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Business Landscape Changed Forever

It’s probably safe to say that the landscape of business as we knew it 12 months ago has changed forever.  Now forever is a long time but I’ll take the risk.  My favorite quote of the week is from Lynn Franco of the the Conference Board in discussing the latest Customer Confidence Index results After two months of significant improvements, the Consumer Confidence Index is now at its highest level in eight months (Sept. 2008, 61.4). Continued gains in the Present Situation Index indicate that current conditions have moderately improved, and growth in the second quarter is likely to be less negative than in the first.  Lynn made a valiant attempt to be positive.  Unfortunately…it failed.  Less negative?  Really?  I suppose the new reality is giving everyone a bit of the jitters.

 

New landscapes require different tools.  I’d like to introduce everyone to John Boyd, one of the finest fighter pilots to ever strap on a jet.  Colonel Boyd also changed the face of warfare.  Boyd worked overtime to understand how he could win any engagement in a matter of seconds regardless of what the other pilot was flying, what made him better?  He never believed it was his flying skill but about the way he approached a fight.  Over a period of many years he studied in great detail this problem and concluded that it was in fact ones ability to process the environment and act faster that the other guy that made him better.  His construct was the OODA Loop.  Components of OODA are: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.  He didn’t believe that “reaction” was ever appropriate, but a conscious act in response to a decision based on situation awareness.  He did believe that if you could move through the OODA Loop faster than your opponent the day would be yours.  In short – being AGILE.  Strangely enough the Air Force never bought into the idea, but the Marine Corps did.  Boyd was a freqent instuctor of warfare in Quantico and many of today’s strategies and tactics have evolved from Boyd’s OODA Loop construct.  Some businesses have taken to using the concept, but in my mind not nearly enough.

To compete in today’s new business environment requires a constant state of observation and orientation to develop the agility necessary to win.  I’ve spoken often about renewal and the use of positive language.  Introducing agility into the conversation via education around and exercise of the OODA Loop would serve any business leader well.  I’ve seen so often how long it takes for organizations to make small changes that it becomes a running joke.  Decisions made in March of one year might make it to implementation the next June.  Reviews, budgets, enrollment of stakeholders, revisions, new enrollment and finally the action gets implemented.  Problem is this was an action appropriate for last year’s orientation not the present situation.  Boyd and his followers, of which I am one, would say the day was well lost.

Our new reality demands agility not reaction.  Observe the environment, Orient to the situation, Decide on a course of action and ACT!   TODAY….for tomorrow will be too late.

May 27, 2009 Posted by | Thinking About Change | Leave a comment

Knowledge, skill or luck?

Living in Surf City USA give me the opportunity to spend a lot of time in the surf.  Funny thing about surfing, know how doesn’t mean you can ride a wave.  It’s not often that a nubie doesn’t do weeks of face plants working to acquire the skill required to put the knowledge of surfing to work.  Same principle applies to dealing with change in today’s challenging marketplace.

Many members of today’s corporate leadership teams have never experienced riding the “big surf” being presented by present challenges.  The old heads that have lived through the pains of ’87, ’93 and the dot com bust are either retired or acting as consultants these days.  Crucially important to preventing a major wipe out is controlled responses until some level of control can be achieved.

Translated from this somewhat lame metaphor is the need to measure response while preparing for the recovery.  Managing change is always a balancing act between hardnosed drastic action and tempered empowerment.  The result of being a hard guy and overcorrecting is loss of trust and commitment to future renewal actions.  Using the power of the wave to propel forward motion is a far more effective approach than making severe changes that actually burn off energy you’ll need later.  Look for the small changes in your organization today to augment the much larger changes made early this year.  Three things to consider to retain the organizational energy you’ll need to renew in the coming months:

1. Commitment is king.  Holding and building commitment of your organization to grow and succeed will pay cash dividends in the near furture.

2. Lost energy can never be regained.  Draining energy from the organization is a losing proposition, for every action that negatively impacts organiational energy ensure that an equally powerful positive action is taken.

3. Celebrate every success.  No matter how small the win celebrate the event openly and with great fanfare.  Celebrations build energy and provide clarity that tomorrow will be another day to celebrate.

Building change skills takes more than knowing how to manage change.  Start working out…

May 12, 2009 Posted by | Thinking About Change, Thinking About Customers | Leave a comment

Where, oh where has empowerment gone?

In the late ’80’s and early ’90’s empowerment was all the rage.  Building self directed work teams in your organization was a top priority to improve productivity, innovation and reduce management layers.  During that period I had the pleasure and adventure of developing and deploying over 200 such teams in a variety of clients.  The results were staggeringly positive.  Since that time talk of empowerment has tailed off quite a bit.  Very few clients have undertaken the task of truly empowering their organizations to do great things.  In fact, recent developments have highlighted the bloated management layers that evolved since.  Many of the RIF victims over the past few months have been to thin the management layers.

I’m initiating the “Empower Now” campaign.  Just to remind us all that the magic behind true empowerment comes from this little equation, for the quantitiative among us, from Fisher E=f(A,R,I,A) where empowerment is a function of Authority, Resources, Information and Accountability.  Where any of the variables equate to Zero there is no empowerment.  As layers of managment grow possession of authority and accountability move to a single leader away from the team. It is clear that to justify 8 or 10 layer deep organizations, all the rage these days, many executives have built an environment where team members feel far less empowered to impact.

Today’s renewal environment offers a wonderful opportunity to invigorate through empowerment.  Push innovation and change through the active and overt involvement of every team member.  Remove barriers and allow productivity to flourish.  Arguing that single leader working groups make sense today is short sighted.  Information is readily available, simple to share and act on.  Resources are scarce but exist in the spirit of the team.  Layers are trimmed to open doors for authority and accountability. 

If there’s any doubt of the power that self directed work environments generate just visit the story of Semco Brazil.  Semco Brazil transitioned to a shared leaderhsip, empowerment culture to meet the demands of a near-death economic crisis and never looked back.  Employees make their own schedules, set their own salaries, senior leaders swap top job roles every six months. 

Empower NOW!!!

April 24, 2009 Posted by | Thinking About Associates | Leave a comment

Taxes, Change and Customer Engagement

Walking through a downpour in Washington, D.C. on tax day accross from the White House I ran into a Tea Party in progress.  Not your run of the mill tea party but a group of a few hundred of my fellow citizens exclaiming their displeasure with the present state of their tax bills.  How cool was that?  After I dried off in my client’s warm digs the thought came to me about the relationship between taxes, change and engaging your customers. 

With over 500 of these tax day tea parties taking place all over the U.S. clearly our elected officials have implemented their change program at pace that has truly put their customers (us)  in a state of shocked disbelief.  Spewing trillions of dollars out the top of the treasury building like so many pieces of confetti has gotten citizens a little unnerved.  In the world of managing change leadership has made some serious mistakes that would instantly derail any corporate change program. 

Key Mistakes:

1. No clear awareness of the stakeholders readiness for change

2. Poorly designed and executed communication program.

3. Weak case for change (over 50% of Americans didn’t agree to bailing out anything let along every bank and open hand)

4. No clear vision of the future to gain commitment to the change program.

With all these holes in a strategic change program it certainly wouldn’t have even left the chocks at any of my clients let alone be in full swing.  The result of a poorly managed strategic change is rapidly weakening commitment to the future state.  Guess what? Commitment is flagging.

In this unique case study key stakeholders are also customers.  In developing advocacy with a customer it’s critical to truly understand and analyze the practical and emotional needs required to deliver a WOW experience.  As Billy Mays would say ” Where’s the WOW!”   Government’s customers are far less than delighted by the present state of leadership leading to what we call in the contact center world “abandonment”.  Not good.  Even worst when the alienation occurs in your most valuable customers, those earning over $250,000 annually. OUCH!  How many business leaders would tolerate that behavior in their organization? Not a single CEO I’ve ever met.

Often the Change Dudes are called into strategic change initiatives when they reach the state described above.  Time to get back to basics and accomplish the spade work that wasn’t done before the change kicked off.  If the Obama administration reached out to me as a highly experienced change dude what advise would I provide?   Hmmmm….

5 Point Plan to Enhance Commitment to the US Government Strategic Change Plan

1. Develop and articulate a clear vision for the future state, specifics about what the future will look like and feel like 1, 3 and 5 years out.

2. Complete a change readiness assessment for ALL key stakeholder/customer groups to clearly identify the commitment levels of each unique group of stakeholders/customers

3. Focus commitment building efforts on the groups that need it the most, asking for feedback, acting on the feedback and enrolling support.

4. Develop and communicate a solid, bulletproof business case for the changes at hand, the exisitng case is replete with holes.

5. Make local leadership responsible and accountable for ensuring all points of view are heard, addressed and provided to senior leadership in a timely, unfiltered way.

Sounds a lot like a change leadership program with a sprinkling of customer engagement. 

Change is fabulous when the end state is clear and renews the spirit of as many as possible.  Change fails when a small group forces their vision on everyone.

April 18, 2009 Posted by | Thinking About Change, Thinking About Customers | 2 Comments

Implement Change Now!

My colleagues at Endeavor Management have joined forces with a talented group of change experts from Holland and Davis. Our merging offers my clients access to over 40 years of client experiences with 2000 plus clients. We are incredibly excited about the opportunity to share ideas and expereinces together to offer the marketplace leading edge consulting.
Check ’em out at http://www.implementchangenow.com, I know you’ll be enriched by the experience.

April 10, 2009 Posted by | Uncategorized | | Leave a comment

Pulse Your Staff…Now

When was the last time you took the pulse of your employees?  Most businesses accomplish the obligatory annual employee climate survey to get a view of how the organization is meeting the needs of its most valuable assets, people.  If this has happened in your world and it was pre-November 2008 go ahead and throw it in the trash.  Employee’s needs have swung dramatically in the past 6 months from needing a high level of self actualization to needing consistent cash flow and the assurance a job will be there in the next few weeks.

As Q1 financial results hit the street and business leaders begin to reach back into the old cost cutting bag take the time to pulse your employee base before hitting the eject button on more assets.  Ask the right questions and you may find that the cost savings from adding to the unemployment totals may be jeopardizing your future.  Below is an excerpt from a strategic communication that recently emerged at an organization, tell me how you feel after reading the list:

Short-term actions effective immediately

  1. All discretionary travel is suspended.  Travel required by your job obviously should continue.
  2. Out of cycle wage increases are suspended with the exception of those positions that are on an approved, step-wage increase schedule (e.g., actuarial and customer service).
  3. Company provided meals are only approved for on-site meetings that run through lunch or dinner.
  4. Professional services and consulting engagements in excess of $100kmust be preapproved by the EC (process to be determined).

 Long-term actions effective immediately

  1. Replacement of Your Great Cards with non-monetary recognition greetings.  What employees tell us they value is the recognition more so than the $25 gift card.  So, we are retaining the emphasis on thanking each other and dropping the nominal gift amount in this program. (More details to follow.)
  2. Elimination of the Employment Anniversary Gift Program effective May 31.  We continue to believe that employee recognition is important.  We are developing tools for managers to recognize milestone anniversaries and other significant events.
  3. Competitive bidding for all RFPs will be standard (procurement has this underway already).
  4. Paper, color-copy & ink reduction program will be created (procurement to provide details).
  5. Office supply procurement governance program will begin (procurement to provide details).

Notice the justification that providing employees a token $25 gift card really isn’t what they want, it’s the recognition that’s important.  HA!  true but not really true.  People desire to be recognized that’s true, people also enjoy getting a little token, so let’s pull that out and save a few beans.  What’s the true impact of suspending the annivesary gift program?  Clearly a few more beans will be saved.  But what is the exposure this company now has to a reduction in productivity while everyone mocks the executive suite for being foolishly frugal.  How about asking your most valuable assets for feedback on what they’d be willing to do differently to put a few extra coins in the shareholder’s hands?  They probably will come up with ideas that will be both productive and provide savings.

 

Executives often come down with a case of RLD (Reduced Listening Disorder) when financials get a little iffy.  TIme to take a look at what really matters to your future through the eyes of the assets that serve your customers everyday. 

 

If you haven’t taken a quantitative pulse of employees in the last 60 days spend the money being saved on recruiting costs and DO IT… Just DO IT and take action on what you hear.

 

 

April 8, 2009 Posted by | Thinking About Associates | 1 Comment

Be your customer…Be the best

Before Saturday’s NCAA semi-final in downtown Detroit a young student-athlete playing for Michigan State who’s home town is Sterling Heights, Michigan made a slight change to his introductory bio.  He changed his hometown to DETROIT.  Kalin Lucas understood that the fans in Ford Field that night needed to hear their town associated with a member of the Spartan team.  HE GETS IT! 

Customer service training most often focuses on presenting the image and brand of the company service represents.  Not really the wrong thing to do as long as the customer also works for the company.  But in the case that your customers typically are not also employees it’s critically important…to be the customer.   Being the customer means hearing the person asking for assistance.  Hearing the tone of the their voice, the style of their communication, the severity of their concern and taking a moment to determine the best way to interact. 

Listenting for key words in the early stage of a conversation with a customer helps the service provider quickly determine the preferred communication style of that partular customer.  Simple techniques of using those key words and tone can quickly allow a service provider to delight the customer.  Basic Jungian profiles to determine if the customer is a Director, Analytical, Socializer or Amiable.  Once a provider makes this determination speaking the language of the customer is a breeze.

  • DIRECTOR: Pleasant tone, business-like and confident with normal volume a relatively quick pace. (Think CEO)
  • SOCIALIZER: Friendly, enthusiastic tone with an upbeat pace at a loud volume.  (Think your favorite Uncle)
  • AMIABLE: Understated, friendly tone with a rather slow pace and light volume. (Think librarian)
  • ANALYICAL: Serious, moderate volume, moderate pace to ensure understanding. (Think CPA)

Responding to each communication style in a way that the customer relates to opens the door for understanding and exceeding expectations.

April 7, 2009 Posted by | Thinking About Customers | Leave a comment

Business: Art or Science

Ever since my first days of  joining the community of business leaders it has occured to me that the act of generating profit from a product or service wasn’t really something you get a degree in.  Good business is done by creative people that hit a nerve with a market.  Who would have thought that rocks could be considered pets?  Where in the Harvard Business School curriculum is the course that helps neophytes to business learn the art of schmoozing?  The whole notion that charts, graphs and numbers make a business run is ludicrous.  In my experience it’s exactly the opposite.  Finance is sludge that slows down the engine.  Scientific business destroys the hearts and minds of everyone involved in the endeavor.

To validate my claim that good business is a product of great creativity and lots of luck is a recent study highlighted in the April 2009 HBR by a couple of Deloitte Consulting guys and a prof from the University of Texas.  You can read the article but in short they evaluated companies from 1966 through 2006 finding that of the 287 alleged high-performers only one in four, that’s right 25% of the group had “remarkable” characteristics.  Hence, the conclusion is that you can do everything right, according to the rules of scientific business and fall flat or just do OK and hit the market right and be a STAR. 

Aha!  My Five Rules for Being a Successful Business:

1. Have an idea that you love

2. Put the idea on the street and see what happens

3. Keep changing the idea until someone buys a lot of it

4. Take really good care of the people that make your idea work and the people that buy it

5. Ensure no finance executive achieves greater status in the org chart than a staff accountant, if you need real finance help buy it by the hour, you get better ideas.

It may seem a simple way to think about business.  The reality is that perserverance, integrity, creatitivity and old fashioned courage make a business thrive, the rest is window dressing.  Much of the consulting I’ve done over the years has been focused on assisting executive teams get back to basics.  Which in large part requires them to put down the daily spreadsheets and pick up the customer satisfaction data.  To move their eyes off the numbers and onto their staff. 

People are the core of business and trade.  Numbers are the by-product.  Of the many highly successful businesses I’ve been fortunate enough to have as clients make money in-spite of management not because of it.  The day-to-day work of creating, manufacturing, delivering and servicing are accomplished by heroic individuals that, more often than not, have to ignore management to keep customers happy and deliver on the brand promise.

Imagine for a moment that every C-Level executive had to service at least one customer or account every day, what a very different place most businesses would be.

April 2, 2009 Posted by | Thinking About Customers | Leave a comment

My Flying Office

Unreal. I’m presently 33,000 feet aboove Alberquerque on my wy to Washington D.C. fro L.A. and working on the internet. This is incredible. Virgin America has made this trip not only comfortable but also productive. Not wasting any time mindlessly watching some heavily edited movie today. This is just cool.
The bad news is that I can’t hide. Being connected while flying clearly has its pros and cons but today I needed to get some work done and by getting it done and emailed out will save my NCAA Tourney viewing tonight.

March 26, 2009 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Talent Pool – Frozen Solid

I was out with a client last week and we discussing their recent Reduction in Force (RIF) and one executive mentioned that in the next few months they would really need to redesign process to deal with the changes forced by the RIF.  AHA!  Someone gets it.

Being a loyal HBR subscriber I get access to what’s called “The Daily Stat”  facts and figures to stimulate thought and action.  I highly recommend you subscribe to this daily feed.  Last week this interesting piece of data arrived courtesy of a study from Watson Wyatt: 52% of 245 large U.S. employers surveyed in February have already conducted layoffs and 56% have instituted hiring freezes, up from 39%  and 47% respectively in December.  The good news? The percentages of companies still planning layoffs and hiring freezes have dropped almost as sharply.  13% of those surveyed said they expected layoffs compared to 23% two months earlier. 

The absolutely numbing surprise in these numbers is that 100% of the companies surveyed took a step, or two, to freeze their talent.  Like an old cops and robber flick – “freeze or we’ll shoot”.  Step 1 – executives freeze the circulation and development of talent.  Step 2- talent freezes solidly in place.  Step 3 – employees and customers stand around waiting for the spring thaw.  Step 4 – costs, revenues and value freeze. 

Clearly the business community was forced to take actions based on the reset button that was pushed in late ’08.  Talent is the most expensive and easiest lever. Voila – layoffs to the max.  I have the most severe reaction to slamming down the talent lever in response to a downturn without spending a little time evaluating the potential exposure.  Many companies did not take that step.  In most of my conversations with clients I’m hearing that the highest compensated staff are the hardest hit by this wave of talent cutting.  High paid talent is typically in place as a result filling a real need with strangely enough…high quality talent.  The end result of all this is that 100% of the companies surveyed have probably reduced not only their cost base but also their value base.  Lower quality talent delivering lower value to customers and hence the shareholder.

3 Tips on Protecting the Pool

  1. Care must be taken in the short term to ensure that the strong talent left in place is provided the opportunity to grow, contribute and feel respected. 
  2. Ensure that employees feel commited and secure to reduce the effect that weak employee engagement has on your customers and their confidence in the organization’s ability to deliver on the brand promise. 
  3. Use this time to challenge staff and expand their contributions in ways that lever forward the organization and themselves in tandem.

March 23, 2009 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

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