Order of Magnitude CEOs

Swarm of Bees? Don't Let the Truly Urgent Distract You from the Truly Important in Your Business

I pulled my family’s minivan out of the garage onto the driveway and then was just about to head back inside the house to get my family when I noticed more than a few bees had gathered in our driveway.

Not thinking much of it, I went to do a few things inside the house and gather the family for our outing to look at different types of pavers for an upcoming renovation in our backyard.  About 10 minutes later, we were all ready to go.

I looked outside at our minivan and noticed hundreds of bees now around it.  My wife then noticed a bee or two in the house.   It was then I realized that not only did we have a bee problem outside the house; we also had a bee problem inside the house.  I had not closed the garage door. 

I immediately called our exterminator company where I spoke with their message service.  As I talked on the phone, I noticed some of the bees started coming inside the house via the door connecting the garage to the house.  My wife and I agreed it was definitely time to go and look at pavers!

I exited the front door which was far away from the bees and made my way to the minivan through my neighbor’s property.  With blinding speed, I made it into the minivan with no bee sting.  Pulling the car out of the driveway I noticed a large rock on the ground that must have had thousands of bees swarming on it. I pulled the car to the front of our house and picked up my family.

We drove to the Nursery that had the pavers and as a family we selected the particular paver and color after testing it out in our bare feet.  After about a half hour of not hearing back from the exterminator, I left another “emergency” message with the exterminator.

We then headed home to check on our house.  Entering into the house, there were now a handful of bees in each of the rooms, although the big swarm around the rock outside had disappeared.  Where had they gone?  Still, no call back from the exterminator.  Not a big surprise since it was Memorial Day Weekend, so I called again and left yet another emergency message specifically asking that they tell the exterminator that this was the first time in our five year history of using them that we had ever called with an emergency.  There was nothing more we could do but wait.

As previously planned, we decided to head out to our favorite local ice cream place knowing we did not have to be back to the house for another hour or so when we had an appointment with a landscaper for the paving work that needed to be done.   While eating the ice cream outside, I finally received the call from the exterminator. Our exterminator would be arriving at around the same time as the landscaper.   After ice cream we headed home and went to the backyard.  A few minutes later the landscaper arrived and few minutes after the exterminator arrived as well. 

The exterminator killed the bees in our house and in our garage while the landscaper measured the amount of pavers we needed.  The landscaper left and the exterminator prepared to leave as well.  Although, he had killed the bees inside the house and the garage we still did not know where the swarm had gone or if they would be back.  As the exterminator was about to leave, my wife noticed a couple of bees heading into a tall tree alongside our house.    At the top of the tree she saw a huge swarm of bees probably numbering in the thousands.  The exterminator did not have the vehicle nor the chemicals to take care of the issue. After checking with the owner, the exterminator promised to come Tuesday with their big truck and hose to finally take care of our urgent swarming bee problem. 

Since there was nothing more we could do, as previously planned, we headed out for dinner.  I woke up Sunday morning and went to our driveway to check on the bees, the swarm was gone.  I thought to myself, “I guess I won’t need the exterminator to come on Tuesday after all,” as I went back to the house and asked, “everybody ready to head for the beach?”

As you continue the journey of fulfilling your personal ambitions for your business, there will always be plenty of daily distracting urgent issues that you will need to deal with along the way.  Don’t forget that most of them are like the swarm of bees outside (and even some inside) my house that have very little to do with what you are seeking to accomplish in your business, or in this case, with my family. Yes, you have to deal with these urgent distractions but don’t let them consume you or your business.

Hating Something Sometimes Just Means You Are Not Very Good At It (Sometimes to Build a Valuable Company, You Must Overcome What You Hate Until You End Up Loving It)

 

“I hate building my sales team Jeff, it’s so hard.”  I was catching up with an owner friend of mine named Jerry, who was visiting from the West Coast.

“How’s your operations team?” I asked Jerry.  “Great, we are rocking and rolling, why can’t building a sales team be as easy?”

“Did you have a great operations team when you first started your business?”

“Of course not, you know it took me a number of years, why do you ask?”

“Well your hatred of building a sales team reminds me of a story I heard from a friend of mine who served in the military.  Is it ok if I tell you a story he told me?”

“Sure, Jerry replied.

“Cool, so I was talking with my friend from the military about working out, a subject I am usually pretty quiet on so I did most of the listening.

As he talked, he really appeared to enjoy working out, whereas I have never been a big fan of it, so I asked him point blank, “Do you really like working out?”

“Yes,” he replied, “I do, it’s fun for me.”  “Really, was it always fun?” I asked.  “Actually, now that I think of it,” he said, “I used to hate it.”

That’s what made me think of you Jerry.”  “Go on,” Jerry replied.

So I did.

“Strong words, how could you go from hating working out to looking forward to it?” I replied to my ex-military friend.

“Well, when I first got into the military we would have to do 10 pull-ups before we ate breakfast.  And, if you didn’t do the 10 pull-ups, you guessed it, no breakfast, or at least they would put you through a lot of pain before letting you eat.   At the end of the day, when everybody was dead tired, they would keep tabs on who was practicing doing their pull-ups.  The guys who practiced were the ones they would cut some slack the next day and also were the ones that of course, ended up getting to 10 pull-ups in the least amount of days.”

“It happened again and again, the guys furthest from getting to 10, hated doing pull-ups the most and the guys who could do it right away, liked it the most.”

“That makes sense,” I replied.  “Sure Jeff, but the interesting part is that the guys who couldn’t get to 10 AND practiced each day, although they were dead tired, ALSO hated doing pull-ups as well. Until…” 

My ex-military friend gave a long pause for dramatic effect,  “they started making progress.  Tuesday - 5 pull-ups, Wednesday - 6, and so on, until they were able to get to 10.   Each of us, who couldn’t get to 10 in the beginning ended up liking pull-ups. It certainly worked that way for me.”

Jerry collected his thoughts for a moment and then finally remarked, “You know what Jeff, I forgot but in the beginning my operations team stunk, there were always problems, I hated managing them and thought I was no good at it. 

Over time, I kept working at it, invested a lot of time, where today I love my operations team. Thanks for reminding me of that Jeff.”

“Sure, Jerry, where are you off to now?”   “Funny, coincidentally I am interviewing a Regional Sales Manager candidate, I used to hate these conversations, now I love them,” he said with a smirk as he shook my hand good-bye.”

As with Jerry, and my friend from the military, if it is important to fulfilling the ambition you have for your company, what you hate today you can end up loving (or at least liking) tomorrow!

Providing Slow Service to your Clients like Quick Service Restaurants Kyochon and Cosi - Do you care?

Last week, I had a few minutes in between meetings towards the end of lunchtime, so I ventured into one of the new quick service restaurants (QSRs) that are opening up across Manhattan.  This particular one, Kyochon, is a restaurant chain focused on Korean style chicken.  The restaurant was clean and fresh looking both on the outside and inside and it was not crowded.  Perfect! After placing my order, I received a buzzer and proceeded to wait while one person made the food.  After about 10 minutes, I inquired about the slow service.  When I was told each order was made fresh I replied, “I understand, but why do you only have one person making the food during lunchtime?”  I then added, to see what reaction I would get in a polite voice, “Most likely, I will not be able to visit your location again due to the slow service.”   Five minutes later, I received my food but with no response to my comment about not coming in again due to the slow service.  

I had a very similar experience the prior week at a Cosi during breakfast except this time the line to order moved so slowly that the two people ahead of me left the restaurant out of frustration.  As with Kyochon, to see what would happen, I let the cashier know that the two customers ahead of me left due to slow service to see her reaction.  The cashier was apologetic and explained that this is normal.   Interestingly enough, in both cases, if you have the patience, the Kyochon chicken and my Cosi breakfast order actually turned out to be quite tasty.  

Ok Jeff, slow customer service with a good product, I get it, we have all experienced it, why blog about it and what can this possibly have to do with helping an ambitious business owner like myself?

If I am the owner of Kyochon, I would want to know that a customer was dissatisfied with the speed of the service and also wonder why only one of the two food preparation stations was being operated during lunchtime.  If I am the owner of Cosi, I would want to know if I had a recurrent issue in taking breakfast orders that would make my customers abandon the restaurant once, if not for good.  Unless one of the cashiers did something with the information or there was a system in place for measuring speed to order and/or speed to receiving food, it is highly unlikely the owner of either Kyochon or Cosi knows about their slow service issues.  Or so I thought, until I did a search on “slow service” for both restaurants and to my surprise found that “slow service” is a recurrent theme in online customer reviews for both restaurant chains. Rightly or wrongly, the employees of the Kyochon and Cosi locations I visited appeared to prioritize the quality of food preparation over delivery speed.

(It is also quite possible that the respective owners intentionally accept slow service during lunch (Kyochon) and during breakfast (Cosi) if most of their respective profits are made during other parts of the day).

If your employees perceive you do not care about something, you better be damn sure that you really don’t.

By the way, Cosi is trading at less than 15% of its high over the prior 5 year period and Kyochon is a private firm based in South Korea.

How Brands Like Apple & HP Can Lose Their Way when Dealing with Customers? (or Is Your Staff Executing on Your Core Values or just your Policies?)

Last week, a business owner and Apple Fanboy (click on the link to see if you are one too) who until a week ago only bought Apple products for his house told me about Apple not crediting him $1.29 for an accidental purchase on iTunes (since he had made a similar request to Apple that was granted about 1 year ago).  Of course, it wasn’t the money for this business owner, it was the point - he thought he was more than just a transactional customer for Apple.  I then shared with him my own similar experience with a large retail brand that happened last month to me.

About two years ago I bought a high end laptop.  This was the 2^nd premium laptop I had purchased from the same vendor within a year.  I didn’t run much on it.  Just the basics – mostly Microsoft Office applications and Internet browser software.  I also have a few other random applications that I use including Dropbox and TweetDeck.  When Windows 7 came out I upgraded. Recently, the screen died and I was forced to pair it up with a monitor in my office and relegate it to a desktop replacement.  So, I bought a 12” screen netbook with 2GB RAM for client meetings and for working during my commutes into Manhattan.  I noticed that my new netbook was much quicker than my two year old laptop.  Appreciating the difference, I decided to devote some time to make the old laptop quicker.  I did a bunch of software related tasks like removing unneeded items from Start Up.  One consistent issue I noticed is that once I opened two applications the physical memory would hover around the 90% mark.  As I searched online how to lower it, people wrote that adding RAM typically solves the problem.  When I checked my RAM, I noticed I only had 1 GB.  Checking back on my records I noticed my laptop was supposed to have 3GB. I immediately did 2 things – first I went to Amazon and luckily found out that 2GB only costs about $35.  Second, even though the issue was 2 years old, I decided to let the vendor know.

Having unsuccessfully used their tech support for other issues when the laptop was under warranty, I decided to email the corporate office.  Within less than 12 hours I received a reply with a case number with words in the email including “apology” and a commitment to “escalate” the issue.  Wow, I thought, they must want to investigate and understand the issue just like I do.  In my mind one of two things can explain the issue – either they sold me a laptop that accidently had the card removed somewhere in the supply chain or somebody had secretly removed the card.  Instead, I was immediately transferred to a generic out of warranty support person that said that since my laptop was 2 years old it was out of warranty.   It would cost me $398 to fix.  His callous reaction made me upset and the call went downhill from there.  The person had no interest in discussing what happened, didn’t express any empathy, he didn’t even let me know the price of an additional 2GB of RAM that I could install myself. I immediately emailed the corporate office to let them know about the interaction.  This time, there was no reply.    

I now have no idea where they stand on the issue.  One thing is clear though, they had no intention of genuinely interacting with me to either rectify the issue or explain to me what could have caused the issue.  From my perspective, they viewed each of my purchases as transactional, they appear not to care about my current frustration, and thus having a genuine conversation with the customer is currently not The HP Way to do business.   (As for Apple, after rereading their core values, I can sort of see why they did not issue a refund, as their core values are all focused on producing great products and nothing to do with customer service).

In your own firm, does your staff make decisions based on policies or are they empowered to act the way you would act if you were talking to that particular customer.  Unlike these two incidents with Apple and HP, granted - both are very large, very successful companies, if customer service matters in your business (and admittedly it might not), make sure you train employees to not only follow policy but how to break policy and even better train them in the long-term value of empathizing with your customer if you expect them to continue to do business with you.

Note: This blog was inspired by great blogs I read by two ambitious Owners/CEOs this week, one from John Dijulius on why policies are bad and one by Dan Hoffman on how great firms like Amazon and Google have recently dropped the customer service ball.

How My Daughter decided to ride the Sidewinder roller coaster at Hershey Park (or Sometimes to get where you are going you have to think about where you have been)

In early April, my wife suggested that for Easter weekend, “maybe we should take the kids to Hershey Park” which in our family means “we are going to Hershey Park for Easter Weekend, find us a hotel room.”

Over the last three years or so, we had taken our two daughters on various roller coaster rides at Sesame Place, the NJ beach amusement parks like Jenkinson’s in Point Pleasant, as well as at Disney World. Sarah, our older daughter, used to be afraid of even the most timid kid-friendly roller coaster rides.  Over time though, her feelings have changed where now she is very excited and looks forward to riding them.

Hershey Park has a number of thrilling roller coaster rides that previously my daughters would have been too small to ride.  Although we are less than 3 hours away, this is the first year it made sense to visit Hershey because our younger daughter just made the 48” cut off to be a Hershey Bar rider (a Hershey Bar rider is 48” to 54” tall) for four of these thrilling roller coasters .   On our first day at the park, we rode three and passed on the fourth even though by the end of the day there was no line for it.

The one we skipped, Sidewinder, turns you upside down multiple times and looked very intimidating.   Instead, we ended up going on some other roller coaster rides multiple times.   One particular roller coaster we rode multiple times, called the Super Dooper Looper, is a more kid-friendly version of Sidewinder, in that it also turns you upside down but only once and is not nearly as fast or as high.

The next morning, before heading over to the park, for some reason, I remembered a conversation I had about a year ago with Rob Levin, publisher of The New York Enterprise Report.

As we were discussing a presentation I was about to give to about a dozen ambitious owners about motivating them to act now towards where they want their business to be in the future, Rob mentioned that it might be helpful for these business owners to reflect on where they had been and the progress (or lack of progress) made.  “It might give your talk about making a future declaration more context, thus making it easier for them to discuss it, and making it easier for them to act upon their declaration afterwards.”

This conversation with Rob was in the back of my head as I talked with Sarah as we went through the turnstile into Hershey Park and looked at a map of the park.

“Sarah, you have come a long way since you used to be afraid of roller coaster rides three years ago.  You wouldn’t have ridden any of the rides we did yesterday, not even the Super Dooper Looper.”

Sarah thought about it and you could see her face get excited as she agreed that she had indeed come a long way.

“Daddy, which are the roller coasters that I am not allowed to ride yet because I want to ride them all?”   On the park map we went through the handful of roller coasters that required her to reach the next height milestone called Twizzler, a Twizzler rider is over 54” tall and is allowed to ride on all the roller coasters.

“How long will it take before I can go on those roller coasters?”

“Around 2-3 years,” I estimated.

Next she asked, “which roller coaster rides have I not gone on, that I am now allowed on?”   “Only one, Sidewinder,” I replied with a smile.

After the two of us completed Sidewinder together about twenty minutes later (without my wife and younger daughter – the only one they didn’t try), Sarah was very proud of herself as she exclaimed, “I can’t wait until I am a Twizzler.”

By looking back at her journey of riding roller coasters and then declaring to herself that she would ride all the Twizzler roller coasters in the park when she got older, Sarah motivated herself to take immediate action to make her declaration come true.

For your own business, are you happy with the progress made in the last three years?  Did your business reach the ambitious goals set for it three years ago, why or why not?

If you don’t know what your goals were three years ago perhaps it is time to start declaring some today.  Even better, make your declaration public!