Chronicles from a Caribbean Cubicle
New Thinking from Framework Consulting
In an announcement that comes as a shock to most, Cable and Wireless is replacing its Jamaica CEO, Rodney Davis.
The new CEO, an Australian, has once again emphasized that customer service is going to be the major point of focus.
After so many tries, and so many failures at improving customer service in the company, I wonder what he thinks he’ll do differently?
It’s easy to overlook, but at the top right hand corner there is a search box that allows this blog to be searched using any chosen word.
A visitor to the site who is interested in a certain topic can just enter it in the box, hit return and up comes every article in which the word appears.
Perhaps there is a way to place it in the right column? If anyone knows, do let me know.
One of the advantages I have of living in Jamaica is that it has helped me to see what is often accepted as a normal business practice in North America from a very different perspective.
One simple example is a question that we used to ask each other in the U.S. workplace — “Are you keeping busy?”
Now, from a Jamaican perspective, this question looks like a strange one. Why should someone’s goal be to keep busy? What is the purpose?
Will we all be happier when we are busy all the time?
Is the whole point of work… to find more stuff to work on?
There is a temptation in business to try to build the company around whatever seems to be hot at the moment.
The logic taught in MBA schools is as follows:
The logic seems to make sense, and it has created a generation of what one might call “profit chasers.” People start companies in order to make as much money as they can as quickly as they can, and they are particularly susceptible to the latest offers that come along.
On the other hand, there is a new and growing school of thought that this thinking is limited. Instead, the new thinking is as follows:
I have become a firm believer in this new approach to business, which I will call Business 2.0. I started a company in the Business 1.0 model that didn’t work — a t-shirt company that just seemed like a good idea that would make money. Instead, it lost it (even while teaching me some stern lessons about running a company).
Living in the Business 1.0 world is cold and hard. People take jobs for companies they don’t like, doing things they don’t care for, earning enough to pay their bills at the end of the month. This is as good as it gets. In Business 1.0, people give as little as they can, while trying to get as much as they can in return — what economists call “maximizing their utility.” In this particular world, it always makes sense to pursue to highest paying job, no matter what.
In the Business 2.0 world, however, the single-minded pursuit of profit and tangible gain is set aside to some degree for other commitments, such as personal fulfillment and making a difference. There is a commitment to learn, expand and grow, while taking care of one’s psychological and emotional needs along the way.
I observed an interesting contrast between these two models recently in two web sites that focus on methods of making profits through blogging.
One, problogger.net, is clearly Business 1.0 while the second, stevepavlina.com is clearly following the alternate model. While one model is not necessarily better than the other, I will say that the second is more likely to do a couple of things that i personally like:
I guess that my point here is that each of us has a choice in life, regardless of what we might argue to ourselves and others. I do know what many people complain that they have no choice, and they are more likely to bake what Kahlil Gibran, author of The Prophet, calls “a bitter bread.“
This month’s issue of FirstCuts looks at how the annual strategic planning exercise can be rescued from the doldrums of same-old, same-old.
Any questions or comments related to the issue can be posted here.
Recently, I checked out Facebook (and also Myspace) to find out what the fuss was all about.
Something about the whole social networking thing left me feeling like it was too close to match.com, and too far from something that had a serious business application.
Well, my initial suspicions were terribly wrong.
Here in the Caribbean, Facebook is a excellent way to maintain business contacts, given the geographic distance that we have to overcome, Ironically, in recent speeches I have been giving on the power of using the internet for networking, I never imagined that these tools would have a regional use, but they sure do.
As I experiment some more I’ll probably be writing about how users are able to get to know someone on all sorts of levels at the same time. Knowing someone in business terms is only a part of the overall picture that one can have, and the truth is that we in the Caribbean rely as much on social connections as we do on those related to family and business.
I am sure to get into this topic more in the future, especially as I am writing an ebook on the very topic of regional networking. More on this to come.
In an interesting conversation with an expat manager yesterday, I realized a few things that might be of use not only to expats, but also to other managers.
A successful manager is not necessarily the best teacher, partly because their success may have come in ways that they are unable to clearly distinguish. This is why some of the most most accomplished sportsmen and women make terrible coaches. Their achievements came from their abundant talents, rather than from their ability to break their actions down into small elements that they then could practice diligently.
In this sense, someone who has less talent could well be a better teacher.
An expat coming to manage Jamaicans has a possible advantage.
Because they are entering a new culture, they often migrate with open minds, and they often are willing to take nothing for granted. They know that the environment they learned to manage in is very different. They know that there are some things that they learned when they were young that managers in Jamaica do not learn as readily.
What they (and Jamaican managers) can do is to take the following steps to coach those who report to them:
1. Distinguish the distinction that they possess
2. Articulate it in new-sounding language
3. Introduce it as a new item to be learned to their teams
4. Demonstrate that they are also learning how to apply it in this
environment
5. Share what they are learning and encourage others to share
An example:
The distinction “being on-time” can mean something very different to expat managers, and is often a source of irritation. This distinction can be introduced by a savvy manager who wants to create an immediate change in the way people are managed.
Sometimes an outsider can bring these distinctions to bear on a group (which is often the role I play as a consultant) but this is only needed in the exceptional circumstance where the manager
has tried everything they can think of.
It occurred to me today that many vision statements leave people unmoved.
At the same time, we all know of visions statements that were inspiring when they were said — such as “A man on the moon by the end of the decade.”
What was it that made this statement so very inspiring? Was it the clarity? Was it the fact that JFK said it? Was it the fact that it was measurable? Or is it because it was time-based?
I think these are all important, but I also think that there is a reason why a company’s goal of “being number one in it’s industry by 2010″leaves most who are listening stone cold.
It has nothing to do with the words, and everything to do with those who are listening.
Behind JFK’s goal, or Bill Gates’ (a micro-computer on every desktop) is an implicit understanding that the vision would not be realised in the normal course of events.
In other words, it was understood that a man had never walked on the moon before, and that there was not a micro-computer sitting on anyone’s desk at the moment those visions were spoken.
This tension between today’s reality and the vision being stated made it inspiring. If there were no tension between the statement and today’s reality, it would be useless.
Or, if the gap between today’s reality and the vision were not well understood, it would be toothless.
The management of this tension is essentially what management and leadership are all about. Executives do their companies a great disservice when they slip into “how great we already are” talk and start to claim that the vision is already being accomplished, or has already been accomplished. In effect, they destroy what little tension might exist in the listening of their employees.
Keeping this tension alive takes great discipline, and is the key to provoking excellence and extraordinary effort. Without it, employees are unconsciously being encouraged to merely seek the path of least resistance. Mediocre results are the guaranteed outcome.
P.S.
(Many years ago, I read a book “The Path of Least Resistance” that I can only now understand in hindsight. The author’s name is Robert Fritz.)
Now that we are ten days away from election day, I am remembering an article (http://urlcut.com/dchuck) that Delroy Chuck wrote about creating an environment in Jamaica that is business-friendly.
Beyond the politics of what he has to say, there is a truthful point. I recently opened a business here in Jamaica, and I finally received the legal papers in August 2007 after waiting from December, 2006.
In an earlier post entitled “The Thwarting of the Creative Class“, I shared some research that showed that Jamaica’s ranking among countries in terms of how easy it is to do business is terribly low, even after years of efforts to make things easier.
Jeff Thull’s book “Exceptional Selling” on the art of conducting High Stakes Sales continues to provide superior value. He has written several articles for management consultants that I have found particularly useful.
In a prior post, I mentioned that I have been doing some work to customize my own approach, based in part on this book.
He makes the point that a high quality sales approach is basically a high quality decision process, just mis-named.
He also advocates the production of a Cost of Problem Analysis (COPA) that describes the cost of the problem that exists. Once that is done, he describes a Solutions Report that is used to defines the Gains to be made from the solution, as well as the Solution Cost. The difference is the Solution’s Financial Impact. All these computations are described in a Solutions Report.
As I am learning more about this approach I am seeing that it takes some skill to devise these reports for the kind of work that I do — after all I am selling interventions, not machines.
This is where my industrial engineering background has been helping.
He says:
Next, explore the six major focus areas required to arrive at a quality decision process. They include: thoroughly diagnosing the problem; determining the financial impact of the solution; establishing measurable outcomes; understanding solution alternatives; defining investment parameters; and establishing the decision criteria. In each of these areas ask the following questions to help prevent decision mistakes:
- What types of mistakes do clients tend to make regarding this kind of decision?
- What do clients most frequently overlook or not consider?
Make sure the decision process brings these elements into consideration.- What are the most difficult things for a client to understand?
Determine ways to communicate these elements precisely.- What must a client understand to reach a fully informed decision?
Make sure the decision process brings these to the client in an orderly fashion.- What level of professional education or experience is required to understand each specialty area of the decision?
Make sure you engage people in the decision process that have the required experience or professional background.
In the article I read, he talks about helping the client to improve the way they make complex decisions, and preventing them from making mistakes. The same also applies to the sales professional.
Phew… this is going to take some thought!