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I really enjoyed this video from Jason Fried of 37signals fame.

He explains the farce that is the modern workplace. Where no work actually gets done. This is well worth the six minutes of your time. Fried is a visionary.

Quick read from Fast Company about the difference between Leadership and Management. When asked to define, Randy Komisar  said:

Management is more operationally focused. It’s more of a supervisory role of setting priorities, allocating resources, and directing the execution. Leadership is more forward thinking, more about enabling the organization, empowering individuals, developing the right people, thinking strategically about opportunities, and driving alignment.

Komisar goes onto to emphasize that communication is key for a leader and interpersonal skills which he defines as:

…when you sit down in your office with somebody who’s relying on you for leadership, you’ve got to be able to emphatically communicate with them around their challenges, figure out how to help them be more successful.

I really like that statement too. I’ve embraced this approach. I am not the most outgoing, gregarious person you will ever meet. But when we are talking and you need my help, I try to be very focused on helping you solve the problem.

I have been working on a series of posts detailing my thoughts on how I would fix or turn around a business operation. I would take a stab at a scenario an MBA candidate/intern threw at me. So far we have talked about financials and how to get a handle on your customers.

Its all about ENGAGEMENT. TP is a huge fan of employee engagement. Go figure – so am I. An engaged employee is a productive one. I read an article recently (can’t find it) that said U.S. working population is 26% engaged, 55% not engaged and 19% actively disengaged. in your 40 person shop, 20+ could care. 8 of your people are actively trying to screw you up. Are you listening now?

Oh…and those 8…they aren’t who you think.

I like a two phased approach coupled with a very strong helping of genchi genbutsu or MBWA (Management By Walking Around). Get yourself seen. Have breakfast with people. Have lunch. Fruit roll ups. Just do it. Then, the first step is to sit down with everyone and just talk. The second stage is to do a formal employee satisfaction survey. Depending on the size of the team, you may not get a chance to sit with everyone. But you can devote 30 minutes to each interview.

I love Capt. D. Mike Abrashoff (ret.), who wrote an EXCELLENT book on leadership -It’s Your Ship. (This is a great book for new leaders by the way.) Mike lays out a very simple plan in this book that has served me RIDICULOUSLY well over the years.

3 questions.

1. What are we doing well?
2. What are we doing poorly?
3. If you could fix one thing right now, what would it be?

Short and simple. The best part about this process is that once you have a decent sample size, you will know the top issues facing your team and you will have some pretty good ideas on how to fix them.

From a process perspective it is pretty easy. Gather everyone together and tell them you are going to meet with them individually. It is a great opportunity to introduce yourself to them and put them at ease. You don’t want to just start randomly calling people into your office. (Although – that tactic has its merits.)

From the long term approach – start conducting Employee Satisfaction Surveys. A long time ago I referred to a great set of questions that really get at Employee Engagement – the 12 Questions That Matter:

In hindsight, twelve questions seems like a bit much. Some of them are a bit redundant. Here are a solid 5 to get you started:

4. In the past seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
9. Are my coworkers committed to doing quality work?
10. Do I have a best friend at work?
11. In the past 6 months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
12. This past year, have I had the opportunities at work to learn and grow?

Number 10 stays because there is a lot of research on the benefits of having a best friend at work.

5 questions and then leave room for feedback. And I hate anonymous surveys. They are pointless. Guess what though…if people aren’t comfortable filling our your employee survey and attaching their name – YOU HAVE A PROBLEM.

You are not going to get all your answers the first time you do one. But that is ok because you’re already doing the 3 Question meetings. Do the E-Sat quarterly. You could do them monthly if you like but quarterly has worked for me. You have to be consistent. The WORST thing you can do is drop this survey on your people and then not do another one. Actually, the worst thing you can do is conduct the survey and not follow up on the results.

You have to be very clear in communicating your intent. That is: you want to make things BETTER. Make YOURSELF accountable to action items created out of the survey. And do it publicly. You have to share the findings. You have to share the actions you plan to take to correct problem areas. You must be c-o-n-s-i-s-t-e-n-t. You must be patient. It takes a bit of time to build trust.

You could deploy this survey using the 5-scale or the 3-scale. In a 5-scale, you can look at Strongly Disagree-Disagree-Neutral-Agree-Disagree. Only the top two boxes matter. That is why I can say go with a 3-scale:
Disagree-Sometimes-Agree. And then only count the “agrees”. Just seems simplier and eliminates ambiguity.

Our next installment will talk about Processes and continuous improvement.

I love when science validates my (several forms of) crazy. As many of you know, I seem to have some kind of mild fixation on shaking hands. I tend to rant about it. I talked to my 9 year old daughter about it yesterday as a matter of fact. (She gave someone a limp handshake. And I didn’t freak out on her. We had a nice private little huddle over the matter.)

On Friday, Discovery News, posted an article: A Formula for the Perfect Handshake. FINALLY! Someone understands me! Actually, I haven’t been alone on this.

Researchers at the University of Manchester, in northwest England, said on Thursday that the biggest problems were sweaty palms, limp wrists, gripping too hard and lack of eye contact.

Right on.

These same scientists have taken it a step further and developed a way for ALL OF US to excel at shaking hands. They have applied math and science to solving one of the universes most awful experiences…the DREADED first impression.

The formula looks at vigor, eye contact and hand temperature. No sweaty palms people. Neither too warm or too cold. No one likes shaking hands with the UNDEAD.

Geoffrey Beattie, the university’s head of psychological sciences, provides the steps to the perfect handshake for BOTH men and women. That’s right ladies, you need to step up your game as well.

The steps are:

1. Use the appropriate hand (Beattie says “right” hand – but what if you are a zombie and don’t have one.
2. Use a complete grip [mike - no tips of the fingers. You are not a duchess.]
3. Use a firm squeeze (but not too strong) – this is possibility the hardest part, practice at home with your friends.
4. You need a cool and dry palm. Hand in your pocket before hand, behind your back, whatever. Wipe the clammy off.
5. Approximately three shakes – I never even CONSIDERED this aspect of it!
6. Use a medium level of vigor – again practice with friends.
7. Hold it for no longer than two to three seconds. That is one pump/shake per second people!
8. USE EYE CONTACT! THE whole TIME!
9. SMILE!
10. Use an “appropriate verbal statement”

OK, honestly, I don’t know what the last part means. I like a nice, hi, good to see you, thanks for coming, thanks for having me, I’ve been looking forward to this – mix it up.

Go forth and make good first impressions!

The Keys To Unlocking Your Most Successful Career by Joann S. Lublin from the July 6, 2010 WSJ online is possibly the best article I have read all year about managing your career. Great, great stuff.

Five simple lessons.

1. Network effectively. I already love Lublin. You’ve seen me rant about this before. She recommends “strategic relationships” and I am completely on board. She quotes a career coach, Paul Anderson, who says “relationships can’t be built in 60 seconds.” Amen, brother. This is the problem I have with “networking”. I am focusing on networking SMARTER. Quality versus quantity.

2. Sweat the small stuff. Details matter, people! This is another recurring theme from your old pal Mike. She reminds us to not have sweaty palms when you shake hands. Check the tags on handshakes over on the right —-> it has been a recurring theme for me.

3. Get your marketing materials in order. OK…I paraphrased my new favorite Lublin. She talks about creating something called a “pre-resume” which Career Sherpa will tell you is her Marketing Plan. It works. Do it.

4. Pay it forward. Help others.

5. Know thyself and be ready for re-invention. Seriously…I may have to stalk my new bff Joann Lublin. Know you goals. Know your core values. Know your TRANSFERRABLE skills. You can re-invent. Mrs. Mike Lally, after YEARS of worrying and ASSUMING that she would have to “start at the bottom” if she changed jobs – just got a PROMOTION at a NEW firm which takes her into a COMPLETELY NEW role.

Last week, I started as series of posts detailing my thoughts on how I would fix or turn around a business operation. Inspired by a promising MBA student that is doing an internship with us, I thought I would take a stab at a scenario she threw at me. Last week-ish we talked about financials.

This week, let’s talk about getting a handle on your customers – specifically their level of satisfaction. A few years ago I linked and commented on a great approach to customer satisfaction (csat). The original article talked about the 5 csat questions you will ever need but it was service operation focused. I think the questions are still very relevant and can be used in almost any business.

It is really 5 questions and a 6th which asks for verbal feedback. I also throw in another question – a net promoter score question. So really….7 questions. Here they are (in order of importance):

1. Courtesy of the Whomever You Interact With Most Frequently (support person, billing, customer service, field service, delivery person, sales person, account manager, CEO) – Your customer deserves and and expects to be treated in a courteous/professional manner. If you are scoring poorly here you need to make sure you have communicated the absolute importance of service and satisfied customers to your team. You may also need to specifically train customer service and customer experience skills.

2. Skills and Knowledge of Whomever You Interact With Most Frequently – While a courteous employee is nice, it won’t make a bit of difference if they can’t solve the customer’s issue. Your customers want confidence in the employee’s skills and knowledge to resolve the issue at hand. This is the best way to measure your team’s skill and knowledge level. Weaknesses here go back to the hiring and training process.

3. Quality of the Resolution – Again, courteous and knowledgeable employees are really nice to have, but they need to be actually addressing customer needs/questions/issues. Customers calling back for the same reasons over and over again is a customer that is going to churn on you.

4. Timeliness of the Resolution – Time is money! Fix your customer’s problem the first time they call. Two things happen if you don’t: you drive up your total cost per incident and you irritate your customer’s…see churn above. This is a process problem. Break it down step by step. No step is too small. Trouble lies in the handoffs.

5. Overall Experience – This is really the weighted average of the first 4. Keep in mind that customers will weigh each of the above differently. If you have a low score (bottom two boxes out of 5), CALL THAT CUSTOMER AND BEG THEM TO HELP YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU CAN DO BETTER!

6. Additional Feedback – always, always, always allow your customer to give you open ended feedback. Let them vent. Not only will they tell you what is wrong (and right if you are lucky) they will tell you how to FIX IT.

Additionally, I have become a fan of the net promoter score. Net Promoter basically asks one simple question – “Would you refer us to someone else?” You take all the people that say yes and subtract all the people that say no and you end up with your score. It makes for a great measurable. And it is easy to create goals from it. If you’re NPS is 55 – set a goal to increase it to 60.

Ask these questions to your customers as soon as you get into your turnaround. Then do it quarterly. Track and compare results. If you have a lot of customers, you can outsource this task. If you have a manageable number of customers, keep it in house. If you have a handful of customers, you should be doing this yourself, on the phone or in person.

Each of the top 5 questions should get a scale of 1-5. 1 being completely off the rails broken and 5 being Superbowl win. I would label the boxes specific to each question. For example: Courtesy of the person would be a scale of Christian Bale/Mel Gibson to Miss Manners. Or you could let HR rule the world and do a scale of 1 to 5. If you do 1 to 10, then top two boxes are good. I like 1 -3 – easier to get through and eliminates ambiguity.

Ideally, every customer gets some kind of sponsor. Positive responses should get a follow up of thanks. Negative responses should get a follow up to work through the issues. It doesn’t even have to be an “executive” sponsor. In fact, you could kill two birds with one stone here….you can find out which of your employees are engaged too. (See next week’s installment.)

I started writing “a” blog on this day in 2004. I cannot believe it has been six years. I’ve been through a lot in that time.  I was running a telemarketing operation at the time. Then I had back surgery. I tried to launch an outsourcing business with some partners. That failed. I went to a major telecom provider where I spent a year commuting to Florida helping to launch a 500 seat call center. I went to a learning solutions company to become a product manager. I got laid off after one year. I spent a year out of work. My daughter spent 15 days in the hospital with what we now know was H1N1. Now I am doing account management/project management for a software company.

Whew.

In ’04 I started it all off by referencing Tom Peter’s Brand You Survival Kit from FC. ALL of what TP says in this article is still relevant. Lots of us STILL aren’t hearing it. To re-cap:

• Turn every project into something the recruiter or person doing the hiring is going to get excited about.
• You must market yourself. Accomplishments on a resume are NOT ENOUGH.
• Don’t settle for being a jack of all trades. Master something. But be able to adapt at a breakneck pace.
• Loyalty to the “company” is dead. Loyalty to your peers is crucial. Build your contacts.
• New technology is useless for the first five years. But you need to know its out there and be ready to use it when it becomes useful.
• Constantly re-invent yourself.

The funny thing is that in my original post I said that you should build your contacts in your Palm Pilot. I also said “rolodex” but I think in 2010 I have a better shot at people snickering at the dinosaur that is Palm Pilot versus the Rolodex (the modern day equivalent of writing on stone tablets.)

But DAMN, Tom is right. Was right. WILL CONTINUE TO BE RIGHT.

You have to be marketing/re-inventing. You have to be a hammer as Harry Joiner says. Loyalty to your peers IS critical. Your network is your future.

We’re coming up on the sixth year anniversary of writing this blog. It has come in a few different looks. I started it as “Diligentia” which is just laughable now. I really can’t remember why i thought that was a good idea. BUT – I did start off with a tagline of “a blog about how to manage your self, your team, and your company”.

Over the last few weeks, I have been trying to get a bit more organized around here. I went back and added tags to every post. (I probably should go clean up the categories as well.) That exercise was very illuminating.

Over these six years, I have stuck pretty true to that original tag line. My writing has ebbed and flowed with my employment status. When I am working, I focus more on leadership and management skills. When not (like all of 2009) – I focus on self management. I went heavy on the career management and personal branding.

Some other fun and accurate tidbits spilled out too. I am a Tom Peters fanboy. He gets mentioned in 26 of 200ish posts. Other favorites include Rajesh Setty (a TP disciple of the first order), Seth Godin, Penelope Trunk, Harry Joiner of Marketing Headhunter fame, and my Hannah Morgan (Career Sherpa! go give her some love!)

I am a bit of a gaming nerd. I make a few references to World of Warcraft and Dungeons and Dragons. And how they apply to managing yourself and your team.

I am a military fanboy too. I am a history nerd. But not as deep as many others I know. But there are many lessons to be gained from the Marines and Special Forces.

And lastly, I am a book junkie. I have 19 of 200 posts about books or book reviews.

Those are really the high points for me. So…what have we learned? That I have done a pretty solid job of maintaining my brand/my essence AND my original mission statement of sorts.

Last week, I started as series of posts detailing my thoughts on how I would fix or turn around a business operation. Inspired by a promising MBA student that is doing an internship with us, I thought I would take a stab at a scenario she threw at me.

This week, let’s talk about financials. I am taking an operational view. Maybe a business unit, maybe a small company. In some scenarios, you may not get access to the financials. I like to focus on a few areas:

• Revenue
• Operating Costs
• Profit
• Contribution margin
• Days Sales Outstanding (DSO)

Ultimately, I want to understand profitability by customer. I want to know who my most profitable customers are and I want to know who is killing me. Down the road, we will make decisions. Sometimes, customers need to get fired. Crazy. I know. But why would you do business with someone that is costing you money? Charge them more or get rid of them. Unless they are “strategic” – i.e. bringing you HORDES of profitable customers.

I don’t think anyone can be running pure COST CENTERS any more. Every unit should be finding a way to become a profit center. Either way, cost or profit center, you have to understand where the money is going. Detailed operating costs. I promise you there is waste. Find it. Create a bonus plan that rewards people for finding new ways of doing things. Make it so that it comes directly to you and not through a chain of command. Don’t let a middle manager feel threatened and stomp down a great idea.

Contribution Margin is a KPI I also like to examine. Simply put, it is total product price less its variable costs. This really gets at the profitability by customer KPI. You can break this number down many different ways. By customer. By product. By team. It helps drill down into potential trouble spots.

Then, there is DSO. This one has always amazed me. I have been in several operations where payments from customers have lapsed to 90+ days. 120+ days. How is that possible? It happens. One goal is to start closing the gap on DSO. If your standard terms are net 30. Your cash flow is being affected. Plus the conversation required with your customer is worth it for a couple of reasons. First, it is a good to talk to your customers. Second, if they are really late, maybe they have a business problem you might be able to fix.

What is costing us money? Where are we profitable? These are the two big questions that I seek answers to in a turnaround situation. Next steps are to figure out ways to align costs and customers better. Can you charge customers more for the products/services delivered? Can you cut costs? Are there process inefficiencies (more on that later)?

I avoided the obvious cash flow and balance sheet pieces. There are plenty of better places to get that information. I am taking an operational – line management – view. My goal is to show how I would pull apart an operation, dissect it, and then build it back up for greatness.

Next time, we will talk about the Employee Side KPIs. (I will try to do better on timing. This was a holiday week for me. Things got a little nutty.)

This continues our series on how to run a successful turnaround – or – The Mike Lally Way. Maybe we’ll just call this RAST. Running A Successful Turnaround. The Mike Lally Way is just way too lame. Today, I will take a holistic, high-level view and in future posts, I will look at each element in more detail.

Walking into any turnaround situation, I immediately set out to acquire data supported by human information (or intel). You cannot just look at data on a page. A) the data will lie to you. It will beguile you. It will tell you that you are smarter than you think. B) You need to get out in front of your people anyway. Let’s start with data.

I want to see the following Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

Financial KPIs:
Revenue
Operations Costs
Profit
Contribution Margin
DSO. Days Sales Outstanding.

I want these numbers broken out by customer and/or by team. Definitely by customer. I want to know our most profitable customers (not necessarily the customers bringing in the most revenue). I want to know who is COSTING us money.

Customer KPIs
Customer Satisfaction – every main customer contact (assuming we have one) gets a very short 5+1 questions survey. The plus 1 question is the Net Promoter question. Then we start doing this quarterly, same questions. We track results.

Employee KPIs
Employee Satisfaction. Monthly. Simple questions. I will share them.

I will also interview everyone. Three simple questions. If the operation is very large where this isn’t feasible, I would push the interview down the chain of command and get summary reporting created.

Process KPIs/Production
Simple time studies will do. I want to know how long it takes us to produce the widgets. I want to know how long it takes to ship the widgets. And I want to understand how long it takes us to support the customers buying our widgets.

I come from the land of technical support. Any time someone was working on ANYTHING, they needed to be in a support ticket. Assigned to a customer. With the clock running. I want to see rolled up reporting, daily, weekly, monthly, etc. How many tickets, top 10 issues, AGING of tickets.

The same principles apply to production. Where do we have defects? Where do we require re-work? How long does it take?

Over the next days/weeks, I will dive into each of these elements/KPIs.