Art Petty on Management

Art Petty on Management Has Changed and Moved

I don't like to do things small or simple, so in what I sincerely hope is the absolute last time I put myself and you through this, I have moved and changed the name of my blog. 

You will now find me at www.artpetty.com and the new name of the blog is Management Excellence.

As I'm writing this and realizing that most people that have moved blogs have basically had to start over from zero to build traffic, this seems like taking two steps in the wrong direction.  However, sometimes you have to step back to grow, and I've got some compelling reasons for making the move, including:

• Integrating my former corporate web site and my blog under one content management system.

• Creating a simpler url (artpetty.com...12 characters versus the almost 40 for this site).

• Gaining the tools and the control through a hosted blog so that I can easily add planned podcasts, webcasts, forums and other tools that I will roll out this year.

• Aligning my blog's name: Management Excellence with my personal mission to promote high performance, great leadership and the pursuit of excellence in business.  

All of the posts and hopefully, all of the comments have been moved to the new site, so 14 months,  160 plus essays and a tremendous number of thoughtful comments on best practices in leadership and strategy, project management, product management and marketing and sales, all remain part of the library. 

For those of you that subscribe via your favorite Reader or happen across this post via Search, please take the opportunity to visit the new Management Excellence site and click on the site's feed.  And don't forget to check out some of the new tools, including the live polls, free down-loadable tools and links and references to many other great resources.

Thanks so much for reading and referencing Art Petty on Management, and I hope to earn your confidence many times over in my new home at the Management Excellence blog!

In Search of the High Performance Team

A special note: today is Veterans Day

While we may struggle in business to consistently produce high-performance teams, our soldiers in service of our country live this on a regular basis.  Thanks to those who have served, those who are serving and to all who have sacrificed.  Our gratitude has no end. 

In Search of the High Performance Team

I regularly poll my seminar participants and MBA students on their team-focused experiences in the workplace and I am consistently surprised when very few report ever being part of something that they would classify as a “high performance” team. 

The results of my unscientific polling are all the more surprising given that we live during a time when involvement in short-term projects with individuals across functions is a part of the regular work experience of most professionals. 

The business literature is filled with articles and interviews from leaders and pundits on topics tied to innovation, business execution and team heroics.  Of course, the same companies tend to be the focal point of these articles.  It seems like we cannot get enough of the stories of heroics pulled off in companies like Apple, Ideo Google and the few others that seem to make the short-list for the popular business press.  It’s curious that those companies got the memo on creating high-performance teams and the rest of us are relegated to reading about their successes.

When I ask about involvement on high-performance teams, there is invariably someone in the audience sharp enough to ask me what I mean.  Admittedly, my definition is one of those kind of squishy, you’ll know it when you experience it answers.  It’s also a multi-part answer that goes something like this:

• A high-performance team is a group of people that have figured out how to work together to knock down and succeed in pursuit of audacious goals.  They’ve learned to leverage their respective strengths, compensate for weaknesses and tap into the power that a group of people uniquely focused on a goal are able to generate.

• High-performance teams thrive on challenges, revel only momentarily in successes and mostly seek the next big challenge.  They tend to be paranoid about becoming overconfident and in general, they don’t seek significant public recognition.

• The working environment on this team is comfortable for collaboration, encouraging of disparate opinions and singularly focused on turning ideas into actions. High-performance teams are self-policing.  Values and accountabilities are clear and there is an explicit expectation that membership requires honoring the values.   Membership on this team is a true privilege.

• The leader on a high-performance team recognizes that his or her role is teach, to knock down obstacles and to constantly focus on creating the environment that allows others to succeed at high-levels.  This leader may be tough, but this leader tends to be quiet, letting actions talk.  You generally won’t find this leader to be loud and boisterous, although they may be a great cheerleader as well as a stern disciplinarian behind team walls. 

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Effective leadership is a pre-requisite for the creation of a high-performance team.  Perhaps if more leaders focused on their responsibility to empower others, I would see some more hands raised when I ask about whether your employees have been part of a high-performance team.  It’s not too late to start working on this.  

October 29th Carnival of HR (and much more)

Readers interested in some divergent thinking and great ideas should take a look at the menu of authors and content at the latest Carnival of HR.  And don't let the HR headline trick you.  This Halloween collection of articles covers diverse topics in leadership, communication, execution, talent development and priceless career advice.  Oh, and of course, Dan McCarthy, the host, was nice enough to include my recent attempt to place a quantifiable value on leadership development activities.  Check it out, it's definitely a treat. 

In Search of a Quantifiable Return on Leadership Development

Every few months, I run head-on into a discussion with someone (usually a prospective client) about how to value the return from investments in leadership development.  The question is not asked as a means of qualifying my services, but rather as a genuine practitioner-to-practitioner inquiry, not dissimilar to what two MDs might talk about with respect to the latest treatment results for an experimental drug program.  The person asking knows as well as I do that Return on Leadership Development continues to be an elusive issue that no one has substantively put to rest, and that our best answers are no stronger than impassioned, qualitative opinions. 

The venerable consulting firm, McKinsey & Company in their latest issue of The McKinsey Quarterly (2008, Number 4) offers some exciting results showing: “the relationship between financial performance as measured by profit per employee and ten dimensions of global management talent.”  Their findings: “Companies scoring in the top third of the survey (when all ten dimensions were combined” earned significantly higher profit per employee than those in the bottom third."

The McKinsey results showed strong correlations in three specific areas:

• The creation of globally consistent talent evaluation processes

• The management of cultural diversity

• The mobility of global leaders.

McKinsey indicated that the firms scoring top-third in any of these three areas had a 70% chance of scoring in top-third for financial performance.  Alternatively, companies scoring poorly on these practices had a strong chance of ending up in the bottom third for financial performance.

This is exciting information for anyone and everyone interested in gauging the impact of leadership development initiatives on corporate performance, however, before we consider this case closed, it is important to note McKinsey’s own comment that, "the study results do not show any true evidence of causality, but rather that the results, strengthen our belief that these are important areas on which businesses and HR leaders should focus their attention.”  It always comes down to belief.  Welcome to my conversations, McKinsey.

Should it Be Return on Expectations?

Another interesting thought comes from Professor Albert Vicere who describes his experience facilitating a group of executives through a discussion on how to calculate a return on leadership development:

“Discussion on how to calculate a return on leadership development and learning investments were frustrating until we saw the light, stopped talking about return on investment (ROI), and began talking about return on expectations (ROE).  Participants agreed that due to all sorts of complications we may never be able to calculate a clear financial return on learning initiatives, but if we’re clear on what we’re trying to accomplish through leadership development and learning and if we measure our results against those expectations, we may have the data we need to prove the value of our investments.”

OK, at least this group is giving us a reason to accept that valuing leadership development is a tough task. It is good to know that a bunch of smart people sat around thinking about this dilemma and the best that they could come up with was looking at from a different perspective.  They may be right, and the careful expectation setting and measurement around very specific leadership development initiatives may just yield the elusive data that we’ve been seeking.

Is it time to sharpen Occam’s Razor?

More often than not,the rough translation of  Occam’s Razor: “All things being equal, the simplest solution is the best,” proves true.  My non-statistically significant, can’t prove causality hunch is that effective leadership development practices are part of a whole system and that attempting to value them independent of the other components, while intellectually stimulating, is essentially valueless.  This is perhaps like attempting to value the worth of having a healthy heart in a cancer ravaged body or a healthy body carrying an artery-clogged heart.  No matter how you look at it, the body and organizations function as complex systems and a problem in any one part can adversely impact issues across the entire system. 

Aren't These The True Measures of Leadership Development's Value:

•    Quality
•    Financial health and performance (company and versus industry)
•    Innovation
•    Ability to Execute on Strategy
•    Employee Satisfaction
•    Customer Satisfaction
•    Growth versus industry participants
•    Retention and advancement of the right people and elimination of others
•    Fulfillment of mission
•    Growing contribution to community and society

The Bottom-Line for Now

If these items are generally accepted and desirable outcomes of a well-functioning organization, then executives looking at their talent development programs should quit focusing on the search for discrete ROI measures, and instead focus on identifying those practices that are likely to contribute the most to the above.  We may not prove causality, but just like McKinsey, it is my belief that focusing on becoming great at the right few talent and leadership development practices will yield higher performance than not focusing on these issues.  My vote says focus on: individual development planning, feedback and widespread involvement in strategy creation and execution, and the results will come and the other leadership development pieces will naturally fall into place.  Oh, and the decision on how to invest in development activities is a management team decision, not just an HR call.  Leadership Development is everyone’s business.

Surviving and Prospering Under a Weak Leader

It’s not secret that complaining about the boss is part of the culture of many teams and organizations.  The person in charge is an easy target and a certain amount of healthy griping about the boss may be cathartic for his or her subordinates.  It creates a common bond on teams where any form of bonding can help strengthen relationships and possibly performance.

When working with clients in consulting environments or working with teams in workshops, I tend to tune out background boss chatter until the tone and content of the conversation crosses what I call the Performance Line.  This line is crossed when it becomes clear to me that the performance of an individual or a team is being held hostage by a weak leader. 

In my recent post, Weak Leadership at the Top Derails the Pursuit of Performance Excellence, I characterize the problem as follows: Instead of overwhelming their associates with strict orders in pursuit of rigid targets, they (weak leaders) default on their responsibility to set direction in a poorly constructed attempt to create an environment of empowerment. The results of this approach include endless discussions without resultant actions and massive frustration of well-intended personnel that want to move projects and ideas forward. 

If you are working for someone that resembles this description, it can be a truly debilitating experience, especially if your nature is to drive and to innovate and experiment in pursuit of success.  Working for a weak leader can make you feel like you are running the Boston Marathon with your feet permanently encased in concrete.

I’ve worked with teams to identify ideas to help people break out of the concrete shoes created by a weak leader.  Here are some of the suggestions that they’ve come up with as they’ve talked through this dilemma.  Perhaps one or more of these will work for you.

Five Non-confrontational Suggestions for Coping and Even Prospering Under a Well-Meaning but Weak Leader

1. Make the leader the hero.  Not all weak leaders are bad people, and sometimes a dose of self-confidence is just what the doctor ordered.  Talk with this individual, paint a picture of how things will be different when the initiative in question is successful.  Show that you and your team have done a good job isolating and planning for the risks, and tie the expected outcomes back to organizational objectives or in the case of nonprofits, organizational missions. 

2.  Build Coalitions Across Your Peer Group.  A weak leader tends to create a vacuum of decision-making.  This vacuum can be filled by the leader’s subordinates aligned around the common need for action.  This is not a confrontational coalition, but rather a working coalition that moves things forward in spite of the leader. 

3.  Recognize the Psychology of the Weak Leader and Use Judo on It.  The weak leader syndrome is frequently a function of a lack of self-confidence, fear of having to say no to a subordinate and upsetting them, and perhaps fear of team mistakes shining directly on the leader.  This same person has a need to succeed, a desire to be liked and wants to feel that he or she has a voice in the direction.  Leverage this leader as you would a counselor.  Ask for help in framing solutions (even if it has already been framed), and make the leader very genuinely feel like an advisor and coach.  Make it comfortable for him or her to give feedback, and encourage this at every opportunity.  Involve the leader in brainstorming or in status reviews and do an extraordinary job of highlighting progress and or problems and how they are being handled. 

4.  Coach the Leader.  In spite of the lofty position, top leaders are often hungry for feedback and interested in receiving coaching from people that they trust.  Create opportunities for discussions that are not all about you.  If the leader provides an opening (many will), ask a few open ended questions about how things are going, what it’s like to deal with the Board etc., and shut up and let him or her talk.  It is amazing how lonely it can be at the top, and this act of listening can do a great deal of good in gaining the trust of a leader.

5.  Learn to Understand the Priorities of the Leader.  Applying several of the approaches above will help you understand the leader’s individual priorities (personal and professional).  This knowledge is priceless if you and your peers use it to help the leader meet his or her targets. 

The Bottom-Line for Now

Learning to manage your team leader takes time and requires extraordinary care and handling.  Being indecisive and failing to set direction are big shortcomings for a leader, but leaders that carry these attributes are all too common. You and your peers can either let the water-cooler complaints dominate the daily agenda or you can do something about it.  Teams and individuals that have leveraged some or all of the suggestions above have reported some nice successes.  No complete cures, but some nice successes and sustained progress in the right direction.  When your feet are cast in concrete, progress of any kind is good.

What's A Good Meeting Anyway?

I’ve heard the phrase “We had a good meeting,” or some derivative of it so many times that I’ve lost count.   Whenever I hear this meeting review or it’s ugly stepchild, “We talked about a lot at that meeting,” alarm bells start ringing, my spider sense tingles and I have to resist the sudden urge to scream. 

As best as I can tell, my visceral reaction(s) to “the good meeting” verbiage has a lot to do with the fact that when I politely inquire as to what made it good, I receive wishy-washy, touchy-feely kind of answers like: “ we reached a common understanding,” or, “we got on the same page,” or something else that tells me that there was no point to the meeting. 

With a bit more probing about the meeting outcome, I can usually satisfy my hypothesis that not only was there no point to the meeting and, there was no action-oriented outcome that when realized will move us one step closer to executing on a key strategy.  Last and not least, the “good meeting” vernacular is generally put forth by people that I view as Professional Meeting Attendees.  You know the type…an outlook calendar so full that it’s a lock there’s no time to do any work other than to show up at the next meeting. 

I’ve posted on my perspective about meetings before and offered some reasonable advice for ensuring productivity if you absolutely have to have a meeting.  (See: Leaders Are Your Meetings Straight Out of A Dilbert Comic Strip and How to Improve A Dysfunctional Meeting Culture Without Removing the Chairs.)  While not interested in repeating myself I feel duty bound to raise the flag on this rampant productivity killer that infects so many cultures. 

People grow accustomed to the comfort of the meeting room.  In most cultures, there is little accountability for meeting output, so it is at least in part a paid social experience.  People saunter in, crack jokes, catch up with colleagues and then ten minutes after the hour, the person that called the meeting pulls people to order.  Everyone gets serious for a few minutes, an issue is highlighted and then it is fascinating to watch the meeting masters at work.  A Professional Meeting Attendee knows that if he or she raises some sticky questions everyone will marvel at how on-top-of the issue that they are.  The Pro also knows that a few good questions will ensure that there will need to be a follow-up meeting, thus perpetuating their existence.  It’s Darwinian survival right in front of your eyes. 

The Bottom-Line for Now:

OK, I will end my rave with a few reminders for leaders everywhere:

• Strive to run meetings that have a purpose and a clear, action-oriented outcome.  (Brainstorming meetings are a separate issue..and they still need a purpose.)

• Teach by example with your own meetings.  Your rigor and discipline in managing meetings for productive information exchange and pointed outcome will serve as a model of meeting behavior for your subordinates to follow.

• Show up at the meetings that your subordinates meetings and provide coaching feedback soon after the meeting.  Your goal with the coaching feedback is to elicit behavioral change, so remember that you need to show up again (and again) in the future to monitor and provide feedback on progress.

• High-level executives are some of the biggest abusers of good meeting protocol.  This starts at the top. 

• Always tie meeting topics to strategic objectives.  If you cannot, consider killing the meeting.

• Beware recurring meetings on your calendar.  After a few sessions they tend to degrade.

• Take pride in running great, productive, action-oriented, strategically focused meetings.

• Never ever give up trying to promote effective meeting management!  It's an insidious productivity killer that requires constant vigilance.

Are You Making Progress?

Not surprisingly, it’s often difficult for senior executives and management teams to gain objective feedback on their individual and collective performance.   I’ve worked with clients and in organizations where the management team was generally satisfied with their own performance and would give themselves high marks at a time when the employees would give them lower or even failing grades.  In all cases where I’ve observed this perception gap, there was no objective, systematic means of measuring performance and perceptions in place.

During periods of widespread growth, the rising tide effect and decent numbers tend to support management’s belief that they are doing the right things to secure the future of the business.  Along comes a slowdown in the economy, a movement in the key metrics in the wrong direction and the painful recognition that all is not right in Camelot.  We all know what happens from here.  Top management runs around, holds a bunch of meetings with employees, consultants are invited in to help out, “strategy” becomes the new buzzword, lofty new goals are announced and somewhere in here there’s a reorganization or two.  (I don’t mean to sound cynical, but even in these enlightened times, this cycle is repeated over and over again.)

At least one critical component to avoiding the scenario above and to isolating on problem-areas before they manifest themselves as crises or at least significant organizational performance problems is to consistently monitor employee and leader perspectives on the issues and areas that count.  You can do this the hard and expensive way by investing in outside resources or you can take advantage of some remarkable and free resources courtesy of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Program.

Baldrige Is About Performance:

While you may assume that the Baldrige program is focused on quality (that’s part of the story), it is also heavily focused on performance and on the integration of all of the systems and processes that interact to create sustained, outstanding performance.  The criteria for the award are covered in seven categories:

1. Leadership
2. Strategic planning
3. Customer and Market Focus
4. Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management
5. Human Resource Focus
6. Process management
7. Results.  

According to the site, the intent of the program is to: help organizations enhance their competitiveness by focusing on two goals: delivering ever improving value to customers and improving overall organizational performance.

Part of the expansive set of tools available license and restriction free for you to use are two different, brief and easy to use survey instruments: Are We Making Progress? and Are We Making Progress as Leaders?  The surveys follow the seven categories described above, and ask leaders and employees to give their opinions of organizational effectiveness on the most critical issues that drive overall performance.  As a bonus, the site includes the aggregated survey ratings of the companies that applied for the award in previous years for your use in comparing your organization’s results.   All in all, these are some remarkably important and powerful tools available free for your use at the click of a mouse.

Observations and Suggestions: The Answers Are Closer Than They Appear: 

• Thoroughly read and digest the Criteria for Performance Excellence document(s) at the Baldrige site.  You might be surprised how much wisdom has been nicely aggregated over twenty plus years into some powerful and brief documents.  In my opinion, this 70+ page document has more insights between the covers than entire shelves of business books found in stores.

• Assess the gap between employee perspectives on organizational activities and effectiveness and your leadership teams perspectives by using the surveys.  Compare your results to the summary results of past year Baldridge candidates to develop some context for the gaps.  I promise that the results from this survey will be fascinating, eye opening and actionable.

• Leverage the survey results and the vast body of Baldrige tools and materials to architect a holistic and sustainable business improvement program that focuses on the key drivers of organizational performance.  You don’t have to search for the secret formula or even the answers…they are right in front of you, and in this case, neatly organized, well documented and supported by an ample body of cases for your use. 

The Bottom Line for Now:

If you’ve not studied Baldrige, you would be well served to fill that gap as part of your professional development(see my post, Back to School!).  There’s a remarkable amount of good common sense in gauging your organization’s performance and maturity against well-established criteria for success.  You don’t have to pursue a Baldrige award and I certainly am not interested in inviting debate over the efficacy of one discipline versus another (e.g. Six Sigma, ISO, Deming Award Criteria etc.).  However, I am interested in suggesting that a great starting point for figuring out what ails you is to ask people, to understand perception gaps, and to mine the gold from those gaps as part of your improvement programs. 

The Leadership Art (and Importance) of Encouraging Constructive Dissent

I hear frequently from leaders that wish their employees would disagree with them more often when discussing complex issues. 

“I’ve told everyone over and over again that they should be comfortable disagreeing with me, but other than some polite alternatives, no one seems to have the courage to speak up,”  indicated one frustrated executive that I talked with recently.

“We all know that when the discussion ends we’re going to do it her way, so why bother wasting our time debating,” said one of the employees of the frustrated executive.

In this situation, the executive was sending mixed signals.  While her employees acknowledged that she verbally encouraged constructive debate, no one seemed to believe that she truly meant it.   One of her employees indicated that the message never matched the body language—“she never looks like she truly wants anyone to disagree,” he said. 

In the article Reaching Your Potential, by Robert S. Kaplan, in the July-August, 2008 Harvard Business Review, Prof. Kaplan cites a scenario where a CEO was frustrated that none of his three top reports raised their concerns over a prospective hire, in spite of the fact that two of them had serious reservations.  The candidate was hired and the concerns only came to light once he began to struggle.  The executives had concluded, “the CEOs mind was made up and that speaking up was unwise.”

Professor Kaplan observes that: “Otherwise overconfident executives sometimes overestimate the career risk of speaking up and meaningfully underestimate the risk of staying silent.”  He adds: “I have seldom seen people hurt their careers by speaking up and appropriately articulating a well-thought out contrary position.  However, I have seen many bitter and confused people who stalled their careers by playing it safe.”

Leader, Heal Thyself!

In both examples above (and in most examples that I've observed), the leaders clearly failed to create the working environment that allowed and even encouraged constructive dissent. While the employees can be faulted for not acting in the best interests of their firm, there was something in the environment that triggered their survival instinct and indicated that it was safer to stay silent than to speak up.  The leader invariable controls the “something” and needs to focus on reshaping the environment to open up the communication flow. 

• How severe is the problem?  The leader should ask his or her reports about their comfort and discomfort in providing feedback. What are the barriers?  What behaviors is the leader displaying that shut down constructive dissent?  If the personal interviews go nowhere or if there is no 360-degree feedback system in place, try a simple, anonymous survey. 

• Leader, learn to manage your body language.  We all learn somewhere in our travels that if you combine a verbal message with seemingly conflicting non-verbal cues, the non-verbal wins out every time.

• Recognize that giving in to alternative viewpoints (from your own) does not mean that you are weak or ineffective.  To the contrary, it’s your job to hire smart people with different ways of looking at the world and solving problems.  The greatest leaders have great advisors.  Give your people a chance to play that role.

• If you are like many of the leaders that I know, you will allow a group to run in their own direction even though you had a different idea of where they should go.  You will also come to the uncomfortable conclusion that they were right and you were wrong.   Your confidence in calling this out will reinforce the notion that you encourage well-thought out dissent. 

The Bottom-Line for Now:

This topic goes to the heart of creating an effective feedback culture—one where everyone is comfortable tackling the tough topics and highlighting when the Emperor has no clothes.  The discomfort of a team in expressing alternative viewpoints with a leader is one sign that all is not right with the feedback culture.  In many cases, some simple behavioral adjustments and appropriate reinforcement on the part of the leader can open the spigot to some great ideas from some smart people.  Remember, the contest is in the market for the hearts, minds and dollars of your customers, it’s not in your team meetings to show that you’re the smartest. 

How comfortable are your associates in disagreeing with you?

 

Lousy Customer Service Starts with Sloppy Leadership

Fresh off of a vacation and what seems like a thousand or so “interactions” with various service providers and merchants, I continue to be perplexed as to why we as consumers so easily accept and by default, encourage lousy customer service in our daily lives.  To my observation, receiving poor customer service is more the rule today than the exception. 

I’ve wondered if it’s just me eliciting the questionable service, but I have a standing policy to greet every retail/front-desk/agent/clerk/teller with a smile and a nice greeting in an attempt to create a positive exchange.  I can tell in a nanosecond of my approach whether the experience will be good or bad based on the response.  Too many experiences with large and small organizations end up in the negative column.

While I am fascinated (morbidly so) at the number of people that make their living through customer contact that don’t understand how to contact customers, I am mortified at the sloppy leadership practices and sloppy leaders that allow poor customer service to rule the day.  My armchair diagnosis is that these leaders suffer from an unhealthy mix of arrogance, apathy and ignorance.  They either don’t give a damn or don’t know.  Both are inexcusable. 

Aside from the obvious relationship destroying, bad-will creating outcome of delivering poor customer service at the point-of-sale, consider the bigger picture.   An organization spends an incredible amount of time and money in creating products and services, enticing you to try their offering and just when they finally have you where they want you, they shoot themselves in the proverbial foot by creating a miserable customer experience.   For example, I receive better service from neighborhood kids selling lemonade than most people receive from almost anyone in the U.S. airline industry. 

For decades, U.S. manufacturers ignored the rising quality standards in global competitors, and seemed genuinely perplexed when consumers voted with their wallets in favor of the best product, regardless of origin.  It took a few more decades for the firms that survived to recognize that designing quality into the product and processes wasn’t a new management fad, but rather it was the price of admission.  I see the same thing happening with customer service.

9 Suggestions on Customer Service for Executives, Leaders and Managers Everywhere:

1. Come to grips with the value creating, brand strengthening, loyalty building, buzz generating, lifetime value maximizing power of great customer service. 
2. Alternatively, come to grips with the cost-wasting, bad-will generating, brand destroying, competitor enriching power of lousy customer service.
3. Figure out what “great customer service” means to your customers and turn your organization upside down in pursuit of delivering it.
4. Design customer service into your offerings and processes just as you now design quality into your offerings.  Customer Service is a part of your “augmented” product. Fixing customer service after the fact is a lot more costly in many ways than building it into your organization and offerings up front.
5. Beware the lure of cost-cutting measures that have the potential to adversely affect customers.  Evaluate the customer impact carefully before proceeding.
6. Delegate power to satisfy customers down to the lowest possible point in the organization.
7. Reinforce a culture of customer service excellence by measuring, monitoring and rewarding for performance as well as for identifying and implementing improvements.
8. Seek specific, direct feedback from customers on their experiences.  Surveys are OK, observing, talking and asking questions are all much more tangible.
9. Get out from behind your desk and spend time where your firm comes in contact with customers.  Become a customer and evaluate your own experience.

Suggestions for Consumers Everywhere

• Vote with your wallet every single day. 

• Tell everyone about your experiences…good and bad.

• If you are in a hospitality environment, tip lavishly for great service, and remember to tell the server and the server’s manager about your experience.  (Do the same, minus the tip part for lousy service.)

The Bottom-Line for Now:

There is no excuse for lousy customer service ever.  Poor customer service is either a philosophical failure on the part of leadership or a failure to execute.  Regardless of the cause, the impact is the same. Poor customer service destroys your value proposition in the marketplace and degrades the efforts of everyone in the organization.  Is great customer service more than just a slogan in your organization?

Great Things Happen When Confidence and Capitalism Collide

In this time of bad financial news, high energy costs, record deficits and global turmoil, it’s exciting to meet people that see opportunities in the headlines.  I had the great fortune to meet someone recently that has the right attitude about making lemonade out of the bumper crop of lemons we are experiencing this year. 

This individual has a self-stated mission of seeing the U.S. energy independent from foreign oil  producers, and has the confidence, resources and conviction needed to just possibly pull it off (or at least make a big difference).  He’s investing heavily in all-things renewable, and he has no qualms about the fact that he will make a lot of money along the way to helping us become energy independent.  Mission, vision and a tidy profit all at the same time.  Ayn Rand would be proud.

There are more than a few leadership lessons that I take away from meeting and listening to someone very confidently talking about knocking down regulatory walls at the same time he is helping solve huge engineering and infrastructure challenges.  What might appear as insurmountable barriers to many are just problems to be solved and opportunities waiting to be realized.   It would be easy to listen to this type of talk and think of the top 100 reasons that come to mind why it will never work.  The hard job is to jump over to his side of the fence and see the only logical outcome: success!

Corporate offices are filled with Devil’s Advocates, Naysayers and Professional Critics.  These are the people that take someone’s seed of a vision and work hard to ensure that it is crushed into oblivion to serve as more grist for the big corporate mill.  Some of the best-educated, smartest people you will ever meet fill these roles.  They are so smart, that they easily see everything that can go wrong in pursuit of a vision.  My advice: do yourself a favor and fire these people and replace them with individuals that are excited by the vision and singularly focused on helping realize it.  You’ll be happy you did.