The story of the missing TV

A friend came for supper after we’d moved house. Whilst showing her around I mentioned that I wanted to sell my old TV and get a new small, flat screen one to fit into the bedroom. Shortly afterwards she received an e-flyer advertising a limited special on TVs from a well known store. She forwarded it to me pointing out the one that looked perfect for my needs. The price was excellent, less than half the normal price.

I noted that it was a limited offer and that one could go in store or order online. There are no stores close to me so I went online to see if I could still place an order.  I was thrilled when the order was accepted and I received confirmation of my payment. There had been an option for free delivery if you were prepared to wait a bit, I think it said 5 to 10 days. I opted for that.

Eight days later I emailed asking when delivery could be expected. No reply. The next day I called the online orders help desk but couldn’t get through. In trying to find help I landed up at the Customer Resolution Desk and was assured I’d be hearing from someone by the following morning. 

The following day, a Friday, there was a call around midday from the manager of the closest branch explaining that “the system had been down for two days” but he now had my query and a lady would be calling me to arrange delivery. That evening I received an automated response to my original query giving me a reference number and stating that they are "passionate about customer service". Then nothing.

Late on the Monday I landed up at the Customer Resolution Desk again. After many attempts from them to connect me with someone who would attend to my query I received a call the following evening from the admin lady at the branch who said “We can’t fulfill the order because the stock was finished the day the “clearance” started. We have checked with all the other branches and no one has stock left. We can’t give you a different TV because they cost more than you have paid.”

I explained, “That’s not acceptable. You took the order and my money and I now want a tv set. Please relay this to the branch manager and ask him to call me to tell me what he has sorted out.”

Two days later I was again talking to the Cust Res Dept. but this time I was asking for the name and number or email address of the MD/CEO. The information was given quite willingly all be it that it was for the wrong CEO. What a disconnect when staff don’t know who the “big boss” is.

After going round in circles with the switchboard I eventually emailed my issue to the CEO. I received a very prompt reply from him politely explaining that he was the wrong individual and redirecting my email to the correct CEO. Within one hour of that I had, had a call from the Regional Manager to say that a different TV would be supplied and checking I was okay with that and the admin lady had confirmed the delivery for the next day!

I was very happy with the outcome. The TV is working great. And I received calls from both the admin lady and the Regional Manager to check that it was received in good order.

I am not surprised that the problem got resolved once I escalated it to the top. I am sorry that I had to waste the time of two CEOs to achieve it. 

At the same time the second one is ultimately responsible for that being necessary. My experience exposed some serious flaws in the business, some in the IT systems and some in the people. One sees combinations of these same problems in many companies. 

• Why does the online ordering system allow the processing of orders it can’t fulfill?
• How can a paid up order lie in the system unfulfilled and unnoticed?
• Why does the help desk line not get answered?
• Is the Customer Resolution Desk able to achieve its purpose, add value?  
• Why is the branch manager handing off tricky cases to an admin person?
• Why does the branch manager not appreciate the value of customer service versus the cost price of one item?
• How empowered are the branches?
• Why do the staff not know who the CEO is? Would it make a difference if they did?
• How many other customers are having bad experiences which aren’t reaching the desk of the CEO but are reaching the ear of their friends or the pages of social media?

I don’t expect junior staff to have the authority to resolve all problems. What all staff do need is training to recognise legitimate issues and for them to be able to access appropriate support quickly. Middle managers need to be able to see big picture as well as deal with detail. They need to balance cost and risk, and be able to deal with potential conflict appropriately.

I spoke to many different staff members during the whole episode. Many were average, some had poor interpersonal skills and others stood out. When I wrote to the CEO I had included a compliment for one of the staff in the Cust Res Dept. It was clear that he had the intent to help, he communicated clearly and the first time I called he paid enough attention to hear my surname and find my order himself before I could give him the order number. There is potential which if given the right environment can flourish and make a difference. I hope he will go far in his work life.

Wherever you sit in your organisation are you able to deliver the very best service to your customers? Are your people able to deliver the very best? Are the systems and processes really working? Do they produce value? Is what has been designed on paper actually happening, or working, on the ground?

Where is the missing TV in your department?

To Solve or not to Solve?

The other day my daughter described something in her life that sounded like a problem. When she finished I remained quiet, processing what she’d said. She then went on to say, “You don’t need to solve it, I just needed to say it.” I was quite relieved! I had been thinking, “I don’t know what to suggest. What should I say?” 

Her talking through the issue, and me hearing her, was far more important than her getting a solution at that point in time. For many of us that is a strange way of thinking. We are accustomed to going straight into solution mode.

Very often better solutions would be found if we first allowed more time for people to express their needs and feelings. We could be more helpful by asking some questions which focussed their thoughts. And, in giving them the time to think out loud, they may find their own solution, or just the acceptance of what is.  This applies both at home and at work.

During a workshop I was facilitating for managers we practised Fierce Conversations. These are structured conversations that allow us to confront tough issues with courage, compassion and skill.

In this ten step method we name the issue in step one but we only talk about any sort of solution in step nine!

The delegates really struggled with this. They kept jumping to the solution before clarifying how they felt about it, or what was at stake, or eliciting the other person’s viewpoint. They also wanted to present the other person with the solution instead of allowing them to make suggestions.

If the problem is ‘solved’ in this manner the opportunity to be aware of alternative perspectives is missed. The other person hasn’t developed any of their own problem solving skills. And very often they are unwilling to change their behaviour to adopt your chosen solution. 

I myself am a solution oriented person. I have had to work very hard at listening, asking appropriate questions and allowing others to find answers for themselves. However the results when I get it right are so exciting. The other person feels so much better about their own abilities, they often come up with amazing ideas and they are far more likely to go ahead and implement those ideas with enthusiasm.

There are of course times when you are in fact responsible for finding a solution, especially in a work environment. Even then the results maybe better if you involve a group of people in the discussion to find a solution. Letting go of the need to always have the solutions can be a big relief.

A possible new approach is:

Does this situation require a solution?

NO - Then I can simply listen with empathy.

OR YES - Then is it really necessary for me to solve it all by myself

   YES - Solve it!

   NO - What questions can I ask? (which will help the other person, or a group of us, to come up with some ideas to explore)

Take the pressure off yourself

“You don’t look yourself,” was the greeting from a friend on meeting me for our final committee meeting of the year. “I am tired,” I replied. “The last couple of weeks I have just been chasing my tail and barely meeting deadlines.” As I said it, it struck me that this was most unusual for me. What had gone wrong?

Into my head came a picture of Stephen Covey’s four quadrants.

Ideally we should spend most of our time doing activities that fall into Quadrant 2 – important but not yet urgent.

I had instead slipped into being in Quadrant 1 – important and urgent.

I haven’t done that for many years. I make a point of planning and prioritising, of saying No when necessary and of remaining in the moment rather than worrying about what may be coming. However somehow that went pear shaped at the beginning of December. By the time I realised what I had done I was feeling drained and dissatisfied.

I am now back in Quadrant 2 and feeling so much better.

If two weeks of that made me so tired, what do months and months of it do to us? And what’s more it is an unproductive space, so all that stress and strain is achieving even less.

Perhaps this is a good time for each of us to evaluate where we are working from and if that isn’t a productive, enjoyable space to make a plan to change it now?

(Originally written in December 2011)

First acknowledge the problem

“Resolved. No fault found.” was the response from City Power when I reported that two out of three of our electricity phases had cut out the night before. I could have screamed. Well if there is no fault why do half our lights, most of our plugs and our geyser not work?

“Billing crisis. What billing crisis?” responded Johannesburg’s Mayor and the ratepayers couldn’t believe their ears. If there is no billing problem why do so many of us receive outrageous utility bills, no statements for months, accounts for the wrong properties?

Time after time we see people denying problems exist – in the public realm, at work and at home. Ignoring a problem hardly ever makes it go away. Instead it often leads to frustration and an escalation of the problem.

Things go wrong, mistakes are made, problems happen. It is all part of life. And most of them do need to be fixed - the sooner, the better. But we cannot fix what we don’t acknowledge.

Effective problem solving is a skill which begins with recognising the problem, followed by finding the root cause, considering a variety of solutions and their consequences, making a decision and then taking action. It is a skill which serves us well at work and in life.

How effective are you at the five steps of problem solving?

Being happy at work

A recent e-mail from a client ended, “I often asked myself, why can I not be satisfied with what I have achieved, or just see my job as a means to earn my living.” My immediate thought was, “because you wouldn’t be you, and you wouldn’t have achieved the success you have.” The client is a senior manager who has built up a very successful business unit within a large organisation.

Keeping that famous life / work balance is tricky and sometimes the balance comes from two equally unbalanced phases - working flat out - and then taking a complete sabbatical. The headmaster at King Edward V11 school recently did that. He has been head for eight years so took an entire term off to travel through the Kruger and other game parks. Sound inviting?

Although driven people sometimes do question themselves, they for the most part thrive on being driven - on the achievements and on creating something just a little better than last time – it makes them happy. And being driven is not stressful if it fits your personality - a laid back life would quickly become boring for them.

I am reading a book called “Happiness at Work. Maximising your psychological capital for success” by Jessica Pryce-Jones. For years I have ‘preached’ that we can create productive, effective businesses with happy, engaged, fulfilled people working in them. What is great about Jessica’s work is that she and her team have conducted really robust research that proves that people who are happy at work are more productive.

The happiest employees focus on their work 78% of the day compared to the unhappiest who focus on what they need to do for only 53% of the time. That means the happiest people put about 60 extra days of work effort into their year.

A very big, proven key to productivity at work is happiness!

She also states, if you are happy at work you get promoted faster, get more support. generate better & more creative ideas, achieve your goals faster, receive superior reviews, are healthier, and many more ...

The book explores many factors that determine how happy we are at work. I maintain that all leader-managers should be managing in such a way as to make it easier for people to enjoy their day at work (and get the job done!). However the book really focuses on what each of us as individuals can do so as to increase our own happiness at work. My work with past clients didn’t use the same structure as Jessica uses but I have seen many people who were so unhappy that they came to me to explore changing jobs and yet ended up finding themselves becoming happier and deciding to stay where they were!

As an individual are you happy in your work? And if not consider changing that. Life is too short to waste it being unhappy.

If you are a leader-manager do you know how to manage so that your team are productive and creative, and happy?

Pushing back

“Why isn’t the work we agreed on finished?” “Bess from dept A asked me to extract some data for her and Jim from Dept B needed graphs prepared”. Does this happen to you or to people you work or live with?

In 2002 I was managing a team at SARS. I found that because my staff had a reputation for being able to provide answers and deliver, they were constantly interrupted with requests. With the result that they had to work overtime to keep up with their own work, sometimes fell behind and were feeling stressed. I called a meeting and we discussed what was happening. They were all helpful people who felt guilty to say No to anyone who asked them nicely.

So we set some new rules (or boundaries). I would let the departments we supported know that we would be planning our week’s work on Monday mornings. Anything they required from us was to be communicated to me by the previous Friday (or very early on Monday morning). Anything not so requested would stand over for scheduling the following week.

My team agreed that they were answerable to our schedule before anyone else’s. If someone asked them for something during the week they learnt to say “No” in a nice way such as “I’d love to help you once I have finished all of this week’s work” or “If you give the request to Alison I am sure she will schedule it for you.”

Naturally there were emergencies and we did make adjustments to accommodate the legitimate ones, but for the most part after a few weeks everyone pretty much cooperated with us.

The result was a happier, fulfilled, engaged team delivering on time and getting through even more work than they’d ever done previously.

All of us have a need for boundaries in some aspect of our life. Without them our values, needs and priorities get subjugated by those of everyone else. We lose sight of what is important, suffer health problems, miss important events with loved ones. Some of us do too much for others. We think we are helping but we are denying them the opportunity to be strong.

Think about how you could modify what we did at SARS to help you in your own circumstances.

Solving a Problem or Wasting Resources?

Minister Motsoaledi wants to ban alcohol advertising. His reason – to reduce violent crime fuelled by excessive drinking.

A solution needs to address a problem, right? Without checking the research I am pretty sure that there is enough to prove a strong correlation between excessive drinking and increased violence. However I am not sure that there is such a correlation between the advertising of alcohol and the excessive use of it.

One of the critical, but often ignored, skills of effective leadership is the ability to effectively solve problems. The Leader-Management Framework shows this involves four steps – acknowledge the problem, explore ways to treat the root cause, consider the consequences then take action.

Minister Motsoaledi has the first step right. He has acknowledged the violence and the connection to the abuse of alcohol. From here on he has a lot more work to do. Does banning advertising treat the root cause? If not what does? If you ban advertising what are the possible consequences? If you have a good solution it will have many positive consequences. Nevertheless you still need to see if they outweigh any negative ones.

Once you are sure you have the right solution to treat the root cause you take action. Motsoaledi has already jumped to step four with his announcement of the ban. The missing steps in between are crucial to effectively solving problems instead of wasting much time and money.

GM's advert sends the wrong message

The GM Red Tag advert is back on our TV screens.

Every year that it airs it annoys me. Why would I want to buy a car from a company who thinks it is impressive that their staff work extrememly long hours - hours that are so long that they forget what their daughter looks like or where things are kept in the kitchen?

Excessive working hours can lead to burn out. I have seen people who've burned out in this way. Their ability to handle work and stress after they "recover" is never what it was before.

It is also well known that working excessive hours damages home life. And people with problems at home become less productive at work.

So in the medium to long term allowing your staff to lose their work - life balance makes them far less productive and therefore possibly no longer of use to the company.

As someone who helps managers to work together with their staff to bring out the best in them, now and in the long term, it goes against the grain to buy a car from a company who sends the opposite message.

In a crisis you need that foundation

On the Sunday evening after New Year my husband and I felt like a meal out. I am always looking for new places to try so had a list ready with three close to us. The first was closed for the festive season but we found the second open and buzzing with about half the tables occupied.

After placing our order we realised that the majority of those at the tables were in fact waiting for take away orders. They seemed to be getting quite agitated. My husband had a view into the kitchen and could see the manager, perspiring heavily, trying to get the orders flowing.

As time went on there were more and more complaints which were met with apologies and excuses of being busy. As the wait for food got longer the waiters disappeared, to avoid dealing with the conflict. We eventually received our order, out of the blue, an hour later. The Thai food was lovely but the evening hadn’t been a good one.

By this time things had quietened down, all the take away people had left and the seated diners had been served. The young manager came out from the kitchen and started visiting each of the remaining tables. We could hear the conversations as he got closer to us. He profusely apologised to each one explaining it was busy and he couldn’t be everywhere so had prioritised being in the kitchen.

When he got to us I thanked him for his apology and suggested he needed to find an experienced restaurant manager to help him get on track. I pointed out that in fact the restaurant wasn’t really full when things started to fall apart. Blaming it on a busy night was ignoring the true problem. There simply wasn’t the correct foundation in place to cope with a reasonable amount of business.

The key components of leader-management had not been put into place:
• Implement systems & processes – who does what, where, when and how - roles, responsibilities, skills & procedures
• Develop a strong work culture – we work together for a common purpose even when the going gets tough and without supervision
• Connect effectively with people – we are loyal & supportive, communicate well and are comfortable to use our initiative

Because the manager hadn’t created that foundation, when the “crisis” came he had no team, he was on his own. As an individual he was willing, polite, hard working, responsible. All great qualities. But as a manager he was lost.
Where does the blame lie? Is it the young manager’s fault? I don’t think so. The responsibility lies with the restaurant owner. He or she hired someone with a good attitude but without the necessary skills and experience. Now they need to bring in support to teach him. And after a bit of theory most of that teaching needs to be on the job mentoring – understanding how to translate theory into practise.

Do you have situations like this in your workplace? How can you make it more effective and profitable, and still have fun?

An accident? Or intentional action?

Yesterday I was at a conference all day so only heard about the train "accident" in Blackheath on the radio whilst driving back.
Today I have read a number of articles about it on News24. If they have their information correct the taxi driver overtook a number of cars, drove on the wrong side of the road and ignored the barrier at the crossing.
This isn't an accident! It is reckless behaviour with a very high possibility of endangering self and others - which tragically is exactly what happened.

My children sometimes do something like place their glass on the floor while watching TV and then knock it over. They would often then say "Sorry, it was an accident." My response would be "No it isn't. An accident is bumping the glass when it is in the middle of a table. When you put the glass on the floor you made it highly likely that it would get knocked over by you or someone else."

We are far too quick to speak about things being accidental these days. If a young child walks into the road in front of a car it is an accident (and a lack of responsibility on the part of their caregiver). If an adult walks into the road, it is reckless and asking to get knocked over.

If we have the knowledge or experience to know the negative consequences of an action then we are responsible for those consequences, if we continue to take the action. It is not an accident.

This may sound like semantics but I think that at a deeper level we are constantly reducing personal responsibility by referring to bad consequences, that could have been avoided, as accidents.

Fitting it all in

Emma Thompson (writer, actress) shared her view on balancing career, family and hobby in an interview on channel24 today. Her answer is so pragmatic - I just loved it.

She was asked “How to balance your career and being a mother with your activism? You’re involved with a number of campaigns, supporting refugees and the opposition to a third runway at Heathrow Airport.”

She replied “Well I just try and parcel it out and say ‘what can I manage in this month…’ Like if I’ve got a deadline or I know, for instance, this month I’ll be away a lot because I’m promoting Nanny McPhee and I’m also taking the family on holiday, so I say ‘what can I achieve?’ and then cut my cloth accordingly. It’s just a bit of a balancing act really and unfortunately it does mean that I say ‘no’ a lot. But you know, I hit my 50th last year and you think to yourself ‘I have to choose very carefully what I do and make sure that it’s important..’ (read the entire interview here)

That last sentence ‘I have to choose very carefully what I do and make sure that it’s important..’ sums up the key to taking control of your life so succinctly. Now all you have to do is put it into practice :-).

1. Let go of the expectation that you need to do everything
2. Identify your values and your priorities
3. Generate personal energy (increases capacity)
4. Develop ritual habits (increases capacity)
5. Simplify your life
6. Learn to say “no”
7. Work from quadrant two – important, not yet urgent
8. Plan your week and your day (max 3 – 6 priorities per day)
9. Use your time efficiently
10. Be in the moment

Have fun

If you want more help with this come along to one of our workshops “Take control of your life” or “Help, I’m a yes-addict”. There is one this Saturday and the other next week Saturday.