by Charles Plant | Mar 25, 2014 | Leadership Development
A few customer service experiences in the last week have shown me that details matter in a way that they didn’t a few years ago. In the first case, I was trying to resolve a complaint I had with an organization which shall remain nameless as I really don’t want to punish them (yet).
I had tried a number of ways to get heard by the company but no one seemed to be paying attention to me. I sent messages to general mailboxes that were ignored. I sent emails to people by name but in five attempts had received not one response.
So I went on Twitter and found the person to whom one email had been sent and I sent a tweet as well to the founder of the company. Well Twitter obviously is the go-to place for customer service as I got two very quick replies after several months of trying.
From the customer service person who had been ignoring me I got a tweet reply, a phone call, and an email which resolved the problem. In the case of the founder, I got a quick reply to send him a direct message with details. Which I did and we are now exchanging messages.
Before Twitter, Yelp and countless other social media channels, a company could ignore a customer and know that there would be no public record of their failure and that only a few close friends of the aggrieved customer would ever know.
Since this is no longer the case and it is possible to make a very public and direct connection with company employees, details now matter in a way they never did before.
Companies need to execute flawlessly which is a real challenge for leaders but more than that, they have to be very quick about rectifying situations when they don’t execute flawlessly.
by Charles Plant | Mar 18, 2014 | Leadership Development
I was talking with Mike Tobias of Mercanix fame the other day and he related a good story about a bit of systems implementation work he was doing. He was training users at a client’s location and had a really varied set of reactions amongst employees.
Some of them loved the new software, others were skeptical, and others were vehemently adamant that it would never work.
Mike suddenly realized that this group he was dealing with were in fact grieving for the loss of their old way of doing things and that he had to take many of them through the Six Stages of Grief before they could all be onboard.
In case you forget, the six stages are:
- Shock
- Denial
- Anger
- Bargaining
- Depression
- Acceptance
I had never thought of people reacting to Organizational Change projects in the same albeit smaller way that they react to a death in the family but it really is the same thing.
Some people hate change and you have to drag them kicking and screaming from their old way of doing things. You have to help them grieve. Other people are more open to change and you don’t need to babysit them as much as they move quickly through the six stages of change.
by Charles Plant | Mar 14, 2014 | Leadership Development
Every now and then you discover a new phrase that just seems so…. Today it is “Doing the Gemba.” Gemba or Genba is the Japanese term for the real place, or where the action is.
Doing the Gemba is going to where the action is or in American terms, management by walking around (MBWA). But I like Doing the Gemba so much better as it seems so much more Wabi-Sabi than MBWA.
A fundamental part of lean manufacturing philosophy, it enables a manager to see the actual process, ask questions and learn.
But the real benefit of Doing the Gemba is giving your people some attention, in their space, showing you care about their lives, about their work and that you’ve gone out of your way to do it.
by Charles Plant | Mar 11, 2014 | Leadership Development
Yesterday’s blog on Personal Attention elicited some sharp emails from a few people not least of which was the story from one former colleague.
He related how he had a boss who left him completely alone. So alone in fact that the only time the boss visited his cubicle in the two years he reported to him was once when he needed to borrow a cable.
I’m not surprised when bosses make no attempt to have a personal relationship with their subordinates, never inquiring about their lives or talking about theirs. After all, some people think that you need separation in order to be a good boss.
Other people resent the intrusion. One woman with whom I worked absolutely categorically refused to discuss her personal life. In fact she made it a policy and was quick to tell anyone about her policy. You couldn’t even go so far as to ask if she had a good weekend.
But I am surprised when it goes as far as to leave the subordinate totally alone. If bosses don’t feel comfortable chatting about personal lives, they can at least chat about what’s going on at work, providing context, asking if help is needed, providing extemporaneous coaching.
Plants crave water. Employees crave attention.
by Charles Plant | Mar 10, 2014 | Leadership Development
My father tells a good story about a time when he was running one of Canada’s largest retailers. He was out of town one day visiting stores in one region and it was coming to the end of a packed day. It looked like he wasn’t going to be able to get to the last store on his trip and made a remark to that effect to the store manager he was with.
That store manager pleaded with my father to make time to for the visit as her husband was the store manager of the store he was going to skip. Her husband had been anticipating my father’s arrival for some time and had gone out to purchase a new suit just for the visit.
When you’re in a position of power, you can easily forget what a difference personal attention makes. Your followers crave it, thrive on it and die from lack of it.
by Charles Plant | Mar 6, 2014 | Leadership Development
I’ve had a bunch of interesting discussions lately about valuation metrics for a business. I know I’m straying from leadership and execution a bit here this week but bear with me as I link it in.
Unfortunately, not everyone realizes that valuation is an art, not a science.
(If you’re bored here you can stop reading but you’ll miss some really interesting stuff.)
In the technology industry, valuations have often been on the basis of numbers of users. Investors figure that if a company gets lots of subscribers for free, it can figure out how to get revenue from them later. This has led to some interesting results.
Here are some stats:
This begs the question, what is success? Is success getting the most revenue from each user in which case Google wins hand down. Or is it driving the best value per user given revenue in which case LinkedIn is the winner.
This type of analysis can dramatically affect your strategy. Do you tell your people to go after the most users, the most revenue per user that they can or the stickiest users? This directly affects success if you can figure out how to define it.
