Skip Down for the Cluetrain Moment

During the last few days,  I was given a strong example of how far out of sync a retailer could be in the approach with loyal clients.

I have a supermarket close to my home where I am a frequent shopper. The store is close by.  The selection is not huge, but certainly adequate for my needs. The clientele is not always of the noble variety, but there the market is innocent.

The parking situation has become atrocious in our neighborhood lately. After a certain time in the evening, it has become impossible to find a parking spot. One evening, out of pure desperation, I left my car in the store’s parking lot, knowing there was a risk tied to this decision.

I went out in the morning to find out that my car had been towed away. Certainly this is not a good way to start the morning, but I accepted the risk of leaving the car in this parking lot overnight. I called the city department responsible for towed cars to find out that my car had been towed by a private company and was promptly given the number of the business. The private towing service was very friendly mentioning they are open 24 hours a day and even gave me instructions on how to get to their establishment.

At that point in time, I started thinking this situation where a local supermarket hires a private business to tow people’s cars from an empty parking lot in the middle of the night (the car was towed at 1AM), knowing full well how desperate the situation is with parking and that a car overnight can only be from someone in the neighborhood. Isn’t it correct to assume that the owner of that vehicle could very well be a customer of the supermarket?

My next step was to enquire where the customer service for this supermarket chain is located with the objective of talking to them about the situation. I was clearly guilty and had no intention to hide this. My question to them concerned a perceived treatment a loyal client had received. What is more important for this supermarket, the receipt of a towing charge (which I’m sure they don’t see much. I actually found out through discussions with others that this actually a racket where I live. I wouldn’t be surprised if the towing company does not pay the supermarket for the privilege to tow cars from their property!) or the continued patronage of a loyal customer? The objective had nothing to do with the charge I paid to get my car back, but rather this ideal I have of customer service….and what is right. I have developed a theory which basically states that those who pride themselves on customer service are the most indignant clients you can ever have. They will not accept poor service and will let you know. They will also explain WHY the service is poor. This is all tied to an obsession we have about process improvement.

That evening, I went home and started going through my receipts to calculate how loyal a client I had been. I was surprised to uncover a spend of over $1100 over less than a 6 month time period conducted within 28 visits. My daughter was astute enough to note that the figures I had calculated did not even take into account the cash payments, where we save no receipts.

Now here comes the Cluetrain moment! I drove down to the customer service department of this supermarket and went to the reception. I mentioned to the receptionist that I would like to speak to someone in the ‘customer service’ department

Receptionist: Do you have an appointment?

Me: No. I assumed under the name ‘customer service’ that the intention is to help customers with issues.

Receptionist: Did you write an email?

Me: No. I made the effort to visit you with the intention of settling matters

The reservationist was perplexed but called the customer service department and handed me the phone.

‘Customer Service’: Sorry, I am the wrong contact for your query. Have a good day

Me: I have difficulty understanding this definition of ‘customer service’. I just wanted to let you know that I felt your supermarket should be aware of the perception certain loyal customers can get from that of what happened to me. The question is not of guilt or blame. I am guilty of the infraction but feel that your business should work with the community, not against it.

‘Customer Service’: Well, I’m sorry. I can’t help you. Have a good day.

Me: I brought my documents along to show you how loyal a customer I am. Can I please show them to you?

‘Customer Service’: I am alone, and besides I told you already I can’t help you. Will you please leave?

The receptionist noticed that the conversation was getting heated and tried to intervene, to her credit. Unfortunately, the best she could offer was to talk to a regional sales representative, who might be able to offer me a gift certificate.

They all didn’t get it!

The real problem was not with the receptionist, or even the bureaucratic ‘customer service’ employee, but the corporate culture that instills in their employees that the customer is the enemy. OK, I’m sure it’s not every day that you have some crazy customer who is actually trying to help you in improving the service. Instead of saying  “terrible market. I won’t go back there again and will let everyone else know how bad it is”, I made the effort to visit them to explain matters. With that of what I experiences, they made a bad situation infinitely worse!

Customer Service is Just a Conversation Under Another Name

Following my recent posting tied to the Cluetrain Manifesto, I have been thinking about the the concept of conversations and its various facets. Discourse is conducted between individuals, and one shouldn't forget that service is also managed (for the most part) by human beings.

Maybe due to a pride I have in offering the same customer service I would expect myself, this has caused me to lament recent experiences where apparently others do not necessarily hold that same benchmark. Maybe such people expect no more than they offer themselves. 

Here the intention is not to spell out why a customer is experiencing bad service, but what impressions a customer receives when being served improperly. After careful thought, these  four categories below summarize my experience, and I welcome any suggestions to enhance the list below.

• Intimidation - "How dare you ask for a refund"
• Avoidance - After staring at a clerk for over 20 minutes behind his desk, the person finally acknowledges your presence and says "Is anyone helping you?" The only reason the clear responded at all is because he inadvertently looked up and mistakenly made eye-contact with you
• Lethargy - How often have you been 'serviced' by an individual, where you know full well they could care less about you and/or your wishes. When I run across a situation like this, my biggest wish is restart the scenario like rebooting a computer, hoping that I land at any other counter that the one I'm at right now.    
• Lying - The worst is when you know more about the product than the employee, and that person tells you anything expecting you to believe it. I've noticed lying is rarely a singular act but comes in multiples.

I feel better already just by performing this cathartic exercise...

Cluetrain Revisited

Cluetrain Revisited


Maybe it's my search for my digital happy days, but I have just finished reading again one of the most seminal pieces of literature to come out of the go-go 90's, The Cluetrain Manifesto. Looking at the contents 13 years after its first publication, three concepts immediately jump out:

• Belletristic foretaste of our times
• Clients are having conversations directly with employees and are finding out what is really going on within corporations. Some companies have even tried to take advantage of this dialogue to foster customer loyalty. Crowdsourcing has been applied by certain enterprises to create vastly more meaningful products and services for their clients. Applications such as Twitter enable companies to turn negative feedback into a vehicle by which a corporation can show they care about their customers.
• Those companies who either do not conduct open and honest dialogue or do not see the importance of such conversation described in the book eventually learn to regret their stance.  The examples are numerous and have become a daily occurance.
• The transparency discussed in the book is more prevalent today. The combination of exponential growth within the technological realm with a universal use of social media has ensured that nothing is secret anymore. The ugly flip-side to this scenario does not require description.
• Revolutionary zeal as a 90's zeitgeist
• The irreverence in Cluetrain's writing style was partially representative of the time the book was written. Many of us felt the power of something new being created and took liberty in a certain bravado. Such cockiness was lost in the dot-com bust, and we are continuously reminded to be wary of such exuberance today. The Facebook IPO, in spite of the hope that Zuckerberg might be our economic white knight,  is a good example of such caution.
• The description of the primary means of communication back then such as eMail, mailing lists and websites seem very quaint today. Based on the current and future growth of mobile (here) in comparison to the computer (near), one can say that the bespoke had their better days behind them. eMail is actually viewed somewhat negatively today.
• Unfortunately, one can question how open the web's architecture is today. Big money has taken this technology over, which is a good segway to my third point.
• We lost the war
• What happened to the conversations? Yes, we do have social media to converse with the near and far, but are we really conversing? I see plenty of comments being made daily, but they are primarily asynchronous and are very often of the lowest common nominator variety. 
• Does the web imitate life, or is it the other way around? One can find a correlation between  the constant need to profess ones opinion, a societal polarization based on ones individual stance, and the manifestation of this state through media moguls such as Fox News. This malady reminds me of how the Communists ruined a great architectural style (Bauhaus) through cheap mass-production
• Neil Postman wrote about our attempts to amuse ourselves to death, and we see that we have just changed the media. 
• The biggest loss we have had with the development over the last 13 years is the lack of ability to consume any detailed analysis. Instead of a written document, reports are prepared exclusively within PowerPoint. All development is expected to be intuitive as accompanied material stays unread. Mood boards have replace concepts or strategies. Although I possibly  run the risk of appearing to display Luddite characteristics in public, it has to be said. I find this development regrettable. 

Does such a creature exist?

The strategy of the company will become a mantra where every employee will know the plan. Goals will be set and everyone will know their role. Results will be measured and performance pay will become a reality. There will be no surprises and communication will be consistent and constant. A seed of trust will be sown and it will quickly grow and flourish as each employee begins to believe that he and she is a valued member of the team.

I found this quote on the net and just want to share it

' get involved in things to help find or create your next passion. Keep a sense of movement and growth in your career and you will always be ready for your own next step.'

Locks Keep the Employees from the Office

Late in 2008, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. sought to engage employees by launching the Global Access initiative, partnering with Grameen Health (an affiliate of Grameen Bank) in Bangladesh to improve access to health care through rural clinics. As soon as the initiative was announced, project leader Ponni Subbiah was swamped with expressions of interest. “Employees wrote to me from all functional divisions within Pfizer — research, marketing, manufacturing, operations, auditing — telling me how happy they were to see Pfizer involved in this area and how it made them proud to be part of this company,” he says. Employees were so eager to contribute that many offered to volunteer after working hours or on weekends

Backlash: How Early Adopters React When the Mass Market Embraces a New Brand

A well-established principle of product development holds that a small group of early adopters can spur mass-market acceptance of a new product. What is less well understood is how those early adopters react when that product or its brand is accepted by the mass market. As Wharton marketing professors David Reibstein and John Zhang explain in this video, the company could experience a backlash as early adopters move on to other new products. A case in point: Porsche saw a decline in sports car sales after it entered the SUV mass market. Research by Reibstein and Zhang discusses reasons for the backlash and suggests a strategy for dealing with it.

Business Success from the Bottom Up

Business Success from the Bottom Up
by Laura W. Geller

4/08/08
Management consultant Ralph Sink believes that people, when given ownership and held accountable, will shine.

In the Autumn 2007 issue of strategy+business, Ralph Sink, a consultant on high-performance systems, wrote about his decades of experience implementing the approach on the factory floor and as a human resources executive (“My Unfashionable Legacy”). High-performance systems, also known as self-organizing teams and participative management, require employees to take ownership of their jobs, to collaborate with one another to establish control over their work, to be innovative, and to deliver results — to maintain accountability for the business and be treated with corresponding respect, regardless of their level within the organizational hierarchy. In his essay, Sink lamented the decline of this approach, but expressed a belief that, in the end, it will make a comeback. But is there an appetite and an aptitude for this type of management today? What could it mean for companies coping with globalized business models and waves of corporate scandals? Sink spoke with strategy+business recently about the challenges of employing participative management in today’s business environment.

S+B: Why is the high-performance systems approach needed today?
SINK: Many of the young people I’ve spoken to who are being hired straight out of school actually come into corporations expecting participative management. The innate desire is there. Yet we’ve programmed managers to say, “Implement these rules. Follow these procedures.” People in organizations no longer think freely for themselves. They’re in survival mode, and some of them are doing pretty well that way; they are earning big bonuses. Everybody is pushing to get short-term financial results.

Moreover, there’s no loyalty in business today, on either side. When young people enter the workforce, they don’t want to wait 30 years to make good money. They want to come out of school and make it right off the bat, and a lot of them are able to. And they recognize that they can get to be 50 years old and then suddenly be let go by the company they devoted themselves to. People don’t stay at the same company for their whole career anymore; everyone is looking for the best deal.

But what if companies told their employees, “You can be involved, you can lead your own segment, you can have some space and leeway as long as you meet these parameters and grow”? People want their thinking to count. If there’s a better way to accomplish a task, they want to be able to identify it and use it. If they have ownership and they’re involved, they’ll do unbelievable things.

S+B: How do you convince executives to stop focusing on short-term gains?
SINK: I like to use an analogy about making wine. Managers who operate by metrics, paperwork, and numbers say, “OK, we’ve analyzed wine. It has sugar in it. It has pulp. It has yeast. It has grapes.” So, they dump those ingredients in a pot, stir it, drink it, and say, “but this doesn’t taste like wine,” and wonder why. It’s because the wine had to go through a process. They may have had the components right, but they overlooked the principles for transforming grapes and water into wine.

These managers will look at our approach and say, “Oh, I see what this is. You operate with 20 percent fewer people. You eliminate the supervisors, and everybody is self-managed.” So without any development process, principles, or leadership, they go in and cut head counts. And when they end up with a catastrophe, they say, “This approach didn’t work.” From their perspective, they analyzed the pot and put the elements in and stirred it up, so when it failed, they weren’t to blame. If you look across the United States, it’s happening left and right in corporations.

When I go into a company I may see potential for a dollar’s worth of improvement, but I’ll accept five cents, 10 cents, or 15 cents at first, because if you try to go for the whole dollar right away, management won’t believe it. You have to start small and show them that it works. At one company where I was working with an order fulfillment group, I told finance that I needed US$180,000 to build a room where the various people involved in the process could operate as a team. They would have desks but no walls, and when they ran into a problem, they would meet at a table in the middle, solve it, and move on. They would run their unit like a business. The head of finance initially laughed at my request, but after we did it, the company’s distributors told the CEO that they had never before experienced the service, quick response, level of quality, or ease of paperwork that they now found with this company. Soon after, the people who once scoffed at $180,000 were giving me $1 million to implement the approach more widely.

S+B: What type of leadership is needed?
SINK: Schools focus on developing functional capability. They don’t develop character and state of being, and they don’t develop the creativity of individuals. Organizational effectiveness and development should be a discipline, but instead we’ve made it a gimmick. I think we should teach people to be systemic, holistic thinkers, and to manage people’s energy.

For example, when I was moved from manufacturing to human resources at CPFilms, I put a big board up on my wall with pins on it to represent the people I was responsible for. No matter where they were in the organization, I was there to develop them. This was a different approach. I said, “Let’s take a look at your performance. Let’s see if it can be enhanced.” After I did that with people in research and development, the company started to win awards for its new products, and all we did was change the managing process.

Everybody thinks that they’re a visionary, but few are. We’ve educated and programmed people to analyze things, to break them down into their parts, and so forth, but what about the ability to see the big picture? Successful leaders, like Apple’s Steve Jobs and Starbucks’s Howard Schultz, have a vision. To create one, management has to ask itself, Do we have vitality in the organization? Do we have spirit? What’s missing? What do we want to be as an organization, and who do we want to be as a group of people?

S+B: How would your ideas apply to today’s globalized business model?
SINK: Large multinational corporations should have a corporate umbrella that embraces a basic principle and a set of ethics. They should then allow each region to adjust its functions based on the local culture. Just as members of a business unit or employees on the factory floor should be given responsibility and encouraged to problem solve and innovate, so should regional offices have their own space and boundaries so long as their activities don’t conflict with the overall principles of the corporation.

An example of a failure to do this is Wal-Mart in Germany. If Wal-Mart had adjusted to German culture and allowed Germans to take ownership, the company would have been a huge success there. Instead, executives took the model from Arkansas and dropped it in. The German culture is very sophisticated, and also very independent. Germans didn’t need a greeter at the door and, in fact, having one there made them suspicious. They disliked grocery baggers, not wanting strangers to handle their food and personal items. The company also tried to enforce its American-style company code of ethics, causing an uproar among German employees. In 2006, Wal-Mart sold its German stores to a local rival, losing $1 billion in the process.

S+B: What do the corporate scandals of recent years say about the current state of management?
SINK: When the CEO of Merrill Lynch loses billions of dollars and then leaves the company with a $161 million severance payout, it’s fairly sad. He should have been fired for his incompetence and not given a dime. People at all levels, including those at the very top, should be paid based on performance and held accountable, and they should be fired for underperformance. I would tell employees at orientation: “We’ve got a strange company here. You have to progress, or you’re out. You will be held accountable. You’ll have ownership. You’ll become a businessperson and grow. If you don’t take care of the business, the people around you, and your safety, you’ll be fired.” We fired more people for not progressing than for almost any other reason.

Today I think we create systems with the potential for people to take advantage. Many organizations post mission statements on the wall. But they are just taking up space, because nobody within the organization owns them, and no one is held accountable. You see it every day.

Yet in a high-performance system, as a manager, you have to see your employees as professionals and demand that they perform accordingly. When you start saying, “Everybody can now hold one another accountable, including the top guy,” it makes people nervous. Accountability is tough. But if you’re up-front about it, lay it out, and enforce it, this approach works. Ninety-seven percent of your people want to do the right thing. It’s when you let the 3 percent drag it out while the others are working hard and performing that morale and performance deteriorate. The 3 percent becomes 6 percent. Then the 6 percent becomes 12 percent. And this cannot last.

Author Profile:

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Laura W. Geller is deputy managing editor of strategy+business.

Emotional Intelligence

Since Daniel Goleman's bestselling book Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More Than IQ was first published in 1995, a cascade of books, articles and papers has followed-most of it gushingly positive. It sounds almost too good to be true: People who are self-aware and in tune with other people's feelings are more successful on the job, or so the theory goes. The reality is a bit more nuanced. Emotionally intelligent project managers are no more likely to achieve project goals than their "unenlightened" peers. The ways in which they achieve those goals, however, tend to win them praise and promotions, while many of their counterparts are left stewing over why their careers are stuck in neutral.

John D. Mayer, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire,Durham, N.H., USA, offers the example of two team leaders, one with low emotional intelligence, the other with high. "Let's say, for example, that both leaders get a job done on time and with equal quality," he says. "The difference is that the person with high emotional intelligence will create a team environment where people feel liked and respected-where they enjoy their work and feel better about the organization. The leader with low emotional intelligence will more likely leave his [or her] team frustrated, nervous about their jobs or unhappy with the company:'

A person who has high emotional intelligence can read facial, verbal and physical cues that express how a person is feeling as well as manage their own emotions. "It's about how well people can deal with their own emotions and recognize emotions in others," he says.

A high emotional intelligence rating does not necessarily mean someone is highly emotional, says Tim Sparrow, founder of the Centre for Applied Emotional Intelligence, a Cheltenham, England-based trade group for emotional intelligence practitioners in Europe. "You don't want someone who is always pessimistic as a leader, nor do you want someone who is 'wildly optimistic," he says.

The key to strong emotional intelligence is having a balanced and appropriate approach to emotions. And the higher someone is in the team hierarchy, the more important it is for that person to have the trait. "When leaders are not emotionally intelligent, they spend a lot of time fighting, worrying and protecting themselves and that's all a disb'action from the project," Mr. Sparrow says. "As a team leader you need to be flexible and responsive, balancing the skills and needs of everyone on the team."

A person with high emotional intelligence can "have a profound impact on the success and longevity of teams," says David Caruso, Ph.D., research affiliate in the psychology deparbnent at Yale University, and founder and CEO of consultancy EI Skills Group, both based in New Haven, Conn., USA. "They are better able to read the emotional needs of others and manage their own emotions, which enables them to evade conflict and resolve relational issues among team members before they impact the project."

Being able to accurately interpret how a decision will affect people and relationships is especially critical when the implementation of new programs or other events will have a negative impact on the team, says Connie Wayne, manager of executive development for Eaton Corp., Cleveland, Ohio, USA. "With change management, leaders can't just look at the corporate impact of a new system," she says. "They need to examine how it will impact the people and how to help them embrace change. A leader with high emotional intelligence will be more successful in achieving that."

Test Time

The question is, can you boost your emotional intelligence? It's one thing to recognize the importance of being responsive to the team's emotional needs but quite another to figure out how to do that when the project is over budget and everyone is fighting over who is at fault.

Emotional intelligence can indeed be improved upon, although it may not be a topic that belongs in a classroom.

First, you have to figure out where you rank and what your shortcomings are. Of the many tools available to measure a person's emotional intelligence, the best-known is probably the Mayer, Salovey, Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test, designed by a team of subject matter experts that includes Dr. Mayer and Dr. Caruso. The test measures the ability to perceive, understand and manage emotions, Dr. Caruso explains. It can be useful to get a base reading on an individual or team, but should be followed up with a feedback session on what the results mean and what can be done to improve the score.

In Control

Developing greater self-awareness is the first step in gaining more control over the way you manage your own emotions-and how you react to others, says Valerie A. Jachimowicz, PMP, project manager in the information services group at Wyeth Pharmaceutical Co., Philadelphia, Pa., USA.

"As a project manager, anything that helps you understand yourse1£ is helpful," she says. Ms. Jachimowicz discovered emotional intelligence in 2000 when she read Mr. Goleman's first book, which she credits with helping her connect the dots on elements of her behavior that were holding her back on the job. "I have a 'smart mouth,' and sometimes it gets me into trouble" she says. "When I get frustrated or angry, I can lose control."

Because of her emotional outbursts, people didn't want to work with her and she was criticized for the way she communicated. By doing her own research into emotional intelligence and using her reviews. to evaluate how her emotions were impacting her performance, she was able to make some changes. "I learned that when I get emotional, I have to be more careful. I don't get sucked into emotional situations like I used to," she says. "I found that once was more aware, I became better at managing myself."

Even so, Ms. Jachimowicz says emotional intelligence doesn't make for a great training topic for teams. "You have to he ready to make changes," she says. "If you have emotional issues, then you are likely not self-actualized enough to benefit from emotional intelligence training."

Therein lies the rub of emotional intelligence. Because people deal with their emotions in unique ways, a classroom training program isn't likely to have a big impact. "Training can be useful to teach people the concepts of emotional intelligence, but everyone's emotional intelligence needs are different and what you need to do to enhance your emotional intelligence depends on where they are," adds Calha Bright, principal consultant of Galba Bright & Associates, a provider of emotional intelligence knowledge products and services based in St. James, Jamaica. "Results are much more likely to come from coaching than training."

That coaching can take many forms. Trusted colleagues, for example, can serve as "a good low-cost means of improving emotional intelligence," Mr. Bright says.

If you recruit someone inside your company, choose a peer; preferably someone working on the same project, who will be close enough to see you work during high-stress situations, suggests Anthony Mersino, PMP, president of the Project Advisors Croup, a project management consulting firm in Chicago, Ill., USA. "After a meeting, ask that person how you did and what you could have done better."

This kind of feedback should never be given unsolicited, he warns. If you see someone struggling with their emotional responses or cues, first ask yourself if pointing out their shortcomings is in the best interest of the person or team-or just payback for bad behavior. Also consider your own feelings to see if you are sad or angry at that person. "If you think your comments will help, begin by asking, 'Can I give you some feedback?'" he says. "And don't just point out the negatives."

If there's no one on the team you trust to tell you the unvarnished truth, consider bringing in professionals, Mr. Mersino says. He started working on his own emotional intelligence with a life coach five years ago and believes it changed his career. After years of working on mid-level projects at IBM, Ameritech and Unisys, Mr. Mersino was frustrated by his inability to move up-but looking back, he can see why it was happening.

"I was abrasive and communicated with a lot of inappropriate humor and sarcasm," he says. Solely focused on tasks, he avoided relationship-building opportunities, going so far as to remove the visitor's chair from his office so people wouldn't stop in to chat. "1 was there to work, not to make friends," Mr. Mersino says. "But as a project manager, you can't do that. Projects are about people, not tasks."

His life coach helped him see that work was not about a "to-do" list, it was about relationships. Thanks to his newfound emotional awareness, "I've been financially rewarded and have had greater success on projects."

Mr. Mersino's transformation wasn't immediate, though.

It can take years to reverse ingrained behaviors and emotional responses, Mr. Bright says. "You have to think about emotional intelligence improvement as a process," he says. "People change when they recognize the need for change, internalize new behaviors and learn to get out of their own way."

Sarah Fister Gale is a freelance business writer based in Chicago, IL., USA.

Slack Off - If you really want to improve your job performance, go ahead and take some time off.

WORK+LIFE »BY KAREN M. KROll www.pmi.org

Every three months or so, Trelman de Villiers, Ph.D., an engineering manager at Bateman Minerals and Metals in Johannesburg, South Africa, takes a long weekend getaway. He spends time with his wife and focuses on interests outside of work, such as photography and gardening.

"The main reason for taking time off is to rest and recharge. Coming back from a break, or even a weekend without work, I have renewed energy for the tasks ahead," says Dr. de Villiers, who normally works 60 to 70 hours a week.

Taking time off can help improve your performance on the job in several ways. First, a break is invigorating and can prompt you to tackle your work responsibilities with more enthusiasm once you return.

It also gives you an opportunity to step back, n says Lisa Gundry, Ph.D., professor of management and director of the Leo V. Ryan Center for Creativity and Innovation at DePaul University, Chicago, III., USA. Focusing on an activity outside of work can lend a new perspective on the challenges you're facing on the job.

This method is referred to as "pattern-breaking thinking," based on the work of Edward de Bono and other creativity experts. By immersing yourself in an unfamiliar environment or experience, you gain new insights.

Dr. Gundry takes several of her classes to the Art Institute of Chicago to view French Impressionist Claude Monet's "Stack of Wheat" series. Each painting pictures a wheat stack in a different light and season. While the wheat presumably is the focus of the paintings, it's the background that actually distinguishes each picture. "Often, you don't notice what's around you," she says. "It gets people to consider that the problem you're given may not be the real problem."

A Little Peace and Quiet Many weekends, as Beverly Stocker, PMP, hikes several miles, answers to work challenges often become clear. "When I get my mind quieter, the solution will dawn on me," says Ms. Stocker, a project manager at Matanuska Telephone Association Inc., Palmer, Alaska, USA.

In 2004, Ms. Stocker was trying to new figure out how to improve communication among the 150 stakeholders working on a project to automate the provisioning of services. With team members working in different locations and for different departments and business units, communication on the project was unwieldy.

She'd been relying on e-mails with documents attached, as well as regular status meetings. However, team members would often arrive at meetings lacking the information or materials they needed, because not everyone received updated e-mails on a timely basis.

While hiking one weekend, Ms. Stocker thought of Microsoft Project Server. After looking into; the software,she found it would allow her team to set up a central repository for status reports, Gantt charts and other information team members needed. Now, they simply go to the site and click on the hyperlink to access resources.

Back to Basics Stepping into the role of a beginner can help project managers develop a greater appreciation for the effort younger team members must make to master their roles, says Kay Fleischer, PMP, an independent project manager in Chicago, III., USA.

After wrapping up a project in the spring of 2005, Ms. Fleischer spent several months learning to sail competitively. It was her first extended period of time off, and the first time in a long time that she was back in the role of a novice. "At some point, you're at the top of your game professionally, and you just keep doing things that you're good at," she says. "You do forget that you really need to be patient and can't assume things."

Her sailing experience helped her appreciate anew what it's like to be a beginner. Like many disciplines, sailing has its own vocabulary, and novices probably don't know what jib and spinnaker mean or how these items are used. Similarly, Ms. Fleischer says, many newer project team members assume that a Gantt chart will suffice as a project plan.

How Free? free time should be just that -without strict deadlines and goals- it helps to have a loose plan, Dr. Gundry says. That's especially true if the time off extends beyond a few days.

"If you take a sabbatical, you have to plan," says Seppo Halminen, senior manager, project management at Nokia, Espoo, Finland. In 2000, Mr. Halminen took a six-month sabbatical after he finished overseeing construction of a recreational complex.

Initially. he enjoyed relaxing and working on house projects he'd put off. After several months, however, he was ready t do something productive. So Mr. Halminen and his wife began a project they'd long talked about: making a movie to promote travel in Finland. Their creation, "Winter Holidays in Finland," was shown to more than 20 million TV viewers in Eastern Europe.

I Making the decision not to work for a while "freed the mind from the pressureoff or normal work tension to think creatively, which then led to the extraordinary thing of producing a movie," Mr. Halminen says.

A Short Break Taking off an extended period of time isn't always feasible, of course. But even get ting away from work and into a new environmentforan hour or two can help. "I'm a firm believer in taking breaks that don't very long," says Renee Hopkins Callahan, director of insights and innovation at Decision Analyst, a marketing consultancy in Arlington, Texas, USA. Something as simple as reading a book in a genre you usually overlook can be enough to help you think in new ways.

Creativity often involves making connections between situations or topics that don't initially seem particularly similar, Ms. Callahan says. The broader your range of experience, the more material you'll have to draw from when it's time to think of new ideas. "You need to seek out experiences that push you out of your routine," she says.

Find me, follow me, hide me

Dreamforce Report: the prophet margin of John Chambers

http://www.mycustomer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=133266

18-Sep-2007

A capacity crowd turned out to listen to Cisco CEO John Chambers' keynote. What words of wisdom did he share?

By Chris Middleton

The network is the platform, and the old corporate hierarchies will be swept aside in the move to more collaborative working paved by software as a service (SaaS), Cisco CEO John Chambers told Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce jamboree.

As the single-minded CEO of the world’s largest enterprise supplier, Chambers made a surprising evangelist for a flatter, more collaborative way of working. But in his guest speaker slot at the event, he suggested that firms abandon the old “command and control hierarchies” that have characterised his and other large enterprises.

Chambers claimed he now favoured a culture in which everyone across the enterprise – from the mailroom to the boardroom, in effect – is free to innovate and contribute to the corporate vision, a suggestion that would leave many business leaders reading the small print of their retirement plans, given the number of successful IT giants built in the likeness of charismatic and controlling CEOs.

"It’s no longer about investing in ERP, it’s about doing it on-demand, you want it bought to the people who need it." John Chambers, CEO, Cisco

Walking prophet-like amongst the crowd, Chambers said a lack of innovation has characterised the past ten years of the IT industry, a period in which many a technology giant has continued pursuing the locked-in, proprietary business models of the mid to late twentieth century.

In fact, of course, there has been enormous, disruptive innovation over the last decade, but much of it has been in the consumer space led by the likes of Google, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and YouTube, many of which are now part of the unwieldy portfolios of a small number of media giants – or which have become media giants themselves.

What Chambers was really signalling was a welcome, if long overdue, sign of generational awareness. Most potential employees looking to join successful enterprises today are people in their twenties who have grown up with an internet and diversified communications infrastructure that allows them to connect and share and collaborate at will.

However, when those same people enter the world of work, many find corporate IT systems that do not, and cannot, offer that same flexibility and opportunity to innovate, and such rigid hierarchies built on the old client/server model are frustrating and counter-productive. This has the potential to be a recruitment and staff retention problem in future.

Second wave of innovation

The “second wave of innovation,” said Chambers, was about moving away from “internet phase one, one person to one person”, and so the main challenge (or opportunity) for business is finding new ways to work together towards common goals. “You have to see this occurring,” he said. "You have to see it three five and seven years before it is obvious to the market, and position your company for were it’s gonna go.”

The way towards this was a “common open architecture, and IP for the future… it’s no longer about investing in ERP, it’s about doing it on-demand, you want it bought to the people who need it,” Chambers concluded. In other words, the difference is being locked in because you want to be, not because you have no choice, and he even went as far as saying that he has rebuilt his own business on the modus operandi of successful social networking sites.

"People are collaborating on the internet, regardless of the CIO." Bob Suh, CTO, Accenture

Put another way, leadership is no longer about command and control but about subject matter and expertise, and being able to call on that expertise 24/7 in a greener, more efficient, global model driven by such technologies as telepresence and SaaS.

“Find me, follow me, hide me is going to be a way of life in this environment,” he said, but rather undermined his own argument by adding: “If we were a democracy then the whole of my management team would have voted against it.”

Of course, this is precisely the problem that many successful enterprises – and many unsuccessful ones – face in the on-demand world, namely that of management and culture. If the role of the CIO is moving closer to that of the CEO, by becoming more about innovation than information, then that is a huge cultural challenge to the boardroom, and an equally large management challenge to middle-ranking executives. This will be particularly true in risk-averse cultures, both in the sense of nations and of vertical market sectors.

After Chambers’ departure, a panel discussion offered a less evangelical perspective. Chairing the discussion, professor and author Nicholas Carr of MIT said: “Saas and utility computing in general will change the way companies organise their collaboration elements. IT used to be built on isolation, but collaboration in that environment is difficult.”

Bob Suh, CTO of Accenture, said that there is no question that the “consumer web” will move into the company. “People are collaborating on the internet, regardless of the CIO,” he suggested. “What’s happening is that the personal world and the work world are becoming confused together [sic] and people like it that way. E-mail is no longer a document transfer piece of software. I think what’s really happening is that many of customers grew up with technology in a social context and they expect that when they get to work. I grew up with technology as a corporate mandate.”

Eric Berridge CEO Blue Wolf offered the most balanced view. “The beauty of the SaaS model is the common platform that can be rolled out department by department,” he said, adding: “Saas companies could do better selling up the food chain… a lot of them are very niche applications.”

The Ten Faces

http://www.tenfacesofinnovation.com/tenfaces/index.htm

The Learning Personas

Individuals and organizations need to constantly gather new sources of information in order to expand their knowledge and grow, so the first three personas are learning roles. These personas are driven by the idea that no matter how successful a company currently is, no one can afford to be complacent. The world is changing at an accelerated pace, and today's great idea may be tomorrow's anachronism. The learning roles help keep your team from becoming too internally focused, and remind the organization not to be so smug about what you “know”. People who adopt the learning roles are humble enough to question their own worldview, and in doing so they remain open to new insights every day.

The Anthropologist is rarely stationary. Rather, this is the person who ventures into the field to observe how people interact with products, services, and experiences in order to come up with new innovations. The Anthropologist is extremely good at reframing a problem in a new way, humanizing the scientific method to apply it to daily life. Anthropologists share such distinguishing characteristics as the wisdom to observe with a truly open mind; empathy; intuition; the ability to "see" things that have gone unnoticed; a tendency to keep running lists of innovative concepts worth emulating and problems that need solving; and a way of seeking inspiration in unusual places.

The Experimenter celebrates the process, not the tool, testing and retesting potential scenarios to make ideas tangible. A calculated risk-taker, this person models everything from products to services to proposals in order to efficiently reach a solution. To share the fun of discovery, the Experimenter invites others to collaborate, while making sure that the entire process is saving time and money.

The Cross-Pollinator draws associations and connections between seemingly unrelated ideas or concepts to break new ground. Armed with a wide set of interests, an avid curiosity, and an aptitude for learning and teaching, the Cross-Pollinator brings in big ideas from the outside world to enliven their organization. People in this role can often be identified by their open mindedness, diligent note-taking, tendency to think in metaphors, and ability to reap inspiration from constraints.

The Organizing Personas

The next three personas are organizing roles, played by individuals who are savvy about the often counter-intuitive process of how organizations move ideas forward. At IDEO, we used to believe that the ideas should speak for themselves. Now we understand what the Hurdler, the Collaborator, and the Director have known all along: that even the best ideas must continuously compete for time, attention, and resources. Those who adopt these organizing roles don't dismiss the process of budget and resource allocation as “politics” or “red tape.” They recognize it as a complex game of chess, and they play to win.

The Hurdler is a tireless problem-solver who gets a charge out of tackling something that's never been done before. When confronted with a challenge, the Hurdler gracefully sidesteps the obstacle while maintaining a quiet, positive determination. This optimism and perseverance can help big ideas upend the status quo as well as turn setbacks into an organization's greatest successes—despite doomsday forecasting by shortsighted experts.

The Collaborator is the rare person who truly values the team over the individual. In the interest of getting things done, the Collaborator coaxes people out of their work silos to form multidisciplinary teams. In doing so, the person in this role dissolves traditional boundaries within organizations and creates opportunities for team members to assume new roles. More of a coach than a boss, the Collaborator instills their team with the confidence and skills needed to complete the shared journey.

The Director has an acute understanding of the bigger picture, with a firm grasp on the pulse of their organization. Subsequently, the Director is talented at setting the stage, targeting opportunities, bringing out the best in their players, and getting things done. Through empowerment and inspiration, the person in this role motivates those around them to take center stage and embrace the unexpected.

The Building Personas

The four remaining personas are building roles that apply insights from the learning roles and channel the empowerment from the organizing roles to make innovation happen. When people adopt the building personas, they stamp their mark on your organization. People in these roles are highly visible, so you’ll often find them right at the heart of the action.

The Experience Architect is that person relentlessly focused on creating remarkable individual experiences. This person facilitates positive encounters with your organization through products, services, digital interactions, spaces, or events. Whether an architect or a sushi chef, the Experience Architect maps out how to turn something ordinary into something distinctive—even delightful—every chance they get.

The Set Designer looks at every day as a chance to liven up their workspace. They promote energetic, inspired cultures by creating work environments that celebrate the individual and stimulate creativity. To keep up with shifting needs and foster continuous innovation, the Set Designer makes adjustments to a physical space to balance private and collaborative work opportunities. In doing so, this person makes space itself one of an organization's most versatile and powerful tools.

The Storyteller captures our imagination with compelling narratives of initiative, hard work, and innovation. This person goes beyond oral tradition to work in whatever medium best fits their skills and message: video, narrative, animation, even comic strips. By rooting their stories in authenticity, the Storyteller can spark emotion and action, transmit values and objectives, foster collaboration, create heroes, and lead people and organizations into the future.

The Caregiver is the foundation of human-powered innovation. Through empathy, they work to understand each individual customer and create a relationship. Whether a nurse in a hospital, a salesperson in a retail shop, or a teller at an international financial institution, the Caregiver guides the client through the process to provide them with a comfortable, human-centered experience.

Overstating the Obvious?

Another goal is to speed the processes of getting to know each other in a large organisation and establish points of common interest and engage in meaningful communication. People won't naturally share information, sometimes due to compliance and security restraints, time constraints, siloed think or simple self-interest ('what's in it for me') so businesses have to break down those barriers to sharing and develop positive reasons to contribute information.

Source www.top-consultant.com

Plug and Play Employees

Once employees become individuals too, they can no longer be regarded as „plug and play“ parts in an ongoing exercise of producing goods and services. True to the observations of fractal geometry, their individuality now matters. Indeed, it is essential to all outcomes, because through the medium of that individuality, they learn to produce the intangibles that are the critical inputs to competitive success. Work cannot be a question of managing false emotional displays in the service of some kind of “customer satisfaction”. The work of nourishing relationships with individuals cannot be cynical. The I-You relationship requires two individuals, each imperfect but committed to honestly doing their best. These things simply cannot be faked.

It's about dignity, stupid!

Most managers spend their time and effort trying to force the workforce to do what they want. If they found out what the workforce wanted, to be proud of what they do, and spent their time instead creating the environment that allowed them to become proud, then the difference in their performance would be astonishing.

process to empathy ratio

Knowledge@Wharton: Would you explain the concept of the process to empathy ratio?

Bagchi: Yes. This is actually not a scientific explanation. I, like any MBA, would talk about P/E ratios [price-equity ratios]. You talk about one of the indicators of the financial health of an organization through P/E ratios. When I was raising MindTree, one day it occurred to me that we were putting too much of an emphasis on process and building of process and process as an enabler. I found that the Human Resources folks -- we actually call them People Function folks in MindTree -- were becoming more process-centric, and process does not solve all problems. Process works only when it is given life through empathy. I didn't know how to drive home the point, and then it occurred to me that we could have a different take on the P/E ratio concept. I called those folks and said that we need to balance every process with empathy. Think of it as a new way of looking at the P/E ratio. Deal with every situation partly by looking at process and partly by looking at empathy.

Subroto Bagchi
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/article.cfm?articleid=4188

Physical infrastructure you can buy. Intellectual infrastructure you can create, borrow, or inter-network. But emotional infrastructure is the most nebulous and most difficult to build. It offers the most sustainable competitive advantage.

Subroto Bagchi
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/article.cfm?articleid=4188

Seven consumer trends you need to know about

By Reinier Evers, trendwatching.com

In a traditional consumer society, he or she who consumes the most, the best, the coolest, the most expensive, the scarcest, or the most popular goods, will typically also ‘gain’ the most status. However, expect 2007 to be the year in which many brands realise (if not grudgingly accept) that the ‘old’, mass-era status symbols, from the Audi Q7 to the De Beers Radiance collection, are no longer every consumer’s wet dream. After all, as mature consumer societies are increasingly dominated by (physical) abundance, by saturation, by experiences, by virtual worlds, by individualism, by participation, by feelings of guilt and concern about the side-effects of unbridled consumption, status is to be had in many more ways than leading a somewhat dated lifestyle centred on hoarding as many branded, luxury goods as possible. In light of this and factors such as the proliferation of social networking, expect the following trends in 2007:

1. Transumers – An increasing number of consumers are driven by experiences instead of ‘the fixed’. They are driven by entertainment, by discovery, by fighting boredom; people who increasingly live a transient lifestyle, freeing themselves from the hassles of permanent ownership and possessions. These consumers have been around for some time but there will be many more of them in 2007. The implications? An obsession with the here and now, an ever-shorter satisfaction span, and a lust to collect as many experiences and stories as possible, are undermining the perceived value (and thus status) of fixed goods and services. How can firms react? Fashion brands are leading the way in tapping into ‘transumerism’. From the very transient (and affordable) collections at Zara and H&M, to innovative lease concepts that play to the temporary nature of the business, and to transumers’ desires. Elsewhere, exclusive car sharing clubs are popping up faster than you can trade in your old jalopy. Why spend all your money on a Bentley when you can experience a Ferrari, Lamborghini and Maybach, too? Check out the likes of Classic Car Club, P1 Club, LuxShare Auto Club and Ascari.

2. Participative lifestyles - Especially for younger consumers, participation is the new consumption. For these creatives, status comes from finding an appreciative audience (in much the same way as brands operate). No wonder that it's becoming increasingly important to hone one's creative skills. Status symbols, make way for status skills. In economies that increasingly depend on (and thus value) creative thinking and acting, well-known status symbols tied to owning and consuming goods and services will find worthy competition from status skills: those skills that consumers are mastering to make the most of those same goods and services, bringing them status by being good at something, and the story telling that comes with it. Once you get into spotting status skills, you’ll notice they are spreading everywhere. Travel is a case in point. As reported in the New York Times last year: “While many travellers are still happy to spend their vacations lollygagging on the beach, more and more of them want to learn something on their trips. [...] Adventure travel captured the American imagination years ago, but now more people are seeking skills, not just thrills.” Equitours, for instance, offers instruction-based horse-riding tours in the United States and across continental Europe, while Access Trips takes small groups off the beaten track for sports programs and a maximum instructor-to-client ratio of 1 to 5. In other sectors, Volkswagen AutoStadt Driving Courses provide customers with a personal trainer to teach them everything from reducing fuel consumption to keeping one’s car under control in extreme circumstances.

3. Connecting lifestyles - In a post-material world, all that’s left to covet is… other people? From networking sites to buddy lists to meetup.org to a boom in members-only clubs, social status 2.0 is all about who you connect to and who wants to connect to you, tribal-style. This lifestyle is a subset of a larger trend, ‘online lifestyles’, which encompasses everything from status gained from the number of views for one’s photos on Flickr, the real estate one owns in Second Life, to the good looks (and outfit) of one’s avatar.

4. Eco-lifestyles - With the environment finally on the agenda of most powers that be, and millions of consumers now actively trying to ‘greenify’ their lives, status from leading an eco-responsible lifestyle is both more readily available, and increasing in value. A substantial subset of consumers is already bestowing recognition and praise on Prius drivers while scorning SUV owners, and this will only accelerate as design-minded and branding-savvy eco-firms push to the forefront in 2007. Make it green, make it chic, make it effortless, make it visible, and don't hesitate to point out your competitor's polluting alternatives!

5. Trysumers – Trysumers are transient, experienced consumers who are becoming more daring in how and what they consume, thanks to a wide range of societal and technological changes. As saturated, experienced consumers can draw on plenty of past experiences, and know that many more experiences will follow, it's easier to cope with possible disappointment stemming from trying out the unknown. Freed from the shackles of convention and scarcity, immune to most advertising, and enjoying full access to information, reviews and navigation, experienced consumers are trying out new appliances, new services, new flavours, new authors, new destinations, new artists, new outfits, new relationships, new anything with post mass-market gusto. Companies that are latching on to the trend are enabling such experimentation through ‘rent instead of buy’ deals – from handbag subscriptions to super car sharing.

6. Transparency tyranny - Remember the promises of flawless matching of supply and demand, and limitless consumer power, when the web burst onto the scene a dozen years ago? While the last few years didn’t disappoint(consumers are already enjoying near-full transparency of prices and, in categories like travel and music, near-full transparency of opinions as well), 2007 could be the year in which transparency tyranny really starts scaring the shit out of non-performing brands. Why? For one, 1+ billion consumers are now online, and the majority of them have been online for years. They're skilled bargain seekers and ‘best of the best’ hunters, they're avid online networkers and they're opinionated reviewers and advisors (tripadvisor.com now boasts 5+ million travel reviews). Now, for 2007, add camera and video phones becoming both ubiquitous and more powerful - reviews of anything and everything will go multimedia. The impact? Well, a picture says more than a thousand words, and a video says more than a thousand pictures. Everything brands do or don’t do will end up on YouTube.com, or on an undoubtedly soon to be launched YouTube-clone dedicated to product reviews.

7. Generation C(ASH) – Three and a half years ago, Generation C(ontent) emerged as "an avalanche of consumer generated content that is building on the web, adding tera-peta bytes of new text, images, audio and video on an ongoing basis." Fast forward to 2007, and it's hard to find anyone still in awe about the fact that content-creating consumers are behind some of the biggest Web 2.0 success stories, from the tens of millions of blogs to the Flickrs and YouTubes. However, this trend still has a lots of room to grow, as younger, participation-minded consumers will eventually dominate all of the online space, meaning the stakes will continue to be raised as well. And now Generation C(ontent) is joining Generation C(ash). If consumers produce the content, if they are the content, and that content brings in money for aggregating brands, then revenue and profit-sharing is going to be one of 2007’s main themes in the online space. It’s not like brands will have a choice: talented consumers are going to be too sought after to remain satisfied with thank you notes. Get ready for an avalanche of revenue sharing deals, reward schemes and sumptuous gifts aimed at luring creative consumers.

Six of One

"...in academia there is much talk, little action. In industry, there is much action, little thought."

Donald A. Norman

Novel Book Publishing Initiative
We Are Smarter Than Me
Having read about business books, here is your chance to get involved with writing one. Wharton (along with the MIT Sloan School and Pearson Publishing) is working on a novel initiative in book publishing, and readers of Knowledge@Wharton are welcome to participate. The project -- tentatively called We Are Smarter Than Me -- is an experiment to see whether a large community of business people can jointly author a book of the same name. Pearson will publish the book later this year. The book focuses on ways in which companies are learning to leverage social networks and the power of communities to improve their performance by allowing customers or others to take over functions typically performed by experts. Every contributor will be credited as an author, and will help direct royalties to charity. We encourage you to explore this interesting opportunity by going to the We Are Smarter website.
http://www.wearesmarter.org/