61. Words of Truth—from a Fiction Writer.
“Why not just tell the truth?”
—Raymond Carver
(The late Raymond Carver was one of America’s most skillful short story writers—no one knew the contours of the human psyche better.)
(The problem with lying, in addition to the moral cost, is, of course, the amount of time and effort that must go into maintaining the cover-up—and the degree to which the whole affair deadens the soul. Or deadens an entire organization’s will to move forward.)
Networking
62. One Line of Code: The Shortest Distance Between “Critic” and “Champion.”
“They” say that complex software implementations fall short of promised effectiveness almost all the time. “They” add that the problem is rarely the software; it’s almost always less-than-enthusiastic (or out-and-out recalcitrant) down-the-line users.
I have the answer! Well, no, of course not, but I do have an answer: one line of code!
You’re in IT.
The software you’ve got on offer will change the world!
It’s perfection, in fact—an engineer’s dream come true!
But the implementation will take place far from home. The answer to pulling off that implementation? Well, in large measure, if you’re wise, it’s sales; you hit the road and … sell sell sell … would-be users … retail … one at a time. You sit down with, say, Erik H. in marketing. He listens to your pitch, agrees on the importance of the project—but—has a host of concerns. You listen, you go home; and, in effect … you alter … one … line of code, which deals with … one … of Erik’s issues.
Bingo!
Nine out of 10 of Erik’s issues are still not addressed … but … you changed … something … directly … because of Erik!
In 4.2 out of 5 cases, Erik flips from thorn in your side to fellow champion! Suddenly the whole damn thing is “Erik’s project”! In Erik’s mind, the whole damn thing would have been a bust without his precious, save-your-ass input!
I exaggerate in the details, of course, but the “one line of code” moniker per se came from an IT guy in an Australian small-business financial service company. (“I guarantee it’ll work, mate.”) (Yes, he did say, “mate.”)
The point is obvious:
Give people a chance to engage at the more or less design stage.
Respond directly and visibly to a couple of their problems.
Convert foe to friend (in 4.2 of 5 cases, remember).
I wouldn’t blame you if you called this approach manipulative. While obviously somewhat true, the fact is that the majority of “Eriks” actually do have an idea (or 7 or 10, most of which are pretty good, a few of which are gems) that makes your own overall implementation better!
The ultimate solution might not be quite so pretty or “perfect”— you’ve gunked it up with prospective-user changes. But, loss of a touch of perfectionism notwithstanding, the product does get better in ways that matter to the users/“customers”—and user buy-in (after all, the point of the whole bloody exercise) goes through the roof.
Message:
(1) Staff departments must … “Sell” … their services.
(2) “Sales” success requires … active user buy-in.
(3) Active user buy-in comes from respectfully listening to the user and … taking some of her issues on board.
Today:
Examine a stalled project. (Alas, we all have them.) Make a renewed and vigorous effort to “go consultative” with users; go to them, yes, starting today, as more or less a humble supplicant: A-pol-o-gize for not having listened attentively enough to date. Remember: Apologies are worth more than their weight in gold—approximately 100 percent of the time. (See #60.) Bend over backwards to listen intently (including “reading between the lines”—this is a somewhat learnable skill that’s tough for any number of technically-proficient-but-empathetically-challenged-staff-professionals), and accommodate some of their needs. And observe what happens.
CONSULT! (AND CONSULT AND THEN CONSULT.)
Roger Rosenblatt’s Rules for Aging is one of my favorite books, clearly on a very short “all-time-best” list. Among his very small number of tips for guaranteed (his word, as I recall) success at damn near anything:
“Consult everyone on everything.”
Amen!
(There were actually two tips—the second was … thanking everyone you can think of as profusely and often as you can manage.)
(Both tips are veeeeery near and veeeeery dear to my heart.)
(Rosenblatt, who more or less wrote the book as a 60th birthday present to himself, claims that his failure to scale the heights of some of the bureaucracies of which he was a part can largely be attributed to his less than 100 percent zeal on these two dimensions.)
Rosenblatt.
Success.
Consult everyone.
On everything.
Thank everyone.
All the time.
As I said: Amen!
63. “Suck Down” for Success.
My professional “Adventures in Gender Differences” voyage began with a conversation with an exec at the travel service giant Rosenbluth International (now part of American Express). In a wide-ranging discussion, we passed through his career as a very successful systems salesman at AT&T. He said, in effect, or exactly per my memory: “My secret was hiring women.”
The story he told was illuminating: The fact is, in any large, or large-ish, organization “the sale” (for a significant commercial product like the one my pal was selling) takes place three or four levels “down” from the top. That is, the vetting and analysis that precedes a “yes” or “no” is likely done by a 28-year-old staff engineer in a little cube in nowhereville on whose desk the project landed.
Back to my pal and his female hires. “For guys,” he said, “it’s always ego. The guy is a senior salesman, and he therefore, God help us, pretty much insists on dealing more or less exclusively with senior counterparts. It’s beneath his self-invented station-in-corporate-life to muck about in the bowels of the customer’s operation with ‘mere clerks,’ or some such. But the women I hired reveled in the things that the men eschew. The women willingly invested big-time in developing a rich network two or three or four levels ‘down’ in the customer operation; ‘down’ … where the decision to buy or not is effectively made!”
To make a long story short, the bottom line—female or male—is what I call:
The Gargantuan Power
of “Sucking Down.”
Forget “sucking up”—it’s a low-odds strategy. If you are willing to invest the time, “sucking down” is a high-odds affair—to paraphrase the immortal robber Willy Sutton on why he chose to knock off banks, “It’s where the money is.” (Oh, is it ever.) In addition to the plain fact that “down there” is where the deal is effectively done, the folks a couple of levels “down” [“down” always in quotes—”‘down’ is the real ‘up’” is the anthem here] are typically bowled over by your time and attention—we all crave being taken seriously. Hence, the next thing you know (after a lot of work), you’ve got in effect a private sales network to die for in the bowels of the customer organization—and it’s a network, typically, with staying power; there’s not so much volatility “down there.”
Suck down for success!!
(You read it here first.)
(As always, in this book, the point is not “catch as catch can” or “a good idea.” It’s about a well-thought-out scheme, in fact, no less than a “way of life”—a measured, systematic effort to penetrate the working-class ranks of a Client organization and develop a set of relationships with the real deal makers!)
(NB: Alternate formulation to “Suck down for success”: “Success does not depend on ‘the people you know in high places’—it depends on ‘the people you know in low places.’”)
REACHING “DOWN” … UP ON CAPITOL HILL
My personal breakthrough on this one
came over three decades ago, working on drug issues in/near the White House. I needed congressional support—but I was a junior staffer, White House affiliation or not. Fortunately, a wise pal gave me priceless “Capitol Hill” advice: “The secret is not getting close to the congressman—the odds of that are very, very low. The secret is finding and courting the congressman’s young LA [legislative assistant] who will be the one who deals with your issue.”
I did just that!
With abandon!
And, zounds, did it ever yield pay dirt. (I still fondly recall my boss once saying, “It seems as if you’ve got Congressman ______________[subcommittee chairman] working for you!”)
64. Formula for Success: C(I) > C(E).
This idea waltzed into my life when I was speaking to sales folks at GE Energy. (Largely big systems sales, often to public clients in developing countries.) I’ve long argued that the set of relationships inside your own company is almost as important as the relationships with external bill-paying customers. Although it may not be a universal truth, it struck me as I talked to my GE pals that in many cases … our Internal Customers/“C(I)” are in fact … more important … than our External Customers/“C(E).”
Again:
C(I) > C(E) (Internal Customers are more important than External Customers.)
In this case at GE … to win with External Customers the systems salespeople typically want an “unfair share” (the words of one GE informant) of a host of insiders’ time—engineers, the logistics team, lawyers, and the all-important (“yes” or “no”) risk-assessment staff.
Lots of GE people are selling lots of stuff—and need … yesterday … lots and lots and lots of time-consuming Inside Help. Which means I (the salesperson) want to be … at or very near the front of the queue … for the harried risk-assessment staffers’ time and attention; I want to be at the head of the engineers’ queue, too, as they are the ones customizing the product …
Hence my full set of “internal [customer] relationships” may well end up being/will likely end up being more important—even far more important—than my “external [customer] relations.”
With the GE case in mind, I subsequently found myself saying to a supersuccessful systems saleswoman at a Spanish telecom company, “Your problem is [not “may be,” but “is”—what arrogance] that you are spending too much time with your [bill-paying external] customers.” She looked at me as if I lost a screw or 10, but we then got into a useful discussion about “customers” (typically meaning external customers) and “customers” (of the internal sort). Her main gripe, which had triggered her question in the first place, was that her external customers often get their orders filled after the promised date of installation—because her company’s engineers routinely missed their promised deadline in configuring systems. I urged her, then, to spend more time nurturing her network inside her own engineering department; the reallocation of time might cost her a few quota points in the short term—but was a “guaranteed” (another arrogant term!) winner in the mid to long term.
The applications of this idea range way beyond enormous GE systems sales or the Spanish telecom company. In the past, I, for example, as a McKinsey consultant at the “Client interface,” wanted an “unfair” share—and posthaste—of our Graphics Department’s attention when a hastily scheduled presentation loomed. As a junior purchasing staffer, you want an unfair share of the Legal Staff’s time as you prepare a medium-sized contract. As a White House staffer many moons ago, I wanted the various gatekeepers to put my memo to the secretary of state (etc.) at the front of an infinitely long queue of people who waaaaay outranked me.
Critical query: What … precisely (measure it!!) … have you done lately (last 36 hours!) for your all-important “portfolio” of … internal customers????????????
(E.g.: When was the last time you took a C(I) to lunch or dinner? Or brought flowers to the Legal Department after they’d done you even a wee favor?)
I repeat:
Measure it!
Track it!
Obsess on it! E-v-e-r-y* (!!) day.
(*Every = Do Not Let a Single Day Pass Without Doing Something Notable for Some Internal Customer.)
There are literally a hundred twists and turns to this. Consider just a few:
(1) Keep your internal customers “Over”informed—tweet them or email or IM them about the trivial and the not-so-trivial in your work with your external customers. Go out of your way to put them on your team as “in-the-loop” insiders—we all love to be “insiders”!
(2) Give your internal customers “face time” with your external customers—this, too, is a mega-turn-on!
(3) If you’re the Big Boss, plan a “sales” convention-gala for top internal staff performers—e.g., those in logistics and engineering and finance who greased the way for giant sales and performed follow-up service miracles for key clients.
(4) We’re all (well, most of us) suckers for pens and pins and (in my case) baseball hats. After a big sale or on-time delivery, pass out those pens and pins and hats, commemorating the success, to internal staff supporters—by the bushel.
(5) On the one hand, as customer contact people, we want C(I)s in large numbers “in our pocket.” On the other hand, we want our C(I)s to join us in getting directly committed to and charged up about the C(E)s—if we are really smart, we will want to help our Internal Customers in, say, engineering, to develop their own direct relationships with external customers’ engineers—it’s all about, in the end, breadth and depth of network.
(6) Etc.
(7) Etc.
“JUNIOR” LEAGUE PLAY
I owe it all to Walt.
Walt Minnick, exactly my age, had an extraordinary private sector career. But rather than retire, at age 66, he ran for Congress in a long-odds Idaho campaign … and won.
I worked for (young) Walter at the White House over 30 years ago. It truly seemed as though this then rather junior guy had half of Washington in his pocket! A lot of the reason, I’m convinced, was his abiding attention to … Junior (!!!) … Internal Customers. At the end of each of his six workdays, for example, at about 7:00 P.M., Walt would retire to his office and write 10 or 15 thank-you notes. Not, or rarely, to the Big People—but to the junior secretary to Mr. Big who, against all odds, had gotten Walt 10 minutes on Mr. Big’s calendar. Walt’s lesson took. My fanaticism on this topic for the last 30 years is largely thanks to now-Congressman Minnick’s example.
65. How Does Your “Inside Game” Measure Up?
Given: Cross-functional communication is such a problem that it could fairly be called enterprise “Problem #1.” (Whoops … that may be at least the 26th time I’ve said that—and we’re not even halfway through the book. Maybe I’ll hook you by the 50th repetition.)
Solution (one more part thereof): All staff departments ought to/should/must quickly install first-rate internal customer satisfaction measurement systems … with tough up and down incentives.
In my experience, it is the rare staff department that measures (internal) customer satisfaction religiously—and the ever more rare internal unit that ties substantial rewards and penalties to such measurements.
That must change!
So … start …
Now!
Begin your discussion about this.
Today!
(You could push back with objections such as, “The auditors are, after all, cops—they’re not out to win popularity awards.” True, to a point. The okay auditor discharges his duties in a thoroughly professional manner and names names if appropriate. The … superb … auditor also discharges her duties in a thoroughly professional manner—but also helps the audited department appreciate the theory and practice of, say, superior record keeping. That is, staff departments possess peculiar expertise in the likes of auditing—but they can express said expertise in the manner of a dentist pulling teeth without Novocain, or in the spirit of wholehearted hyper-responsive partnership. It is the latter that I’m urging
as the goal of an effective internal customer satisfaction evaluation system. In fact, if I were a Big Boss, COO for example, I would insist that all departments, small or large, develop internal customer satisfaction schemes that include attention-grabbing incentives.)
BANK ON IT
Case: I met the boss of Staff Services at a large Italian bank. He was fanatic about “customer” satisfaction for his departments’ internal customers. In his scheme, each staff department’s internal “customers” themselves devised the measures; and the primary dollar and cents (euro) incentives for staff departments were based primarily on quantitative measures of their internal customers’ satisfaction. The staff department exec called this Internal Customer Satisfaction System “my principal strategic initiative.”
Lunch
66. Across the Board: Cross-Functional Collaboration Is Issue #1.
Cross-functional issues are the organization’s #1 problem.
#1:
6-person logistics subdepartment.
12-table restaurant.
Auto dealership.
Therefore: Actively going after this issue … Daily … is a Monster Opportunity.
Want great cross-functional cooperation-opportunity maximization, or … XFX (Cross-functional Excellence) … as I call it?
Answer: Make friends in other functions! (Purposefully.)
Answer: Go to lunch with people in other functions!! (Frequently!) (Also see immediately below.)
Answer: Ask peers in other functions for some references so you can become conversant in their world. (Big deal: You’ll find it interesting— and it’s a helluva sign of … Give-a-damn-ism.)
Answer: Invite counterparts in other functions to your meetings. Religiously. Ask them to present “cool stuff” from “their world” to your group. (B-i-g deal; useful and respectful.)
The Little Big Things Page 14