photo credit: Joel Bedford

As I sit here and absorb the passing of Steve Jobs, a few things strike me.

Many are aware that he co-founded, left, and then returned to lead Apple’s turnaround – transforming it into one of the most valuable businesses in the U.S.

Many are aware of his attention to detail and quality.

For example, Robert Scoble a few weeks ago wrote about Jobs’ attention to things that seemingly didn’t matter, noting that Jobs showed off the metal on the back of iPad2 during the keynote, remarking that “other CEOs didn’t care about the back of their products. They cared, instead, about shaving cost from them instead.”

Many are aware that his and Apple’s focus on end to end design as a strategic edge that still escapes many products. Meanwhile others fail to bridge the distance from brochure to website to business card.

Many are aware of his and Apple’s rare ability (particularly for a tech company) to get marketing *so well*, so much so that you know it was discussed during product design.

But that isn’t what caught my attention.

Business is Personal

I am surprised at how overwhelmingly sad I am at the passing of Steve Jobs.

October 5, 2011 7:45 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@HildyGottlieb

Hildy Gottlieb

What struck me early on was that his passing touched so many on a personal level, myself included.

Yes, I know a lot of folks in the tech community but none of them knew Steve personally. Still, I feel compelled to call him ‘Steve’ even though we never met.

Many of the folks that I talked with in the first couple of hours were not in the tech industry. Yet they too were touched. Some were surprised at how much his death affected them. Hildy’s comment (above) was but one of many examples.

Remember for a moment that we’re not talking about a guy who came over to help these people move into a new apartment, but the just-barely-former Fortune 50 CEO of a company whose market cap is the size of Exxon/Mobil’s.

Think about it: If the CEO of another Fortune 50 company passed on, would Facebook, Twitter and blogs be flooded with personal tributes? Would “average Joe” be able to reel off that CEO’s three most successful products?

Unlikely.

That’s not a slam at them. It’s simply an illustration of one more thing that Steve did so well.

A Final Note

The 24 hours following Apple’s Tuesday keynote turned into “Bag on (Apple CEO) Tim Cook” day.

Despite announcing a phone that’s twice as fast as the previous model, a new voice command system and a new operating system, pundits all over the net were talking about how Cook’s first Apple keynote was such a disappointing performance and how he “just wasn’t Steve”.

None of them could have known that Cook and his VPs took the stage to launch iOS5 and iPhone 4S despite knowing Jobs’ condition.

I can’t imagine how that could have felt, much less how it feels now.

RIP, Steve. You showed us how personal business should be.

photo credit: Abhisek Sarda

Last week I was talking with a friend who was celebrating, or at the very least – remembering, the fact that a certain day this week marked the 10th year on the job at his employer’s business.

10 years. How many people do you know that have had the same job for 10 years? I’ll bet the number is smaller than it used to be.

A decade or two ago, it was commonplace to have the same job for 10 years. In the decades of my parents’ work life, 25 or more years wasn’t unusual at one job.

Recent research indicates that people entering the workforce will have as many as 30 jobs during their lifetime. Meanwhile, some of today’s employers are often heard lamenting the attitude of the supposedly uncaring young people they employ, not realizing that their actions often provoke the attitude they perceive.

The “all corporations are evil” tribe members out there will likely be quick to paint all employers with this uncaring brush, but that would be intellectually dishonest of them. While some certainly fit that mold, numerous large businesses treat their employees as if they’re critical to accomplishing their mission. You already know their names.

To be sure, some companies struggle with ethical, accountable behavior. When businesses hit rough times, some organizations will have employees who continue to show loyalty and deliver quality work. Guess which ones? The rest may look like a rodent-infested, Renaissance-era sailing ship slipping below the water – people won’t be able to leave fast enough. But they will, because their management will have made it so it just isn’t worth it anymore.

Is that really what this birthday thing is about? Of course not. It’s about common courtesy. Remember that?

Little Things

As I learned more about this employee’s work anniversary and how the day went, it became clear through the conversation that no one at this business remembered the date (who would after 10 years?). No wonder there was no mention of the anniversary.

No, it’s not a huge issue, unless you’re that employee.

Keep in mind that:

• Someone who feels valued, even by the smallest of occasional gestures, will think nothing of doing a little extra when asked. Sometimes even when not asked. Remember, they’re the front line between you and your customers more often than not.
• Someone who feels like they are just another brick in the wall tends to be made to feel that way over time. Little signals like the anniversary thing send the message that staffers are taken for granted are received, perhaps intermittently, but they continue to arrive.

For most adults, work is more than a paycheck. It’s part of who we are at some level. If it isn’t for someone on your staff, ask yourself how that adult came to feel that way about their work.

What you are vs. who you are

Sometimes the little things people do to recognize events like this 10 year anniversary are the ones that remind them that they’re more than a “(whatever you make/create/repair)”.

Imagine the conversation I would’ve had with that person if their general manager, regional manager  or (gasp) the home office sent the guy a hand written note. Two minutes to write it. What message does that send?

Imagine the value of a phone call or an off-location cup of coffee with an employee who has seen your business change and adapt over the last 10 years. Remember the year. This particular anniversary means the hire happened just after 9/11, when very few were hiring.

Any number of small things could have been done. A small “10″ on a new name tag. A name badge that’s a different color, with “10 years” on it. A custom fitted company ball cap with “10 years” across the back. Any number of inexpensive gestures.

Perhaps something as inexpensive and priceless as a handshake and a sincere “Thank you”.

How difficult?

How difficult and expensive would it be to put every new hire’s start date into a private-to-your-business Google calendar? Hark, I hear the cries of privacy advocates, so talk to your HR folks before making this egregious error (that was sarcasm, mostly). That Google calendar will automatically email or text you to remind you of each date.

Your work is almost done, but keep in mind that your Google calendar can’t put meaning into that handshake.

You have to do that.

UPDATE: Want some hints on how to improve how you thank your staff? Check this out:

photo credit: ruurmo

If your software business was “perfect”, what would it look like?

What do I mean? Here are a few ideas to get you started…

• What’s your product line look like?
• What services do you offer?
• How big (or little) is your staff?
• What benefits do you offer?
• How much vacation do you enjoy per year?
• What would your customers say about your company?
• How many customers would you have?
• What trade shows do you exhibit at?
• What’s your position in the market?
• What would happen when a support call came in?
• What would happen when a bug was found?

Not in the software business? So what. Replace “software business” with whatever you do. Alter the question list to fit your business.

You might be thinking none of this could ever happen.

Or you could start with your answers and work backwards to figure out what it will take to get there. Take one step, then another.

If you don’t ask yourself the hard questions…who will?

PS: Are you really in the <whatever> business? A drill bit manufacturer doesn’t sell drill bits. Ultimately, they sell holes. A coffee shop sells comfort, even to take out customers. What do you really sell?

photo credit: audreyjm529

Last time (in the context of being trusted, and what a business must do to re-establish trust), I talked briefly about vendors who announce software years before they plan to ship it, including firms that never ship what they’ve announced and taken payment for.

On occasion, early announcements are a legal requirement for some businesses. IBM and the terms of their consent decree, for example.

Delivery problems can be made worse by substantial changes in market conditions that can make the announced product irrelevant. In some cases, a failure to deliver is irrelevant because the product is so late that it no longer matters. The totally rewritten Netscape is one such example.

Sometimes the product doesn’t meet the expectations it originally set for potential customers even if market conditions haven’t changed. On very rare occasions, a failure to deliver is intentional/fraudulent but that’s for legal blogs to discuss.

How do delivery problems happen?

Delivery problems are frequently born months or even years before they reveal themselves. They happen because the firm involved has internal development (yes, management) problems.

While hidden, these problems can lull a business into taking advance payment for a product that they cannot dream of delivering in the short term – even though their intention is to do just that.

Symptoms of a software business with development problems can include:

• Inability to deliver a consistently high quality product.
• They can’t name a date and deliver on that date occasionally, much less time after time.
• They don’t know with any confidence if they will ship on a particular date until that date is too close to do anything about their ability to reach it.
• They fail to design to a detailed enough level of granularity and get surprised during the development process, finding that something allocated to two days or two weeks instead requires four months of work.
• They fail to focus on the task at hand and occasionally find themselves chasing a “bright shiny object” that has at best a tangential relationship to their announced product goals.
• They work in a vacuum (insulated from their industry and/or their client base) and because of a substantial design/strategic product miscalculation, it is months or years before they discover it.
• If they accept customization work requests for their core products, it tends to appear “duct taped” on, rather than designed-in.

Businesses that experience one or more of these issues simply haven’t decided to do enough enough to ensure compelling levels of consistency in the product they produce. They haven’t decided (or don’t realize they need) to focus only on the things that ensure an on-time delivery of a quality product. In some cases, they may not even be sure what “on-time” will be.

These things are not “just how it is”. They are decided.

Trust that upgrade?

Think about the one software package you use more than any other. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a development tool (like XCode or Visual Studio), an accounting package (QuickBooks?) or a firmware upgrade for your CNC machine.

• Will you install the next upgrade without first checking to see if someone else has done the bleeding for you?
• Are you confident that you can install the next upgrade right away, or do you wait a few days or weeks to see what the fallout is?
• Do you install new upgrades right away with strong confidence that it’ll be solid?
• Do you install and then spend a pile of time testing obvious things to make sure they still work?
• Do you routinely wait for someone else to “do the bleeding” for you before you decide to install or not?
• Is it common to have to “back off” an upgrade because it broke too many things?

Put that hat on your customers.

What do they do?

Do they install what you ship on the day you ship it? Or do they put off updates until they have no choice – such as when industry specification and/or governmental rule changes require use of the upgraded version.

That’s an indicator of their trust in your development and testing process. In YOU.

Problems like this aren’t just about software businesses and aren’t about upscale quality. It’s about management consistently doing the things that create trust. This kind of trust applies to plumbers, coffee roasters, political candidates and construction companies – and many others.

You trust that even the cheapest generic milk from the store won’t have hair or bug body parts floating in it. You trust that when you flip a wall switch, the power will come on.

To produce high levels of trust in your work requires a decision: “We will do what it takes to become (or remain) the trusted party.”

photo credit: Andrew Morrell Photography

Earning, retaining and regaining the trust of your customers has been central to this blog from the beginning.

We talk about a lot of different things that all come down to creating an atmosphere of trust with your clientele. That trust will build a relationship and that relationship, even if impersonal, is what makes business personal to your customers.

A few questions came out of recent conversations on these topics and the best ones were these:

• How can an impersonal business relationship truly be personal?
• How does a vendor recover from a massive loss of trust?

Come on, Steeeeve

How can an impersonal business relationship truly be personal?

Easy…it starts with trust.

For example, I have a relationship with Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Do we know each other personally, like I do some of my readers? No.

Despite that, I know enough about him from his behavior and the behavior of his company to trust him – at least enough to invest in his company’s products and recommend them to others who trust me.

His behavior and the behavior of his company over time tell me a few things:

I trust that when he walks on stage to speak about new products:

• He is going to announce things will often seem as if they were designed specifically for my use. Not because he has me on speed dial, but because his company has habitually built products which do just that.
• He is going to announce products that will be publicly available today or very soon.

How is that different from others?

Some companies build something not to fill a need their customers have expressed,  or a need that they’ve discovered through vision and research, but because (for example) they compete with Apple in some other way and perhaps feel obligated to compete there too.

Those conversations seem to start with “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” or “Well, if so-and-so did it, so can we…”

When you come to market with a product with that much R&D behind it and no one blinks… somewhere, somehow, your company simply isn’t listening well.

Example, HP just cancelled WebOS and their TouchPad tablet one day after Best Buy publicly complained they’d only managed to sell 25,000 of the 270,000 devices they ordered. While it seems to me that this is a strategic buying error on Best Buy’s part, it isn’t as if HP can’t be held accountable for making a product that can’t compete in the marketplace. No question that the iPad and other devices hurt them badly, but they’ve known about the iPad since at least January 2010.

Again…listen well.

Some vendors announce new products years before they plan to ship – and in some cases they never deliver them. In the most extreme cases, they pre-sell them and then fail to deliver. Some repeatedly toss out anticipated release dates and never meet any of them. Try recovering from a misstep like that, even if it wasn’t intentional.

Trust starts in the mirror

How does a vendor recover from a massive loss of trust?

At the risk of being Mr. Obvious, you start recovering by earning back the trust you lost (or earning what you never had).

Start with this: Say what you’ll do, then do what you said. If you stumble, own up to it. Seem too simple? Laugh it off if you like, but as Tom Peters says “There’s not much traffic on the extra mile.”

Some of you will point to Jerry over there and you’ll say “He’ll never come back no matter what we do.”

You might be right, but more Jerrys will leave if you keep acting the way you do now. If you don’t change, how can you expect them to? Even if you don’t get Jerry back, there are others who will recognize your efforts with each bit of trust you earn.

Each customer you lose because of something you did to lose the trust of that customer. You delivered late. You didn’t deliver at all. Your quality was poor. You treated them poorly.

These problems can be repaired. Just like trust.

photo credit: Peter Gorges

Feedback-wise…

• A great client is one who asks tough questions incessantly, almost always in a polite manner.
• A good client is one who asks tough questions regularly, sometimes politely.
• A bad customer is one who asks poor questions, regardless of how they ask them.

Tough questions are your friend. They’re like competitors because they make you better. Or at least, they should.

As for those that aren’t yet great? Your job is to help them achieve it.

Photo credit: Michael Hyatt

When book publisher Michael Hyatt posted this image saying “When you read this at Panera, you know your city has a water problem”, it struck me as a business problem.

Sure, the city might have a problem, but that shouldn’t be your customers’ problem.

Every day, we must adapt to the cards we’re dealt.

Rather than “We are not serving tap water, sodas or brewed tea today” and taking what might be perceived as a political shot at the city (the same one who does their next restaurant inspection?), a customer-centered management team could have called Culligan (et al) to get all the restaurant-approved water they’d need to provide glasses of water and brewed tea.

If you’re Culligan, there’s a win-win there.

Perhaps you can’t easily and quickly alter the water supply for a soda dispensing system, but that still doesn’t require a sign.

A quick look at last week’s sales totals from the register would have told them that they sell 430 sodas per day on average and run over to Costco or Sam’s (or called their normal supplier) for a canned/bottled supply that would span the gap for them.

The next work day, they could consult with their soda mix supplier and explain the situation further, ask for advice on water supply adaptation and then contact their plumber to arrange for a way to feed the third-party water into their soda system. Or they simply could have adapted using pre-mix, though that would probably be too much of an interference to the restaurant’s workflow.

Instead, they chose to sell no soda and no tea (both high profit margin items) and take a shot at the city.

Maybe the city needed a smack, but the place to do that is at the city offices, at a council meeting and worst case, in the local press.

Using your customers as pawns in that game makes for a losing battle, especially when they are standing at your front door with their wallets and purses open.

PS: Interesting that coffee wasn’t mentioned on that sign. Might be because many places use high-tech water filtration systems for their coffee water supply lines. I wonder if a non-franchise restaurant would have reacted the same way.

photo credit: ansik

Not often do I post two guest posts in the same day, but this one can’t wait.

The education-related portion of Steps Toward Becoming a Technology Leader: Advice to School Administrators is what originally caught my eye, but the root of the discussion has applications in every business, if not every life.

Good stuff from J. Robinson, the 21st Century Principal.

photo credit: Bas Lammers

Recently, the Flathead Beacon published a story about a global tech-oriented business that continues to grow right here in rural Montana.

This business started from scratch and achieved critical mass…

• Without tax breaks that often encourage unsustainable business models.
• Without specially crafted laws that treat their industry or part of their industry “more fairly” than others. Rhetorical sidebar: What exactly is “more fairly”?
• Without the work of half a dozen lobbyists in Helena or Washington.

In other words, they started just like your business likely did, probably using the same methods most small business owners use – the same thing that I suggested when we talked about the fitness center just a few days ago.

They found a need and they filled it.

Several years back, I remember sitting in a coffee shop next to someone interviewing a candidate for a job with what was then the startup roots of the company discussed in the article.

The discussion and the numbers I overheard told me they were serious, sustainable and positioned well. I’m really glad to see this business continue to grow.

In good economies and bad, your business model has to make sense on its own, no matter what’s going on in the state capitol and DC, and no matter who is in the White House.

Hildy and Dimitri’s efforts have always been pretty transparent.

But a few months ago, they made a big decision to basically reboot their entire business.

Many business owners have done that. But not like this.

Instead of doing it all in the cones of silence, they decided that every step of the way, they would make this transition in full view of their friends, family, competition, clients, prospects and anyone else willing to look.

It’s much more interesting than anything Charlie Sheen’s doing.

But the discussion there really isn’t why I mention this. Sure, it’s instructive because they listen as well as anyone I’ve ever worked with.

That’s not the takeaway. What you should take away from the process they’re going through is the idea of being willing to completely redesign your business – even if it doesn’t need it right this minute.

I suspect there are some in the nuclear energy business who are mulling that over right now.

You don’t have to do it in full view of the public like Hildy and Dimitri have, but everyone ought to do it once in a while.

Like Harvey Mackay says, “Dig the well before you’re thirsty.”

1926 Ford Model T photo: digitizedchaos

Henry Ford, despite his success with the assembly line at Ford Motor Company, made a mistake that many business owners still make today.

He didn’t delegate.

Most business owners delegate at least a little. Not Ford.

According to Peter Drucker, the senior Ford didn’t believe in delegation or floor management and it cost him plenty. Fortunately, he had the millions, if not billions, to backup what is now commonly considered a sizable error in judgment. We do, of course, have the benefit of a century of hindsight.

Ford’s son, Henry II, felt differently about the delegation of management. He believed that having management on the factory floor was critical. That decision was one of the keys to turning their family business around from a financially perspective.

Delegation is Efficient, Strategic

Ford II understood that leadership had a place in the assembly line factory floor back then as much as it does now in any business that has employees.

He discovered that empowering factory floor managers with the power to make decisions within the authority granted to them resulted in a savings of time and money. I suspect it also resulted in a safer factory floor in an era that isn’t known for having safe manufacturing workplaces. It’s also likely that the decisions made were better than (or the same) as those Mr. Ford might have made, since they were made based on those managers’ day to day experience on the factory floor.

That has several benefits we’ll talk about shortly, but it isn’t the number one reason to delegate. Your time is the biggest reason.

If you are focused on making the small decisions, every minute you spend on them is taken from the time available to research and make big decisions.

If the big decisions that affect your business long-term aren’t getting the proper amount of analysis, what problems could you miss? More importantly, what opportunities could you miss the importance of, if not miss completely?

Return on You

I can’t sit here and tell you exactly what to delegate and what to do yourself. What I can suggest is that you consider if something can be delegated to another person when you put that task on your todo list or schedule. You could do this daily, as you add things to the list, as you finish the task or whatever works for you. The key is that you actually do it.

Maybe you have to do it yourself this time, but make another todo to prepare as necessary to delegate that task next time. That way, when it comes up, you’re prepared to delegate without delay.

I’ve already made note of the value of being able to focus on the important stuff. Yes, this is the Department of Obvious Obviousness stuff, but I see enough of it that it’s worth repeating.

An additional benefit is that you might be the highest paid person at your business. If so, do you want to be doing things, management or otherwise, that someone who makes less than you *could* do? Being willing to mop the floor is essential. Doing it yourself, when you could outsource it or delegate it, allows you to focus on and work on valuable work that grows your business.

You wouldn’t hire someone to mop the floor and pay them $75 an hour. Yet that’s exactly what doing it yourself might be, effectively.

Fertilize Your Garden

One of the other benefits of empowering people on the floor (in the cubicle, on the road, whatever) is that you make that person more valuable.

Just like compost or fertilizer strengthens the plants in a garden, empowering your staff has a similar impact.

It engages them more closely in your business, makes them worth more in the marketplace (and thus to your business) and allows them to gain more skill in making decisions. The better they get, the less time you spend on those decisions, giving you more time to focus on the big picture.

Failure to “fertilize your garden” leads to the next topic…

Vacationus Interruptus

Once in a great while, you probably like to take a day off.

You’d love to leave for a week and come back to a business without 100 emails about decisions that “couldn’t be made while you were gone”.

You’d probably love to take a vacation and not have your cell ring every hour with a question about a decision that, now that you’re on vacation, seems like an annoying interruption.

Empower. Delegate. And enjoy that vacation.

Just had to share this video from Honda on failure.

Good, good stuff to share with your team.

photo credit: joiseyshowaa

One of the things Scoutmasters teach their Scouts is the Scout motto – “Be Prepared.”

We don’t stand around saying those words all that much (or ever, really).

When I ask a Scout what it means to them, I get a lot of different answers. I talk about it with the boys because I’m curious what it means to them – which tells me where they are preparedness-wise.

Depending on their age and their seriousness when I ask the question, I hear answers that include things like:

• knowing how to select the right gear for a campout,
• having the right fishing lures,
• making sure that bacon is on the menu (not kidding),
• being in good enough shape for the upcoming hike,
• making sure the car is full of gas and has proper levels of other fluids/air and so on,
• having charged batteries in the camera,
• having a sharpened pocket knife,
• knowing how to tie a rescue knot, or
• having the proper gear to safely canoe or kayak a river/stream.

What it ultimately means to me is being prepared for what life/business serves up, whether it’s a class V rapid, an unexpected flat tire during a snowstorm in a remote area, that five figure invoice that your “customer” still hasn’t paid, the new box store down the street, mention of your business in the Wall Street Journal, by Scoble and on TechCrunch, or stumbling upon an idea that changes your life and/or business.

Embarrassment? No.

To someone who has a job, I ask them what they would do if they lost their job today? Are they honing a new or enhanced skill so that they can react quickly to a downturn in what they’ve done for the past 20 years? Do they have a network of people in their current (or desired) line of work that could help them identify opportunities?

To someone who has a business, I might ask them what would happen if the building housing their business burned down, or if their biggest customer stopped buying from them, or if they suddenly got 100 new customers tomorrow.

I don’t ask these questions to embarrass employees or business owners any more than I ask them to embarrass a Scout when asking them what would happen if their friend cut his hand or lost his water bottle on a week-long hike. I ask them so they’ll think about their level of preparedness.

Being prepared isn’t just about having a poncho in case it rains, having backups offsite, and having a marketing plan that never stops finding new customers for you. It’s also about being mentally prepared to deal with what happens next.

Be prepared, not only to take a punch, but to make big leaps when opportunities present themselves.

photo credit: kevindooley

Not long ago, a little boy was murdered.

Soon after, his grandpa was traveling to see his little 3 year old grandson one last time.

He was running for the plane, desperately late despite getting to the airport several hours before departure.

After two hours of standing in line, pleading with TSA officials and airline employees to help him get to his gate on time, his perception was that no one seemed to care how important it was to make that plane.

Waiting

While the drama takes place in the ticket and security line, the airplane was sitting at the gate.

Waiting, waiting and more waiting.

It’s a Southwest airplane.

Anyone who has traveled with and/or read about Southwest knows that one of their top operational priorities is fast turnaround at the airport’s gate.

It’s simple. Planes make money in the air. They don’t make money sitting at the gate.

Southwest takes that to heart. Their focus on at-the-gate efficiency is so well polished that they can turn a plane from arrival to departure in 20 minutes, 2-3 times faster than many competitors.

Every employee is well aware of that focus.

The grapevine

Somehow, someone at the gate found out.

Despite the focus on turnaround and the potential risk to their jobs, the ticketing agent and pilot refused to move the plane away from the gate until the grandpa arrived.

People know to make these kinds of decisions every day, but they often don’t out of fear for their jobs or the specter of “policy”.

The wrong kind of business culture breeds that behavior.

The right kind of business culture empowers their employees to make decisions that are the right ones for the customer at that moment, even if they temporarily fly in the face of business policy or strategic goals. They hire and train with those things in mind.

The agent and pilot knew what should be done and took action.

Loyalty

Who do you think that grandpa and family fly with in the future?

Opportunities to create life-long loyalty are fleeting. Make the most of the ones you get and make sure your people do too.

Especially when it’s the right thing to do.

photo credit: James Jordan

My wife’s birthday was this weekend, so as a last bit of her gift, our youngest son and I took her to one of her favorite restaurants in the Valley.

As we sat down and caught up on junior’s just-finished semester at Pacific, the “so, what are you gonna order” discussion starts.

My wife he has a favorite entree there – and to my knowledge has never ordered anything else in our many visits to this place over a period of roughly 5 years.

But this time, she asks for something else.

Turns out that the last time we visited, she ordered this item and the creamy sauce was more watery than creamy and just “didn’t seem like it used to”.

My son likes that dish as well, so he ordered it anyway.

Taking Pride

Most of my son’s jobs have been in the fine dining and/or catering business and the chefs he’s worked for are a couple of the finest we have to offer in our area.

His dish arrives and sure enough, he notices things that would have never flown at his employers’ restaurants.

Chipped plates, for example. His arrives with a small handful of chips around the edges of the plate. Both mine and my wife’s have them as well.

He tells us that someone with pride in their work would never serve these entrees on chipped plates (this is a restaurant with entrees from $14-29).

He also notices that the sauce is thinner than usual and not seasoned as it was in the past.

Reflecting ownership

“Something’s changed here”, he notes. “Do they have a new owner?”

I’m not sure of the timeframe but I do recall a change of ownership sometime in the past.

While that may or may not be the instigation of the change in entree quality of this place’s signature dish, it doesn’t really matter because it reflects on the owner, the manager and the head chef.

The chipped plates are a symptom of “Oh, that’s good enough”.

Would you sell your business’ reputation gets sold for the price of a $6 dinner plate? Or .08 worth of garlic, a little black pepper and 4 more minutes on the burner?

How about one less restroom check per day? Or a 25 cents worth of Pine Sol in the mop water?

It happens every day. Don’t let it happen to your business. Don’t teach “good enough” to your employees.

Every little thing sends a message. If nothing else, this is high-value marketing with a low price.

Doing it wrong gives it a high cost and delivers the wrong thing – reputation damage that’s hard to get back.

photo credit: psiaki

Profit is an evil word in many circles these days, but I used it anyway.

Are you the innovation leader in your market?

It seems to work for Apple.

Think back to your last real innovation. Yes, that one.

Remember that product or service that made customers and prospects flock to your office, store, website, trade show booth or reseller displays?

Once you got to that point, business sure did seem easy, didn’t it?

Think a little farther back. How’d you get there?

Follow the thought process that made you decide to reach out a bit more than normal.

Isn’t it worth being your market’s or even your industry’s thought leader again?

Sure makes those trips to the bank a lot more fun.

photo credit: Northampton Museum

When I first came across this meat vending machine, the comment I read introducing it was something along the lines of “Do we *really* need this?”

If this butcher has customers who do shift work – or anything that keeps them from visiting the shop during business hours- it’s worth a try.

Perhaps he had a lot of customer comments about his hours from shift workers and this was how he decided to serve them.

Perhaps it only serves custom pre-paid orders. You don’t really know, but if it works for the shopkeeper and their customers, who cares?

The real question is what can you borrow (and change to suit your needs) from another line of work in order to better serve your customers?

photo credit: joiseyshowaa

Last weekend, we took a trip to Oregon to get our youngest son registered for fall classes at Pacific U.

During the lonnnng drive (it’s about 10 hours each way) from Montana past Portland, a few things about processes brought me back to our talk about QuickBooks and my own process improvement from last week.

What kept tweaking my “slight edge” nerve during the trip was that I was reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” for the first time. If you haven’t read it, one of the constants of the book is the impact of quality in one’s life, work, thought, psyche and in fact, quality’s impact on almost everything. I found it a fascinating read and something I really hadn’t expected.

The teachings of the book aside, one thing that stood out during the trip was the difference between my admission at a large state college years ago (too many) and today’s at a small, private university.

Shake and Sign

Each student begins their stay at the U via a personal face-to-face with the University president during new student orientation just before their first semester begins. During this time, the new student shakes hands with the president and signs into a book where all prior students have signed in.

This “shake and sign” event fires psychological triggers relating to commitment, group membership, and the beginning of a process that comes with what likely feels like a personal obligation to a new mentor to complete it. When the student graduates, only then do they sign out – by that time, they’re only leaving campus. The relationship to the school is fully vested by that time.

The process of starting school is transformed. For most, it’s a group event with potentially impersonal “herding” of hundreds (or in my case, thousands) of new freshman through all the processes typical of orientation and starting college.

Turning that into something very personal to each student is simply brilliant.

Personal. Individual. Welcoming. Obligation.

It created an experience like those that Walt Disney focused on: one that you had to tell someone else about.

How do you welcome new customers?

photo credit: Kevin

Today’s guest post comes from the high-falutin’ Harvard Business Review.

But don’t get all snooty on me, because this post is a home run.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a boss or an employee or a solo entrepreneur, there is definitely something here that will resonate with you.

This is important stuff anytime, but it’s especially critical during a time when many employees and their families are stressed with economic worries, the oil spill or heck, even the Celtics loss.

photo credit: TheTruthAbout…

Not long ago, I was helping some friends make a major decision in their business.

Deep down inside, I suspect they might have already made the decision (or were confident of the eventual outcome).

The process of opening up and making the decision publicly with the help of their friends, colleagues and clients would end up cementing the decision as not only the right one – but the only one they really ever had.

Once the decision was made, it seemed to spawn an even bigger one (and perhaps, a collection of others).

But really – it didn’t spawn any decisions, and that’s what I shared in my comment on the page linked above.

When the direction-changing decision is made, you should know that you’ve made a bunch of others as well.

For example, when you start a new business, you don’t have to decide to get internet and electricity. Those “non-decisions” are part of the process. You’ve made those decisions by virtue of deciding to start a business. When you decide to get married, that makes a lot of other decisions as well.

Now you just have to act.

The Obstacle

The real decision is the one you might not have even made: the one to push past that big obstacle that the original decision confronts you with.

What you have to figure out is what the obstacle really is. What’s making you cringe a little? What’s the thing you’ll blame that last decision on?

The money? The difficulty? The people?

Probably isn’t any of those. It’s probably just a little bit of hesitance in facing the elephant (obstacle) standing behind you / looming over you.

You can only ignore it for so long.

Go ahead. Introduce yourself to the elephant.