Close encounters of the third kind

Words: 311
Reading Time: 1 minute 2 seconds

What is it that brings out the volunteer in us?

There are 10 million openings for volunteers in what is known as the third sector. And the number of voluntary organizations in the UK is staggering. Such organizations are found across the spectrum from healthcare to book clubs, sports to crisis support.

Whatever help you need there is almost certainly a voluntary group out there somewhere that can help you. I even came across one that helped third sector organization tender for funding.

There are even clubs for particular makes of car peopled by enthusiasts, like the MG Owners Club.

Specific software – such as accounting packages – will often have users groups, some supported by the vendor, to provide mutual assistance and lobby for changes and improvements.

How cool is that; people getting together in organized groups to help you do a better job of marketing your product. It has to be a gathering of Raving Fans, or they would have already voted with their wallets and gone elsewhere.

When people get together in support of a cause they are expressing passion. They can also leave themselves open to accusations of merely serving their own ends, special pleading, nimbyism and being obsessed.

Well, sometimes that’s what it takes to change things and change starts with just one person being ready to step forward and be counted. That’s an energy and commitment that can be used in all aspects of life and business.

Business suggestions:
1) Encourage complaints – it shows people care;
2) Publish both good and back feedback on your website – it shows openness;
3) Form and support a user group – and then listen;
4) Don’t survey customers, it’s cold and impersonal – talk to them;
5) If there are voluntary groups around your industry, then join them and contribute to the energy;
6) If there are no voluntary groups, then start one.

Tomorrow is another country

Words: 217
Reading Time: 0 minute 43 seconds

All around me are preparations for the first England match in the World Cup. Whatever you may think of football – or of the England team - enormous enthusiasm is being exhibited nationwide. When we consider the record of the England team delivering against such expectations, I begin to wonder why such raving fans exist.

I believe the most likely explanation is that – once again – they have been sold, not the reality of past results, but the dream of future glory. This is not the past all-over-again; this is new territory, the dynamics are different; the possibility exists. It is hope-against-hope time and an excuse, among some, for a party.

And then there is the loyal cognoscenti who would enthuse whatever the circumstances – either for football in general, or for the England team in particular – although they are probably a minority.

What are the implications for business?

I would suggest the following lessons:
1) Don’t ignore your loyal fan base, they will keep you going through tough times;
2) Find out why your prospective supporters should care;
3) Sell the future for your customers, not the products' past;
4) Dreams overpower reality.

If business recognized and realized the way their potential supporters think, they would have many more enthusiastic aficionados and a very different tomorrow. Computer firm Apple is the classic example.

Rules and Reality

Words: 404 Reading time: 1 min 21 sec

This morning I made the mistake of stopping for fuel, southbound on the A1, at Astwick. Clearly, it was simply not convenient for the staff on duty at the time. Having replenished the tank I went to make my payment. I was the only customer. And I had to wait.

It was much more important that the surplus cash in the till be counted while I stood and watched. It was very important that the notes all be the same way round, that notes of the same denomination be kept together and that they all be rolled tightly into a small sheaf and secured with an elastic band. Then they had to be securely stored.

If you are losing the will to live at this point, so was I. But there I was, pinned in place by my obligation to pay for the fuel I had put into my tank, while any obligation they had to serve their customers was blithely ignored.

There was a second person behind the counter. It was apparently paramount that she restock the shelves for possible future customers, rather than serve those already present. I can see the short-term logic. I had already committed myself to my purchase. There was no practical way to avoid paying. Perhaps, in her mind, potential future revenue was more important than past revenue.

Next time an Area Manager drops by he or she will see a tidy, well-stocked, well-organized filling station. In all probability the folks behind the counter will get a pat on the back for a job well done – for following rules and regulations about what makes for a well-run site. What the Area Manager will not see is a forecourt crammed with raving fans. The sadness here is that those fans will not be missed, because the measures are all wrong.

Here we have an organization almost completely inner-focused. It has decided for itself what is good, what is acceptable, what people should want and it has put in all the procedures to deliver just that. Wonderful; meanwhile the world outside goes on.

It will come as no surprise to learn that the company in question is BP. The same BP that hired Transworld to do the drilling and still believes that is sufficient to excuse them from the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Average or Amazing?

Words: 971 Reading time: 3 minutes 14 seconds

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