Make Time for People

When people become new supervisors they usually go through the, “I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that” phase. This is a great thing to do. Set goals. Plan things out. The bad thing is that many people don’t follow through. They get tied up in operations and forget about all those great plans.

One thing that people normally say is that they’re “going to make time for their staff”. Sound familiar? How quickly we forget.

As a supervisor, you’re a resource for your staff, a mentor, a teacher. To others, you’re a trusted colleague. You’re in a people job now. If that doesn’t fit into your agenda, then you’re in the wrong position. You have to make time for people.

Some of your staff won’t need a lot of supervision, or time for that matter. That’s fine. Let em work. But you still need to be available when they do need you. Others are going to need constant supervision and an open door. When these folks come to see you, ignore the phone, put down the pen and listen. Show them how important they are and how much you care. This is not only courteous and respectful, but also motivating. They’ll believe that you find them important and begin to act like it more. They’ll have more confidence and act more decisively.

If you’re not in the same physical area as your staff you can still be available. Provide a means for them to get in touch with you quickly – phone, e-mail, voicemail, etc. Make sure that you get back in touch with them quickly. No more than 24 hours. Make this a habit and they’ll have greater trust and respect for you.

Need another reason for making time for people? You’ll reduce turnover. As I’ve posted before - most people don’t quit their jobs, they quit their bosses.

Negaholism

It's unfortunate that negativity comes so naturally to people. "No, you can't do that. No, I can't do this." To some, NO is the first thing that comes to mind. It's extremely stressful to be around these people all the time. But hey - what can you do? You can stay positive is what you can do. Realize who's causing the negativity and why and help them out.

A lot of times it just takes someone to point out to the "negaholic" that they have a problem. We've all been there, whether at work or at home. I was there. When my kids were growing up, any time they asked for something, my immediate answer was "NO". Not because the answer was really no, it was because "no" became a habit. Once I realized it, I had to work at losing it.

Negaholism causes many problems in the workplace and just keeps building if nothing is done about it. Some of the biggest problems negaholism causes are:

• breakdowns in communication,
• loss of trust,
• arguing over seemingly childish issues,
• the blame game (what does that TV commercial call it - "blamestorming"?), and
• competition where there should be cooperation.

So what can you, as a leader, do to help? Mentor your negaholics. Meet with them, talk with them. Show them how things are and how they should be in order to improve. Point out that their road to advancement depends on their change. You should discuss your (and the organizations) behavioral expectations. And most of all, give good honest - and frequent - feedback. Just showing a negaholic that you care can be enough to turn him/her right around.

Work With Locations

If you work for a large organization with a main headquarters and numerous locations, you’ll relate well to this. There’s always been a disconnection in most organizations with an organizational structure such as this, mostly because the locations are out of sight and out of mind. It's like trying to hold on to a long distance relationship. For some people it works well. For others . . . not so well.

HQ’s commonly develop SOPs and policies and distribute them with no thought on how they’re going to impact locations around the region or country. In organizations set up like this, you don’t have one culture. You may have one “corporate” culture, but there are numerous sub-cultures within it. Just the fact that you have locations around the country in the North, South, East, and West is going to give you four sub-cultures. People are brought up differently and have different work ethics in various geographic areas. Age variations and length of employment also create sub-cultures of their own which often stress different beliefs and actions. The authoritarian, “my way or the highway” thinking of HQ can do more damage to the overall organization than anything else. Internal strife is hard to deal with.

Now if you want to add mergers to the mix, you’ve just doubled the number of your cultures and sub-cultures. This will take extra involvement all the way around. But that's for another blog.

The means to solving these issues takes effort from all locations, but in the end, it’s HQ that has to take the time to truly care and implement solutions for everyone. Someone (management), needs to travel to your various locales and sit down and truly watch and listen so that you can get an accurate picture of what’s going on and what people need to do their jobs to the best of their ability. This act alone will build trust just because you made the effort to get involved with those that feel they're not being heard.

If you don’t listen and your locations are continually fighting to be heard, they’ll eventually give up. Then you’re in for lackluster, unproductive work. Their customer service suffers and retention suffers. What’s good for me isn't necessarily what’s good for you. Stop, look, and listen.

Learn!

Keep learning and never look back. Continuous learning, of any kind, will keep the brain fires burning, advancements ongoing, and respect by others increasing.

Many employees, especially those in the lower ranks, think of training as a burden. Something “extra” they have to do. These are the people that aren’t going anywhere in your organization. You can always improve yourself through learning and education no matter who you are or how much you already know (or think you know). Socrates said, “There is only one thing I know, and that is I know nothing”.

Learning doesn’t have to take the form of sitting in a classroom. It can be a class online (free at http://www.gcflearnfree.org/) or just reading books or magazines. Doing this keeps your mind active. I hear all the time from people that they don’t have the time or attention span to sit and read an entire book. That’s fine. Subscribe to a couple of magazines. These days, a lot of magazines are even available as digital editions online for free (http://www.successmtgs.com/mimegasite/index.jsp). You flip through the pages on the computer as if you actually have a copy in your hand.

Organizations want knowledgeable employees and employees that want to improve upon themselves. In the workplace, there’s always more to learn. Use your down time to review SOPs, not sit and chat about what you’re planning to do next weekend. Remember, “It’s called work for a reason” (Larry Winget). Just because you read it during training doesn’t mean that you’ve necessarily retained it all. SOPs/directives/policies, whatever your organization calls them, are living documents. They’re constantly changing.

If you don’t know already, find out what the trade journals are for your occupation and subscribe to one. Or, if you don’t want to put out the money, go to your local library or company library. You’ll be surprised by what’s there that you probably had never heard of before. Seek out your professional associations online. They always have a wealth of information about what's going on and what's coming up. Although you may have to pay to join, it’s a great way to network.

Continuous learning may require some discipline. If you need to, set aside a specific time each day to read. The key sometimes is to just do it. Your future depends on it.

Gotta Do What You Gotta Do

According to the ADP National Employment Report, from January through April this year, U.S. companies with fewer than 50 employees let go 904,000 employees. Being laid off is a huge psychological and financial event, but it can be just as traumatic for the business owner who has to perform this dirty deed. Although a much different setting, managers and directors of large organizations can go through the same thing.

But just like the flight attendants tell you on the plane, always put the oxygen mask on yourself first. You're no good to anybody if you're incapacitated. I'm not trying to be cold here but lets face it, you gotta do what you gotta do. If you don't look after the business, why would anyone else?

A number of years ago, I knew a guy who had a yard landscaping (mowing) business that took off like hotcakes. He quickly developed a rather large clientele and hired extra people in order to keep up with the workload. And then, alas, Winter rolled around and the workload dropped just as quickly as it had grown. He felt so bad about the idea of having to lay off some of his workers that he couldn't do it, and the business eventually (fairly quickly actually) fell apart. Instead of putting on HIS oxygen mask, he tried to share it . . . and there wasn't enough. The survival of his business depended on him putting on his own mask first.

When the time comes to lay off staff is when the real leader comes out. Honestly explain to your employee(s) the reasons for your decision, express gratitude for their loyalty and service, and be sure that you re-enforce the fact that the lay off isn't in response to their performance. And remember that you aren't the focus of the conversation, the life of the organization is. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

Protect Your Brand

Protecting your brand is the name of the game these days. There's just too much competition out there for you not to be continuously looking for ways to improve. You say you don't have a brand? Wrong. Every company and every person has a brand whether you realize it or not. It's what defines you. It's what sets you apart from everyone else. If you don't see or work on your brand, you're not going to be in business for too awful long.

One of the (many) things you need to do is protect yourself by actively seeking out the things that others are saying about you, whether good or bad. You need to be prepared to react appropriately to accusations or capitalize on positive comments. You don't have time though to sit at your desk and manually search for your name in articles, blogs, video's, etc. That's where Google comes in - I love Google. Contrary to what you may think, the Google website is chock full of all kinds of everyday business tools. It's definitely not just a search engine.

One of the things that Google can do for you is to send you alerts when people are talking about you. Create a Google account, if you haven't already, and go to www.google.com/alert. Here you can type in key words or phrases, like your company name, CEO's name, etc, and Google will continuously and automatically search the web for you and send you e-mail alerts whenever you're mentioned. Pretty cool, huh? And guess what - it's FREE. You can't beat it.

Setting up alerts takes less than a minute. Start taking some steps to improve your brand, and start right here and now. It takes no time at all, and it's free. What more can you ask for?

Note: If you want to search a specific name or phrase, type it in quotation marks (ie, "walt disney world") or else you'll get hits on each individual word also.

Relentless Preparation

In a recent issue of Success Magazine, Rudolph Giuliani discusses his seven success strategies. One of them that hit home was, "Relentless preparation is key". He says to "anticipate what is going to happen. Practice your response, and then afterward, study what actions you did take and what those results were."

Too often people come up with a solution to fix a problem, celebrate, and move on. That's not going to help down the road when it happens again or to someone else and you can't remember what you did before. Especially when it happens off-site. If you have supervisors out in the field overseeing operations and they're dealing with the day-to-day problems, they should be reporting these things to their supervisors back at the ranch. Chances are, if things are happening out there to them, they're happening to others. Why continuously try to reinvent the wheel? That just wastes peoples time and money, and could very well complicate the situation.

You should have a system in place to document problems that arise and what's done to correct them. They should then go to a main supervisor/manager(s) (or some other designated person) who will then discuss them amongst themselves or with the field supervisors, however would work best for you, to determine if that was the best way to correct the problem or if there would be a better way. Depending on the size of your organization, you may even need to go as far as creating an actual department, or make it a part of QA's job function. These problems and their preferred corrective actions should become the standard and be shared with your field supervisors/managers.

The idea here is to stop wasting time, energy, and money. Plan and be READY to act, not react. Even if you weren't a Boy Scout, I'm sure the majority of you know what their motto is - "Be Prepared". These are kids that adhere to this motto - do you really have an excuse not to?

Meetings, Meetings, and More Meetings

Have you ever sat down at a meeting table and asked yourself, "why the heck are we even here?"? Me too - many times. I used to have a department head that held a basic "what's happening" meeting the last hour on Friday and again first thing Monday morning. I'm still trying to figure that one out.

According to the Wall Street Journal report on Wharton Centre For Applied Research, the average CEO in the United States spends 17 hours a week in meetings that costs the company $42,500 per year. Senior executives spend 23 hours a week in meetings and cost up to $46,000.00 per year each. Middle managers spend 11 hours a week in meetings and cost up to $20,000.00 a year each.

There are some things that you can do to counteract some of these expenses. First and foremost, ask yourself if the meeting is really a necessity. Look to see if there's a more cost-effective way to achieve your objective - by phone, email, or water cooler.

Speed up your meetings by supplying all participants with an agenda two to three days prior to the meeting. Include objectives, issues to be discussed, start and end times for each issue, a list of attendees and any preparations required. Assign someone as a time-keeper to keep things on track according to the set time limits.

When making out your participant list, be sure the people you're choosing really need to be there. If not, you're just completely wasting their time. Pretty soon everyone will be questioning their need to be at any of your meetings.

And by all means, manage your meetings. Keep discussions on track. Use the parking lot - if the group starts getting off track, write that issue on a sticky note and post it to discuss it more at the end of the meeting, if there's time, or at a later date.

Good meetings don't just happen. If you manage the process, the results will take care of themselves.

Speech Tics

After a little time off - I'm baaaaaack. And I want to talk about something you hear about a lot when discussing training or speeches/presentations. Speech tics. Speech tics are when you repeatedly use words, sounds, or phrases over and over. Things like "okay", "ya know", "I mean", and "um" and "uh".

Speech tics can be VERY annoying to your audience. PRACTICE your training or speeches prior to performing for the first time. You may think you don't have any tics, but you may actually find out that you do.

Just a couple of weeks ago I was listening, with a group of others, to a presenter. We all eventually tuned out what he was trying to get across because we were too busy counting his "um's" and "uh's". I actually can't recall what his presentation was on.

Repeating your speech tics - repetitive sounds - gets old and boring really fast. It's a sure way to lose your audience. In addition to just losing them, you also stand the chance of being made fun of (I saw some of that) and also decreasing your believability (saw that to).

Recognize your pet phrases and words and work on eliminating them - PRACTICE. Ask someone to keep a record each and every time one slips out. Use videotapes or even audiotapes to play back to see for yourself. Warning: it may not be pretty. Watch your audience while you're giving your presentation. You can pick it up by noticing their mannerisms and looks.

Even the most seasoned presenters will fall into the speech tic mode from time to time. If getting up in front of people isn't your main occupation, chances are you're going to fall into it more than what you think. PRACTICE.

Love Your Job

The keys to success come from being good at what you do. Lets face it, you're paid to work and to do a good job - everything else is extra. You're not always going to like 100% of your job. So concentrate on the part that you do.

It's easy to fall into the rut of hating a job - just because there's some aspect of it that you don't like. I've known a lot of people in that position, including myself. You really have to look past some aspects of what you do and seek out the reasons why you liked your job in the first place.

In Larry Winget's book, It's Called Work for a Reason, he says, "Fall in love with the 10 percent of your job that is really your job and just put up with the rest of it - the other 90 percent - because it's just part of what must be done to get you to the 10 percent that you enjoy". Winget gives a good example in explaining that he's a professional speaker about 200 days out of the year, yet he only spends about 100 hours on stage. The rest of all that time is spent traveling, waiting, etc - not really exciting stuff. But he has to wade through all that other stuff to get to the part that he really enjoys. They're necessary evils.

You may have to do some adjusting to get that love of your job back. Find that 10 percent, work at it, and you'll be good at what you do. You may even be excellent at it. That 10 percent is most likely that portion that gets noticed.

Think back to when you started your job. What was it that drew you to it? What aspects of it did you like the best? Make yourself a list. Find that old spark and work at getting it back. Forget all the other stuff and focus on the positive. Pretend that you've just started your job - all over again. Approach it from a new staff perspective - except that you already have the knowledge. Winget says that, "you don't have to love your job in order to be excellent at it. But it helps". It helps a lot!

Stay Informed

Donald Trump says that, "Ignorance is inexcusable; it's the surest way to fail. No acceptable reason exists for not keeping well informed." As a supervisor, this is essential. In order to excel you need to go above and beyond.

I watched a program on TV last night on the National Geographic channel about Air Force One (the Presidents plane). It was really worth my time. It showed just how much preparing and planning it takes to make any kind of trip - especially overseas. The pilot (Air Force Colonel) oversees EVERYTHING. He's constantly reviewing maintenance, scheduling and weather reports. He knows everything that's going on with that aircraft and plans for multiple scenarios.

The thing that was most interesting was the trip they made with President Bush (W) to Iraq for Thanksgiving. It was kept with the utmost secrecy - at that time Baghdad was a true battleground. In order to be able to pull this trip off the Colonel had to be sure that what his crew was doing was in total sync with the rest of the plans. They had to switch planes at one point and ensure they landed at the precise given time. While on the ground they had to be ready - literally at a moments notice - to take off. Now the Colonel could have had the attitude that, "I have great people and they'll handle everything". Sure. He has a highly trained and motivated crew and they each have a load of responsiblity. But he was the glue holding all the pieces together.

This is not a drill in micro-managing. Ugh - I hate that word. It's a matter of being ready, being prepared. It's a matter of gaining knowledge so you can make better and quicker decisions. It's a matter of being the best. Everyone wants to work with and deal with the best. If you work hard, hard workers will want to work with you. Remember - you are a role model. The ability and desire to keep informed will trickle down to your staff. That will make them more knowledgeable, motivated, and productive.

Wanted: Morale

I recently read a survey by the consulting firm Towers Perrin that said that "75% of employees polled believe that they can have a direct impact on their company's success and 72% derive a sense of accomplishment from their jobs".

Employees are looking for more than just a paycheck these days. They want to be treated like human beings, not just another piece of equipment. They WANT to be able to make a difference. The thing is, a lot of managers still don't get the idea. They're still in the age of "do as I say, not as I do". Employees are constantly under a microscope.

I'm sure you've heard the phrase, "do unto others . . .". It goes both ways. Just as you expect to be treated fairly and in a mature fashion, so do your employees. If you show them that you don't care about them, guess what, they show that right back to you. Show them that you care and can work for and with them, and they'll do the same.

Energize your employees - remember, we're all customers to each other in the workplace. Sharon Harwood, from Disney University said, "(Walt) Disney knew you couldn't have a supervisor in the back room yelling at you and then walk through the front door and greet a guest with a big smile as if nothing were wrong".

1001 Ways to Energize Employees by Bob Nelson, talks about how "energizing managers aren't afraid to tell their employees how much they appreciate them. When Ed Stewart, an employee of Dallas-based Southwest Airlines, turned down a better-paying job offer to stay with Southwest, CEO Herb Kelleher walked into his office and kissed him". Now I'm not saying that you need to go around kissing your employees, but it doesn't take much to let them know how much you care for and appreciate them. People want to feel good about where they work and who they work for. They want to be able to wake up in the morning because they want to go to work, not because they have to go. The better they feel, the more committed and productive they are.

Dave Longaberger, CEO of The Longaberger Company summed it up pretty well - "Having a good time is the best motivator there is. When people feel good about a company, they produce more."

How to Lose Trust

Trust - a balance between what staff are giving and what they're receiving. If staff detect an imbalance between these two things, their trust in you or the organization will suffer.

You can gain trust by empowering people. Now that doesn't necessarily mean you have to give them the keys to the executive washrooms (that's another topic). It can simply mean trusting them to do the right thing, keeping them in the loop, or noticing the things that they do.

Every once in awhile you need to sit back and reflect on your relationships. Here's a list of behaviors, from Motivating Employees by Bruce and Pepitone, that cause employees to lose trust:

• you say you'll empower them, but you find excuses not to,
• you deliberately instill fear and anxiety in them,
• you're manipulative,
• you fail to deliver on promises or you make empty promises,
• you inform the public about something before telling employees about it,
• you don't tell them what you expect from them,
• you give rewards that mean little or nothing to them,
• you're inaccessible and always behind closed doors,
• you delegate responsibility without authority.

Any of these sound familiar? If they do, it's time that you sit down and draft a new game plan. Give them what they need in order to do a good job and let them go at it.

Remember, I've said this before - most people don't quit their jobs, they quit their bosses.

Futurism

Well I'm baaaaack. I've been concentrating the last couple of weeks on the new job - and I love it. But it's time to get back to sharing my thoughts and "insights".

I can't remember what I was doing the other day when I saw the name Joel Barker. Wow. I hadn't heard that name in years. Barker wrote the book Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future. It's been one of my favorite books - and movies.

Barker is a futurist. He believes that paradigm shifts can happen at any time. And so do I. The thing is, if you look to the future, you may see them coming. This is where the futurist comes in with anticipation.

Too many managers lead with a reactionary skill. In his book, Barker discusses Peter Drucker's book Managing in Turbulent Times. He writes about the skills that a good manager needs and "suggests that one of the most important managerial skills during times of high turbulence (and anytime really) is anticipation."

Successful managers have always been strong problem-solvers. When a real problem occurs, they solve it. This is what they're paid for and this is what they concentrate on.

Drucker suggests that managers improve their skills in the area of anticipation and problem avoidance/opportunity identification. This is where you have the greatest leverage over the future - in business and in personal lives.

By looking ahead - anticipating - you'll dramatically improve your ability to deal with things before they happen, which in turn is going to give you more smooth sailing time. Sure, there are always going to be problems to solve. But by being a futurist and anticipating, you'll be able to head them off easier - or before they even happen.

Real Team-Building

How many times have you mentioned "team-building exercise" and seen eyes rolling and people heading for the door? That many? Without even knowing you I bet I can tell you why. It's because your exercises have nothing to do with any kind of relationship to your staff's jobs. A 250 pound man falling backwards for a 125 pound woman to catch is not going to help them at work.

When developing a program ask yourself what your real need is. Is it to actually build teamwork? Is it simply to improve morale? Is it to increase communication? Depending on your answer, the way you go about developing is going to be quite different.

If you're going to team-build, it has to be more than just a fun activity. It has to be something that will apply back at the workplace. Referencing a team-building book (there are tons of them out there) is great, but you still have to tweak it to your needs. Remember to be sure that you work in your organizations mission and values. This is the perfect opportunity to do so without the "here it comes again" attitudes. Team-building done correctly will leave them feeling more apart of the organization.

If your goal is to improve morale, by all means, go out and do something fun. Take everyone to a ballgame or go play laser-tag (very fun). Do something totally different.

If you're trying to increase communication, get that team-building book out. You'll find a lot of ideas in there where staff have to work together in order to get something accomplished, things where they have to talk with one another in order to get the job done. They'll get a sense of camaraderie and a better understanding of each other and how they think.

The whole idea with these three programs is to engage or reengage your staff. Nancy Mann Jackson summed it up best in a recent article in Entrepreneur magazine - "An engaged employee will stop and pick up a piece of trash in the hallway, a disengaged employee will walk by the piece of trash and leave it, and an actively disengaged employee will throw the trash on the floor." Which employee do you want?

You're Not Alone

If you could do everything as a manager, you'd be indispensable and probably make a lot more money. But guess what? You can't do everything. You're not alone. You didn't get to where you are by yourself.

For those of you who sit on that high horse, let me try to illustrate this to you. Most people think of the Blue Angels as a team of six shiny blue and gold F/A-18 Hornets and their pilots. They fly from air show to air show and thrill millions of people every year with their precision aerial moves. Well, that's only the tip of the iceberg. It takes a whole lot of people behind the scenes to make sure that those birds can fly.

In over 60 years, the "Blues" have never cancelled a show for maintenance reasons. Every person on the Blue Angels is dedicated to making sure that everything falls into place and everyone is safe. This is a true team. The pilots would not be up in the sky thrilling us all if they didn't have the support of the ground crew and support staff.

Teamwork isn't a part-time activity. Each member is representing the rest of the team at all times. That includes the team members at the "top". Managers and supervisors have to be just as much a part of the team as anyone else. Without that, you really don't have a team. You have a bunch of people working for the good of the boss.

Be apart of the team and develop your staff. This is how you accomplish things that others can't. Be upfront and of course, lead by example. You're the one molding the team. If you're a slouch, your team members will become slouches.

To succeed in management, you have to be able to accept responsibility and not hide behind desks. You don't lose the team player role when you move into that office. You become a motivating part of it.

Learning to Take Command

In Captain Michael Abrashoff's book, It's Your Ship, he discusses how taking command of USS Benfold required a change in his own leadership model. He found that time and age changes many things. In order to tackle these challenges, he researched exit surveys and interviews and found that the top reason people leave jobs was because of "not being treated with respect or dignity; the second was being prevented from making an impact on the organization; third, not being listened to; and fourth, not being rewarded with more responsibility". Low pay was way down in the fifth position.

In leadership or staff training, you really must look at your demographics in order to be effective. Organizations have very diversified age ranges these days, from Baby-Boomers to the Gen-Y'ers. These two groups, and all in between, have very different mindsets. Like it or not, you may have to adjust your own ways in order to be more effective. The old "my way or the highway" type of leading just isn't going to fly with the younger folks.

A good way to demonstrate the differences in the generations is to look at the way they compare work and life.

• Baby Boomers - view themselves and their career as one and the same
• Gen X - balance work and life; like flexible working hours and job sharing
• Gen Y - express themselves rather than define themselves through work

In the Gen X and Y'ers, we've lost the "company man" attitude and gained a more entrepreneurial, flexibility attitude. In order to create better unity, treat everyone, from your newest member to your most seasoned employee, as if they have great things to offer and are motivated to do their best. And of course, keep continuing training a priority so staff don't don't get stagnate in their jobs.

Training and Customer Retention

Good customer service doesn't necessarily come natural to some people. They need to have training and follow-up. Most organizations have some sort of customer service training but it's too often not enough. One basic class during orientation doesn't cut it. New staff are commonly overwhelmed with information already. Give them a little bit of time to get acquainted with their job and to see just how and where they fit in. They'll be able to adapt to their role in customer service a lot easier.

Don't leave training with the one class. Do follow-up in-service's, seminars, etc. Keep customer service at the forefront of your staff's minds. You don't need to (and don't want to) cram it down their throats. Just make sure that they at least know the basics, can use the basics, and be able to form some type of relationship with their customers. Customers should be treated like guests in their own house. Relationships are a key influence to holding on to customers, especially in service-oriented industries.

There are five basic standards for treating guests that you should be reviewing with staff:

• welcome them using their name,
• introduce yourself,
• take care of their needs,
• thank them, and
• invite them back.

Good customer service is that easy. You can include these standards in your training in many ways - video's, role-play, "how would you" questions, "pick the best way" scenarios, etc.

Markets, for any organization, are constantly changing so "people skills" become extremely important. Reminders in staff meetings or pre-operation meetings will go a long way. Focusing on this key area will not only give you a good ROI on training, but also show staff how important it actually is and where your priorities stand.

Competitive Customer Service

In my customer service classes I discuss the fact that some organizations (like mine) and their competition do things so similarly that the only way to distinguish themselves as the better organization is through superior customer service. The quality of employees and services are the only distinctions between organizations that provide the same or similar service.

I read a great example of this in the book Blue Streak, by Barbara S. Peterson. In beginning the discussion about JetBlue U (university), the trainer for the flight attendants comes in the first day still upset about the JetBlue flight he had had the prior day. One of the attendants on his flight seemed like he was "not really there" for various reasons. [I'm making a long story short here] The attendant didn't do anything bad and wasn't rude. But this is exactly why people want to work - and fly - at JetBlue. "The sort of indifferent service that one would take for granted on another (most) airline would gain you some very unwelcome attention" at JetBlue.

JetBlue does the same "job" as many other airlines. They fly people from point A to point B. But if you talk about customer service within the airline industry, who's name is at the top (along with Southwest)? JetBlue.

Be the paradigm shift. So many organizations can benefit from this kind of thinking. Why was Disneyland successful so quickly? One of the reasons was in a paradigm shift of what amusement parks were like. When Walt started Disneyland his wife would ask him, "But why do you want to build an amusement park? They're so dirty." To this he replied that, "mine wouldn't be".

Don't bank on, "this is the way it's done everywhere else". That will just make you look like "everyone else". Train from the start to be the best of the best.

Ethics

I recently read someplace that today's society tolerates too much questionable activity, whether it be by our kids, businesses or managers. I got to thinking about it and I'm not quite sure I agree. Do kids today really think that cheating or stealing is okay? Do businesses and managers really think it's okay to cheat and steal?

I think basic misbehavior is considered just as wrong today as it ever was. People are just coming up with more creative ways to try to get away with things (ahem-Madoff) and others are just stupid (ahem-AIG). Society doesn't accept these ways, but people are still going to try, and try hard they do.

Laws don't always require us to do the right thing. This is where ethics has to take over. Ethics are standards of conduct that we "ought" to follow. Good ethics in business is akin to good sportsmanship in athletics. We are to play by the rules, be fair, and be a good sportsman. The rulebook doesn't always tell us specifically what we can or can't do, but yet we know. Ethics guides us in those situations.

As a supervisor/manager, we have a responsibility to promote ethical behavior - and take action when unethical behavior is suspected. We have a duty to:

• set a good example,
• ensure others act according to laws, values, and policies,
• make sure your staff have the resources to do the right thing,
• enforce standards and policies,
• report noncompliance,
• never retaliate or permit retaliation against "whistle blowers".

You can pretty much sum this all up with the phrase, "do the right thing". If it doesn't seem right - it probably isn't.