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GPS4Leaders

by Ron Potter

Over the last couple of years, I have been working with a team of people to bring some of our (myself and other coaches on the team) experiences to users in an app.  I would like to share a video with you about that journey.

GPS4Leaders

Good GPS devices perform three functions:

  • Show you where you are
  • Show you where you’re going
  • Give you the best route to get there.

GPS4Leaders performs the same functions.  It will show you where you are as a team through

  • Personal Assessments
  • Team Dynamic Assessments

It will show you where you’re going through

  • Models of great teams, leaders, and cultures

It will give you the best route to get there

  • By talking team dynamic assessment, showing you where to focus and progress towards becoming great teams, leaders, and culture

Cost-Effective

GPS4Teams (including two of the four modules of GPS4Leaders) is very cost-effective.  At $150/year/person it will cost only a fraction of a good executive or team coach.   However, our goal is not to replace the good executive or team coach, it’s to help them be much more effective by focusing their work and requiring less of their time to help you grow teams, leaders, and cultures.

Visit GPS4Leaders.com

Join us today to help grow your organization.

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BlogFacing AdversityRegrets

Regrets—Text to Corinthians

by Ron Potter

We started off these two blog series with Paul’s text to the Corinthians.  He listed the following items:

We then looked at Daniel Pink’s book The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. Pink identifies the four core regrets:

  • Foundation
    They begin with an irresistible lure and with incredible logic.
  • Boldness
    Thwarted possibility of growth.   The failure to become the person—happier, braver, more evolved, than we could have been.
  • Moral
    Deceit, infidelity, theft, betrayal, sacrilege.
  • Connection
    Meaningful relationships.

Together, they make some interesting connections.  In Paul’s letter, we experience great difficulties and painful points in our lives.  But in the end, they don’t break us.  We are not crushed, driven to despair, forsaken, or destroyed.

In Pink’s book, the four regrets of foundational, boldness, morals, and connection are capable of breaking us and in all cases are self-inflicted.  In Paul’s writing, the pain and suffering are no more or less than those identified by Pink.  However, in Paul’s letter, there is a sense that these things happen in everyday life.  While we should examine our own behavior and beliefs to determine if we are contributing to the affliction, perplexion, persecution, and personal destruction put forth by Paul—in the end, it may have nothing to do with our own behavior.  Daniel Pink says that it essentially has everything to do with our personal behavior.

Regrets: Self-Inflicted

If you look at each of Pink’s regrets, there is a self-infliction:

    • Foundational:  It starts with an irresistible lure.  This may be food, sex (also mentioned in the moral section), or materialistic desires.  I’ve mentioned that my irresistible lures are new cars (I’ve had a new one every three years over the past 50 years).  And watches.  The self-inflicted part happens when we let our logic run ramrod over knowing that certain things are just wrong.  I have an incredibility logical mind.  I can convince myself that almost anything can be explained through logic.  And I’m good at it.  My self-infliction is in allowing my logical brain to convince myself that my logic overrules irresistible lures.  I’m just too “smart” to be dictated by my feelings.
    • In the boldness category, Pink makes the point that we’re just not bold enough to try new things.  I’ve had three major careers since graduating from engineering school.  The first was walking steel 160′ in the air.  The second was developing a software company at the beginning of the microcomputer age.  The third was TLC (Team Leadership Culture) consulting all over the world.  A lot of people would say to me, “I couldn’t do that, I was never qualified.  How were you able to accomplish three different careers and work all over the world?”  It’s because I was bold and willing to try new and different things.  I never felt qualified either.  It just seemed like the new and bold thing to do at the time.  Our lack of boldness is self-inflicted when we feel that we must be qualified first.  If you’re bold in trying new things, you’re never qualified.
    • Moral.  In this one, I focused on sacrilege.  It doesn’t have to be a religious issue.  Sacrilege means “violation or misuse of what is regarded as sacred.”  What do you consider as sacred?  Violating it will cause suffering.
    • Connection.  I have at least three groups of good friends.  Two of the groups are (or were) centered in Ann Arbor where we lived for 35 years.  One group is built around our GPS4Leaders App.  We’ve gone through good times and bad but have stuck together for several years.  The second ground of guys have given ourselves the name “Space Cadets.”  This is a group from several professions and we spend our time discussing clients and how to add the best of who we are to help them grow and become better.  I feel very close to this group.  We also moved to Grand Rapids, MI, a few years ago to be close to one daughter and our two grandchildren (our other daughter and grandkids live around the world and are currently in Tunisia).  We are now a part of a Grand Rapids church and have developed several friends there.  We’re very blessed with all of these connections.

Pain: Everyday and Self-Inflicted

Paul talks about the difficulties that we face in this world.  If we have examined ourselves and feel we’re seeing everything clearly, these are difficulties that we face just because we live here.

Pink, on the other hand, talks about regrets being self-inflicted.  We can avoid that by examing ourselves and our motives.  It often takes that close friend who we trust who is not afraid to point out our flaws and shortcomings.  But we must have someone that we’re that close to and who is willing to tell us what they are seeing in our behavior.  Avoid self-inflicted pain—the world is full of enough pains for us without the ones we cause ourselves.

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BlogLeadership

Oxygen – Part I

by Ron Potter

Have you ever been near drowning?  When I was a kid I don’t know how “near” I was but I was afraid that I was drowning.  Swimming at our local swimming hole I got stuck under the 55 gal drum that we had used to create a raft.  There was a point when I thought I was done for but eventually broke free and surfaced to suck and gulp oxygen into my lungs.  That oxygen gave me my life back!

Project Aristotle

in 2012 Google set out on the task of figuring out which teams performed the best and why.  They called it Project Aristotle.  The main researcher at the time was Abeer Dubey.  He said, “At Google, we’re good at finding patterns.”  The problem was that they didn’t find any solid patterns.

Then they looked at the work of Amy Edmondson at the Harvard Business School.  Amy and her team found something they called Psychological Safety.  Psychological Safety meant that team members felt safe for interpersonal risk-taking.  Team members felt confident that they would not

  • Be embarrassed
  • Rejected or
  • Punished for speaking up

They were safe within the team!

This type of team climate is characterized by

  • Interpersonal Trust
  • Mutual Respect

Work Rules

Now comes a book titled Work Rules by Laszlo Bock.   Laszlo leads Google’s People Operations.  Laszlo does a good job of summarizing the findings during that time of searching for what makes the best teams.

Oxygen

So what does this have to do with Oxygen?  In my 30+ years as a coach and consultant to leadership teams, I saw too many people who were going through their days feeling like I did when I was underwater and running out of oxygen.  I experienced this first during one of my summer jobs during college.  It was in a factory and I would watch the employees go through the shift like they were short of oxygen.  Then as soon as the whistle blew, it was like sucking in that oxygen when my head first broke the surface of the water.  They had new life.  They were energized.  They couldn’t wait to get going on whatever it was that gave them oxygen.

Project Oxygen Finding

Laszlo breaks the results into eight “Project Oxygen Findings”

  1. A good coach.
  2. Empowers the team and does not micromanage.
  3. Expresses interest in and concern for team members’ success and personal well-being.
  4. Is productive and results-oriented.
  5. Is a good communicator – listens and shares information.
  6. Helps with career development.
  7. Has a clear vision and strategy for the team.
  8. Has key technical skills that help him/her advise the team.

I’m going to ask forgiveness from Laszlo at this point but as I categorize these elements into my mental model (Team Leadership Culture) I see many of them fitting into the Leadership category more than the pure Team category.

This is not to say they are incorrect, it’s just a different mental model.

A Good Coach

Future posts will cover each of the eight findings but I’ll close today’s blog with the number one finding – A Good Coach.

Why is a good coach necessary?  Can’t teams just get better on their own?  Do they really need that outside source to figure this out?

The answer to these (and other Team questions) is yes, but!  As good as teams get, sometimes it’s valuable just to have an outside observer and someone who has no fear of voicing opinions.  Good coaches can do that.

One of the projects that I’ve talked with you about in the past is our GPS4Leaders app.  It has been our opinion right from the start that an app will never replace the need for a good coach but can go a long way toward bringing a team closer to the Trust and Respect levels that is required for strong teams.

Project Oxygen Finding

Over the next few weeks, I’ll unpack each of the findings from Project Oxygen.  Stay tuned.

 

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BlogCulture

Zoom Fatigue

by Ron Potter

My first regret with Zoom is that I didn’t invest in the company in the early days.  I’ve been a user since the early days but had no idea what was coming.  Covid increased users rapidly and the last I looked they had around a half-million users.  One more investment opportunity missed!

For this blog, I will use the word Zoom as a generic term for all of the video conference applications from Microsoft, Cisco (Webex), Google, and others.

Exhausting

Even though Zoom has become essential, the environment has become exhausting at the same time.  Why?

I’m a highly extroverted person and you would think I would enjoy the Zoom environment.  And in fact, I do prefer it to one-on-one phone calls.   And I even do OK and experience quite a bit of value in small team meetings.

But for those who are in several meetings per day and often with large numbers of participants, it’s exhausting.  I have always experienced mental fatigue deeper and harder to recover from than physical fatigue.  Zoom meetings are all focused on mental fatigue.

Evolution

We have evolved (and survived) because of our ability to understand very small expressions and understand meaning from them.  One of my pleasures is reading spy novels.  Almost all of them talk about microexpressions as a means for understanding truth, lies, confidence, fear, and other emotions.  Human communications is a combination of words, movement, timing, gestures, and others.  Scientists even have a name for all of this coordination.  They call it synchrony.

Synchrony is essential for complete communication and humans work hard to achieve it.  I believe that synchrony is essential to build trust!  It’s interesting to me that Zoom and all of its competitors are working hard to improve teamwork through this media.  I believe it was Microsoft that talked about the “art of teamwork”.  And yet, they are all looking at things that can be measured like: “Who are you meeting with?”, “How often are you meeting?”, “What time of day do you meet?”.  None of these things have anything to do with building the trust essential in good teams.

Fight-or-flight

Scientists at Stanford University found that the size of images can trigger our innate “Fight-or-Flight” state of mind.  When another person’s image looks larger and closer than others on the conference call, they can seem threatening.  Looking at a screen of nine faces where there is no coordination of closeness to screen is very different than having nine people around a conference table.  When every image is a different proportional size, the human mind is trying to figure our fight-or-flight threat.  It’s exhausting.

Feel Good Conversations

Studies also show that face-to-face conversations release neurotransmitters like dopamine.  Dopamine is linked to our feelings of pleasure.  I look forward to meeting with people one-on-one.  It feels good!

Another quote from Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction lab is “Zoom smothers you with cues, and they aren’t synchronous.  It takes a physiological toll.”

What to do

So what do we do about all of this?  So far, I’ve seen no good answer.

Virtual Apps

I’m working with a group putting together an app we call GPS4Leaders (GPS4Leaders.com).  It was originally meant to be a stand-alone app that leaders and teams could have instant access to through their phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers.  We have built the app based on years of consulting work with clients.

Since the rapid shift to virtual meetings, we are moving away from the stand-alone app to a Zoom-based app.  We’re currently working with one of the Virtual Meeting Software companies to incorporate the “trusting team” concepts into the virtual environment.  We’ll see how it goes.

Pick up the phone

If it’s impossible to meet someone directly, pick up the phone and talk together.  You can even revert to the Zoom environment but do it one-on-one, not in a group.  Talk with the other person directly.  Get to know who they are, not just what they do.  What makes them a unique individual?  What is their background?  What experiences have they had?  What are their ambitions?  Anything you can do to get to know them as human beings the better.  We are human beings, not human doings!

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BlogCulture

Science is Always Right

by Ron Potter

But scientists are not always right!  Even scientists have a perspective on the world that will shape the scientific data they see.

All too often I hear people refer to science as the answer that ends all arguments.  As a Christian, I especially dislike the one where Christians don’t believe in science.  I’m a Christian and I believe in science.  I’m not technically a scientist but I do have an engineering degree that depends a great deal on science.

Francis Collins might be considered this nation’s leading scientist.  He is currently the Director of the National Institute of Health (NIH) and a leader in the Human Genome Project.  Dr. Collins wrote a book titled, Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.

Virtual Meetings

My point in this rambling is that we are entering a new era of virtual meetings versus face-to-face meetings.  I believe this is our future.  Many companies, especially the ones with collaboration platforms such as Webex, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and others are adding technology to improve virtual meetings.  I believe they will have a positive effect on meetings but they are also claiming that this technology will create high-performance teams.

I believe they’re missing a key point.

Tech That Aims to Improve Meetings

The Wall Street Journal recently printed an article called “Tech That Aims to Improve Meetings”.  For the article, they interviewed management experts, technologists, academics, and startup founders.  They broke the article into the following categories:

  • Who’s Paying Attention?  Worker’s posture and expressions are analyzed to determine positivity and engagement levels.
  • AI to Manage the Flow with an AI-powered moderator.  It would provide feedback, facilitate flow, monitor time, and interject if someone is getting cut off or talked over.
  • A Seat at the Table: The software would assure that the meeting includes a diverse ethnic and gender balance.
  • Immersive Presentations: Participants would use virtual-reality glasses to view materials such as PowerPoint slides and others.  The goal is to have the participants flip pages, go deeper and move their heads to flip between tables, charts, presentations, and the meeting itself, eliminating the need to flip back and forth between these things on a shared screen.
  • A Fitbit for Meetings:  In this one, each participant wears a smartwatch that analysis and tells them about their personal overall performance.
  • The Virtual Office Party: This is an attempt to provide the casual chat between participants by having their avatar hear only the voices of nearby avatars as they move around.
  • Data-Driven Collaboration:  Avatars are used in this one as well to “help” people casually talk while keeping track of personal interactions between employees to help match up people across departments when needed.

A line at the beginning of the article says “Critics say elements of tools under discussion raise concerns about worker privacy and may face resistance as being too intrusive.”  I think if they had explored this one point further the conclusion may be that none of this technology will work because workers will find it too intrusive.

The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups

At the same time that WSJ article appeared, I was also reading The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle.  I found the contrast between the two documents striking.  While the WSJ article may be focused on running meetings more efficiently, that does not translate into higher performance.   In The Culture Code, it’s stated that the highly successful groups talk about relationships.  There isn’t much in the WSJ article that talks about relationships.

One section of the books talks about patterns of interaction:

“When I visited these groups, I noticed a distinct pattern of interaction. The pattern was located not in the big things but in little moments of social connection:

Close physical proximity, often in circles

    • Profuse amounts of eye contact
    • Physical touch (handshakes, fist bumps, hugs)
    • Lots of short, energetic exchanges (no long speeches)

High levels of mixing

    • everyone talks to everyone
    • Few interruptions
    • Lots of questions
    • Intensive, active listening
    • Humor, laughter
    • Small, attentive courtesies (thank-yous, opening doors, etc.)

One more thing: I found that spending time inside these groups was almost physically addictive.”

MIT’s Human Dynamics Lab

There is also an interview with Alex Pentland who runs MIT’s Human Dynamics Lab.  He said:

“If I lean a few inches closer to you, we might begin mirroring.  It only works if we’re close enough to physically touch.”

Pentland says that words are noise.  Group performance depends on behavior that communicates one powerful overarching idea:  We are safe and connected.

Safe and Connected

All the technology currently available or available in the foreseeable future may in fact make meetings more productive.  However, I currently don’t see any that help people feel safe and connected.  This will be the challenge for the near future.

GPS4Leaders

In the app we’re developing, we do get at the issues that help people feel safe and connected such as trust and relationships.  But it will still require the participants to take corrective action and make changes when the data indicates these are a problem.

Star participants and leaders of the future will be good at this!

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BlogTeam

Thankful and Discouraged

by Ron Potter

Today is the last day of 2020.  It has completely changed the meaning of 20-20 hindsight.  In fact, I hope it continues to fade in the rearview mirror.

Almost all of our Christmas cards described the rough year that was 2020.  It was a joy to hear the comments about how thankful and grateful people were through all of the difficulties.

Thankful

The things I’m thankful for include my family (all healthy and living around the world), the Lord and his personal love and forgiveness, and all the things that make life bearable or easier.   We are warm, have a roof over our head, and people beyond family around us that love and care for us as well.

Discouraged

The thing that discourages me the most from this year is the loss of human contact.  In public, we have masks between us, are able to elbow bump at the best, and have nowhere to meet.  I used to arrange to meet people for coffee on a regular basis.  And so we rely on video conference.  It’s just not the same.

All of my grandchildren do well with their video schooling.  But what they talk about the most is not being able to be with their friends.  They need human contact.  I went to a small rural school system where most of my classmates were together all the way through graduation.  We still get together annually and I truly do love these people.  We didn’t know each other in the work world where you’re measured on your productivity.  We knew each other because we were together.  We shared our life dreams together.  We share the difficulties with each other.  We encouraged each other.  We were human beings together.

What We Used to Know as Teams

Highly effective teams got to know each other as humans.  We shared together.  We journeyed together.  We accomplished outstanding things together.  If you saw someone on the team who seemed to be struggling, it was easy to take them aside, shake their hand or put a hand on their shoulder and ask, “Are you OK?”  Human touch!  None of that is possible in a video conference.

Today I hear leaders talk about how productive teams are because there is no time for this kind of thing during a video call.  It requires that you get to the topic at hand, receive updates if necessary, set the next goals, and assign the people who will be responsible.  The productivity is great!  But “team-building” is not.  Productivity may remain high for a period of time, but a highly-effective team needing to tackle very complex or innovative solutions will never be built.

Technical Solution

There are no technical solutions to solve this problem.   However, a team I’ve been working with has formed an app called GPS4Leaders to help overcome some of these issues.  While we’ll never solve the lack of face-to-face issues or overcome the need for human touch, we have focused on where the team is starting to breakdown and how to overcome that issue.  The system offers guidance in terms of where-to-look for helpful hints and offers what’s called a “Coach in a Box” to help guide the users in solving the problem they face.  But, there’s still nothing like a true human connection to build trust and overcome issues.

Best Solution for the Moment

While I’ll stand by my statement above that there is no technical solution to this problem, there are some things that I believe could help.

Let’s start with understanding the purpose of the various forms of communication we have available today.

Email

Email is the oldest and possibly the most used communication software.   However, email was intended to pass on information from one person to another or even several people at once.  It was not intended to provide psychological understanding or even humor.  It is a fact-based tool.

Text Messaging

Text messaging has likely taken over as the most used communication software.  I have to convince my grandchildren that it is not universally used and it is probably worse at providing understanding or humor… hence emojis.

Social Media

I believe that social media was originally intended to share thoughts with lots of people but it seems to me that for the most part, it has allowed people to vent and make outrageous statements that they would never consider making when they are face-to-face with someone.

None of these technical solutions is good at building trust and understand.  So what is a person supposed to do in this socially distanced world?

Pick up the Phone!

While a phone is still a technical solution that’s not quite as good as being face-to-face, it does allow for listening.  Listening for emotional clues.  Listening for understanding.  Listening to show respect for the other person.

GPS4Leaders

This is where GPS4Leaders tries to help.  Once issues are identified in the data, GPS4Leaders will encourage the team to talk through their beliefs about the issue or have one-on-one conversations for understanding, respect, and trust.

 

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BlogCulture

High Tech – High Touch

by Ron Potter

Those words keep haunting me.  They are the four words I remember from the book Future Shock.  The book was written by Alvin Toffler in 1970.  That’s 50 years ago!

Description

Wikipedia says that

Alvin Toffler argued that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a “super-industrial society”. This change overwhelms people. He argues that the accelerated rate of technological and social change leaves people disconnected and suffering from “shattering stress and disorientation”—future shocked.

Stress and Disorientation

I am familiar with these feelings.  I wrote about them recently in my blog titled “Divided” where I talked about being confused, hurting, and even angry.  I love this country and love the people in this country.  But I am feeling stress and I’m definitely disoriented.

Virtual World

Covid-19 is contributing to this stress and disorientation.  By all predictions, more than half of employees indicate that they would like to stay in the virtually connected world, rather than go back to the office.  I believe that many corporate leaders are salivating at the cost savings of shedding their physical office space by allowing everyone to continue in the virtual world of video connection, they just don’t know the real costs.

High Tech, High Touch

Toffler was emphasizing one point with these words.  You can have all the high tech you want, but without high touch, it won’t work well.  In this day of division, with many taking “sides”, what can we do to help this situation?   The answer is also in the four words: High Tech, High Touch.

Without building personal, “high touch” relationships, we don’t have a chance of solving this issue.

Virtual World Better

So, if we’re going to be in this virtual world for some time to come, how do we solve the “High Touch” issue.  Unfortunately, I don’t think we do completely.   But with some additional High Tech we can at least get focused on the issue and help people connect and build relationships if they’re willing.

I’ve been working with a group of consultants (High Touch) and technical people (High Tech) over the last couple of years in anticipation of this virtual world happening.  Even without Covid-19 impacting the world, I was seeing more and more geographically separated people working together on teams.  Through this effort, we have created a platform we call GPS4Leaders.  It’s made up of four modules:  Interact, GPS4Teams, GPS4Leaders and GPS4Culture.  We might refer to it as iTLC.

Here is a short video about the iT of iTLC.

We have designed the GPS4 modules to help virtual teams.  It can help in the following ways:

  • Identify the makeup of the team from a personality type.  Built into the system are three assessments based on Social Styles, Competing Values, and a partial Myers-Briggs.  If there is discord on the team or the teams lack the ability to make decisions, the Interact Module can help.
  • GPS4Teams will also help the team to determine where they are now and how they get to the needed future state of a highly functioning team.  This happens through team assessment and pulse surveys.
  • GPS4Teams also identifies disagreements.  While protecting individual member scores, it will show if there is Diffusion, Polarization, or an Outlier.

The best that can happen in this virtual world is to help teams focus and spend time developing understanding and relationships between members.

Reach for the Best

It’s going to be difficult to create the relationships that are required for high functioning teams.  Using the tools available can help focus the need for building these relationships.  But, it’s going to be up to the team leaders and team members to use technology to help build high functioning teams.  It looks like the only thing we’re going to have as the world changes.

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BlogCulture

We’re not in Kansas anymore

by Ron Potter

I’ve just started reading a book titled Epidemics and Society.  This book makes the point that epidemics have done more to shape society and the course of human history than wars.  This book was written before our current battle with COVID-19 was even on the radar.

What will our Future Look Like?

During this time of self-containment, I’ve had many thoughts about what our future will look like when we finally emerge for the worldwide pandemic.  My thoughts have taken me from movie theaters to the workplace and topics in between.  We’re not in Kansas anymore!

Video Connected Teams

One of the things that I believe will happen during this time is employers and employees will realize that much can be accomplished over the Internet.  While we’ve been moving this way already, this forced telecommuting may help us finally pull the trigger to use technology more broadly.

All of the collaboration software such as Microsoft Teams, WebEx for Teams, Zoom, and others are seeing this as an opportunity to push their technology farther and faster then they would have before we left Kansas.  We’re not in Kansas anymore!

Art of Teamwork

We’ve heard “Art of Teamwork” used to show that collaboration is needed as much as simply getting things done by groups of people.  In other words, there is an Art to building great teams with collaboration platforms.

A few years ago, a small group of my colleagues gathered to talk about creating an app that would help leaders form better teams.  We believe it’s more than simply adding the “art” of great teams.

We called our app GPS4Leaders (You can see more on our webpage).  In doing so, we were expressing that teams, like a good GPS system, is more than just functioning well at the moment.

Think about what a GPS system does for you:

  • Clearly identifies where you are now.
  • Helps you locate your desired destination.
  • Maps out the best route to reach that desired destination.

Where are you now?

Knowing where you are now means knowing who you are as a team.  GPS4Leaders uses four modules to help you assess your team and guide you toward the desired future.

GPS4Leaders is made up of four modules:

  1. Interact (available now)
  2. Teams (available now)
  3. Leadership (coming next)
  4. Culture (in the near future)

Knowing where you are now requires the first two modules.

Interact helps the team identify who they are as individuals and what the make-up of the team looks like when you put all the pieces together.  This is accomplished by a self-assessment looking at personality types.   You can think of these similar to the familiar DICS or Myers-Briggs.  We’re not trying to build the best assessment; we’re trying to make whatever assessment you use more visible and useful.

Teams looks at the dynamics within the team.  GPS4Teams has two assessments built-in.  But again, we’re not trying to become the best assessment in the world.  Our goal is to help you assess how your doing so that you know where you are now and your progress toward a better future team.

Leadership will be built in the near future.  This will allow teams to assess their leaders.  It will provide the same advantages as Team but be focused on the leader.

Culture will be coming in the future.  This will look at the company as a whole and determine the extent to which leaders and leadership teams are being successful in pushing positive behavior throughout the organization.

We’re not in Kansas anymore

Just like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, we are now in a very different place.  The rules and patterns of our old way of working together have disappeared.  How are we to function now?

Please visit our website today and experience how this new app will help you navigate this brave new world.

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BlogCultureCulture Series

Culture – Adaptability: Customer Focus

by Ron Potter

Customer focus is an interesting topic to me.  Henry Ford is quoted as saying “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”  He was inventing the car.  People didn’t know they needed a car.

Entirely new Product or Service

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”  Thomas Watson, president of IBM.  This was the quote from Tom Watson Sr.  It was Tom Watson Jr. that turned the punch card company toward computers of the future.

I believe Customer Focus must be driven by the Mission quadrant.  If our mission is to create something the world has never see or doesn’t know they need yet, then Customer Focus must be very selective.

I’m involved with a wonderful team attempting to create something that doesn’t exist yet.  We’re trying to take years of consulting experience from myself and a couple of other consultants and boil down the essence of building teams, being great leaders and developing great cultures into an app.  We’ve titled it GPS4Leaders.  Even though we have a great concept on how the app will work, our goal right now is to put the app in the hands of customers and let them tell us how it should look, feel and react to their use.  We’re trying to listen to the customer.

Existing Product or Service

But,

  • once the car has deeply penetrated society
  • everyone is working with computers daily (sometimes it even resides on your wrist)
  • giving you access to your Team, Leadership, and Culture progress instantly on whatever device is available at the moment

how should you then listen to your customer?

Listen to the customer from the companies position, not just your job

I recently received notice from my insurance company that my policy would be discontinued if I didn’t submit a payment immediately.  However, that particular policy is set up for automatic withdrawal, and it is the insurance company that initiates payment.  I called the company, brought the payments up to date and then asked, “Why didn’t you (the insurance company) make the automatic withdrawal?”  The answer was “I don’t know, but I’ll have someone contact you.”  I was never contacted!  The person I was talking with did their job of receiving payment and didn’t care if it happened again or not.

Listen before the customer asks

In another example, I received a regular shipment, but the shipment was short two critical pieces.  After waiting a week I called the company.  The person I talked with immediately corrected the problem and sent me the missing parts.  Did that person listen to the customer?  Sort of!

In correcting the improper shipment, the person said: “Yes, we had several shipments with this same issue, I’ll correct that for you.”

Wait a minute!  You knew you had this problem.  If fact you have several examples of it, and yet you didn’t correct my issue until I called you to see why there was a problem!

Companies that are good at listening to their customers make corrections before the customer calls them.

Listening may be unique, but it requires focus

Each company may have unique issues around listening to its customers.  An emergency room will have very different issues from a vitamin company.  A parts supply company will have different issues than a new car dealership.  You will likely need to customize your listening skills to your particular situation.  Just make sure this is a leadership issue, it’s everybody’s job; it is not the domain of a customer service department!

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If you don’t know where you’re going any road will get you there.

by Ron Potter

That is a quote from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol.

I like the Yogi Berra version better. “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might wind up someplace else.” I don’t know if a famous person also said, “If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know where to turn next.” Maybe that’s just something that came out of my head. But, you’re getting the idea. Where are you going and where are you now

Those are the questions?

Are we there yet?

When our girls were young we lived in the western United States. Once or twice a year we would make the 1,600-mile trip back to Michigan to visit family. IN A TOYOTA! Averaging 50 miles per hour with stops, that was a 32-hour trip.

Within an hour of a very early departure time, from the back seat would come the question “Are we there yet?” After banning that question on the first trip, I needed to come up with a constructive alternative. Giving each girl a detailed map of our entire trip (in the days before Google Maps) I allowed them to ask, as many times as they wanted, “Where are we?”

In addition to becoming good map readers, it soon became apparent to them that this was going to be a long trip. The frequency of questions from the back seat dropped dramatically.

Corporate Roadmaps

Years later, working with several clients who were making heroic efforts to become the best they could be, it became apparent to me they were asking the same question “Are we there yet?” Without any real understanding of their destination or where they were on their journey, they needed a map.

We began by describing a simple five-step map. I asked them to describe, for their business or focus, entry-level behaviors and skills all the way up to world class behaviors, skills, and impact. Now, we had a “map” and we could ask the next question “Where are we now?” It always amazes me how consistent they were identifying their current location along the journey once the journey was mapped out.

You Are Here

Once we had their “You are Here” marker, it was easy to identify the adjustments and improvements they needed to reach the next level of their journey. Once the next steps were identified, a realistic time frame for accomplishing the changes was also much clearer. And, just like our long-ago road trips, the anxiety levels dropped, everyone focused on being productive in a reasonable amount of time. Soon enough we were once again asking, “Where are we now?” and mapping out our next steps.

Do you have a map?

Do you know where you are on the map? I’m part of a team creating an app to help leaders and teams determine what their journey looks like and where they are now. It can be thought of as a GPS for Leaders. I’ll keep you informed as we progress but you can start today. Describe your journey and figure out where you are today.

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