Thanks to the widespread influence of total quality management (TQM) and business process reengineering (BPR), most organizations now understand the idea of redesigning and improving work processes. These business improvement programs usually involve process mapping as a tool to redesign operational activity. In most instances, however, such exercises only delineate what activity organizations perform, and not how the work should be performed. Simply put, the resulting work processes still lack a sense of intention. Merely completing an activity is not enough: some underlying motivation must invigorate the performance so that it ultimately affects the buyer of the final offering. Everyone can, for example, detect the difference between a receptionist who merely takes names and calls for parties, and one who graciously greets each visitor and performs otherwise identical tasks with intentional style and color. The encounter in the lobby, however brief, affects the guest and sets a particular tone for the entire meeting that follows—and on occasion perhaps even alters the outcome.
Focusing not only on the what but also on the how serves as the core distinction between mundane service interactions and memorable experience encounters. Economic activity truly engages customers when each worker fills activities consciously and thoroughly with intention. Every movement becomes a meaningful action when richly designed with intention in mind. Without it, work is dull, monotonous, a cliché. (How many processes are as thoroughly unimpressive from start to finish as those that end with “Have a nice day”?) Because many people perform acts without deliberate intention, Stanislavski could comfortably and universally demand that actors cut 95 percent of what they do. The same admonition applies to business acts. Process excellence—at least in the sense of truly engaging customers—surfaces only when workers decide to enrich how they perform each activity. As acting instructor Kearns relates, “Deciding what you want is critical to your success … If you haven't decided what it is you want, you're likely to be un-focused … and the result will be a vague, meaningless encounter. When you've conscientiously spelled out your intent beforehand, you are more likely to be specific and clear, and the result will be an energized connection.”32 Any offering increases in value when every worker on stage—in farmyards, on shop floors, at service counters, within themed attractions—fills work with intention.
Kearns supplies a most useful tool for doing so. For every piece of work, one must describe his intention using the phrase “in order to.”33 Barbra Streisand chewed gum in order to demonstrate that appearances don't matter; it's the vocal cords that count. The Jacobs Field performer swept the street in order to show that the new ballpark was clean, safe, comfortable, and eager to come to life. The inspired receptionist greets visitors in order to welcome them to a place where great things happen.
Imagine that you're standing outside the closed door of your boss's office. Your very next task is to knock on that door. How would you do it differently if you were to knock in order to announce you had just arrived? In order to apologize for being late? In order to let him know you were there, but without disturbing his work? In order to state that the time for a meeting was at hand? Each intention calls for a decidedly different knock.
Or consider the very real world of doctor–patient relationships. Medical research shows that women with breast cancer who choose lumpectomies (simple tumor removals) live just as long as those who select mastectomies (total breast removal). Despite laws requiring doctors to explain lumpectomy as an option, the rates of breast-conserving surgery in some parts of the United States remain unchanged. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Part of the reason for the lack of impact is that it's not just what the doctor says, but how it's said.”34 Doctors must therefore provide patients with options in order to ensure that each properly considers the alternatives.35
Lawyers addressing a court also must fill their work with intention. “You want to plan every detail, the way you dress [and] the way your table looks,” says Fred Bartlit, who practices in Chicago.36 Bartlit is one of a growing number of trial lawyers who closely scrutinize every single thing they do, from how they walk across the floor to where they stand to how and when they make eye contact to what gestures they make when handling files and using a laptop computer to how they deliver ad-libs and prepared quips.37 Their intention in performing each activity determines how it contributes to the overall performance. If no intention exists other than to be done with the work (that is, performing in order to be finished), then the work inevitably lacks the potential to engage.
It's not surprising that doctors and lawyers, whose decisions intimately affect the lives of their customers, must apply intention to their work. Yet any activity proves more valuable, worthwhile, and meaningful when performed with intention. Consider this simple example. In the Hill House dormitory at the University of Pennsylvania, a woman everyone just called Barb provided a daily demonstration of intention. Until a few years ago Barb worked in the dorm's cafeteria. For many, she was the most memorable person encountered in their entire educational experience. Her job consisted of only one activity. For three meals a day, Barb sat at a table at the entrance of the dining hall and swiped students' prepaid meal cards—one after another—through a machine that registered a green light if meals remained for the week and a red light if not. That was it. To the casual observer, this surely constituted the most mind-numbing job imaginable. Yet Barb richly filled this simple task with intention. First, she took a student's card in order to learn his name. Then she took the card in order to greet him back by name. If someone missed a meal, she took the card in order to inquire about his earlier absence. She would even take a card in order to inform its holder where a friend sat in the cafeteria. In every instance, by word or merely with gesture, her intentions fulfilled her theme of warmly welcoming students to the school's dining experience. She may have been one of the greatest welcomers ever to grace the globe. No wonder Barb's position was not automated and eliminated immediately upon her retirement.38
One meets such individuals in all lines of work. For every Barb the card taker in Philadelphia, there's a Fred the lawyer in Chicago and an Aaron the shoe shine man in Kalamazoo. You remember them when you encounter them. Their intention-filled work spills over into passion for their character, caring for the company, and empathy for the customer. They are the world's true actors, and we all should follow their lead.
CHAPTER 7
Performing to Form
LINDA LEADS THE NEW OFFERING development team for a U.S. automobile manufacturer.1 She arrives at her office and reviews her schedule for the day: “Let's see. There's my usual talk at the Executive Briefing Center for a group of supply partners at 10 a.m., a 1:30 on the fall strategy cycle, and then the 4 p.m. call at that local dealership. Not a bad day, but I'm going to have to get right at finishing my prep. It'll take some work …”
Linda boots up her laptop and opens the PowerPoint file for her morning presentation. Scanning through the slides, she realizes that the graph on one slide is out of date. She texts her assistant, who is working from home today, to get the new data and revises the slide. She then goes over in her mind what she'll say to reflect the latest information, jotting a few notes on a pad. Soon, another slide causes her to pause, as she remembers a snag in her performance last time. Linda stands up, faces the closed door, and explores what she will say—and do—at that point in the presentation. After a few dry runs she figures out the problem: there's too much going on. The slide's so busy that she has to keep looking back at the screen, she talks too fast to get through it, and her mannerisms are all over the place.
To rectify the problem, Linda sits down and removes all unessential information from the slide. She makes some more notes on what she'll say to cover the streamlined points and then stands up again and talks from the notes. Going over them again and again, she finally hits on the cadence and gestures that will bring home her crucial points. Satisfied with her performance, Linda takes one more run at it—this time without notes. Then she opens up
her Word file and updates her script, including descriptions of the mannerisms to use.
Just then she hears a knock on the door. It's Paul, one of her managers—again. Linda closes her notebook and flips down her laptop screen to show Paul that he has her undivided attention. She doesn't really want to hear about the latest problems with the market research study, but she acts as if she's hearing his woes for the very first time. The details of their discussion remain confidential, but suffice it to say that Linda thinks fast on her feet to defuse the latest installment of the saga. As Paul and Linda shake hands to close their session, she briefly holds his right arm with her left in order to show that she appreciates him and his sincere desire to bring the problem to a resolution.
Linda then turns her attention back to the final preparations for her presentation to the group of suppliers, and finally she heads down to the Executive Briefing Center. Shortly before arriving, she stops at the restroom to ensure that her outfit is neat, her hair just so, and nothing from breakfast remains in her teeth. Oh, and she remembers to take out that PartnershipPlus pin from her purse and puts it on her jacket. As she takes one last glance in the mirror, a look of reserved assurance comes over her face, whereupon she strides confidently out. “To the Briefing Center,” she says to herself, as she begins reciting lines to an imaginary audience to help her get in the moment. In a few short minutes she's introduced by the host. Reaching the podium, just before launching into her speech, Linda pauses, eyeing the audience, beginning in the back, scanning down the middle, and finally making eye contact with a supplier sitting up in the first row. They both smile.2 Then she delivers her four-word opening, “Partnerships demand learning relationships.” A pause. And she's on …
Linda performs flawlessly and finishes her thirty-minute talk with a spirited, “So no more guerilla warfare!” to great applause. She immediately exits with a last glance and a smile to that person in the front row. One of the purchasing managers in the back comments to the host's assistant, “Wow—I can't believe how spontaneous and informal she seemed, yet she just walked right through every pothole out there.” “Yes,” the assistant replies, “but I've seen her give this same presentation a half-dozen times before. Except for some minor changes here and there, virtually every word is identical each time.” To which the manager can only respond again, “Wow.”
Meanwhile, back at her office, Linda's already preparing for the 1:30 p.m. strategy meeting. This will not be like her morning performance: no PowerPoint slides, no prepared remarks, no applause. The key to success, in fact, is to ensure that everyone across the line functions gets involved and provides input to the company's first-ever strategic exhibition, where the automaker's top management will experience what it's like to work in a business system where faultless development plans are flawlessly executed. No longer the Confident Executive, her role at this meeting event will be Inclusive Guide.
To that end, Linda reviews her notes from past meetings and interim telephone calls, a memo or two, and e-mails that various participants have sent back and forth commenting on how the desired results can be better achieved. She focuses her preparation primarily on ensuring that this meeting picks up on the outcomes from the last session, matches the tone of concerns expressed since, and moves toward delivering the set of impressions everyone has agreed the company should make on the exhibition participants. This will keep the meeting focused and on track, avoiding costly diversions (and as a side benefit, prevent her from being late for her 4 p.m. sales call). Linda takes out her list of “runplan” techniques, storyboards her plan for facilitating the session, and outlines the flip charts she'll use.
Once again her preparation pays off. While having to respond to a hiccup or two, as Inclusive Guide Linda not only keeps the meeting on track but also pushes forward the greater agenda of planning the orchestration of the event. Now, she's off to the sales call—after first changing her clothes to a more casual look, befitting the culture of the company she's visiting—and meets up with Steve, the vice president of leasing.
This won't be a “normal” sales call, like one she would make with a fleet manager. She and Steve are meeting with the owner of a large local dealership to enlist him in the automaker's prototype offering: the Pre-Lease Executive Automobile Sampling Experience (code-named PLEASE, which rhymes with “lease”). With PLEASE the company aims to stage an event at its test track in which potential high-end lease clients will pay more than $15,000 to test drive a number of high-end cars—from the luxurious to the exotic—under various exhilarating circumstances, whether racing others (including local celebrities) or sliding on rain-slicked surfaces. At the end of the day the guests will take home the cars of their choice, receiving a year's free lease and a customized video of their driving experience. With the experience priced at two to three times the cost of an annual lease, Linda, Steve, and their cohorts know it will be very profitable. And now top management, finally warming to the fact that the company makes more profits from leasing than from manufacturing, has agreed to include cars from other manufacturers in the event.
As Linda and Steve drive to the dealership together, they map out their plan to sell the owner on participating in the pilot program for his area. From their past experience in selling the concept up the ladder, each has become quite adept at promoting certain aspects of the proposal, with Linda focusing on the nature of the PLEASE experience itself and Steve on the financial justification. Linda suggests she open with the panoramic “B” version of what they're going to accomplish. Steve will then show what it could mean to the owner's bottom line, and then, after dragging out the formalities a bit to increase the anticipation, for the finale Linda will reveal the scripts and colored drawings their design firm created to demonstrate what a great experience PLEASE will be. Throughout, Steve will play the role of Straight Man to Linda's Affable Enthusiast. Just as they arrive, he reminds her of the line about the winter tires that works every time with the version “B” opening.
Once settled in the dealership owner's office, Linda and Steve masterfully play off each other, making their points in swift succession, even finishing each other's sentences on occasion. Everything goes perfectly, except, that is, for the twenty-minute late start, the constant interruptions by dealership personnel, and the frequent objections by the owner. But throughout, since Linda and Steve know each other's role and their own lines of explanation so well, they turn every interruption into a joke or an enjoyable respite and turn every objection into a positive segue to another point. To overcome the dealer's final objection—that including other nameplates would cannibalize his own inventory of cars—Linda subtly motions to Steve, they rise in unison, go to the owner's bookshelf, and simultaneously point to the replica of a DeLorean sports car they had spotted earlier. Anticipating their question, the owner blurts out, “Well, that was my dream, my first sports car …” to which Linda responds, “And you loved the experience of driving it, didn't you? We're going to give your customers the experience of driving their dream cars, and you'll make more money off that than you would selling five of our average models. Who cares who makes the car? That's just a prop for the driving experience that'll line all of our pockets because it creates such value for your customers.” Soon all three walk toward the door, with Linda slapping the owner on the back as they shake.
The Four Forms of Theatre
This vignette illustrates many of the elements of theatre discussed in chapter 6—and a few new ones. Linda truly understands what it means to be an actor and how becoming one turns every interaction—no matter what the offering being produced, no matter where the workplace stage may be—into an experience. But notice how differently she approaches each of the four onstage roles she filled this day. While preparing for her speech, she's confronted with a problem by her subordinate, Paul, and must extemporaneously handle the situation. Here, Linda performs improv theatre. As much onstage as when she's with people outside the company, Linda quickly decides how to respond to Pau
l by relying on the reservoir of managerial techniques she has stored up from past experience.
When speaking to the supply partners, Linda performs platform theatre. She scripts in advance every line and every gesture, practicing each over and over again until she can confidently give a performance so accomplished that it comes off as fresh and spontaneous. In planning her performance for the afternoon strategy meeting, she is careful to review each and every prior interaction with those attending the meeting—telephone, e-mail, correspondence, and face-to-face meeting. She then engages in matching theatre by piecing all these disparate facts and events together in a unified whole, much as a film editor or director does.
Finally, when working with Steve to sell the dealership owner on the preleasing experience, Linda finds herself in a setting that she cannot control. Rather than rely on improvisational techniques—too risky for this venue—the two of them perform street theatre, in which small, atomic units of activity are called on demand to construct a performance (and to handle whatever interruptions or objections arise). Although nearly every move they make is part of a practiced routine, the order of the routine isn't planned but occurs in the moment.
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