Tag: rants & raves

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Engagement

When Strategic Change is Designed to Disengage

After hearing from clients and colleagues undergoing organizational restructuring, I’m totally confounded by their descriptions of what’s happening. Managers are brought in from “corporate” or outside the organization and placed in positions to make changes without gathering any input from current managers who are running successful business units.

Yes, I get that company execs can change strategy and supporting structure(s) when and how they want to. It’s the processes they use that are most concerning – especially when they seem designed to disengage. Like changing job responsibilities with no consideration or input from the managers and employees in those roles. Or telling people they have to re-apply for their current jobs. While such an approach might be a way to eliminate under-performers, it’s insulting to those who perform at or above expected levels.

Executives who initiate strategic changes without engaging current managers in the process disrespect them by dismissing their institutional knowledge and experience working in their respective departments.

While organizational change isn’t easy. it doesn’t have to be made more painful by those in charge.

“The trick is to know what to change when. And to achieve that there is no substitute for a leadership with an intimate understanding of the organization working with a workforce that is respected and trusted.” Dr. Henry Mintzberg

 

 

 

 

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Engagement

Low Unemployment – What It Means for Employee Engagement

“Companies are in a talent war. It’s a race to get the best candidates quickly since unemployment rates are lower than they’ve been in years.”

“The days of employees being thankful just to have a job are over and likely will not return for a while. Instead, the onus is on employers to cultivate and appreciate talent.”

“With the labor market as tight as it is, employers would be wise to do everything in their power to retain exceptional employees while simultaneously recruiting strong candidates.”

Business media contain similar quotes on today’s low unemployment situation. As an employee engagement advocate, you’d think I’d be excited about the flurry of attention given to employee recruitment and retention. But I’m not.

Reactive engagement

In the current economy, company execs concerned with repositioning their employer brands to be more attractive for recruiting purposes and/or seeking to hold on to their employees have re-discovered employee engagement. “We need qualified employees who want to work here and not jump ship for other opportunities. So what can we do now to engage them given the tight labor market?”

Here’s what bothers me about this situational response. Reactive engagement isn’t sustainable — particularly when applied as a short-term solution by short-sighted executives. Because what happens when the economy cycles back to high unemployment? That’s when these same execs revert to treating their employees as commodities, and management’s message changes from “What can we do to keep you here?” to “You’re lucky to have a job!”

Engagement matters regardless of the unemployment situation

Even when unemployment rates go up, companies need to invest in employee engagement, development, and retention. Because high unemployment also means reduced consumer spending; i.e., when fewer people are working, they tend to spend less. So even though companies might enjoy a “buyers market” when it comes to employees, they have to work harder to compete for customers. And to effectively attract and retain customers, you need highly engaged employees.

“If your employees don’t feel valued, neither will your customers.”  Sybil F. Stershic

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Engagement

“Maniacal Operations” and Other Sad but True Tales

When it comes to management and organizational dysfunction, there’s little that surprises me anymore.

  • Asking a colleague about work, I got this description of the company’s new president: “I know all about his first marriage, his second marriage, his grandchildren, etc., but he doesn’t know anything about me. He dominates executive meetings with his talking but checks his cell phone when others are speaking.”
  • A participant in one of my recent workshops asked the group for ideas on how to help communicate the company’s top 20 strategic goals to employees.
  • A client told me she’s concerned about her daughter approaching job burnout. While the young woman loves her work, she’s trying to survive what she describes as a stressful environment of “maniacal operations.”

In an “ideal” world …

There’s so such thing. Here are more true office tales that may leave you shaking your head:

In the real world …

I’ve learned it’s healthier not to expend precious energy getting upset about such examples. It’s better to turn to people like Scott Adams (Dilbert creator), E. L. Kersten (Despair, Inc. founder), and Robert I. Sutton (author of The Asshole Survival Guide and The No Asshole Rule), who provide comic relief and guidance to help us cope with “maniacal operations” and other types of workplace absurdity.

 

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Customer service Marketing Training & Development

What Do You Notice About These Three Customer Service Stories?

In honor of National Customer Service Week (observed the first week in October), here are three amazing stories told by customers — all marketing professionals — who experienced and analyzed them. They represent different situations that share a common theme.

Customer experience #1:

“I walked into an Eckerd Drug Store to buy a sympathy card. Before the clerk even rang up the purchase, he took a silk rose from a display at the counter, presented it to me, and said, ‘I’m sorry for your loss. I hope this will cheer you up a little.'” Toby Bloomberg

Toby’s takeaway: “There were no dramatic gestures, no casts of thousands, no high cost involved. Simply an elegant approach to ‘service’ between two people. And when you get right down to basics, isn’t that what “legendary service” is all about — people who go the extra mile to connect to the customer?”

Customer experience #2:

“It was a Saturday around noon at the Hyatt Woodfield hotel in Chicago for an American Marketing Association chapter leadership meeting. Just as our people were sitting down to lunch, the first alarm went off. We were quickly hustled outside by the staff and stayed outdoors for the better part of an hour due to a water emergency.

“A couple of weddings were scheduled to take place at the hotel later that day. One of the brides arrived that morning and, not finding a closet hook high enough to hold her wedding gown off the floor, she hung it on a fire system water sprinkler. The weight eventually broke the sprinkler head, spewing rusty water all over the gown in her room and other rooms on the floor that were linked on that sprinkler water line. The water also leaked through to rooms below the bride’s floor. The hotel could have easily blamed the bride for her misfortune and the inconvenience caused to everyone else in the hotel. But instead they summoned a limousine, took the bride and her mother across to the Nordstrom’s at Woodfield Mall to buy a new dress.” Chris Bonney

Chris’s takeaway: “I don’t know if the hotel was insured for this kind of thing or not. But they knew that it was cheaper for the bride to get a new dress so that her wedding could proceed and worry about the details later. They recovered the situation without embarrassing the bride and her family.”

Customer experience #3:

“My husband and I were traveling to Boston to attend a conference for his work when I had a medical emergency on the plane. Upon landing at the airport, I was immediately taken off the plane in a special ambulance gurney and transported to the hospital. While filling out our medical forms in the ER, my husband and I suddenly looked at each other to ask, “What happened to our luggage?!” since we left the plane in such a hurry.

“While I was in surgery, my husband took a taxi to the conference hotel and explained our situation. The Marriott Copley Hotel front desk clerk called the airport to find and hold our luggage. The hotel also arranged for a staff member to drive my husband back to the airport to collect the luggage, drop him off at the hospital to be with me after surgery, and place our luggage in the hotel room for when my husband returned.” This is my customer service story.

Here’s my takeaway: “In our situation, we were guests who arrived at the hotel with a problem that had nothing to do with the hotel itself. Yet the front desk staff showed their compassion and concern by going the extra step take care of us.”

What these stories share

My colleagues and I had different customer experiences with a common theme: demonstrations of exemplary service by employees who were empathetic and responsive to their customers — all in situations where the service provider did nothing wrong. Nonetheless, front line employees went “above and beyond” to do everything right.

What’s equally impressive is that these experiences took place more than 25 years ago. Extraordinary customer service — good and bad — leaves a lasting impression.

Categories
Engagement

A Business Consultant’s Rant

I love working with my clients, and yet I get so frustrated sometimes — not at them, but for them. I get frustrated on their behalf because of the organizational absurdity they have to deal with. For example:

  • A management team focuses on improving employee and customer engagement despite inconsistent or no corporate support.
  • An executive director struggles to move forward with a board-approved strategic plan while lacking sufficient resources that include board member support. (The latter is well-meaning but complacent.)
  • A department head labors to accomplish departmental objectives with conflicting goals and multiple agendas as the top executive’s vision and those of the division heads exist on different planes.

These clients know what they need to do despite being hindered by misplaced priorities, misguided executives, and misaligned goals. So they persevere.

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Theodore Roosevelt.

I care about and admire my clients, and I’ll do my best to help them succeed no matter what – even when it’s being a sounding board for them.

Unfortunately, there’s no magic solution for organizational lunacy. I just wish I had a supply of silver bullets they could bite.

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Customer service Engagement Training & Development

Hey, Wells Fargo: You Should’ve Followed Aretha Franklin, Not Gordon Gekko

I’m saddened and shocked, but not surprised, about the recent Wells Fargo sales scandal that lead to bank employees opening bogus customer accounts in response to intense pressure to meet unrealistic and aggressive sales goals.

I was once a sales manager for a local bank. It was some 30 years ago when the banking industry was trying to build sales into its service culture. At the time most of our customer service reps (CSRs) were not comfortable with cross-selling. The attitude was, “If I was interested in sales, I would have gone into retail. I got into banking because I didn’t want to sell!”

Integrating sales in a service environment
Aware of this mindset, my bank was careful and deliberate about changing the culture. Our approach was sales was part of service and that “suggestive” and “consultative” selling provided a better customer experience than just being “order takers.” It wasn’t the customer’s job to know about all the products and services our bank offered; that was the CSR’s, teller’s and branch manager’s job. It was branch team members’ responsibility to educate customers about additional products/services that might better meet their needs for savings, credit, and convenience. We used extensive training and a formal incentive system to support branch sales efforts and reinforce this new service & sales culture.

What I remember most about that time was the role of respect in the sales process — respect for both our customers and employees. It was part of the CSR’s job to suggest additional services, and if the customer declined, that was OK. This was based on my issue with fast food’s “Would you like cheese with that?” approach. As a marketer, I understood that the counter person at MacDonald’s was trained to cross-sell cheese with its hamburgers. But as a consumer, I sometimes became annoyed because if I had wanted cheese on my hamburger, I would have asked for it! Understanding and respecting the customer’s needs took precedence over “sales for the sake of sales.” That was the service & sales culture my bank’s leadership supported.

Wells Fargo brand damage
My former boss in branch administration, who endured several bank mergers, used to joke that the operational metrics in the large banks were so extensive, they probably tracked how much toilet paper was used in the employee restrooms. That’s why I find it hard to believe that Wells Fargo management was unaware of what was happening. The banking giant’s meet-your-sales-goals-numbers-at-all-costs-if-you-want-to-continue-working-here culture created a lose-lose-lose situation for its customers, employees, and brand — the result of greed, not respect.

 

 

 

Categories
Engagement Training & Development

What’s the Matter with Management? It’s Not What You Think

Actually, the question should be “What’s the matter with managing?” as I’m hearing from more colleagues who tell me they still love their work, but they dislike the managing people part.

I shared my concern about this with Mary Theresa Taglang (MT), who has a background in HR and is now the Director of Lehigh University’s Master of Science in Management program. We talked about what MT called “the seismic economic shift that began with outsourcing and hit its zenith in 2008 when the economy soured and many experienced managers were let go and replaced with younger, cheaper and inexperienced managers focusing only on the bottom line.”

We also discussed:

  • the decline and continued lack of corporate America’s investment in management development that’s still considered “soft-skills” training
  • technology that allows for more communication and task efficiency that also results in unrealistic demands of being available to work 24/7
  • mixed generations who multi-task and communicate differently
  • the ongoing stress of changing priorities, budget challenges, and internal politics
  • the resulting frustration of experienced managers who are tired of it all and not yet able to retire.

We could spend hours lamenting what’s the matter with managing these days, but my concern is the message we’re sending to young professionals. How do we keep from discouraging prospective managers? Based on her overall career experience, MT was both candid and realistic in her response: “Suck it up or go out on your own. That’s the only way to be in control of your own destiny.”

Yes, people interested in management roles need go in with their eyes wide open. In addition, what else can be done to better prepare people for the workplace – in both managerial and non-managerial roles? Your thoughts, please.

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Engagement Training & Development

Best Lessons from Bad Bosses-Part 2

We all love great bosses and hate the bad ones. The only upside to a bad boss is what we learn from our experience working with that person: primarily what not to do and, occasionally, what to do.

Following up my previous post on lessons learned from bad bosses, here is more great advice shared by colleagues.

Understand Who’s Important

The best lesson I learned from a bad boss is — to kiss your subordinates’ butts. Put another way, be of service and work for YOUR TEAM instead of the other way around. You need your team to get things done. If you are there for them when they need you, they will be there for YOU. So, for example, if one of your team members needs an extra day off or a little resource boost on a project and you deliver, they are far more likely to help you when you need to pull together a presentation for YOUR boss.

A lot of bad bosses get it reversed. They are busy ingratiating themselves to THEIR boss and treating their staff like dirt. My favorite and best boss taught me this lesson in a big way. In some ways it felt like he worked for me. Whenever I needed resources or him to push something through the system, he was there. This was a huge help in my being successful. This also meant that when he came to my office on a Friday at 4:30 p.m. begging for help on his board presentation — you KNOW I was there, and happy to do it. — Ivana S. Taylor, Small Business Influencer, DIYMarketers.com
A Bad Boss Can Do Something Right

I learned that sometimes the rules need to be broken when something important needs to be done. Not unethically, but when a rule designed to solve one problem, creates a barrier to success, it can be the right decision to do the wrong thing.

We had a process whereby a certain form needed to be filled out. It was a form designed and created 40 year earlier by the founder when there was maybe 100 employees. We had over 2,000 at the time and the form was no longer needed. But no one wanted to stop using it because they feared the repurcussions. My bad boss simply stopped using the form. Two years later someone asked about the forms and he played stupid. We never had to do the form again. Nothing fell apart. Nothing stopped working. The world went on without it.

Lesson: The requirements of the past can stop you from creating a future. — Paul Hebert, consultant/speaker/writer for engagement, incentives and rewards

Don’t Ignore the Value of Engaged Employees

  1. Recognize the fundamental economics of having engaged employees, customers, channel partners, and communities, which is that: companies with highly engaged audiences relationships do better financially than the average company; relationships with customers and talent are a company’s biggest financial and brand equity asset; and disengagement has hard costs in terms of turnover, lower productivity, poor service, more accidents, less healthy people, and legal suits that can have a significant effect on the bottom line and brand equity.

  2. Empower and value people, rather than control them and treat them like statistics: people who feel empowered, act like owners and watch your back — people who feel controlled, act like slaves.

  3. Do as Tom Peters said:  “Manage by walking around.”  — Bruce Bolger, Managing Director, Enterprise Engagement Alliance

You Can’t Fake It + Other Important Lessons

  • Playing politics never pays — It’s shallow, transparent and short-sighted.  It may help you win the day, but it will lose you a ton of respect long-term with peers, superiors and subordinates.

  • Communicate clearly (not in code) — There’s no excuse for allowing ambiguity to cloud judgment, direction or execution. If your style of management is to expect your team to predict or guess what you mean and want, that’s terrible leadership. Not all news is good news, but people want clarity, not innuendos.

  • Invest time with your team — Absentee management never works. You can’t hide behind emails. And it’s never a good idea to look annoyed when one of your team members wants to see you or ask you a question. Successful management requires time, it requires an investment in spending time with your team to make them better, allow them to become more autonomous and productive. That just takes time, but it creates results, loyalty and longevity (for you and for them).

  • Superficial optics will backfire — This particular boss told us she wanted us to be at our desks as much as possible, so that people walking by would see how hard we are working. She literally said that to us. You can imagine what that did to her credibility.  — Matt Heinz, president, Heinz Marketing, Inc.

Special thanks to Ivana Taylor, Paul Hebert, Bruce Bolger, and Matt Heinz for sharing their lessons learned from bad bosses.

You’re invited to share
What lessons did you learn from your experience with a bad boss?

 

Categories
Engagement Training & Development

Best Lessons from Bad Bosses-Part 1

This post is inspired by Boss’s Day. I hope you’re fortunate to work with a really good boss. If not, take heart – there are valuable lessons you can learn from your experience.

I asked several colleagues to share their best lessons from bad bosses. Here are their horror stories and lessons learned.

It’s Just as Easy to Demoralize a Team as It is to Build Them Up

I had a boss who decided to change his Windows start-up theme to be Full Metal Jacket. On startup and shutdown, his computer would remind us that we were all equally worthless. After he quit, employees from around the company remarked how happy they were he was gone. The new manager removed all themes from his machine, and found more positive themes for his team to use on their computers. He also made a point of managing by walking around, and thanked his employees often for the effort they put in to make customers happy.

Both took the same amount of time and effort. One built the team up and found them recognized for customer service every year for the next 10 years. One tore the team down and made the rest of the department look down on the team, as if the manager thought they were useless, they knew they could treat them badly too.  — Phil Gerbyshak, Social Selling Training and Social Media Strategist
Blind Siding an Employee Doesn’t Help
One particularly bad boss I once had many years ago suddenly turned on me. It came “out of the blue.” I had been a “star” one moment, and the next I could do nothing right in her eyes. It did not end well for me. Here are a few of the lessons I learned:
  • Stay alert to the proverbial “handwriting on the wall.” There may have been signals I was missing. Like a drop off in communication from the boss.
  • Keep your boss in the loop at all times on everything you are doing. Run the risk of over-communicating, especially if you suspect something is “up.”
  • Determine what your boss’ priorities are and get into alignment with them. Do whatever you can to support your boss. And make her “look good.”
  • Be professional, personable, and positive at all times. Be accountable. Deliver with excellence to your clients. That way, if the tables turn on you, you can walk out the door with your head held high, knowing that “it was not about you.”
  • Sometimes the power plays that happen in a corporate environment result in some folks winning, and other folks coming out with the short end of the stick.  — Terrence Seamon, author of “To Your Success!” guide for transitioners; “Lead the Way” leader’s guide to engagement; and “Change for the Better” change agent’s guide to improvement.

How NOT to Treat an Employee

I think my lesson is (was) that the fastest way to kill enthusiasm and commitment in young talent (or even older talent for that matter) is for the boss to publicly humiliate someone in front of others, when the someone had only good intent and was trying to do their job. We all have to learn, we all make mistakes, we all need coaching and guidance. But there is a right way to handle ‘teaching moments’ and a wrong way.

When I was a young, aspiring channel marketing manager at a small software company, I worked for a Sales and Marketing VP who was promoted too fast and not mature enough for his role. He had no patience or interest in the details of actually making a business run. When on several occasions I asked questions in group sales meetings that he thought were stupid, uninformed or otherwise too tedious, he delivered stinging, humiliating responses to me – a young female – in front of a room full of mostly men sales reps. I grew to hate him, and the bitterness and resentment I felt is still called up writing this, almost 20 years after the fact. The channels business for that company also failed, because the leader in charge of it would not do what it would take to make it a success, and my own sense of urgency about taking care of channel partners certainly took a hit after my experiences with this guy. It took a long time to overcome that feeling and fear of opening my mouth in meetings. — Owner of a Strategic Communications Consulting business

Special thanks to Phil Gerbyshak, Terry Seamon, and a colleague (who’s still so traumatized by her bad boss experience that she wished to remain anonymous) for contributing to this post.

I’ll have more great lessons to share in my next post, so stay tuned …

 

 

Categories
Marketing

Today’s Marketing: Less IS More

Signs of intelligent marketing at last! Lately I’ve seen more marketers respond to consumer sensitivity and backlash to promotional and informational overload – a major contributor to attention and intention deficit.

Here are two examples. The first is an excerpt from Penny Sansevieri’s Book Marketing Alert newsletter*:

I don’t know about you but I’m overwhelmed almost daily with all the stuff I need to get done and learn (because we always need to be learning, right?). And I hear this from authors all the time: I don’t have time OR I don’t know where to start.

Because at the end of the day, you’d rather be writing, right?

That’s why the AME team has decided to change up our newsletter. Less information = less overwhelming.

If you’re an information junkie you can still find tons of tips on our blog and social media all week long, but our newsletter will now focus on one or two action items and that’s it. Strategies you can manage that won’t send you into a tizzy of “I have no time for this!”*

The second is an email promoting AMA’s Marketing Workshops**:

18 Workshops | 2 Days | 0 Distractions

That webinar you wanted to check out just got pushed off your calendar. That new book you bought has taken a backseat to pressing emails for the third night in a row. And that idea you’ve been trying to find time to research for the past few weeks is now on life support somewhere in your subconscious.

With all the roles marketers play, it’s hard to find the time to hone our skills, develop our ideas and keep up with the fluid, tech-fueled landscape we call our careers. That’s why when you get an opportunity, you really have to make it count.

dontcalluswellcallyouAs a consumer and professional marketer, I’m tired of robo calls and junk email clogging my email inbox. I’m annoyed with financial service firms’ limited opt-out options that allow “related” businesses to continually promote their services to me. (No, I don’t need more credit cards or more insurance!) Ditto for nonprofits that sell my name to other donors’ lists.

I’m OK giving my email when I make a consumer purchase or request a white paper for business; it’s quid pro quo permission marketing. It’s the onslaught of frequent emails following afterward that make me crazy. Just because a retailer features frequent daily specials or a business offers a weekly webinar doesn’t mean I care to know about it. I know who you (as a retailer or vendor) are; presuming my experience was positive, I’ll be happy to call you when I need you or refer you when appropriate.

Bottom line: Respect the consumer/customer and they’ll respect your brand. Bombarding them with promotional messages results in brand alienation – not a good strategy for building customer relationships and retention.

Less IS more.

*Reprinted from Author Marketing Experts, a full service book marketing and publicity firm. Find out more at: www.amarketingexpert.com]
**Disclosure: I’m one of AMA’s Workshop speakers.