Don’t just stand there…move!

I was a part of a conversation between two different parties today, a corporate office and a local office, regarding technology at the local level. Local had a set of needs, and corporate had a plan. It went downhill from there.

Local asked for a simple automated order entry button for their website. Corporate explained the process involved in getting the button developed and the ultimate problems with the button request. Local asked for an online map so customers could easily find the branch offices. Corporate hastily shot down the idea, providing instead an explanation from the “corporate guidelines”. On and on this discussion went, with local requesting, corporate hedging and the conversation floundering. Finally, without a resolution to any of the requests, local gave a resigned sigh and a “sounds good to me” at the end of the conversation.

In almost any organization, local is the hub, the center of fulfillment to the organization’s purpose or its bread and butter. There is no need for a corporate accounting department if there is no revenue coming through the door. No need for regional administration if there are no schools to teach the kids. It is local whose head is on the chopping block if the site doesn’t perform.

So why the constant struggle of two differing views between corporate and local?

The further corporate gets from local, the greater the danger of falling into an echo-chamber. Corporate decisions, processes, strategies and activity become justified based on past action, “the way things have always been done”, not based on connection to local. Group think becomes a pervasive mindset at corporate, developing unquestioned activity that “sounds like a good idea”. Outcomes move further from local needs and closer to what corporate believes is necessary.

I’m sure you’ve seen some of the following examples play out in some form or fashion within your organization:

Local says:	Corporate responds with:	Instead of:
“This is what I need”	“But this (something different) is what’s best for you”	Listening to the group of workers closest to the customer.
“I need it now”	“Let me tell you where your request fits on the timeline…”	Putting yourself in the shoes of the local organization, feeling the hourly pressure, demands and urgency.
“My staff doesn’t understand the technology”	“It’s okay, just spend a few days [of productivity] going through this training” [and then another several months of going through the adjustment phase]. “You’ll get used to it”.	Building or purchasing an easy to use, intuitive system for end users that will enhance rather than detract from their productivity.
“Why do we have to keep manually reporting these numbers to you?”	“Because we said so” or “Because the CEO wants to see them”.	Building or purchasing a system that automates tracking and measurement, taking the burden off of local.
“Here are my concerns. What can we do about them?”	Nothing. Empty [demoralizing, deflating and disheartening] air.	Appeasing the worry, providing a listening ear and then making changes.

Corporate quicksand can swiftly suck a person into processes, paperwork, Gantt charts, timelines and scoping discussions that drown out the urgency and relevancy of local market requests. The echo-chamber confirms the actions and can put corporate on a trajectory of decision making with outcomes that make local frustrated, resigned and listless.

So, to all of the “corporates” out there, if you’re reading: listen first and second, and act third. Strive to see things from a local perspective. It’s okay to ask questions to understand their point of view.

The opening at the opposite end of this tunnel sure looks small from this vantage point, doesn’t it? Being this far away, it’s easy to lose perspective. But the minute you start walking towards the end, your perspective changes. Pretty soon, the opening becomes larger, more focused and more understandable. The closer you get to the opposite side, the farther you get from yours. And the closer you get to their side, the smaller your original perspective will seem.

Filed under: Myopia, Teamwork

Better Than the Current Reality

Do you ever wonder why you can’t get your audience to do what you ask them to do?

Yesterday, I saw a friend who was asking passerby’s to fill out a survey for her health clinic. For every survey that was returned, the clinic would receive an additional $93 of funding. The only problem was, not a lot of people were taking the time to answer the surveys. Many of those that graciously took a survey from her hands threw it in the first trash receptacle that was available.

So the health clinic revisited their idea. In hopes of better results on day two, the clinic put the following disclaimer on top of the survey:

STOP! Do Not Throw This Survey Away

Not surprisingly, the results on day two were the same. You probably know why, too. Even though the clinic modified their message, they did not change the fundamentals of their approach. The survey in its current state of promotion was only beneficial to one party in the transaction, the clinic. The audience perceived that the completed survey would do nothing for them.

If I were to envision this give and take relationship between asker and audience, it would be as a scale:

with one party on either side. Often times, the asking group asks for the audience to do something, and fails to communicate what that “something” will do for the audience. To the audience, the perception is that the scale is tipped in favor of the asker.

Here are three more examples of how this plays out in business:

• Marketers send emails to prospective and current customers in hopes that the customer or prospect will (1) open the email, and (2) better yet, complete the call to action in the message (buy the product, attend the event, read the article, etc.)
• A manager asks her employees to “work together as a team” for the utilitarian “good of the department” or company.
• A sales person asks one of his top customers to refer his company or product to her colleagues.

Do you see how action taken on these requests has tremendous benefit for the person doing the asking? But the audience being asked is left to wonder, “What’s in it for me?”

Your audience wants maximum benefit for minimum cost of time and/or effort. To get compliance from your audience, you’ve got to promise an outcome that is better than their current reality.

Take the little boy watching this survey petition unfold, as an example. His mother, also a nurse at the clinic, wanted to re-use the surveys that were thrown away. So she told her son that she would give him $5 if he dug through the recycle bin to find the unopened surveys. Was that tantalizing promise better than his current reality? You bet. The result? Last time I checked, he was head first in the bin, holding 15 surveys and digging for more.

So what else could the clinic have done to increase responses? Two of many very simple examples:

• Compensate respondents for time: Offer a choice of a $5 credit to the coffee shop next door or the bookstore for every completed survey. That’s a spending of less than 10% of the $93 the clinic would get in return, and they’ve more than doubled their response rate.
• Increase value and/or lower cost: Tell the audience “Every survey you fill out gets us $93 of funding, which means that the money we receive will help us stay open longer hours and on weekends, and lower the price you’ll pay for visits from $50 to $25”. Or something of that nature.

Promise ease, benefit, higher value or lower cost to your audience when you want them to do something for you. Whatever you do, promise and deliver something. Otherwise, you’re going to get little more than “no” for an answer.

Filed under: Management, Marketing

“Dam”med if you do: Tidal Waves and Chain Link Fences

Here is your challenge for the day: you know that a tidal wave is coming. You don’t want the water to disrupt your world. So you have an idea.

You’re going to put a fence that looks like this:

in front of the wave that looks like this:

Really?

Really.

Not very effective, right? The reality is that you can’t stop the wave from hitting. There is nothing you can do that will make that wave change its mind.

And yet, we see chain link fences hastily erected in front of tidal waves every day. In fact, this very act was embodied just last week. Not in the physical sense of steel vs. water, of course. In the allegorical push vs. pull, big-rusty-business-machine vs. organic-ecosystem-employee or customer, shouting vs. listening, controlling vs. multiplying sense. This is the battle between social media and the tight-fisted behemoths that want to regain their semblance of control in a changing world.

EMI Music learned this the hard way last week when they seized control of embedding indie-pop rock band OK Go’s music videos. In 2006, OK Go’s music video “Here It Goes Again” posted on YouTube received tens of millions of views, brought concert crowds to five continents for 700 shows and even propelled the band to win a Grammy. For the band, it was viral promotion at its finest. For the EMI Music, it was free advertising. And then big business got greedy. Record labels started making money on YouTube video views. But not on embedded views where videos were posted on blogs, in emails, on websites. So several weeks ago, EMI Music denied users to the right to embed Ok Go’s videos. The result? Views on Ok Go’s new video dropped 90% in one day, from 100,000 one day to 10,000 the next. The bigger impact? OK Go “peaced-out”, ditching EMI Music as their record label and starting one of their own.

Short-term, small picture, myopic mindsets can lead to a hasty attempt to seize control. Schools fear losing the attention of students so they ban social media in the classroom and across campus. Businesses fear losing productivity, so they censor social media in cubicles and meeting rooms.

The bottom line: you can’t control a force that is bigger than you. The driver of social media is the same driver of business: relationships. It’s a cumulative force that is bigger than any one person, and it is bigger than a business or any one person can control. You have to find a way to work with it, change with it, use it to your advantage.

So let’s try the question again. You know the tidal wave is coming. You don’t want the water to disrupt your world. So you have an idea. How about putting a fence like this:

 

in front of a wave that looks like this:

 

Okay, so it’s not a fence…it’s a dam. It’s also a better alternative. It’s a source to harness the power and create energy from the tidal wave of the changing environment. Rather than stopping it, embrace it. Work with it. Change with it.

Like Ben & Jerry’s. Their most recent Facebook post on the fan page earned 199 “likes” and 36 comments. The one before that received 746 “likes” and 145 comments from their 1.2 million fans. And Red Bull. Response to their most recent wall post garnered 605 “likes” and 62 comments from their more than 2.3 million fans. These businesses use social media not as another megaphone to shout boiler-plate, stiff and familiar messages to customers, but instead as an engaging environment, a figurative comfy leather couch on which to sit with customers or employees to listen, engage, break bread and interact.

Your audience no longer wants to be told. Period. They want you to listen. And if you don’t, there are millions out there who will.

When you face the onslaught of change, the tidal wave of social media, you’re going to have to change your defense, because the chain link fence is not going to work any longer.

Filed under: Management, Relationships, Uncategorized

The delicate balance: challenging yourself and others challenging you

I’ve always wrestled with a thought in business: whose responsibility is it if an employee fails because they were not challenged or coached enough? Is it the manager’s responsibility to make sure that the employee is challenged and coached, is it the employee’s responsibility, or is it a combination of both? At what point in the job role does the responsibility for challenge shift from the manager to the employee?

I visualize the orientation of workers (task versus strategic) in the firm on a horizontal hierarchical scale, with task oriented positions being on the far left end of the hierarchy and strategically oriented positions falling on the far right of the strategy. As a simple example, the secretarial position or mail clerk would fall on the far left, and the senior level manager or CEO would be on the far right. The horizontal hierarchy is in no way representative of importance to the firm, it is just a framework to use when visualizing task versus strategy oriented jobs.

The secretary’s tasks are purely instructional: keep our files orderly, answer the phones in three or fewer rings, set up as many appointments on next Tuesday as you possibly can. The senior manager’s tasks are more esoteric: introduce X product into the European market, develop one new product per year for this specific product line, increase brand recognition in rural markets. If a senior manager had to receive a task list every week in order to inform her of the expected objectives, it’s likely that she does not have the appropriate skills for the position. Conversely, if a manager expects a secretary to take a majority of the responsibility for the strategic goals of the company, the manager does not understand the role of the secretary.

At some point in the hierarchy, there starts to be a blend where positions resemble a blend of task-oriented and strategic objectives. Consider the sales representative role: maintain a list of customers, call on the customers, tell the customers about our product, convert customers. This job is a blend of both tactical and strategic objectives. The same with a marketing manager: keep reports of conversation with customers, send out weekly emails, create marketing messages.

Is it fair to argue that responsibility of challenge should lean more towards the strategic influencer? In other words, the person who is influencing the strategic role of the position (be it the manager for the secretary, or the senior manager for himself) is responsible for challenging and coaching themselves to grow and improve. Should it be the organization’s role to coach and challenge regardless of the task-orientation or the strategic orientation? Maybe it depends on your view of the firm: is the firm purely in place for profit, social responsibility, or some combination of the two? Does giving an employee a positively challenging work environment improve the success of a firm?

This may depend on company, industry or structure, or it may depend on the person. I’ll keep wrestling with this and add thoughts as experiences and ideas come to consciousness and to mind. Just food for thought, to whet your appetite with thoughts to consider as your work for, or manage employees within a firm.

Filed under: Career development, Challenge, Coaching