Category Archives: Management

Do Customer Service People Really Want Autonomy?

Management,

Not that long ago I discovered, to my dismay, that some customer support and customer service people didn’t want autonomy. I always thought, like my friend Shep Hyken suggests in the tweet above, that everybody wanted to use judgment and decide things on a case-by-case basis. 

But I was discussing this in a business owner workshop once when one of the owners in the group said:

Actually that’s not really true. Lots of people want not to think about it, and not to take responsibility to decide when to make exceptions. They want the simplicity of being able to have clearly defined rules to follow. 

Shep Hyken Amaze Every Customer

And in defense of Shep Hyken, who’s a true expert in this field, it’s not fair to take pot shots at a tweet. If you want real insight into customer service, check out his book Amaze Every Customer. 

But it’s also a good reminder that you have to take every piece of advice carefully, always evaluating whether or not it fits your exact content. There may be a lot of good practices, but there are no reliable best practices. Well, sort of.

And here’s the rest of that exchange:

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Are you Running a LIFO Time Management Strategy? How Bad Is It?

Creativity, Management, ,

Do you do what I do? I suspect a lot of us do. With me it’s not just what’s urgent or important, but also what’s on the screen, which window is in the forefront, and what just happened. 

It’s like urgent vs. important vs. recent. With a distortion filter for fun, or interesting. 

The title of this post comes from basic accounting, handling inventory for accounting purposes as either last in first out (LIFO) or first-in first-out (FIFO). Lately I’ve been doing extreme LIFO. And I’m not sure that’s good. 

Urgent vs. Important. It’s a really old paradigm, right? I bet you’ve been aware of it forever. I think most people identity author Steven Covey with bet you’ve heard of the problem of confusing urgency with importance. The video here puts it clearly in just a couple of minutes, so I decided to include it with this post.

But that’s not what really happens with me. I’m grateful for what seems like a problem. I’m involved with a lot of interesting things … my flagship company that I founded, business planning, social media, blogging, and lately I’ve had a kick with video editing. My days are easy to fill. 

But damn. Every so often I pull my head up out of the immediate and look at what I’m doing and it’s disorganized, not prioritized, kind of fun but not as productive as it could be. I have no discipline about what’s the next thing I do. It might not be either urgent or important; it might just be there. I do whatever is fun or interesting, or just came in. 

Is that what you do? 

No Let’s Not Have Meetings; Let’s Effing Do It

Management, Starting a Business,

I love this quote:

“I remember a great quote from Andrea Breanna, former CTO of the Huffington Post, which went something like ‘Lets have an idea on Monday. Instead of having lots of meetings about that idea, lets just effing do that idea. By Wednesday we’ll have realized the flaw and iterated … and by Friday it’s either executed or almost done.’”

That’s from a post called Titanic vs speedboat: four tips for publishers in the digital age by @JamesHaycock in Brand Republic News. TheMouse

Andrea Breanna is my daughter and founder of Rebelmouse. And that quote is a perfect description of my take on entrepreneurship. Don’t spend too much time talking about it. Instead, do it, quickly, and then watch results and change it quickly too if it didn’t work. That’s good for most startups.

A related quote:

“Perfect is the enemy of Done.”

That one get’s attributed to multiple authors, going back to as far as Voltaire, also Jim Collins, and others. It’s one of my favorite quotes. And it means: “No, let’s not have a lot of meetings. Let’s just do it.”

(Image: that’s the Rebelmouse logo)

1 Thing Coaching Kids Taught Me About Management

Leadership, Management, ,

Most people do better with carrots than sticks. I just posted 3 best ways to reward people on your team over at Up and Running. As I wrote that, it reminded me of this. One thing I learned by coaching kids soccer.

coaching praising incentives motivation kids soccer flickr cc

Try this: To manage people in business, helping them to perform better, try emphasizing what they’re doing right, and celebrating that, instead of constantly criticizing what they’re doing wrong.

Of course you have to use common sense to make that work. Don’t go to extremes. People have to have real information about performance and problems. But seriously, are you repeating the bad news too often? And, if you are, is that working for you?

I had eight years of coaching little kids in soccer. Some kids were naturals and led the team and that was cool. But for those who weren’t so gifted, didn’t want to get the ball, or in some cases didn’t want to give the ball up, I learned to wait until they (even if it was accidentally) did the right thing. Then I’d shout that up to the skies. And, at the same time, I stopped steadily, constantly, repeatedly urging them to be more aggressive, or pass, or whatever.

With some kids it took patience, waiting for them to do the right thing. But it paid off big time when they did.

And I learned, running a business, that this basic principal applies to grownups as well as it does to little kids. Do you agree?

(photo credit: sean dreilinger via photopin cc)

Pop Quiz: Why Do Men Need Women. Business Perspective.

Leadership, Management, ,

Yesterday my sister sent me the link to Why Men Need Women, a New York Times opinion piece by Adam Grant. This morning one of my daughters sent it. It starts with this:

New York Times Opinion Why Men Need Women

New evidence reveals a surprising answer. The mere presence of female family members — even infants — can be enough to nudge men in the generous direction.

Grant, a professor at the Wharton business school, cites a collection of interesting studies where researchers drilled down into details, discovering:

  • A Danish study showed CEOs reduced average salaries after having a son, but not after having a daughter.
  • An American study showed American legislators with daughters vote more liberally. A UK study showed voters did the same.
  • A Dutch psychological study using game methodology showed that players having sisters were more generous than players who didn’t.

Grant, a popular prof at Wharton, also the author of Give and Take, draws some logical conclusions about gender balance in school and workplace:

What would happen if every classroom followed the jigsaw structure, with mixed-gender study groups providing boys with the opportunity to learn from girls? In addition to gaining knowledge, perhaps they would learn something about teaching, helping and caring for others.

At work, we sorely need more women in leadership positions. We already know from considerable research that companies are better off when they have more women in top management roles, especially when it comes to innovation. Professors Dezso and Ross have recently shown that between 1992 and 2006, when companies introduced women onto their top management teams, they generated an average of 1 percent more economic value, which typically meant more than $40 million.

And he adds:

We recognize the direct advantages that women as leaders bring to the table, which often include diverse perspectives, collaborative styles, dedication to mentoring and keen understanding of female employees and customers. But we’ve largely overlooked the beneficial effects that women have on the men around them. Is it possible that when women join top management teams, they encourage male colleagues to treat employees more generously and to share knowledge more freely? Increases in motivation, cooperation, and innovation in companies may be fueled not only by the direct actions of female leaders, but also by their influence on male leaders.

What do you think?

How Human Recall Screws Up Management and What To Do About It

Leadership, Management, , ,

When the experts dig down into it, human recall doesn’t work. What you remember isn’t what happened; it’s a mosaic of truth, impressions, past experience, guesswork, etc. If you have any doubt, watch the riddle of experience vs. memory and why eyewitnesses get it wrong on TED. 

bigstock stones path management

This cuts hard into the fundamentals of management. What do you do with following up on what was said, and what was done, when every individual story is different? And no one story is more valid than the other? We agreed what? When? 

Traditional management makes this simple: the boss’ version is correct. Just like they say that history is written by the winners. 

The right way, however, is also simple, but only if you have the patience and discipline to record the steps:

  1. Always look for objective measurable goals and progress reporting. Sales and costs and expenses are obvious, but also tweets, follows, likes, leads, calls, presentations, minutes, trips, or whatever. Agree on the future goals and acceptable progress. Make something both boss and worker can track, via objective tools. Make the numbers visible. 
  2. Track, measure, and follow up. Watch the progress. Review performance. 

Everybody wants a score. Everybody wants to be in charge of their own numbers. Make it real. 

Why Management is Like Dribbling a Ball

Business Planning, Management, , , ,

This is interesting: Stanford Business School professor Charles O’Reilly on Why Some Companies Seem to Last Forever:

women soccer dribbling

What explains this longevity? Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor Charles O’Reilly calls it ‘organizational ambidexterity’: the ability of a company to manage its current business while simultaneously preparing for changing conditions. ‘You often see successful organizations failing, and it’s not obvious why they should fail,’ O’Reilly says. The reason, he says, is that a strategy that had been successful within the context of a particular time and place may suddenly be all wrong once the world changes.

So running a business right requires minding the details but also watching the horizon. Eyes down, eyes up. At the same time. 

Which reminds me that dribbling is one of my favorite analogies for business planning. In soccer or basketball, dribbling means managing the hand-eye or foot-eye coordination of the immediate detail while simultaneously looking up and watching opponents and teammates and plays developing. When I was coaching kids in soccer, I’d try to help them remember to also look up and not just down at the ball. The best players did this naturally. 

It’s a cycle. Plan, with metrics and milestones. Review once a month. Revise. Do it again next month. That’s the way to last forever, according to O’Reilly. It’s the right way to manage the details and the long term simultaneously. 

(Image: bigstockphoto.com)

Decision Making is Way Easier Than Decision Doing

Advice, Management, Reflections, ,

Imagine a dark shape in the distant sky, moving towards you. Slowly. It’s white or perhaps off white, but not as clear a color as a cloud, speckled. And it seems more solid than a cloud, and it moves in ways clouds don’t. As it comes closer, maybe a mile away now, it’s as if it’s a flying giant creature. Then, as it gets closer still, you discover that it’s really an unusual flock of birds, flying very tightly together. 

bigstock cloud of birds

That’s a good metaphor for a hard fact about decisions we make. Most of the important big decisions are really made up of thousands of small decisions.

That’s life as well as business. Maybe more life than business.

For example, everybody wants to stay healthy. That’s the big decision. But it doesn’t happen without thousands of small decisions, probably dozens every day. Do I eat the big fat breakfast? Do I take the walk? Do I work out? Do I eat too much, the wrong things, or just right for lunch? Do I drive myself crazy worrying about next week? Do I dwell on my fears or just exhale and let it go? Staying healthy isn’t a big decision but rather a steady collection of small decisions.

For example, everybody wants to do well with their work or school. That’s the big decision. But it doesn’t happen without all those small decisions. In the context of school, every day it’s the choice of homework or not, more study or not, review or not, school work or television, take a nap or read the next chapter? Do I take the extra time to research SEO? Do I write that blog post, or put it off? Do I address the poor performance or let it go? Do I make those calls or put them off? Doing well in work or school isn’t a big decision but rather a steady collection of small decisions.

In my favorite topic area, business planning, doing it right isn’t a big business plan. It’s a just-big-enough business plan that gets reviewed and revised regularly. What makes it valuable is the process, the review, the management that happens because of the contrast between what was planned and what actually happened. And that happens not once but every month, in some contexts every week. Here too, the big decision is really a collection of small ones.

And, dammit, staying with it through the small decisions is hard. We’re human. The big decisions are glaringly obvious. Do you know anybody who doesn’t want to stay healthy, or do well in work or school? But actually executing on those decisions is really hard. We are so human, all of us, that it’s really hard to stick with the big decision without wavering through all the small ones. You can make nine out of ten healthy eating decisions and if the tenth is a Big Mac it nullifies all of the other nine. You can exercise all day one day and then not again for a whole month, and you’re worse off. Consistency is the collection of the small decisions.

Making the right decisions is easy. Making them stick is hard.

(image: bigstockphoto) 

Do You Underestimate Time for Tasks You Like?

Business Mistakes, Management

Damn! I just did it again. Even after 30+ years running my own business I still underestimate time for tasks I like, and overestimate time for tasks I don’t like. 

bigstock-pocket-watch-on-old-paper-back-12357476.jpg

I like writing, and I like programming, which is definitely cool because that’s how I built a business. But when I look ahead, trying to schedule my time right, I end up consistently underestimating the time it’s going to take to post on a blog, develop an ebook, or write a column; and the time it’s going to take to redo one of my WordPress sites or work on one of my newer product development projects. 

That makes it hard to manage my time. 

Do you do this? Or is it just me? 

(Image: bigstockphoto.com)

How to Calculate Hourly Cost of an Employee

Management,

For the sake of occasional business analysis — such as calculating return on investment (ROI) on a project, hiring a new employee, allocating costs — here’s a simple formula for calculating the hourly cost of an employee:

cost per hour = annual gross salary/1000

calculating hourly cost

So the $75,000/year salary costs the company $75 per hour. The $30,000/year data entry person costs the company $30 per hour.

This quick and practical calculation is based on the assumption that the overhead, including payroll taxes, health insurance, benefits, office space, office equipment, telephone, Internet, electric power, transportation, and so forth costs the company about as much as the employee gross salary.

So the step-by-step calculation, using a $75,000 salary, is:

  1. Double the gross salary ($150,000)
  2. Divide by 50 because a work year includes 50 weeks ($150,000/50 = $3,000)
  3. Divide by 40 because a work week includes 40 hours ($3,000/40 = $75)
I hope that’s helpful.