August 2012 – Page 4 – Management Library

August 6, 2012August 19, 2022

Becoming a Peak Performing Leader Through Flow

An office busy with business activities work flow

Here’s a Riddle…

Everyone has experienced me, but few people know how to find me. I cannot co-exist with anxiety, fear, anger… or multi-tasking. I don’t cost a dime, but if I could be bought, people would pay small fortunes to create me. I can show up any time, any place, and during any activity. I am the difference between “good” and “great.” What am I?

The Answer

I am ‘Flow.’ The state of peak performance. First proposed by one of the world’s leading researchers in the field of positive psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, ‘flow’ is defined as:

The experience people have when they are completely immersed in an activity for its own sake, stretching body and mind to the limit, in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.

It is the place where your attention, motivation, skill set, and the challenge before you collide. The result is a joyous, productive harmony, where you are at your best – your most innovative, most productive, and most brilliant. A ‘flow experience’ is often characterized by words like “rapture,” “timeless,” and “single-pointed-focus.”

Whoa. Sound like a magic elixir? Too good to be true? It is not. And it is a key differentiator between those who are “good” at what they do, and those who are recognized and celebrated as “great” at what they do.

Components of Flow

According to Csikszentmihalyi, there are three components that are necessary to generate a ‘flow state.’

One must be involved in an activity with a clear set of goals. This adds direction and structure to the task.
One must have a good balance between the perceived challenges of the task at hand and his or her own perceived skills. One must have confidence that he or she is capable of doing the task at hand.
The task at hand must have clear and immediate feedback. This helps the person negotiate any changing demands and allows him or her to adjust his or her performance to maintain the flow state.

As can be seen in this graphic, flow state occurs when you have the courage to embrace a higher than average challenge, while, at the same time, stretching your skills to meet that challenge.

High challenge, but it requires low skill? Flow is blocked and the experience instead is one of anxiety or worry.

High skill, but not a challenge? Flow is blocked and instead the experience is one of boredom.

The Four Elements to Creating Flow

While a flow state can never be forced (how about that for an oxymoron?), you can intentionally set yourself up to create a state of flow by incorporating four key elements:

Intrinsic Motivation. Take on a goal or challenge that you are intrinsically-motivated to achieve. This is different than a goal that motivates you because of an external reward (like money) or recognition (like an award).
Uni-task. Choose to create a single-pointed focus during the times you are working on that goal or challenge (no email, no phone, no multi-tasking).
Stretch. Select a goal or challenge that makes you stretch. You know what that is – it’s the thing that keeps knocking on the back of your mind and it has the power to both excite and scare you at the same time.
Build skills. Is there is a system you need to implement, a mind-set you need to adjust, or a skill you need to build? Do it. Then get to work.

Where are you experiencing flow in your work? What’s keeping you from having more flow experiences? Is it time to change something up?

August 5, 2012June 15, 2022

Gamification And Techncial Writing

Gamification for this post is defined as applying a game, which also grants rewards, badges, or prizes. Can we apply this to technical writing? – Yes.

Gamification applied to an organization’s documents can encourage employees to:

read their policies and procedures by providing a mechanism for them to check in and out in order to gather points which can then be redeemed within an organization’s store. The organization can provide rewards from something as simple as a better parking spot to gift cards.
meet project milestones designated in requirements documents, technical specifications, or test plans during crunch time deadlines . The organization can reward them with, hopefully, some well-earned time off.
participate in training programs and meetings. For this example, you could reward employees with, e.g., free lunches. Due to a lack of time, employees tend to skip training sessions and meetings. Gamification will provide an incentive for those with limited time to attend. Rewards can be given out for every individual, team, or Department who fulfill the requirements.

How does all this involve the Technical Writer?

As a Technical Writer, you could employ the use of Gamification in your, e.g., education or marketing material by being creative when designing these materials. The materials should be stylized and written in a game-like fashion, e.g., educational material should be written to cause the reader to want to read on. Not like a novel, but more in an educational way to make the reader want to learn more. Use your imagination and think of fun things to include.

Some ideas are:

Include plenty of visuals for depicting examples or include case studies for reflecting what is being taught, mix in various tasks or quizzes, etc. Think of a puzzle and have the reader connect the dots or have a spreadsheet and have the reader fill in missing pieces.
Include games, or questions and answers and challenges at the end of the learning program to make sure the objective was met and to reinforce the lesson. If the reinforcement quiz is electronic, then the points earned can be automatically added to the total rewards to earn more prizes.

Regarding marketing material and Gamification, an example is to apply QR codes and have the reader download an application from which they could learn more about the product.

What about the Content Manager?

As a Content Manager in charge of a group of Technical Writers, use Gamification to:

provide incentives to encourage your team to meet milestones or deadlines. Challenge them to think of ways to improve current styles or to create new visual presentations to keep the reader more involved.
help the team stay focused. When you are continuously writing and lose focus, you tend to get side tracked and sometimes the words seem to express boredom and that is one thing you do not want to do.

The Content Manager should harness team energy via games and challenges.

Gamification is a very popular way to gain more visibility and acknowledgment. If you have the imagination, then add more Gamification to your writing material.

August 4, 2012February 22, 2023

When facilitation fails – a dilemma

Businesswoman in office sitting in front of her laptop

Olba has asked for your advice. She has been appointed to a government sector board to represent her local peoples in decision-making and resource allocation. The organisation has been constituted with legislation that mirrors many provisions of the corporations act. Directors are not paid but Olba is happy to gain experience and serve the community.

The Minister appoints the board members and also a ‘facilitator’ to chair the board meetings. Olba resents the facilitator and knows that her colleagues on the board share her feelings. The government use this facilitator for a number of board and committee functions; she is well credentialed, politically well-connected, and somehow a ‘power behind the throne’ with several local organisations.

The facilitator is paid a sitting fee and does not appear to carry the duties that are imposed upon directors under the legislation. She is also often late for the meetings, arrives without having read the papers beforehand, and, on one memorable occasion, got some way through the agenda before realising which board she was chairing. This appeared to be a major conflict of interest as it became obvious she was currently also chairing a board that competes with Olba’s board for funds.

Olba has done some governance training and a lot of reading on the topic. She aspires to be a prominent and useful board member and a good ambassador for her people. The facilitator could cause an embarrassment that would thwart Olba’s aspirations. She is also, in Olba’s opinion, not performing well enough and possibly harming the organisation.

What should Olba do?

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Many readers of this blog will be familiar with my newsletter The Director’s Dilemma. This newsletter features a real life case study with expert responses containing advice for the protagonist. Many readers of this blog are practicing experts and have valuable advice to offer so, again, we are posting an unpublished case study and inviting YOU to respond.

If you would like to publish your advice on this topic in a global company directors’ newsletter please respond to the dilemma above with approximately 250 words of advice for Olba. Back issues of the newsletter are available at http://www.mclellan.com.au/newsletter.html where you can check out the format and quality.

The newsletters will be compiled into a book. If your advice relates to a legal jurisdiction, the readers will be sophisticated enough to extract the underlying principles and seek detailed legal advice in their own jurisdiction. The first volume of newsletters is published and available at http://www.amazon.com/Dilemmas-Practical-Studies-Company-Directors/dp/1449921965/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321912637&sr=8-1

What would you advise?

August 3, 2012March 29, 2023

SumoSalad Hepatitis A Disaster

A doctor with a patient discussing during a medical check up

Sick worker triggers health alert for salad bar

[Editor’s note: We’re pleased to bring you another guest article from crisis consultant and frequent contributor Tony Jaques]

When hepatitis A was discovered in a worker at Sydney fresh salad bar SumoSalad, the company initially did some things well, but they also made some crucial errors in crisis communication.

It was a nightmare scenario for any food company, and even more so for SumoSalad, which sells itself as “the healthiest fast food franchise.”

On August 1, the New South Wales Ministry of Health issued a health warning for anyone who had eaten at the chain’s central Sydney store, where a worker had been diagnosed with hepatitis A after a visit to Indonesia.

The health authority said customers at the salad bar over a two week period might have been exposed to the disease and recommended that some of them may need a hepatitis A vaccination, while for others it was too late.

In a brief statement on the SumoSalad website, CEO Luke Baylis said it was an isolated incident at just one store and he emphasised that during a review the NSW Food Authority had acknowledged that the company was compliant with all food safety regulations and determined there was no further risk of infection.

It was a classic response and, apart from the fact that the statement was posted a day AFTER the government warning, the CEO was doing some things well.

He issued the statement in his own name and provided his personal mobile phone number rather than hiding behind a PR spokesperson. He also made sure that all medical opinion was attributed to independent experts. However, nowhere in his statement or subsequent reported interviews did he say he was sorry or express sympathy for his customers.

The Ministry statement had described the risk of infection as ”probably low” but in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald the CEO seemingly thought that was no longer good enough. “While she (the staff member) was working in the store she wore gloves at all times, so there is a very, very miniscule possibility that anyone could have contracted the virus.” That may have been his non-expert opinion, but does not seem wise at the same time as medical authorities were urging people to get vaccinated as soon as possible.

In his formal statement the CEO had said customer safety was his highest priority, but he appeared reluctant to express any sympathy for clients at the salad bar who were frightened they may have been exposed to a serious illness.

In fact in a subsequent interview with the business website Smart Company his focus was defensive and almost entirely focused on his concern about his brand rather than his customers.

It was a situation that is not created by employer negligence, Mr. Baylis said, and he added that the franchise would have to work hard to counter the inevitable brand damage that had already occurred through reports of the infection.

“This will be damaging for our brand, but we hope people will see the lengths SumoSalad has gone to in order to assure our customers’ safety.”

Stating the blindingly obvious in the midst of a corporate crisis was less than helpful, and served only to reinforce that his main concern was to “manage the damage of the situation.”

It seems the benefits of the original calm, planned strategy were soon overcome by the CEO’s enthusiasm to keep talking and go off message.

As he optimistically told Smart Company: “We hope that our customers will look at this as a positive, but there are certain people that will take a negative approach to this and will be skeptical”

Really, Mr. Baylis? You think? Maybe that extraordinary statement sounded better inside your head than in cold, hard print.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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Tony Jaques is Director of Issue Outcomes, a full-service crisis management firm serving clients across PanAsia.

August 3, 2012January 29, 2022

Combating the Hero Worship Culture at Penn State: the NCAA Got It Exactly Right

Person walking beside a stop sign on the street

By David Gebler and Donna Boehme

In the wake of the Penn State child abuse scandal, many in the media were outraged by the NCAA’s decision to instantly vacate the university’s win record from 1998 through 2011. As two ethicists with a combined 40+ years working in the trenches with organizations and their cultures, we’d like to offer the opposite view: the NCAA got it exactly right.

Former FBI agent and assistant US attorney Louis Freeh was unflinchingly stern toward Penn State’s “culture of reverence” for legendary coach Joe Paterno, his coaching staff, and the entire football program in his detailed 270-page independent report. Culture is a dramatic influencer of behavior for better or for worse.

While each individual is personally responsible for his or her actions, the culture we’re immersed in determines how hard it will be to maintain our integrity, and whether our human vulnerabilities will drive us to do things we’re not proud of.

Culture can neither be internally mandated nor externally legislated. In short, culture is “the way things are done around here.” Good or bad, an organization’s culture is grown organically from within and driven by the words and actions of its leaders. At Penn State, that culture was a blind hero worship of all things football, and it permeated every level of the organization and the community, with terrible results.

So entrenched was its hero worship culture that crowds of angry students rioted and women sobbed after the board’s unanimous decision to fire Paterno, even after the shocking revelations of unrestrained child sexual abuse were widely disseminated. That one scene alone said it all about the powerful impact an embedded culture can have on an entire organization.

Healthy organizations have checks and balances to guide how they govern themselves, allocate resources, and make important decisions. It’s the role of boards, internal and external audits, legal and compliance policies, and even individual employees to enforce accountability and serve as controls on the operation of unchecked power. But in some organizations, like Penn State, the entire system of checks and balances can be subverted by culture.

A hero worship culture trumps controls. It creates blinders that can cloud decision-making and destroy any sense of individual responsibility or “the right thing to do”—even for a 28-year-old assistant coach stumbling upon a horrific attack on a child in a locker room shower.

That culture drives an entire university community—from an acquiescent board, to deferential administrative officials, to devoted students and public fans—to create a cult of personality around a legendary coach and an entire football program.

In his report, Freeh describes it as a “culture of reverence for the football program that is ingrained at all levels of the campus community.” In the face of such idolatry, a mere victim, a victims’ family, or an observant employee doesn’t really stand a chance.

Faced with a potential scandal, and influenced by their hero worship culture, Penn State officials repeatedly hid damaging facts, empowering Sandusky to continue his despicable acts. The Freeh report confirms a conspiracy of silence designed to save an institution’s reputation (and lucrative revenue stream) at the cost of young lives, both those who had already been harmed and those who were yet to be harmed.

The independent panel describes “callous disregard for child victims” and “an active agreement to conceal”—all of this to save the institution from scandal and negative press.

Although Freeh may have found elements of a conspiracy, no one had to be told what to do. As one janitor who was an eye witness to the abuse said in his testimony, reporting what he saw to the police “would have been like going against the President of the United States.”

Penn State’s culture acted as an unstoppable force rising up to protect the institution and its officials, with unthinkable, monstrous consequences.

What’s needed at Penn State is a complete blood transfusion of good culture for bad. Joe Paterno’s hero status and the university’s “win at all costs” identity have to be replaced by accountability and transparency.

Presaged by the symbolic removal of Paterno’s iconic statue in the same week, the NCAA’s debilitating penalties have set the table for the institution to spend years, perhaps decades, resetting “the way things are done around here,” initially under the careful watch of a court-appointed monitor.

During what will undoubtedly be a long and painful rebuild, one hopes that a new leadership and a meaningful system of checks and balances will begin to create a new culture of individual responsibility and integrity, ultimately exorcising the hero worship culture that brought a once-great institution to its knees.

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Donna Boehme is Principal, Compliance Strategists LLC, member of the advisory board of the RAND Center for Corporate Ethics and Governance, and former global compliance and ethics officer of two leading multinationals. Learn more at www.compliancestrategists.com.

David Gebler (www.skoutgroup.com) is the principal of Skout Group, LLC, a global firm advising organizations on reducing culture-based risk and is the author of The 3 Power Values: How Commitment, Integrity and Transparency Remove the Roadblocks to Performance (Jossy-Bass, 2012).

August 1, 2012March 12, 2023

Key Training Ideas for Your Customer Service Program

We all have different ways to train using customer service programs. Some would say some of us remain in the dark ages, but you also might argue that not all that’s old-fashioned is bad. We often buy things because they are antique or retro. It may make the untested or lightly tested technology of the day look good; however, it makes the trainers who have good old-fashioned, reliable company training on their minds look bad.

I won’t deny it. But I do think there are good ways to do the job right and good ways to sound good and make a profit. Don’t get me wrong; profit is important, but a one-time sale as in some automated services is bad for all trainers, not just one business.

If you have automated customer service, make sure it works smoothly and quickly and gives callers an opportunity to talk directly to a customer service rep. Not everyone is or is willing to be computer literate to take care of basic business.

True story. We received a utility bill threatening to shut off our utilities in three days if we did not pay five months of our past-due bill. Our bill has always been on autopay so we didn’t notice. We don’t generally open that information bill that says so much has been taken from your checking account, but we did this time and will now in the future.

When I tried customer service, I was told to go to the webpage or call the next day. The website wouldn’t take my numbers–not my fault. I gave up and called the next day, or rather my wife did.

After a forty-five-minute wait, she was able to talk to a person who told her that we had never been on autopay, which was absolutely not true; we had no problem on our end and no notice from them. And they couldn’t fix it without transferring us to two different places with waiting lines and a fee for credit card payments.

Not good customer service. Maybe because they were the only game in town… May I make a suggestion here? If you don’t know the business or the specifics of training or customer service, don’t sell businesses off-the-shelf merchandise in place of the real thing.

Customer service hotlines that don’t really do much but steer a customer through the automated system to the right person hopefully is not my idea of good customer service and it shouldn’t be yours. Customer service means solving problems and giving customers the satisfaction of knowing you back your product or service.

This automated form of customer service is useful provided the customer has an account number and other accounted identifying passwords and, of course, fingers of lightning on the phone keyboard. Make enough mistakes most systems send you to a web page, which is not much better. I have even had them hang up and say to call another day.

Know it now, it is my opinion that in most business practices someone should still be able to get to a person without waiting thirty minutes–ten is bad enough. Waiting kills customer confidence in your company. If you don’t have the people or particularly busy days, most of us understand this economy.

Good customer service is never about passing the buck. Who the hell told a business professional of that magnitude that was the case? Were they not adequately trained in customer service, or were they given off-the-shelf products (how-tos) to keep costs down and provide immediate answers without talking to a person and calling it customer service?

Keeping your company happy and customers glowing will keep managers from jumping through hoops to find elegant solutions to a problem that could have been solved simply–and probably at less cost in the long run.

I apologize for my long absence. It was health-related. Now, I’m back and I promise the best that I provide great customer service. Training and development are so intertwined with how we do business well, I feel something has gone wrong in training when other areas show flaws. For those who have followed me, you know the solution, in any case, is either bad communication or misguided training. We all have to make a buck, but let’s keep the country strong by relying on some of the basics that made us who we are–not always the cheapest but the most dependable. I hope that’s still true.

Best Practices for Developing a Successful Customer Service Training Program

Customer expectations: The first step in providing excellent customer service is to understand your customers’ expectations. Customer support teams should be trained to identify and understand customer expectations and tailor their service accordingly.
Effective customer service: Effective customer service involves identifying and addressing customer needs and concerns in a timely and efficient manner. Customer service training programs should focus on teaching the customer support team how to provide high-quality customer service that meets or exceeds customer expectations.
Training programs: Training programs are essential for ensuring that the customer service team has the knowledge, skills, and tools they need to provide excellent customer service. Customer service training programs should cover topics such as customer communication, problem-solving, and conflict resolution.
Customer service training ideas: There are many different customer service training important ideas that can be used to improve customer service. Some examples include role-playing exercises, case studies, and interactive training session.
Customer satisfaction: The ultimate goal of any customer service program is to improve customer satisfaction. Customer service training program should focus on teaching customer support teams how to identify and address customer needs and concerns to ensure that customers are satisfied with their experience.
Customer loyalty: Providing excellent customer service can help to build customer loyalty. Customer service training courses should teach customer support teams how to create a positive customer experience that encourages customers to return in the future.
High-quality customer service: High-quality customer service involves providing fast, friendly, and efficient service to customers. Customer service training programs should focus on teaching customer support teams how to provide high-quality customer service that meets or exceeds customer expectations.
Customer service program: A customer service program is a comprehensive strategy for providing excellent customer service. Customer service training programs should be an integral part of any customer service program, as they can help to ensure that customer support teams are equipped with the skills and knowledge they need to provide excellent customer service.
Put the hands-on back into customer service. I think one of my first blogs talked about the government and how we had gone automated, then pulled back to personal involvement to satisfy our customer base. In areas that are necessarily people-friendly or should be, don’t expect a machine voice to take the place of a person who can provide unique solutions or even make decisions.
Always have a place for questions with a person equipped to answer in a polite, respectful manner whether the company is right or wrong. Managers should be taught or trained to do this or they shouldn’t be managers. If it isn’t a manager, but a specialist, extra pay is in order. Keep in mind the stress level of the position, and rotate and back-up, up that function.

In summary, effective customer service training programs are essential for providing great customer service. Customer service teams should be trained to understand and meet customer expectations, provide high quality customer service, and create a positive customer experience that encourages customer loyalty and satisfaction.

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For more resources about training, see the Training library.

Pay me a visit on my webpage and check out my other writings–some in different arenas. Also, my book The Cave Man Guide to Training and Development and novel, Harry’s Reality, are related and interesting diversions for a small price. Happy training.