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January 2026
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HIDING IN VIRTUALITY10/31/2018 I grieve for customer service under the guise of virtuality.
Call us on the phone. Text us your opinion. Tweet your photos. Follow us on Facebook. When you want to speak to somebody to establish rapport, connection, demand attention, file a complaint, you are talking to a machine or not even a machine, nobody. Nobody knows what’s the process once the form has been filled, the phone call is made, or anything for that matter that is called reaching out. You wait for your lucky stars if they are even going to get back to you. The bigger the company, the bigger the bureaucracy and bureaucracies kill innovation and creativity. It creates pockets of fiefdom within organizations where lower-level staff or personnel are not empowered to delight and please the customer. All problems and issues get pushed to the middle management where the action is synonymous to wait out and see. I went into a job fair recently to talk to companies and organizations that are hiring and get their pulse on their industries. I asked one lady for her card, and she said, I didn’t bring any, just go to the website. Well, lady, you are not there on the website. The website has a bunch of information that is not going to give me access to someone like you that I met in person, talked about the company, and made that vital connection. The purpose of the job fair is to get to know your prospective hires, attract the best talent, and get them to know your company. Hiding behind the website is inane, and it shows how either you loathe what you do, or your company wants to be more secretive than FBI or CIA. Honestly, I don’t think I want to work for your that company.
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CHANGE MANAGEMENT BEGINS WITH YOU10/29/2018 A newly-minted CEO has a problem of changing practices within the organization. How do you do ensure the changes stick, what messages to say, what needs to be embedded, who needs to model these changes? As part of the management, these are the steps you can take.
1. Practice what you preach. You want things to be changed in the organization. It has to be communicated from the top and be modeled from the top. If people see otherwise, it is just lip service. 2. Model the changes in real-time. Don’t put that in a plan, procedure, policy, or manual, only to be left in a 3-ring binder somewhere. Changes in practices should be implemented on a regular, consistent basis, over time, ensuring clear alignment, focus, and synergy by all stakeholders. 3. Let the best employee model it! I say that, let their peers start to model those changes that the management seek. Employees learn from each other, and the best/or the most influential get to showcase that changes are their friends, not their enemies. 4. What’s in it for me? Do you need to change how people talk to their customers? How the organization plan for the future? How you do want to implement the services? The management has to showcase that with these changes, the organization will hit its targets, and targets being met means profitability and sustainability in the long run. A profitable and sustainable organization takes care of its employees and employees reciprocate the gesture. 5. The changes you want to see should manifest in their performance. Everyone’s performance needs to be evaluated by the outcomes you want to see. Without the measurement, who cares whether it gets done or not! And the CEOs and the management team’s performance needs to get evaluated too. No sacred cows. These steps will ensure that changes stick and become the norm, not the aberration. You can’t change things over time, but you can start replacing old habits with good habits. It is the same with organizational entities
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PROBLEM-SOLVING IS NOT INNOVATION10/24/2018 A lot of organizations want to “wing” it all the time. Okay, for the first few years, it seems like the need to produce or demonstrate action is very important, but disorganized action leaves much to be desired. The disorganization becomes the bane of the organization. When things plateaued, then the conversation becomes “how can we make it better?”
There is a lot of romanticism regarding being ‘grounded up’ but what does it mean: - Being participatory and democratic - Being consultative and egalitarian - Being able to pluck the low hanging fruit - Being able to be flexible and nimble - Being able to wing it! While these are grand and noble things to pursue, they can be used as avoidance measures to accomplish the following, for example: -Stretch the organization systems to focus on strategic rather than popular; -Plan for long-term than short-term, including delaying short-term pleasures and gains for long-term stability and growth; -Increase the commitment of Board, staff, or Steering Committee to aspire for the systems-wide thinking and deliberate attempt to take a stab on things, not just to wander from one initiative to another; -Increase uncertainty but decrease the level of politics that is blocking any meaningful organizational change to happen; -destabilize conservative views, offer new thinking, and increase executive leadership from that of being an administrative manager to a leader; Innovation rarely occurs in the everyday problem-solving. Putting out fires increases your level of adrenalin but rarely gets you to your ultimate destination. Strategic focus is more needed when the times are tough, the money is low, friends have left, and there is a room for mistakes. But I guess, it's not common sense. Let me know what you think. |
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