Customer Experience OurScore – Page 20 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

May 5, 2020

What is Marketing?

One benefit of this pause we’re in is more time to think about our businesses than usual.

Which makes books like the one I recommended yesterday particularly good reads, if reading is your thing.

Today’s book is “This is Marketing” by Seth Godin. I recommend it because unlike any other marketing book I’ve come across, it makes you think hard about what marketing is really for.

We usually start our marketing thinking from the wrong side of the relationship: How much do I need to sell? Who can I sell it to? How can I get to that is quickly and easily as possible?

This book challenges you to think from the other side: Who do you want to serve? What do they want? What do they really want? Can you offer that? How can you do that best for them? How does the word spread when you get it right?

The result is a business that may be very hard to get started, but which in the long run creates more, better, more appropriate value.

More, better, more appropriate value is just what we all need going forwards.

This is the book to help you create it.

April 16, 2020

Process vs People

Why do I need process if I have good people?

Because making good people reinvent the wheel over and over again is a shocking waste of talent.

Talent that could be used to invent better wheels, or more interesting uses for them.

April 15, 2020

Connecting

Last night I discovered Johann Hari and his work on depression, anxiety and addiction.

His findings are fascinating, and chime very much with my beliefs on what motivates people, and how you help them to be happier and more productive.

Humans have fundamental physical needs – food, clothing, shelter, sex.

We also have fundamental psychological needs – autonomy, mastery, agency, purpose and above all connection with other people. We need to be seen and valued.

I’d be interested to know what the current situation is doing for those needs right now. I suspect that some of the psychological needs are being better met for some people, while for others some of the physical needs are under threat.

If Covid-19 is an opportunity for a reset. It’s going to be worth thinking about what comes back after the reset button is released again.

How can we ensure that more people have more of their fundamental needs met intentionally and consistently, without killing ourselves or the planet in the process?

It’s a big question. But we can start small, with where we belong – with our own families, friends and businesses.

Here are the TED talks:

https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_this_could_be_why_you_re_depressed_or_anxious

https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addiction_is_wrong

April 8, 2020

Stepping into empathy

If, like me, your business-to-business offering feels a discretionary spend at the best of times, you’re probably thinking “Where will I fit in after this is all over?”

The answer? Wherever, whenever and however the people you serve are going to need what you can do for them.

The only way to find out where this will be is to step outside the bubble of your own concerns and put yourself in their shoes.

Not their shoes now, but their shoes down the line, when the urgent crisis is over, the extent of the damage better known, the time when the people you serve will be asking themselves the question “Where will I fit in after this is all over?”

For the right people, what you offer will never be a discretionary spend.

And we only find the right people with deep and deliberate empathy.

April 3, 2020

Managing blind

If you know about Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), you’ll know that people have preferred channels of communication and expression. Some people lean towards images, others towards words, others towards feelings.

Not surprisingly, these preferences apply to how people take in the information that convinces them of something, for example, whether or not someone is doing a good job.

Try it. Ask yourself “How do I know someone’s doing a good job?“

Is it by seeing them do it? Is it by reading a report they’ve produced? Is it by hearing someone tell you? Is it by doing it with them?

The preferred channel isn’t the whole story though, we also have a preference that relates to time and frequency – how many times we need to experience the signals of a job well done, in order to be convinced that the person doing it can be safely left to themselves.

Some people are immediately convinced, they only need to see/read/hear/do once, and they are happy to let the person carry on.

Others need a few instances before they are convinced.

Yet others need to keep receiving the evidence because they are never quite 100% convinced, no matter how many times they see/hear/read/do.

Clearly this has implications for what might be appropriate roles for the individuals in your team, depending on the kind of business you do. And there are dangers in it, as I’ve talked about before.

It is of particular relevance if you are a manager or business owner, when one or more of the usual channels are not available.

The first part of the answer for most businesses, is to switch to measuring outcomes, not work.

The second is to run spot-checks at a reasonable frequency, which can take different forms.

For example you could arrange to ‘accompany’ someone as they perform their job. You give notice, so they are prepared, because you are not so much checking what they are doing as monitoring the reactions of the people they interact with as they do it.

Or you can ‘mystery shop’ – the non-creepy equivalent of observing covertly, from a distance. Better yet, get a professional to do it for you on a regular basis.

And you can give everyone a stake in success, by truly sharing ownership.

The point of this post, and some of the others I’ve written this week, is to show that there may be reasons beyond the immediate crisis that are making you and your team feel uncomfortable and demotivated.

Of course the priority now is get set up just enough to survive.

But there is no need for things to be worse than they are, and soon you will have some time to invest beyond survival.

By taking the time to understand individual working styles, so you can work with the grain of every member of your team (including yourself), you’ll come out of the other side stronger. And you’ll have showed your team you care.

Here’s the book reference again: “Words that Change Minds”, by Shelle Rose Charvet. Check out the website too.

March 30, 2020

Going with the grain

I’m fascinated by the way people differ in their ‘working style’ – how they like to operate at work. One … Read More “Going with the grain”

March 20, 2020

Learning together – online

Following on again from yesterday’s post, if you know your business is going to be quiet for the next few weeks or months, here are some courses I recommend (I’ve done most of them, some of them more than once).

They could be for you or for your team.

A whole bunch from Akimbo Workshops (Seth Godin and friends)

The Bootstrappers Workshop, ideal if you are still getting your business idea off the ground (which in my case was 5 years after I’d started!)

The Marketing Seminar, will make you think really hard about who you are for, and what you really do for them. Highly recommended.

The Podcasting Workshop, a brilliant thing for graduates to do instead of an internship, and for experts too. (I haven’t done this one, you can probably tell!)

The Freelancers Workshop, Seth calls himself a freelancer, so you’re in good company.

The Story Skills Workshop, with Bernadette Jiwa, a master of daily storytelling.

And if you’re really looking to use this downtime to hit the ground running later, there’s the AltMBA, as it suggests a leadership and management workshop, that is more intense that the others.

You’ll never be the same after any of these workshops. And the brilliant thing about them is that you aren’t doing them alone. The format requires you to interact with your fellow students, to help each other, constructively critique each other and encourage each other. By doing so, you learn far more yourself. And they are not expensive.

If you prefer to work on your own, many of these are also available on Udemy.

Last but by no means least, here’s something a little more local, but equally good: Seeds to Success from Anwen Cooper, of Get Fruitful Marketing starting April. I’ve been working with Anwen for about a year now, and the difference she has helped me to make is enormous.

March 9, 2020

Out of touch

Before mobile phones, you had no choice about being out of touch outside working hours. You either got everything done during the working day or you didn’t. Even if you worked late, you could properly relax at home.

If you knew you were going to be away from your desk for a few days, you left it so that someone else in the office could pick up a call and handle things in your absence. You could concentrate on the job you were actually doing.

If you needed to get a report written or a complex spreadsheet set up, you deliberately took yourself out of reach of the banter, ‘quick questions’ and interruptions. You could give the job the attention it deserved.

All of this made us more productive, not less. And we were probably less anxious and stressed too.

Now, putting yourself out of touch has to be intentional.

And it’s a skill worth learning, for everyone’s sake.

February 26, 2020

Who are you aiming at?

One of the best things you can do to make your business work better is to decide who you are for. It’s also one of the hardest.

When we start a business, the need to bring money in means we put off even thinking about this, and because it’s hard, we perhaps never get to think about it.

That’s a mistake. Even when you offer a universal product or service, you are not for everyone. One because you can’t possibly reach everyone, two because you have your own unique way of doing things that won’t appeal to everyone.

So it’s a good idea to think about who you are for as early as possible. How do you do that?

Well, start by thinking about who you are. What makes you tick? What are your personal values? How do you like to behave? What’s your watchword? The people you will enjoy working with, and who will be attracted to work with you are the people who share your values, behaviours and the things that make you tick.

Next think about what kind of people you want to work with. By this I don’t mean what shape or colour or age, I mean character. If that’s too hard, think about who you never want to work with – flipping these negatives tells you something about the positives.

Capturing this information about yourself and the people you wish to serve, tells you what kind of people you want to work with, it tells you how you can talk to them in their language, and how they might want to be served.

Next, get clear about what you are really offering. What’s the transformation people are able to make once they’ve bought from you?

Finally, identify where you are most likely to come across the kind of people you want to work with, who are also looking for the transformation you can offer them. This is where you look at things like age, location, industry, income. Is there a particular group of people in need of what you offer? Can you easily identify this group? Is it big enough? Can you easily find them? How can they find you?

This becomes your target market. And once you know what it is, its much easier to take aim. And that makes it more likely you’ll make a hit.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

Category: Customer Experience OurScore