Bancography's web site 

How to win with the B players: about sports, strategy, and doing things differently

You don't have to be a football fan to get a lot out of this story from the New York Times Magazine about an unusual coach at Texas Tech that has taken a team full of B players and set records. 

I'm not a football fan, but this is a great read, and had some good lessons for business and leadership.  Here are a few of the lessons I saw:

Don't do what the big guys are doing
Texas Tech can't attract the calibre of player that the elite schools can.  So they can only win if they play a different kind of game, using a different strategy.  They play a passing game, with more receivers than most teams. They spread out their offense so the Quarterback can see what's going on.  They spend time on the field studying their opponent's reactions to various plays.  Then they use that learning to advantage. 

If you run a business and you aren't the best funded, don't have the best locations, and aren't the market share leader, you'd better have a different plan than the big guy.  Because you can only lose playing the big guy's game.

Change the nature of competition
This is a major strategy in negotiation, and clearly it works in football too.  Don't accept the conventional wisdom about how to win -- change the game to your advantage.

This is much easier said than done, of course.  But you can do these things if you think carefully about your customers, the competitors, the dynamics of your market space, and your own areas of strength.  Can you design better products that make your competitor's distribution advantages irrelevant?  Can you provide customized service that makes your competitor's pricing irrelevant? 

Give your staff the room to use their own judgement -- they're the ones on the field watching the action
Managers act as if you need to give front line staff full latitude or no latitude, and often seem to ignore the middle ground.  Coach Leach calls the main play, but the QB customizes it each time, based on what he sees happening in front of him.  They don't have as many plays as other teams, but they customize them a lot based on local conditions.  Players don't have to memorize a giant play-book -- they memorize the main formations, and the variations. 

When we limit the ability of staff to respond to what is in front of them, we reduce the chances that we will succeed.  We also remove most of the fun and intrinsic rewards from the job.

Have you found the balance between too much direction and not enough?

You Don't have to be a Great Player to be a Great Coach
Leach played football only in high school.  He studied law at Pepperdine.  Then he decided he wanted to become a football coach. 

A lot of people in business excuse themselves from coaching because they don't think they are better at -- say selling -- than the people working for them.  That's not what good coaching is all about.  It's about observation, strategy, direction, focus and feedback. 

Motivational Speeches and the Importance of Tempo
What are you saying to people at your daily huddles before the start of play? 
Here's what Leach says to his players:

One - Do  your job.  DO - YOUR - JOB!
Two - Play together with great tempo
Three - Your body is your sword.  Swing your sword.  SWING - YOUR - SWORD!

The last bit comes from an ongoing pirate ship analogy that Leach has developed.  The tempo thing is interesting too:  Leach thinks that teams that are winning and teams that are losing fall off tempo and slow down.  He thinks the team with the best tempo wins. 

When you are in a restaurant and the service is great, look around you at the wait staff.  They are usually moving in a rapid motion ballet, scanning the room, bending around corners, everyone working at a high tempo together. 

A trading desk that's having a hot day on the markets looks just like this.

Tempo counts.  How's the tempo in your shop today?

Article:  Coach Leach Goes Deep, Very Deep - New York Times Magazine, Dec 4, 2005

Beta Testers Needed for Self-Directed Educational Product

A colleague is pre-testing a self-directed educational product targeted at adults seeking career development.  Before he goes to formal marketing testing, he is looking for some less formal feedback.
What's in it for you?  You get to keep the materials.
If you are interested in this, please send me an e-mail stating your name, location, age, gender and current occupation.  If you are selected for the pre-test, we will contact you again to arrange delivery of the materials and the questionnaire.
If this doesn't sound like something you would do, but might be of interest to a younger colleague or mentee, please pass this opportunity along to them.
Many thanks!

Engaging Your Team - Start with Better Meetings

Becoming more customer centric always involves people and change.  A lot of clients tell me "we don't do change management well".   If this describes your organization, you're in a big club.  But the key to change management is not all about the giant project plan for change management.  It's much more about doing the small things well, to engage people and start conversations.

Because where change is concerned, conversation is action.

You can start to shift in a more positive direction by taking small steps.  You might be surprised how well they work.  Here's a fresh example from yesterday.

I was having lunch with a client who was holding a large meeting later in the day around their CRM initiative.  She asked me for some ideas about energizing the meeting, which I was glad to provide.  Judging by her e-mail this morning, the meeting was a success:

My meeting yesterday went really well!! People commented on how great the session was at the close and afterwards. In addition to our group notes, we also now have a written record of their ideas in their words.

Here were a couple of the things which worked so well for my client, (a clever individual and a fast learner): 

1. Ask everyone in the group to fill in a simple mind map to do a brain dump on the topic to get things rolling (Download SimpleMindMap.pdf )
2. Post the mind maps on the wall, and get everyone to walk around the room in pairs to read the other maps. 
3. Start the discussion by asking people for the common themes they saw

This approach gives everyone a chance to be heard.  It clears up all the brain clutter on the topic and gets it down on paper before you even start.  It's a much faster way to share a lot of information quickly than by going around the table for everyone's input.  It quickly helps people see where there is common ground.  And it surfaces fresh ideas and issues in a non-threatening manner. 

Now my client is a pretty capable individual, and I bet her regular meetings are usually pretty good.  But she took a couple of simple ideas and leveraged them to make a potentially painful discussion about CRM implementation challenges an energizing meeting that got people excited about the project. 

To close the meeting, she asked everyone for their personal action steps to take towards the vision.  So people left the room talking, having made a personal commitment to take some small step. 

If your meetings are full of telling and selling, you might try a couple of these techniques to get things moving in a fresh direction. 

Acknowledgements:
Suzanne Bergeron, who taught me the gallery walk technique
Pat Sabena, who taught me this simplified approach to mind-mapping

Consultant Undercover: Buying Dinner

My associate Mr. X is working a part time in an upscale food emporium to stay in touch with reality between gigs.  Since we have created a few training programs together -- all directed at people in service roles -- this has been a real eye opener for him.  Let's face it -- it's easy to suggest how people should act in a customer service situation, but real customers are often considerably different than what we imagine them to be.  The jobs are more complicated and more stressful than we suspect. 

Over a cafe americano at Starbucks, I suggested that X capture these observations and insights as a contributor to this blog.  Amazingly enough, he ultimately agreed.  His condition: he meant no disrespect to the store owner or the customers, so it has to be anonymous. Okay, I said.  It's not like we're the Wall Street Journal here -- we have standards, but this seems reasonable.

So here's the first installment of consultant undercover, courtesy of Mr. X.

Mrs. V Buys Dinner 

"I could tell she was going to be trouble from the get-go. If it’s possible to look both aimless and hostile at the same time, she managed it. Picture her in her early sixties, slack beige raincoat, damp grey hair, silk scarf, scowling at the display case.

Me: Hi, can I help you?
She: What’s that?
M: Lasagne.
S: Doesn’t look like Lasagne.
M: Sausage Lasagne.
S: Doesn’t look like Lasagne.
M: (lying) No it doesn’t, does it.

S: Is it any good?
M: I’ve never had it, but all our products are very good.
S: How much is it?
M: $3.25 per 100 grams
S: What’s that mean? (legitimate question)
M: I can price this piece for you, if you like.
S: It’s gonna be about 5 bucks.
M: (reading the scale) $4.77
S: See, I told ya.
M: (nothing)

S: How do you heat it up?
M: Well, I’d put it in a warm oven for a half hour or so.
S: That’s cooking.
M: Well, no – it’s warming. You can put it in a microwave, but that’s a dangerous way to go.
S: Yeah, it is. Well… I think I’ll get something else. (walks out the door)
M: Thank you, have a good weekend."

Dell Executives Teach Leadership

In an interview with Chairman Micahel Dell and CEO Kevin Rollins, HBR captured some interesting ideas corporate culture, innovation and developing leaders.

On innovation:
"For every dollar we put into R&D, we get about six dollars back in profit...But Sony invests $1 Billion and gets back only $200 Million in profits.  Sony is overinventing.  They invest in things that might be exciting but that aren't valued by customers. So they can't generate good returns." ~ Dell

"The true test of a company's innovation is whether the customer is willing to pay for it" ~ Rollins

On execution:
"Most companies like to talk about investing for the future.  We say the future is today and tonight.  Good execution requires a sense of urgency.  The notion of investing for the future can become a trap"  ~ Rollins

On leadership development:
"Our own executives teach, and we use our own material and facilities.  Rather than bringing employees to a central location, as GE does, we travel to them.  Either Michael or I meet with the top 10% of Dell managers around the world every quarter and give them a short training dose.  We also have an intense ten day leadership training program, which our people tell us is the best session they've ever attended. 
It's been a huge retention tool among our high potential employees.  We were surprised at how well they responded to the time and attention from us and other senior executives." ~ Rollins

"Kevin and I each spend three full days teaching.  We review individual development plans, compensation and career paths for all these people.  We now consider them the corporate talent and they're 'owned' by the office of the CEO, not by their immediate supervisors" ~ Dell

On culture:

"We knew we couldn't get to $60 Billion in revenue without changing the culture.  But it's not like you just flip the swithc and it's done.  First, we implemented [the] Tell Dell [survey] to measure how good a job we were doing of managing people. The survey is voluntary, and 92% of our employees participate.  Based on what we learned from Tell Dell, Kevin created the Winning Culture initiative, which has become a top operating priority at Dell." ~ Dell

"We asked, 'what's the social contract we offer at Dell?' That led us to define the Soul of Dell: Focus on the customer, be open and direct in communications, be a good global citizen, have fun in winning.  These were all elements of our traditional culture that had just never been articulated" ~ Rollins

Acknowledgements:

HBR March 2005 "Execution without Excuses", by Thomas Stewart and Louise O'Brien.  (purchase)

Getting the Right People Doing the Right Things

I'm going to tell you a secret that could save you the price of a mid-sized consulting project.  Let's say $40 - 50 K at a minimum.  In addition, you'll make your staff a lot happier, AND you'll reduce the cost of delivering your services.  Ready?  Here it is:

Move the work to the most junior person that can competently handle it. 

That's it, that's the whole secret.

What got me thinking about it today was a very personal example of how I am managing my own time.  But I meant what I said -- I've made some good money telling clients how to do just this.  If you keep reading, you'll see the brilliant simplicity of what I'm saying. And might just be inspired to do a little workplace reengineering of your own.

Just because you can do the work doesn't mean you should

I am wrapping up a process of building a stronger support structure around my own work.  Today I hired a new systems administrator that will give me on-the-phone fix-its, and ongoing behind the scenes maintenance for our PCs, both here and when we are on the road, worldwide. (YAY!)  No more doing my own updates, configuring my own firewall, calling Microsoft support, etc.  Now Charles will be doing it.  He's not cheap, but guess what:  he still costs less than half what I charge, and he's about five times as fast. 

We also put in place a new bookeeper earlier this summer.  Once again, not cheap.  In fact, fairly expensive as bookeepers go, and overqualified for the complexities of a boutique firm like mine.  But she finishes in a couple of hours what I would take most of a day to do, after procrastinating for weeks.  (And of course, not get done at all if I'm too busy with client projects)

There is no such thing as spare time

Many of us are guilty of hanging on to work that's easy for us to do -- whatever your equivalent of my scenario is.  Others might call it micro-managing, but you think of it as managing the details.  Or worse -- like me -- you think you have the time to do these things yourself and thereby keep overheads under control.

My brother, who is a maxillofacial surgeon, once helped me wash dishes after a family dinner.  He made some remark about how much his time was worth, doing these dishes.  My response to him: "You're not worth that much when you're washing dishes".  Cheeky, perhaps, but true. 

Inside big organizations, the problem is much more insidious, and plastered over with a million rationalizations about why things must be the way they are.  Nonsense.

Redesigning the Work

Here's a real example of what I'm talking about.  We had a project where some bank staff who were responsible for lending arrangements also had to complete all the paperwork after they did a new deal.  They hated the paperwork.  They grumbled about it.  But it also kept them from doing more deals.

We created a new position (by re-jigging some of the other roles) to shift the paperwork completion to more junior employees.  The lending staff had a lot more time -- several more hours in a day, in fact.  And they used this time to see more customers, and shorten wait times.  Were they happy about this?  YOU BET THEY WERE.  Many of them told me this was the best thing that had ever happened to their job.

The people who took on the paperwork were happy too.  They had much more interesting work, taking a single customer's file and ensuring that everything went along smooth as silk.  Their roles were also enriched.  Many of these people loved the sense of completion that comes from an empty in-basket every day.  They didn't really care for the face-to-face sales oriented encounter, and the stresses of handling multiple customer needs.  THEY WERE HAPPY TOO!

As a result of this project, the company had created new capacity without increasing staffing costs, and had also made employees happier at the same time.  It doesn't get much better than that.

 

This works for managers too

This rule applies all the way to the top of the organization.  It just can be harder to see as you get into bigger titles. 

I used to work for an SVP that wanted to personally select the colors of new counters in new shops we opened.  Here's the thing:  head office had already specified a relatively small range of acceptable options.  And we had a design staff.  But he always mucked around in the final selections.  It was probably fun.  But it sure wasn't worth his hourly rate. 

Levels of work

What you need to think about in any organization is what level of work you have.  Is it SVP work?  Is it Director work?  Is it Senior Manager work?  Manager work?  Analyst work?  CSR work?   

And then you need to look in a really systematic way at what activities are assigned to what roles.  When you clean up where the activities belong (using rule #1 above), you're on your way to having an efficient AND effective organization. 

This is not just a process of guesswork, by the way.  Although there is some art and judgment involved, there are also some fairly scientific methods for conducting this type of analysis. 

When you are finished, people at every level will have challenging and interesting work. 

On the other hand, your managers and executives won't be able to pretend they are adding value by picking out paint chips, at 5 times the hourly rate of an interior designer.  And I'll have to spend time on clients, instead of software updates. 

 

Culture and Service Standards

There's a resort I like to go to in Northern Ontario where you can canoe all day, see stars at night, and listen to the loons, but still drink fine wine and have a good meal in the evening.  This resort, like many lodges, is actually quite renowned for the consistent high quality of their food.  It's not noveau by any stretch, but it is always good. 
There's a big banner in their kitchen only visible to staff.  It says:

If you're not proud of it, don't serve it

That's a great service standard that covers a lot of ground and is very clear. 
More important is that the organization tells stories that reinforce this standard... like remaking a whole batch of cheese sauce that wasn't cheesy enough, and that type of thing.

In earlier posts, I have commented favorably on Marriott Hotels -- they actually have an official repository for collected stories of customer service.

I have heard several times of people witnessing Clive Beddoe, Chairman and CEO at Westjet go through the cabin collecting garbage and having friendly chats with the other passengers. 

So here are the questions for today:

1. Are you proud of the things you are serving in your organization?
2. What kind of stories do your people tell? 
3. Can you explain the objective in one sentence that everyone can understand?
4. And have you demonstrated the importance of your standards with your own behaviors?