My wife and I have been in Paris on a two week vacation, spending the holidays in one of my favorite cities in the world.  While the sights, lights, art, food, chocolate (oh yes), and all else this place has to offer have been fantastic, there was one particular thing I really wanted to share with you.

In our shopping for vegetables we encountered a produce shop and a owner/proprietor I will not soon forget.   It’s called “Le Potager Mermoz” on 36 Rue Jean Mermoz in the 8th Arrondissment.

The owner, quite simply, delivered one of the best customer service experiences I have ever received, if not the best.

Here are all the attributes he displayed on our visits there:

Proper Greeting – without fail, a hearty “bonjour monsieur“.

Meticulously Arranged & Attractive Goods – so meticulous, that you were not allowed to touch them. And the fruits & vegetables looked SO fresh.

Proper Attire – He wore a clean,  bright white coat that screamed “you can bet that I love these vegetables as much as you will love them on your table“.

One-On-One Service – You pointed out what you wanted, and he actually picked it up.

Great Packaging – He individually wrapped every vegetable like it was a delicate bunch of flowers, and packed them lovingly in our reinforced paper bag with string handles.

Patience – While we knew very little of each other’s language, and there were several people waiting in line,  he still exhibited great patience while we deliberated (and stammered through) our selections.

Handling Queues- He was very good about greeting customers as they arrived, even though he was still attending to us, and telling them he’d assist them as soon as he could.

Respect - When an older man entered the store (I would guess in his late 70’s), he immediately pulled up a chair for him, so he could be comfortable while he waited.

Positive Attitude – Smiling, gregarious, pleasant – all through the transaction.

Salesmanship – On our second time there, he showed off his recent acquisition of black truffles by inviting us to smell them (gosh, they smelled good!).

Remembering Past Buying Behavior – On that 2nd visit, he remembered the vegetables we bought the time before, and led us to them.

Valued Return Customer Treatment – He also, haltingly but sweetly, made a bit of conversation with us the second go-round,  exchanging pleasantries about our general well-being.

Thank Yous and Farewells – A heartfelt “merci“, “au revior“, and “joyeux noel“, all again with the French “sir” equivalent attached.

Proper Manners – When we left, he opened the outside door for us.

Proper Manners, II – As we were leaving, he noticed that my wife was carrying the bag of vegetables.  That was not going to stand – he took the bag and handed it to me, and said something in French roughly equivalent to “hey dude, be a gentleman and carry that bag!”.

It was a totally unique experience, and one that left an indelible impression on me.   Why couldn’t customer service always be this way?  And here’s the kicker – because we were being treated so royally and so graciously, and the produce was so clearly superior,  we GLADLY paid well beyond the supermarket rate.

Customer service, done well, is a personal experience – it’s two people, interacting, and benefiting from it. The buyer gets great value, and the seller gets the personal satisfaction of delivering the value. And, if all those elements noted above are part of the process, those benefits and go beyond value, and into the realm of lasting positive impressions, and long-time unfailing loyalty.

I only wish I could put that store, and that wonderful person, on the plane back to the states with us.  What will be coming back with us is my memory of that place, and the great lessons I received  from the Paris Produce Man.

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Bill Clinton at the World Economic Forum, 10/7/09

This is my second post of observations from the World Business Forum in NYC.   My first post , covering the 1st Day of the conference, tied all the presentations on Leadership into the theme of “sitting tall in the saddle“.

This post continues the thread on Leadership, but from a slightly different direction.   The 2nd Day speakers, particularly in the afternoon sessions, made it clear to me that a lot of effective leadership practice is hiding in plain sight.

That is, sometimes we go too deep in searching for answers.   The best illustration I can offer came from one of the speakers, the CEO of Kraft Foods,  Irene Rosenfeld.

Ms. Rosenfeld has turned Kraft around by simply making some common sense observations, and not necessary digging too deep into what I’m sure was reams and reams of data that showed the arrows pointing downward.

The one in particular that was hiding in plain sight for Kraft?

The food needs to taste good.

I know, you must be saying to yourself – isn’t that just absolutely, positively obvious – they are a food company!

But apparently it wasn’t to the previous management – Rosenfeld discovered that way too many customers really didn’t like their products.

Ooops.

That, of course, has now changed, and the ship has been righted. But not before the discovery of what had been hiding in plain sight.

It’s the use of some good ‘ol common sense that really separates the great from the good.

This was also illustrated by the closing speaker President Bill Clinton.   His speech was peppered with insights as to how he came to many of his tough decisions, and it was interesting how he would “connect the dots” with very basic observations.   For example, when talking about lending money to Mexico, he would speak of being a “Good Neighbor” just as much as he would be dig into the economic and socioeconomic data.

He also was asked about his core Leadership principles – he cited 5:

• Have a vision
• Lay out a strategy
• Get the right people to execute it
• Sell it
• Use your charisma

Nothing very complicated here  – once again, it’s usually all hiding in plain sight.

All too often the “too obvious” gets pushed aside – it can’t be that uncomplicated, could it?  We need more analysis! We need more study! We need more committees!

Nope, we just need common sense leadership.  Be a master of the obvious. You might not be crowned a genius – just as someone who “gets stuff done”.  I’ll take that any day.

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I’m part of the “Blogger’s Hub” covering the World Business Forum in New York City, and focus during the morning sessions was on Leadership.  Three well-known speakers, Bill George, Bill Conaty, and Patrick Lencioni, talked about Leadership in the context of crisis, performance, and effective team building.

Their presentations were all very good in their own right (Lencioni in particular was wonderful, and darn funny to boot), but there was a common theme in my mind that bound them together:

A Great Leader Needs to Sit Tall in the Saddle.

There’s so much more to this than “hitting the numbers”.  Just like John Wayne on his horse, leaders need to set the example for all to follow, by doing things like

• Facing reality (George)
• Not taking on the world alone  (George)
• Making sure the team is prepared for the long haul (George)
• Following your True North  (George)
• Showing commitment (Conaty)
• Demonstrating values (Conaty)
• Always telling it like it is (Conaty)
• Balancing passion and compassion (Conaty)
• Over communicating (Lencioni)
• Encouraging truth telling among your charges (Lencioni)
• Promote and enjoy conflict (Lencioni)
• Preach joint accountability (Lencioni)

It takes character, guts, resolve, and yes, even a little swagger to pull all this off.    It can’t be for the faint of heart.

These are the kind of things they don’t teach you at business school.   Each  speaker acknowledged their obviousness, but yet admitted their difficulty.

How can something that looks so simple on paper actually be so hard to just step up and do?

Because in reality, it’s hard.  Unless you can stand tall in that saddle.

Giddy-up!

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This week Starbucks launched its new instant coffee,  “VIA”,  to much fanfare.  On two consecutive days, I was handed free samples of the product as I purchased my daily lattes.

I tried both varieties of Colombian and Italian Roast, and they were surprisingly good. Just as good or better than my office’s “by the cup” pod machine.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but be disappointed by what Starbucks and its founder Howard Schultz has done – launched its self-proclaimed “product of last resort”.

According to Eric Felten of the Wall Street Journal, just a few years ago the Starbucks director of research and development uttered that line at a conference – because instant coffee was way “off the target” from the core of its business.

It was a complete and total capitulation to the one powerful thing that had always worked against the Starbucks ideal, especially as it grew by thousands of stores – speed.

Today, fast always wins. This is a society where the concept of “lingering” is rapidly going the way of the dinosaurs.  The Starbucks store, for me, has been quite the laboratory to observe this change over the past 15 years.

I can remember the smell, the music, the zen vibe, and the relaxed “no rush” atmosphere in 1994 when I first made my daily visits. Nobody hovered around the barista like vultures circling their prey.

Today, the music is turned way down.  The lights are brighter and the zen is long gone.  And 9 out of 10 of us are using our handhelds impatiently as we hurry the barista along.  We want our lattes, and we want them now.

From that perspective, I can’t  blame Starbucks for launching this product of last resort – it’s just tapping into our speed culture.  Fast and faster.  I even find myself growing more and more inpatient about waiting for just about anything – even if a Google search takes more than 5 seconds.

Deep down, I don’t want fast to win – so when one of the last bastions of  “the experience rules” throws in the towel, I truly worry about what’s to come.

As I hover around the barista and buy a few packets of VIA.  Life can be such a contradiction……

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Columnist Alina Tugend is tired of hearing about “finding our passion” in the workplace.  She wonders if we are falling into a “trap of believing that our work, and indeed our lives, should always be fascinating and all consuming”.

That’s the interesting theme of a piece she wrote this past Sunday in the New York Times that is well worth your time.

It is filled with great little tidbits on how various Professors, Psychologists, and Authors look at job fulfillment, and the role of passion in achieving it.

The point she makes amongst these opinions is that not everything we do in the workplace is going to be “passion-worthy” – there is a lot of routine, boring, and outright unpleasant stuff that happens along the way.  But that shouldn’t stand in our way of a general sense of career enjoyment, or finding some meaning in what we do.

So instead of shooting for all passion & glory, all the time, perhaps there is a more reasoned way to approach it.

One way that made a lot of sense to me in the article was offered by Professor Csikszentmihalyi, and his concept of “flow” – or “a state of complete involvement“.   Put simply, it’s being so absorbed in your work that you lose track of time.

I could completely relate to this – during the part of my career when I was unhappy, I was always looking at the clock – counting the minutes to when I could go home.  These days, where I’m in a job I like, time just totally flies, and there never seems to be enough of it.   So my “flow” is pretty good – not perfect, but good.

Then there’s dopamine.   That’s what gets released in our brain when we accomplish goals – and makes us feel good.  Professor Gary Marcus concludes that “the way to be happy in life is to set a series of achievable goals”.    Fair enough, but the purpose of the goal setting does factor into it – otherwise everybody would be fulfilled in life by winning at video games instead of cracking the genetic code or inventing a new Social Media software.

Finally, there’s “the love of the job”- to Tugend’s point, it’s pretty rare when we absolutely love everything that happens on any given day on the job.    It’s more like a series of trade offs that lead to a generalized good feeling – as she quoted Byron Wolt, “if you love what you do, what you don’t love about it isn’t so bad“.

In the end, Tugend concludes that perhaps searching for passion is “not so bad”- but it has to be infused with a sense of realism that understands that it’s not going to be there all the time.  In fact,  it seems like any way you look at happiness in the workplace, be it through passion, or “flow”, or goal setting, or love, if we can indeed keep our sense of perspective through it all, we don’t need 100% of any of it.

How much DO we need?

Tugend quotes Author Lawler Kang as saying – “if 85 percent of what you’re looking for is there, that’s great“.

85 Percent – that’s sounds about right to me.

Let’s call it the “85% Happiness Solution – Because The World Ain’t Perfect (and Neither Are We)”

Sounds like a pretty half-full way of looking at it, don’t you think?  Thanks Alina for a great article, and the inspiration. 

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“That’s what capitalists do”.

I was scanning the business pages of the NY Times yesterday when I read a column by Joe Nocera about the recent government bank bailout.    It questioned whether those banks, in the wake of their rescue,  have a responsibility to “do what’s right for the country” and in essence be “kinder, gentler banks trying to repay their debt to society“.

Nocera noted that the folks in the bank executive suites have the same perspective as anyone running a business – their job is to maximize profits, and not necessarily be thinking of the public good.   Hence the line at the beginning of this post – “that’s what capitalists do“.

This is the classic tug-of-war between capitalism and altruism, and while the bank bailout is a very large scale version of it, playing out in front of a world-wide audience, this tightrope gets walked on nearly every day by nearly every business owner and manager out there.

Especially in a service business.  Put in this context, “service business”  is very nearly an oxymoron – serving others while at the same time acting like a capitalist.

Can this fine line be successfully navigated?  I believe it can, but clearly a few compromises have to be made.    We can’t serve everyone the same way and expect to be profitable.  We need to have a standard of service that is appealing relative to the price, but yet cost effective.

The interesting thing is that there is a wide-spectrum of relativism at work out there, where price considerations can almost obliterate any service obligation.   A great example I saw recently in the NY Times was the case of the airline Ryanair.   They are doing well financially, but not because of their service  – here’s the view of their CEO, Michael O’Leary:

Mr. O’Leary said in a recent interview. “Our customer service is unlike every other airline, which has this image of, ‘We want to fall down at your feet and you can walk all over us and the customer is always right,’ and all that nonsense.”

By contrast, Mr. O’Leary continued, Ryanair promises four things: low fares, a good on-time record, few cancellations and few lost bags.

“But if you want anything more — go away! Will we put you in a hotel room if your flight was canceled?” Mr. O’Leary asked rhetorically. “No! Go away.”

Not a lot of altruism there.

But this is what capitalists do – because the end game is profit.

As consumers we really do wish we could hold every business up to the same altruistic standard, in that we all should be dealt with in a certain “spirit of service” that is indeed kinder and gentler, and everything is completely transparent and fair.

As businesspeople, however, we have to shift our perspective, and say yes, we want to do that, but only to the extent we can and remain profitable.

Those that can walk this tightrope successfully are the glue that holds a capitalistic society together – filling common needs as well as filling pockets.

It ain’t perfect, and sometimes we need our government to intervene – the bank bailout saga certainly illustrates that – but it’s hard to argue with where this version of capitalism has taken us, and will take us, as long as this delicate balance with altruism can be sustained.

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I hear a lot about the “ROI of Social Media” these days, and every time I do, I cringe.

Over last 27 years I’ve done a ton of ROI calculations determining if an investment of “X” in something (call it “Y“) could, or did,  produce an adequate return on that investment, based on predetermined thresholds.

So, if my threshold was 10%, and my X investment in Y returned 12%, I was either good to go or popping a champagne cork.

Let’s now consider “Social Media“.     Here’s my first problem – most people aren’t buying these platforms, that is, unless you are a venture capitalist that owns a piece of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,  or anything else out there.

They are just USING them.  For free (or pretty close to it).

There goes the “X”, because  there’s no investment,  and the “Y”, because there is no something that has been bought – in one fell swoop.

And thus, the cringe.

What Then, Is A Better Value Evaluator?

I believe a far better way to characterize the potential value of using Social Media is to look at its Utility.

That is, its “fitness for some purpose or worth to some end” (thank you Webster’s dictionary).

Because when you get right down to it, as I’ve said in this space before, Social Media is just another way for humans to communicate.  Right up there with television, e-mail, texting, telephones (wireless and wireline), morse code, tin cans and good ‘ol snail mail.

What’s more, we have (at least) a million potential “ends” for communication – and if you pay close enough attention to your social media streams, you’ll see quite a lot of them.

Pick An End, Any End

For this exercise, let’s just pick one of them, one that I’m pretty familiar with -customer service.

To provide the kind of customer service I want (where the level of satisfaction is such that the lifetime value of those customers is maximized), I need to communicate well.  I need to be available to my customers to talk about their problems, discuss their bills, take payments,  sell services, or even talk about the weather.

I need forms of communication that work well towards that end – they need to have high Utility to me.

The Utility Test

Now let’s put Social Media to the customer service utility test.   On the positive side, it’s probably already being used by  a significant number of my customers, which combined with the relative ease of using the tool means that we have good accessibility.    Next, the negatives – this communication is being done “in public” (so good and bad is exposed),  with inherent limitations on the expansiveness of our discourse (i.e. to use Twitter as an example, I only have 140 characters).

The bottom line on Social Media’s Utility for customer service?   I believe it is poor-to-marginal- we can score some PR points for “being there” and showing empathy and courtesy, but when it comes to actually solving problems and answering questions in a meaningful way, we’ll end up “moving the conversation” to the traditional means anyway (most likely through a telephone, or a face-to-face discussion).

With this Utility determined, I can put it up against the Utility of all the other forms of customer service communications and allocate my resources accordingly (which means we won’t be shutting down our call center anytime soon).

This is just one example – I could also put Social Media through its Utility paces for me personally – and given the way I use it, I’d give it high marks for finding and forging friendships, promoting my blogging activities, learning more about the world I live in,  and indulging my love of  music and music trivia.

Now About That Screwdriver…..

What I hope is apparent here is that Utility carries with it a large doses of subjectivity and personal preference -things that are hard to measure on a pure objective scale (like an ROI), but really should be evaluated when deciding whether or not to use something.

Which is the beauty of assessing Utility for Social Media- it just boils down to, how well does it work as a means to your end?   And within that beauty lies the reason behind the ever-growing popularity of the medium – its seemingly endless number of uses for a corresponding number of ends.

It’s just another tool in the communications toolbox – and when was the last time you tried to calculate the ROI of a screwdriver?

Think Utility instead, and send the ROI back to your stock portfolio.

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After doing something for 27 years, you’d think that you could figure it all out and know how to “do” it really, really well, and gain fulfillment too.

That “something” for me is work (aka what we do to make a living).

And nope, I haven’t quite figured it all out yet – which I gather isn’t unusual given that a Google search for “Secret of Work” produced no less than 181 Million entries.

Keep in mind I’m not talking about the classic cause and effect here – that is, the objective results of the labor, which is in most cases contributing to profit or loss.

What I’m searching for looks inward, to the effects of the work on ourselves, our psyches, and our overall feelings about life.

Yep, the deep stuff.

The problem is, we can get so tied up in the “day-to-day” nuts and bolts activities that are part of our daily working lives that we rarely can come up for enough rarefied air to ponder those larger issues.

Occasionally, however,  this higher level reflection can happen, and this past week was one of those times for me.

It was the confluence of several things – a funeral, a business trip, a management meeting, and a conference – that created a perfect learning environment.

And here’s what I learned, in very simple terms:

• Work must be done with passion
• The work must be for a cause greater than ourselves
• It ultimately must be fun, or it isn’t worth doing

What’s more, these 3 are truly a set - that is, you can’t just get to 2 out of 3 and call it good.

We need to get to the fun part, and that’s all too often neglected.  It’s an underrated piece of the puzzle.

For example, how often does someone ask  “Are you having fun?” at your workplace?

I suspect it’s a rarity,  since “fun” is all too often associated with “unproductive“.    Where the work itself can’t possibly be the cause – if someone is enjoying themselves too much, it must be because they spent more time playing video games than cranking out spreadsheets.

In other words, there’s a “fear of fun”.

But here’s where my lessons of the past week come in.

I see “fun” when the passion and the cause are making a difference – when a group of people are continually hitting targets and raising bars – in other words, to use a sports analogy, they are “winning”.

And who doesn’t enjoy being a winner? Think of the camaraderie, the smiles, the feelings of satisfaction, the pats on the back, and yes, the celebrations.

That’s FUN, all right.   Better than getting a high score on Tetris.

I realized that I don’t fear this – in fact, I do regularly ask my team if they are having fun.

Because I’m confident that the foundations of the “secrets of work”, the passion and the cause,  are already in place.

I just need to get them (and myself) across the goal line to the fun zone.

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by James Michener

“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both”

Yipee!

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Starbucker on Leadership

My first encounter with Zappos came a few years ago when my wife was looking for a particular pair of boots.

I had overheard a remark by a friend of mine that praised their “quick service and free shipping”, so I passed it along to her.

We haven’t bought a pair of shoes from anyone else since.

What has always set this particular retailer apart for me has been its attitude towards its customers- it’s apparent on their website, and with their people.   They just seemed to “get it” – making me happy was important to them.

And the free shipping (and on the return side, thank you) didn’t hurt either.

Of course, this appreciation as a customer led me to want to look a little harder at this company, as a businessperson and leader, to find their “secret sauce”.

I didn’t have to look any farther than the CEO’s office.

Zappos is led by someone who had the audacity to put the pursuit of happiness ahead of market share, inventory turnover, margins – heck, ahead of everything.  Happiness is Zappos “raison d’etre”.

That person is Tony Hsieh, and you can find an excellent piece on him in the latest edition of Inc., written by Max Chafkin.

Profiled as someone “widely regarded as one of the most innovative Internet marketers of all time“, he has created a very successful company in a seemingly unorthodox way – passionately and relentlessly  promoting a culture of “personal emotional connections“  with customers and with each other.

He had been through the ups and downs of high-tech entrepreneurship, and wanted to create a place that would be built to last, celebrating the life fulfilling potential of a happy workplace.

Hsieh was convinced that if he was successful in building the right culture, the profits would come – and come they have.

This culture construction had several key components:

• A collaborative summation and discussion of key company values, assembled into a book each new employee receives (this book has grown to 480 pages since each employee is asked to make a contribution)
• Pervasive transparency of all key goals & objectives, both short-term and long-term (i.e. you can’t miss them because they are plastered all over the building)
• Innovative and comprehensive training programs that emphasize knowledge of company history and values (they are famous for offering $2,000 for new trainees to leave the company)
• Emphasis on the social aspect of the workplace (they actually require their managers to spend 10 to 20 percent of their time “goofing off” with the people they mange)
• Confidence and trust in the employee’s ability to creatively,  intelligently, and efficiently please customers with a minimum of process and structure (for example, there is no scripting, and they do not track call times)

Hsieh intends to expand this formula beyond shoes – he’s mentioned hotels and banking as possibilities – and I suspect he’ll continue to find success, as long as his culture constructs continue to be applied.

That’s the big if – as other similar visionaries have learned (Howard Schultz of Starbucks is a great example), the outside pressure to put profits first can be very, very strong.

I hope he can resist that pressure, for he’s showing us a better way forward.- one that blends people, passions, purpose, and profit.

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If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 3+ years using Social Media, it’s this:

When it comes to being read and relevant, it’s all about value.

Of course, “value” means something different to every person looking for it.  And some “value targets” are easier to hit than others.

But if there’s a pattern to be found here, it’s this:  before you can hit your bullseye with consistency, you have to throw a lot of darts.

So it stands to reason that those who start on the outside of the target board and work their way in stand a much better chance of achieving their ultimate value goal, whatever that may be.

I’ve illustrated my target progressions above.  I’d suspect that yours is similar, although the exact values and the number and size of the circles (i.e. the ease of achievement) may vary.

My first ring is “Keep My Faith in Humanity” - that is, I value things like common courtesy, respect, hellos, goodbyes, and general adherence to the Golden Rule.  A big circle because it’s pretty easy to hit, and it doesn’t need a whole lot of substance behind it.  Note: this needs to be personalized more often than not, however – automated replies are better than none, but not much better.

Next is “Make Me Laugh (or Sing)” – I highly value the ability to laugh and take a lighthearted view of things.  I also love music and it’s ability to effect mood. So, if you post or tweet  something that can make me smile (or reach for my iPod), you are hitting that target.  This is also fairly easy to do, since there are a zillion jokes and songs out there.  But it’s good practice for the next level.

Information is important to me – and so, the ability to “Inform Me” is an excellent value target.  I can’t read every blog or every newspaper out there, so when someone points me to something that I ultimately find interesting, they’ve certainly created good value.  The degree of difficulty has certainly gone up at this point, because to do this the provider has had to learn a few things about me.

Which leads to the next level, “Teach Me”.  I love to learn new stuff, and if by informing me you also add to my knowledge base or understanding in a meaningful way, you have hit quite a value target.   You are establishing yourself as a reliable source of learning – and you are ready to zero in a little further.

Now that you’ve piqued my interest in what you have to say by being polite, funny, and most informative, you can “Inspire and Challenge Me” . You post or Tweet something that is so good that it spurs me to action, or really forces me to sit back and reexamine myself.  That’s quite a degree of difficulty, because I have to trust that you are being sincere, and not calculating, or not being provocative for its own sake (or to drum up attention to yourself).

When trust is established you can go for my ultimate value target – to “Sell Me” something.   Your product, your service, your book – whatever it is.  Because you’ve thrown enough value darts at me you will begin to hit the center mark with your pitches.  Because  I believe what you have to say, I’ll either buy from you, or, if it’s really a product I already have or don’t need, I’d be happy to recommend it to somebody else.

Can someone hit my center target right off the bat, or with only a few hits off-center?  Just like darts, its always possible, but unless it’s the best written and presented sales pitch I’ve ever read, I’ll ignore it. (Kinda sounds like direct mail or e-mail and Twitter spamming, doesn’t it?).

Finding and hitting all of my value targets from the outside in takes a lot more work, but it’s really worth it.  Ask all the folks I’ve met through Social Media that I have bought something from, or hired as consultants.

And as I’ve noted, I bet there are a lot of other people like me out there.

Darts, anyone? 

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