The Customer Pendulum

Customers are interesting things. They are the source of all business’ survival. They are hard to find and easy to lose. Many times they don’t know what they want and are almost always not willing to pay for what they need. They are fickle with their allegiance and occasionally are not entirely forthcoming about their preferences. They are part of and are sometimes caught up in a changing environment that most of the time they may not be prepared for. It would probably be possible for a vendor to solve the customer’s problems, if only those problems would remain unchanged for any sort of measurable time.

But they don’t.

Customer’s problems change. The very act of solving one problem invariably creates, or at the very least reprioritizes another problem.

Please don’t get me wrong. This is the way of business very much in the same way of Darwin’s Theory of natural selection. I’ll use the evolutionary speed race between cheetahs and gazelles here.

Faster gazelles mean that only the fastest cheetahs are selected to survive as they are the only ones that can catch the gazelles. This means that the next generations of cheetahs are based only on the faster bloodlines.

Now, the next generations of faster cheetahs mean that only the fastest gazelles will be selected to survive as the slower ones will fall victim to the cheetahs. This means that the next generations of gazelles will be based only on the faster bloodlines.

Now only the fastest of the faster generation of cheetahs will survive.

And the pendulum continues to swing from one side to the other.

I am going to focus on business services here because I think it best illustrates the changing focus, and the swinging pendulum of customer desires. In the business world of services there are no gazelles and cheetahs, but rather there are prices and service levels. There may be those that may try to interject other variables into the service customer equation, but the reality remains primarily associated with these two variables. The interesting part of this price and service level relationship is that only one of them seems to vary at any given specific time.

In the initial stages of the vendor to customer relationship the primary variable will be price. (There may be times where this relationship may be referred to as a “partnership”. This would be inaccurate. Partnerships of the sort implied here take time to evolve. Particularly when there is an ongoing service based relationship.) When a customer is looking to enter into a business services relationship, they are initially looking for a vendor.

This is due in no small part to how most customers go about entering into a services relationship. They will invariably set a minimum required performance level for the services they want, and then look to the vendor that agrees to provide them the greatest cost reduction from their current spend level at the selected service level. That means they are looking for the vendor that bids / quotes them the lowest price.

Of the two variables previously noted, price and service level, they have fixed the service level and are trying to vary the price to the lowest level possible. If the price for the desired services is low enough (as opposed to the total attracted cost that they are currently paying) they will select the vendor and sign a contract. If it does not return sufficient savings the customer will usually stay with the service arrangement that they currently have and avoid any service provision change event issues.

Once the service contract is signed, the price for those services is now fixed. The customer focus will now shift to the service levels associated with the service. Requests for incremental service or services and faster solutions to issues and problems will become the focus.

It is at this point that a relationship can begin to become a partnership.

Businesses want to help with and solve their customers’ problems. That is the value they bring and why customers buy their services. One of the things to remember is that customers associate value with that which they pay for. That means if you give them something for free one of two things will happen. They will either associate no value with what you have given them (since it was free) or you will have established a new service baseline where what you have given them will be incorporated into what they expect going forward. You will in effect raise the service baseline performance expectation going forward.

And once the new increased service level baselines are set the next generation of discussions (or contracts) will once again be focused on the price of the new service level.

And the customer pendulum will continue to swing, price, service, price, etc.

The point here is that despite their best intentions, vendors need to resist the urge to provide quick and cost free solutions in an effort to engender customer gratitude. There will always be times where quick support decisions will need to be made to support the customer, but it is always in everyone’s best interest to go back and revisit them after the issue has passed. Providing “freebies” provides some credence to the customer perception that once the price is set, they can continue to push for a greater scope of work to be provided.

A partnership has to have more of a connotation of a peer to peer relationship instead of a customer to vendor relationship. That means that there is a give and take instead of just an ask and take oriented relationship. If something is provided, then something should be asked for in return. It does not need to be strictly quid pro quo, but there needs to be some sort of cost or consequence associated with each request and action in a business services relationship.

Contrary to what we might feel, without some sort of cost consequence for their requests, many customers will only more deeply ingrain their vendor type perception of the relationship. The customer asks, the customer gets and it is up to the vendor to figure out how to provide it and continue to survive in the relationship. Businesses need to remember that making a customer happy by giving them things does not create a partnership. It usually just creates an expectation that more can and will be given in the future.

One of the best ways to stop the customer pendulum from swinging and creating a business partnership is to focus on the customer’s business service needs while remembering your own business needs. Being responsive as well as empathic regarding the customer’s issues will go a very long way in this regard. It is also necessary to educate the customer on the supply side issues in the service equation and the requirements that are required for a viable business relationship going forward.

I don’t know that you can ever get a customer to be fully empathic about the issues and costs associated with solving their service problems, but educating them about what it takes to provide them service can probably go a long way toward getting them to acknowledge and accept the bill that should be presented to them after the issues have been solved.

Micromanagement

Before I dive head first into the metaphorically shallow waters associated with this topic, I guess it would be best to find an acceptable definition of exactly what micromanagement is. We are all pretty comfortable with what a microprocessor is. I am particularly well versed in what a microbrewery is and the delicious products that they produce. I am even familiar with the show “Tiny House Nation” on the FYI channel. (I couldn’t think of another micro-something, so I had to settle for a tiny-something. It’s the same thing really.) But I think everyone has a different view or definition of micromanagement.

Webster’s dictionary defines micromanagement as:
verb (used with object), micromanaged, micromanaging.
1. to manage or control with excessive attention to minor details.

That’s a pretty good start, but I don’t feel that it entirely captures the full annoyance factor that can be associated with this management practice. I have found that attention to detail is sometimes a necessity and not a particularly negative connotation item the way micromanagement is. I think we can all reminisce back to past assignments, lives and times in our respective business careers when we each may have been members of teams that were led by individuals that might possibly have been defined as micromanagers.

A cold chill just ran down my spine. I think I will go and get one of those previously mentioned microbrews to try and soften that specific micromanager memory.

The definition of a micromanager that I will start with is someone who not only tells you what to do (which is the role of just about any standard run of the mill manager) but also tells you how to do it.

Remember, a leader is someone who tells you what has to get done and then supports you when you work out the part that you need to do, and how you plan to go about doing it. Leaders inspire and groom future leaders by challenging them to perform the radical business process commonly known as thinking.

Micromanagers seem to believe that they should do all the thinking. If something needs to get done, they will tell you what you need to do, how you need to do it and when you need to do it. Your responsibility will simply be to follow the instructions. That is unless you have been told to do the wrong thing. Then it will most likely be your fault for not recognizing it was the wrong thing that you were told to do, and instead doing the right thing.

I have heard of many micromanagers being described as “control freaks”. Again I think this description has a little bit too much of a negative connotation that I don’t wish to be fully associated with. I think I would prefer to refer to them as “control enthusiasts”. Some of them can be so enthusiastic about it that at times they can become difficult to tolerate.

So now that we have hopefully adequately defined what a micromanager is, the question that is engendered is: Why do people become micromanagers?

The simple answer to this one is: I have no idea.

If I were going to guess, I would guess that during their formative years in business they were once given an assignment and for whatever reason they created and implemented an ultra-detailed plan, and it worked. This possibly reinforced what here to fore might have been a latent behavior and voila, and a future micromanager was born. Perhaps during the same formative period the future micromanager reported to a current micromanager and the micromanagement DNA was passed down to the future management generation through some sort of micromanagement osmosis.

It might be as simple as a personality defect.

Whatever the cause micromanagement is in and of itself a self limiting management style. As a manager matriculates up the management structure they take on more responsibilities. This means that there are more and more items for the micromanager to try and keep track of and manage. There are only so many hours in a day. Sooner or later the micromanager is going to run out of time to micromanage all that they have on their plate.

One of two things will then happen. The pace of the business will either slow down to accommodate the micromanager’s business technique, or the micromanager will learn to let go of some of the control that they are so enthusiastic about in order to keep pace with the demands of the business. If the business is slowed by the management process, it will fall behind the market, which will not slow down in order to accommodate the micromanager’s technique and it will soon find itself in a recovery mode.

Either way the level of micromanagement will have reached its limit.

During a discussion some time ago I was asked if there was ever a time where micromanagement was called for.

I had to sit quietly and think about that one for a moment. With the entire myriad of business structures and environments there probably was at least one that called for this approach. After careful consideration I had my settled on my response.

I said “no”.

I have mentioned many times that people and teams want a leader not a manager, and certainly not a micromanager. A leader does not tell all members of the team what they are to do. Team members have their respective responsibilities. It is up to the leader to define and communicate the goal and then enable the team to achieve it.

If a team truly requires micromanagement attention in order for them to achieve their goals again one of two things has happened. They have either been so conditioned that their individual input is not appreciated or utilized and have adapted their behavior to that desired by the micromanager, or they truly cannot or do not know what to do.

In the first instance, a management or management style change may be able to return that micromanagement conditioned employee to a business condition where they can contribute more fully to the success of the business. Instead of being an “order follower” they can become a solution creator in their own right.

In the second instance the team either needs to be better trained or replaced. If the team is incapable of performing except under constant management supervision they may be trying to do work that they are not qualified or capable of completing. If the team members are in fact capable and qualified to do the work, yet still require micromanagement in order for them to achieve their goals then they may be candidates for roles in other organizations where micromanagement is the preferred form of management.

Offhand, I can’t think of many of those types of organizations.

Micromanagement is a centralized decision making management structure. One person, the micromanager tries to make the decisions for everyone else in the organization. As organizations become more culturally diverse and geographically dispersed this structure rapidly becomes a limiting factor instead of a performance enabler. The speed and flexibility of response that an organization needs to be successful in today’s business environment is lost when micromanagement is in play.

People will respond to the guidance provided by leaders by making good business decisions and will be fully vested and committed to the outcome. The only response people will have to micromanagement direction will be to make no decision, only to comply rather than commit to the desired outcome, and just follow orders.

As leaders we need to focus on what needs to get done, and rely on the talents of our team members to help us come up with the best ways to get it done. By definition they are closer to the issues than we are. It only goes that they should have some good ideas on what needs to be done and how they can best do it. It is up to the leader to best utilize all the ideas that are available, not just their own.