by Jason Fried
“… this may have caused” The “may” here implies there might not be anything wrong at all. That’s a classic non-apology apology move. It slights the very real problem(s) that customers are experiencing. If this didn’t affect them, you don’t really need to say anything. If it did affect them, then there’s no need for “may” here. Stop wavering.
So what’s the perfect way to say you’re sorry? There’s no magic bullet. Any stock answer will sound generic and hollow. You’re going to have to take it on a case-by-case basis.
The number-one principle to keep in mind when you apologize: How would you feel about the apology if you were on the other end? If someone said those words to you, would you believe them?
Keep in mind that you can’t apologize your way out of being an ass. Even the best apology won’t rescue you if you haven’t earned people’s trust. Everything you do before things go wrong matters far more than the actual words you use to apologize. If you’ve built rapport with customers, they’ll cut you some slack and trust you when you say you’re sorry.
Put everyone on the front lines
In the restaurant business, there’s a world of difference between working in the kitchen and dealing with customers. Cooking schools and smart restaurateurs know it’s important for both sides to understand and empathize with each other. That’s why they often have chefs work out front as waiters for a stretch. That way, the kitchen staff can interact with customers and see what it’s actually like on the front lines.
A lot of companies have a similar front-of-house/back-of-house split. The people who make the product work in the “kitchen” while support handles the customers. Unfortunately, that means the product’s chefs never get to directly hear what customers are saying. Too bad. Listening to customers is the best way to get in tune with a product’s strengths and weaknesses.
Think about the children’s game Telephone. There are ten kids sitting in a circle. A message starts and is whispered from one child to another. By the time it gets all the way around, the message is completely distorted—to the point where it’s usually hilarious. A sentence that makes sense at first comes out the other end as “Macaroni cantaloupe knows the future.” And the more people you have in the circle, the more distorted the message gets.
The same thing is true at your company. The more people you have between your customers’ words and the people doing the work, the more likely it is that the message will get lost or distorted along the way.
Everyone on your team should be connected to your customers—maybe not every day, but at least a few times throughout the year. That’s the only way your team is going to feel the hurt your customers are experiencing. It’s feeling the hurt that really motivates people to fix the problem. And the flip side is true too: The joy of happy customers or ones who have had a problem solved can also be wildly motivating.
So don’t protect the people doing the work from customer feedback. No one should be shielded from direct criticism.
Maybe you think you don’t have time to interact with customers. Then make time. Craigslist founder Craig Newmark still answers support e-mails today (often within minutes). He also deletes racist comments from the site’s discussion boards and pesters New York City Realtors who post apartments for rent that don’t exist.* If he can devote this kind of attention to customer service, you can too.
Take a deep breath
When you rock the boat, there will be waves. After you introduce a new feature, change a policy, or remove something, knee-jerk reactions will pour in. Resist the urge to panic or make rapid changes in response. Passions flare in the beginning. That’s normal. But if you ride out that first rocky week, things usually settle down.
People are creatures of habit. That’s why they react to change in such a negative way. They’re used to using something in a certain way and any change upsets the natural order of things. So they push back. They complain. They demand that you revert to the way things were.
But that doesn’t mean you should act. Sometimes you need to go ahead with a decision you believe in, even if it’s unpopular at first.
People often respond before they give a change a fair chance. Sometimes that initial negative reaction is more of a primal response. That’s why you’ll sometimes hear things like, “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen.” No, it’s not. It’s a minor change. Come on.
Also, remember that negative reactions are almost always louder and more passionate than positive ones. In fact, you may hear only negative voices even when the majority of your customers are happy about a change. Make sure you don’t foolishly backpedal on a necessary but controversial decision.
So when people complain, let things simmer for a while. Let them know you’re listening. Show them you’re aware of what they’re saying. Let them know you understand their discontent. But explain that you’re going to let it go for a while and see what happens. You’ll probably find that people will adjust eventually. They may even wind up liking the change more than the old way, once they get used to it.
*Reyna Susi, “The Exxon Crisis, 1989,” Effective Crisis Management, iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Fall02/Susi/exxon.htm
†John Holusha, “Exxon’s Public-Relations Problem,” New York Times, Apr. 21, 1989, www.tinyurl.com/yg2bgff
*Scott Kirsner, “Craigslist’s Unorthodox Path,” Boston Globe, June 15, 2008, www.tinyurl.com/4vkg58
CHAPTER
CULTURE
You don’t create a culture
Instant cultures are artificial cultures. They’re big bangs made of mission statements, declarations, and rules. They are obvious, ugly, and plastic. Artificial culture is paint. Real culture is patina.
You don’t create a culture. It happens. This is why new companies don’t have a culture. Culture is the byproduct of consistent behavior. If you encourage people to share, then sharing will be built into your culture. If you reward trust, then trust will be built in. If you treat customers right, then treating customers right becomes your culture.
Culture isn’t a foosball table or trust falls. It isn’t policy. It isn’t the Christmas party or the company picnic. Those are objects and events, not culture. And it’s not a slogan, either. Culture is action, not words.
So don’t worry too much about it. Don’t force it. You can’t install a culture. Like a fine scotch, you’ve got to give it time to develop.
Decisions are temporary
“But what if …?” “What happens when …?” “Don’t we need to plan for …?”
Don’t make up problems you don’t have yet. It’s not a problem until it’s a real problem. Most of the things you worry about never happen anyway.
Besides, the decisions you make today don’t need to last forever. It’s easy to shoot down good ideas, interesting policies, or worthwhile experiments by assuming that whatever you decide now needs to work for years on end. It’s just not so, especially for a small business. If circumstances change, your decisions can change. Decisions are temporary.
At this stage, it’s silly to worry about whether or not your concept will scale from five to five thousand people (or from a hundred thousand to 100 million people). Getting a product or service off the ground is hard enough without inventing even more obstacles. Optimize for now and worry about the future later.
The ability to change course is one of the big advantages of being small. Compared with larger competitors, you’re way more capable of making quick, sweeping changes. Big companies just can’t move that fast. So pay attention to today and worry about later when it gets here. Otherwise you’ll waste energy, time, and money fixating on problems that may never materialize.
Skip the rock stars
A lot of companies post help-wanted ads seeking “rock stars” or “ninjas.” Lame. Unless your workplace is filled with groupies and throwing stars, these words have nothing to do with your business.
Instead of thinking about how you can land a roomful of rock stars, think about the room instead. We’re all
capable of bad, average, and great work. The environment has a lot more to do with great work than most people realize.
That’s not to say we’re all created equal and you’ll unlock star power in anyone with a rock star environment. But there’s a ton of untapped potential trapped under lame policies, poor direction, and stifling bureaucracies. Cut the crap and you’ll find that people are waiting to do great work. They just need to be given the chance.
This isn’t about casual Fridays or bring-your-dog-to-work day. (If those are such good things, then why aren’t you doing them every day of the week?)
Rockstar environments develop out of trust, autonomy, and responsibility. They’re a result of giving people the privacy, workspace, and tools they deserve. Great environments show respect for the people who do the work and how they do it.
They’re not thirteen
When you treat people like children, you get children’s work. Yet that’s exactly how a lot of companies and managers treat their employees. Employees need to ask permission before they can do anything. They need to get approval for every tiny expenditure. It’s surprising they don’t have to get a hall pass to go take a shit.
When everything constantly needs approval, you create a culture of nonthinkers. You create a boss-versus-worker relationship that screams, “I don’t trust you.”
What do you gain if you ban employees from, say, visiting a social-networking site or watching YouTube while at work? You gain nothing. That time doesn’t magically convert to work. They’ll just find some other diversion.
And look, you’re not going to get a full eight hours a day out of people anyway. That’s a myth. They might be at the office for eight hours, but they’re not actually working eight hours. People need diversions. It helps disrupt the monotony of the workday. A little YouTube or Facebook time never hurt anyone.
Then there’s all the money and time you spend policing this stuff. How much does it cost to set up surveillance software? How much time do IT employees waste on monitoring other employees instead of working on a project that’s actually valuable? How much time do you waste writing rule books that never get read? Look at the costs and you quickly realize that failing to trust your employees is awfully expensive.
Send people home at 5
The dream employee for a lot of companies is a twenty-something with as little of a life as possible outside of work—someone who’ll be fine working fourteen-hour days and sleeping under his desk.
But packing a room full of these burn-the-midnight-oil types isn’t as great as it seems. It lets you get away with lousy execution. It perpetuates myths like “This is the only way we can compete against the big guys.” You don’t need more hours; you need better hours.
When people have something to do at home, they get down to business. They get their work done at the office because they have somewhere else to be. They find ways to be more efficient because they have to. They need to pick up the kids or get to choir practice. So they use their time wisely.
As the saying goes, “If you want something done, ask the busiest person you know.” You want busy people. People who have a life outside of work. People who care about more than one thing. You shouldn’t expect the job to be someone’s entire life—at least not if you want to keep them around for a long time.
Don’t scar on the first cut
The second something goes wrong, the natural tendency is to create a policy. “Someone’s wearing shorts!? We need a dress code!” No, you don’t. You just need to tell John not to wear shorts again.
Policies are organizational scar tissue. They are codified overreactions to situations that are unlikely to happen again. They are collective punishment for the misdeeds of an individual.
This is how bureaucracies are born. No one sets out to create a bureaucracy. They sneak up on companies slowly. They are created one policy—one scar—at a time.
So don’t scar on the first cut. Don’t create a policy because one person did something wrong once. Policies are only meant for situations that come up over and over again.
Sound like you
What is it with businesspeople trying to sound big? The stiff language, the formal announcements, the artificial friendliness, the legalese, etc. You read this stuff and it sounds like a robot wrote it. These companies talk at you, not to you.
This mask of professionalism is a joke. We all know this. Yet small companies still try to emulate it. They think sounding big makes them appear bigger and more “professional.” But it really just makes them sound ridiculous. Plus, you sacrifice one of a small company’s greatest assets: the ability to communicate simply and directly, without running every last word through a legal-and PR-department sieve.
There’s nothing wrong with sounding your own size. Being honest about who you are is smart business, too. Language is often your first impression—why start it off with a lie? Don’t be afraid to be you.
That applies to the language you use everywhere—in e-mail, packaging, interviews, blog posts, presentations, etc. Talk to customers the way you would to friends. Explain things as if you were sitting next to them. Avoid jargon or any sort of corporate-speak. Stay away from buzzwords when normal words will do just fine. Don’t talk about “monetization” or being “transparent;” talk about making money and being honest. Don’t use seven words when four will do.
And don’t force your employees to end e-mails with legalese like “This e-mail message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information.” That’s like ending all your company e-mails with a signature that says, “We don’t trust you and we’re ready to prove it in court.” Good luck making friends that way.
Write to be read, don’t write just to write. Whenever you write something, read it out loud. Does it sound the way it would if you were actually talking to someone? If not, how can you make it more conversational?
Who said writing needs to be formal? Who said you have to strip away your personality when putting words on paper? Forget rules. Communicate!
And when you’re writing, don’t think about all the people who may read your words. Think of one person. Then write for that one person. Writing for a mob leads to generalities and awkwardness. When you write to a specific target, you’re a lot more likely to hit the mark.
Four-letter words
There are four-letter words you should never use in business. They’re not fuck or shit. They’re need, must, can’t, easy, just, only, and fast. These words get in the way of healthy communication. They are red flags that introduce animosity, torpedo good discussions, and cause projects to be late.
When you use these four-letter words, you create a black-and-white situation. But the truth is rarely black and white. So people get upset and problems ensue. Tension and conflict are injected unnecessarily.
Here’s what’s wrong with some of them:
Need. Very few things actually need to get done. Instead of saying “need,” you’re better off saying “maybe” or “What do you think about this?” or “How does this sound?” or “Do you think we could get away with that?”
Can’t. When you say “can’t,” you probably can. Sometimes there are even opposing can’ts: “We can’t launch it like that, because it’s not quite right” versus “We can’t spend any more time on this because we have to launch.” Both of those statements can’t be true. Or wait a minute, can they?
Easy. Easy is a word that’s used to describe other people’s jobs. “That should be easy for you to do, right?” But notice how rarely people describe their own tasks as easy. For you, it’s “Let me look into it”—but for others, it’s “Get it done.”
These four-letter words often pop up during debates (and also watch out for their cousins: everyone, no one, always, and never). Once uttered, they make it tough to find a solution. They box you into a corner by pitting two absolutes against each other. That’s when head-butting occurs. You squeeze out any middle ground.
And these words are especially dangerous when you string them together: “We need to add this feature now. We can’t launch without this feature. Everyone wants it. It’s only one little thing so it will be easy. You should be able to get it in there fast!” Only thirty-six words, but a hundred assumptions. That’s a recipe for disaster.
ASAP is poison
Stop saying ASAP. We get it. It’s implied. Everyone wants things done as soon as they can be done.
When you turn into one of these people who adds ASAP to the end of every request, you’re saying everything is high priority. And when everything is high priority, nothing is. (Funny how everything is a top priority until you actually have to prioritize things.)
ASAP is inflationary. It devalues any request that doesn’t say ASAP. Before you know it, the only way to get anything done is by putting the ASAP sticker on it.
Most things just don’t warrant that kind of hysteria. If a task doesn’t get done this very instant, nobody is going to die. Nobody’s going to lose their job. It won’t cost the company a ton of money. What it will do is create artificial stress, which leads to burnout and worse.
So reserve your use of emergency language for true emergencies. The kind where there are direct, measurable consequences to inaction. For everything else, chill out.
CHAPTER
CONCLUSION
Inspiration is perishable
We all have ideas. Ideas are immortal. They last forever.