Archive for July, 2007

Have you ever seen your staff blinded by a situation where they then freeze or better yet act inappropriately causing even more damage? It’ shouldn’t happen and this type of deer-in-the-headlights situation happens all the time.

The solution is easy. Do what the military does. Review the strategy and tactics before someone goes into battle so that they are prepared by at least having seen or experienced a similar situation. In this way, when bad things happen, employees are not frazzled. Mentally they can say, “I’ve seen this before” and act accordingly.

If you’re dissuaded by what seems to be a lot of work, think of the mess you might be cleaning up for your team’s lack of preparedness.

You may also be thinking that most of the situations we face are not our department’s fault. Stop thinking this way. Your team may manage customer relations, and even though a problem doesn’t seem to fall directly under your umbrella, if it leads to losing clients, the ramifications are indeed your problems, in numerous forms. Lost customers mean lost profits and therefore lost investments in your future.

It’s just smart business to have everyone prepared.

Just last week an important component of our website went down for no apparent reason. We have not touched the programming for over a year and a half. It’s the portion, designed in a programming code called PHP that allows editors to secure articles from our website for production in their newsletters, magazines, and in-house publications.

For us, this is a very useful marketing tool.

When we notified the company that manages our server, their response was typical of many technology firms. “They are working on the issue.”

Domestic or off shore, this type of response always tends to get me worried, because from the perspective of the customer, this means either of two things. The first is that they are actually not working on the problem and might even be off skate boarding in the streets, or that they can’t figure out what’s wrong. (Either way, I’m left without a speedy remedy.)

In this case it was the latter. Someone on staff did a review of our account and thought they could do things a better way. After messing around with the programming, they screwed up the site. When we were alerted by an editor that the site was down, we contacted the company. Their response: an email pointing the finger of blame at us.

I made a phone call explaining the situation. The site went down, yet we’ve not touched the programming at all. Besides, we had paid for back ups.

After 28 minutes on hold, I was told they would research the problem even further.

Once again we received an email a day later telling us that we’ve got our settings wrong, and that’s why it’s not working. Duh! Better yet, it’s up to us to fix our own problem.

I couldn’t believe it. We were again being blamed for their mistakes.

This type of dialog went back and forth for over three days until the CEO of the company emailed that they could restore our server for “only” $100. Restore it? It’s their problem, not ours.

The final phone call eventually ended up with a senior manager that said she would look into the issue. Two hours later an email arrived that everything was fixed. It appeared that our rights were changed BY THE ORIGINAL TROUBLE SHOOTER making all the “improvements.”

You might be thinking, why not move your server to another firm?

Like many customers, we don’t see enough differentiation from one firm to another, its design and people. IT’s next evolution has to be a strategy to enable a structured approach to design so that troubleshooters can identify and act in a fashion that’s consistent with other trouble shooters.

Larry Ellison tried this with Oracle 9I. He found that everyone who purchased his sophisticated software made so many modifications to the core of the product that customer service went nuts trying to solve basic issues.

Can’t run a business like this. So he developed a handful of basic products and said, here they are; don’t alter them at the core, or they won’t be serviceable. The result was that customers had what they needed while maintenance improved just because the engine was still an engine.

In this case, besides the techs blaming the customer, a no no, the lack of a consistent approach caused a whole chain of events including the CEO getting involved in what was not a CEO issue: especially for a $100 ticket and a customer that’s been loyal for 7 years.

Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsay has to be one of the most entertaining business-rebuilding television shows I’ve seen in a long time. In each episode, Gordon, a “World Famous Chef.,” takes on the challenge of overhauling what many would assume to be a complete and utter disaster of a restaurant business.

His approach on the surface is simple. At least in this one episode I watched.

He showed up to the restaurant, tried the food, most of it unrecognizable, surveys the kitchen, attacks management and owners, sets on a path to fix and clean both the restaurant and the kitchen areas, reintroduces new talent, skills and structure, then works the model with his supervision, making adjustments as he sees fit.

When completed the entire business looks completely different.

The benefits that Gordon has are immense. First, he’s an outsider and can see the business from a completely different perspective. Second, he’s previously built a winning organization, so he knows exactly the steps that need to be taken to achieve exceptional results. Third, he’s willing to participate in the overhaul along with everyone else. Lastly, he’s very direct in his approach, calling problems as problems and addressing poor management with an in your face approach that quite frankly, if not for television, might end up with some sort of law suit.

What impressed me the most is that Gordon is a man on a mission who has a plan. His plan is not one that he freely opens up about, however, it’s a plan that works, and he knows it. He is, in a sense, a professional coach who’s got winning strategy for his team.

Look beyond the entertaining rants and watch how Ramsay works a plan to rebuild a self-sustaining new business. Then imagine what your organization could look like if you did the same at your job. Begin by taking a look at things from an outsider’s perspective. You can also bring in experts to review what you’re doing and then make the right decisions to make your business best in class.

If you want to see another interesting show hosted by this famed restaurateur, watch Hell’s Kitchen (FOX).

How would you address this challenge?

The VP of Sales and Marketing of a $2 billion dollar firm is having trouble dealing with a partner, a $20 billion dollar firm. The issue is silos. One silo tended to work with with his organization and the others smacked his team around when ever they wanted. His challenge is that he needs several of the silos to be working with his office at a much more productive level. For years he’d tried to break down the silos to no avail. Calls were often ignored. (His division did $1 billion in sales with this firm.)

What would be your recommendation?

Mine was to do this.

Use the one silo to leverage the others. Instead of cold calling individuals within the organization, he should take his main contact and work the “C” chain. Get his main contact to set up a meeting anywhere at any time with a close friend in another silo so that the parties could start talking. I actually suggested doing two of these meetings.

The purpose was not to sell but to see how he could help the other company raise revenue and to offer support in any way possible. The old rifle versus shot-gun approach. Targeting specific parties and then shooting at one target. Besides the connection was not to complain, but to assist the other person.

As much as this seemed simple, the years of hostility between the ONLY vendor and this VP with his team often just landed on deaf ears. I saw it first hand myself. The VP needed to help me accomplish something and even though he managed a billion in revenue, they treated him as if he just walked up to their office selling cyanide tablets. When I called and mentioned my client’s name, I was told they would not help me and that I should speak to my client first.

For the VP the shift was something he’d not tried before and the shift opened up doors in a much more clandestine way where the parties were willing to, for a friend/collegue, meet the VP. Over time he’s already started to penetrate the silos from within, gaining support and leverage with key stake holders.

He tells me for the first time, “I see some light on the horizon.”

You’ve probably heard in a self help book or two, you must be present to live life. Well, there are other times you must be present in order lead or manage accordingly.

During a national sales and marketing convention for an international conglomerate, the North American Director decided not to physically show at the event, however, he thought speaking through the intercom would suffice. (His history is he’s never around.)

The arrangement was a 5-minute pep talk and then off to his next project.

His senior managment team arranged for the call to be patched through right after the review of the morning achievements, which were very impressive from an outsider’s point of view.

After 4 hours of programming, the Director was given the microphone and off he went. For the first 2-3 minutes he started with what he saw in North America and then SLAM. He started commenting on where everyone was going wrong. Everyone from the front line to management. Every person in the audience in some way or another was told they were doing a horrible job. Or that’s the way it sounded.

This rant went on for 30 minutes and without being present, the director had no clue as to the damage he’d caused. One VP said, “I just wanted to kick out the cord from the wall!” Another said, “He’s destroyed everything we looked to accomplish.” An employee shook her head and under her breath said, “I can’t believe he did this over the phone.”

He was not present.

If he had been, he would have seen the faces and could have reacted.

If he’d been present, he could have informed leadership of the issues and then decided on an agreeable approach.

If he’d been present, a million dollars in travel, personnel costs, andpreparation could have been used more appropriately.

The funny thing is that after the event when a VP approached him, he was surprised at the responses, never imagining he’d done so much damage.

If only he had stuck to his approved 5 minutes, this may not have happened. The next time around I can assure you, his management team, who all voiced their anger, because they were also slammed publicly for reasons they still are trying to calculate, will try their best to keep such situations to a minimum…if they are still around.

Just remember, some things are best done when you’re present. Physically. Also remember that even though you’ve got the title of CEO, Chairman, VP, there are schedules, and if you needed more time, you should have thought it out in advance and requested a larger slot.

Lastly, don’t give bad news over the phone, unless absolutely necessary. It’s like asking for a divorce by email. Not too classy.

FastPitch just emailed me that they posted our Tiny URL on their website as a blog entry. My first reaction was how did this happen? Then, this must be some type of joke or someone trying to send, place, or attach a virus to an email for me to unwillingly download.

With trust in Symantec and a little hesitation, I clicked on the link without bringing in the file to my computer and sure enough, FastPitch has a dozen of my blog entries on their website: a dozen different pieces written over the past few months.

I had so many questions as to how did they know where to look and what to grab. With a little searching, I found that months ago when I set up my profile they asked if I had a blog. This little hyperlink created an automated feature that searches and selects articles primarily with the intent on selling me on having others read my blog entries.

If I were willing to pay $10, they would market my blog piece.

Cool feature and truly automated.

When you look at your business, do you have any of these automated fuctions? Bet you don’t. I’m talking about features that deliver digital products or autoresponders that do more than say you’re away from the office.

The web has not only introduced the rapid sourcing of information, it’s taught many that being “live” is not always the best way to do business. Automated functionality is far more powerful, and it allows you to have a life.

If you’re believing the technology is too expensive, look overseas or to packaged programs. They are all over the web and within no time could be producing customers and better yet, revenue just by thinking automation.

Here’s a cool tool.

Tiny URL is a freeware site that offers a mechanism to shorten a long URL into a short URL without losing the address. You know the type that’s so long that when you paste it into an email, it goes on for three lines. Then when someone clicks on it, the URL breaks up and won’t work.

This tool converts the URL into a pasteable format.

For example the URL http://finance.yahoo.com/how-to-guide/family-home/12820 can be converted to http://tinyurl.com/262caa. The website shows more complex examples.

Give it a try.

http://tinyurl.com