Categories
Musings

Just in Time for Boss’s Day: How to Be a Better Boss

In honor of National Boss Day (Oct. 16, 2009), I’m delighted to feature this interview with Allison O’Neill, author of The Boss Benchmark and blog about how to be a better boss.

QSM: It’s unlikely a person in management aspires to be a bad boss (at least I hope that’s the case for most managers!). So why do you think there are so many bad bosses out there?

Allison: I think it’s because they kind of get swallowed up by the role – they are so busy doing, they don’t see the bigger picture. They don’t get to see themselves from the perspective their staff do. Often there are things staff feel left out of/want to know more about but the boss doesn’t pick up on this, so the team are excluded. Some bosses have a bad attitude and refuse to believe they could ever be wrong about anything (!) and that doesn’t sit well with the team! Others might be quite unapproachable, so the workers are not comfortable discussing things with them, so communication is very lacking.

Overall I think it’s the inability to step back and evaluate themselves really truthfully. It’s also not realizing that they need to be continuously growing and learning (many times a day) and not being afraid to say “I was wrong” – workers trust you when you are that humble and unafraid of honesty.

QSM: Other than learning from examples in the workplace (what to do + what NOT to do when in a supervisory position), what advice do you give most often to someone who’s a first-time boss?

Allison: Your #1 key responsibility is to see the big picture of yourself as a boss – evaluate everything you do as if you are a third party who is watching and see if you find yourself thinking “that guy is acting like a prat!”. Ask yourself EVERYDAY how you could have been a better boss today – keeping a notebook of your thoughts on this would be good.

QSM:  What do you advise someone who’s been around for a while and wants to become a better boss?

Allison: Don’t be fooled into thinking that because you are the boss (and may have been one for quite some time) that ‘you have made it’ and that you have all the skills required. You need to keep your eyes open constantly for opportunities to learn, change and develop – especially if you’ve been a boss for ages as the workplace is constantly changing – bosses need to be aware of different things/have different skills than they did even 5 yrs ago.

QSM: What are your suggestions for observing National Boss’s Day for employees fortunate to work for a great boss?

Allison: Tell them you think they do a good job – and explain why – be specific!

QSM: And for employees whose current boss is in need of serious help?

Allison: Buy them a copy of my book!

QSM: LOL … Anything that will help develop a better boss is appreciated. Thanks, Allison!

Categories
Marketing

Help for Marketers Dealing with the “New Different”

My friend and marketing research colleague Chris Bonney has written a thought-provoking white paper, The View from the Front, in which he shares his impressions and suggestions for navigating what he calls the “New Different” marketplace.

As I’m highlighting just a few excerpts here, I encourage you to read the complete paper. Better yet, share it within your organization and use it to spark discussion, especially on how to compete successfully in the new year and beyond.

Advice for Marketers and Business Leaders

  • “You can’t sit this recession out. Despite the obvious reasons for tightening your belt, this is not the time to be timid … Let your competitors sit this one out. Let them allow consumers to forget about them by not communicating regularly, or by taking ‘safer’ approaches in their products, pricing, and marketing communications. Market share you pick up now is going to reflect in your bottom line when you need it most.”
  • “Stop playing the victim. Before long, someone’s going to make a breakthrough that’s going to put us all to shame. It’ll become obvious that while we were staying the course, whoever’s behind this breakthrough will have been working hard to figure out where the winds are and sail ahead. I don’t want to be embarrassed by this. Do you?”
  • “You’ve still got to get close to the consumer [and] Get out. Ask Questions. Listen.You can only do so much of this by e-mail, Instant Message or Facebook or Twitter. You’ve got to get close and in a context where there’s time and safe space for the consumer to unwind, explain and give you the kind of context and color that tells you how to connect with them.”
  • “You’ve got to constantly re-invent [and] Don’t kill the creatives. They can be found in every one of your departments if you’ll just let them loose to push the edges, test the limits, stretch the envelope and otherwise provoke you with new, scary ideas. Tempting as it may be to consider such people nonessential during tough times … they can be the sources of your future success.”

According to Chris,

“Perhaps the biggest challenge facing many organizations, and the most important thing you can do to successfully embrace the New Different is to learn to let go and be brave in developing new ideas, new products, new services and new ways of distributing your ideas, products, and services. Use the technologies of today. Respect the changing consumer perspective. And recognize that by the time you’ve done all this conditions will have probably changed again. That’s how it is these days.”

And I imagine that’s how it will be for quite a while.

Categories
Engagement

Interview with Sarah Perry on Innovative Approaches to Internal Communications

Sarah Perry is Sales and Marketing Director at SnapComms, a New Zealand based firm that provides innovative technological solutions “with a pragmatic approach” to improve internal communications and strengthen employee engagement. I wanted to interview Sarah because I was impressed with the way SnapComms applies new technology to address real employee communications issues, not just offering tech tools that are cool to use.

Company Overview 

SnapComms offers a fascinating array of tools that facilitate top-down, bottom-up, and lateral communications within organizations. For example:

  • Snap Shots– interactive screensavers that can be used to share corporate initiatives and encourage employee participation
  • Snap Mag – an electronic employee magazine that includes user-generated content to keep employees informed while effectively managing (and helping to reduce) information overload
  • Other “Snap” interactive tools that make social media easy for internal communicators to use and help streamline communications, such as desktop alerts, newsfeeds, and targeted intranet updates.

SnapComms serves a global client base in the UK, USA, Canada, South Africa, the Middle East, Australasia, Caribbean, and South America. Its client companies range in size from 50 to 29,000 employees.

QSM: Based on your experience, Sarah, what are the top 2-3 communications challenges organizations are struggling with today?

Sarah: Resource, in terms of hours in the day versus workload, seems to be a huge issue right now. Organizations are downsizing their internal communications teams or expecting existing teams to manage an increased work load. I also think that social media can suck up a lot of time and presents some significant challenges to internal communicators (e.g., monitoring trends on external social media channels; also dealing with the reality that internal communications need to be faster and more authentic or ‘stories’ break on their own and are not always accurate). In other words, the role has become more complex and time critical, whilst unfortunately, the resource is reducing.

QSM: Given the expansion of communications technology going forward, how will organizations best balance the “high tech” and “high touch” elements of internal communications?

Sarah: I’m not sure that “high tech” and “high touch” need to be mutually exclusive. (I’ll assume that “high touch” means the face-to-face types of communication.)

Social media is making it much easier for people to connect regardless of location, and tools like Webinars are almost as good as face-to-face for building relationships. Video will start to replace some of the more traditional town hall meetings (especially if you can use delivery tools that monitor who is viewing and allow interaction).

I think the “high touch” is really the domain of line managers (from an internal communications perspective). The focus will increasingly move to line managers, and we need to raise the profile of communications as a key part of a manager’s role. Some of this can be achieved by providing guidelines and training and measuring and managing communications as a KPI [Key Performance Indicator]. There’s a need to actively reward good managers and coach those who need it.

QSM: What scenario(s) do you project regarding how organizations of the future will use internal communications to engage employees?

Sarah: Internal Communications has become more of a recognized discipline over the last few years; this will continue. (I’m always pleased when a smaller organization approaches us and clearly realizes the benefits of good internal communication. Fortunately, we are seeing this more and more).

Other trends will be:

    • Cloud computing will make remote collaboration easy and affordable, so it will become more commonplace.

[Here’s how Sarah explains cloud computing.] From an employee    communications perspective, this means low cost, scalable software solutions offered as a service which anyone from anywhere can access (typically via a web browser) and collaborate with anyone anywhere (with appropriate security). This is nothing fundamentally new – the key difference is that corporates are now more comfortable with using solutions like this. This is mainly due to the fact that hardware can now be ‘virtualized’ which makes the solution ‘redundant’ [meaning] very reliable and cost effective; i.e., if a server somewhere falls over, other servers elsewhere in the cloud automatically pick up the slack. Current examples include salesforce.com and Google docs.]

  • The reducing cost of bandwidth will make tools like video conferencing and multimedia in general much more prevalent.
  • Social media will no longer be called ‘social media’ – it will just be another channel or tool in the tool kit.
  • Micro blogging will have found its very small niche (from an internal communications perspective) and the hype will have died down.

I did read an interesting blog post about holographic communications being less than 10 years away due to quantum computing – now that will be an interesting town hall meeting!

QSM: Thanks, Sarah!

Categories
Engagement

New Study Confirms Employee Engagement’s Positive Impact

The latest in employee engagement research continues to confirm its bottom line benefits through improvements in customer satisfaction/loyalty and employee retention.

The Aberdeen Group studied more than 300 organizations with engagement initiatives to benchmark best-in-class performance. A complimentary copy of Aberdeen’s report, Beyond Satisfaction: Engaging Employees to Retain Customers, is available through Oct. 2, 2009.

Categories
Marketing

Do It Yourself Marketing for Entrepreneurs

In the past several months, I’ve seen a tremendous increase in the number of new business filings listed in my local business journal. It’s no surprise, given the current economy. (Background: I started my business during the recession in the late 1980’s.)

So for all new (and wannabe) entrepreneurs, here’s a great resource. Dana VanDen Heuvel (aka Marketing Savant) created a 30 day do-it-yourself marketing e-course for entrepreneurs. Dana posted the series earlier in the summer and has offered a complete e-course recap of the program’s marketing ideas and action items. Here’s a sample of the easy-to-digest content:

  • Building your database (day 6)
  • Engaging in meaningful (rather than mindless) marketing (day 10)
  • Becoming “slightly famous” (day 23)

It’s also a great resource for long-time entrepreneurs who need a marketing boost.

Categories
Customer service Engagement Marketing

Interview with Chip Bell on Internal Customer Service

Chip Bell has been writing about customer service for as long as I can remember. An internationally renowned consultant, speaker and author, he has written several customer service classics, including his latest book, Take Their Breath Away: How Imaginative Service Creates Devoted Customers, co-authored with John Patterson. [Note: see my review of his new book.]

I asked Chip to share his expertise and insight on the topic of internal customer service.

QSM: What do you see as the relationship between internal customer service and external customer service?

Chip: The requirement for remarkable external service is exactly the same for internal service. The quality of the service the external customer gets is a match set with the service that is delivered to colleagues internally. Go to the “back of the house” of any Ritz-Carlton hotel and you will observe the exact same service between associates that you will see the front desk clerk deliver to a hotel guest. Internal service reflects the organization’s true commitment to remarkable service.

Service between internal units is sometimes like getting service from a monopoly service provider. If you don’t like the service from your Department of Motor Vehicles, you can’t take your business elsewhere. Likewise, if you get poor service from the HR department as an employee, you often cannot go to another HR department like you might abandon a Sears for a Nordstrom. However, it is important to remember that almost all internal units could be outsourced. Job security does not always come with being the sole source, especially in challenging economic times.

When customers (internal or external) do not have a choice, and get poor service, they often take out their frustration on the front line person. It suggests perhaps an even higher standard from units or organizations that are the only game in town.

QSM: Based on your extensive experience in the field, what would you site as an example of great internal customer service?

Chip: Several exemplars come to mind. Sewell Automotive (Dallas) has been the #1 car seller in the nation across most of their brands—Lexus, Infiniti, Cadillac, GMC, etc. One of their secrets is the terrific partnership between sales and service. Other examples include USAA (San Antonio), the insurance company that caters to the military, retired military and military dependents. Zappos.com and Amazon.com are both best in class as e-tailers for their great handouts and superior internal service.

QSM: Who should be responsible for internal customer service?

Chip: The same people who are responsible for external customer service—everyone! Customer-centric and customer-focused organizations, like the ones already named, make every employee responsible for remarkable service. A service ethic is hardwired into their organizational DNA. I asked a waitress in a Ritz-Carlton hotel restaurant what she liked most about her job. “Working here at the Ritz has made me a better wife and parent,” she said. “The values that we practice at the hotel with each other and with the guests are the values that make all relationships special.”

QSM: What advice do you have for companies struggling with maintaining customer service (both internal and external) in an environment with reduced resources?

Chip: As cash-strapped customers seek service, they expect more and more value for their hard-earned funds. Customers may not always be able to judge the quality of the products they buy or the fairness of the price they have to pay, but they are always gifted at judging the quality of their service experience. It is the front-line that creates that experience.

When companies started making cuts, they should remember to spare the most important variable in their customer’s definition of value. Front-line employees should be respected, heard, trained, empowered, and affirmed for their crucial contribution to the company’s reputation. It is important to remember that employees learn how to serve customers by the way they are served by their leaders.

QSM: Thank you, Chip!

Categories
Engagement

Employee Engagement Gets a Big Boost from the UK: The MacLeod Review

I’m back from my brief blog break and wanted to share these links to a major new employee engagement report recently released by the UK.

Amazing: a major government commissions an independent report on employee engagement’s impact on business practice, and then it provides open access to the information! The official report is titled Engaging for Success: Enhancing Performance through Employee Engagement by David MacLeod and Nita Clarke.

Here are two great sources that summarize this important new report:

(Thanks, guys!)

Categories
Engagement

Help for Communicating with Employees

I found two great resources on internal communications that I want to share.

Melcrum’s Source for Communicators recently featured a great article on how to help prepare managers who have to deliver difficult news. It provides guidance on creating the appropriate communications environment for employees + helping managers build their confidence in communicating in a challenging situation.

I’m also happy to recommend Jane Vanderhorst’s new blog focused on helping HR professionals with employee communications, The Inside Voice: Effective HR Communications That Engage Employees. Check it out and then pass it along to the HR folks in your organization.

Categories
Engagement

Re-energize Employees and Organizations

As a follow up to my recent series Re-Charging Employee Morale, here’s an approach that helps employees re-energize themselves and their organizations.

 

“To effectively re-energize their workforces, organizations need to shift their emphasis from getting more out of people to investing more in them, so they are motivated-and able-to bring more of themselves to work everyday. To recharge themselves, individuals need to recognize the costs of energy-depleting behaviors and then take responsibility for changing them, regardless of the circumstances they’re facing.”

The excerpt is from the article:  Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time by Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy of The Energy Project, a consulting firm focused on building “sustainable high performance cultures by teaching people to manage their energy rather than their time” — the latter being a finite resource. Their approach helps employees better understand and better manage four energy sources:

  • physical – involving nutrition, fitness, and sleep/rest
  • emotional – the ability to cultivate positive emotions
  • mental – being mindful and maintaining focus, including dealing with multiple distractions
  • “human spirit” – a clear sense of purpose and meaning in one’s work and life.

Check out The Energy Project’s blog: Changing the Way the World Works to learn more.

Judging by their client list, The Energy Project has helped many organizations and their employees. If it’s unlikely that your company will find itself on that list, don’t wait … start by exploring how you can better manage your energy.

Categories
Engagement

Re-Charging Employee Morale: Organizational Tips

This wraps up my series of posts in which I feature coaching tips from business consultant-coach-authors Dawn Lennon, Phil Gerbyshak, and Michelle Gall, who graciously shared their suggestions for coping in this chaotic climate.

Leadership and Performance Improvement Coach, Dawn Lennon, who is the author of Business Fitness: The Power to Succeed – Your Way, gives us an organizational perspective in her response to my question:

In organizations where employees are experiencing low morale, low motivation, general malaise, etc. – due to workplace pressures and current economic conditions – what do you suggest to help people re-energize themselves and their co-workers? 

“Relentless negative messages are suffocating. When people hear or read nothing but discouraging news day after day in the media, at staff meetings, in company e-mails, and at the water cooler, they develop a feeling of powerlessness that can sap even the strongest spirit. The truth is that the glass is always half full and half empty at the same time. How we see the contents of the glass determines how we proceed. When the spirit of our employees flags, management needs to look at the messages it’s sending.

“Employees get energy, motivation, and optimism from a clear understanding of the state of the business (how it’s doing financially, what the market needs, how costs impact operations) and what the business needs them to do to make a difference.

“People want to feel in control of their work life. They don’t want to feel like they are sitting in wait for something awful to happen. They don’t want to live in dread of unseen inevitabilities. Employers owe their employees the information they need to make good choices each day about what they do, how they work, and what their options are.

“Businesses that see a pall falling over their employees need to do three things:

“Deliver a balanced (upside and downside) state of the business message face to face to employees—Use the existing leadership (executives, managers, and first line supervisors) to communicate these messages in ways that connect with employees and allow for candid questions and answers.

“Develop specific performance initiatives with each employee that aligns his/her work with the needs of the business—Give employees a clear understanding of how their contributions are helping to drive the success of the business by having each person meet with his/her supervisor to set priorities.

“Meet with work group employees together each week to review progress—Build a sense of team camaraderie where each person’s efforts are applauded in the context of the broader needs of the business. Reinforce the state of the business messages, showcasing how the positives are beginning to impact the negatives.

“The engagement of team effort around a central challenge is a strong antidote to malaise. It brings fresh air into the workplace, builds optimism through shared involvement, and helps people to focus less on their individual concerns and more on the power of the team. Together we generally feel stronger and safer than we do alone.”

 

Thanks, Dawn!