Posted on

Mastery, and My Plumber

Mastery, and My Plumber

It’s strange what having a blog does to the mind.

It’s now 3:21 am and I’m wide awake with a blog on the mind. In case you’re new to blogging, no, it doesn’t mean anything illegal, immoral or fattening. This has more to do with having a need to write, and for me, blogging fills the space between having a swirl of thoughts buzzing around in my head, and some end-product like a white paper or published article.

The thoughts I had in mind came from 2 meetings I had on consecutive days this week, both of which went better than I thought they would.

One was a workshop with some managers, and the other was a speech. In both cases, I was the one in the front of the room with the PowerPoint presentation. One audience had about 20 people, while the other had about 200.

In both cases I entered that elusive “zone” in which I found myself completely enjoying what I was doing. Time seemed to fly. My shoulder, which includes a recently dislocated collar bone, stopped hurting. I was accompanied by 2 of my best friends in life, a consultant and my wife. One event was in Barbados and the other was in Jamaica (I did a lot of flying to attend the two.) They were very different in design also, with one designed as a facilitated workshop lasting over 5 hours with a client, and the other being a pure speech given in about 35 minutes to the Jamaica Customer Service Association’s (JCSA’s ) annual conference.

In both cases I used ideas that are presented in my blog. They were thrown out into the world in this space as infant thoughts, and then grew into adolescence in subsequent entries before being tried on live human beings.

I felt a feeling of what I can only call mastery.

Which brings me to my plumber….

My plumber is someone that I knew as a teenager, from my days attending Mona Baptist Church. He was called in by my mother (who happens to be my landlady) to fix a bath-tub leak and a toilet that would not stop running.

After he had done the repairs, we asked whether or not he had a replacement tip for the faucet in the kitchen. It seems that the prior tenants, in their desire to leave with as little as possible while taking as much as possible, seemed to have made off with the tip of the faucet that regulates the water flow. The result is a constant and too-strong flow of water that wets the unsuspecting user, frequently with water that is uncomfortably hot.

Well, as we’d say in Jamaica, “who ask me fi ask him about dat?”

He responded with a lengthy lecture on the need to replace the spout also, because they do not sell the tip separately. Furthermore, he informed us that we had what I’ll call “the Briggston Company A Type” (the true name was lost as soon as it was said.) that was brought to Jamaica in the 1960’s and he used to get it then from Mr. Bowen on King Street, and he in turn brought it to Jamaica at my plumber’s request, which he used to do from time to time based on unusual needs. Furthermore, this maker had a particular seal at the bottom of the spout that was superior, so over time this became the most popular faucet in Jamaica.

(I am clearly not doing justice to the complexity of the subject, and this I say without irony.)

He clearly knew his stuff.

And he truly wanted me to see the world that he sees: I see tip-less faucet, and he sees a world behind that faucet that comes from being someone who loves what he does.

Yesterday while I was preparing to give my JCSA speech my wife realized that she knew the woman sitting next to her.

Actually, it was the woman who recognized us, when we didn’t. She asked us if we came into the HiLo supermarket at Manor Park and we said yes, we did. Then it clicked. She remembered us from a 3 minute interaction in which my wife asked her what the appropriate tip would be for the fellows who take the groceries to the car (just as they do in some places in Florida, but not in the N.E. USA.) She remembered us from then, and while we were laughing at the coincidence I told her that her particular HiLo was the cleanest supermarket and best laid out I’d been in since I’ve returned to Jamaica.

She took the compliment in stride, and without batting an eyelid she asked: “Is there anything you’d like to see us improve?”

I was taken aback. She repeated the question a few times to make sure that I was not just stupid, but the truth was that I could not think of a single thing.

My barber is another one… he loves what he does enough to have left a secure job at the top-rated barber in Kingston (Upper Cuts) to open his own shop just across the street from me. His place is impeccable, incidentally. He, of course, always looks sharp.

And he put me on to a lady who sells replacement parts for my own clipper, which I sorely needed at the time.

My plumber. The HiLo lady. The barber across the street.

They are all people who love what they are doing, and relish the challenge of it, and seeking to master their own corner of the universe.

None of them is rich from what I could tell (my plumber must take a bus to get around town.)

Yet, I’ve worked in corporations with people who earn hundreds of thousands (maybe even millions) who hate what they do, and have convinced themselves that they cannot stop doing it. And there are a LOT more people like that than there are masters.

A recent survey in the U.S. showed that some 40%+ of employees are “doing just enough work to keep their jobs.”

But this blog isn’t about them, it’s about the few who dare to fall in love with what they do for a living. They do so in spite of what the cynics around them have to say. They seek out ways and means to fall in love over and over again with their work, by continually expanding their knowledge, broadening their experience and trying out new ideas.

I’m aspiring to have more and more of these masters in my life. They are not only more skilled than their counterparts, but they are likely to open up a sizeable gap over others who are not so in love with what they do.

In reflecting on the last few days, I realized that I could only deliver the workshop I gave to my client and the speech I gave yesterday because of the following truths: the material for the workshop was developed and created by me over 7 years ago, and I’ve been practicing it diligently since then by delivering it repeatedly.

Also, yesterday’s talk wove together threads that I’ve been building up in this blog since I first started blogging early this year. I didn’t realize this at the time, but blogging is addictive – the more I write, the more I want to write. The more ideas I share with you, The Reader, the more ideas come.

And, it took hours of blogging to develop the ideas into a decent speech in which I would have something different to say.

So here is what I’ve learned – the joy of mastery is available now, and at any moment, by developing a love relationship with our chosen work. The tangible and visible fruits, however, take time to come.

So here’s the deal: do what you love, because it beats the alternatives.

Do it better each day, because it makes things more interesting than just keeping them all the same. The hard part is keeping one’s eyes open long enough to see the longer term rewards, especially when they actually may not come. After all, there are absolutely no guarantees in life, and tomorrow October 8th, 2005 may be a reality for you, but not for me.

But being in love with one’s work, and life, may not be a bad way to spend a penultimate day.

Posted on

High-Tone Managers

High-Tone Managers

I’ve met a few of them in my time, and one or two of them lately.

What are high-tone managers? They are the relentlessly upbeat, cheerful and smiling managers that perpetually tell a good story, and emphasize the good things that are happening in their business.

They are not unlike those people who in interviews, have trained themselves to respond to questions like “What is your greatest weakness?” with answers like “I work too hard” (without a drop of irony).

Well, OK, Francis, what’s wrong with that? It beats being the opposite, doesn’t it?

At a certain level, we all aspire to be this way – in good spirits in spite of whatever circumstances may surround us. This is a particularly enlightened way to be in life.

My suspicion goes through the roof, however, when the time comes for someone who is “high-tone” to take responsibility for a failure. That’s when it doesn’t seem to be about enlightenment, but about something else.

Once, I observed a manager starting a workshop by defending a programme that had failed miserably. I had trained him to open with an acknowledgment that the program had failed, and that he had played a part in its failure, and that he was sorry about that, and wanted to take responsibility for it.

Instead, what came out of his mouth was a defense of the failed program. He seemed unable to admit to a failure publicly and instead gave his version of “I work too hard.” He was speaking to the issue, but he was taking no responsibility.

This experience has made me think more deeply about these “high-tone managers” who spend a great deal of time and energy trying to look good, and admitting to as few faults and failures as possible. It’s as if faults and failures are forbidden as topics on which to dwell, and both faults and failures must be either turned into positives by quick thinking and talking, or ignored altogether.

High-tone managers are the easiest to promote. They quickly determine what their boss wants to hear, and they thrive on repeating it. They learn just as quickly which topics to avoid, and they make sure to stay away from those, especially if they involve any threat of them looking bad. They are the consummate corporate animals, and get promoted quickly, especially by bosses that welcome their cheerful outlook and hopeful nature.

Unfortunately, the hot-air balloon eventually runs out of gas.

If promoted quickly, there comes a point when the large number of people the high-tone manager has directly or indirectly reporting to him/her her eventually catch on.

In the book “The Wisdom of Crowds” the author, Joseph Surowiecki, describes how groups of people are able to generate a kind of intelligence that a single person or small group is unable to attain.

I think that the same thing happens with managers. Their weaknesses are only amplified when they are promoted, and more people report to them. Over time their employees are able to fit together bits and pieces of their individual understanding, so that a composite is developed that is quite accurate.

For the high-tone manager, it can happen quite quickly. A once friendly crowd turns hostile. A favorite employee turns a cold shoulder. Morale takes a dip.

The high-tone manager responds by turning up the volume, and becoming more upbeat, more positive and more cheerful. The result is a further separation between the manager and his or her people, as they increasingly complain that the manager is “full of bull-shit,” “smoking dope / drinking their own Kool Aid” or “much too in love with themselves.”

If the cycle is not broken, cynicism deepens and every word that is uttered by the managers is met with suspicion. People work to protect themselves from an over-optimism that they fear might leave them dealing with some failure that their boss refused to face. This lack of trust manifests itself most openly when the high-tone manager attempts to “rally the troops,” leaving only one person rallied: themselves.

The cycle only breaks when the high-tone manager starts to demonstrate some recognition of his/her faults and failures, and does so in a way that lets other people know (and not just hear) that there is normal blood flowing through their veins, “just like the rest of us”. This authenticity has a refreshing tone to it that is inspiring and compelling, and can convert even the most hardened cynics. For the high-tone manager, it takes courage and strength of character to give up their natural inclination to do whatever they can to look good. The upside of doing so is that when they return to their natural upbeat selves they can do so knowing that being cheerful and positive is a choice, rather than a habit.

——————————————————————————————————-
Afterthought: For the Caribbean business-place, the high-tone manager has a unique challenge. During slavery, the worker that was high-toned was rewarded in physical ways: with better food, lodgings, jobs, treatment from Backra Massah and so forth. They usually would be found working as house-slaves, rather than field-slaves. At times, they would experience hostility from the other slaves as they curried Massah’s favor.

The high-tone manager is working with, and against, this historical legacy and tendency.

Posted on

Training Beyond Customer Service

Training Beyond Customer Service

It’s interesting the effect that pressure has.

I’ve been bouncing around some ideas related to customer service in my head for a few months, but it was not until I HAD to write them down in the form of a paper for a conference that I was pushed to form them into some coherent whole. Of course, that was easier said than done, especially when I realized that I was working with some compound insights. In other words, I had insights that I had been using for some time, that have themselves been assembled into compound insights. But I had never written the original insights down… so I had to go back and lay the groundwork, and this I found somewhat annoying, although necessary.

Make sense? 🙂

One idea I finally had to explain is how little customer service training in the Caribbean is directed towards generating a particular customer experience.

If anything, I would say that our front-line staff in the Caribbean is only trained to follow the “right” process, and little else (with notable exceptions). What does that mean, exactly?

It simply means that as a customer, over and over, it seems as if customer service representatives (CSR’s) are only expected by their managers to say and do the required actions that they have been told to say and do. CSR’s are quite satisfied when they have done so, and seem to have either an ignorance of, or indifference to the experience that I and other customers are having.

I recently noticed this phenomena with three companies in different settings, and for the sake of competitive fairness, I’ll use three companies that offer services in the same industry – Digicel, Cable and Wireless and TSTT (Trinidad’s monopoly telephone provider).

As mentioned in a prior post, I have been waiting for basic fixed line service from Cable and Wireless here in Jamaica from Aug 8th, and as of today, Sep 27th, I have not received service. When I call to complain/beg/cajole, which I do almost every other day now, I receive a uniform response – “We don’t know.” That is the fixed response that my wife and I have gotten to every question that we’ve asked. There has been not a single show of concern, regret or apology.

I can tell by the response that they are “following the party line.” We’ve also tried the tactic of asking for a supervisor, only to be told that “they are just going to tell you the same thing.”

Once, I did get through to a supervisor, who told us that he’d check into it and call us back. We’re still waiting almost 4 weeks later.

In Trinidad, TSTT, in which Cable and Wireless holds a minority stake, has an awful habit of taking down their network for days at a time. It’s an amazing piece of monopoly-driven behaviour that has generated significant ill-will among Trinidadians who, from all indications, are even more eager than we Jamaicans were to bring in cellular phone competition. This is due to start in early 2006, which is not a moment too soon for most Trinis.

The joke is that with a likely and immediate drop in revenue on the near horizon, TSTT’s customer service remains painful to experience. When TSTT introduced GSM service I was told by everyone who switched over ( i.e. lured by false promises) to hold on to my old TDMA service. Three years later, I was being told the same thing, except that at this point, my TDMA phone was falling apart. I was forced into an upgrade, and had to make three trips to TSTT to get a new chip and a new number (transfers of old numbers were “backordered’ and would take weeks to accomplish).

I happened to go on a day on which “the system was down” and when I returned later that day, I was told by 3 CSR’s that I recognized (they were casually strolling around Trincity mall) that the system was still down.

Undaunted, I went up to check for myself and was told that the system was back up. About fifteen minutes later, the 3 CSR’s casually strolled in and started taking customers from what was by now a considerable line of people. They may have been on a sanctioned break for all I know, but the truth is that they must have been idle for several hours before that break due to the system being down. They were oblivious to all around them…

And, to add insult to injury, the entire cell-phone system went down for two whole days starting the day after (this occurrence is inconceivable to us in Jamaica).

Digicel, for its part, came to Jamaica as a breath of fresh air and has been able to capture over 50% of the cellular phone market in just three short years. Their trademark has been a combination of better pricing, better service and wide availability (going to a Cable and Wireless office used to be seen as one of the worst evils imaginable).

Lately, however, Digicel customer service operators have clearly been “trained.”

Every conversation with a Digicel CSR goes something like this:

“Can I have your name please?”

“Francis”

“Mr. Francis, thank you for calling Mr. Francis, how can we help you today Mr. Francis?”

“My voicemail cannot be reached”

“Mr. Francis, I’m sorry to hear that Mr. Francis, and let me see what the problem is Mr. Francis.”

While I’m exaggerating to demonstrate the point, the effect of the CSR using my name over and over again in this unnatural way makes me think I’m dealing with some kind of machine, worse than any I encountered while living in the U.S.

But this is only annoying.

Clearly, Digicel, has also trained its CSR’s to keep the phone conversations short, and they might even be measured on the amount of calls they accept per CSR.

How did I arrive at this conclusion? Well, in each case that I’ve called, I’ve had to struggle to keep the CSR on the phone, and to prevent them from hanging up on me before I was finished asking my questions, and long before the issue was resolved.

Throw in a “Mr. Francis” here and a “Mr. Francis” there and the conversation is comical:

“I would suggest that you call back later Mr. Francis, and I’d like to thank you for calling Mr. Francis, and have a nice….”

“WAIT, I’m not finished yet!!!!”

“Yes, Mr. Francis?” (in an exasperated tone)

“How do I know that I’ll be able to fix this next time I call? What will be different then?”

“Well Mr. Francis, perhaps by then we will have a solution, but I’d like to thank you for calling Mr. Francis, and hope that it gets resolved next time Mr. Francis, and have a nice…”

“WAIT, Hold on, I’m not finished yet!!!!”

And so it goes, on and on — with me desperately trying to keep them on the phone, and them rushing to get off.

The thing that Cable and Wireless, Digicel and TSTT have not understood is that their employees were probably trained to be “good students” or what we in Jamaica would call “nice students.” In other words, they are very-well trained to follow orders and follow procedures. You cannot get through our Caribbean education system, with its do-or-die examinations at different levels, without being proficient at following sometimes mindless routines.

In fact, Caribbean slavery and indentureship were all about doing as little work as possible under duress, and just enough to avoid punishment. In Barbados, (where my observation is that this behaviour has reached an apogee,) I’ve heard this called “malicious compliance.”

The employee is trained to follow the rules, and does so, against what I believe are some of his/her natural instincts.

Thankfully, there is a new standard of customer service that is more appropriate for Caribbean customers – training in producing a particular customer experience (also called a “branded customer experience”).

This approach takes much more focused effort to both define the experience, and to train employees in producing it. The definition requires senior management involvement, and for the benefit of Caribbean employees be put into song, verse and script in order to get the definition across. The experience might be as simple as “Customers feel cared for in every interaction” or “Customers are able to get on with their day as soon as possible.”

One benefit of focusing on a particular experience, is that is puts the employee squarely in the world of the customer, so that instead of wondering whether or not their boss will be mad at them, they focus their energy on how to produce the desired customer experience.

Clearly, the CSR’s that I encountered from Digicel, C&W and TSTT did not care about my experience, as they would probably say that that was just not a part of their job. Their job was to follow the instructions they had been given (as good students would) and to do as they were told.

The fact is, providing a particular customer experience takes more than following the rules, and in many cases the rules that work in places like North America do not work here in the Caribbean (and even have the opposite effect). Instead, it takes a different level of awareness of what’s occurring in the customer’s world, combined with some ingenuity to determine how to provide it given the business constraints that the company must operate within.

The good news is that the Caribbean has no shortage of people who are tuned into the experience of others, and an over-abundance of ingenuity… if only these could be combined in some unique ways we could go well beyond dealing with people who are just “following the process” and come to know our companies by the quality experiences that they offer.

Posted on

Reflections on Blogging and Customer Intimacy

I found the news that Google has just developed a search engine for blogs to be really exciting, and it had me think about blogs on a much larger scale, and their impact on customer intimacy.

The new Google search engine can be found at http://weblogs.google.com.

Of course, I immediately did a search for this blog, and of course, Google has already done a fantastic job in indexing this blog in their search engine. As I saw my posts appear on the list, it began to dawn on me that easy access to blogs is going to accelerate a process that I already see happening that I think has a profound impact on how companies come to be known by their customers. But I go too far too quickly.

In a conference workshop I gave this week I shared my blog address with the participants who attended, which was a first for me. It was the first time that I was sharing the existence of my blog with a public audience.

Given that the workshop was located in the Caribbean, I wasn’t too surprised that almost no-one in the room even knew what a blog was. Blogging is yet to enter the mainstream in either the Caribbean or North America, and I’m feeling like some kind of pioneer.

It’s made me think about the role of a blog in bringing customers closer to companies, in several ways.

Recently I had the opportunity to visit David Allen’s website – www.davidco.com. The topic he is an expert in – time management – is one that I’ve been interested in for all my years as a professional, and I’ve read tens of websites and books on the topic. When I read his book, I liked the ideas, but when I read his blog I was hooked. Here he was honestly and openly discussing the base of his ideas, which is basically his daily life.

Here was someone who was brave enough to be sharing his most early ideas, almost from the point at which he was developing his newest thinking. This runs counter to the idea that ideas are like tangible assets like gold and diamonds that are limited in quantity and therefore can be stolen.

Ideas cannot be “stolen” unless the person who originated the idea stops innovating, and turns instead into protecting them.

A blog such as David’s helps to establish him as an expert, and also makes it very clear to anyone who will do the basic research that he is the source of the ideas, and no-one else. It’s easy to see that he has been developing his ideas over a period of several years, and that while anyone can read his book, hearing it from him is truly hearing it from the “horse’s mouth”. All other time management systems can be openly and clearly compared against his, and when I actually did this for a time management system that I am familiar with, I noticed where the developers of that system had clearly lifted some of his ideas, and were re-packaging and re-selling them.

The blog has helped to protect David as the originator of the ideas behind his unique system.

(To view a Quick Time video of David in action, click here.)

In contrast, other competitive products to David’s are the typical ones that one finds on the internet – glorified advertisements. They talk about how great their systems are and how much it costs to sign up for them, replete with opportunities to use a credit card online to sign up.

They offer little or no information or details on the system, and are quite static, with no opportunity to do any of the kinds of things that are possible with a blog such as:

1) hearing about new ideas as they are being developed

2) giving feedback on new ideas, how the system is being used, ask questions, make complaints, etc.

3) hearing about future plans for the company, and present-day problems or issues from the CEO/MD of the company rather than from hired PR flacks

Of course, there is also the possibility of a company being either embarrassed or criticized publicly, and openly. Anyone can respond to a blog that allows feedback and use it as a way to publish lies (at least until the company removes the offensive responses). If a company has something to hide, it’s quite possible that a reader will use the system to make the issues public.

Here in the Caribbean, there is not a single CEO or MD from the region that has a blog. I imagine that that will change in the near term.

At the same time, many do not even have websites, so they remain completely out of the website loop that their competitors overseas are using daily.

While companies can talk forever about wanting to develop customer intimacy, and do their best to get their customers to do their basic business with the company over the internet (thereby saving them a lot of money) ,it doesn’t seem to occur to them companies that there is a way to accomplish both through the skillful use of a blog. What could possibly generate more customer intimacy than a blog in which the CEO or MD shares interesting information? What could be more responsive than a blog that answers customer’s questions?

The joke is that companies that either have no web presence or only a web-based billboard will have their presence in blogs defined by others, who can say anything they want. When the company finally realizes (as many did in the 90’s in the case of email) that they must adopt and use the new technology or die, it will be quite late. Others will have defined the company in their blogs, and attempts to answer the question or balance the messages will probably be a case of “too little, too late”.

Posted on

Customer Service and Caribbean Airlines

I’m in the midst of a series of short-hop flights from KIN-ANT-POS-BGI-ANU-KIN (see a list of acronyms used at the end of this blog.)

In the past, I’d sworn to myself that I would never fly BWIA again, after some piece of bad treatment on some flight that I now can’t remember. This time around, I couldn’t bear to either face the cost and time of flying through MIA to get to POS from KIN. The connections are long, and the whole day of flying is deadly.

I didn’t want to fly AirJa to BGI, and then make another connection to another airline (LIAT, Caribbean Star or BWIA,) as my experience was that the extra connection to another airline just did not make it worth it. So I resigned myself to giving BWIA another try, and as I checked in I began to remember what I disliked so much.

The first annoyance was BWIA’s ultra-strict carry-on policy, which always results in me having to check my luggage – the same luggage that I carry-on to every other plane I fly in North America. For that size aircraft, they are the only carrier that insists that carry-ons be checked, and the way that they do it consistently seems to disregard the fact that a business traveler and frequent flyer have different needs than the casual vacationer. BWIA seems not to distinguish between the two in any way, and seems unwilling to make any kinds of concessions for its most valuable passengers (who fly the most often and pay the highest fares).

When we got to Antigua, which was just supposed to be a short stop on the way to POS, we were told that a flight attendant had burned her hand badly on the flight to Antigua, and as a result could not perform her duties. Therefore, the flight would have to be discontinued, as they could not find a replacement. Thus began a 4 hour delay.

Of course, people were complaining. How could the absence of a single flight attendant cause that much disruption? Why didn’t they offer some people free tickets and an overnight in Antigua in exchange for giving up their seat on the plane and making the flight legal? Why didn’t they have backup crew – could no-one on the island step in?

I cussed to myself, and reminded myself why I don’t fly BWIA. I quickly made some alternate arrangements so that I would only need to fly to BGI on the way back.

When I turned up at POS for my next leg to BGI a couple of days later, the absence of a line at the check-in counter warned me that something was awry. I was told that they were sorry but the flight was no longer stopping in Barbados, and instead that I was checked into the following morning’s flight to BGI (without my knowledge.)

I was sputtering with the shock of this news at all of 7:30 pm.

The CSR’s did not even begin to apologize, or try to make amends, which made my blood start to boil. They also started to get into what might be called “blame the victim” by asking me if I had confirmed (“Yes”), given a contact number (“you tell me“), made the reservation a long time ago (“No”).

I eventually asked them a pressing question – “Was there another flight going to Barbados tonight?” That yielded a reluctant “Yes, there’s one leaving in a few minutes on LIAT.” I rushed over to LIAT with a transfer in hand (OK, it was at the same counter, just 25 yards away). By the time I really started rushing, I was there.

I ran through immigration and the check-points, and to gate 13 – which had a small number of passengers, and no staff in sight. It was delayed.

Thankfully, they were still keeping to their schedule, and I made it to BGI that night, albeit an hour late.

I contrast this with a horrible delay that I had the prior week travelling with Air Jamaica from Fort Lauderdale. The 8am flight had mechanical difficulties, which were not resolved by parts that were sent up from Jamaica, and we were finally included on a flight that left at 10:30pm that night, which resulted in a travel day of some 20 hours total from bed to bed.

The contrast comes in the way the Air Jamaica staff dealt with the problem. They had several problems themselves, in this case in getting the word out to the customers on the latest developments. But the feeling I had was that the staff cared, and one agent cared enough to sit around for a couple of hours with the passengers in the lounge commiserating and demonstrating a remarkable willingness to be the butt of Air Jamaica jokes.

That was something else, and the laughing and hilarity that ensued helped make the day feel that much shorter.

At BWIA, I was left with this uneasy feeling that the staff just did not care, and were not willing to be responsible for anything. Although both Air Jamaica and BWIA are losing money every day, and are both up for sale by their respective governments, Air Jamaica’s service consistently seems to be at a higher level in some ways that I can’t define very well.

My hypothesis is that Air Jamaica is a major carrier for European and North American tourists to the island, while BWIA carries mostly Trinidadians and other Caribbean islanders. The feel of the service at BWIA is that it is more friendly than professional.

The difference between friendly and professional service, however, is that a friend represents only him or herself, whereas a professional represents a company. Friends are free not to care, but a CSR is paid to care, and is obliged to provide service regardless of their mood, or how they feel about the person on the receiving end. To that end, BWIA’s service is good when things are going well and that friendly feeling prevails. It quickly turns distant and unfeeling, however, when things go badly and this is where the other airlines are generally better.

Interestingly, I’m writing this entry aboard a Caribbean Star flight from BGI to Antigua. That by itself is pretty mundane, but the interesting aspect of this trip is that I am the only passenger on a 32 or so seater.

To be more accurate, I am the only revenue passenger – there are 3 employees of the airline on the flight also. There is one (female) flight attendant working, another one travelling and two pilots travelling. To my disappointment, they have not yet broken out the champagne and fillet mignon… perhaps I am cramping their style? I made a joke that they now had to hide the scotch…

I made the mistake of asking if there was anything else, at the end of an offer of refreshments – I had a choice of 4 kinds of cream filled biscuits, and 4 kinds of juices, in addition to water. Not even soft drinks are carried on these flights apparently… However, the flight attendant assured me that on the longer flights they carry sandwiches. She must think highly of these sandwiches as she suggested that I take a longer flight to find out what that kind of service was like… Hmmm…. That one had the spare pilots and flight attendant laughing.

Acronyms used

ANU –Antigua

GAIA / BGI– Grantley Adams International Airport

POS – Port of Spain

KIN – Kingston

Posted on

Awakeness – The Key to Accomplishment

I had the privilege of leading a workshop today here in Trinidad at the TTAIFA conference – the Trinidad and Tobago Association of Insurance and Financial Agents.

The group was a wonderful one to speak and engage with, and as great a bunch of Trinis as I’ve every worked with.

The initial post that I wrote today related to this speech appears to have disappeared into Never, Never Land, unfortunately. Somehow the content just disappeared…

The most exciting part of the preparation came when I ran into a roadblock while trying to describe a certain quality that I know is important to being productive. I am now calling it “awakeness,” and as a Jamaican – we are famous for inventing new words – I like the “sound” and vibe of it.

In a nutshell (which is just about all the work I’ve done on it so far) “awakeness” is defined as the quality of being present to the outcome of a task while one is engaged in it..

When someone is experiencing awakeness, there is a connected feeling that makes the activity flow, and sometimes allows it to feel easy. Yet, it’s more than “being in the flow”. The process of completing a task takes several important steps:

  1. Changing the definition of the task
  2. Making a decision to do the task
  3. Scheduling the task
  4. Choosing to start the task at the appointed time
  5. Completing the task
  6. Deciding on next steps once the task is complete

As you can imagine, having “awakeness” is important at each step of the way. Let’s take a simple task such as “doing the ironing.” Doing the ironing is a task that could be poorly executed at any of the 6 steps, resulting in the task either failing to be fully completed in some way.

When there is “awakeness” there is a powerful quality brought to each of the above steps. At each step of the way, there is a clarity of purpose that changes the entire task.

  1. The first step is about replacing how the task is expressed in writing and speaking, from “ironing the clothes.” The person doing the task would have to look to see why they are in fact doing the task e.g. it might be a real part of a goal of “providing my children a secure and safe environment in which to grow.” The task could be re-expressed as “ironing for security, safety and looking clean and fresh.” This re-expression can help to bring an awakened frame of mind to the activity that is not there when it’s just about plain “ironing” which seems to be something that just needs to be endured.
  2. Making a decision to do the task at a specific moment in time is easier to do when there is “awakeness” simply because a deeper purpose has been engaged and activated.
  3. Putting the activity into our calendars at a time that is realistic is also easier to do with “awakeness”.
  4. Choosing to do the task at the appointed time, even when we are busy, is easier to do when the appointed time comes and we are awakened. If we are watching television and the time comes to do the task, it would be easier to turn it off and see about our children’s “safety and security” than it would be to watch the rest of the episode of “Days of Our Lives”.
  5. Seeing the task through to the very last sock and t-shirt, and avoiding interruptions are all about being awake during the task. The hard job that we have to do while ironing is to prevent ourselves from unconsciously falling out of “awakeness” into the kind of absent-mindedness that allows us sometimes to drive for miles to a destination and wonder what route we just took to get there.
  6. When we are in a state of “awakeness,” realizing that there are next steps is natural. When we are just ironing and nothing else, then the end of the task comes as a respite, and the tendency is to get the mind out of the boring task at hand and back to Days of Our Lives (recorded on our DVD-RW). On the other hand, when it’s about “our children’s safety and security,” it’s easier to see that it might be a good idea to put the clothes away now, and to schedule some more time to buy a good quality iron that would do a better job. The next steps are easier to see, and to start a new six step process when we are “awake,” because the actions are merely a continuation of the deeper commitment.

The point here is that the steps are, by themselves, not the point. There are some training programs and time management systems which try to be prescriptive about what happens at each of these stages, down to the kind of language that is used to re-express the task.

They all miss the point, however.

When we are “awake” the right things to do naturally present themselves. When we are asleep at the wheel, then no amount of detailed instructions will compensate for a lack of “awakeness.”

Why is this all important?

Well, we human beings need to be protected from ourselves.

On the first of the year, a part of us gets inspired to create plans to get fit and lost weight. By the end of the week, however, another part of us kicks in and takes control, and that’s the end of the plan until the start of the next year. The same happens with respect to other plans that we make, in our attempts to “Have the Lives that We Most Want.” The part of us that creates these plans does need assistance to make it through tough times , and this assistance comes most easily from our level of “awakeness.”

To put it another way, when we don’t have awakeness, then our mind will only allow us to accomplish simple tasks that require a single effort, and prevents us from accomplishing complex tasks like losing weight, that require sustained and consistent effort.

* I’d like to credit the book Getting Things Done for providing some of the key ideas and thinking for my own ideas.

Posted on

Throw Away Customer Service Training

Yes, that’s right. Throw away Customer Service Training.

That’s the new mantra of companies that are thinking seriously about delivering a particular brand promise to their customers.

The truth is that companies have become chained to a vague commitment to “better service” without this “better service” being defined in way that ensures that definite progress can be made. Instead, “bad customer service” is used as an accusation that is used to blame companies at all levels for not providing service… at all levels. Yes, that’s right…. companies are blamed for not providing service at ALL levels.

Small companies are blamed for not providing the consistent service of larger companies.

Large companies are blamed for acting as if they do not care.

Low-priced companies are blamed for being cheap, and not supplying the luxuries that people want.

High-end companies are blamed for charging too much.

What’s going on here? Are customers being unreasonable to ask for so much? Are the complaints just a matter of the impossibility to trying to please everyone?

In Port of Spain, should the doubles vendor on Long Circular Road be asked provide the same level of service as Hot Shoppe? In Kingston, should the pan chicken vendor on Red Hills Road be asked to provide the same level of service as KFC up the road? In Bridgetown, should Jus’ Grilling provide the same levels of service as Champers?

The vague quality of these questions leave us all in a quandry, that pushes most of us to nostrums such as “You get what you pay for,” implying that the issue has something to do with the price that the consumer is willing to pay.

These kinds of vague non-answers seem to let companies off the hook, but they are just a mistake on the part of companies that refuse to do the much more difficult work of defining a brand experience for their customers that is precise and clear.

Clarity and precision have nothing to do with price. They also have nothing to do with the size of a business in terms of total revenue, or profit.

For example, the pan chicken vendor on Red Hills Road is not providing the consistency of KFC, and he (or she) should not try to. Instead, he should focus on the brand experience that he wants his customers to have — one that consists of:

  • a home-cooked taste that changes with people’s tastes
  • the pungent smell of the chicken that pervades the air
  • all-night availability
  • friendly and fast service and gets better with repeat purchases
  • the convenience of not having to leave the car
  • the low cost that comes from buying on the street in an “unsecured” environment

Instead, the drum-pan chicken vendor should seek to provide an experience that is uniquely the “Red Hills pan chicken experience” …. and nothing else. The same principle applies to KFC, which should also try to provide a unique experience.

Neither outfit should try to provide “good customer service.” In doing so, they hold themselves hostage to customers’ (and employees’) complaints that only come about because companies are insufficiently courageous enough to define unique service that is clear. The emotional challenge comes from the fact that when a company defines itself in a unique way, then they immediately must define themselves as “not-everything.”

My observation is that executives of Caribbean companies (with whom I have the most experience) are downright scared to define their companies as “not-everything”. Declaring that your company is a unique “something” actually defines it as “not-everything” when it’s done well. Sticking to your guns and defining yourself as “not-everything” takes courage and are not for the faint of heart, especially when contracts and business opportunities seem to be abundant in the areas that are outside the defined zone of expertise.

Recently, I had the opportunity to take my own company down this path. In 2005 we made the decision to use the tagline, “High-Stakes Interventions.” One of my partners-in-crime (but not an employee) shared with me that the tagline made him feel as if he were a CEO, that he would not want to give the company a call. He was right, and I knew it in the moment.

I gulped, and after thinking about it for a minute I realized that CEO’s would only call me when they needed to, not when they wanted to. In this sense, my firm was willing to create a brand experience that is similar to that of surgeon or a skilled mechanic — someone that you call for help when you absolutely needed that particular kind of expertise (and not just for a good lime). This little interchange helped make my company’s brand just a bit more clear and precise, and it grew into the truth that I now have embraced and included in my marketing copy, which is that “High-Stakes Interventions are not for Everyone.”

The downside of failing to define the company as “not-everything” is a kind of superficiality that creates a blurriness in the mind of the customer that is the very opposite of a brand experience that is clear and precise.

The upside is that a company that sticks to its guns can do the following differently:

  • distinguish the branded experience at a deep level, and define the experience in way that makes it clear when the experience is present, and when it’s not
  • define in depth the unique combination of People, Processes and Products/Services that together provide the experience
  • decide how much to invest in making the experience real, and also what the costs are for not committing to an alternate experience

For the customer, this only helps. I go to KFC when I want one kind of experience, and I can choose a different kind of experience by visiting Cheffette, Royal Castle, Pollo Tropical or Island Grille. Rather than being told that I get what I pay for, I can make my choice based on the brand I choose to experience.

The job of the proprietor is to ensure that they have accurately defined their own brand experience, and have the internal brand to deliver it over and over again.

In this sense, generic customer service training needs to be thrown away, and replaced by very specific, clear and precise brand-oriented “experience training.”

Posted on

How Do You Consultants Come Up With Those Prices?

While there are some clients that ask this question out loud, it’s my sense that every client asks it even quietly when they get to the part of the proposal titled “Professional Fees.” Often, this section is approached with a sense of dread, as up until this point the prospective client has a feeling that I have something they are interested in buying, if only it fits the budget they have in mind. They have mentally mapped my proposed solution to the problem at hand and are hoping that they will not have to turn their company upside down to find a solution.

Therefore, from time to time in my career as a consultant, I am asked by a prospective or current client to engage in the awkward business of justifying my fees.

“Why is it so much? How did you come up with that figure? Why is it different/more than I thought it would be? Are you guys all a bunch a tief’?”

At first blush, my response is to give an off the cuff smart-aleck answer, like “it pays the rent” or “because that’s what it IS” – with a slight tone of contempt that is related to some vague feeling that they are questioning the value of my existence, and whether or not I deserve to be drawing breath upon this earth.

After I resolved the more basic question of my value to our race, I began to realize that they might be asking because…. they just don’t know, and they think that the knowledge might be useful to them. The truth is, that the setting of consulting fees is a mysterious business, even to the practitioners of the art. Obviously, we’re not selling something that is tangible or can even be compared to what any other person on the planet can provide. For example, part of what makes my work distinct is that I bring first world standards of thinking and tools gained from my years living in the U.S. to the Caribbean, and apply it with an understanding of our people in the region. (Whew) No-one else can do that in the same way, and I cannot do what they do in quite the same way.

But, how does one impute different dollar amounts to the different value? How about the local consultant who is known internationally? How about the foreign consultant who is married to a Caribbean person, but lives in Latin America? Aren’t they also valuable in their own way, and should be charging more, less or the same as I do?

These questions don’t have definitive answers, but as I played around with them, I thought that I should at least be honest about what drives my own pricing, so that I at least have something to say to myself other than “that’s my gut feeling,” when this awkward matter comes up.


So, to lift the fog on my own criteria, here are the rules of thumb I use when coming up with the cost of a project, and the price I charge clients.

1. The Value to the Client

Framework specializes in High-Stake Interventions, and not everything that a client needs or does is high-stakes enough to warrant my interest or attention. There are many more low-stakes opportunities for things like skills training, coaching, facilitation, job analyses, etc. than there are high-stakes opportunities, but we’ve made a conscious decision to stay away from them. In other words, we only get involved when there is a great deal of risk and/or reward involved, and we like both big problems and big bets. This commitment of ours keeps life interesting, which is the way we happen to like it.

The upside of this approach is that the projects we work on are of tremendous importance and therefore value to our clients.

As one might expect, the more critical the project, the higher the price we propose. Typically, on critical projects the costs of failure are prohibitive; people’s careers and futures in the company are dependent on successful outcomes. The same activity (e.g. coaching a CEO) that I will do for free for a friend starting his own business, will not be free to the CEO of the US$500m company, and will cost less than the coaching given to the US$5b company.

Why the difference? Doesn’t a CD player sold to each of these CEO’s cost the same to each one regardless of who is doing the purchasing?

Consulting services are very different, however. Experience tells me that high-stake projects are those that generate the most stress, require the most pre-planning, cause me to lose the most sleep, and are the ones I care about the most because they are so engaging. Also, coaching my friend has little or no downside to my reputation, but there is a greater risk in coaching the big company CEO because, presumably, his or her time is extremely valuable in economic terms, and the decisions and actions to be taken have far-reaching effects.

In other words, the same advice given to CEO’s in different companies has different ramifications and effects, and the price of that advice varies accordingly.

For projects that are not important, routine or are too easy, our preference in Framework is to others, or turn them down flat.

The paradox is that I am in essence saying that I should be paid more to take on greater challenges… now that’s a win-win if I ever heard one, as I there’s nothing I love more than an engaging and exciting challenge!

  1. Delivery, Face and Contact Time

A modifier on the price of every project is the amount of time we need to spend face to face with the client, either in coaching conversations, planning or delivering a course. While there isn’t a tight correlation, it does play a part in our calculations.

For example, delivering a course in front of 50 people for two days is very different than sitting down to have one-on-one interviews, or observing an activity, or strategizing over Red Stripes while sitting at a bar in Ocho Rios. They are all valuable activities, but by far the most difficult activity to undertake, and the one that takes the most preparation and concentration is the 50-person course. That also is the one that is the most tiring, and must be done to the exclusion of any other activity.

Also, there are fewer consultants who can lead a 50-person course effectively, and any number who can (claim to) strategize over drinks. In other words, a consultant is more valuable to the client when they are undertaking unique and specialized activities that few others could do well.

  1. Travel Time

Sometimes we include the time it takes to travel to and from the client, if that is a factor. I turned down a project in Europe recently because the one day that the project required was not worth the 2+ days of travel plus jet lag it would take to get to the site in Germany and then back home to Florida. I’ve never had a client that was willing to be charged for my travel time, unless I was travelling over 12 hours in one rare case.

  1. Phone Coaching Time

If there is significant meeting time on the telephone, then that is factored in also.

  1. Custom Preparation Time and Expertise

If there is something that we have developed that will fit the need exactly, then that is used to modify the price we propose. This is rarely the case, however, as the kind of interventions we do, don’t lend themselves to cookie-cutter solutions (but perhaps one day we’ll figure out how to do that!)

  1. Client “Friction”

One of my prior clients was so difficult to work with, and so chaotic to do business with, that we’ve put a premium on doing work with them. This “tax” is to compensate for the missed meetings, long negotiations, last-minute cancellations, unreturned phone calls, unpaid invoices, etc. that continues to be part and parcel of working with them. By now, you might be wondering why I even worked with such a client – well, to date, they have refused to pay the increased fees caused by the “tax” so they are no longer a client.

  1. Staffing and Training Costs

At times, projects require extra hands, which require additional management. At other times, I must bear the brunt of training someone to work on the project. In both cases, this impacts the cost of the project due to the extra head-ache of carrying another person on my payroll. The extra administrative time required to hire a single other person is just horrendous.

  1. Opportunity Costs

Bluntly put, if I am busy I tend to charge more than when I’m looking for the next project to pay the bills!

Last Few Thoughts

What my more unreasonable prospective clients often don’t understand about business of consulting is that, unlike an employee, they are only paying me to work, and ONLY to work at my absolute best. They are not paying me to take vacation, get sick, get tired, pick up the kids / dogs / groceries / mother-in-law, take off early on Fridays or the days before holidays, do paperwork or anything administrative, pay my taxes, vote, do jury duty, travel to and from their locations…. or even take lunch, in the extreme cases.

They also don’t take kindly to my resisting doing weekend work, holiday work, late-night work or hurricane work.

They also don’t realize that while I’m negotiating with them and waiting for them to make up their minds, I am not getting paid. This gets expensive for me when I encounter prospects that have long decision-making processes, or just like to wait to see if the price that I quoted will come down.

None of these are a problem by themselves, as they are part of the service I’m offering as a consultant in the business of High-Stakes Interventions. The problem comes when a client does not see (or worse, cares not to see) the entire equation.

All in all, one thing I’ve learned over time is that the way a client negotiates says everything about what they will be like on the project once things get going, and that it’s important to define my firm’s boundaries early on in the process. I recall being on a closing call with another consultant and a client, who he later described as a “Taker.” In other words, the client was only interested in how much they could get for themselves and their company, with no regard for my firm’s welfare. “Takers” are trouble, and while I’m not good enough to spot them before every project starts, I am learning to know when to stop doing business with them.

“Takers” are the worst – most are much more sensitive – but I think the average client does want to know where the amount in the proposal is coming from, and do like to know that they are not just being fleeced by whimsical dreams of consumer goods bought with hefty consulting contracts. I think that the better clients would like to know that there is a hard business rational behind every dollar that gets quoted in a proposal, and that when I’m quoting a number for their consideration, I’m responding to the facts of my business, rather than just a need to buy a new car or take a fancy vacation.

As a new consultant, I did not appreciate this fact, and I committed what must be the mistake of every new consultant – that of charging too little.

A relevant analogy and story that illustrate the general point:

  1. High-stakes professionals like surgeons and airline pilots tend to be paid more than others who are sitting right beside them, spending even more time than they are, and possibly working even harder than they are (in physical terms.)

    As a frequent flyer, and someone who had surgery once for adenoid removal, I have no problem paying my surgeon more than the orderlies who pushed me into the waiting room, or my pilot more than the cleaners who remove trash the from inside the aircraft.

  2. I recall the story of the plumber who came in once to fix a complex system of pipes in a major factory. The problem had remained for months, and was starting to create severe problems with the company’s throughput of its main money earner. The plumber came in and after careful thought he reached down into the bowels of the plumbing and tightened a screw. The management was incredulous, but sure enough, that was the correct solution.

    A week later the plumber submitted his invoice for $5000. The plant manager went ballistic and refused to pay. The plumber quietly said he would resubmit the invoice, and he did so one day later with the following breakdown of charges:

Time used to tighten screw: $10

Knowing Which Screw to Tighten: $4990

Total $5000

P.S.

(Of course, I have absolutely no self-interest WHATSOEVER in bringing to mind either of these cases. ;0)

Posted on

A cool book on negotiating with sword and spirit

I just finished reading a book called The Sword and the Spirit written by a good friend of mine, Andre Bello (www.andrebello.com)

Written in the form of a medieval fable, the book is actually a brilliant exposition and description of the underlying principles and distinctions that make for powerful negotiating. I just read it through in one sitting, and really enjoyed not only the story, but learning what I did wrong in past negotiations.

I even started looking forward to my next negotiation, which would be an opportunity to put to use what I’ve learned!

The book is divided into two parts. The first part is the story of a kingdom that is under threat of attack by a neighbouring country. If you’ve read other business “stories” such as The Goal by Eli Goldratt, you’ll recognize some of the same kinds of characters — there is the young thinker, the wise sages, the gradual awakening to the new knowledge, the dilemma to be resolved etc.

The second part of the book lays out the principles that are contained in the book, written in linear fashion. Andre assures me that there is more to the book than he put in the principles, but that remains to be discovered by the ardent practitioner!

Congrats to him on an excellent exposition, and one that I hope is used widely across our region, as we have our fair share of unresolved disputes that have lead to loss of jobs, profits and benefits to our economies.

Andre is a Trini who is living in Jamaica (and loving it from what I can tell…)

The Sword and The Spirit by Andre Bello
ISBN 976-8194-57-X