We’ve run our company on Apple computers  for 23 years…long before the world discovered what we’ve always known:  Macs are cool. As much as we’ve loved our Mac’s, we’ve always had one or two applications that required a PC. Since the newer machines now have Intel chips, we easily can run Windows right on our machines without the need for a PC in our office. This, however, is exactly when all the trouble began…

As we were preparing for a presentation using a Window based applications we could not get this application to project.  After a few days of doing everything short of calling Microsoft we had made no progress.

Have your ever actually called Microsoft for help?  This is kind of a touchy subject in our office after Intuit was purchased by Microsoft.  The amazing support we had grown accustomed to seemed to disappear overnight. We dreaded that phone call and headed out instead to the Apple store with our Mac that was resisting behaving like a PC.

We knew this was not Apple’s problem so we disguised the visit with a different need and then casually brought up our frustration over the Window’s concern. Nothing quite like watching an “Apple Genius” thinking about a Window’s problem- these folks aren’t called “geniuses” for nothing. They seem unable to stop themselves when a “challenge” is brought to them. They are relentless. After about 15 minutes of web searching and trying different avenues our genius unlocked the solution to our problem.  He seemed pretty pleased with himself, but not nearly as pleased as we were.

Rule 1 suggests that sometimes you have to break the rules to serve customers. I am guessing Apple prefers that their employees help customers with “Apple” applications that run on the “Apple operating system.” That makes good business sense, but offering “outrageous” customer support (when you can) produces goodwill that can never replicated by even the most creative Apple commercials. 

Tags: 42 Rules of EE, Sightings by Susan S.
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To develop a fully engaged team, everyone in your organization needs to be a leader.   This means the entire team needs to be able to exercise judgment on the day-to-day challenges and opportunities that present themselves. Whether or not this happens has a lot to do with your approach to managing.

Think about it. How can any organization win without everyone’s full participation? Participation is a key indicator of engagement.  In some organizations, however, rules, policies, and procedures are designed to cover every possible contingency so employees do not need to think.  Have you ever written to your Senator or Congressman and received a form letter response that barely addressed your concern? Have you ever complained about a product you’ve purchased and received what appeared to be a memorized response from an employee? Contrast this to IKEA, where a prominent sign in their Philadelphia area store was used to recruit employees who would “think for themselves.”  This enlightened approach will attract top talent and build engagement.

Sometimes organizations create policies for the masses the moment an individual employee (or customer) slips up. Creating policies may seem easier than coaching and managing performance, but the results are dramatically different. When coaching, you clarify misunderstandings about performance and usually discover that few employees try to do poor quality work on purpose. Rules and polices are usually perceived by employees as an expectation of future poor performance- generally not the best way to build an engaged team.

Following memorized sequences and prescribed patterns such as “thank you for shopping at …”, is counter to a team approach which actively solicits the input, ideas and good thinking from every member of the team. If your organization has rules, you may find that sometimes it is necessary to break a rule in order to provide extraordinary service or to go around a system that is not serving the customer. You and your team should actively discuss these rules to determine their impact on customers and desired results. By inviting discussions around rules and policies you send a message that sometimes the rule may not be the most effective approach. Such discussions increase engagement.

Shortly after our youngest daughter began dating, there was a surge in her text messages; but we did not discover this until our bill arrived from AT &T. In addition to the monthly service for her phone, she had over $90 in text message charges above and beyond her monthly allotment. As we discussed this situation with our representative, we were surprised and delighted that she was empowered to remove the charge entirely and help us secure a plan that would prevent this from occurring in the future. True, AT&T was out our $90, but as new customers who had left another supplier only months before due to poor service, we were feeling really good about the new relationship. And, considering the long term monthly increase in our fee,  AT&T was not out anything at all. Yet the customer representative skillfully positioned the increase as a great service to us, which of course it was.

Yes, rules may be necessary, but they often prevent people from being actively engaged. Rules will never take the place of directly dealing with performance issues on your team.  They certainly cannot replace excellent service skills and they should be scrutinized regularly to evaluate how they are helping to promote success for the team and organization as well as their impact on engagement.

 Action: Make a list of all the rules and policies that are active in your organization for both employees and customers. Discuss these with your team and begin to analyze their impact. How are they serving employees, the customer, and the organization?

Tags: 42 Rules of EE by Susan S.
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We are all busy people. Problems pop into our lives without first calling for an appointment.  Yet, as managers, problems “are” our work. I am not suggesting we alone must solve them, but we have responsibility for making sure they are solved. Working hands-on with our team to solve problems creates an opportunity to build engagement, but the use of silver bullet solutions often prevents this from happening.

 It is hard to avoid the lure of the silver bullet when their abuse has become so wide spread. One major abuse of silver bullets today is the over use of technology. Whenever you place a call and wade through seven different menus you are experiencing a hands-off, silver bullet solution. The offending organization has successfully eliminated the  “problem” of answering incoming calls, and perhaps has reduced costs; but does it create engagement? When customers finally reach the “live employee,” how engaged does the employee feel when greeted by a succession of frustrated customers throughout the day? And then, of course, there is the customer…

 It seems that technological silver bullets are pervasive today. As my son and I waited at the jewelry counter of a major discount retailer for a replacement watch battery, he gave me the details on why he had hated working there. He pointed to an electronic device on the counter and told me: “that was my manager.” I was a bit confused until he explained that he carried this device around with him and did what “it” told him to do; complaining that some days it only provided about 4 hours of work for an eight hour shift. He had no real manager to discuss things with and he felt frustrated by the lack of interest from, and connection with, the management team (if one existed).

 Silver bullets are not exclusively technologically based. Let’s take a look at my favorite magical solution: training. I usually become aware that I’ve been hired as a silver bullet when I discover that what I am training has nothing at all to do with the real problem. The participants in a silver bullet training session often have the distinction of knowing they have been labeled as “broken” and they have been sent to training to get “fixed.” This can make for a “stimulating” learning environment.

 In one such event, the manager told me that his employees were not being nice to the customers. After finding my trainees were rather passionate customer service representatives who cared deeply about the customer, we set out to define the real problem, brainstorming possible solutions (see Rule 33) to make things work better. The employees felt they had been heard (perhaps for the first time) and were energized about the possible ways they might move forward as a team.  All that remained was to sell the manager who, sadly, felt he was too busy to sit in a training event and hear the concerns of his employees. Well, I was lucky that day to have found the manager open to what I shared and this story had a happy ending.

 Silver bullets take a “hands off” approach that allows the manager to pass off the problem to some piece of technology or to someone else. Yet, to get to build engagement with your team and with your customers, you need to be a hands-on manager. In the example above, the manager could have participated in the training process to build connection and greater relationship with his team. While he got the result, he distanced himself from the process and his team.

Action: Reflect on your personal and organizational use of silver bullets. How have they served the employee and the customer? Have they built stronger relationships and engagement? Is there a silver bullet you and your organization could give up? How might this impact customer and employee engagement?

Tags: 42 Rules of EE by Susan S.
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When Rick and I were first married we lived in old farmhouse that had been transformed into two large apartments. We shared a wonderful friendship with the upstairs couple from Maine spending many evenings together making meals, talking and watching films. Each year at Christmas, our friends would trek home to spend time with parents. Just before leaving, they would bring their Christmas tree downstairs to our apartment where we would enjoy it the rest of the season.

Working in the Human Service Industry at this point in our careers, money was a real challenge for us. But there was something beyond the frugality of this act that was really spectacular. It was the stewardship of sharing a resource that seemed to catch my breath each time the tree arrived. It somehow seemed more special then any other tree we might buy just because it had been shared. It was an act of community.

I watch people struggle alone in the workplace and wonder why we are so individualistic. It is so counter to a team approach and our inner desire to be connected. Look at the web 2.0 networking revolution: Facebook, Linkedin, and new communities that spring up each day with millions of members. But these are still “virtual” connections. Right outside your office are “real time” people that are hungry for connections that the workplace can fulfill. As their boss, your caring and community building is central to their experience in the workplace.

Regardless of whether you work for a big or small company, we all seem to be guilty. A colleague of mine joked with me that she was unaware of something significant in their work because her husband had failed to send her an email. Their company has just two people in it, her and her husband.  In our own little office we use IM to send quick messages back and forth across the hallway, and while it is terribly efficient we must be sure we are not avoiding the opportunity to connect. We make it a point to have face-to-face conversations regularly to share critical information. Without a more personal connection we cannot share ideas, understand shifting priorities, or support each other, all essential ingredients for an engaged team.

How can you facilitate a greater sharing of resources on your team? Remember getting your team involved in such a discussion, is itself, an act of community. Does you team meet regularly now? How are best practices shared on your team? How can individual knowledge become collective knowledge?

Lets say you are reading this thinking: sharing, well our team doesn’t share much of anything. As one supervisor I worked with put it: “we keep our heads down and get our work done.” Well that is fine perhaps if you are on a production line, but fewer and fewer of us do work that depends solely on us (even on production lines). It seems to me that sharing was one of the items covered in Robert Fulghum’s classic book entitled “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” I guess a lot of us were absent during that lesson.

Action: If sharing is counter to your current culture, try easing in to it. You might lunch together and share family news.  As your team warms up, let sharing progress. Your role is to facilitate, not dominate or dictate sharing: ask questions, listen, and appreciate contributions. Make it a goal to decrease the talking time you contribute at team gatherings. Keep adjusting your involvement downward. Ask someone to share for the next five minutes highlights of a current project, or insights from a training program they just attended, or best practices that have been recently discovered on the team. Find out what team members are reading and how the team can benefit. Stay with this practice and watch engagement soar.

Tags: 42 Rules of EE by Susan S.
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