Be Different or be dead

February 25, 2019

5 courageous demands to make of your leader right now

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5 courageous demands to make of your leader right now.

To move beyond your current role requires a personal development plan; it’s not likely that serendipity will play a significant role in advancing our careers.
It’s all about positioning yourself to take advantage of either an opportunity that comes up or one that you create because of proactive moves you make.

Step up and demand

Either way, there are a few key things you should discuss with your leader to enable you to capitalize on your potential and prepare you for further career success.
After all, they are supposed to be there to help you get both your performance and developmental needs met, so be courageous and tell them what they are even if they don’t ask.

Most leaders don’t ask “How can I help?”, they just expect you to do the job without their intervention.
But don’t play that game. It’s your career and life and you have every right to tell your boss what you need to improve your performance and to prepare you to make even greater contributions to the organization.

Ask your leader:

To give you more work

To delegate more tasks to do within your current role.
Tell them that you have the capacity to take on more (even if you are not sure you have) and are prepared to do so.

I’m sure there is a project on the shelf not being actioned that interests you or a deliverable you think should be worked on that would help the organization; show initiative ask if you can take it on even if you put yourself at risk in the process.

My personal style was always to define the job I was in by expanding the scope of deliverables I produced. I rarely accepted the boundaries of the role I was given because I considered them too restrictive.
Most people need defined boundaries for them to do their job; I never did.

In a marketing product manager role, for example, I asked to assume the task of defining and implementing the customer service support requirements necessary to sustain a product in the field. In the process, I not only was able to deliver a high performing product that met its sales targets, I also learned a great deal about the service world which prepared me for a career path in operations.

To define your line of sight

Effective execution of the strategic game plan of the organization requires that each function and individual know exactly what their role is; the game plan must be translated in very granulated form down to what each person needs to do in their job to ensure the plan is implemented the way it was intended.

For example, if the game plan was to beat the competition by outperforming them on serving customers, everyone needs to understand what they need to do to help the organization deliver miraculous service moments.

When line of sight is foggy and people don’t know their role, they invent what they think it should be and dysfunction sets in. There is no consistency in what people do and results are all over the map.

So, ask your boss to sit down with you and map what the game plan of the organization specifically means to you. What do you need to do differently? Agreement on this is critical to ensure performance expectations are the same between boss and employee and to move the game plan forward.

To make introductions for you

Career success depends heavily on the network of people you know; not just the number of them but their quality in terms of their relevance to your chosen career path.

It’s cool to be introduced to a VP Finance but it would be even more cool if you were headed to a marketing role to meet a few VPs of Marketing.

In addition, see if you can get introduced to people who you have something in common with. Do your homework and ask for introductions to specific people.
But don’t expect your leader to commit to you and provide you with quality referrals immediately. They need to get to know you and trust your capabilities. This takes time so be prepared to make the investment and that you deliver beyond their expectations.

What new stuff you should learn

Career growth requires constant learning and leaders are an excellent source of advice on how to fill your knowledge gaps.

They see your performance and should be the best people to offer suggestions to help you improve. In addition, they have experience that you don’t and can refer you to learning sources based on what worked for them.

Their involvement in the organization’s strategic game plan also enables them to have an accurate perspective on what skills and competencies are needed to add the value that spells success in the marketplace. Take your lead from the new knowledge what they suggest you acquire.

To help prepare you for a lateral move

Success isn’t just about moving up. Rarely do people look back on their journey with a record of only promotions.
In my experience the most valuable moves I made involved accepting a lateral position to a different department. This gave me a broader perspective on what the organization needed to succeed and was a brilliant source of learning.

When promotions did present themselves, I received more serious consideration because of the more diversified experience.
So ask your boss to find a niche lateral move that would complement your long term career goals and pester her until you get it.

Don’t expect your leader to do the right thing for your career. If you don’t put YOU in front of them they will likely have other priorities.

You must take ownership of your own fate; tell them what you need.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 2.25.19 at 02:15 am by Roy Osing
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February 18, 2019

5 effective ways to make a culture of personalized customer service

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Many organizations have in their business plan the goal of providing intimate customer experiences; personalized service tuned in to what THAT specific customer wants at THAT specific time.

The essence of the plan is to deliver memorable — WOW! — experiences that will delight customers and enhance their loyalty. It’s the warm caring treatment intended to make the customer’s skin all goose-bumpy.

The logic behind the personalization theme is that while providing a standard level of service to everyone will satisfy some people, it won’t appeal to all because everyone has slightly different needs.

But if service is individualized to reflect the unique characteristics of each customer, mass moments of delight can be created and customer loyalty will increase.

Personalized service is impossible

The reality is, however, personalized service is an impossible dream; it cannot be delivered because of ‘the noise’ that surrounds service delivery in every organization.

The noise is represented by all of the activities going on in an organization; they constitute the context within which personalization must be practised.

The noise consists of:
— repair and service delivery activity.
— advertising messages.
— ridiculously long call center hold times.
— social media conversations.
— customer complaints.
— internal cost management concerns.
— new leadership directives.
— product quality issues.
— differing business unit priorities.
— supply challenges.

There is too much noise

With this confluence of activity happening every moment of every day, is it any wonder that the art of creating a memorable personal experience for a customer gets lost?

Personalized service experiences don’t stand a chance when there is this cloud of activity in conflict with this purpose:
— customers wait 45 minutes to get a call center rep who does their best to provide caring service buts it’s ruined by the noise of the wait;
— customers are told their individual needs are important but the product breaks down after it has been used only a few times;
— employees are told that responding to each customer is the strategy yet service costs are cut to meet quarterly financial targets and there are insufficient numbers of employees to serve customers;
— social media conversations are replete with service criticism at the same time as the organization declares its intent to provide stellar personal service;
— sales solutions can’t be provided because of supply chain problems;
— a sensitive engagement with a service rep is followed by a disastrous installation that requires multiple attempts to get it right;
— a special deal is provided to a customer but the bill is sent out with errors.

All of these noise factors work in unison to discredit the personal service mantra, it’s not a believable proposition in the face of proof points that counter and undermine it.

A holistic view is required

Polite customer service reps and amazing fulfillment self serving technology won’t bring personalization to life; it’s a bigger challenge than that.

All the currency built up by a rep handing the customer in an amazing way is quickly lost, for example, when the product ordered is lost or the promised delivery date is missed.

And the caring attitude of a rep doesn’t really count for much when the customer has been sitting in the call queue for the better part of an hour.

To really provide a personal service experience requires a holistic view of all service components operating across the organization. They must all work efficiently on their own and work together in harmony to serve the same purpose.

If one link in the service chain breaks down personal service is a non starter.

In the long term, the culture of an organization must be morphed to delivering the personal service experience.
Leadership must declare it to be the prime objective of the organization; a strategy must be put in place to make it happen.

These 5 actions should drive cultural change to personalization

▪️Define the operations functions that the customer views as key in fulfilling the personal service promise and make sure they operate with maximum efficiency and minimal errors. If call center wait times is critical to them, apply resources to avoid their displeasure when the reach a rep.

▪️Insource the functions that drive the personal experience, outsource only those that have no influence on it.

▪️Re-vector your performance management process to prioritize those deliverables and behaviours that are key to the personal service mission; pay handsomely when someone is a champion of the cause.

▪️Set measurable objectives for the key operations processes that control how the customer feels about the way they are treated and hold management accountable to achieve them. If, for example, keeping promises for product delivery is important, set targets and measure performance.

▪️Ask the customer “Did you enjoy your personal service experience with us?” as the key lead question to monitor if the new culture is making way.
You will quickly find out if customers found their experience with you personal at all and what your organization needs to do to make it more memorable.

A personal service experience equals the sum of the experiences a customer has with each touch point they engage with in your organization.

It’s not about just the service rep, delivery technician, receptionist, repair person, website, advertising message and bill individually.

It’s about all of them, and unless they all work together in the spirit of personalization you can forget about the ideal and claim something else as your end game.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 2.18.19 at 04:38 am by Roy Osing
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February 11, 2019

Why an amazing speech must have a voice with passion

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The world needs people to believe in. People who stir our emotions. People who have a perspective that resonates with us and compels us to act.

There are many people who speak passionately but their words have no consequence; they float “like feathers in the wind”, hoping to land on a receptive ear.

These words tend to promulgate from theoretical doctrine, political ideology and social cause; their purpose: influence an audience and imprint a specific message on each member of it.

These words are pushed, blurted and forced with the hope of commanding and proliferating a narrow biased point of view.

A voice without passion Is self serving

It speaks with the left brain in control, carefully articulating the message intended to advance their specific agenda — it’s a one-way street leading to THEIR destination not yours.

I have often heard certain people described as having a hidden agenda when they speak; the type of person that conveys distrust with their words.
It’s a feeling they stir in others.
You can’t put your finger on exactly what bothers you about what they say, you just feel you’re not hearing their true story.

But a voice with passion puts everything out there for everyone to hear and decide whether or not to buy in; the passionate voice wears who they are on their sleeve; the truth is obvious.

A voice without passion relies on logic

Tries to influence through logic. It’s conviction is that if the audience understands the words, a change in behaviour will likely follow.
Appealing to the intellect has its flaws. I may understand someone’s point of view on a subject but don’t act on it because my gut doesn’t compel me to do it.

My experience as a leader is that intellectualizing rarely, on its own, doesn’t result in action. It’s gets a nod which says “I got it!”, but it doesn’t move the feet.

A new strategic plan, for example, may be viewed as the right thing to do to meet the competitive challenges of the day, but unless it lights fires in people, nothing actually happens.

To get stuff done you have to have a healthy mix of understanding and agreement fuelled with emotion and passion.

A voice without passion doesn’t convince anyone

Is ineffective in convincing others to listen and follow them. Dis-passionate voices are ineffective in expanding their narrative to those around them because those receiving the message don’t buy what is being said.

The message isn’t believable, not necessarily because the content is inaccurate or false, but because it’s not being communicated with feeling.

A voice with passion, on the other hand, can fall short on the facts of a particular issue, but still convince others. The raw power of emotion can overcome most incomplete thoughts.

A voice without passion cures insomnia

A voice with no passion puts us to sleep. It doesn’t cut through the clutter of the barrage of messages that plummet us every hour of every day. It has no no clean signature that subliminally forces us to sit up and take notice.

A presenter on any topic must find a way to make their words compelling and interesting so people take notice. If you’re discussing your views on eliminating bureaucracy in your organization, for example, you might want to talk about cutting the ’CRAP’ instead of ‘reducing red tape’.

A voice with passion uses words that helps create one’s persona that is characterized as exciting, vibrant, innovative and interesting; attributes that everyone can identify with

A voice without passion lacks conviction

Bland words suggest a lack of speaker conviction; saying the words but not feeling and believing the words.
If I don’t believe that you personally identify with your own words (because of the lacklustre way you deliver them), why should I buy in?

How many times have you sat in an audience and listened to someone read their script in a perfectly monotonous way and have concluded that the speaker is a non-believer of their own message?

It happens more often than not.

The passionate voice easily convinces the listener that the communicator is all in with their content.
The emotional context of any communication is critical in being perceived as one who owns their material completely.

A voice without passion captures little controversy

A dispassionate voice will likely never get criticized, whereas someone who speaks loudly from the heart can attract labels like: intense, excessive, angry, aggressive and overly opinionated.

The thing is, what do you want: words that land on you but make no difference to the way you think and feel about something, or words that jolt you to think about a different perspective because of their sheer energy and apparent outrageousness?

Moderate words play to the crowd with a herd mentality and are soon forgotten.

Bland insipid words may not be taken the wrong way but they’ll never be unforgettable

The passionate voice lives in a different world; it very often creates controversy around its words. It has the ability to take an issue and either upset others or make them euphoric by its emotional energy; it’s rare to leave them with a “take it or leave it” conclusion.

The voice without passion rarely changes the world

It might be accurate but never compelling to produce action; non-controversial but never outrageous to stir emotions.

Change is created by people who believe in a new something and get excited by its possibilities.

Voices who are able to push people in this direction exude the passion required to overcome the inertia that’s in the way.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 2.11.19 at 03:53 am by Roy Osing
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February 4, 2019

How do amazing cultures react when unexpected shocks hit them?

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How do amazing cultures react when unexpected shocks hit them?

A highly successful culture doesn’t rely on text book principles and academic methods to shape the future of their organization. Rather it relies on creating an environment that can adapt to the realities of unpredictability and chaotic change.

So when it comes to issues like setting strategic direction, they are more likely to shy away from traditional business planning methods and adopt a different approach — the ability to successfully react to unexpected events that shock them.

Traditional business planning methods offer structure in the analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats — the SWOT process.
They provide demand and forecasting models to assess propensity to buy. And they provide many decision-making tools to assess the merits of various alternatives.

And although business planning is a mature discipline, it has two significant drawbacks in my view.

Complicated, expensive and time consuming

It requires an inappropriately high level of investment in relation to the benefits realized. It raises the false expectaion that the strategy will actually work as planned which is not the case in a world of rapid change and unpleasant surprises.

Reaction cultures buy into the notion that if, in the face of unpredictable change, the essence of the strategy can’t be counted on to succeed, the planning process should be simplified so that it is not overly onerous and complicated — it should be simple, expedient and cost effective.

Reaction is missing

Traditional planning says virtually nothing about the principle of response and most leadership teams spend virtually no time dealing with tactics to deal with the unexpected.

I have sat through executive planning workshops where 3 days have been spent trying to perfect the plan, leaving zero time to discuss execution and contingencies. It’s almost like people don’t like to admit that Plan A has a possibility of not succeeding; a ridiculous notion to say the least.

Sustaining cultures are brilliant at reacting to surprise events they did not anticipate; those that are unable to adapt struggle and die.
How many strategies have you seen unfold the way you originally planned? I have seen none; it is the impossible dream!

The principle of reacting is the essence of what I call planning on the run: set the (imperfect) plan — start executing — learn what is working and not working (because of the unexpected) — RESPOND and adjust the plan accordingly — then continue executing. And on it goes…

Reaction cultures take the following steps to take their performance to astronomical heights and to separate themselves from their competition.

They ignore precision

They keep the business planning process simple. Cut the time to develop the strategy in half to make room for more attention to implementation. Get your general direction right. Be ok with ‘heading west’.

My rule of thumb: spend 20% if the time available on the plan and 80% on implementation — who does what by when to make the plan come to life.

My success as an executive leader has been to minimize the traditional planning approach. I built an alternative approach — the strategic game plan — that I road tested in the real world for many years.
The essence of it is: dumb down the strategy building process, get the plan “just about right” and focus on execution in a world where the unexpected rules.

They focus on the few

My experience has shown that the fewer the number of things focused on the better the results. We are simply disastrous at trying to do too many things simultaneously.

Reaction cultures are great at getting to the real GUT issues they are facing; they don’t try and boil the ocean. They declare three critical issues that must be addressed to survive and they focus on them to the exclusion of other things that could be done.

They understand that trying to accomplish 10 or 20 objectives well is impossible and that all energy must be concentrated on the critical few priorities.

They plan to execute

To react, you must be focussed on HOW the strategy is to be achieved — execution is real time, which is where you have to be in order to respond to unforeseen events.

Reaction leaders drill down on how their strategic game plan is to be implemented. The implementation plan is developed in minute detail; action plan accountabilities and specific timeframes to deliver results are delighted to members of the planning team.

Reaction cultures shift the emphasis from planning direction to planning execution activity with excruciating precision.

They pour their hearts into Execute!

Bear down on getting results however you can. It doesn’t have to be elegant as long as you’re getting stuff done.
Reaction cultures concentrate on making sure everyone in the organization clearly understands what they have to do to support the execution plan; people doing their own thing is a nonstarter.

And they measure the hell out of the execution plan. Generally results are tracked monthly to ensure they have the capability to react in real time if results fall below what was expected.

They learn on the run

To successfully react to unforeseen external forces requires that organizations learn what works and what doesn’t.

Amazing cultures are hyper-fastidious over the results monitoring process that examines results vs expectations. They rely on actual performance to decide what action should be reinforced (because it’s working) and what should be stopped (because it’s not working).

Learning from doing is a critical attribute of cultures that can weave their way through storm force winds.

The learning-on-the-run process in a nutshell:
— define the top 3 - 5 critical performance indicators to measure.
— track results.
— focus on performance that is under achieving.
— learn what caused the shortfall in results.
— develop an action plan to close the gap.
— tweak the plan and move forward.
— keep the feet moving!

Incomparable cultures have a ‘reasonable’ plan based on traditional methodology, but their success is they react to unexpected change better than anyone else.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 2.4.19 at 03:07 am by Roy Osing
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