Busy is Not Always Progress

By on January 21, 2015   /   Leadership  

busy-not-productive

What have you done today?

At the end of the day, can you honestly look back and confidently state 2 or 3 things that transformed your team, department, or organization?  Or, did you feel really busy, but in retrospect didn’t really accomplish much?

It’s easy to get caught up in busy.  Busy feels productive.  Checking email.  Meetings that spawn additional meetings without decisions being made.  Responding to the current crisis of the day.  Interruptions and phone calls.  Checking social media streams also fall into this bucket.

But busy doesn’t move your organization forward.

Two tips that have worked for me:

  1. Plan your day the night before
    • Be realistic.  A good rule of thumb is to only schedule 60% of your day as you never know what interruptions and unforeseen opportunities and problems will occur.
    • Prioritize your lists with the biggest impact to you and your organization.  Focus attention where it matters most.
    • Planning earlier allows you to begin each day by completing priorities as opposed to trying to plan during daily distractions.
    • Your daily actions should move priorities/projects forward even if only by a small drip.
    • Strive to complete each day’s priorities before the end of the day.  Have a finite completion date.
  2. Block out 90 minute chunks of time to plan
    • Shut off all distractions during this time.  No social media.  No phone.  No email.  Use this time to think and strategize.
    • In his book, The Effective Executive, well-known management guru Peter Drucker stated “even one quarter of the working day, if consolidated in large time units, is usually enough to get the important things done.”

Stop getting caught up in excuses.  Do the work that matters, don’t just look like you are.

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Why Do Our Clients Leave Us?

By on January 20, 2015   /   Customer Service  

Reasons-Why-Clients-Leave-Your-BusinessDuring a town hall meeting today, a senior leader told a couple hundred people that the biggest reason clients leave us is due to a change in their service rep.  I couldn’t disagree more.  That’s only painting half the picture, isn’t it?  Transitioning to a new representative is typically just a symptom, not the cause.

Over the course of an ideal and successful partnership, a service representative (regardless of what you call it – account manager, client success manager, service rep, solution center consultant) will have built a great relationship with the client.  Traits such as: understanding the client’s business, consulting on underutilized/unknown features that will grow their business, being proactive and working issues with urgency, and overcommunicating status, go a long way in building trust with the client.

You can easily tell when you’ve built that trust.  Adjectives will gush from the client (real life examples of recognition I’ve heard about my team):

  • …been the driving force
  • …speaks our language
  • …lucky to have her
  • …worth his weight in gold
  • …incredible at what she does
  • Wonderful, fantastic, amazing – I think you get the picture

So what happens when this person needs to be replaced?  There are a myriad reasons it might happen, ranging from a promotion, to maternity/paternity leave, or leaving the company for a new opportunity.  What’s the client’s perspective?  Put yourself in their shoes.  We just had this amazing partner … and now you’re giving me an unknown.  Will s/he ‘get’ us?  Will they be able to step in immediately with no service quality drop-off?

Let’s think through some hypotheticals:

  1. You soft transition to the new rep.  The trusted outgoing rep doesn’t leave right away but allows the new rep to burn-in slowly and build rapport before an official departure date or a soft fade into the background.
  2. A hard cut over to the new rep.  The new rep doesn’t know the status of the account, feels ‘green’ (a lack of training), doesn’t resolve issues in a timely fashion, etc.

In both situations, you’re putting a new rep on the account.

Back to our town hall meeting earlier today.  Based on his synopsis, you’d assume the client would be looking to terminate the relationship in both instances.  That’s obviously not the case.  In scenario #1, while I may miss my old rep, I feel like I’m in good hands.  In scenario #2, I feel like you don’t care about me, and yes, if the situation doesn’t get addressed soon, I may start looking for a new vendor.  The issue here isn’t necessarily transitioning to a new rep but a lack of adequate training and preparation.  A symptom not a cause.

There’s also the negative situation where a rep is being replaced due to performance issues.  However, if a client is leaving based on this experience, ask yourself why you didn’t know about it sooner and/or why you didn’t do enough about it.  As a service leader, you need to have a firmer pulse on the satisfaction of your clients.  Once again, transitioning to a new rep is a symptom, not cause.

You aren’t always afforded the luxury of lead time when talent is going to leave your organization (exactly why you need to invest and develop in these high performers).  But a change of rep doesn’t spell doom.  Plan ahead and think through what you need to do to maintain the high expectation of service quality and excellence.

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I’m Going To…

By on January 19, 2015   /   Initiative  

Excuses.  I had so many of them.

A few years ago, I told myself that I was going to start a blog.  So, I bought a theme, got everything setup, and then proceeded to let it sit on the shelf collecting dust.  Why?  Because I didn’t have a logo.  Something that seems so insignificant now (does anyone really care about a blogger’s logo?) became a major impediment.  Between work and family life, I didn’t have time to put it together, or so I said.  Or, when I finally did have time, I didn’t like what I put together.  Producing work for yourself is somewhat similar to dating.  You could never find the perfect mate for yourself yet had no problem advising or setting up your best friend.  In the end, the blog was never started.

One of my other dreams was to start a business.  A couple of buddies and I brainstormed some ideas at work, but again, there were always excuses.  Either we couldn’t think of any good ideas, couldn’t figure out a way to make money, or our days jobs got in the way of putting in the hours on a side project.  It was always some excuse.  In the end, the business was never started.

For many of us, we live in our comfort zone, doing the same thing every day yet expecting a different result.

For me, this year will be different.  No, this isn’t just another New Year’s resolution.  While I practice the skills of being a Linchpin at work, I don’t hold myself accountable to ship in my side projects.  I’m ready to start.  And repeat.  To move the needle from ‘wantrepreneur’ to ‘entrepreneur.’

Seth Godin, one of my favorite authors (including the aforementioned Linchpin) and blogger, recently published his most recent book, What To Do When It’s Your Turn (and it’s always your turn).  In his usual style, Godin challenges you to do work that matters, and race to the top instead of the bottom.  Godin’s Special Projects Lead, Winnie Kao, decided to use her failed daily blog post as a means to rally together and practice shipping together.  Daily.  The challenge involves blogging daily for 7 days in a row.

Why am I participating?  There is nothing more amazing than a community of like-minded people.  To meet, connect, and share.  To push each other to ship.  As Godin wrote, “people like us do stuff like this.”  Care to join us?

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How Long to Form a New Habit?

By on January 18, 2015   /   Initiative  

resolution-fail-1Happy New Year!  Streamers!  Parade!  Ball Dropping!  Expensive tickets to a party where the line to the bar is so deep you only get 1 drink and everyone leaves by 12:08!

…Wait, what’s that you say?  It’s NOT New Years?  It’s already past the middle of January?  OK – let’s check in on all those resolutions you said were so important just a couple of weeks ago.  How are you doing?

Approximately one-third of people will break their New Year’s resolutions within the first 30 days.

If you’re still going, keep up the great work!  It typically takes about 2 months for a new habit to form.  This study, published in the European Journal of Social Psychology in 2010, shows that people took anywhere from 18 to 254 days (average 66 days) for their new habit to become automatic, mostly depending on the person and habit.  No wonder it’s not easy!

If you’ve already broken your resolution, don’t despair.  Just get back on the horse.  Why not pretend that today is New Years Eve?  You don’t have to wait for an artificially made up day to begin forming a new habit.  So break out those streamers and celebrate!

3…  2…  1… start again!

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I Don’t Have Any Good Ideas!

By on January 17, 2015   /   Ideas  

ideaI’ve always wanted to start my own business.  The problem?  I couldn’t think of any good ideas (or so I told myself).  I chalked it up to the fact that I was the “Operations Guy”, able to take someone else’s idea, and build and scale it to profitability, as opposed to the “Idea Guy,” the person who can think of a ton of ideas but can’t execute on them.

I continued to press on and stressed over finding that perfect idea that never popped into my brain.

I found I wasn’t alone.  Many other people are in the same boat.  So, are we Ops guys destined to always be the #2 to the visionary?

Not so fast.  James Altucher argues we all have the capability to generate ideas.  He calls it the idea muscle.  Similar to a muscle that atrophies over time without use, so does the idea muscle.  His premise?  The more you exercise the idea muscle, the more ideas will flow on a daily basis.  In short, write down 10 ideas a day, every day, for 6 months.  Don’t worry if they are good or bad.  As a result, you’ll find yourself continually coming up with more ideas, seemingly out of nowhere.

Try it.  You’ll be surprised to find it works.  While I haven’t done Altucher’s method yet, I can see it working on a smaller scale.  I’ve only been blogging for a couple weeks and it seems like every day I think of a couple new ideas to add to my notepad.  The more you use it, the more ideas will come.

Want to join me in thinking of 10 ideas a day for the next 6 months?  Altucher claims once you’re done it will feel like you have a super power.  Sounds exciting.  Who knows, maybe I’ll become the “idea guy.”  Can’t wait to find out.

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