Everybody wants to look good. I am pretty sure of this. Some people may want to look good more than others. Sometimes this is construed as some people wanting to look better than others. Although this may be the case in some instances, or if you are to believe that the world is truly a “zero sum gain” existence (for every “winner” there must be a “loser”), I think that in business everyone wants to do their best and have that performance reflect on them positively.  They want to look good.

I think that this precept may be part of the issues that businesses may be having today. I am not a total altruist. I keep a close eye on people who claim to be altruists, and make sure that I know where my wallet is any time I find myself around them. But when the focus on self takes on a bigger and bigger role when trying to quantify performance we have a tendency to lose track of the bigger picture of business success.

Please do not get me wrong. I am a believer in individual accountability and measurement. What I am looking at here is that we seem to have lost sight of the fact that one of the best ways to look good, is to make other people look good. We seem to be inundated with images of the sports figures “beating their chests” after an acrobatic basket, or performing various “dances in the end zone” after a touchdown. I thought these were team sports, but they seem to have evolved to more of a “look at me, I am an individual” mentality. Even individuals on teams that are losing by lopsided scores seem to be behaving this way.

What I am getting at here is that several other individuals on those various teams had to perform their assigned tasks well in order to enable that specific individual to perform their assigned task, which was to score.

I am not going to go into the idea of the coaches who drew up the plays, or the team mates who executed the blocks, or threw the passes, or whatever else. I went here to illustrate the point. Individuals who are part of an organization (or a team) do not need to jump up and down, or beat their chests to get attention for doing their job. If the job got done (the basket made or touchdown scored….to carry the allegory on out), chances are that more than a few people noticed.

It is the start of a new year and we all know what that means: Annual Reviews. I have to conduct them. I have them conducted on me. As leaders we have our teams, and on the bigger scale are usually parts of bigger teams. No one can achieve their objectives by themselves. When I review my team members I usually look at and ask how they worked with other team members, as well as members of other teams to achieve their goals. When I am reviewed I try focus on the work that the team has done to help my bosses achieve their goals. I do not need to take a bow.  I need to focus on how well my team performed, because it was primarily my responsibility to get them to perform. If we scored, they should take the bow.

I think that the approach should be to look for those that give the most, and get the most out of others. If they can do that well, you can be pretty sure that they are also getting the most out of themselves. That invariably translates to and can be seen through the attainment of objectives, both individual and team oriented.

Individuals that have not been able to demonstrate their success as part of and in terms of the team’s success may not have actually or ultimately attained all of their goals. (If the team failed to achieve its goals, it may be difficult to position or defend any individual in positive, quantitative way. An exception to this could perhaps be in the sales realm where quota attainment or lack thereof is measured quantitatively on an individual basis.) In this way as a leader you can look at both the individual and the team, but more importantly how that individual performed with respect to the overall performance of the team.

So, yes there will be individual measurement. It is a business, not a socialistic environment where only the collective is measured. But it should not be just about the individual who made an acrobatic basket and then decided to beat their chest. Some individuals should and will be recognized, both positively and negatively, but it should be from within the scope of the overall performance of the team. In this way, everybody who should look good can look good. Not just those that decided to dance in the end zone after they, and everybody else did their jobs.

As we start out on a new year I was looking back at the past one(s). There is no doubt that we have been in, and continue to work through unsettled times. I have several friends that are in the employment market. Some for the first time, and others are repeating the process. I too have been through multiple position changes over the past several years. As I said, I think it is a sign of the times.

When people ask about these multiple positions, I think the reasons for the changes are clear. Companies and businesses are making changes and adapting to new environments that are requiring them to adjust their resource plans at ever increasing speeds in order to deal with the financial demands that they face. Simply put, businesses are increasing staff much more slowly, and reducing staff much more quickly in response to the market pressures than they have in the past. As a result, many of us have had the opportunity to work in multiple environments over this period.

While it has been unstable, challenging and sometimes stressful, it has also provided many of us with the opportunities to work in, and experience different business models and cultures that can’t help but assist us in future business opportunities. Below are some examples of what can be learned and taken away from different and varied assignments.

Many of us have spent the majority of our business careers in a General Manger type environment and structure. This seems to have been a favored structure for North American companies. This structure puts significant value on the performance of the individual and business as the primary metric functions. While it was a very good model for each discrete business unit in the structure, it does create an insular and competitive environment where there is very little cross unit communication or assistance. While it was also very good for rapid response and action (after all there is ultimately only one person making the final decision for the business), it also did not openly foster the need for contribution and buy-in from the entire team.

As Matrix organizations and structures become more popular, a greater emphasis is now being placed on the communication and cooperation between business units that is needed to now get jobs done. Since there is now in effect multiple entities that are required to concur before a decision can be finalized, multiple inputs and contributions are both needed and invited. This structure generates a concurrence and consensus orientation to decisions that reduces the internal conflicts associated with the General Management model, but may take longer for those decisions to occur.

The future will require business leaders to be equally at home and adept at managing in both the General Management decision making / responsibility structure and Matrix management communication / consultative structures. Being comfortable or good in one structure will not be enough. Leaders will have to be able to understand and work well in both structures, probably at the same time.

These times have presented the opportunity, and in many instances demanded that leaders who have been involved with large multi-national organizations to work in and learn how smaller and entrepreneurial organizations function. Understanding how to help small organizations act big, and how some big organizations may need to learn from and in many instances emulate the smaller and more nimble businesses will probably also be a requirement of the future business environment. Since almost all competitors will compete in almost all markets, the ability to be “big” when necessary and “small” when required will be a flexibility key to success in the future. As businesses opportunities will evolve to be situational by market, the ability to recognize, vary and change business approach and behavior to take advantage of them will be a key to future success.

Another opportunity that these times have presented is the opportunity to experience both sides of the “Head Office – Remote Office” divide. The problems, perceptions and bias’ that occur from prolonged involvement in one office structure or the other can affect future performance and views of a leader. Being able to understand and live the different and discrete issues associated with trying to manage remote offices, or being in a remote location managed by a distant head office, can provide the perspective needed to understand the forces driving particular behaviors at both locations.

Few of us “like” to have to transition from one position to another. In many cases it will take us out of our comfort (or familiarity) zone. By understanding that when we step into new organizations and structures we not only have the opportunity to contribute from our experience set that may be external to the current business culture, and thereby strengthen them, we also have the opportunity to learn and take away new experiences that will increase the breadth of structures and situations that we can and have dealt with, and thereby strengthen ourselves.

Over the past while we have seen the business world focus on each individuals “depth” of knowledge in very narrowly defined responsibilities. As the business environment hopefully begins to improve I can’t help but think that the leader who has come through these times and taken with them an increased breadth of perspective and experience will become more in demand.

I was reading an article the other day about the current tough economic times. It is difficult these days to read anything that does not somehow reference these tough economic times. I guess the same is true about this Blog article.

The article referred to the current situation as a “Balance Sheet” recession. The reference here was that everyone (businesses and individuals included) has racked up so much debt by previously buying things that they really couldn’t afford, and put it on their respective balance sheets that no one can borrow any more money to spend on consumption. With our economy based on 70% consumer purchases, this has put a pinch on demand as people (and companies) come to grips with their debts (and hopefully trying to pay them off). This reduced consumer demand has in turn caused the stagnation in growth needed to cause and drive companies to create jobs.

This in itself was not news. I think we have all felt the pain of the last few years in one form or another. What I did take away from the article and what I am addressing here were some of the fundamental mind set changes that were proposed to help people deal with the Balance Sheet recession. I thought they were equally if not more so applicable to running businesses, and probably jobs in general.

1. Think Like an Immigrant.

Historically immigrants have come to this country with very little. They came with no sense of entitlement. They did not come expecting to be given anything…other than the opportunity or chance to do better than where they were.

It seems we may be starting to see this approach to our jobs (after 10 years of tougher economic times) but it appears that we may still have a ways to go. We need to remember that once we have a Job, it is not a “given”. It must be continually “earned”. We are not entitled to that job, or any other job for that matter. Like the immigrant we are entitled to the opportunity or chance to do better. If we don’t do better, then we may lose the opportunity, or job.

It is a little bit different world that we now live and work in, then it was before. We may need a little bit different mindset if we are to be successful in it.

1. Act Like an Artisan.

Artisans have normally been considered the one-off and hand-made makers of goods. They did not mass produce anything, and their quality was considered a cut above. I am something of a would-be musician, and hand-made instruments made by artisan-luthiers are far more desirable (and expensive) than the production line models of the big manufacturers. They put their name on their output and take tremendous pride in what they make.

We need to start thinking like artisans in the businesses that we have. We need to take the sort of pride in our work that artisans take in their work, in whatever we do. It is not the job that we have been assigned by the boss. It is our job. It is a slight difference in approach but one that makes a significant difference in how you approach it and what you produce. If you had to sign your name, and your name only, to everything that you produced (reports, presentations, etc.), and then be judged by each one of them, would you do them differently?

An artisan is judged each time he creates a product by the product he has created.

I don’t want to sound overly dramatic, and I don’t want to intimate that everyone feels they are entitled and that no one takes pride in their work. That is clearly not the case. I do however think that there is merit in both refreshing our own mindsets, and those of our associates, of how we should be thinking about our jobs, and the pride that we should all be taking in the job we do.

Customers are funny things. They need your product and they want your help. On the other side of the equation, you want their business. On the surface this would seem to be a relatively simple situation where the solution is obvious. You provide them the solution they want, and everyone is happy. Right?

The reality seems to be that it rarely works out that way.

My experience has been that customers know exactly what they DON’T want when they see it. They can tell you exactly where the provided solution falls short of their expectation, but only after it has been provided. By then it is too late. They are dissatisfied with the solution, and you are in recovery mode. It doesn’t matter that it is precisely what they asked for, or even demanded as part of their contract.  

Customers seem to have a very hard time defining the necessary aspects of what they want to the level where the provided solution can easily satisfy them. There is an art to getting the customer to provide you the desired, and in many instances needed information to enable you to satisfy their needs. In many instances this is because the customer is not aware of, or does not know all of the variables associated with their specific business need.

So what do you do? You start asking questions.

We have all heard the old adage: “There are no dumb questions.” This is wrong. There are an incredible number of dumb questions. If you happen to ask enough of them you can and will destroy your credibility with the customer and put your deal at risk.

On the other hand, you cannot make the customer fact finding process appear to be an interrogation. Each customer feels they are, and in most cases truly are unique. Template and check list question approaches need to be used with caution as they have a tendency to remove the individual and personal relations ship that a customer requires. It also makes them feel as though they have been “sold” to and you are now just filling out the required forms.

I recently read a book, “The Sales Messenger”, by Mary Anne Davis, where she actually addresses the art of questioning a customer. The idea was not to immediately start “selling” or interrogating, but to engage them in more of a give and take proposition. Obviously this is something all sales people want, but is much easier said than done. She did get me thinking about some of her ideas and particularly the words and approaches she uses.

Ideas such as asking your customers for “opinions” and not “decisions” as a way of creating a discussion where the customer can be induced to provide more information they may not have even known they had. We are always in a hurry to get a customer to decide if they want “this” or “that”, when it is possible that ultimately neither will end up satisfying the customer.

Opinions draw pictures, where decisions select from provided options. Unless you have all the information that has enabled you to provide the correct solution / option to that specific customers needs, the idea of looking for customer “advice”, “help” and “experience” in creating solutions for that customer can only help improve the final outcome for everyone. Asking the customer for their “beliefs” on what is important and their “priorities” on what they expect help to draw the customer deeper into the desired solution, as well as draw out the deeper information necessary to create it.

The book also brought out the negative or “fighting” words that we all use. These words have a tendency to appear when the customer’s opinion or advice does not completely match our own. When this happens we usually use words like “but…” and “however…” These words will cause contention with someone you are trying to work with.

We need to debunk another old saying here: “The customer is always right.” That is not the case. If it were, every customer would be satisfied with every purchase they have ever made. Have you ever met anyone that could say they were happy with every purchase they ever made?

Healthy contention is a good thing. It will usually result in the creation of a stronger solution. The idea is not to conflict with your customers opinion. If you believe there are aspects of the needed solution that are not reflected in your customer’s opinion, do not directly challenge them. Instead, ask them a challenging question. Get them to think about your point without conflicting with their point.

As I said, customers are funny things. I thought that the ideas in the “The Sales Messenger” on how to get the information that they need and want to give you, but may not necessarily know they have, were good. The connotation of the words that you use and the approach that you use them in are key. The creation of healthy contention versus customer conflict helps to create a stronger overall solution.

It also might end up helping make your customer more satisfied with their decision to partner with you, and more satisfied with the solution you provide them.

I have recently had the opportunity to visit several of our companies other corporate offices as well as several of our customers at their locations. It was during these trips that I realized how much we had in common with our customers, and what the new norm seems to be in business. It seems that we are all working in ghost towns.

I visited major corporate offices in both the East and Mid-West and was surprised by how close to the front door I could park. I just pulled in and was only a few steps from the door. Initially I put it down to the fact that I prefer to get into the office a little earlier than average. It usually gives me time to get prepared for the day’s meetings.

During the day I had the occasion to look out the windows from one of the upper floors at the parking lot, and it didn’t look any better. It was far less than half full. This got me to thinking. I started to pay a little more attention to my surroundings in the building. It was quiet. Too quiet. There wasn’t a soul around.

I started to walk down a few random aisles. Most of the cubicles and offices were dark, with no name plates on them. The only real sound was the uneven whine-hum of the air conditioning system. If a tumbleweed had blown by I would have thought I was in one of those high plains desert westerns.

It was very similar at our customer’s locations as well. There were very few cars in the parking lot and even fewer people to be seen around the building.

I can remember back to a time (not so long ago) when if you were not at the office early in the morning there was a very real chance that you might not find a parking space. I can also remember (not too fondly) having to wait my turn through multiple elevators to make my way to an office on the upper floors of a building. It was a very lively and busy time.

I understand that the Telecom-Technology markets have had a reset, and that there have been some significant staff reductions. Some poor decisions by some companies and the general business downturn have helped to create a reduced resource demand. Companies no longer have or need the staffs they once carried during the market expansion periods.

I also think that we are now starting to fall victim to the very technology we have created to help increase our productivity. As a mobile business society we had to create the capability to be productive in those times when we were not in the office. In most cases this meant when we were out on the road. We needed remote access and all the other applications that we used when we were in the office. And we got them.

We got so good at working outside the office that it seems we have never gone back to it. It now appears that even people who live very close to their companies offices are choosing to work at home. In many instances companies are encouraging this arrangement. They are seeing the opportunity to reduce their overhead allocations for office space by having fewer people in the office. This helps the business unit’s bottom line by reducing the corporate overhead allocation for office space, but doesn’t seem to help the overall company since the office space is still there, but now it is just sitting empty and idle.

This brings me back to my topic. Our offices were once centers of activity. Teams worked, shared and collaborated face to face in the past. There was energy in the office and a general feeling of optimism. Now for both technical and economic reasons there far fewer people in the office. This seems to be the case with most offices. You walk around and there is no one there. It is quiet.

It doesn’t sound, look or feel like there is any activity or work being done in the office. If it doesn’t feel like there is a positive feeling for those of us still in the office, what can the feeling be for those who are outside the office? Those that are connected to the office through remote access technology (alone in their homes, or out on the road) surely can’t feel anymore, and in most cases are feeling much less comfortable with the progress of the business. Those that are now unemployed feel fully disconnected and are even less comfortable about it.

The office needs to be the center of our business activity. The office needs to be a place where people work and share their insights and opinions. I think we need to start getting people back into the office. We need to start by reducing the acceptability of remote and virtual office utilization. We need to encourage people who live near the office to come to the office. We need to increase both the activity and the activity level in the office.

We need to consolidate our office structures so that we do not have these vast stretches of empty, dark cubicles and offices reminding us of how good times were in the past, and how they are not so good now. We need to at least start to try and put energy and positive attitude back into the office if we are going to expect energy and positive attitude from the business in general. The only way that I am aware of getting energy and positive attitude is with people.

When the people are not there, neither is energy. The offices are relatively empty and dark without people. The convenience of virtual offices seems to me to be something of a contributing factor to the low energy and less than fully positive attitude that appears to be the norm in the office. Without people, working in the office is like working in a ghost town.

We need to start getting the people back in the office.

I went out to visit some customers recently. I learned, or should I say I relearned some basic tenets about dealing with customers. Our customers were concerned about the performance level they were receiving. We were concerned about the incremental work that we were doing that was not in scope that we were not getting paid for. With this kind of a build up, we were all expecting an interesting and potentially spirited meeting.

I was prepared to go into the meeting with a strong review of the contract and definition of the agreed scope. We wanted to make sure they understood our issues and concerns regarding our out of scope functions. It sounded like the right approach to me. It would provide the basis for our future discussions about who would do what going forward. It would provide all the basic groundwork for our positions and planned negotiations about how we would both go forward.

I am glad we didn’t conduct the meeting the way I was planning on doing it.

When we met the night before the meeting to go through the slides and plan our meeting strategy, the sales team was almost apoplectic when they saw the slides. I should say that they were not entirely against the content of the slides. They were against the order of the slides.

The sales team’s position was that the customer understood what the scope of the agreement was. The customer was unhappy with our performance regardless of what the scope of the agreement was. If we were to start off with reminding them of what we signed up to do – meaning worrying about our position, instead of worrying about what the customer was concerned about (our performance) we would have set up a significantly adversarial situation.

Let me repeat that. We wanted to address our issues before we addressed the customer’s issues. That is always a major mistake. I think we would have failed.

Fortunately, we didn’t do that. We changed the order and focus of our slides away from what we wanted to talk about (scope) to what the customer wanted to address (performance).

We started the meeting by going through the metrics, performance measurements and demographics of the types of functions we were performing for the customer. Robert McNamara in his book “The Fog of War” stated that the first thing you do was “get the data”. He was right. We got the data out in front of the customer first. We set the stage by telling them what we were doing for them.

We listed it out by function and quantity/effort. We also made sure to show our performance measurements, both the good and the bad. The customer was right (as usual). We were not meeting our performance commitments. However, the data showed that we were doing so much more than we (or they) had planned on us doing, there would have been no way for us to meet the performance targets.

The customer then understood the issues.

By approaching the contentious issues from the perspective of the customer, and providing the data on how we were trying to do measurably more that we were supposed to do for them, we were able to defuse the customer’s performance issues, while also delivering the message (indirectly) regarding our scope issues. We never even had to review the agreed scope.

The end result was that we were able to turn a contentious and possibly negative customer perception into a positive. By providing the data, both the good and the bad, we were able to set a stage that addressed both the customers and our needs for the meeting. We also ended up getting an up-scope commitment from the customer to cover the cost of the incremental work that we were doing.

I have to remember that customer first thing in the future.

I normally like to Blog about what I perceive as real business issues and solutions. Sometimes I can’t help myself and propeller off into a different area. This is one of those times.

It used to be that my business email was almost pristine in terms of the types of messages and content that I received. I only got business emails and items that were germane to the work I needed to do. I understand that this must have been an anomaly in today’s electronic communications environment. The same could not be said about my personal email. I don’t know how I could have possibly won both the Ethiopian and Kenyan lotteries last month. The odds of something like that must be really astronomical, especially since I don’t remember entering either of them. However, until recently, my business address was relatively free of these types of opportunities.

That isn’t the case any more.

While I am not getting the rather colorful pharmaceutical, friendship and foreign lottery opportunities that I do get in my personal inbox, I now seem to be getting a plethora “business” trade shows, seminars,  “bulletins” and symposium opportunities to either attend (for a hefty fee) or subscribe to (for another fee). It takes a set of notifications like these to actually inform me of many superfluous industry meetings and publications there are out there. They seem to exist for just the purpose of getting people to attend / buy them without any other redeeming qualities.

Am I the only one that feels this way about them?

The question now turns to who is providing my business email to these “Spammers”. It’s not me. Why would I want to commit any act that would knowingly subject me to this type of ultimately useless barrage of seminar and white paper opportunities? It has to be someone that is deriving some sort of twisted pleasure in befouling my here to fore relatively useful business email. When I check around it seems that it is possible that I might have in fact been the last person on the internet with any type of mail address that was not receiving useless unrequested mailbox clutter of this type.

It is said that “misery loves company”, so I am trying to figure out who the miserable jerk was that put me on some list that got all this started. I am convinced that all these spam lists are related. First I got just an occasional useless message. There was nothing to it. I just deleted it. Then it started to grow.

I didn’t respond to any of the messages. They must have been communicating with each other. There must be some sort of secret spammer society where they meet, (virtually? electronically? in person?) to exchange the addresses of their latest, and in my case last victim to receive their onslaught. It has truly gotten out of hand.

My mail system does a reasonable job of trying to sort out some of the junk email from the rest. I believe that it must be set according to the number of recipients in the email address. At least that would explain why every announcement from our senior executives (and HR) end up in the same Junk Mail folder as my most recent opportunity to attend an industry seminar in Miami, Florida, to go over the proper steps in justifying to senior management why it is important to attend industry seminars.

Some days I now come in and my Junk Mail folder rivals my Inbox folder for new messages, and by the time I sort out those that should be moved to Junk Mail, it is not even close.

I understand that there is a law where if you take the active step to “unsubscribe” to the email sender, they will stop sending you email….from that address. It seems that they will however just create a new email address I have now thrown down the gauntlet and Don Quixote like started charging at the windmills of industry bulletin and white paper generation. I am patiently searching through each of these emails for the unsubscribe message location. For those of you that may be interested it is normally located in either the top, middle, bottom side, or corner of the page, and it can be recognized because it is the only writing in the message that is in 4 point font. It is also occasionally written in “white”, just to add to the challenge of finding it.

This seems like a significant amount of work, especially since I don’t ever remember subscribing to this stuff in the first place. I am also concerned that if there are enough people like me in the work force who are taking these steps to try to hold on to their business email mailbox like I am, there could be significant productivity lost in the work place. Perhaps this could be a root cause factor to the current business malaise that we all seem to be in.

When was the last time you were 100% sure about a business or sales decision? We all like to say we are when we make a decision. Occasionally we might even be that sure. Most of the time I don’t think we are that sure. We usually have an acceptable amount of information or input that enables us to feel confident enough to make our decision and move forward. If we didn’t feel confident, we would ask for more information and decisions wouldn’t get made and things wouldn’t get done.

Have you heard the phrase “paralysis by analysis”?

Confidence and how it affects decisions can be looked at on many levels and seems to vary significantly with both the economic climate and the business culture. In harder economic times, such as those we have been experiencing for the last while, it seems we need more information to make us feel confident enough to make decisions. The return for making the right decision seems to be outweighed by the risk of making the wrong decision. We also seem to be in many instances encouraging a “matrix” business culture where “consensus” is almost a requirement for any decision to be made.

Pareto would tell us that we will get 80% of the information in 20% of the time or inputs. It would follow that on average with this input you would make the right decision at least 80% of the time based on this 20% input. You would be right at least 4 out of 5 times. Just think how well you would do if you had this kind of accuracy with respect to your decisions in the stock market.

It seems we are now in economic times where the risk of being wrong once outweighs the benefits of being right 4 times. So now where do we go? Is it acceptable to only be wrong once out of every 10 times? Once out of every 20 times?

We need to remember that as we require this greater and greater accuracy on our decisions, we also require greater and greater amounts of information on which to base the decision and more importantly greater and greater amounts of time with which to make the decision. The result is we end up moving slower and slower. It ends up taking us longer to react. It takes us longer to get moving. It takes us longer to recover. When then layer in a matrix / consensus business structure and environment where the process has to be repeated for each individual associated with the consensus, it is almost a wonder that progress can be made at all.

Of the major resources available to a business, Money, People and Time, the only one that can not be replaced or replenished it Time. Physics tells us that Time only moves in one direction, and unless you are travelling at relativistic speeds (close to the speed of light) and doesn’t slow down. It would seem that if we focused more intently on Time as it affects our businesses that we would probably get a better return on our decisions, and start moving faster.

Moving our businesses forward will require the confidence to make right decisions as well as the acceptance of wrong decisions. We need to understand that no decision will engage reality and remain intact. They will all need to be modified. The “correct” decisions will only need to be modified slightly (if at all). The “incorrect” decisions will need to be modified to a greater extent.

The point here is that it will probably take less Time to modify the one potentially wrong decision out of five (the 80 / 20 rule) than it would take to gather all the information and gain the consensus required to get a higher level of surety across all five decisions.

I think that in these economic times with businesses focusing on the risk, and hence moving slower and slower, the business that has the confidence to focus on Time will gain the advantage by starting to move faster than the competition, and get the return.