Archive for the 'managing' Category

Posted by: Peter Massey | 26.10.2010

Successful transformation of a business on behalf of customers is complex. These are the top 10 things that I’ve seen in transforming large businesses around the customer over the last decade. What have you seen?

1) Leadership built on uncompromising values
Leaders give absolute clarity and simplicity in their challenge and vision such that anyone can understand.
They insist on the values being lived

2) Leaders start externally
Ask the customers – nearly always the first step in creating awareness of dissatisfaction, and what to fix first and with what importance.

It usually requires experiential learning as well so that internal people “get it”.

3) Leaders keep learning what to do?
They ask the frontline staff because they know what ought to be done to achieve the challenge – this is at the heart of change working well .
The leader doesn’t ask what changes to make, but sets out clearly where they’re going and consults extensively on how people think they can get the business there.
He/she uses this to set up continuous processes for this kind of consultation and listening in order to “change the change” later.

4) Leaders support and equip their people
Support the change with the right resources and training – so each person feels equipped to do the new things.
Frontline management and middle management usually need more training and coaching than frontline staff.

5) Leaders plan to win
Make sure each person has time to do the job the new way, taking account of the fact that  “its not something else on top of what you do, it’s the new way you do it”.
Adequate resource planning means people have time to do a great job

6)Leaders change what gets attention
Support the change by measuring different things differently.
Measure individuals on things they can affect, not the things they can’t affect.

Talk incessantly about the vision and successes on the path to it.

7) Leaders plan slow, act fast
The timescales are much sharper than would be first seen as reasonable – after the plan has been formulated, not before.
Leaders take a long time to consult and communicate and that shouldn’t be cut short if the change is to be sustainable.

Leaders communicate endlessly
Massive amounts of formal and informal communication.
The comms plan is as big as the project plan.

9) Leaders review and change
Proper project planning & review.
Communications planning and stakeholder communications.
Constantly “changing the change” with feedback.
Most project managers don’t have the necessary change skills and need training in many cases.

10) Leaders have stamina and consistency
Each decision, made along the way, sticks to the values and vision.
Any deviation introduces cynicism.

Good luck with your customer change programmes. Let us know what other points you are taking note of.

Change, customer experience design, managing, planning, success factors | 2 Comments

Posted by: admin | 23.04.2010

The UK General Election has accelerated the interest in what is called ‘social media’ – in this context meaning Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, etc. And in particular, how these new ways of communicating with people can be used to win the election.

A lot of this has to do with the perception that the use of these new tools was hugely influential to Barack Obama’s success in the US Presidential election. We can debate whether this is true or not, but my purpose here is only to recognise that social media has become widely acknowledge and discussed. I want to look at the potential impact social media may have on business.

The current news items are only the public face of a debate that began some time ago in the business and government worlds. But what the added attention has done is move the topic of social media up the corporate agenda – and no doubt many will rush to ‘”do something”, to be seen to be doing something and not to get left behind.

Like most bandwagons, and especially technology-led ones, it pays to be cautious and spend time thinking – hard – about what you want to achieve by engaging in these new forms of communication. In amongst the uncertainty about how organisations should react to this change in customer behaviour, one thing does seem to be certain. There is no going back once you have started. 

Many groups and forums are springing up to address this area, many of which are ill-informed and offering poor advice. But, there is lots of valuable thinking and sharing being done as this new area is explored. One that I like is called Social CRM Pioneers. It has somewhat of a technology slant (which suits my background) but there are some very informative and insightful conversations being had there.

The first question is how to start – what should be done first? There is no single right answer to that, as individual circumstances differ massively, but here are a few thoughts for you.

Your customers have always been having these conversations between themselves about your products and services (although with less reach and fewer people to listen). You now have the possibility to ‘overhear’ what they are saying in these public communities and networks and, if you are careful and respectful, the possibility to be invited into the conversations and maybe influence attitudes and opinions. 

How will this change in customer behaviour affect your corporate culture? Firstly, remember, your employees are customers too – and will be feeling this change first-hand in their everyday lives. So, you probably already have a lot of knowledge internally. Perhaps, you could start by asking employees about their experiences and how they would like brands to interact with them in this environment? Start an internal conversation as a precursor to external conversations.

The rise of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems over the last fifteen years should have been accompanied by corporate adaptation to a more customer-centric model, although in most cases only the technology was implemented. Maybe, in this new social revolution we should be building ‘people-centric’ organisations.

That is, not companies facing off to individual customers (remember the ‘market of one’ and 360 degree customer views?) but individual people in organisations building trust and relationships with individual prospects and customers over time and through multiple channels and media – whether that be for marketing, sales or service needs. That would mean organising internally to meet customers’ needs and not simply organising for efficiency.

Oh, and don’t forget that there are a large number of customers who do not not participate in online communities and social media. Their needs must not be overlooked in the seeming stampede for this new promised land.

brilliant basics, culture, customer experience, customer forums, frontline agents, listening, managing, people, social media | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 18.03.2008

After a fascinating few days chairing Contact Centre Week in Dublin, one always reflects on what new insights to share with colleagues on returning to the ranch.

Yes I loved BT’s Nicola Millard’s entertaining style  – futurology and all that stuff. But I would because it’s the same stuff we already do today. It’s more today than tomorrow to be looking at new customer behaviours, blogs and wikis and new operating models for business with feedback built in.

I always love hearing more about first direct, Virgin and any company that bases its customer approach on how it treats its people, on its values. The basics of recognising people as people, and treating them accordingly, just shine through time and again.

But one thing struck a large note of curiosity and that was Virgin talking about generation Y and how they are different to work with. They had a great list of aspirations that went deeper than just what Virgin do, dressing down or dressing up.

So I did a bit of digging – take a look at some of the research into the 3 generations at work today – baby boomers, generation X and generation Y. And how it’s changing work as we know it into “Work 2.0”. Actually the trends just seem to be what we’d all want and reflect what many good businesses have done before anyway. Less patience with poor management or poor development is a good thing. Wanting more gyms and sabbaticals is hardly new.

Perhaps being prepared to stand up and take more risk to get it, this is where the difference lies with generation Y. I can’t help but admire the “balls” of gen Y to go out and get what they want. Well most of them. And not put up with something less, preferring to keep searching rather than do something less than what they want. That’s great if you got an education. And a disaster if you didn’t.

I’ll put away my UK crystal ball at this point as it’s gone a bit dark and nasty. In China and India every gen Y person and their gen X parents or baby boomer parents and grandparents want one thing – the best education you can get.

In some ways th gen Y behaviours are no surprise. I use my daughters as examples of this new generation at every opportunity when talking about customer behaviours. If you’re a student, you don’t knock next door to see who’s going for a drink, you IM them. What’s email when you can talk to several people in real time. If I can’t update my Bebo pages, how will people know that I’m alive?

Of course it left me very confused – being a perennial 18 year old, I can see all 3 sets of behaviours in what I do…..but I didn’t see how I recognise the 3 generations differently at work and manage their motivations differently. So I will look harder in future. Once I’ve understood the differences between men and women, this should be a piece of cake!

Generation Y, Virgin, future, managing | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 3.03.2008

I sit blogging this whilst my daughter is in theatre at Maidstone Hospital – yes that one that made all the press for MRSA deaths. So it wasn’t without trepidation that we approached the place. It’s a toe curling place to be – or rather toe uncurling to be precise – that’s the minor operation she’s in for.

Beth’s last lesson on Friday had been doing TLAFSSOS…three letter acronym for social studies or something… talking about hospital infections. Online yesterday I discovered from a contact in S Africa the sad news that someone I met last year died from complications after an operation. One of Beth’s friends was in intensive care for a month 2 years ago after a minor op here.

What sticks in my mind from a few years ago, was the difference between the private hospital in Tunbridge Wells and public hospital there. Yes the other half of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust once run by the infamous Rose Gibb. She that made the news for chasing targets and the resultant dirty hospitals that killed many. She’s still the signature in the “Welcome to our hospital” book today.

But far from being about slagging off the NHS, this is a story of reassurance. Walking into reception at 7.30am this morning, the place was awash ( no pun…) with cleaners. Every corner looks spotless. Every uniform freshly pressed. Every entrance to every ward has disinfecting hand washes and everyone uses them. Whilst sitting in the room waiting, someone has been in and cleaned the toilet. Someone else has waashed down the surfaces, someone else has vacuumed the floors and finally someone else has mopped them. One of the toilets is marked for deep clean 030308 (heh happy 5th birthday to telco 3, launched on 030303 !).

So I can see cleanliness is a top priority. There are no inspectors, just people everywhere paying attention to cleanliness.

There are at least 4 lessons to draw from the tragic history of this place:

- The business of this NHS Trust became focused on its shareholders, the money men, not on its customers, the patients
- The targets set by its shareholders did not reflect the most basic needs of its customers
- Neither the management nor the shareholders would listen to the customers, even when they were dying, because of cost targets that would ultimately cost a lot of money
- The waste of life stands out: the cost now of keeping it clean must be high, but not so high as the price of a death, let alone 100 deaths
 

It’s about the focus and stamina of the leaders really.

I remember hearing Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney talk last year at ECMW. When he ran Universal, he was frustrated that he could never keep the toilets as fastidiously clean as at Disney. So he called the then CEO of Disney and asked what was the secret. He discovered 3 things:

- Whenever I visit a Disney operation of any kind, the first thing I do is go to the toilets. If I have to pick up paper from the floor myself, I do so. But hell breaks loose if I ever have to do it twice
- The secret is cleaning the toilets most when they are most used eg every 15 minutes at lunch time
- It wasn’t difficult. It just had to be a high priority. And stay a high priority.
 

So as I relax and wait for Beth to come into post op, I ask you these questions from the 4 lessons:

1.       Is your business really focused on the basic needs of your customers, not the money? “Show me the money!”, as the film Jerry McGuire illustrated, just isn’t going to cut it in the 21st century.

2.       If you know the most basic needs of your customers, are your metrics about those needs and are they calibrated to match what customers say?

3.       Do you capture what your customers are saying? Yes? And do your management priorities get set by what they are saying?

4.       The cost of waste hopefully isn’t as evident as at this NHS Trust, but do you really know what it is?

Is every customer of your business as relaxed using your business as I can be sat here?

If you’re not sure, type you company name followed by “sucks” into Google and see what comes out.

Get in touch if you’d like to talk

Healthcare, brilliant basics, listening, managing, measurement | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 14.06.2007

I sit writing, bleary eyed, having just taken off from Milan very early this morning after an excellent night on the tiles at Stream’s annual user conference. The conference circuit has been taking its toll on my blogging of late….. In the last 30 days, its been ECMW, a telco CRM event in Lisbon, our own Chief Customer Officer forum, then Dusseldorf and Paris with LimeBridge external events, LimeBridge’s 10th global gathering. This week it’s been Milan and the British Bankers Association. Finally next week I chair Advanced Customer Management in London and the “season” finishes. I probably need to buy an acre of Brazilian rainforest to offset the flights and the midnight oil that has been burned.

There’s at least 10 blogs to back date from the interesting things I’ve heard people talking about, Prahalad, Eisner. Updates on how LimeBridge is jumping to its next iteration etc – I’ll catch up at the weekend….may be.

What just caught my eye was an article in the FT titled “In the pursuit of happiness”. The story goes that the long held premise that happy staff make happy customers is not backed up by the evidence. Crumbs, I just noticed I know the journalist – will have to shoot him – Alan I know where you live !

On the conference circuit I’ve been talking a lot about our passion of “how do we stop doing dumb things to our customers and people” and trying hard to get people to feel the feelings that customer facing staff feel when they deliver dumb things in what we call the “stupid factory” of poor processes. How it feels when they are not supported by management, and worse when they are controlled by management practices and measurements. And how they perform when they are supported rather than managed (see the blogs on red nose day, and on the 4 questions that Happy use). I’ve been working hard to recognise that change in attitudes starts with them, not someone else. How they respect people by saying hello in the morning, how they listen to their frontline staff who know what customers are saying. How they are as managers and designers of the operation around them.

There’s also a fundamental that people won’t get off their backsides for money, to make shareholders another million. But they will for a real purpose, for a passion that matters. When we did the CCO forum we calculated that about 30 million customers and 90,000 staff would be affected by how the influential people in the room drove their businesses – that matters. Not how much more money their businesses would make as a result. I realised I had to shout this from the roof tops when I heard a colleague of mine say he thought our passion didn’t make our sales proposition clear. Bollocks to propositions, its not about business – its about how frustrated and fed up we’re making those 90,000 people and 30 million customers. And how quickly can we stop it happening.

So as you see the FT article got me going! It refers to the seminal HBR article “The Service Profit Chain” (you can read it in our library at http://www.budd.uk.com/ ) and how the authors now admit its not that direct a linkage from satisfied staff to satisfied customers to higher profits. That’s its not that linear. Of course it isn’t. But that doesn’t mean that happy staff don’t deliver better results.

The article falls into the trap of measuring results only in shareholder terms ie profit. 21st century business is also about measuring social returns on customer time wasted, staff lives wasted and natural resources wasted from paper wasted on junk mail to midnight oil burned trying to get your laptop to work with all its new software and PDAs and printers. This matters far more to people. It gives purpose to what businesses are for.

In fairness the article does touch on the need for both dimensions, the process and the motivation, to be right in order to deliver a good result for customers. And it emphasises a key thing – that workers should redesign work, not managers or consultants. They already know what’s broken – you just have to free them to change what happens. It’s managers “managing by getting in the way” LINK that’s the problem with the Service Profit Chain logic, not the service profit chain itself. And the article does emphasise the Gallup 12 questions ( see previous post) bringing out that its your direct manager who affects most how you feel and therefore how well you perform

Alan must have been reading our blogs when he put his FT article together, given all the things he mentioned!!

Well that’s another half hour lost to ranting, but I feel better for it! A bientot

chief customer officer, dumb things, managing, people | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 21.05.2007

I met Henry Stewart, CEO of Happy, an IT training firm that has won numerous awards for being what it says on the tin. What a nice bloke. With 50 employees, they have a waiting list of 2000 people to join and are top ten in the FT top companies to work for apparently.

His secret goes back to MBGITW – management by getting in the way. He did a great exercise to make you think about it. Try it:

What do you think is most important to do when you are managing?

Think about when specifically you did your best work

What did your manager do when you did your best work? (Most common answer – nothing, they got out of the way!)

So what should you do when you’re a manager and want to get the most out of your people?

Scary thought eh?

managing, people | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 13.05.2007

The earlier post on managing by getting in the way seemed to hit a rich stream. Not least in terms of re-thinking some of the things I do!

One of the rich veins to tap when looking for waste and MBIGTW is the purchasing department and paying one’s bills.

I won’t say which companies are concerned, but needless to say they are 3 major companies I could example, household names, coincidentally European companies. The systemic problem they have is that the business leaders are not so much supported by good purchasing practice, as ruled by them. They cannot run the business at the pace or in the way they would like. The cultural impact of purchasing is major.

Worse still, in these companies, there appears to be an accidental, but systematic inability to pay their bills. This results in major time wasting for executives, managment and their staff. The effect on culture and morale is palpable. The effect on retaining the best talent can’t be measured, but it’s there.

Ok, the CFO might make an argument for the financial benefits of not paying the bills owed. But the human impact in the business ( let alone the suppliers) is bigger.

Is this the biggest example of managing by getting in the way that you can suggest, or do you know of a bigger one?

managing, people | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 2.05.2007

Managing by getting in the way

You’ve heard of MBWA or “managing by walking about” ? It comes in a number of guises:
- The early morning tour just to say hello, catch a few swift glimpses of what’s going on, take the temperature and be seen to be around
- Staple yourself to the order – a famous HBR article about walking the route of a piece of work to see what really happens with it. It avoids “fact-free” meetings, all too common the higher you go in an organisation. You can apply it to any
- Back to the floor – not every manager is skillful enough to be trained to fully do the job of a frontline, but they can do a lot of learning and inspiring by taking part in frontline activities

Let me introduce you to another acronym – MBGITW or “managing by getting in the way” It also comes in a number of guises:
- the need for copious management information that tells you what happened in the past
- the need to know what’s going on in every corner all the time
- the need to be seen to have all the answers, to be in control, to make the decisions

We all do it. Try asking yourself these questions:
- How often are decisions about change made by the people who do the work involved?
- How long do the decisions take that you make, from first being raised through investigation to conclusion?
- How much time do people spend explaining the things they need to you?
- How often do you say “I don’t know”?

managing | No Comments