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Under the heading ‘Ordinary or Awesome’ I expressed the view that what is awesome and what is OK is firstly conveyed and then established partly by the customer. If we want awesome and we keep getting ordinary, then customers have to accept part of the blame.
But only part of the blame, because there are at least two parties to every transaction. In one context we are customers; in another context we are the providers. And in the many cases where we are providers, whether that is in a commercial setting or not, we too are in a position to be average or amazing. As someone wrote many centuries ago, “by their fruits you will know them”.
Few people set out to do a deliberately bad job. Even the apocryphal husband, who deliberately drops dishes as a ploy to escape doing the washing-up, is doing the best he can with the resources available to him – his vision of how the world should be.
In the context of employment many workers are made to feel they can go “only so far” in the job that they do. The organisational view is that the value of the transaction in question – or just the implicit gain to the company – allows for only so much resource, no more.
This can be traced back to management taking a short-term, transaction-by-transaction, view. In the face of a complaint and taking the short-term view, management weighs up the margin on that particular transaction and uses it as the limiting factor in determining how much more they are prepared to do to meet what the customer wants.
That would be fine if the transaction was totally divorced from all subsequent transactions, but it’s not. It’s either one of a stream of potential transactions stretching into the future – the so-called life-time value of the customer, or it contains the advocacy potential of a “raving fan” gained through amazing products and astounding service, even if it’s a one-time deal.
Management that ignores the wider setting of any transaction runs the risk of making the insignificant hugely significant by throwing away a large amount of future business for the sake of “a few dollars more” in the very short-run.
Either that or, they are on a personal ego trip with an unknowable cost.
Amazing helps deliver the future, because ordinary – and certainly less than ordinary – is no longer good enough.
Authors like Jeffrey Gitomer make the point that mere satisfaction is hardly going to light up someone’s life and get them talking about you. Satisfaction is when it’s just OK. Amazing is when it’s in a totally different league.
Do not measure customer satisfaction; it’s taking you in entirely the wrong direction.
And good doesn’t cut the mustard either. As Michael Bungay Stanier points out, many organizations are focused on delivering ‘good’’. And they want to sustain the way things are, so that there's minimum interruption to that ‘good’’.
But good gets in the way of GREAT. To stop at just good misses everything that flows from amazing and it short-changes both parties to the transaction. As Jim Collins found, great is a matter of conscious choice. It’s no coincidence that Good To Great companies first got the right people on the bus and the wrong people off.
If organisations wish to thrive then Presidents, Vice Presidents, Chairmen, Directors and Executives need to recognize that amazing products and astounding service are only delivered by people who are encouraged to exercise the necessary attitude.
Anyone can do it, given the right mindset and appropriate encouragement. As businesses we need to build a sense of pride and place the magnificent ahead of the merely measurable, because measurable places a huge roadblock in the way of being amazing.
This is why.
We are told that we get what we measure. And the unfortunate inference is that we get only what we measure. So, to get something we always have to be able to measure it. Right?
We know that isn’t true. Great art, of whatever hue, cannot be measured; yet it is still produced. Compassion cannot be quantified, yet it is poured out in huge abundance around the world. Not always, but more often and to a greater degree than one would suppose for something that no one has attempted to gauge.
Humour, ambition, grief – all these human qualities are not susceptible to measurement, but still they come forth. And so do their opposites like oppression, cruelty and neglect.
Being amazing, whether in production, in customer service or in life does not mean making a vast and overwhelming effort every minute of every day. Good grief, most of the averages we get are so poor that being even just 1% more remarkable will put you into the area of amazing.
To be amazing is not a call to abandon everything that you do and everything that you are. On the contrary, it a call to deliver your full potential, to be everything you can be, rather than what someone else would keep you from being or doing.
What can you do more of that makes a difference, shifts the balance, has an impact, moves minds, adds beauty, changes the status quo, creates something that’s worth creating, improves life, shows love, moves things forward, stops waste, starts a dialogue and engages people?
Jump right in. There are opportunities all around you and any one of these suggestions will start transforming the average ending into an amazing outcome.
Of course, from time to time the desire to be truly amazing, to settle for nothing less, will go against the flow. But where the broad river of humanity is going is not what we should be aiming at.
“The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
Under the heading ‘Ordinary or Awesome’ I expressed the view that what is awesome and what is OK is firstly conveyed and then established partly by the customer. If we want awesome and we keep getting ordinary, then customers have to accept part of the blame.
But only part of the blame, because there are at least two parties to every transaction. In one context we are customers; in another context we are the providers. And in the many cases where we are providers, whether that is in a commercial setting or not, we too are in a position to be average or amazing. As someone wrote many centuries ago, “by their fruits you will know them”.
Few people set out to do a deliberately bad job. Even the apocryphal husband, who deliberately drops dishes as a ploy to escape doing the washing-up, is doing the best he can with the resources available to him – his vision of how the world should be.
In the context of employment many workers are made to feel they can go “only so far” in the job that they do. The organisational view is that the value of the transaction in question – or just the implicit gain to the company – allows for only so much resource, no more.
This can be traced back to management taking a short-term, transaction-by-transaction, view. In the face of a complaint and taking the short-term view, management weighs up the margin on that particular transaction and uses it as the limiting factor in determining how much more they are prepared to do to meet what the customer wants.
That would be fine if the transaction was totally divorced from all subsequent transactions, but it’s not. It’s either one of a stream of potential transactions stretching into the future – the so-called life-time value of the customer, or it contains the advocacy potential of a “raving fan” gained through amazing products and astounding service, even if it’s a one-time deal.
Management that ignores the wider setting of any transaction runs the risk of making the insignificant hugely significant by throwing away a large amount of future business for the sake of “a few dollars more” in the very short-run.
Either that or, they are on a personal ego trip with an unknowable cost.
Amazing helps deliver the future, because ordinary – and certainly less than ordinary – is no longer good enough.
Authors like Jeffrey Gitomer make the point that mere satisfaction is hardly going to light up someone’s life and get them talking about you. Satisfaction is when it’s just OK. Amazing is when it’s in a totally different league.
Do not measure customer satisfaction; it’s taking you in entirely the wrong direction.
And good doesn’t cut the mustard either. As Michael Bungay Stanier points out, many organizations are focused on delivering ‘good’’. And they want to sustain the way things are, so that there's minimum interruption to that ‘good’’.
But good gets in the way of GREAT. To stop at just good misses everything that flows from amazing and it short-changes both parties to the transaction. As Jim Collins found, great is a matter of conscious choice. It’s no coincidence that Good To Great companies first got the right people on the bus and the wrong people off.
If organisations wish to thrive then Presidents, Vice Presidents, Chairmen, Directors and Executives need to recognize that amazing products and astounding service are only delivered by people who are encouraged to exercise the necessary attitude.
Anyone can do it, given the right mindset and appropriate encouragement. As businesses we need to build a sense of pride and place the magnificent ahead of the merely measurable, because measurable places a huge roadblock in the way of being amazing.
This is why.
We are told that we get what we measure. And the unfortunate inference is that we get only what we measure. So, to get something we always have to be able to measure it. Right?
We know that isn’t true. Great art, of whatever hue, cannot be measured; yet it is still produced. Compassion cannot be quantified, yet it is poured out in huge abundance around the world. Not always, but more often and to a greater degree than one would suppose for something that no one has attempted to gauge.
Humour, ambition, grief – all these human qualities are not susceptible to measurement, but still they come forth. And so do their opposites like oppression, cruelty and neglect.
Being amazing, whether in production, in customer service or in life does not mean making a vast and overwhelming effort every minute of every day. Good grief, most of the averages we get are so poor that being even just 1% more remarkable will put you into the area of amazing.
To be amazing is not a call to abandon everything that you do and everything that you are. On the contrary, it a call to deliver your full potential, to be everything you can be, rather than what someone else would keep you from being or doing.
What can you do more of that makes a difference, shifts the balance, has an impact, moves minds, adds beauty, changes the status quo, creates something that’s worth creating, improves life, shows love, moves things forward, stops waste, starts a dialogue and engages people?
Jump right in. There are opportunities all around you and any one of these suggestions will start transforming the average ending into an amazing outcome.
Of course, from time to time the desire to be truly amazing, to settle for nothing less, will go against the flow. But where the broad river of humanity is going is not what we should be aiming at.
“The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
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