Off the Shelf

The Power of Gathering Input

Yesterday, I had lunch with a friend of mine who is a consultant for a local technology firm. We’ve known each other for years and I always appreciate his insights and ideas. While he knows a lot about publishing and the marketplace, he’s not in the industry so he doesn’t have the normal biases or institutional memory. I came away from our time together inspired and much more informed than I was when we began an hour earlier.

I don’t know about you, but I have a small network of close friends who give me tremendous input. If you don’t have such a group, I’d highly recommend that you seek out people who are willing to just hang with you and talk about their market or ministry, what they are seeing as trends, how their organization is responding and what they think about your industry. It’s an invaluable way to get advice and input as often the best input comes from someone who brings to the table a totally different point of view or comes from a totally different place than you do.

The most successful leaders I’ve known feel comfortable asking for the input of others whenever they need it. They make no attempt to project an image of the all-knowing executive.

Why would you want to seek input from people outside your market or business?

• It’s the highest form of compliment. These are wonderful and knowledgeable people. By demonstrating that you think highly enough of someone to share your personal challenges or invite them into helping you solve problems is a way to express esteem to them.

• It allows for new perspectives. The outside people who regularly give me great input also bring different angles, different views and refreshing insights. I can then take their thoughts and use them to help my business or myself be better or create completely new paradigms.

• It gives me a new set of eyes. Unfortunately many times I miss the obvious because I’ve stared at it so long it’s become part of the scenery. Gathering outside input gives me fresh eyes.

• It gives me a new information set. We drown ourselves in data and information in our own markets and sometimes it’s good to hear new information from other areas that, when it’s all glued together, affect trends I’m seeing here.

I learned a long time ago that there are many people much brighter than me who can give me input and advice that cuts to the chase. 

Do you regularly hang out with people who can help stretch your thinking to new ideas and perspectives?

Sprintz Furniture – Lessons from Poor Customer Service

Over the last several days my wife and I have been underserved by a local furniture store. For context, we bought new furniture for our living/gathering room in June. Our daughter bought a new house and so we shipped all the furniture from that room to her. So since June this room has been empty or we sit on dining room chairs. In early July the furniture store informed us that our material was on back order and it would be a bit longer. No problem, because of my work I understand backorders from overseas textile plants.

Then the trouble began. We called the store and were informed that the fabric was in the US and the company that manufactured our new furniture (a U.S. company) had about a three to four week turnaround time. After that call came silence.  We had to continually be proactive and call the store. Our sales rep seemed to not have any details, the problem escalated to an Assistant Manager and finally after a lot of grief, multiple calls, angst and loss of patience, we’re getting half of our order today.

What can retailers and other organizations learn from this circumstance?

Communicate. When there is a problem with a customer it’s a good thing to keep them in the loop. Just a few proactive calls from our rep would not have solved the problems, but would have assured us that we had a partner in this. It’s not the customer’s job to seek updates and information.

Take responsibility. Customers look to the retailer to solve problems and be their trusted agent in the transaction. It doesn’t smooth any ruffled feathers for people to blame something or somebody that’s outside the loop and whom we, as customers, can’t contact directly. To play the blame game only makes the customer angrier.

Empower employees. Employees need to be empowered to make decisions that best serve the customer.  I have a friend who owns a software business. He has one customer service principle for his support team – “Take care of our customers.” That’s it. Each phone rep has the authority to do what it takes. Unfortunately in our circumstance we had to wait for the owner of the store to make some simple decisions. That wait was two days. When you empower your employees to serve, customers get quick answers that make them feel like you are part of the solution.

Make your initial offer a good offer. If you decide to do something to offset the customer’s bill or payment, make it something of value to the customer, not just something that is easy for you to deliver or perform. Look at the situation through the customer’s eyes and ask what is the right thing to do from their perspective. Don’t make it a negotiation. Do the right thing first.

Remember the customer. Retailers and others need to remember above all else that their logic is not necessarily the same as the customer’s logic. Customers have a special frame of reference that is unique to their specific needs or circumstances. They see service as a total experience, not an isolated activity. Good service is not about employees accomplishing tasks; it’s about the value provided to the customer.

Stores and organizations that truly serve their customers, like my friend’s software company, will find a way to be successful during both good and bad times. With all the competition out there the customer is king and companies with service policies and principles that don’t recognize that will unfortunately come in second.

Closing the GAP

There are several ways to keep effective employees motivated and growing. Marcus Buckingham has spent a number of years pointing us to maximizing one’s strengths and I heartily endorse (and personally try to use) his advice and concepts. There’s no doubt in my mind that they work.

There is another way and Ron Potter and I, in our book Trust Me, call it GAP. It stands for Growth Achievement Path. Ron lends a GAP story to the book about a mail clerk, buried in the bowels of a large corporation. The interesting thing about this employee was his natural affinity and love of computers but being in the mailroom, he wasn’t exposed to leaders who could help him. One day Ron brought up this person’s name to the company’s leadership team and armed with Ron’s recommendation they shifted this person’s responsibilities and created a path for him that led to not only personal satisfaction, but also a very positive outcome for the company.

I have personally used GAP and encourage you to try it. To begin, you need to be aware of your employee’s and their strengths, desires and dreams (even if the dreams are outside of your unit or organization).

Once you feel you have a good handle on these three elements, you can, along with the employee, build a “path” that will help them grow and develop.

Some other tips I’ve learned when using GAP:

 

• ·          Both you and the employee need to be brutally honest with each other. That takes a solid relationship and frequent conversations. If the employee wants to be a ballet dancer and they have two left feet, you need to guide them to a different place. Conversely, you need to be open to what the employee is saying and not be closed minded in your own prejudices and barriers. It’s a balance that takes time, trust and talking.
• ·         The path should contain some achievable milestones. This is not just a good way to measure progress, but it gives the employee a feeling of moving forward toward their dream.
• ·         You need to regularly meet. Don’t start strong and let this slide. Keep at it, stay persistent and make it a priority for both of you. Remain committed to the path.
• ·         Make changes if necessary. Sometimes the employee sees that their dream needs some tweaking, especially once they begin down the path. I’m not talking typical obstacles to achievement, I’m saying that sometimes a person begins to do the actual work of the dream and finds out that it’s not quite what they expected. In this case, keep talking and developing. Your goal is to develop and maximize talent, not just check off boxes.

GAP is a wonderful tool for both you and your employees. What tools or methods do you use to maximize your employees?