January 2008

Happy New Year and welcome to the first Random Ramblings in its new format as a monthly newsletter.

What will you see in Random Ramblings each month? Well, it will vary from month to month depending on what is topical and what I think may be of interest, and possibly useful for your business.

Hopefully this month’s menu will give you an idea of what you might expect:
Ø New Year Resolutions
Ø People not Processes
Ø Keep on Talking
Ø But Don’t Talk Too Much!
Ø The Blues
Ø Have You?
Ø Circulation List details
Ø And finally


New Year Resolutions

I believe that it was Thomas Watson, the legendary head of IBM, who was asked how long it took to achieve business excellence. His reply was, “One minute.”

Clearly he didn’t mean that the whole process would only take a minute. What he was referring to was the decision to make the commitment to be the best. Of course, as with any resolution, making it happen requires considerable and sustained effort, but if you have the will to drive something through, then you are well on your way to achieving success.


People not Processes

Unfortunately there is a misguided belief that policies, procedures, and processes will ensure success. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Just ask HMRC about that! What will ensure success also starts with a ‘P’ … yes, you’ve got it: People!

Of course policies, procedures and processes have their place. Often that place is the bin in my opinion! It must be recognised that all those paper Ps are only there as tools to help People to do their job safely and effectively. I accept that some of them are necessary and even desirable. An exam certificate only proves that you can pass an exam, not that you are any good at the subject. Likewise, having the paper Ps only proves that you have a lot of paper.

It is instructive to read the British Accreditation Bureau commentary on the latest version of the ISO 9001 quality standard; making it clear that it is 'a documented system' not a 'system of documents'. It goes on to say that there is reduced emphasis on having documented procedures if clear evidence can be presented to show that the process was working well. In other words, everyone has a clear vision of what they are trying to achieve and how they will go about it.

And how will they gain that clear vision? I would say that it won’t be by reading pieces of paper. It is suggested that we only recall 5% of what we are told and 10% of what we read. However, we will remember 50% from a discussion group that we have participated in, and 75% if we practise something by doing it. And the retention rate leaps to 90% if we teach others. This clearly demonstrates that telling someone what to do or giving them a piece of paper to read will have little impact. If we can actively involve them in developing a way of working , living it and teaching others, we are likely to be successful in our aims.


Keep on Talking

Continuing with the talking theme, on average, it seems that it takes seven ‘conversations’ with potential customers before they will do any business with us. Of course, if the average is seven, often it is going to be considerably more. Before Christmas I was talking about this to Andy Brewin, the head of Bridgegreen Environmental Finance (www.bridgegreen.com). Andy said that his email correspondence file suggested 20 or 30 exchanges were not unusual before business was done.

Consequently, it’s a shame that most businesses typically give up after the fourth contact. On the assumption that being pushy and contacting someone every other day is more likely to alienate them than win any business, what do you do? I suppose that you could send them a monthly newsletter! If you have already met them you could phone them for a chat. By chat I mean just that, not a sales pitch. It is well known that people tend to buy from people they like, so maintaining a friendly dialogue with them will do no harm. Or you could email them. This form of communication has the benefit of not interrupting whatever they are doing as they can choose when to read it. This isn’t a bad tactic as you are less likely to catch them at a bad moment.

If you talk to your customers, past, present and potentially future, you should be able to find out what they need; whether what you are offering is what they want, or maybe whether what they want is not what you are currently offering, but could do in the future.


But Don’t Talk Too Much!

“Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking.” Bernard Baruch, US economist and presidential advisor.

So when I say ‘talk’ to them, what I really mean is listen!


The Blues

No, the title doesn’t refer to Chelsea, Birmingham City or any other football team that happens to play in that colour. In fact, it doesn’t just refer to the colour blue. Do you have a business website? If the answer is yes, I assume that its purpose is to provide information to prospective customers about your business and the services you offer. Increasingly I come across websites that have arty-crafty shades of blue, green, yellow or whatever, with text that blends into the background so that it is difficult to read. This is what I call an own goal. Let me show you an example: http://www.majestic.co.uk/ They used to have a perfectly legible website but have now made it difficult to read some of the text, leaving aside any considerations of taste in the colour scheme! I have perfect colour vision, but many potential customers will not. Don’t make life hard for them. So have a look at your website now; forget whether it looks pretty or whether it is your website developer’s favourite colour; can you read it easily?

If you want to check your colour vision, go to: www.kcl.ac.uk/teares/gktvc/vc/lt/colourblindness/cblind.htm


Have You?

Tom Peters, one of the world’s leading management gurus, has developed a Top 50 ‘Have You …?’ questions. I have shown the first dozen here and will follow up with others in subsequent months.

Have you in the last 10 days ... visited a customer?
Have you called a customer ... TODAY?!
Have you in the last 60-90 days ... had a seminar in which several folks from the customer's operation (different levels, different functions, different divisions) interacted, via facilitator, with various of your folks?
Have you thanked a front-line employee for a small act of helpfulness ... in the last three days?
Have you thanked a front-line employee for a small act of helpfulness ... in the last three hours?
Have you thanked a front-line employee for carrying around a great attitude... today?
Have you in the last week recognized—publicly—one of your folks for a small act of cross-functional cooperation
Have you in the last week recognized—publicly—one of "their" folks (another function) for a small act of cross-functional cooperation?
Have you invited in the last month a leader of another function to your weekly team priorities meeting?
Have you personally in the last week/month called/visited an internal or external customer to sort out, enquire, or apologize for some little or big thing that went awry? (No reason for doing so? If true—in your mind—then you're more out of touch than I dared imagine.)
Have you in the last two days had a chat with someone (a couple of levels down?) about specific deadlines concerning a project's next steps?
Have you in the last two days had a chat with someone (a couple of levels down?) about specific deadlines concerning a project's next steps ... and what specifically you can do to remove a hurdle? ("Ninety percent of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get things done."—Peter Drucker)

Courtesy of www.tompeters.com


Circulation List

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And Finally

The inner grumpy old man has finally got the better of me! Have a look at www.davidwike.co.uk and you’ll see what I mean. I hope that you will join me for another Random Ramble in February!

David