Bottom line:
Circuit City got rid of its best folks when times got tough.
Best Buy in the same tough circumstances reemphasized its commitment to personalized service provided by an energetic, highly nurtured workforce.
I believe you can multiply this story by a thousand or a million and apply it pretty much directly to a national economy.
Circuit City vs. Best Buy?
Hardly “pie in the sky”!
97. Up with People! Up Your People Budget!
There’s a convenience store near me. Its owners undertook what I’d guess was a $500,000 renovation.
Bravo!
Except …
Whoops …
The staff attitude, previously crappy, is as crappy as ever. And it’s all the more obviously crappy in what’s now a great-looking space. Frankly, I feel the owners pretty much pissed away the $500,000! (Okay, drop the “pretty much.”)
I’ll trade a paint job for a
terrific attitude any day!
It calls to mind a Very Big Issue, which holds for the three-person, walkup accountancy—and for the U.S. military. And for everything in between. It’s soooooooo easy—it’s sooooooooo visible—to get caught up with the capital budget/the capital expenditure:
It’s “permanent”!
You can take pictures of the result!
It doesn’t take sick days!
The people budget, on the other hand, is …
All about intangibles.
“Soft stuff.”
No photo ops to speak of.
So here’s what I insist that you do: When you’ve absolutely, positively, unequivocally locked down your budget for the next year, I ask/beg/command you to pick the lock.
Please, please, please: Cut the projected capital expenditures by 15 percent.
And: Redirect those savings to the people budget (recruiting, training, perks, pay, extra staffing, whatever) … penny for penny or million for million!
(If I can’t convince you to follow my instructions, perhaps I can at least talk you into running a simulation. Imagine—in detail—what a 15 percent transfer of funds from capital expenditures to human resources might look like. Run the simulation with execs, supervisors, junior staff. Discuss the results.)
Please!
Please!
Please!
COST-CUTTING? “CONTAIN” IT
News item, buried (almost) in a pile of bad economic news, especially for retailers:
The Container Store—best place to work in America a couple of years ago, per Fortune—doubles (d-o-u-b-l-e-s) its (already very significant) frontline employee training budget.
Logic?
Not exactly rocket science:
A lot of people still shop during recessions.
It’s essential that their “Container Store experience” be better than ever to please the cost-conscious remnant.
Hence: shower attention, as never before, on the frontline stalwarts who serve that ever-so-precious customer.
(Duh.)
98. Cherish the Last Two-Percenters.
After a brutal, two-hour brushcutting-landscaping session in 90-degree heat (summer of 2008), I was “dog tired” in a way that defines the term. I was done-finito-out of gas. I had truly pushed my ancient body to the limit and beyond.
But I’d gotten the day’s task I’d set done!
Or had I?
As I packed up my tools, I took a final look at the output of the completed bit. Fine and almost dandy, but … it was still just a tiny bit ragged here and there. Problem was, I didn’t have an ounce, or a gram, of energy left. “F%$$* it, I’ll get to it later,” I said to myself, and twisted the ignition key of my Kubota four-wheel RTV.
I sat there a minute, dripping with sweat. And then I turned off the engine. With every muscle screaming in agony (I do not exaggerate—or so it felt), I got out of the Kubota, gathered a couple of tools, and spent the next 20 minutes giving the job its final touch—and then some, and then some.
While the vignette is unmistakably self-serving, it is also one of those “reminders of the obvious” worth reminding you of. Namely, one cannot overestimate the value of … “the last two-percenter.” That person who, at 2:00 A.M., takes one final look at the presentation to the Board tomorrow and discovers that two key numbers are transposed on the footnote on Slide 47—and then looks “one [more] last time” when she returns at 5:45 A.M. The carpenter who, though technically “finished,” adds one final touch that alters the character of the cabinet he’s spent two weeks building, and then hauls the piece back to his shop for a significant (to him) re-re-revision. Etc.
Sometimes we call the last two-percenter a “pain in the ass.” True, but no one (literally no one!) is of greater importance to the success of what we do. Funny thing, I actually felt less tired and less achy after my “last two percent” drill than when I started it.
Reward the “pain in the ass” “last two-percenter” as if she were the Ultimate Gift from the gods!
She is!
99. The Excitement Axiom—and the People Corollary.
Axiom: Only Excited People can excite customers over the long haul—i.e., again & again.
Corollary: To cause our colleagues to be Excited we must put—and keep—the maintenance of their well-being and their opportunity structure at the Top of our agenda.
Which must necessarily mean that …
(1) the employee who serves the paying customer is for the leader, in fact, her primary customer;
(2) hence, the paying customer actually comes second.
(Which is what Southwest founder Herb Kelleher, RE/MAX founder Dave Liniger, and former Rosenbluth International boss Hal Rosenbluth, among others, would say. I have learned at their feet and cribbed directly from all three of them—thank you, gentlemen.)
Further corollary and pledge of enterprise allegiance:
I hereby promise to …
First and Foremost
Cherish and Excite the People
Who in turn Have the Opportunity to
Cherish and Excite the Customer
And Induce the Customer to Recommend Us to Others
Which is the Premier Path to Growth and Profitability.
Forever and Ever,
Amen.
Gender
100. Pronoun Power!—Or: The Customer Is “She.”
“Forget China, India and the Internet: Economic Growth Is Driven by Women.”
—Headline, the Economist
“One thing is certain: Women’s rise to power, which is linked to the increase in wealth per capita, is happening in all domains and at all levels of society. Women are no longer content to provide efficient labor or to be consumers … With rising budgets and more autonomy to spend, this is just the beginning. The phenomenon will only grow as girls prove to be more successful than boys in the school system. For a number of observers, we have already entered the age of ‘womenomics,’ the economy as thought out and practiced by a woman.”
—Aude Zieseniss de Thuin, founder of the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society, rated one of the top five global forums by the Financial Times
Hey, g-u-y-s:
If women are your/our primary customers (they usually are, commercial as well as consumer goods in the United States), knock off the likes of unending football analogies. If women are your/our primary customers, always (always!) refer to the generic customer as … “she.”
There’s obviously lots and lots and lots more to this issue—it’s been an obsession of mine since 1996. But language matters.
“She.”
Starting.
Now.
Drop the football (et al.) lingo.
Starting.
Now.
PURSE-POWER, MADE IN JAPAN
The fast-expanding women’s market is not just a U.S., or even “Western,” phenomenon. To wit:
“Goldman Sachs in Tokyo has devised a basket of 115 Japanese companies that should bene
fit from women’s rising purchasing power and changing lives as more of them go out to work. It includes industries such as financial services as well as online retailing, beauty, clothing and prepared foods. Over the past decade the value of shares in Goldman’s basket has risen by 96%, against the Tokyo stockmarket’s rise of 13%.” (Source: The Economist)
101. Women Lead! (Can Men Learn to Be Good Sports About It?)
I was writing about something or other, and … “naturally” … found myself referring to the comeback antics, almost unique in the history of the game, of San Francisco 49ers (NFL) quarterback Joe Montana. (I lived in or near SF during the entire Reign of Montana—and in fact my house was close to his.)
So, once again … ho-hum … boy-uses-football-example. It was a good example. (Damn it.) And a lot of women do watch the NFL, presumably tolerating three-hours-a-Sunday of legal brutality. But it was also a typical example—and from me, Mr. Feminist Guru—of SMP/standard male prose.
A main message of The Little BIG Things deals with the-“soft”-stuff-that-is-really-the-“hard”-stuff that underpins organization and individual effectiveness. Fact is, a lot of “this stuff” (e.g., primacy of relationship development) comes pretty naturally to most women—and is Big News and a struggle to most males. Hence, I wonder sometimes, mostly as I toss and turn in bed, if this book and its ilk have much or any relevance to women. (No small thing since women now constitute over 50 percent of the managerial population in the United States—i.e., “my” audience.) Or do some-many-most-damn-near-all women readers laugh themselves silly as, one more time, I treat the obvious as novel? (E.g., “Listening is a … Very Good Thing.”)
Beats me.
A close examination of this topic, though perhaps “all important,” is mostly beyond the scope of this book. But I’ll at least offer up one fascinating, and, I think, compelling, example perhaps worth chewing on, for the boys at least, from “Gender Experiments Surprise Even the Experts,” a boxed feature title in Leadership and the Sexes: Using Gender Science to Create Success in Business, by Michael Gurion and Barbara Annis (my italics):
“In the 1990s, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/CBC created a short film that recorded an experiment in leadership styles between women and men. CBC didn’t tell the participants the objective of the work they would do that day; the director simply divided the male and female leaders into two teams, and gave those team leaders the same directions: build an adventure camp. The teams were set up in a somewhat militaristic style at first, including team members wearing uniforms, but also with the caveat in place that the teams could alter their style and method as they wished as long as they met the outcome in time.
“Leader one immediately created a rank-and-file hierarchy and gave orders, even going so far as to assert authority by challenging members on whether they had polished their shoes.
“Leader two did not have the ‘troops’ line up and be inspected, but instead met with the other team members in a circle, asking ‘How are we doing? Are we ready?’ ‘Anything else we should do?’ ‘Do you think they’ll test us on whether we’ve polished our shoes?’ Instead of giving orders, leader two was touching team members on the arm to reassure them.
“As part of the program, CBC arranged for corporate commentators to watch the teams prepare. Initially the commentators (mostly men) were not impressed by the leadership style of leader two; the second team wasn’t ‘under control,’ members weren’t lined up, and they ‘lacked order’ (or so it seemed). The commentators predicted that team two would not successfully complete the task. Yet, when the project was completed, team two had built an impressive adventure camp as good as team one’s, with some aspects that were judged as better.
“When debriefing their observations, the commentators noticed that when team one was building the structures for the camp, there had been discord regarding who was in charge and who had completed which job and who hadn’t. Team one exhibited a lack of communication during the process of completion that created problems (for example, ‘Wasn’t someone else supposed to do this?’).
“Team two, on the other hand, took longer to do certain things, but because of its emphasis on communication and collaboration during the enactment of the task (such as ‘Let’s try this’ and ‘What do you think about that?’), the team met the goal of building the adventure camp in its own positive way, and on time.”
Interesting, eh?
(I wonder how the guys would have done if Joe Montana had been their team leader?)
BOARD SILLY
Data points (all pointing in the wrong direction):
16% of S&P 500 board members are women
9% of S&P 500–45 companies–have zero women on their board
“Catalyst … just completed a study showing that companies with at least three women directors performed significantly better than average in terms of return on equity [16.7% better] and return on sales [16.8% better] and return on invested capital [10% better].” (Source: Fortune/2007)
102. Men, “Get the Facts”: Women Are Different.
I love the writer Anita Shreve. (Most women are surprised by this fact—my wife calls her books classic “chick lit.”) I just finished, as I write, her superb The Weight of Water. Few writers—and virtually no male writers, as I see it—deal so lucidly or movingly or in such depth, with life’s painful tangles of relationships. Simple fact: Women by and large instinctively appreciate complex, inchoate sets of human relationships. Men are more or less clueless. (Research, including recent neurobiological research, increasingly supports this dichotomy.)
Translating this into the emotion-driven, all-important-these-days world of design, I have by and large concluded, after one and a half decades of study and writing and contemplation:
Men cannot effectively design products-services-experiences for women.
Men cannot effectively sell or market to women.
Men who disagree with this are delusional.
Men (TEND TO) approach & deal with the world in a fundamentally Linear way. Few twists. Few turns. Little reflection. (Get the facts. Act. Move on. Let the chips fall where they may.)
Women (TEND TO) see bends and twists and reversals in every path that involves the interplay of humans. Women appreciate & live for those bends and switchbacks; such convolutions are the essence of the human experience on earth—men are appalled by, or at least dismissive of, the very same things, assessing them as “soft.” Reading Anita Shreve all too clearly revived my awareness that my professional approach to pretty much everything (the words I use, the stories I tell, my pace, my mannerisms) are … PURE 100 PERCENT MALE.
I can’t change that, hard as I may try. But I can do … something. And so can you.
PROMISES TO KEEP
Attention, men and boys: If you are in any way involved in developing or marketing products that some women, somewhere, might buy … then … please … take the following pledge:
I pledge … that I will never engage in any sort of discussion of products-services-experiences that include women as customers-clients, unless one-third or more of those present and in positions of authority are women.
I pledge … that I will work tirelessly to ensure that women’s views are heard first & last and are clearly incorporated in a commanding way in any and all action plans involving the development and marketing of our products and services.
I pledge … that I will not sign off on an initiative aimed primarily at women unless women are almost unanimously in agreement.
I further pledge … that I will become a “pioneer” in getting women-centric views clearly into the mainstream—and will work tirelessly to ensure that women’s representation in any and all leadership positions is at least consistent with the shape of the markets we serve or wish to serve.
Any fellows ready to become fellow pledgees?
(I’m not asking you to follow this slavishly—obviously there’s no reason to think you would. And I know I’ve become a radical on this topic—n
ot as a matter of social justice, but instead for reasons economic; namely, the enormity of the opportunity and the fact that so few “get it” “strategically” and thus “leave so much on the table.” On the other hand, I think it’d be hard to argue with, on logical grounds, a more or less “pledge” that’s more or less like what you see here. Your call, obviously—why not discuss it with colleagues?)
103. Dressed for Success? Or: What the History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement Taught Me About Hanging In and Hanging In.
In the end it was, to be precise, Harry Burn’s mother who made all the difference. A suffragette, she wrote to her son, age 24 and Tennessee’s youngest legislator, saying, “Don’t forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt …” He did, tipped the scales on a 49–47 vote, and brought, effectively, to an end a struggle that in its most open form had lasted 72 years, 1 month, and 7 days. With Mrs. Burn’s urging and Harry’s courageous vote on August 18, 1920, some 26 million American women were franchised in one fell swoop.
Fact is, I cross-dressed for the first time on March 31, 2007. I went to a local (Dorset, Vermont) costume party and tried valiantly to represent Elizabeth Cady Stanton, rightfully called the Mother of the American Women’s Rights/Women’s Suffrage Movement.
But that gets ahead of the game …
The idea animating the party was that you had to dress as someone you admire—and be prepared to respond to questions as the admired personage would have responded. I thought it would be great fun, and therefore took it seriously. Franklin? Churchill? Lord Nelson? John Paul Jones? John Cleese/Monty Python? No problem, I had them all pegged. And a satisfactory costume would hardly be a challenge (e.g., Churchill, cigar and brandy; Nelson or Jones, folding telescope or bits of my mildewed 40-year-old Navy uniform; and I can do Cleese almost as well as Cleese does Cleese, at least in my own mind).
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