An Unexpected Change of Plans

It was yesterday, Saturday afternoon, about five p.m.  My wife and I had a date last night.  It had been a very busy and stressful week.  Her mother had had foot surgery - not "major" in the sense of life-threatening, but certainly significant.  She was still in the hospital, recovering.  Our youngest had been dealing with exams all week (not exactly pleasant around the house!); I was scrambling to juggle several work challenges.  So I was truly looking forward to our date.

At about 5:30, my wife came downstairs and said, "My mom has had a really bad day.  I've got to go out and see her.  I'll be back in about an hour."  An hour came and went.  At 7:00 pm, I got a text message: "I'm going to have to stay with her tonight.  Please bring me out some dinner later."

No!  I texted her back: "You're kidding, right?"  We had a brief exchange, and it was clear.  She wasn't kidding, she was going to spend the evening at the hospital with her mother, our date was off.  No!  I was so looking forward to our date.  I had worked so hard all day and all week.  I had made special plans for us.

After about 15 minutes, my mood changed.  I was furious!  I slammed around the house, told the girls we needed to go get something to eat, and to take two cars because one of us was going to have to take things out to mom.  My eldest helped pull together her mom's overnight things, and, still fuming, we headed out to dinner.

We ordered Mom's dinner and started to chat about how to deal with the evening.  I thought that, perhaps, I could go out to the hospital and spend some time there.  Then I remembered that I had promised to clean carpets in a couple of rooms before guests came tomorrow.  Well, I could do that tonight and my daughter could take the food and clothes to mom.  That would work - we'd all get to do something needed, and I'd get something done unexpectedly early in the process.

But I still wasn't happy.  In fact, I was downright moody and grumpy.  It looked like something productive was going to come out of the evening, but I still wasn't happy.

We finished dinner and headed off in our different directions.  It felt like things might work out.  Not exactly as initially planned but, you know, okay.  I got the carpet cleaning equipment, did my work, and, all in all, dealt reasonably well with our unexpected change of plans.

This morning, it hit me. I had experienced a classic case of "Negative Resistance to Change."  Shock, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Testing, and Acceptance.  All within a two hour period.  (I must acknowledge, as always, that much of my Change Management training came via Daryl Conner, author of "Managing at the Speed of Change."  This model is discussed in detail in his book.  In turn, it is closely related, literally, to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's classic "Stages of Grief" model.  Daryl and Dr. Kubler-Ross collaborated at one point.  In my own defense, I have developed a few ideas things of my own along the way.)

My change was relatively minor, and so I traveled the various stages quite quickly.  The bigger the change, the more negative the perception, the longer it takes to reach acceptance.

No matter how long you have been doing something, it's nice to get reassurance that you're doing it right.  I had that happen last night - and it was completely outside a business context.

Time is the Enemy

One of the hardest lessons to learn in our connected age is to do something, rather than nothing.  This blog is a perfect example.

I won't speak for anyone else (as my wife is the exact opposite of me), but here are some of my weaknesses:

1. Analysis Paralysis - It's so easy to get data these days, and then let the data overwhelm.  It's a skill to identify what's important, pay attention to it, and discard all else
   
   
2. Demanding Perfection - When I was in school, I learned that a '95' was a great grade, but '100' was better.  Getting '100' got me a lot of positive reinforcement - so there's a tendency to try to get '100s'. That's very bad.  This issue has been noted succinctly as "Don't let the Perfect by the enemy of the Good (enough)."  It's very true.  Getting something good accomplished is far more important and beneficial than planning something great that never gets done.
   
   
3. Losing Site of Priorities - What's more important - Delivering for a client or answering email?  Drafting a blog or reviewing LinkedIn?  The first question is easy (isn't it?); the second not as much. When time is the most valuable currency, it must be spent (and saved) wisely.  I need to make sure I focus on what's important now (because it does change, depending on time and circumstances).  Are you familiar with the Agile Development Methodology?  In a lot of ways, one needs to learn to live life like that - get the most important things done first, then go to the next.  Periodically re-rank.  Continue and repeat.
   
   
4. More is Less -  Be brief.  When you can make the point in three words vs. thirty, do it.  Yes, it's hard.  When one has a tendency to verbosity (hmm, who could that be?), it's very hard.  But keeping it brief and clear has tremendous value.

And that's it for today.  Get it done, Make it Good (enough), Don't let it get in the way of more important priorities, and be brief.  Okay?

2 Bad Experiences and a Question

Quick hits as we get to the end of a busy and eventful year.

Gogo and Delta: Two terrible customer service experiences in one day

Terrible experience #1:  Gogo is a (potentially) great new service, if you haven't had the chance to try it.  Wifi in flight, allowing access to everything Internet: email, web, company portals.  But this week's experiences really have me wondering.  (Hmm, how do I do share this quickly?).

Try this:  Gogo sells its service.  People who need it, buy it.  Like me.  This month, in conjunction with Google to promote Chrome, Google's browser, Gogo is giving away the service free.  All month.  

Guess what.  That means customers who have paid for the service can't use it.  Limited bandwidth; shortened sessions.  Even worse - so overloaded, you can't even get on line.  Imagine how that makes a paying customer feel.  So, time that I expected to use productively got wasted.  Risked deadlines, delayed communications with important customers.  Great execution, guys (please, don't miss the sarcasm).

Terrible experience #2:  This one borders on unethical and perhaps even illegal.  Late last evening, I got on Delta.com to book a flight New Year's weekend.  I searched on the site and found a $169 r/t fare.  Great!  I enter in my daughter's information (I was already logged in), hit enter, put in payment information (it was quick, as my credit card is stored on the site), hit enter and - Presto! - No, not booked tickets.  A message from Delta that, in the three minutes since I searched and selected the flights, the fare had changed from $169 to $285 per ticket (what!?!?!).  Yep, over $100 increase while I was in the middle of booking and after Delta had shown me that the fare was available.  Of course, I discarded those tickets and started again.  Guess what?  THE SAME THING HAPPENED TWO MORE TIMES!  Found a fare (they kept inching higher and higher), went to book it, and - Whammo!  What a scam.  What terrible customer service!

No, I don't cut them any slack for "limited capacity."  Ticketmaster has figured it out.  Ticketmaster has a clock in the lower corner of the page.  Finish this page in x minutes or lose the seat.  It goes, different times on  each page as the transaction progresses, until the tickets are bought.  Don't tell me Delta couldn't do the same thing and protect the integrity of its searches, its ticket prices, and its reputation.  

No, I'm afraid we are seeing more and more of the companies who think they are too (pick one:) big/smart/innovative/exciting/important to fail.  I wonder what history will say about that.

The Observation...

...has nothing to do with bad customer service, but the recent deal to extend unemployment benefits.  I'm all for protecting and taking care of each other - really.  I'm pretty darn liberal that way.  But, can't we ask people to do something for the money?  So, there aren't jobs in private industry right now.  Aren't there things that people could do to help?  Can't there be programs established so the money doesn't just go for nothing?  Who knows, maybe some people would look a little harder for work if even unemployment benefits came with working hours requirements.  Isn't that what created the WPA?

On the Radio

It was a real pleasure to be one of the inaugural guests on Bernie Wolford's new radio show, Accelerator Avenue.  His first guest, Solange Warner is the founder of the World Chamber of Commerce.  And I, for some reason, was the second.  We had a great time and, it seems, put together a pretty good show!  Judge for yourself:  Accelerator Avenue radio.

How NOT to Execute A Strategy

Today is November 3, 2010, the day after a massive repudiation of the last two years.  But a repudiation of what?  The goals?  The plan?  Or the process?

Several of the commentators I've heard suggest the goals were wrong, and that's certainly possible.  Clearly, President Obama's vision was not for everyone.  In fact, I'd suggest that his goals were not aligned with those of everyone who voted against him in November, 2008 including almost everyone who calls him or herself a Republican. 

But what about those who voted for him in 2008?  What happened to the thousands and thousands of Independents who went to the polls in November, 2008 and voted for a new vision, a new approach, a new set of goals?  It's apparent that they didn't like what was happening.  They turned out in mass yesterday to vote another way.  Were they voting, however, for new goals or a new process?

Voting for new goals means they changed their mind.  It means that, once they understood the implications of the original goals, they were no longer in favor of them.  What were the implications?  It would cost too much, take too long, require too much sacrifice, require not enough sacrifice - you name it.  So, one thing that happened was that the electorate went from "Uninformed Optimism" to "Informed Pessimism."  And they "Checked Out"  (please note that the phrases in quotations are borrowed from the writings of Daryl Conner, author of (among other books) "Managing at the Speed of Change."  Daryl is one of my mentors and a true visionary in this field.).

The other option is that they hated the process.  Perhaps that was because the process they were promised was not the process that was followed.  In the months leading up to the election of November, 2008, then-candidate Obama promised bi-partisanship, reaching across the aisles, an attempt to work together.  However, it never happened.  Or, if it did, it wasn't visible to the people.  And so, a normal reaction occurred:  "You lied to us.  You said you would reach across the aisle and you didn't.  I'm mad at you.  I'm voting you out."

It's a bit unpredictable to say what would have happened if the President had made visible and constant efforts towards bipartisanship - there are so many dynamics and variables at play.  But I'd be willing to bet that yesterday's results would have been somewhat, if not significantly, different.

You may disagree.  Here's the trump card:  I think the American people are smart.  They know it took years to get into the mess we're in today, and that it will take years to get out.  So, after only two years, they weren't voting on the success or failure of the programs - they know that there hasn't been time for new programs to make a huge impact.  They were voting on the vitriol, animus, arrogance, and downright hypocrisy that they saw for the last two years.  They didn't like the process.  They let people know it.

And two years from now, if nothing changes, they'll do it again.

Aligning Incentives with Goals: An Historic Perspective

 

Having the right incentives in place, with those incentives fully aligned to goals, is critically important to strategic success. 

I cannot tell you how often I have heard organizations complain about the "chasm" between sales and delivery, that sales sells something that implementation cannot successfully deliver.  In almost every case, we find the problem in minutes.  Getting management to have the will to make the corrections needed is the real challenge.

From NPR's Planet Money series comes one of the best and clearest stories I've ever heard about the immediate and positive impact that comes from having the right incentives in place.  Enjoy!  http://alturl.com/hy7kc

Rarely A Straight Line

One of the hottest groups in music today is Sugarland.  Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush have hit it big.  

But, success did not come easily.  Both of these great musicians, individually, have fought hard for what they have achieved.

Kristian and Jennifer have trained as musicians.  They have been in different bands, playing different genres of music. Even when they started Sugarland, it was as a trio.  Although their first album was a runaway hit, the trio had challenges and, next thing you knew, Sugarland was a duo.  The industry wondered - What next?  Was this the end of the road for Sugarland?

But over the years Kristian and Jennifer, both individually and together, kept focused on their goals.  They adjusted, changed tactics.  To start Sugarland, they moved into country music. No, country music was not where they started.  My guess (and it's only a guess) is that it wasn't necessarily where they wanted to be.  But they had clearly defined their goals, recognized a path to achieving them and, with focus, clarity, and flexibility, went after them.

And today, Sugarland is (to borrow from the title of their upcoming album) an incredible machine.  Five #1 singles.  Country Music Association Vocal Duo of the Year for the last three years.  CMT awards, ACM awards.  A Grammy.  Now, they are headliners, filling venues across the country.  All in their first 5 years of existence. 

I am sure, if you had asked Kristian or Jennifer ten years ago how they were going to become stars, you would have heard a path - and it would not have been what actually happened.  But these two musicians didn't hold tight to a tactic, insisting that was the only way for them to succeed.  No, they stayed fixed on a target, focused on a goal, kept their eyes on it - and willingly changed tactics along the way, to keep aligned with reaching their goals.  As a result, Sugarland is one of the biggest - and best - acts in music today.  As for Kristian and Jennifer, you'd have to ask them, but I'm willing to bet that they are each very close to reaching their true goals.

(Check out their newest video:  Stuck Like Glue!)