Knowing What You Want

Words: 1,061 Reading time: 3 minutes 32 seconds

Kelly was like a lot of teenagers; poised on the threshold of her future, she couldn’t decide. With so many opportunities open to her, how was she to know which one was the right one? Some of her teachers advised her to seek out more information. It didn’t help her. It multiplied her options without suggesting what her direction might be. Where was she to go from here?

You might expect me to recommend using a coach at this point, but where Kelly was concerned, I hesitated. When it comes to goal-setting most coaches conduct a mental version of the three-card trick. And their sleight of hand starts with the very first words out of their mouths – decide on your goal.

They have used that “D” word - decide. Kelly could now wait with baited breathe for all to be revealed. Alas, she would wait in vain. Nothing more is ever said about deciding. That particular stumbling block is deftly avoided as they move on to explaining how the decision should be worded to best effect; securing necessary resources; identifying obstacles; systemizing effort and … whoa!

The Starting Point
Let’s go back. Tell us about the start. How do we decide? What is it that tells us when we know what we want? Isn’t this is the key to the whole exercise?

If what we decide is decided very well, then the rest is merely mechanism for the most part. If we can decide powerfully, then the force will be with us…to coin a phrase.

When we are asked to name what we want, given a few minutes, most of us can come up with a list. Some of the items will be banal, some wild, some wonderful, some small and personal, some immense and municipal. If given more time we could even extend the list. But, out of all the things listed, how do we decide?

The Should-y Life
Part of the difficulty we face may be because, if we think about it, we rarely ask for what we want. Instead we live a life based on “should” and the “should” is bequeathed to us by others – I should exercise more, I should get a qualification, I should own a bigger house, I should get a better job, I should work fewer hours.

Getting from our shoulds to our authentic wants can be a problem. Recognizing that to be happy, we must live the life that we truly want to live, and that we are the only one who can truly determine what is right, doesn’t really help. How do we know what that is?

Even with an extensive list we may still not know what we want. Perhaps we don’t know all the options and what implications each might hold. Selecting just one want may exclude the possibility of fulfilling some other want, since they could be mutually exclusive.

Like buses, our wants often come in fleets. A person having just a single want is rare. Such a person may not exist at all. So, if we end up with conflicting wants – as seems likely – the question of how we know which one to pick stays with us.

What About Values?
One hypothesis is that values have great strength in determining human goal direction. Through our values we perceive important truths about life. These ideals are then reinforced by our emotions and feelings, and those sentiments create a vital passion that we hope to realize in our lives.

Some great human values include things like tolerance, openness, respect for the individual, and teamwork, which derive in part from some of the higher spiritual values like love, beauty, and truth. At certain points, the human and spiritual values come together in concepts such as selflessness, self-givingness, and gratitude

S.H.Schwartz carried out some extensive research and extracted six “universal” moral values, trustworthiness; respect; responsibility; fairness; caring; and citizenship.

However, I am not convinced that this helps people like Kelly a great deal.

A number of our wants may serve the same value – so how do we choose between them?

And any one of our wants may serve one or more of our values – so how does that help us know what we really want?

And should our wants cause some universal values to compete, how are we to rank them?

Hedonism
Steve Pavlina, often a source of inspiration, advises, “Treat goal-setting as a way to enhance your present reality, not as a way to control the future. Stay in the present and consider how this goal can improve the quality of your life right now. Not a year from now. Not five years from now. Not even tomorrow. Right now this very minute. Does it give you hope? Does it inspire you? Does it promise solutions to some current problems?”

As seductive as this might sound at first glance, all Steve has done is shift the timeframe. The questions raised earlier about mutually exclusive wants, conflicting wants and competing wants still remain.

Confession Time
Kelly is a person much like the rest of us. Most of us don’t know what we want. We only know what we don’t want, so we spend all our time moving away. And not knowing which path best fits our appetites, abilities, skills and personality doesn’t matter, because away is in any direction from the point of departure.

Once we are in motion, regardless of the drive, our perspectives will change. Whatever we start out wanting, or not wanting, may appear more or less attractive depending on where our journey has taken us.

Not knowing is OK. Pushing yourself to decide more quickly, more rationally, more firmly will result in beating yourself up to no good purpose.

In our task- and success-driven world, much is written about what people need to do and think, but very little about how they ought to be. To be truly fulfilled Kelly first needs to understand herself. Only when she does will she be able to follow Georgia Anne Geyer advice which is, “Follow what you love. Don’t deign to ask what “they” are looking for out there. Ask what you have inside. Follow not your interests, which change, but what you are and what you love…”

And even when you are sure you know what you want, you will still have no idea of what to cook for dinner.

Shoes from a Sweet Shop

Words: 736 Reading time: 2 minutes 27 seconds

“Why can’t we just give the customer what he wants and needs and stop worrying about our own systems and processes?”

You may be familiar with this recent gripe I heard from a business trainer. It’s not uncommon from people who engage directly with clients when their own grand schemes seem to be going awry. And it does seem to pick up on common themes of listening and customer service.

How well does it work in practice?

At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, just giving the customer what he wants and needs is a process in itself, if that is how the business decides to operate.

A process is “a sequence of interdependent and linked procedures which, at every stage, consume one or more resources (employee time, energy, machines, money) to convert inputs (data, material, parts, etc.) into outputs. These outputs then serve as inputs for the next stage until a known goal or end result is reached.” [businessdictionary.com]

Whereas a system consists of elements which continually influence one another (directly or indirectly) in order to achieve the common purpose the 'goal' of the system. All systems have (a) inputs, outputs, and feedback mechanisms. Systems underlie every phenomenon, and are everywhere one looks for them. [businessdictionary.com]

So, really, the call is not to abandon systems and processes, merely to operate different ones that are seen as better serving this advocate; whether such a change would better serve the business as a whole is an entirely different question.

One of the extreme models of customer service, and a very successful one, is Nordstrom. For those that don’t know, Nordstrom’s is a chain of department stores in the USA. At the end of 2000 they had 77 full-line stores and 24 clearance stores in 25 states, generated annual sales of almost $5 billion and boasted a sales-per-square-foot of $400, which is almost double the industry average.

A central plank in the service ethic that underpins Nordstrom is the single rule governing all employee actions:

“Use your good judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules.”

That’s interesting. All it calls for is good judgment, not an unconditional abdication to whatever the customer demands. For example, in the early 1990s the residents of Santa Clarita, Los Angeles expressed a strong desire to have a Nordstrom store in their community, because of the improvement it would bring. At the time of writing, as far as I can tell, they are still waiting.

Even Nordstrom sets boundaries.

Ryanair can be seen as being at the other end of the spectrum, yet it's a highly successful business. It got that way by deciding exactly what it wanted to do and sticking to it.

Ryanair aims to be a low cost airline, so it flies to low-cost airports which are in out-the-way places. If a Ryanair flight is diverted, perhaps due to bad weather, there will be no coach laid on at the alternate destination. Ryanair is a low-cost airline. Coaches are not part of the package.

Michael O'Leary, the Irish airline's boss, now wants to abolish the luggage check-in. He proposes that people carry their suitcases to the boarding steps, where staff will stick them in the hold. This would be unacceptable at BA. At Ryanair it’s expected.

On opening up new routes Michael O'Leary has said, “I don't give a toss where people want to go. I'm in the business of creating a market for people to go where they have never heard of.”

Ryanair – we do what we do.

So, just giving the customer what he wants and needs misunderstands what customer service is about. Certainly, one must listen to customers, but one must also learn. And part of that learning may be that what this particular person wants is not what this particular business does.

Others may do what they want a lot better. In that context good service would consist of steering the person in that direction. They were never your customer in the first place, because a customer is someone who pays you for what you do.

And as a business trainer my complainant should have understood this.

“Why can’t we just give the customer what he wants and needs and stop worrying about our own systems and processes?”

Let’s be charitable and put it down to frustration. The simple fact is, you can’t buy shoes from a sweet shop.