Be Different or be dead

November 25, 2019

The 5 deadly sins of being like the next person

Source: Unsplash

The 5 deadly sins of being like the next person.

If you’re like the next ‘guy’, you have some serious thinking to do. There may be pressure to fit in and conform with others, but the consequences can be deadly; it’s simply not the place to be if you are looking for a successful and rewarding career.

When you are ok with blending in with the person next to you are committing the following deadly sins.

Sin #1 — you become wallpaper

Wallpaper is background; it provides a convenient backdrop for the action going on in the foreground. Do you ever notice wallpaper? You might if you are looking for wallpaper but it’s a temporal thing: after you’ve seen it, it soon fades and gives way to what is going on in front of it.

Think about when you decide to change the wallpaper on your device. You notice the various choices when you are looking, but once you’ve selected one that you like, it soon becomes subordinated to the apps and webpage shortcuts that populate the space in front of it.

Being like the next guy is being like wallpaper; people may notice you for a fleeting moment but then you disappear.
What you need to succeed in the long term is sustainability in terms of being noticed by people who can influence your career.

Sin #2 — you become immune to risk

It’s comfortable being like the next guy; there’s little personal risk and you’re rarely in trouble. Blending in allows you to float around unexposed to all onlookers.

The problem is that being comfy makes you risk averse and you tend to avoid circumstances where you have to step outside your comfort zone.
Being like the other guy robs you of the desire to take a chance because you don’t have to; it’s not necessary when the crowd governs the outcome for you.

A career suffers when an industry is not prepared to take reasons risks; innovation in any organization is impossible without a certain amount of chance.

Sin #3 — you can’t deal with conflict

When you’re like the next guy, you rarely have disagreements with others; you avoid conflict by having similar personas to those around you and no reason to fight for your own ideas.

It provides an artificial (and unhealthy) environment for the lookalike who grows up being extremely uncomfortable with differences in opinions and incapable of dealing with situations like this when they arise.

Being able to handle conflict is necessary in today’s world where the issues are so numerous that a myriad of opinions will always exist and to survive, people have to know how to put up their opinion and fight for it in a respectful way.

Those that can’t navigate through the opinion maze will stay in their herd — comfortable but unsuccessful.

Sin #4 — you think life is about ‘best practices’

When you’re like the next guy, you’ve already decided that the next guy represents your aspiration; the person or set of competencies you believe will make you successful. And you live your life believing that emulation is the way to successfully meander your way through the challenges and roadblocks thrown in your way.

Looking at what others do and copying what you believe to be the “best” becomes your modus operandi and you judge your worth if the image you see in a mirror is someone else.

Being like the next guy forces you build yourself in someone else’s image, to copy what another person has created and follow best of breed. This is not a recipe for success; it’s a path lacking originality and uniqueness and one that leads not to rewards.

Sin #5 — you are constantly in the stall mode

When you’re like the next guy, your life is punctuated by fits and starts; you have no forward momentum because you have no plan that is special in terms of how you intend to meet your personal goals. You are in the hands of others with no control over what you want to achieve or how you intend to achieve it.

As a result you tend to be in a perpetual stall mode waiting for the wind to either olift you up or force you down.

Being in the stalled mode wastes you of the most precious commodity there is — time. While you wait for the next guy’s energy to propel you somewhere, the people around you who choose to standout and be different from the next guy pass you by.

There is absolutely no redeeming value being like the next guy; it’s sinful and will rob you of your future.

Be different. Be unique. Be special. Be you.

It’s the only way you have an exciting life and a chance to win.

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

• Posted 11.25.19 at 04:29 am by Roy Osing
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November 18, 2019

5 simple things I did everyday as a leader

5 simple things I did everyday as a leader.

If you looked at how most executive leaders spend their time, you would find activities such as: attending executive leadership and board meetings, reviewing financial performance of their organization, developing strategic plans, meeting with their direct report team and the like.

My leadership style was different. Sure, I performed the traditional duties expected of me, but I realized as well that there were other things that had to be done to ensure a consistently high performing organization — plus have more fun!

These 5 activities consumed an inordinate amount of my time regularly while other leaders chose to stay with a more traditional routine.

1. Bear pit sessions

Seeking employee input on what’s working and what’s not working for them is a critical activity for the effective leader. Many leaders choose to delegate this responsibility to their management team; I did not.

I made this task a priority of how I spent my time, and coined the term bear pit session to describe the employee meetings I called to discuss issues in the workplace.

The purpose of the sessions was to engage people in a active conversation on such matters as:
— what’s preventing them from executing the strategic game plan of the organization;
— what needs to be changed in the way customers are served;
— what rules and policies are getting in the way of delivering amazing service experiences;
— what unmet customer needs should be addressed;
— what barriers need to be removed in order to make their jobs easier.

It was my agenda and I sought their input that I would normally never receive. I led each session on my own; my direct reports were never present because I wanted honesty from people.
And I had to take criticism on the chin; these were tell-it-like-it-is conversations which held very little back once I earned the trust of the attendees.

2. Dumb rules contests

One of my essential objectives was to “cleanse the organization’s environment” of stuff that made little sense to people; the rules, policies, processes and procedures — the systems — that got in their way of doing their job or that prevented the delivery of good customer service.

Most leaders opted to do studies using systems and process reengineering experts to identify the culprits that needed change because they were inefficient and could be reengineered to lower cost.

I took a different approach. I chose to sponsor dumb rule contests and involve the people who actually used the systems and enforced the rules & policies in the performance of their jobs. They were the best source to identify the candidates that needed change because they made their jobs difficult and/or annoyed customers.

The suggestions offered by employees — particularly from the frontline — were awesome! And we had a team of managers who were held accountable to schedule and implement the ideas with the greatest impact.

3. Skip level employee engagement

This is another twist to getting close to people doing the job without the filters of layers of management getting in the way.
This was my route to the truth. I have my managers the heads-up that I was going to be speaking to their employees directly on occasion.

I told them my purpose was not to undermine them but rather to get a better appreciation of how people doing the job felt; the individual problems they had and their views on how things could be achieved.

I also told them that if they were uncomfortable with my style then perhaps they need to find a more parochial leader.

This process worked miracles for me and my performance. I was able to get ahead of issues before they became performance effecting and I was able to help people perform their roles the way they wanted to: the right tools & training and fewer roadblocks.

And as a side benefit, it gave a perspective on how well my managers served their people and equipped me with the information I needed to help them do their jobs better.

4. VP-for-a-day assignments

“Walk in my shoes” for a day was an offer I regularly gave to a variety of employees in my organization; people who championed valuable projects that proved to enhance the performance of the organization and other high potential individuals who were the leaders of tomorrow.

This was a recognition for those who stood out and provided an invaluable contribution to fulfilling our strategic intent.

I did this once a month, and I structured the day to provide as realistic perspective of the type of issues I was typically engaged in. There is always a risk in being “too cheesy” so I tried to leave plenty of time for extemporaneous activity if I could.

The role was to engage my guest in whatever the moment was offering. They weren’t there to simply look and listen, they were there to offer their point of view on whatever subject was being discussed.

They loved the opportunity; they told their friends and colleagues of their experience and they became influencers of opinion in the workplace. And many of them achieved rewarding and successful careers.

5. Customers before anything

I always planned weekly customer meetings; I scheduled them early to avoid any conflict with internal meetings.
But of course things change and inevitably my boss would call a meeting that conflicted with a scheduled customer meet.

It was risky but I never put the customer off in favour of complying with my boss’s request that I meet with him or attend an executive meeting. I ALWAYS kept my promises to customers even if it was an uncomfortable and unheard of choice.

My boss at least understood (even though he may not have agreed with) my choice and agreed to support me.

My peers, on the other hand, thought my choice was reckless and not in my own personal career interests.

Turns out that with a great boss you can both stand your ground on principles and have a rewarding career (because customers always show their appreciation with their loyalty).

I’m not saying other leaders should follow me, but I encourage you to step out and find your own unique signature to practice your craft at an even higher level than is possible through traditional leadership doctrine.

Find your own way.

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

• Posted 11.18.19 at 04:19 am by Roy Osing
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October 21, 2019

Why a boilerplate is absolutely the worst thing ever

Source: Unsplash

Why a boilerplate is absolutely the worst thing ever.

How many people go to Google to find a template to follow for something? It could be for a résumé, a business plan, a job application or a flowchart for anything.

Any common requirement that can be programmed and replicated ends up in some sort of template format and made available for everyone to use.

Boilerplates make it easy for the person using it — follow the format; don’t think; stay within the lines — and for the person receiving it (content is presented in one way; common elements are covered).

Boilerplates have a dark side; they are obscene when you consider 5 serious problems they cause:

1. They rob creativity

Boilerplates rob the creativity in people — no creativity is needed to complete a template on any topic (other than selecting the template appropriate to the application you have in mind).
You don’t have to think through your own approach to any challenge you are facing, in fact most people choose the the template that is easiest to complete.

Want to create a résumé? Download one of the many templates from the internet and have a go; it’s that easy.
The problem is that for the sake of easiness, you sacrifice the opportunity to express your individuality; to do something that is uniquely you.

Successful people are remarkable because they create their own personal art, something that is special to them and that conveys their uniqueness.
Template thinking is clearly counter to that and in fact represents a force that stultifies personal art forms.

2. They force compliance

Boilerplates encourage a “fill in the blanks” mentality — rather than considering why the blanks are there and filling them in with a plan or strategy in mind, you just mindlessly fill them in.

You are willing to accept an approach that someone else has conceived and trust that it will work for you.
This unfortunately leads to just doing what your told without thinking for yourself; complying with the rules set by others rather than questioning what you’re being asked to do and doing it your own way.

The ultimate consequence of this behaviour is a population that simply follows the intellectual perspective of other pundits or experts and is therefore unable to adapt to changes required to survive and thrive in a changing world.

3. They spawn copycats

Boilerplates reinforce and perpetuate the copying phenomenon — if one thousand people use the same résumé template, for example, a crowd of 1000 look-alike candidates for any job opportunity is created.

I’ve sat across the table interviewing candidates for a VP Marketing leadership position and have almost been ‘put to sleep’ because the value propositions offered by virtually everyone of them were the same and were the product of a template they all used. Originality was missing in action; individuality was masked by crowd mentality.

As a writer and practitioner of being different, I find the best practices and benchmarking completely of touch with what it takes to achieve personal and organizational growth and success.

Copying anything simply increases the common herd by one; no additional value is created; no actual progress is achieved.

4. They cause laziness

Boilerplates make people lazy — it takes zero energy (other than finding a template you need) to exist in the world of boilerplates.
The process of completing a template is well defined and predictable, so with a minimum amount of effort you can produce the expected result.

Many would argue that this is a good thing, that achieving something with minimal effort is a sign of being highly productive.
And, in certain instances, I would agree. But in this case the zero effort experience raises the expectations that all challenges will be successfully met with little effort — I call it the boilerplate syndrome.

What ever happened to the premise that anything worth doing is worth working hard for? My grandkids’ schooling makes extensive use of templates and they actually think they will achieve greatness by using them. Nope.

The boilerplate syndrome enables the inertia of taking what is perceived as the easy way.

5. They make things boring

Boilerplates are boring — they all produce the same information in the same form; they are totally predictable. Any time a predictable result is consistently produced by anything, it’s boring.

They say variety is the spice of life, and it’s particularly true when it comes to the applications of templates. Where are the spicy résumés, the spicy marketing plans and the spicy flowcharts?

It’s time to mix things up if you want to get noticed. Sure, use a résumé boilerplate as a guide, but apply your own personal twist to introduce variety and attract the attention of your intended audience.

The suppliers of boilerplates market their similar solutions to people who aren’t creative, who love to comply with the views of others, who are comfortable with being a copycat, and who are ok with producing something that is boring.

And unfortunately there are too many people out there to buy what they offer.

Let’s change that.

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

• Posted 10.21.19 at 04:31 am by Roy Osing
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October 7, 2019

5 deadly acts that will make a toxic customer relationship

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5 deadly acts that will make a toxic customer relationship.

A toxic relationship is a relationship characterized by behaviours exhibited by one party that are emotionally damaging to another.

We hear about toxic personal relationships where one person inflicts emotional and sometimes physical pain on their partner, but toxicity isn’t limited to people relationships; it’s also related to organizations, and the relationship they have with their customers.

A toxic service relationship is damaging to both the customer because of how they are treated by the organization, and to the organization itself as unhappy customers typically move to another supplier with repeated mistreatment.

Feelings should be the judge

Toxicity should be viewed as THE criteria to observe and judge the relationship an organization has with its customers because it focuses on the EMOTIONS stirred up in the customer — it expresses how the customer FEELS about how they are being treated.

A toxic service environment in an organization is manifested by behaviours that annoy, frustrate, anger, sadden, infuriate, exasperate, irk, vex, and piss off the people who come into contact with it everyday.

In my 30+ years leading business organizations that had an extremely heavy service component; I learned that you lived or died on how you served customers.

I learned that these 5 characteristics that, if left unattended, will destroy any customer relationship.

1. Distain for humans

Ever talk to someone in an organization who treated you with a bad attitude? Who talked down to you? Who had absolutely no interest in what you had to say?

Unfortunately we’ve all had the experience of engaging with an employee who really didn’t want to talk to us.
These people really don’t like people and yet they are in the position of having to engage with other people.

In a heartbeat, this person can destroy value because they lack empathy and caring for fellow humans; they quite frankly don’t give a sh##.
Strange that a service employee that would rather be taking inventory or filling out requisitions would be given the keys to the organization’s brand vault.

The recruitment process in toxic environments is wrong. It doesn’t place a priority on the skills and attitude necessary to create miraculous service moments with customers.

It doesn’t probe whether or not someone has the innate desire to care for others, because that’s what amazing service requires.
If just ONE of your customer servers doesn’t like people, you are on your way to having toxic relationships with your most valuable assets.

2. Outsourced call centers

Organizations that don’t manage their call centers well nurture toxic behaviour even though they believe they are doing the right thing.

The problem is, it’s the right thing for THEM and not their customers. They use a call center to manage costs efficiently not to build customer loyalty by creating memorable customer experiences.

Two specific call center attributes, in my view, contribute to toxicity — wait times and fluency in the english language.

How on earth can you say “Your call is important to us” and force someone to wait for a service rep for 45 minutes? It’s a joke really. The fact is (I ran call centers), staffing a call center is all about cost, not level of service even though they would claim the opposite.

Because if the staffing criteria WERE based on providing a high level of service your call would be answered in less that a minute — my target was to answer 80% of the incoming calls within 10 seconds (3 telephone rings).

The second issue I have with call centers is the ability of some reps to engage in an understandable conversation.
To be honest, I can’t understand many of them because of their strong foreign accents. They may have passed english exams but they can’t converse with a customer in a smooth way.

As a result I get annoyed and frustrated as my needs go unmet.
Unfortunately, few organizations use call centers to build customer relationships; they create toxic behaviour.

3. Dumb rules

Many organizations design their policies to control customer engagement rather than to make it easy and enjoyable. They decide that the needs of the organization come before taking care of their customers.

A statement from customer servers like “You can’t ... because it’s not our policy” is evidence that what the customer wants won’t be accommodated because of a rule that satisfies a different purpose.

Often these dumb policies that made no sense to the customer. They are rigid and strict and serve the organization only.

Toxic behaviour is expressed by negatives like “You can’t” or “Sorry but…” Healthful behaviour, on the other hand, leads with “Of course”, “Yes” and “Sure, we can do that”.

4. No power

In toxic serving environments frontline employees rarely are empowered to make decisions on customer requests that are not consistent with rules and policies.
They are escalated to a supervisor for resolution.

In my experience the process is slow and cumbersome: the service rep explains why the customer can’t do what they want —> the customer is annoyed and insists —> the rep goes looking for a supervisor —> the customer explains again what they want —> the supervisor explains why the customer can’t do what they want —> customer gets more annoyed and insists —> the supervisor either maintains the “no” position or gives in —> the customer is still annoyed regardless of the outcome because of the process they were forced to go through.

Ironically, the policy to escalate “deviant matters” to a supervisor has no positive customer outcome, and furthermore the employee feels neutered because they provided no value to the engagement process; they looked like an idiot in front of the customer because they couldn’t solve their problem.

5. Rewarding non-loyalty

Toxic cultures are more interested in acquiring more customers; they spend less time on honouring and rewarding the ones they currently have. After all, why invest the money when you already have the customer? False logic and extremely short sighted.

So special deals like “Leave your current supplier and come over to us for 3 months free service” are offered to prospects but the offer is not made available to existing customers.
With such behaviour how can any organization claim they put their customers first? It’s a dishonest proposition.

Healthy environments make new deals and special promotions available to existing loyal customers first — loyalty is rewarded before a new customer.

Promotions and low price deals are typically marketing decisions but they are integral to maintaining intimate customer relationships and therefore marketing needs to join the serving team.

Toxicity kills customer relationships and yet so many organizations practice unhealthy behaviour every day.

Stay on the lookout for these symptoms and be prepared to change your behaviour immediately if you respect your loyal customers.

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

• Posted 10.7.19 at 04:18 am by Roy Osing
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