Workplace Engineering

Understanding performance has been critical to the success of organizations as diverse as Tesco, Plano Schools and Action Coach. But, how do you know if you are getting quality information?

The Manage Smarter article, Results Through Self-Knowledge shows just how difficult it is to get good quality feedback

“We don’t typically get feedback or know how to give it. Consistent research reports that 97% of unhappy customers or clients don’t complain.”

You could add that typically we don’t know how to ask or have an objective system to get that feedback or understand what it really means. If a customer is dissatisfied and has no interest in doing business with you again or has decided to limit their exposure it is important for you to know, but it is not important for them. They’ve already made their decision, right? Why would they want to help you fix your problem?

Let’s take the example of a very well known business services organization several years ago. Every three to five years most corporations reassess their existing supplier relationships and more often than not go out to bid. In the process of an exercise I was leading, we found that our internal customers (their real customers) were not overly happy with service levels from the existing vendor. This vendor had survey responses from those very same customers that showed they were doing fine. When the vendor lost the bid, we found out why we received very different feedback and why giving honest feedback can be fraught with peril, even when asked.

We were asked for a feedback session and decided that after all the work they had done it was the least we could do. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a feedback session at all. It seemed like half their company turned out to meet us. We needed a bigger room. For every item of feedback given we were given a hurt look, told why it was wrong, that there were extenuating circumstances or that the person we’d obtained the feedback from was wrong or just did not understand.

At the end of the meeting, did we feel we were listened to? No!

Would we do it again? No!

Would we want to work with them again? No!

Would we ever want to give them feedback again? No!

Did we have any ongoing desire to help them fix any of their problems? No!

Contrast that with the senior executive from another vendor that decided to “drop by”, thank us profusely for letting them get to know our organization a little better and over a coffee ask us how they could do a better job with their bids for similar clients to us and then followed up months later to let us know that they’d taken a couple of items on board and believed they’d won a contract because of it. The reality is that I have no idea whether that final statement was true, but what I do know is that I’d be happy to give him my time and honesty again.

“How do you know? Do you really know? No, that’s not what I mean….Do you really know?” That’s a question that I ask a lot these days. After much banter the real answer I get back is “I don’t really, but I’m sure that it is the case.” Well……get ready for a competitor to eat your lunch because - THEY DO KNOW!

Take for example, Tesco, the resurgent British retailer. Data mining has been at the cornerstone of a strategy that has taken them from the also-ran of my childhood to a retailing powerhouse that has even caught the attention of Walmart. Tesco: ‘Wal-Mart’s Worst Nightmare’ - BusinessWeek:

“Analysts say that Tesco’s big advantage over major international rivals, which also include Germany’s Aldi and Lidl, is its unrivaled ability to manage vast reams of data and translate that knowledge into sales. “

Tesco uses information gleaned from Dunnhumby, a British data mining firm of which it has majority control, to manage every aspect of its business, from creating new shop formats to arranging store layouts to developing private-label products and targeted sales promotions.

Or education. New York, Plano, TX and others are using Business Intelligence to improve the performance of their schools, the experience of parents raise standards and improve student performance. Information Week on Plano:

In one significant study in eight of its schools, it used that trajectory analysis to identify 60 students at risk of failing state standardized tests, and teachers developed plans to address their needs. Only 10 ended up doing poorly. “It was a huge success story,” says Hirsch.

Or small business. Action Coach has turned itself into the world’s largest small business coaching franchise by helping their customers test and measure. I’m working with a couple of coaches to take some of their tools on-line and make it even easier for their customers to improve profits by testing new ideas and measuring their success. It’s hard work to test and measure, but the success stories are phenomenal.

These organizations do know. Do you?

I’m one of those armchair adventurers who loves to read about the exploits of great explorers and then makes every excuse under the sun why I can’t won’t follow in their footsteps. Not enough money, my kids are too young, overweight, not enough education/ability, bad knees etc. etc.

This is someone who doesn’t make excuses: Adventurer Todd Carmichael Completes 700 Mile Trek from Antarctica to the South Pole Unassisted : TreeHugger:

“Todd Carmichael of Philadelphia, Pa., is the first American to complete the 700 mile trek from Antarctica to the South Pole unassisted. Carmichael arrived at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station at 4:10 p.m. on December 21, exactly 97 years and one week after the first polar explorer Roald Amundsen first achieved the frosty feat.”

My heroes didn’t accept excuses. Shackleton accepted no excuses when it came to getting all his men out of Antarctica. Gandhi accepted no excuses when it came to freeing his homeland peacefully and Nelson accepted no excuses at Trafalgar.

My friend, Ed Harris, asked me today what my New Year’s resolution is for 2009. I’ve decided now:

I resolve that 2009 will be the “Year of No Excuses”

Want to be one of the five percent of leaders who achieve ten times greater success at change management than the rest? Steve Willis identifies three key questions that these leaders ask themselves in ManageSmarter’s An Order of Influence Can Make a Difference:

“What these successful influencers do is ask themselves three important questions to help formulate their strategies:

1) If people clearly understood what to do, would they do it?

2) If not, would it be because they didn’t think it was worth it (motivation), because they couldn’t do it (ability), or both?

3) What would we need to do at a personal level, social level, and organizational level to overcome barriers uncovered in question No. 2?”

Asking these questions (and answering them honestly) inevitably results in a pretty long action and to do list and a lot of work. No one said that being in the top five percent would be easy.

Zen Habits post A Minimalist’s Guide to Using Twitter Simply, Productively, and Funly: is really helpful to anyone like me who’s been trying to figure out how to engage with Twitter….

“Twitter is like a river … you can step into it at any point and feel the water, bathe in it, frolic if you like … and then get out. And go back in at any time, at any point. But, you don’t have to try to consume the entire river — it’s impossible and frankly a waste of time in my eyes.

So that’s how I approach Twitter these days: I’ll just jump into the stream of incoming tweets and see what people are saying. I can ignore them or follow their links or reply if I want. Then I get out of the stream. I don’t try to read everything I missed, and if I miss a lot of stuff, I’m OK with that.”

I think this advice could apply equally to all the corporate information my clients have to keep up with. There are some core performance KPIs that they need to be on top of all of the time, but much of what passes an executive these days is just the flow of the corporate river.

(See the rest of the post in Zen Habits.)

Last minute Holiday Christmas shopping just won’t be the same again.

From one of the best time-wasting sites I know: The Inquisitr

Merry Christmas.

Ed