Be Different or be dead

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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November 11, 2019

5 of the most miserable things that suck in business

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5 of the most miserable things that suck in business.

The fundamentals of running a business haven’t changed all that much over time. Sure, business tools — the micro technologies applied to specific functions in a business — have been revolutionized by the Internet and the new capabilities it has spawned.

The ability to personalize offers and advertising messages, for example, has introduced an entire new dimension in marketing and sales that wasn’t possible a decade ago.

But the basic business principles espoused by some of the more noteworthy thought leaders of the past are still held to have just as much relevance today as they were then.
For example, Peter F. Drucker had simple yet compelling views of how businesses should be led and his guidance remains as vital signposts for business leaders to follow.

▪️ “There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.”
▪️ “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the
product or service fits him and sells itself.”
▪️ “Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.”

But there are some things that are practised in business today that need to stop; these remnants from the past — and many of them remain as examples of what leaders ignored from icons like Drucker — continue to find their way into business plans and marketing strategies and are a drag on business performance.

These are the five worse things that suck in business and they need to be expunged from how organizations are run.

1. Scale thinking sucks

Most business leaders ask the question “How can it be scaled?” when presented with a new business opportunity for a product or service. What they want to know is how the new product can be economically supplied to as many people as possible.

How the supply chain can be ramped up to produce the maximum number of units within an acceptable cost envelope.

The problem with scaling is that it takes an idea that was likely hatched from an analysis of a single customer or small customer group with narrowly defined needs and wants and is transformed into one which will be force fed to the largest population possible.

The demand-centric idea is subsumed by supply and cost considerations; the customer is lost in the process.

The reason scale thinking sucks is that supply should never rule the roost; demand should. And the real question that should be asked by leaders is “How can we efficiently provide this new product to its intended audience at a price that reflects its intrinsic value?”

2. Copying ideas sucks

Truly unique ideas in business are few and far between, notwithstanding the emphasis given to organizational programs around how to generate new ideas and how to be more creative.

The fact is that a new idea being adopted in one organization is most likely an old idea in another. Many businesses pride themselves in being competent in spotting best practices and adopting them; in fact the process of benchmarking best in class and robbing their ideas is often expressed as a core competency of a firm.

Innovation and creativity can’t be achieved by stealing an idea belonging to someone else; all that you really achieve is you increase the herd of copycats by one.

The reason copying sucks is that the process works against the natural process of discovering new ideas that might improve performance. As long as employees are on the hunt for an idea they can copy (under the guise of innovation) they will NEVER apply themselves to finding something revolutionarily new for their customers and their business.

3. Planning sucks

There is a misguided notion in business that if you have a great business plan, success is a stone’s throw away.

As a result, strategic planning, marketing planning, sales planning and ‘everything planning’ is given a high priority and employee education is littered with planning techniques and boilerplates to ensure the process is as sophisticated as possible and that it employs all the tools espoused by the planning experts.

My observation over my career is that the lions share of leadership time is spent charting the right course for an organization with little time left to ask the question “How can we execute the plan?”

Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work — Drucker

The reason planning sucks is that it trumps execution in most organizations; it assumes implementation will happen by serendipity. The reality is, however, it almost never happens because it requires people to do it with their vagaries of individuality and diversity.

If individuals don’t believe the plan will satisfy their own unique wants and desires — if they can’t buy in — they won’t be advocates to the change and the plan will die.

Success doesn’t come from throwing the plan over the wall and expecting employees to dutifully and effectively execute it. It comes from leadership spending 80% of their time on figuring out how to execute an imperfect plan and to find a way to engage the hearts and minds of every employee to make it their own.

4. Crowds suck

Businesses love crowds; the attraction that a large population or mass market brings to profitability potential if it can be converted to a large volume of product and service sales.

Whereas scale addresses how supply can be economically increased to provide large volumes, crowd or mass market thinking addresses how a product or service can be designed to appeal to the greatest number of potential buyers.

This infatuation with the masses tries to find the lowest common denominator solutions that appeal to everyone — to the average individual.

The market reality is, however, is that watering down the features and benefits of a product to try and meet the needs of the many, makes it appeal to no one. It’s bland and insipid. It’s value proposition is vague and unclear.

The reason mass marketing sucks is that it forces the business away from individuals who each have special wants and desires to the herd and numbers that define a potential opportunity. A people-focus is replaced by a superficial numbers one. Furthermore it results in a culture of pushers rather than creators of special value based on what individuals desire not on what you suspect the herd wants.

5. Precision sucks

In business, there is a thirst for precision; to be as accurate as it can be in the solutions it creates to meet the challenges it faces. It’s a fallback to the scientific method which postulates that a finite number of independent variables can be combined in a unique way to produce a predictable outcome.

The d = s x t thinking in business produces, for example, forecasting models that predict consumer demand and market share in a world of chaos and randomness.

The truth is, markets can’t be formularized; outcomes can’t be represented by the results of combining inputs in any particular way. At best, outcomes can be extrapolated or approximated but must always be taken with a grain of salt because before you know it, something unexpected happens that rocks your world and renders your good intentions invalid.

The reason precision sucks is that it sets up unrealistic expectations that things will work out the way they were intended. And it furthermore reduces the capacity of the business to respond and adapt when they don’t (and they never do).

Successful businesses definitely have a “Plan A” that is constructed with the best analytical tools at leadership’s disposal, but they also have contingencies in the wings to draw on when things start to go awry.
And they invest heavily in tracking and monitoring to know when Plan A is at risk; they never let their defences down.

The successful businesses I know:
▪️ are good at anticipating but GREAT at responding to unforeseen events;
▪️are comfortable with an imperfect let’s head west strategy;
▪️view the ability to execute as a competitive advantage;
▪️focus on the individual and creating value that satisfies their special needs;
▪️build a culture to create original and different ideas; they see themselves as best in class.

They’ve found a way to get rid of what sucks.

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

• Posted 11.11.19 at 04:55 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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September 23, 2019

Why caring is the best way to beat your competition

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Why caring is the best way to beat your competition.

Tom Peters in his book Little BIG Things talks about caring and how critical it is to any organization searching for excellence.

Its one of the things that Peters does so well: take an apparently small trait and argue successfully — with compelling evidence — that it is strategic, of the utmost importance to any business and is an essential element that any organization must have to succeed.

Caring is a critical factor that will set any organization apart from their competition. This is a sad fact, really and is unfortunate proof that many organizations these days lack this very basic element of presenting a humane look to the markets they serve.

Caring is a binary concept. Either you care or you don’t, and it shows every time you engage with a customer.

As an organization, you don’t get loyalty points for exhibiting the caring most of the time. If your caring face doesn’t show up every time out, everyone rightly concludes that you’re not genuine in your intent. The aspiration to care really has no weight if it isn’t consistently backed up with caring moments orchestrated by employees 100% of the time.

An organization can’t care if they don’t have these things in place:

Always on attitude — People always have a bad day, but caring must be active, notwithstanding. A bad day cannot be used as an excuse to not care for even one moment. “Oh well, they’re just having a bad day I guess” can never be used as an excuse for an employee’s non-caring behaviour.

Friendly rules — Rules, policies and procedures must accommodate a customer nor drive them wild. You can’t make the the caring claim and then put your customers through the policy pain mill time every they want to transact with you.

Knowledgeable people — If you choose caring as a strategy, your people must be competent and capable of answering a wide range of questions customers ask. Employees require a healthy balance of knowing their specialty as well as a general knowledge of the company and it’s strategy.
Regular refresher training for your frontline should be a priority.

A clean environment — Appearance and cleanliness of your premises (including your website). When customers observe your place of business do they see a clean and tidy environment or do they see worn-out, old and tired? Is your web presence clean and easy to use or is it built by techies for techies?

Community support — Are you active in the community? Do you take your care claim to the not-for-profit sector? You can’t care on the inside and turn your back on your community responsibility.

Problem solving — Are your people problem solvers? Listening, asking questions and finding solutions scream that you care about your customer and the realities they face. The absence of a problem solving attitude tells the story that the organization exists to serve itself and no one else.

Customer friendly language — How do you refer to your customers? For example do you refer to your customers by words like transaction or call? If you do, you’re not well positioned on the caring scale.

Serving leaders — A leadership team comprised of individuals who ask “How can I help?” shows caring for employees. If you don’t care about your own people you will never be able to show honest affection to your paying customers.

It’s quite ironic really.

Every organization is seeking a complicated solution to the challenge of how to separate themselves from their competition and it is staring them in the face.

All you need to do is give a damn about people.

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

• Posted 9.23.19 at 04:00 am by Roy Osing
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