Archive for March, 2010
It’s All Greek to Me
One of my postings last year, <“The Summer of 69″>, reflected on the incredible capacity we have to accomplish, particularly when we face tough challenges rather than each other. There is incalculable capability available when people endeavor to put the objective in front of them and view it from the same side of the table. By now, most of us have benefited from the negotiating strategy of focusing on issues versus positions and to be tough on issues, but softer on people. I’ve never been more disappointed or sadder than today, as I observe the reprehensible behavior of elected officials in facing the monumental challenges of our economy, health and welfare, the common good. We may not have complete control over the forces, dark ones at times, at play at the political playground, but we have almost infinite control over how we can face our own organizational challenges, challenges that may require fundamental changes in practices, behaviors, entitlements, and expectations. Today and yesterday are already gone, irretrievable forever, and a very poor place to try to live in, for they cannot create value.
There are few histories that can better illustrate the potential that we, as a society or organization, have to turn opportunity into destructive conflict, than looking to the Hellenic (Greek) city-states 2500 years ago. By now there have been countless stories, tales, legends, books, movies and plays that retell:
- The Greco-Persian Wars (the Persian Wars), two sets of conflicts between the Persian Empire and the Hellenic city-states from 499 BC until 449 BC. Athenians and Spartans facing the Persians with a bias to what they had in common.
- The Peloponnesian War, a series of conflicts between the Athenian Empire and the Peloponnesian League (led by Sparta) from 431 to 404 B.C. Athenians and Spartans facing each other with a bias to what made them different.
In the first series of wars, the Greek city-states, fierce competitors face a challenge that threatened to reshape life as they knew it, if conquered and integrated into the Persian Empire. In fact, much of what we consider western society, shaped by Greco-Roman thought, may have never existed at all. The wars are a rich area for study, insight and sheer dramatic entertainment. They demonstrate just how much competitors can find common ground, focus on interests, and come together to solve what appeared to be unsolvable challenges. Sadly, once success was reached, the darker side of their self interests, rather than the greater good, returned with a vengeance in less than 20 years, the Peloponnesian Wars.
During the Peloponnesian War, the competing parties nearly destroyed each other. Athens was so devastated that it never recovered. The levels of horror and barbarism each party perpetuated upon each other redefined how the city states would resolve differences in the future. Poverty and societal changes led to a poorer, more devastating and dark future. What had been competing parties unleashed levels of unproductive incivility, a harbinger of civil wars then and, subsequently, in the modern world.
The challenges we face will not perpetuate civil wars. Yet, big challenges can perpetuate incivility. When there is a lot a stake and change is on the table, win-lose can create polarization perpetuating sinister and unprincipled misrepresentation that demonizes opponents. It is that demonization that unraveled parts of ancient Greek society into a shredded tapestry, still threadbare today.
Among my favorite quotes (author unknown) is “When faced with two choices, always take the third one.” Walking away with our marbles, as a once noble patrician is urging others to do, can create Peloponnesian Polarity.
There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar Act 4
Thoughts?
I Can’t Hear What You’re Seeing
For many years, the term Voice of the Customer has been a source of incalculable confusion and a hazardous source of misdirection. The reality of dealing with a cacophony of voices that can often come from the many interfaces and service points is daunting for some. Discerning the signal from the noise fosters subjective simplification and can and too often yield risky and sometimes shallow insights carried forward into our delivery of services. We make decisions about requirements without clearly understanding what creates value for our customer. The simplification can put much more focus on the past at the expense of consequences that await the future.
Some reasons may be:
- Understanding the processes, players and decision-making in the initial contracting process. The customer we see and hear often is not the customers we will serve. Tom procures and Mary operates. The functionality (and different points of view) is currently unavoidable in the public sector and lives well in the private.
- Asking the customer for requirements and then setting quality specifications for our outputs. The customer is limited by what they believe you do, could do, or can’t do. Lost opportunity results from the filtered data.
- Poor differentiation between transactional satisfaction and customer loyalty. There are often very different reasons for staying, renewing, or leaving.
- Equating meeting delivery requirements with delivering value. One comes from walking in our own shoes, not in the customer’s. Walking and hearing are very different.
- Limiting knowledge of service costs to the price the customer pays. The cost dealing with us can be too high as the relationship ensues past the start up.
There are many, far too many others. Over the years, I’ve concluded that the analysis yielding the better insights has come from seeing the world and what is truly required through the customer’s lens, looking forward, always forward. Many years ago in a conversation with Dr. Noriaki Kano, he shared the importance of “Customer In” versus “Product Out.” He’s been right all along. The levels of insight (le mot juste) delivered through lenses versus voices is paradigm shaking. In the movie Beyond the Sea, Sandra Dee says to Bobby Darin, “Bobby, people hear what they see!” She was right.
So,
- How do we decide what our customer wants or needs?
- Do we know if we’re right?
- Do we rely on surveys to look forward with our customer?
- Did we lose a customer by surprise?
- Did we add value?
- Do we rely on surveys and complaints for our lenses?
Thoughts?
No Way!
Sherlock Holmes
How quickly do we label something as “impossible” when evaluating risks, alternatives, or focus for investigation? Does our frame of reference filter out what we can’t imagine or refuse to believe? How much does the race to conclude cost us when we’re under the gun? How much does personal belief, level of ignorance, or cerebral capability affect our judgment? Sadly, even when all that stuff is working well, what makes us forget while under duress? After the recent earthquake, Why didn’t the Chilean navy issue a tsunami warning that cost so many lives, even when they had a plan and process to do so?
I don’t know for certain, but I am certain that there are lots that I don’t know. In fact, history seems to make the most assertive comments about what is impossible sound like idiocy. “Everything that can be invented has been invented,” said Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899. A similar conclusion was uttered in 1843 by a predecessor at the Patent Office. A search on Google will unearth a myriad of similar comments including “640K ought to be enough for anybody” from Bill Gates.
Last year online sales surpassed in-store sales on Black Friday (the in-store sale make or break day). Does anybody recall all the chatter about online sales would never work because they were insecure? I’m glad that Jeff Bezos at Amazon and Pierre Omydar of eBay were steadfast in pushing forward. In-house IT departments have from time to time refused to support technologies that they did not sanction, a behavior that often lags the speed of business (Twenty years ago we ignored the scare tactic and pressed forward installing Word rather than continue to suffer with the less perfect WordPerfect). Some caution is warranted, careful evaluation is appropriate, but functional preferences are not. Technology seems to outpace most things we know and we can be easily scared by the clever. Anyone recall the go to market strategy of a very big blue mainframe computer maker focused on scaring customers away from moving to distributed computing (pc’s)?
Nothing in history, even the industrial revolution, comes close to the rate of change we currently experience, nor the way technology is changing everything we do, and much of what can be done for us or to us. For the most part, the world is better for it, Thoreau lovers notwithstanding. Technology is redefining how we will succeed or not and it does so faster than we can imagine. Maybe we need to get better at imagining? Or perhaps relax the jump to pull out the “that’s impossible” spray paint. A great habit to lose is reaching into the nostalgia bag and saying, “We tried that before and it won’t work here ….”Because it certainly won’t work as long as we believe that past failures define our current capability or possibilities.
Next time I hear No Way, I might imagine, Way!
Thoughts?
Going for the Gold
By now many of us are working through the withdrawal symptoms of POSD, or Post Olympic Stress Disorder. The quality of coverage keeps ratcheting up every time, particularly with the clarity of HDTV, bigger screens, and cameras suspended in truly agile systems. I am amazed at how the athletes perform at levels that continue to redefine what is humanly possible and just how little the difference is between the first and the fifth placers … often a fraction of a second. High performance is redefined.
The human interest stories take a peek under the hood and into histories revealing that the road to high performance is not easy, ridden with adversity, overcoming pain, loss and, a host of challenges. Hours of practice and more hours to build capability under the watchful and critical eyes of coaches deliver world class fitness. That fitness enables world class performance wherein the medal is but one definition of winning.
What rings very true is the recurring theme that fitness precedes performance. It is as true in sports as it is in life and particularly in the world of business. Achieving sustainable business performance does not come from buying tools and handing them out with “how to” manuals and books, on-line streaming, or the overused cheerleads of “You can do it!” It comes from relentless hard, focused, effort pointed towards a goal that demands excellence, not trying hard. High performance will always demand focus, discipline, and follow-through.
How fit are our organizations to compete in races where competitors are improving rapidly? Are the standards of high performance outpacing our fitness to keep up, win, or just catch up? Years ago I was speaking with a former Olympian who coached our high school gymnastics team. He was sharing what it was like and how his coaches set goals. He said, “John, for many years the standard for this event was set by the East Germans. Year after year, the kept raising the bar, literally. We would watch and believed that we would become winners if we could jump as high as the East Germans were jumping. Our coaches would not settle for such low goals. Our coaches demanded that we jump to the height that would beat where the East Germans would be jumping at the next Olympics or world event.” The bar is always moving.
High performance is a slippery slope, one that a former world ice skating champion learned all too well last week. Capability is now set dynamically by the moving requirements. Often, by the time we find out the requirements, it has moved again. For those who lock down requirements very early the development or innovation process, the planning rigidity will result in missed targets, oops, it moved. Ask the telecommunications providers who deliver 3G, particularly iPhones, what happens at high concentration events like football games …. Hmmmm … the models don’t always anticipate ….
Some say that the tea leaves foresee an improving economy, perhaps the beginnings of better times ahead. These leaner times have been an opportunity to build better fitness, better capability to compete.
- How prepared are we?
- Are we jumping to the heights of the last competition or where the competition will jump tomorrow?
- Have we overcome the adversities and come out stronger, or has performance obesity found a way to ride out the storm?
- How do we measure and determine if our fitness will win? What motivates us?
- What do our coaches demand from us?
- What does focus, discipline and follow-though look like, and feel like?
- Do we compete as individuals or as teams?
