Year: 2010

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The I-Reporter

A pair of glasses on some news/ report papers

Welcome to Crisis Management in the 21st Century and to Internet: The Ultimate Medium. A cross between tabloid journalism and a gladiator competition, between Pollyanna and Pandora, where minds meet and merge, clash and clamor, and where you can get more of anything you want than was EVER available at Alice’s Restaurant.

The Internet has become the largest media outlet in our known universe. Interactive print, audio and video communications are all available, with the line between “amateur” and “professional”, “traditional” and “untraditional” media blurred almost beyond ken. This massive medium has spawned what I have been calling “The I-Reporter” since long before CNN started using that term.

Consider these realities:

  • Anyone can be an I-Reporter.
  • While some I-Reporters compete for commercial gain, others compete simply for the joy of recognition. Just as traditional media reporters want to show up on page one of a newspaper, or at the top of the broadcast news, I-Reporters want their material showing up on page one of a Google search and – better yet – staying there for a while.
  • Often, I-Reporters are also their own publishers and site promoters, or work in small teams to provide these functions, and through their skill can get better search engine placement and more attention on the Internet than “competing” entities.
  • Search engine ranking has very little – and sometimes nothing – to do with quality or accuracy of content.
  • Information posted on the Internet propagates virally – it finds a “home” via links or reprinted pages on websites run by people of like mind, and even misinformation is blatantly re-reported at websites operated by supposedly legitimate organizations.
  • Some I-Reporters are constrained by the conditions of their employer, some are constrained by a sense of ethics, and some are completely unconstrained except by law – where it can be enforced.

Throw into that cauldron the fact that the general public still hasn’t fully realized how easy it is to misrepresent information on the Internet, and the witches’ brew has now become the most difficult environment challenging many ethical and honest organizations.

Organizations have always had individuals who disagree with their policies, dislike their products or services, are disgruntled former employees, or just had a bad experience with a receptionist. In the past, unhappy individuals could call or write letters to the company, contact the Better Business Bureau, or even seek the help of their local Consumer Reporter. Today, as or more quickly, they can just launch their own website.

Try this fascinating demonstration, given to me by a client recently. In a Google search bar, enter the word “socks” only substitute a “u” for the “o.” I am being obtuse so that readers’ spam-filters don’t delete this article! There were something like 23 million results as I write this article, and almost all of the first 20 Google pages – 200 entries (which is as far as I looked) – were complaints about companies or products.

How does today’s crisis manager deal with this when his or her organization is under fire? Here are some strategic considerations, offered as do’s and don’ts:

  • Do not depend solely on the Web-based tactics to correct information that has been misreported on websites of any kind (Web pages, blogs, wikis, etc.) Use direct-to-stakeholder communications.
  • Do your best to balance the results of a search for the keywords important to your organization, but remember that a totally balanced search – just like a totally balanced traditional news story – may be, at best, only 50 percent “your side” of a story when there is any controversy already brewing.
  • Do not automatically think that you have to respond to every Internet critic.
  • Do monitor critics to see if they either (a) draw the attention of your stakeholders and/or (b) start to achieve high search engine ranking. Then have your crisis team meet to discuss the pros and cons of PR and legal responses which could force inaccuracies off the Web or demonstrate to concerned stakeholders, on your own Web pages and/or through off-line tactics, why they have no reason for concern.
  • Do not engage in debates with critics on “neutral” sites which allow such interchanges. There are ways to defuse those bombs that don’t make you a target for yet more negativity.
  • Do consider getting more aggressive from a PR and legal perspective if allegations have already propagated widely, with considerable damage and the promise of worse damage.
  • Do insist, as the top executive officer of any organization, that legal actions against hostile websites not be implemented without professional consideration of the PR implications, and that PR actions against hostile websites not be implemented without legal consideration.
  • Do be sufficiently aware of the thoughts and feelings of your stakeholders – internal and external – that you know when and how severely Internet-centered negativity is impacting them. If you do, you will also know when they think you’re doing a good job responding to such negativity.

Virtually all of the crises to which I’ve helped clients respond in the past five years have had a Web-centered/Internet component, with the impact of the Internet on crisis management strategies and tactics growing exponentially every year. While many organizations have “IT people” on staff or on-call, IT expertise often does not translate to “Internet Communication” expertise. With the growth of the Internet, companies were very quick to experiment with it and sometimes learn how to use its capabilities to PROMOTE their products and services, to build brand awareness and enhance their reputation.

But now, just as it was “pre-Web,” the purpose of crisis management is to PRESERVE what has been gained through promotion. To, ideally, prevent crises from happening but, when that isn’t possible, to minimize damage. In the 21st Century, crisis managers need a new paradigm and an expanded skill-set to help their organizations or clients achieve that critical goal.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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What is Spirituality at Work?

Spirituality and work: a woman meditating

In my travels around the country providing workshops on the topic of working spiritually, I’ve found consistently that people are looking for ways to have their work make a difference and to feel energized in a richer way in their work. I want to explore here a few ways that you might examine spirituality in your work.

I provide a framework in my first book, “Path for Greatness”, for aligning your gifts, passion and purpose so you can be of service for the world. (to see more about my book on Spirituality at Work go to: http://www.amazon.com/Path-Greatness-Work-Spiritual-Service/dp/1552124983/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

First idea to explore is – what feeds you spiritually? You need to continually till your spiritual soil so that you can keep energized and inspired. Take some time now and write down 3 things you do each week or every day to renew yourself.

Second, what does spirituality mean to you? What three words do you use to describe times when you feel spiritual? See how you can integrate those words and ideas into your work day. In my workshop I have people write out all the words they can to describe a spiritual experience. Those words may include joy, peace, bliss, serenity etc. I then ask, ‘Would you like to work in a place that has this?’ To a person, they all say yes.

OK then, how do you help create this in your work? What small step can you take to bring such feelings into your workplace? Please share your ideas here on this post of how you work spiritually or how you’ve seen others do this.

Three words that I like to use for working spiritually are: wholeness, meaning and connection. When we feel a sense of our own wholeness, we come from a place of greater authenticity and energy. We generally find greater meaning in what we do when we are doing it for a larger purpose than feeding ourselves or our organization. Think of how you can be your best FOR the world.

Finally, when we connect to others in a deeper way, we often feel greater compassion or joy in our relationship with them. We can strengthen all that we do when we connect with our own Source of inspiration, in whatever ways we connect with this Source.

I wish you many blessings on your journey to find and cultivate spirituality in your work.

Namaste.

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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What is Customer Service?

Customer service webpage interface

Welcome to the new Customer Service discussion:

Servicing a customer is a part of every purchase and interaction with internal and external contacts. It can last a few seconds up to hours. So if we all do it and experience it everyday in almost everything we do, why isn’t good customer service the norm?

We all have stories about when we were treated exceptionally well or extremely poorly. We tend to share these extraordinary stories with others. We all know that word of mouth marketing can be the absolute best advantage, or the worst drawback for a company.

Warren Buffett said it best:

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently. “

We are going to explore how to create a customer service experience that is extraordinary for your customers and the norm for your business. My goal is to guide you to look at these issues in a new way and to encourage you to get creative about how to make every interaction a memorable service to the customer.

Some Upcoming Topics for Discussion:

  • Customer Service vs Customer Experience
  • Customer Service Strategies as a Differentiator
  • Creating a Customer Centric Culture
  • Attributes of a Leader in Customer Service

I fully expect this list to evolve based on our exchange of ideas and comments as we explore this overall topic together. I look forward to sharing my experiences with you and learning from you and your experiences. Together we can challenge the norm for service delivery and raise the bar in all our customer interactions.

Share your own experiences as a customer. What experience have you had that you consider to be exceptional and why? Which companies are the leaders in outstanding customer service and why?

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How Much Pain Does It Take?

A business woman going through stress at work.

What do September 11, Enron and the news about sexual molestation by Catholic priests have in common?

They were all what I’ve previously termed “creeping crises,” vulnerabilities, bombs (literally and figuratively) waiting to explode. There were people — the American intelligence community, some employees of Enron and Church leaders, respectively — who had information that could have prevented or reduced the damage from these situations. And who perpetuated and exacerbated the crises by acts of commission or omission.

They were all terrorism if you define it as “parties inflicting suffering on innocent victims as a means to an end.”

They are all the tip of massive icebergs of creeping crises. Who dares to say that there aren’t other terrorism groups poised to wreak unprecedented damage, corporations whose fiscal and legal practices will lead to Enron-like ruin, and criminal sexual behavior by clergy of possibly every major world religion?

They are all crises which strike at our emotional infrastructure: our desires for physical, psychological and financial security.

Human beings have an immense capacity for enduring pain individually and as organizations. And an immense resistance to change. That’s a bad combination, because for most individuals, and most organizations, it seems to take a great deal of pain to motivate change.

There is a psychological concept called “hitting bottom” that refers to the point at which an individual feels so much pain from what he or she has been doing that the fear of continuing “as is” is greater than the fear of change. At that point, the individual is willing to take some direction from someone other than him- or herself.

It has been my experience that organizations, too, usually have to “hit bottom,” to feel enough crisis-related pain from their actions, or lack thereof, that they’re willing to realize that their own best thinking isn’t making them crisis-resistant, versus crisis-prone. And that’s when they start getting proactive about crisis management.

Here’s the catch, however. Sometimes, that willingness to change comes too late. Sometimes, for an individual or an organization, that delay is fatal.

So ask yourselves at your next board meeting: how much pain does it take?

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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10 Practices for Successful Board/CEO “Strategic Partnership” – Part 1 of 2

A group of business professionals in a meeting

This Part explains the first 5 practices. Part 2 describes the last 5 practices.

Recent and very public “white collar,” stock-fraud crimes have brought much public attention to how governance is supposed to work, but too often doesn’t. The Sarbanes Oxley Act is one example of new regulations intended to strengthen the transparency and accountability of Boards of public corporations. Consensus seems to be that more independent Board members and less involvement of CEOs on Boards is one solution for for-profit and nonprofit Boards.

Some Board members have over-reacted and dramatically distanced themselves from working with their CEOs. Still, the quality of the working relationship and mutual support between Board members and their CEO is critical to the success of a corporation, whether for-profit or nonprofit. We should not expect CEOs to have to work apart from their Boards members — frequently, it’s the CEOs who support members to do their jobs! Here are some practices that CEOs can do for their Boards without losing the diligence and accountability of Board members.

1. Ensure clear descriptions of roles of Board and CEO

Years ago, a person had to hire a consultant to find suggestions or tools to clarify the roles of a Board and its CEO. Now, there is a wealth of resources available on the Internet and bookshelves. An organization should end up with a document that clearly specifies the types of functions and decisions that are driven by, and even those done by, the Board versus executives and other managers. The document should be reviewed once a year during a brief Board training.

2. Recruit Board members based on their strategic expertise

As much as possible, these people should be independent Board members – members who are not or have recently been employees of the organization, are not relatives of the CEO, are not in organizations which have the CEO on their Boards, and are not major customers or vendors. Instead, bring in members who have expertise to address current strategic priorities and, ideally, have been on a Board of a well-respected organization. (Some Boards might be required by investors or other stakeholders to have representatives on the Board. Strive to have some based on their expertise.)

3. Orient Board members to the organization

Frequently, members can serve on a Board for years and still not really know what products and services are offered by the organization. CEOs can significantly increase the effectiveness of Board members by orienting members to the organization, including its history, products and services, customers, collaborators and successes. Note that this is a Board orientation, not a Board training. An orientation is about the unique aspects of the organization. A training is about the role of any governing Board.

4. Annually train members on the role of a governing Board

Because the CEO remains in the organization working with the Board, while Board members come and go according to their term limits, the CEO often understands the role of a Board more than its members do. The CEO can be very useful, for example, in working with the members of a Board Governance Committee as its members conduct a Board training each year, but should not be taking the lead responsibility in this training.

5. CEO should have strong role in strategic planning

Boards that view its members as attending primarily to top-level policy — especially Boards that have over-reacted to recent regulations about governance — will sometimes make the mistake of determining mission, vision, values and top-level goals without the input from the CEO and other employees. That’s a mistake. The most useful strategic planning sessions often involve information, discussions and suggestions from the CEO and employees.

Part 2 will describe the next 5 practices to cultivate a successful strategic partnership between Board members and the CEO.

What do you think?

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Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD – Authenticity Consulting, LLC – 800-971-2250
Read my weekly blogs: Boards, Consulting and OD, Nonprofits and Strategic Planning.

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How to Start Strategic Planning: Plan for a Plan – Part 2 of 5

Man mapping out a strategic plan on a board

In Part 1, we reviewed the first 3 of the 15 questions that should be addressed during the “plan for a plan” phase of strategic planning. In this Part 2, we review questions 4-6.

4. What is the Scope of Our Plan?

It’s not uncommon that leaders believe that a long-term plan will somehow guarantee that they won’t be surprised over that long term – that the plan will somehow lock-in a version of the future. Wrong.

  • If the organization is fairly new, has many current issues or the external environment is changing a lot, then consider a shorter term plan, for example, a 2- to 3-year plan.
  • If the organization is in this situation and still wants a longer term plan, then consider clarifying the misson, vision and values and some goals for the longer term, but do action plans for the next year. (The action plan is about who is going to do what and by what date.)

5. What Planning Model Should We Use?

Here’s where planners often make a big mistake – they do vision-based planning when they should have been doing issues-based planning.

  • If your organization has a lot of resources, few current issues and a history of being able to implement plans, then do vision-based planning. Vision-based planning is working from the future to the present.
  • If your organization has very limited resources, several major and current issues, and struggles even to implement a plan, then do issues-based planning. Issues-based planning is identifying current issues and what to do about them. A year or so after implementing this plan, then the organization might be healthy enough to do vision-based planning.

See the article Basic Overview of Various Strategic Planning Models.

6. How Might That Model Be Implemented?

  • If the organization has frequent turnover of staff, a well-informed Board and upper level of management, and the culture does not value participative decision-making, then a top-down planning approach might be most suitable — although highly participative decision-making almost always results in more buy-in to the Plan.
  • Otherwise, if Board members and executives are not well-informed about the organization and its environment or are weak leaders (an extremely unfortunate situation), then a bottom-up planning process might be most suitable.
  • A concurrent approach to planning — participation from all levels of the organization — is probably best if the culture of the organization highly values participative decision-making.

The next post (Part 3) will address questions 7-9 in the plan for a plan.

Your thoughts about the plan for a plan?

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10 Myths of Management and Organizational Consulting – Part 2

A manager talking to an employee

In Part 1, we reviewed myths 1-5. In this Part 2, we review myths 6-10.

6. Myth That All Consultants See the Same Problem the Same Way

Each consultant brings his or her own particular view, or “lens,” through which they view organizations. Also each has his or her particular biases and assumptions about how organizations should operate. The unique nature of each consultant often results in a unique perspective on problems and the approaches to solving those problems, as well.

7. Myth That There Is One Way to Solve Each Problem

Organizational change is a complex and dynamic process. Each organization is highly unique, depending on the nature of its environment, products and services, leadership, age and size. That is why there are no “cookie cutter” or one-size-fits-all solutions that work for every problem in all organizations. Similarly, experts in organizational and management development have realized that there is no one perfect way to lead, manage or change organizations.

8. Myth of Best Practices

Best practices are activities associated with organizations that are recognized as high-performing. Performance is the achievement of results and best practices are activities that indicate a high likelihood of achieving those results. The practices often become standards by which we measure if an organization is effective or not. Many of the standard management practices that we mention as capacity building activities are forms of best practices. For example, to discern if an organization is high-performing, we investigate whether and how the organization is conducting Board development, strategic planning, financial management or marketing. However, research suggests that the presence of best practices alone is insufficient to guarantee organizational effectiveness. Of more importance is how those practices are applied. The application should be in accordance with the unique nature and needs of the organization and should maintain continued focus on successfully serving specific needs in the community.

9. Myth of the “Isolated Solution”

Many consulting projects focus on one aspect of an organization, for example, financial management, team building or marketing. It is not uncommon that shortly after a project is completed, the client realizes that another major and related problem has arisen in the organization. Your client might contact you to report that your first “solution” did not take care of all related problems in the organization. In this case, your client is displeased.

A familiar example of this problem occurs when an organization hires a financial analyst to somehow generate more revenue for the organization. However, if the organization does not have a strong Strategic Plan, the analysis might not be successful. The organization might end up hiring a strategic planning facilitator. However, if the Board of Directors and top leadership is not ready for strategic planning, the Strategic Plan might not be strategic or get implemented at all.

10. Myth of the “Final” Project Plan

Usually, after your first meeting with your client, you develop a written proposal that includes a project plan that specifies the goals of the project and the activities that must be conducted to achieve those goals. Often, you are hired based on your client’s perception of the quality of your project plan. However, in the vast majority of successful projects, the initial project plan is changed as you and your client work together to address the issues in your client’s organization. An experienced consultant learns to present the project plan as preliminary in nature and open to change. The consultant helps the client to realize that plans often change and that change is natural.

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For more resources, see the Library topics Consulting and Organizational Development.

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Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD – Authenticity Consulting, LLC – 800-971-2250
Read my weekly blogs: Boards, Consulting and OD, Nonprofits and Strategic Planning.

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Welcome to the Customer Service blog!

A young customer service worker

I’m Barb Lyon and I’m the host of this blog. You can read more about me next to my picture in the sidebar. This blog will be about various aspects of customer service, will focus especially on practical tips and tools, and will include posts from guest writers. You can learn more about this blog by clicking on the About link just under the header.

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Welcome!

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Evaluation: Running Training Like a Business

Persons-going-through-charts-in-calculating-ROI

Evaluation – not everyone’s favorite topic but it is a necessary “evil” especially if we as trainers are running our programs like a business. What do I mean by this? Well with this lovely economic environment we are currently in, we all know that soft-skills training departments are the first to make cuts or lay offs (IT trainers not so much, they have the “techies” and updates to help)…I regress… Managers and CEO’s as we all know look at the bottom-line and if training departments do not produce results then bye bye training department.

We all know about Kirkpatrick’s 4 levels of evaluation right! Well let’s add one more level RETURN ON INVESTMENT or ROI this part of an evaluation program is often left out, not thought of as important or just not done because training departments don’t know how or it’s time consuming – but for what ever reason training departments often leave this critical piece of evaluation out. We should always do an ROI – then when the big guys come and look at our evaluation of training then we can show them that the rate of return was high enough to justify our program. CEO’s and managers understand ROI and can easily see how effective the program is or isn’t and if the ROI is high enough then it the TD is usually safe. Doing the 5 levels rather than 4 levels shows that we as trainers are accountable for a profit or at least a high rate of return on the companies investment. It shows we care to run our departments like a business. We are setting a good example of being responsible for our programs.

Friday I will give some tips on calculating ROI and show how simple it can be…

Remember comments, concerns and questions are always welcome.

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For more resources about training, see the Training library.

– Looking for an expert in training and development or human performance technology?
– Contact me: Leigh Dudley – Linkedin – 248-349-2881
– Read my blog: Training and Development

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Leadership Defined

The word "Leadership" written on a blackboard

Greetings

The plan is to dialogue this week about how leadership is, or might be defined. There are hundreds of definitions of leadership and this is not an attempt to come to a consensus on a definition. The hope is to get readers to reflect on what they believe about leadership. It is also an attempt to give blog participants a general sense of how certain “experts” are describing leadership, in the hope that you may come to your own definition, which can then be used to guide your work. What is leadership? Some view leadership as a series of specific traits or characteristics. Others see it as comprised of certain skills and knowledge. And some, me included, think of leadership as a process. This view of leadership, as a process, places an emphasis on social interaction and relationship. This is the idea that leadership is a type of relationship, one that typically includes influencing others in a certain direction. This leads to my current working definition of leadership: Leadership is a relationship that involves the mobilizing, influencing, and guiding of others toward desired goals. This definition does not assume that the goals are shared or even explicit. The word desire simply means that someone in the relationship, perhaps just the person in a leadership role, wants a particular outcome. The following are some definitions that have a bias toward leadership as a process:

  • “Leadership is a process of giving purpose (meaningful direction) to collective effort, and causing willing effort to be expended to achieve purpose.” (Jacobs & Jaques)
  • “Leadership is the process of influencing the activities of an individual or a group in efforts toward goal achievement in a given situation.” (Hersey & Blanchard)
  • “Leadership is an attempt at influencing the activities of followers through the communication process and toward the attainment of some goal or goals.” (Donelly)
  • “Leadership is defined as the process of influencing the activities of an organized group toward goal achievement.” (Rauch & Behling)
  • “Leadership is interpersonal influence, exercised in a situation, and directed, through the communication process, toward the attainment of a specified goal or goals.” (Tannenbaum, et al)

It has been my experience that many organizational leaders, knowingly or unknowingly, view leadership as a set of specific traits or skills. Below are a few definitions that are grounded in skills and, to a lesser extent, traits.

  • “Leadership is a function of knowing yourself, having a vision that is well communicated, building trust among colleagues, and taking effective action to realize your own leadership potential”. (Bennis)
  • “Leadership is about articulating visions, embodying values, and creating the environment within which things can be accomplished.” (Richards and Engle)
  • “Leadership is the creation of a vision about a desired future state which seeks to enmesh all members of an organization in its net.” (Bryman)
  • “It is a complex moral relationship between people, based on trust, obligation, commitment, emotion, and a shared vision of the good.” (Ciulla)

These definitions are entirely valid perspectives — they are simply different from a leadership as process perspective. Having said that, it is my impression that, overall, definitions of leadership are becoming more process and relationship oriented. How important is it to have a definition of leadership? In my role as a leadership consultant it is not necessary for me to share my clients definition of leadership – but it is important to know whether they have a definition and, if they do, what is included in that definition. If there isn’t an understanding of what leadership entails it diminishes the likelihood that the client will get what they want from our relationship. It is similar to a client looking to hire a consultant to increase employee engagement and, after digging a bit deeper with the client, discovering that what they are actually looking for is a way to improve the efficiency of work processes. What do you think?

Do you agree that defining relationship is a worthy effort…or is this much ado about nothing? What is your definition of leadership? If you don’t have one, and this is an important topic for you, I suggest that you take some time and create a working definition. It would be great if you would share your definition with the rest of us — but coming up with a definition is an exercise that is ultimately meant for your benefit.