The Customer Mission: Recent Episodes
Andrea Olson
This is the Customer Mission Podcast - a commentary program dedicated to reshaping the perceptions and approach to serving and communicating with customers and employees.
Making better decisions requires understanding the rationale behind previous decisions. If you don’t understand how you got here, you run the risk of making things not better, but worse.
Most organizations struggle with employee turnover. There are multiple reasons why this occurs, ranging from internal culture issues to simply a hot job market. But instead of being in reactionary mode when employees decide to leave, why not have an intentional attrition strategy?
Over the last few years, retailers have invested a lot in self-checkout lanes. This was initially seen as a great way to reduce labor costs and challenges with hiring. They were touted to reduce waits in line, eliminate the need to interact with a checker, and get you out in no time. But it hasn't done any of that.
Many companies are pulling back on customer service, reducing resources, training, and automating support. It's understandable to an extent. Hiring and retaining customer service staff is incredibly hard. The cost of training people is high. Customers are increasingly doing their research before they enter a store, and they don't even want to talk to anyone at all - just find their item and get on with their day as quickly as possible. So it would make sense that there's a contraction in customer service overall. However, are these companies dramatically shifting where their value lies?
There's been a recent push (most likely by the bean counters) to establish a direct ROI for marketing efforts. I can understand this thinking. Advertising and marketing are expensive. The adage of "half of all marketing spend is wasted, we just don't know which half" makes sense, if you're looking at waste in an immediate return sense. You spend $X on advertising and marketing this quarter and only get $Y in sales. As a numbers person, you'd want to invert that balance. But the problem is, that's not the only purpose of marketing and advertising.
Who invented the light bulb? Of course, you'd say Thomas Edison. But what you may not realize is that Edison did not invent the light bulb. It was actually invented by Joseph Wilson Swan and Henry Woodward. What Edison did really well was commercialize the invention. But why do we always think of Thomas Edison first? Of course, he was a prolific inventor, but more importantly, he built a recognizable and resonating brand.
We ask questions all the time. At work, at home, amongst friends. Often, we ask questions that we already know the answer to, and other times, we ask questions that validate our existing perceptions. But in business, when we're trying to find answers to complex, layered, multi-faceted problems, we need excellent questions to get the answers and insights we need to make the best decision possible. But we're usually pretty bad at it.
There's a lot of advice out there for designing employee incentive programs. Most of it focuses on common tactics including additional vacation days, public recognition, health/wellness reimbursements, referral bonuses, tuition reimbursement, professional development, and monetary bonuses. Aside from the economic considerations, the bigger question to answer first is always the why and what.
Why don't companies take more time to truly understand customer needs? In short, because it's hard, it takes time, and sometimes, we don't want to hear what they have to say. Customer feedback isn't simply about capturing data from questionnaires, reporting the top three frustrations customers have, and then deciding which one is the least costly and painful to implement. It's also not rolling your eyes when you hear the same concerns over and over again.
Say the company is having trouble with widget quality and missed deadlines. Should leadership focus on fixing the operational problems or on the strategy? Most executives would prioritize the former. They would say, “Let’s first patch the holes and then modernize the ship.” And most CEOs would say, “Ok.“ This is a big mistake.
We've all heard the term "Chronos" often regarding expensive watches, and the measure of time. But there's another term for time that's even more important - Kairos. In Greek, kairos represents a kind of “qualitative” time, as in “the right time”; Chronos represents a different kind of “quantitative” time, as in, “What time is it?” and “Will we have enough time?”.
Everyone likes a good rivalry story. They inspire, build emotional connections, and create a deep level of authenticity with the characters involved. Your brand has rivals too, and capitalizing on those rivals can help you position your identity in a way that differentiates you from the herd.
Small things can have big, lasting impacts. For example, 60% of the fish food that organisms living in coral reefs eat comes from the tiny larvae of tiny fish. Coral reefs could not survive without them. We often don't consider the small - especially in business. Small changes are typically overlooked, and the big changes usually get all the attention.
Recruit and retain top talent.
Increase market share.
Improve customer satisfaction.
Expand into new geographic markets.
Diversity product offerings.
Are these actually strategies or not?
Every organization we've worked with has reams of consumer feedback. Often it is utilized to make critical decisions. Sometimes, it's not. Sometimes, the feedback itself becomes the exercise, where study after study is created multiple times a year, and the insights are simply shared across the organization - nothing more. While customer insight collection is one thing, how companies analyze it is another. Even though we do relentless collection, leaders overlook the fact that consumer stories and insights are subject to decay.
When organizations design strategies, the focus is typically on crafting an approach to achieve key organizational goals. These plans usually take hundreds of hours collectively, and once complete, are presented to the organization in a series of town halls, beautifully illustrated documents, and leadership meetings. Yet while we believe the strategy itself is the path to success, it's the people and culture that make a strategy work.
Efficiency is fundamentally about using less input and getting more output. When CEOs talk about increasing "worker efficiency", it usually means getting fewer workers to do more work. You can have the most efficient workforce in the world, but if the company, the system, and the process they’re working in are wasteful, none of it really matters. Eliminating waste is actually way more important than driving efficiency. Efficiency will help you, but waste will crush you.
You likely remember Mickey Mouse and the Sorcerer's Apprentice. It's a story that revolves around an apprentice of a great sorcerer who has grown tired from repetitive manual labor and decides to automate his chores with a bit of help from his departed master's hat. There are multiple interpretations of lessons from this story. The one most frequently cited is about the consequences of laziness, and getting involved in things you don't understand. But I'd argue that's missing the point.
Let’s say you’re trying to teach an elephant how to recite poetry while balancing on a soccer ball. How should you allocate your time and money between training the elephant and designing the soccer ball? The right answer, of course, is to spend zero time thinking about the ball. But most people will rush off and start designing a really great soccer ball first. Why?
Innovation can change industries and systems, but real innovation causesa change in how people behave. Consider technologies like Slack, iPhones, or even the Cloud. For these large innovations and the organizations that adopt them, there is a dramatic shift in how time is spent, how communication happens, how team members relate to one another, and, significant changes in productivity.
We might believe this is because they are revolutionary, but it's actually because these new products weren't sold because of what they were, but what they impacted.
Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly vs. Explosion. Pre-Owned vs. Used. We've seen a lot of terminology changes over the years, and it's because words matter. How you communicate and frame something has been a technique used by marketers for decades. Yet as organization leaders, we often make terminology more abstract and complicated instead of simple, compelling, and clear. This is one of the main causes why our organizations don't understand what we do and why we do it.
Budgeting season is coming soon for many companies, and this usually includes the review of major initiatives, costs, resources, and activities for the coming year. Sometimes, it's also the time to re-evaluate the organizational strategy or even create a new one. And while creating a strategy can be a daunting task, many leaders actually go through long and convoluted processes to create one, only to shelve it in a matter of months.
Some organizations go through CEOs and department heads like Kleenex. Today, the average tenure of a CEO is 4.6 years. In other cases, C-Suite leaders rotate out of the organization within 1 or 2 years, and a new leader is installed. And it's always "This one is the right one - they're bringing incredible experience/ideas/perspective to the organization." They try to install a few changes that typically don't stick, and are moved out in short order. Then the pattern repeats.
The greatest stories start with imperfection. Something went wrong - usually in a dramatic fashion - then a roller coaster of ups and downs until the recovery and eventual happy or hilarious ending. Perfect stories - where everything goes smoothly - aren't stories at all. They're a lecture.
It's easy to document and communicate the "what". What is your department doing this quarter? You have a laundry list to show them. It reinforces that you have "lots to do" and are valuable to the organization. But where's the strategy? Why is this approach different, unique, compelling, or the right way to achieve the bigger goal?
Imagine two people meeting up on a blind date. The first person begins by introducing themselves, going through a 10-15 minute detailed introduction and overview of their life and history. They then move quickly into explaining how and when both of them will get married, buy a country house, and have three children, illustrating how this plan is the best and right option, and that no other person is as suited as they are for this.
This sounds weird and presumptuous, yet that’s how many companies approach their customers.
What is Conway’s law? It comes from a 1967 paper by Melvin E. Conway, and the basic idea is that organizations tend to design products that reflect their internal communication structures.
Put another way, Conway’s law implies that the quality of a product or service is reflected in and linked to the working methods of the business that produces it. This means that successful product or service design depends on communication: between designers, product owners, marketing, and sales, not to mention customers, who should have a strong influence on the creation process.
Most business leaders stress the importance of understanding and responding to ever-changing customer needs to stay relevant and competitive. Yet why do so many companies spend the majority of their time focusing inward?
Poker is a game of concentration, reactions, and critical thinking. While luck still plays a large factor in the distribution of the cards, your skill at reading common poker tells can give you a significant edge. This means focusing on your opponent’s body language to decipher subconscious shrugs, sighs, and signals that give away their hand. It's the same in business, but often tells are even more obvious - coming right out of the individual's mouth.
Floods are typically predictable. There are forecasts which discuss river levels, and projections for where the water will rise to and over what period of time. No one dismisses these projections, and we always prepare accordingly. But these floods don't happen because there's monsoon-level rain in the area. It happens because of extensive snow hundreds of miles north of us. The snowpack depth and melting rate where the Mississippi River begins determines our level and timing of flood risk. While most companies don't have this type of clear correlation or prediction capability to determine what will impact their organization, each and every company has its own proverbial 'flood risk'.
We're all familiar with the concept of financial debt - money you owe, often with interest. Some of us are familiar with technical debt - taking shortcuts while writing code (or making repeated changes to code) that has downstream consequences later. Financial and technical debt plays an important role in organizations. But another type of debt exists — organizational debt. Organizational Debt is the "interest" companies pay when their structure and policies stay fixed and/or accumulate as the world changes.
While politics are inherently part of business, time wasted and money lost are typically blamed on inefficiency and lack of productivity. People aren't working hard enough. They're slacking off. They're not really working when they are working from home. This all stems from the perception that people can't really be trusted to do their jobs without extensive supervision or oversight. (But that's a debate for another day)
In business, we talk extensively about value, specifically how we can create it. But more often than not, in our quest to find new ways to develop value, we have many overlooked opportunities to unleash existing value and underlying things in our organizations that kill it.
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One of the traditional steps in developing a strategy begins with a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis. The results are usually unremarkable, highlighting the same things year after year, and failing to reveal any new, unique ways for the organization to compete. So can a SWOT really form the foundation of an effective strategy?
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We've all been in the hospital waiting room. You sometimes seem to sit there forever. You see people come and go, and maybe you see your appointment time come and go. You don't know whether they're running behind, forgot you, or simply have an emergency to deal with. While a changing schedule flow is understandable, it doesn't bode well for the proverbial customer experience. But transparency can make all the difference.
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We all have worked for dysfunctional companies at one time or another. Most of the time, we view them through the lens of people - whether it be domineering bosses, hostile work environments, or sweat-shop-like circumstances. However, there are three common behaviors that can permeate a company and create dysfunction, even if the people and teams are the nicest on the planet.
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We've heard it before. A new initiative or focus is announced to the organization. There's an explanation as to why it's important, and why the company is addressing it. Then crickets. Or worse, a few superficial, window-dressing activities are conducted before it goes radio silent. Why? Why bother with starting something that's just going to get brushed under the rug? Is it bad leadership? Lack of resources? In reality, sometimes the reasons are more mundane than we'd like to believe.
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During the 1980s, top executives were judged on their ability to restructure, declutter, and de-layer their corporations. This often translated into overly flat and overly lean organizations, where remaining staff worked longer and harder with less. While the approach benefitted the bottom line, it didn't increase organizational efficiency, effectiveness, or productivity. Now, leaders are examining how to improve business operations, but often overlook the fundamentals. They cling to the flawed mindset that technology, more meetings, and more documentation will fix it. Instead, we need to get back to the basics.
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As a leader, one of the jobs you have is to identify organizational gaps. Whether it be operational, resource-based, process-centric, or sales-driven. But what happens when you overlook or completely dismiss gaps that you know exist? Some might say that's negligence, but the real question is, what's the cause of that negligence? Is it laziness? Ignorance? Or avoidance?
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We all know when two employees have a conflict, there are countless articles on how to coach and mitigate the situation. But what happens when departments have conflicts? In virtually every organization, there are teams that don't work well together. It may be a rub between marketing and sales, or operations and production. No matter the departments, this rub impacts morale, culture, communication, productivity, and in the end - profits.
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When the strategy doesn't deliver on anticipated expectations, the strategy-execution gap is the scapegoat. In fact, thousands of articles have been written on this phenomenon. For example, here's one of the top results from a quick Google search:
"What causes execution gaps? There are numerous potential causes of execution gaps, such as goals and timelines that are too ambitious, little to no clarity about the vision or goals, and even a lack of buy-in from key players. One of the biggest causes relates to your resources."
However, this actually isn't the problem. Yes, these components can influence the success or failure of a strategy, but they're not the cause of the strategy-execution gap.
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Strategy is a hard concept to digest, especially for stayed institutions that have seen past success but have reached a growth plateau. New competitors are coming in, the organization has started to move slower, and sales are anything but impressive. They're surviving, but not flourishing. Often, the first step is to refresh the "organizational strategy". This comes in the form of a series of meetings, where high-level, lofty aspirations are put to paper, and then delivered to the rest of the organization. Then - well, not much other than a series of new initiatives, which barely move the needle. The problem is, we misunderstand what strategy is. Today, we're going to give you an easy example to use.
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A tenured employee is someone who has worked for a company or organization for a number of years. Employees that have worked for a company for more than five years are considered long-tenured employees, while those that have worked for a company for less than five years are considered short-tenured employees. Employees with tenure usually have more expertise in their positions than others. But often, this expertise isn't what we think it is. Does someone have 20 years of experience or one year of experience repeated 20 times?
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Executives often spend months (sometimes years) putting together a strategy to grow their organization. However, these strategies are often abandoned, changed, or lose momentum within a year or less. Why? How is it that we spend so much time, money, resources, and effort in creating a strategy, which becomes proverbially obsolete once the rubber actually meets the road? Here are the top 6 reasons why it happens.
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I recently had a conversation with a C-suite leader of a company that has 6,000+ employees who were implementing a significant organizational structure change to build in more accountability and ownership across 50 interconnected departments. The goal was to create an umbrella team who would be in charge of ensuring there was more transparency and communication between each department. This layer would aggregate and disseminate information, along with being the one point of reporting to upper management. On the surface, this may sound good, but it's actually a terrible idea.
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Differentiation; by definition, is what branding is. Which is precisely why I’m so baffled by blanding. Blanding is the copy-paste model of consumer product development and brand marketing that follows repetitive patterns in the name of modernity but at the expense of authenticity and originality. With results that are, in a word, bland.
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We can't be all things to all people, though as companies, we often try. Take a hospital. You try to provide superior care, ensure patient safety, manage insurance claims, recruit top-tier staff, maintain excellent facilities - the list goes on. It's a daunting task, and it's hard to say that any one of those items listed sits at the top of the proverbial importance pyramid. But if you don't have a clear north star set, the customer experience will oscillate.
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Typically, taking your car to the shop isn't a pleasurable experience. Even if you roll in for a simple oil change, there's always something else that needs to be addressed. Often customers are skeptical about a shop's recommendations and have a perception they're being upsold on unnecessary repairs. You could attempt to change that perception with advertising, and push the message that your shop is the "most honest", but is this really getting at the heart of the issue?
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Sandbagging is a strategy of lowering the expectations of a company or an individual's strengths and core competencies in order to produce relatively greater-than-anticipated results. Unlike Quiet Quitting, which focuses on stopping the completion of any tasks not explicitly stated in the job description, Sandbagging fundamentally drags down overall company performance. We've all seen it, experienced it, or maybe have done it ourselves. But why does Sandbagging happen, and why do we allow it to occur? There are a few behavioral reasons, beginning with what we let happen.
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Change is uncomfortable. Inherently so because it's different. It's unfamiliar. It's new. It's unknown. Yet, most changes in organizations aren't changes at all. They are the reshuffle of existing deck chairs. They are so soft and subtle as not to burden or worry the masses. They are often minuscule. It's no wonder that organizations that seek change and enact their soft modifications are disappointed in the results.
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Many leaders want their organizations to be more innovative and strategic. (In fact, there are tens of thousands of articles out there on fostering innovation and making teams more strategic.) Often this gets translated into directives, initiatives, or organizational values around these principles. And of course, those directives and initiatives never manifest into action, no matter how many goals and objectives are established to support them. Why?
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I was at a brewery around 9:00 pm when a group of cyclists rolled up. There were around 7 of them, of varying ages ranging from their early '30s to late '40s. It was a beautiful, slightly cool Thursday evening, with a light and comfortable breeze. They parked their bicycles, dumped their gear, and proceeded to order multiple pints. Clustering around a single, small table with additional chairs pulled up next to it, they proceeded to have an animated discussion for the next hour or so. Some of them I recognized, and knew had spouses and young children.
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The answer to this question may seem obvious, depending on what side of the proverbial fence you sit. Traditionalists may say business is fundamentally about creating value and generating profit. Others may say that it's about being good stewards of the environment, people, and society, creating something of value greater than simply money.
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A widely known term, at least in academia, is “the tragedy of the commons.” The term “commons” describes a resource that everyone can use at no cost, such as air. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School Lawrence Lessig explains that the tragedy is that when there is a limited amount of a commons, the competition over it causes its depletion because people work out of self-interest, whereas if they were considerate, everyone would have enough.
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Consider this scenario. A company has recently upgraded their office space, with a new shared area for employees to use to collaborate and hold meetings. The room has no restrictions - you can use it anytime, and for anything. Within the first week, someone leaves food and spilled drinks on the tables and chairs. This is brought to the attention of leadership, and a new set of policies and processes for use of the space are put in place - specifically to address the mess issue. The question is, was this necessary?
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Steve Jobs found pleasure in reducing a product’s feature set. He hated clutter, loved simple. As business leaders, we often have a hard time saying no to new features, products, or initiatives that support growth. However, too much stuff creates complexity and in turn, reduces the organization's effectiveness. Wharton researchers report that 74% of executives believe complexity is inhibiting their growth strategies and tactics. So why do we keep adding more to the pile?
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What does losing weight, learning to play an instrument, and growing a company all have in common? They take time. Often, a lot of time. However, we are in an age of instant gratification. Whether due to advances in technology, or a decline in our attention span, the drive to get results faster has sped up to an almost breakneck pace. And what's the drawback to this? We dismiss new ideas and opportunities too early and shortchange their ability to deliver transformative outcomes.
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Simplification is one of the hardest things to do, but it is also one of the most effective. When you examine your own organization's projects, initiatives, strategies, and engagements, take the time to consider what you can eliminate, rather than what you can add to make it more effective.
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Consider a situation where a major change for an organization is being debated amongst a leadership team. The group discusses the pros and cons, evaluating whether it should be implemented and if it will produce the outcomes they're trying to achieve. After a lengthy back-and-forth, they choose to proceed. However, the results fall short of expectations. Does this sound familiar? Why does this occur? I'd guarantee that a lack of dialogue between the front line and the leadership team help facilitate the failure.
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Yes, a best practice is often arbitrary and based mainly on habit – the result of conditions that no longer apply. What we call best practices were at one point good or smart business moves, but we seldom do the work to determine how long they stay the “best” or whether they’re universally applicable. In short, best practices are only the best until they aren’t.
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Imagine you're faced with creating organizational change. You need to do something big and bold to turn around the organization's downward trajectory. Or you need to catapult growth. You have some great, innovative ideas that you've vetted and know they'll make a positive impact. You have a budget, resources, and a rollout plan. You're all ready to go - or are you?
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In the 2019 ESPN Tournament Challenge, there were even fewer, with only nine flawless basketball tournament brackets after the initial round of March Madness in 2019. Why? We have such a huge amount of data and computing power at our fingertips - why wouldn't there be a better level of accuracy? Because people are involved.
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Becoming customer-centric isn’t a simple change. Simple changes are linear, predictable, and manageable. Traditional change management techniques work well in these contexts but are less effective in multifaceted, interconnected, and unpredictable ones. A customer-centric change is just that - where relationships, networks, and social influence from peers have a stronger impact on success than top-down influence.
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When looking for growth, most leaders don't want to leave any stone unturned. Where can we find new customers? Maybe this segment or that segment? Why not both? The problem is, the broader the net, the more diluted the message. No matter how hard you try, you can't be everything to everyone. If you try, you lose distinctiveness and differentiation - a key competitive advantage.
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There are all different types of leadership styles. Autocratic, Democratic, Laissez-Faire, Pacesetting, Authoritative, Coaching, the list goes on. There are also many articles about leadership styles, and how to find your own style that best fits your personality. But the bigger question is not about style, but about your leadership perspective default.
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I've seen hundreds of customer and competitive research documents, with pages upon pages of excellent data, qualitative feedback, facts, and figures. These documents are often presented to organizational leadership, who skim through the pages and pull out a few key questions on specific points for clarification and discussion. Those meetings always go well, with the executive team complimenting the thoroughness and value of the research, noting the time and effort put in, and everyone leaves on a proverbial high. We now have the information we need to develop a clear strategy - or do we?
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Organizational leaders aren't infallible. They make mistakes. They miss things. They have blind spots. Sometimes blindspots are easy to reveal, while others persist despite evidence to the contrary. Why is this the case? The problem is, some blind spots are baked in by organizational pressures, which in turn, perpetuate seemingly indefinitely. These chronic blind spots are the toughest ones to eliminate.
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Great execution is essential to any business. You can have a wonderful plan in place, but if it doesn't manifest into action, it's not worth the paper it's printed on. However, with all of our focus on action, leaders often skip investing time in thoroughly examining why we're taking action in the first place. Are your tactics the right ones to achieve the organization's objectives, or is it just a matter of keeping up the image that something's getting done, whether useful or not?
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There are companies where culture is directed from the top down. While it's natural to assume that this vision will simply emerge throughout the organization, this alone does not create culture. Within every company there are sub-cultures. In other words, each department or team can have its own unique culture. For example, the culture of a product management team can be distinct from the culture of the sales team. This can run in direct conflict of your top-down directed culture, and therefore, conflict ensues. Bottom line, culture isn't what you say it is.
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Consider all the tools you would need to build a house. Labor aside, there's a ton of modern technologies out there to help you build a dwelling in a much easier, more efficient, and safer way than 10, 50, 100 years ago. However, if you've never built a house before, or only have done some small craft activities in the past, how equipped are you to actually build a house? This is the problem with the myriad of "tools" out there for organizations to solve their business challenges. Whether it's trying to promote a product or develop a new organizational strategy, it's not so much about having the tools, but knowing which ones to use and how to apply them.
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Strategy isn't just an activity, but a way of thinking. It requires practice, focus, and time. It's not a thing that you can get done in a couple of weeks with a few leadership roundtable meetings. It's even harder when your team has never really developed a strategy before or has never been thinking strategically for the past few decades. No special process or technique will magically produce a strategy. You need to first start shifting internal mindsets to think differently.
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We all like to have data to support our decisions. But we tend to look at this myopically - a decision needs to be made, and we simply need some data to justify it. True, almost everyone, from retail companies to agricultural manufacturers, strives to make data-backed decisions, but what is the right way to use data to make better, more accurate decisions?
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I've spoken with hundreds of executives, CEOs, and business leaders about their organizational challenges. Across all industries, many of the problems are the same. We need more sales/revenue/members. We need more innovation from our employees. We need to reduce costs. We need to reduce attrition (of customers/employees). Sound familiar?
You've actually likely heard them many times over, possibly each and every year as the company sets its "key objectives" for the upcoming business season. If it's so crystal clear these are the problems, why haven't they been solved? Because these aren't really the problems.
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Strategy is a term bantered around a bit too much. We apply it to almost everything within business to subconsciously create an aire of legitimacy and value to our actions. Creating a marketing plan? No, it's a strategic marketing plan. Designing a hiring process? Hell no - it's a strategic hiring process. But the real question is - are these things actually strategic?
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Our memories are time-bound - we often look back on something that we learned or experienced and frequently consider it to be fact, rather than examining if the circumstances have changed. This can significantly limit not only opportunities for growth and change but more importantly, getting organizations out of the status-quo cycle.
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Doesn't getting something done feel good? Getting that checklist completed (or almost completed) at the end of the day? Oh, it's a joy. Yet, we can easily get swept up in this perpetual motion, which can inhibit the generation of new ideas, impede change, and cause burnout - especially within organizations.
But first, why do we prefer doing something over doing nothing?
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You've likely heard of Meatloaf - the American singer and actor known for his powerful, wide-ranging voice and theatrical performances. In 1993, he released one of his most popular songs, "I'd do anything for love (but I won't do that)". While there's a bit of ongoing discussion about what Meatloaf won't do for love, the song title actually has applications in the ways we think about and manage change.
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A friend of mine shared a story where she brought some important data to light to her C-Suite leaders. She had uncovered some concerning trends and felt compelled to bring up her concerns. However, the response was less than stellar:
"Let's focus on where we are doing well rather than [focusing on what] we are doing poorly..."
Really? I mean, really?? While I felt for her, this is not an uncommon response. Many leaders (often beholden to shareholders) are driven to keep positive messaging alive at all costs. But is this focus on positive messaging really good for the health of the company?
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Your CEO announces it's strategic planning season. Every department head is asked to develop and deliver their strategic plan and budget for the coming year. Because they all have proprietary subject matter expertise, each one brings their vision to the table. The presentations are reviewed, some superficial tweaks are made (often in the area of budget) and approved. Then the year continues on, with the CEO checking in periodically to make sure everything is on track.
But strategy isn't a function over which to preside. Presiding instead of engaging in the creation of organizational strategy is a major leadership mistake.
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Job interviews are mostly nonsense. According to Ron Friedman, a psychologist and author of “The Best Place to Work", 80% of people lie during their interviews — so if that's the case, the information you’re hearing is likely fiction, or at best, inspired by real-world events. Job interviews mean you may hire the best actor on the day — not the best candidate. So don’t do them.
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I had a conversation with an organization who was needing to grow their membership numbers, and they were struggling to find ways to get things moving forward. They had just restructured their organizational processes, with a strong focus on performance metrics for each and every department. The thought was, with more transparency, they'd have more insight as to whether everyone was working together to 'move the needle'.
However, tracking activities of departments is very different from measuring those things which directly influence and impact the goal of increasing membership levels. The organization was tracking things like 'number of social media posts weekly' and 'number of newsletters sent monthly' - both of which presumably intended to increase potential member engagement, but the problem was, these activities weren't doing anything to change membership numbers. Why?
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What's your job? Does it match the description? Does it make the best use of your skills and talents? Does your job diverge dramatically from the role you actually do to generate value for the organization? Here's the question - do we need job descriptions? More specifically, do we need job descriptions in the way we construct them today?
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If you Google "Employee Engagement" and look for images representing it, you'll find groups of people in business attire smiling, high-fiving, laughing, or conducting some other staged behavior. While it may look a bit comical, somewhere in the recesses of our minds, we want to replicate this feeling with our own staff. We associated happiness with engagement, and often try to fill the void with a series of initiatives and activities to 'engage' people, from free pizza and bagels, holding off-site meetings, and giving out swag, to public recognition of high performers.
We've all done these things at one point or another. However, does this really build employee engagement?
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We all are faced with a myriad of business problems that every organization wants to be solved quickly and easily. We know not every problem is the same, and we know that some problems are more complex than others. We also know that some problems might be expensive to solve, and some might take a lot of time and resources. However, many organizations actually hinder their ability to solve these problems by defining the problem incorrectly, and inherently, defining an incorrect solution.
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Executives say that cultural challenges — not technological ones — represent the biggest impediment around data initiatives.
In a 2021 survey from NewVantage Partners, 92.2% of mainstream companies report that they continue to struggle with cultural challenges relating to organizational alignment, business processes, change management, communication, people skill sets, and resistance or lack of understanding to enable change. This represents an increase from an already high percentage of 80.9% of firms that named cultural challenges as the greatest impediment to success just four years ago.
If we've known this for a while, why are organizations continuing to struggle with becoming more data-driven?
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While every company is always seeking to grow their business, it's quite interesting that a Lead Generation company sends out a generic email to a non-qualified mailing list about their services, claiming this is their specialty.
Even more interesting is the fact that their message is not tailored to their audience, communicates understanding about the business they are targeting, nor provides a compelling narrative about their oh so special and unique approach.
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We love numbers. We're quite obsessed with them. Everything we do in business has to be measured and tracked in a nice, neat metric, often color-coded with a red-yellow-green indicator. We also pick numbers that are easy to capture, typically pulled from a report already being generated for another purpose. And oftentimes, performance bonuses, raises, and other incentives are tied to these dashboard numbers. So needless to say, we live and breathe by them. However, this information never tells the whole picture, and frequently fails to provide the organization insight into threats and disruptions from left field.
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While RevZilla uses a variety of tools and platforms to manage their customer communications and track purchase behavior, their engagement strategy is what puts them in a category that rivals the well-known Zappos.
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I recently had a conversation with a local retailer, struggling to generate sales through this pandemic. They were exhausted and stretched thin. They had been through the ups and downs of managing cleaning, metering patrons, to having to move their entire business online. Still, sales were continuing to slump.
Knowing that survival depended upon having an online presence, they went all in. They set up a full e-commerce website. They set up Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest presences. They posted multiple times a day. They boosted posts. Yet, things were still looking bleak. The discussion centered on one question - "What should we be doing that we're not doing?"
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We often think a lot about what helps us connect with customers, and focus on marketing messages and communications that relate to and draw in customers. What we overlook is often the most obvious. Humanization.
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There was a great book published back in 2001 called "Positioning" by Al Ries and Jack Trout. It emphasized the importance and impact of companies taking a unique position in the market, albeit through now outdated examples. However, the principles of this idea have gotten lost over the years, and the time is ripe to bring the concept back.
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Dutch philosopher Alexander den Heijer said, “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” Not surprisingly, many organizations try to fix the flower. This happens all the time with culture-change initiatives or even brand strategies, where the veneer is the focus of change and not the behaviors that underlie it.
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Usually, when a company identifies an initiative, it's clear what needs to be accomplished. Team members then dive into the implementing tactics, measuring progress along the way. Ideally, the project gets completed on time, and on budget. So should we consider that success? The better question is, did we get the most out of the initiative itself?
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A value proposition's job is to gravitate your prospects towards your business. To stand out. To connect and resonate. Customers are constantly looking for unique benefits and advantages they can capitalize on - but too many organizational value props are focused more on the company than the customer. They aren't framed through the eyes, perspective, and context of the customer's needs, wants, and challenges.
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Companies are consistently looking for new ways to grow. Every organization is trying to discover new innovations which will catapult revenue, and build a bigger gap between them and the competition. However, many of these organization's leaders are making business decisions they can defend, rather than what will truly make an impact.
It's driven by a fundamental psychological bias we all face - loss aversion. Loss aversion is the tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains. Loss aversion implies that one who loses $100 will lose more satisfaction than another person will gain satisfaction from a $100 windfall.
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The nature of productivity is to identify what needs to get done and make sure it gets done in a timely fashion. However, there’s a big difference between being busy and being productive. Today, too many organizational leaders get wrapped up in proving their department's worth by the number of accomplishments, rather than the value of those accomplishments.
There is a difference between having a lot to do and being busy. And there is an even bigger difference between being busy and getting (the most valuable) things done.
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The popular Progressive commercials with Dr. Rick tend to hit a bit too close to home sometimes. Focused on the concept of "helping new homeowners avoid becoming their parents", it's also very relevant to us as organizational leaders. When we are young and starting our careers, we are aspirational. We embrace change and learning. We are humble enough to learn from our mistakes and are bold enough to encourage our peers to look at new ways of thinking and problem-solving. However, as we move later into our careers, we can lose that drive and turn into our "old bosses".
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I heard the oddest thing, and I've heard it multiple times over the course of my career. Companies that are afraid to ask their customers what they want. Or ask them how the organization is performing. Or involve them in a new product or service creation.
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Companies fail for a variety of reasons. And more often than not, we don't want to admit it occurs most frequently because of our own actions - or more importantly - our own inactions. Even though we can argue issues like cash flow, pandemics, disruptions, and the inability for teams to innovate - organizational failure actually boils down to three core killers.
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Every organization wants to stand out from their competitors, but very few are truly successful at it. Outside of the frequently lauded names such as Apple, Amazon, and USAA, companies continue to do a lot of 'talking about' and 'studying', yet struggle to capture the same magic. The problem is these same organizations are using an old set of tools for a new set of challenges.
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Most companies believe they understand their customers, but a recent study conducted with 50 CEOs across financial, insurance, and manufacturing industries indicates otherwise. The study, conducted in June of 2020, examined the connection between the perception of understanding customer needs and actual organizational behaviors. The overarching conclusion is: even with the widest variety of tools available to organizations, there is a significant gap in the ability to identify the needs of customers.
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In 1928, American sociologist William Isaac Thomas theorized, "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences." In other words, a consequence will come to fruition based on how one interprets the situation. This concept came to life only a few years later, with the fall of the banking system during the Great Depression.
Between 1931-1933, those banks that were on strong financial footing were driven to insolvency by bank runs. Often, a false rumor started that a bank was insolvent (incapable of covering its deposits), a panic ensued, and depositors wanted to withdraw their money all at once before the bank’s cash ran out. When the bank could not cover all the withdrawals, it actually did become insolvent. Thus, an originally false belief led to its own fulfillment.
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In Italian, consigliere means "advisor" or "counselor" and is still a common title for example for members of city councils in Italy and Switzerland. The word was popularized in English by the novel and subsequent movie, The Godfather (1969). Despite its cultural connotations, the true definition of a consigliere is a close, trusted friend and confidant. And if financial institutions want to come out of this challenging time period on top, they'll need to get much closer to their customers.
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It was a meeting of the executive team at an $800m company. The team spoke about the changes the organization needed going into the next fiscal year. Nothing which was brought up was a surprise to myself or the group. Actually, the changes discussed were the same changes that had been discussed the year prior, and the year before that. A companywide survey had been conducted, validating the importance and urgency of the proposed changes. However, the discussion was the same. Other "priorities" moved into the conversation. So were these original changes needed insignificant, or was there something else at play?
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Many of the major problems that we see which impact the success of organizational change efforts are coordination failures. In short, any organizational problems are only solvable if everyone can agree to do the same thing at the same time. When a team is tasked with implementing change, oftentimes, individuals will not necessarily choose what's best for the group, but for themselves.
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Lean is all about simplification, streamlining, and eliminating waste. What could be bad about that? Lean has been found to not only improve consistency and operations but also save a lot of money. Every company likes that. But too lean can be just that - too much. And too lean limits the organization's resilience to forces outside the consistent pattern of business - just like this pandemic.
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Organizations have continually sought quick and easy solutions to some of their most challenging problems. Whether it be employee attrition, product adoption, generating new revenue streams or increasing organizational innovation, leaders look to find that "silver bullet" to turn things around. They seek out expert advice, examine competitor's offerings, and explore plug-and-play technology platforms. Each of these often have the veneer of being a "guaranteed win", where an abundance of "positive results" are lauded by a series of case studies and statistics. However, just because a solution is easy and available, doesn't mean it will work for you.
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Why is it that once you roll out a new product, customers don't use it? Or a new service that you developed specifically based on customer feedback, yet it languishes with low adoption rates? It's a struggle that organizations deal with almost on a daily basis and often try to tackle with anything they can, whether it be creating sales team incentives, investing in a big marketing campaign, or extensive training programs. But the problem starts much further upstream in the development process, in the understanding of not customer needs, but problems.
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As organizations try to implement change, whether it be a new project management platform or a company restructure, they are often met with significant resistance. There's a portion of the organization that wants to maintain the status quo and another portion that's ready and willing to change. So leaders often take a variety of approaches to get the other half on board, whether it be taking a hard line, amplifying communications, or reinforcing the logic of the decision. Yet, the problem isn't the approach, but the change itself.
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So now that we live in a virtual world, almost everything has moved online. Zoom meetings and webinars have now become the norm. Many organizations are also translating their educational programming and training (whether internal or external) online. However, it's not as easy as taking what you do today and simply doing it "digital". Creating an effective and truly results-generating digital training program requires a unique approach.
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There is something you can’t see that is getting in the way of moving your business forward, even in these unprecedented times. It is hidden from view, but it raises strong emotions in your team that make them resistant to change. Buried deep beneath all that grey matter that deals with creativity, intelligence, collaboration, etc. (the neocortex or ‘human brain’) is a small evolutionary building block of life. Our ancestors’ reptilian brain from millions of years ago is still there and occasionally, when you least expect it, it takes control.
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There's something about KPIs that brings about almost a fervent obsession. Having a dashboard with a series of numbers and graphs that are intended to reflect the "health" of the company. KPIs have been long lauded as a critical tool for executives and leaders, and are frequently utilized as a "simple and digestible" way of understanding how the organization is performing. However, KPIs can often be misleading, misdirected, and even worse, fail to help the business identify the right corrective actions if things are turning down.
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The $64,000 question is what will things look like following the Coronavirus epidemic. More specifically, what will business look like, and how will customers change? Instead of focusing on specific tactics, we should look at how behavior will change and we can look to history to give us some insights. If we examine past generations that have experienced major events in their youth, we can glean a bit of insight as to the next wave of change.
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If the Coronavirus pandemic has taught us anything, it's that behavior is everything. The impact of the stay-at-home policies shows in the decline in new cases. But like a virus, behavior within organizations can be healthy or detrimental. Not only for individuals but for the success of the organization itself. Many companies emphasize their focus on strategy, financials, or even products over organizational behavior. However, the behavior is actually the key to success in those areas. Here's why.
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It's an unprecedented time in our history. The COVID epidemic has turned virtually all business on its head. With virtually the entire world on partial or complete lockdown, this is the opportunity to examine what the business world will look like once we get through this pandemic. While many might believe that our world will dramatically change, it's more likely that many people and organizations will want to "get back to normal" as fast as possible. However, there likely will be 4 key changes that will impact almost every organization.
The coronavirus has transformed our world virtually overnight. Companies have had to change on a dime how they operate and communicate. While this is an incredibly serious situation, it's an opportunity for businesses to re-evaluate their approach to managing change going forward.
Mutualism is the doctrine that mutual dependence is necessary for social well-being. Where fundamentally, helping each other is to everyone's benefit. Instead of simply competing for resources and market share, the ability to practice mutualism is critical to our business's short term and long term growth. Mutual partnerships come together because they solve a problem. Sometimes one half of the partnership benefits more, while the other half finds itself barely benefiting — but it does not matter as long as both sides can grow their business and get better results.
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This is what might be deemed as the "old way" of doing business. Business owners and staff who had built deep, genuine connections with their customers. And for that effort, they had truly loyal customers. This deep connection wasn't built by sifting through immense amounts of data, tracking purchasing patterns, or even a series of special offers. It was built by truly knowing and caring about the customer.
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Many legacy organizations are facing a crisis. What worked in the past, whether a product, service or even business model, is somehow not working anymore. The entire organizational infrastructure and operation - often built around this - is humming along as it did before, but incremental cost-cutting has been happening for years. First, it was seen as simply cleaning house and eliminating unnecessary expenses, but now the 1 or 2 years of decreased revenue growth has turned to 6 or 7 or more. There's concern amongst leadership and the board. An idea is tossed out here and there along the way - typically new sales incentives - which show a small boost, but nothing that sustains. The team is now worried - and wants an immediate, clear plan to solve the problem. Does this sound familiar?
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There's a constant push to differentiate in today's competitive climate. Companies often invest in new products, services, and technologies to help shrink the divide and get a leg up on the competition. It's a constant struggle and many organizations even create "innovation teams" and programs to discover that next "big idea".
Most organizations focus on what might be considered the "low hanging fruit". They examine what competitors are doing and work to create their own flavor of those products or services. They often believe it's a safe bet and that they'll simply "do it better" than their competitor, and the revenue will follow. Alternatively, companies will look to differentiate through a unique marketing campaign with a catchy slogan and creative promotions. Or they will conduct a series of internal discussions to identify what they believe customers want and select the most cost-conscious, easily implementable idea that pops out.
However, none of these things are real differentiation.
Most of us never get formal training on how to lead a team, let alone lead an organization. Many simply learn on the job and make their way through the ranks, picking up both good and bad traits along the way. Sometimes, new leaders get the opportunity to attend "leadership" training programs and learn some basics. However, there's still a preponderance of organizational leaders who don't empower others, continue to micromanage and become a "tyrant of small things".
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We often think that organizational change requires a series of all-hands meetings, announcing a new set of company values, often accompanied by a pizza party or even a series of team-building activities. Then, we sit back and wait for the amazing organizational transformation, that never comes. What went wrong? We told everyone what we wanted, and it seemed like the team was positive and optimistic about our vision! The flaw in this thinking is the belief that culture can be changed by simply declaring it should change. Lasting change requires much more - the building of new behaviors.
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Behavior is what humans do, and it's observable and measurable. Whether it is to walk from one place to another or to crack one's knuckles, behavior serves some type of function, and provides a consequence or reinforcement for the behavior. When leaders successfully identify the function of their organizational behaviors, one can reinforce an alternate, acceptable behaviors that will replace them. While this sounds fairly clinical, and maybe even simply common-sense, it is often overlooked and underutilized by organizational leadership. We assume since we are working with experienced adults, that behavioral reinforcement isn't really necessary - that's only required for children. However, the opposite is quite true.
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Slow-moving problems are frequently overlooked inside organizations. They are usually ones that are very un-sexy, seemingly boring and often don't have a highly visible and shiny ROI attached to them. They are typically seen as 'just the way things are' and perceived as more pain and cost to change them, rather than simply let them lie dormant. The issue is that these problems will eventually turn into crises and too many organizations don't take action until they are emergencies.
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We frequently assume that if we hire someone with a great resume and a strong background of industry and competitor experience, we've found a gem. That this person will bring to the organization a breadth of knowledge that will help provide new insights on industry best practices and secret sauces. If we can get them at a reasonable cost, even better.
But is this really a great hire? I'd argue, it's quite wrong. Many companies are of this mindset - bring in people with the pedigree and experience that will elevate the organization to a new level. However, we're looking at it through too shallow of a lens.
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The problem is for most customers, they don't know YOUR process. Customers shouldn't have to know the "secret sauce" for connecting with the right person. They shouldn't have to know the "best method", whether it be web, phone or email, to accomplish what they're trying to achieve. Each and every person on your front line should be empowered to handle customer needs, without the customer needing to know your process. It should be seamless for them, as this is what sets apart "Ok" from "Amazing".
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Every leader wants to fix the problems in their organization. The issue is, that most leaders have a hard time diagnosing those problems correctly. It isn't the case of a lack of seeing the problem, experience, or capability to correct it. The real issue is two-fold: being too close to the problem, and looking at the problem the wrong way.
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It might seem that being a "leader" is this mystical thing. Something that you have to train for or simply be born with. And while there are many articles, videos and, training programs out there to help teach you to be a "better leader", there are often two key things that are overlooked.
Most articles on the subject of leadership talk about skills and traits, such as "communication" or "adaptability" or "leading by example". They discuss at length about being open-minded, setting aside ego, and listening. There's no question these skills and behaviors are incredibly valuable, and many great leaders have these abilities. However, very few leadership training courses discuss the need for "knowledge immersion" and "human behavior insight".
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There's a big push in companies today to create healthy cultures. Many organizations go through detailed processes to identify where culture is going astray and dive into implementing tactics, including defining company values. The problem is too many companies create values without meaning.
Written values are often vague and ignored. Many companies have nice-sounding values, such as "integrity", "respect", "communication" and "excellence". But these values mean nothing without the behaviors to underline and reinforce them. (As a side note, Enron had those same 'values' displayed in their lobby).
Actual values are behaviors. Behaviors which are true to the organization today, but can also continually improve and grow.
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When we make decisions in business, there's often a lot of elements to consider. Whether it be economic climate, organizational culture, financial return, or simply competitive pressure, these decisions can be complicated. So we go to the "big data" to give us the answers. But data itself can't provide you with the right answer, but simply more elements to consider when making the decision.
We have an obsession with data, and often times lean on it to justify decisions, whether it be spending more money on digital advertising or investing in a new acquisition. However, data isn't the magic bullet we often think it is. We need to look deeper, and not only learn how to better understand what data is telling us but more importantly, what questions to ask.
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When organizations examine ways to improve their culture and communications, they often look to the obvious. Simplifying overly complex processes, eliminating redundancies, encouraging people to be more collaborative and so forth. However, for some reason, many organization's cultures end up changing only marginally or even not at all. The company's leaders then search for alternative ways to increase productivity and positivity, whether it be high-level leadership training or employee engagement programs (i.e. parties). For a while, spirits improve, but things then fall back into the old groove.
I've seen throughout many organizational transformation efforts, an overly simplistic view of what truly impacts change. Leaders examine and address the basic blocking-and-tackling elements, but frequently not the subtle things that influence the success or failure of initiatives like these.
American companies spend enormous amounts of money on employee training and education—$160 billion in the United States and close to $356 billion globally in 2015 alone—but they are not getting a good return on their investment. For the most part, the learning doesn’t lead to better organizational performance, because people soon revert to their old ways of doing things.
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We look to leaders for many things. We have expectations of behaviors that reflect vision, confidence, and decisiveness, to name a few. However, the most important trait leaders need to have which is frequently less emphasized is courage.
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There's a reason why the new Ford GT is amazing. It's not because there was an elaborate corporate initiative in place, nor because of an innovation incubator, or a consultant-recommended strategy. It's because Ford let people do their jobs.
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We've all been in an organization that's been on the cusp of implementing change. There were some internal rumblings about addressing some challenges which were hanging around for a long time. Leadership conducted a few discussions on the issues. A study, review, or evaluation was conducted. Fantastic! We have momentum! These challenges will FINALLY get addressed!
However, in the coming weeks, things seem to slow down. There's some disagreement amongst leadership on how "urgent" or "critical" the issues are. There are discussions about the costs of implementing changes. Leadership has concerns about the ROI and the rollout timeline. The initiative list starts to narrow, and now those things that "really needed changing" boil down to a fraction of projects that are easy to implement and assuage the team's frustrations. All is well, right?
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Strategy is an often misunderstood and underutilized thing. More frequently than not, strategy becomes either a list of goals or a conglomeration of tactics called "a strategy". I've heard organizations say that strategy is a waste of time. I've also heard that it's "too complicated" or that "it doesn't add value, as things change all the time".
The problem is that too many strategies are garbage. Too tactical, too ethereal, too vague, too narrow, or just plain unwieldy. It's not that a strategy is bad, it's how we go about creating an organizational strategy that needs to change - dramatically. It's not about using a template or having it all on 2 or 3 pages, but about approaching strategy creation in a clearer and more digestible way.
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One of the hottest topics in business today is the concept of "diversity and inclusion". Many of the organizations we work with lament about their challenges in this area, stressing their need to "get more diverse" and struggle to build a more diverse workforce. They talk about needing "more representation of minorities" and ask about "recruitment techniques" to help bolster their ranks.
One problem with this is these organizations aren't looking at diversity and inclusion as a strategy, but rather a "checkbox". Do we have folks on our team from this group or that? Yes? Check, check. This is not the intent of the concept, but rather to bring together a broad set of ideas, perspectives, experiences, cultures, and more - to see and accept things from new lenses to better connect with growing audience diversity.
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It’s no secret that attracting talent is crucial to the success of your organization or business. However, getting the right candidate for the right job can be a daunting task. Unfortunately, no matter the amount of effort put in for a smooth process, it’s the smaller details that often make things to go wrong. Simple mistakes such as creating a rigid checklist of qualities and qualifications for candidates can make your selection process ineffective. Here are a few mistakes which are often overlooked.
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It's really fascinating to speak with organizations about their personalization strategies. They speak often about things like "customized content" or "customized products", where a customer can select a unique product color, or filter specific content they want to see on your platform. But is this really personalization?
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We all love metrics. After all, you can change what you can't measure, right? However, a company can easily lose sight of its strategy and instead focus strictly on the metrics that are designed to track its impact. For example, look to Wells Fargo, where employees opened 3.5 million deposit and credit card accounts without customers’ consent in an effort to hit their "metric numbers" designed to measure the impact of their organizational cross-selling strategy. It's easy to understand why we want metrics. But metrics don't solely determine whether a strategy is working or not.
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When an organization is seeking change, often there's a series of challenges identified, a detailed strategy developed, tactical plans outlining the approach, and a comprehensive schedule put in place with key milestones. Sounds fairly straightforward, right? Yet often times, change initiatives start to get bogged down, and even sometimes come to a screeching halt, only to be retooled at a later date and attempted all over again. But it doesn't have to be this way. Even change-resistant organizations can succeed in moving things forward, but it's all about momentum.
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I was employed as one of the first female executives in a male-dominated industry. To say this was a challenge is an understatement. While I was very experienced in my role, was provided a great team of 40+ direct and indirect reports, had an ample budget, and latitude to design and implement a new vision, it was still an uphill battle. The organization was fundamentally a "good ol' boys" club, and I was neither old nor a boy. So I started like many women do, diving headfirst into being as productive as humanly possible. And it was exactly the opposite of what I needed to do to get ahead.
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Every company has implemented a customer or employee survey at one time or another. Often times, a lot of time and effort are put into these surveys, only to result in a little generic input, ample complaints, vague feedback, and minimal insights or "ah-ha" moments. Why is this the case?
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We had an organization come to us that was struggling with getting sales trajectories turned around - a common problem for many companies. Through extensive discussions, we identified a wide variety of issues, from bloated inventory to high-cost/low-return investments, to ineffective marketing strategies - all of which could be easily changed to get sales back on track. The team agreed that these areas needed addressing, and were eager to get sales moving up.
Yet, nothing happened. Literally nothing. Follow up meetings and discussions resulted in rehashing the strategies and discussing justifications for maintaining the status quo. Time was of the essence, as the organization was struggling to stay afloat. Why did the leaders resist the opportunity to change?
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This fourth of July, I enjoyed a game at our regional Single-A affiliate stadium, with sun, beer, brats, and great baseball. We also had the pleasure of sitting next to 2 scouts, who were clocking pitches, detailing the stats and performance of every player on the field. They had been following all the teams in the division and attending every game, including taking videos of key player performances, as well as the stadium, noting attendance and atmosphere. A detailed analysis indeed.
So what does this have to do with recruiting and retaining talent for your organization? Everything.
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When a company decides to do something new, employees usually try several different ways of carrying out the activity. But once they have found a way that works particularly well, they have strong incentives to lock into the chosen process and stop searching for alternatives.
Fixating on a single process frees people’s time and energy for other tasks. It leads to increased productivity, as employees gain experience performing the process. And it also provides the operational predictability necessary to coordinate the activities of a complex organization.
But established processes often take on a life of their own. They cease to be means to an end and become ends in-and-of themselves. People start following the processes not because they’re effective or efficient, but because they’re well known and comfortable.
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I received an unsolicited email from a consultant, talking about their services and inquiring if I would be interested. Disregarding the fact that the email was littered with generalities about "successfully serving large clients" and "creating win-win" outcomes (which is a whole issue in itself), the big theme throughout was that they provided "value-added" services. Even worse, the contact's title was "Value-Added Consultant".
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We have all dealt with it. Someone in the organization that's an Eeyore. Maybe it's someone on your team, or maybe it's even the head of your department. What is an Eeyore? In the story, he is generally a pessimistic, gloomy, depressed, and anhedonic character. Pessimistic, gloomy and depressed people usually wear their unhappiness on their sleeve for all to see like Eeyore. But outside of a diagnosed condition, this attitude can be toxic for your organization.
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When we talk with companies about gathering insights about customers, often times there's a push for getting a ton of information. From interests to behaviors, companies want to understand each and every detail in the hopes of identifying that new thing which will create growth, increase customer retention or expand share of wallet.
The problem is, it can be too much information.
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