For any of you who have read my past articles you might suspect that I have a slight bias away from the ongoing development of the total dependence on electronic communications as the sole means of communicating and conducting business. I have similar slight biases to bleeding from gunshot wounds and jumping out of airplanes without a parachute. This may seem funny since I am using that very medium to communicate to you. For me the medium is something more of an electronic soapbox from which I get to make my observations and suggestions, most of which are based on my non-electronic experiences. Please bear with me for a moment. I promise I’ll get to the point. It seems that that many people however have evolved to a full dependence on the internet. This was brought home to me by of all things, the evening news. The various news programs have been lauding the improvement in the economy and the relative reduction in the unemployment numbers down to approximately 8.4%. They then went on to examine some of the individuals who have been termed “long-term unemployed” or people who have been searching for work for more than 6 months. Without exception they showed images of these individuals dutifully sitting at their computers, pounding away at their emails and talking about how they have sent out “over 200 resumes” without a response. Wait a minute. Here comes the point I promised I would get to earlier. Let’s do a little Internet Math here. If job seekers are flooding the internet with 200 resumes each, it is no wonder they are not getting responses. We have seen only half the equation. How many resumes are hiring companies receiving for each job opening? The obvious answer is: Too Many. If everyone is sending out 200+ resumes that would logically mean that every job opening is receiving at least 200 applicants. This number is probably higher for certain types of positions. How can these hiring companies sort through and interview 200+ people per position? Again the obvious answer is: They Can’t. Speaking just for myself, when I was trying to fill a position I always tried to interview 4-5 people for each position, after I had the initial cuts based on just the resumes submitted. With 200+ applicants, 4-5 interviews means based purely on probability and statistics (and I will quote Mark Twain regarding statistics later) there is roughly a 2% chance that any one resume will be chosen / be the perceived perfect match for the position. Unless your resume is truly differentiated from all others (Nobel Prize laureate, Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, $100 Dollar Bill attached to it – particularly difficult to do electronically, etc…), I would think that these statistics would hold true. That means that to improve your chances from 2% to 100% that you would get an interview, you would need to apply to and send resumes to 50 times more opportunities. That means that instead of sending out just 200 resumes, you would need to send out 10,000 resumes to statistically assure yourself of getting an interview. Mark Twain said “There are lies, there are damn lies…and then there are statistics.” I am pretty sure that applies here. I have tried to illustrate with a little hyperbole that sitting at your computer punching out emails, and in this case applying for positions, is not a very effective form of communication. It is not as good as making a phone call and communicating real time with a real person. It is nowhere near as good as getting up, going somewhere and meeting someone face to face to have a conversation. Sitting behind the computer may be more efficient, in that the costs expended in communicating are much lower (how much do bit cost?), and the number of people that you can theoretically contact is much higher (how many friends on Facebook, or connections on LinkedIn?), but as the numbers show, it is nowhere near as effective as the old school methods of actually meeting people and talking to people. In today’s day and age it is indeed the fortunate few who have not had to look for a new position. Some of us have had to do it multiple times. All of my successes in this area have come as a result of making personal contact with someone. I would like to think that I am reasonably well educated and experienced, but I also recognize that there are a lot of other well educated and experienced people out there. While a resume might be able to provide some insights into an individual’s potential job qualifications, the only person that can differentiate me for everyone else, is me. The only way I or anyone else can provide that differentiation from everyone else is to get off the internet, and get out and make real time contact with people. Otherwise, you are relying on some pretty long odds and statistics.
A Not So Novel Approach – Use The Phone
Is it just me, or is the office getting a lot quieter? Part of that trend toward silence may be the fact that so many people are now opting for “Virtual Office” and are now working for home, or some other location. I have tried that. On occasion it works when I have very early morning, or late evening calls with other time zones, but for the most part I find that there are two reasons that I don’t like to work from home. The first is that there are too many other distractions for me at home. Games, TV, family, etc., all are within easy reach and can be a distraction. The second is that I like to think of my home as a refuge from work. I think that a home office would be an invasion of this refuge that I would not welcome. Let’s get back to the quiet office. Its quiet because there are so few people talking. My computer beeps when I get an email. It does it quite often. It has a different tone when I get an instant message. There seem to be a lot of those as well. My mobile phone “pings” me when I get a text message. I think I need to find some way to coordinate these tones so that they make some musical sense because they go off so frequently. I down loaded an application on to my smart phone that allowed me to create some specific ringtones for my phone using some of my favorite songs (late 80’s alternative rock, in case you are interested). I can’t remember the last time I actually heard the song / ringtone played. We don’t talk to each other anymore. Instead we have email chains that are 10-15 emails long where we conduct a slow-motion discussion back and forth over the course of several hours to several days. We “copy” multiple individuals whose electronic mailboxes are clogged with the ping-pong discussion, and the interjections of others on the copy list. When we ask about the topic we are invariable met with “It was in the email I sent you.” We are blasting instant messages back and forth to multiple recipients, across the day. Some of the information contained in these messages can be quite useful. Most of it truth be told is not. It seems to be the electronic equivalent of meeting someone in the hall and saying hello and asking about the weekend activities, personal health, or plans for the next weekend’s activities. I have a business phone on my desk. It is an amazing piece of modern technology. There are no less than 62 buttons on it, including the 12 used for dialing phone numbers. This is true. I actually counted them. Less than 20% of the buttons on my desk phone are directly associated with placing a call. I don’t know why I waited till now to make that observation. I have had this phone for a couple few years. We buy the most advanced mobile hand held devices in history and we type out our messages and happy / sad faces – Instead of taking all day to have an electronic conversation with someone in the internet arena, I have tried to take a small step back in time to a happier age, the age where when I needed something, or wanted to communicate something, I just called someone. I picked up the phone and I spoke to them real time. This may seem incredibly old school, but you know what? I seem to be getting more things done faster. I now have a discussion on the phone, capture the key points and then send a single email, to those interested or effected parties, with only the salient information. There is no need to scroll through 4 – 5 screens to find the pertinent information that is being communicated. No more email discussions. If I think it will take more than one email, I call. It’s faster and more efficient. If I am driving my car and have a need or a question, I call. I still get text notifications on my phone while driving. I ignore them. If it was important, and the vast majority of them (probably all of them) are not, or they can at least wait the 15 – 20 minutes that it will usually take me to get where I am going and have a chance to respond. If it was really important, they would call me, and I would use that snappy hands free technology I talked about earlier. We should remember that phones, both mobile and business were primarily created to enable the real-time verbal / oral communication between people. That type of communication contains the most information for communication and provides it in the shortest time. If you want to try and gain back part of your day and be more efficient, try using the phone to talk to people, instead of typing at them.
using our thumbs or index fingers to our friends. We have a new generation of automobiles that will automatically link to our mobile phones using Bluetooth technology, so that we can speak hands free while driving to anyone on the planet, but texting has replaced drinking as the cause of most driving accidents.
Who’s Looking Good
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.
You Can Take Some Things With You
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.
We Love Our Distractions
I am sitting here writing this Blog, with the TV on, with a
football game being played. I don’t know who is playing, New York I think. I don’t really care. I’m writing
a Blog. At least I am trying to write a Blog. In the next room my wife has the
stereo on (utilizing Pandora – Michael Buble…I think…). I’m still trying to
write a Blog. I could probably turn off the TV and close the door and get more
focused on the task at hand, but that would mean that I would have to fully
focus on what I am doing. I don’t know if I can do that anymore.
I think back to when I am in the office and wonder if it
would be any easier to do this there. But then I think of how often my phone
rings. I always have to answer it. I don’t know why. I immediately prioritize
the ringing phone above almost anything else I am doing at the moment. I get
very, very few calls that are ever worth the interruption, but when I ever do, I
am usually answering them by the first ring.
I also think about my Instant Messaging. That seems to be
going off all the time. Everybody must feel that they must be using it these days. It makes me
wonder what we did before we had it. I can’t remember ever getting any important information or messages via IM, but my hope springs eternal in that I will, so I always stop what I am
doing to see what someone else wants on IM.
I also have a door on my office, but I seldom close it. It
has a glass window in it so people can look in and see if I am there anyway.
People have a tendency to stop by and just come in to talk to me. It doesn’t
seem to matter to them what I am doing. They just walk in. Sometimes they
actually bring work with them, as if it is work that is more important than the
work I was already doing. Sometimes they just bring their coffee cup, which is
obviously more important than whatever I was doing before.
We won’t discuss email at this point. We all have
acquired an email habit / addiction that requires a “fix” at least every 5-10 minutes
lest some critical spam-like solicitation sit idle in our mailbox beyond its
freshness born-on date and we miss it. Have you ever been in someone’s office
when they start reading and responding to their email?
Not seeing someone feeding their email habit would be like
going to lunch with people and not seeing them texting or remotely reading
their email on their smart-phone. You would have a better chance of seeing the
tooth fairy than seeing people neglect their smart-phones for a full lunch hour.
Besides, messing with our smart-phones provides us the opportunity to show
everyone that we are with just how important we are and how crucial our input
is to the well being of the business.
Are you seeing a trend here? We all seem to love our
distractions. If we didn’t, we might take a few steps to reduce them, and focus
more on what we need to be doing. I am just as guilty of it as everyone else,
but I am trying to take a few steps to improve how I cope with the situation.
I have read that we become “dumber” when we multitask. The
average IQ of a man drops about 15 points when we multitask. I actually
believe this one. It means that senior management must multitask far more than
anyone else in the company had even suspected. It also means to me that when it is time to get
something done it is also time to turn off the IM, shut down the email and
close the door to the office. I admit that you can’t disconnect from the world
for extended periods of time, but the world can definitely get along without us
for an hour or two while we focus on getting something done.
I think it is also time to reintroduce the telephone to the
conversation. IM and email are not the media to use for conversations. If you
have to reply more than twice to an electronic message, it probably means that
the phone would be a better faster way to communicate. Use it once and get
done, instead of innumerable electronic messages of one type or another that scream
for our attention and distract us from what needs to be done.
We are goal oriented people for the most part. We like to
work, and then see the results of our labor. I think my wife likes to mow the
yard because she can see how good it looks when she is done. Many of my
neighbors have asked me how I convinced her of this idea, but I digress a
little here. The idea is to set smaller attainable tasks that can be handled
within manageable time periods. This way tasks can be accomplished in manageable
segments which reduce the opportunity for distraction and interruption.
These are just a few of the ideas that I think I will need
to implement in an effort to regain control of my day, and to get better
focused on the tasks I need to get done. They may work for you too. You may
have some other ideas and suggestions as well. The idea is that we all probably
could stand to reduce the number of distractions that we have to deal with as
we try to conduct or business.
By the way, the football game is still on, and I still am
not sure of the score, or who is playing, and the stereo is now playing
rock-n-roll Christmas songs…..
When in the Rough…..
I like to
play golf, but I am not a good golfer. I like to watch golf on TV hoping that I
might learn something that might help me. Mostly what I learn is that the guys
who play golf on TV are so much better than me that I would have to be a much
better golfer just to be able to figure out what I could learn from them.
I was
watching the end of the year golf tournament from California and I actually did
pick up something that I think is useful. Usually the only announcer that even
remotely interests me is David Feherty, who is responsible for such great golf witticisms
as “…That ball landed as softly as a butterfly with sore feet.”, but I digress.
The announcer today was talking about one of the great golfers playing who “had
all the shots”, but was trying them in all the wrong places.
That is to
say the golfer had the capability to hit the ball 240 yards on the fly over the
water to the green on a par five in two shots, but probably shouldn’t try to do
that from a downhill lie, in the rough, behind a tree. Sure enough, when he
tried the increased difficulty shot, he didn’t execute it, and compounded his
problem. He went from trying to make an eagle, to struggling (and eventually
failing) to make par.
The comment
that caught my attention was that with the talent that the golfer possessed,
and being so capable of executing a standard shot so spectacularly, was not to
try and execute a spectacular and risky shot from a difficult position (in the
rough, behind a tree) but rather to execute a good shot to put the ball back
into a standard situation (the fairway) and then executing spectacularly from
there.
Even for a
relative hacker like me, this meant working on “course management”.
There will
always be difficulties encountered in golf. There is always a risk – reward associated
with how you deal with them. However, difficult situations are just that,
difficult to deal with. It is always possible to make a bad situation worse.
Sometimes it is better to take your short term medicine, put the ball back in
play where you have a chance of “executing spectacularly” from a easier, more
familiar situation and making par.
So, even with
all of the golf allegories, we can look at “course management” when it comes to
running our businesses. The idea here is that in many cases you may find yourself
or your business in a difficult position, where the best course of action may
not be to immediately “go for the green” and try to immediately recover the
situation. The correct course of action may in fact be to take you and your
business out of the difficulty and to put yourself back into a “normal” or “standard”
situation where it may be much easier, and therefore much more probable to execute
the “spectacular shot” and achieve success.
Recovery
sometimes is best made as a two step process. The first step is to get out of
your difficulties and back into a standard position. The second step is then to
use all the talent available to you to execute that step to success.
On the other
hand, when I am out on the golf course, I find it incredibly hard to remember
these types of lessons. I seem to just want to hit the ball…hard. Maybe that is why I am not such a good golfer.
Think Like an Immigrant / Act Like an Artisan
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. 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. 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.
When in Doubt….Ask
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.
We are Working In Ghost Towns
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.
Show Them the Data First
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.