Confirming SERVICE Value: Measure the Specifics

Jun 25, 2013 | Sales, Marketing & Customer Service

As businesses look for ways to cut costs while maintaining or improving profitability, I'm hearing more and more about “identifying Value” in our work processes and in our businesses overall. Identifying “Value” in its most basic form means identifying those services you perform, or those production steps that occur, that create a benefit to your customers. As a means of cost-cutting, most businesses look for ways to minimize non-value-added steps. As managers, we try to cut any step...

Building Business Relationships- “Good Enough Never Is”

Jun 11, 2013 | Sales, Marketing & Customer Service

I received a call recently from one of my client’s – let’s call him “Bruce”. Bruce owns a technical services firm. Bruce had just received a letter from one of his long-standing customers – and his customer wasn’t happy. Apparently, one of Bruce’s technicians had been sent out to fix the customer’s problem – and he did fix it very quickly. However, when the customer asked the technician what he'd done, the technician replied – “It’s pretty technical. You wouldn't understand.” The technician...

Are Your Employees Held Hostage or Held Accountable?

Jun 4, 2013 | Leadership Development

A client called me recently to say he'd just finished reading a paragraph from Jack Welch’s book “Jack – Straight from the Gut” to his staff. The section he’d read outlined Mr. Welch’s thoughts on the importance of “Informality” as a key leadership skill. As Jack Welch describes it, “Bureaucracy strangles. Informality liberates. Creating an informal atmosphere is a competitive advantage. Bureaucracy can be the ultimate insulator. Informality isn't about first names, unassigned parking spaces,...

Are You Doing What You’re Paid To Do?

May 28, 2013 | Leadership Development

At work, how often do you feel like a chicken with your head cut off? You run around all day handling one crisis after another. You run from one meeting to the next. You take one phone call after another. Yet at the end of the day, you feel as if you've achieved nothing. Or, are you in a situation where you have a few key supervisors or managers that you count on to handle the “critical” issues. However, because they're so busy handling issues, they're not getting “big” things done in the...

If Something Feels ‘Off’ It Probably Is

Apr 2, 2013 | Leadership Development

I messed up – big time. I knew deep in my gut something had to be wrong, but for some reason, I didn't have a frank, direct Necessary Conversation™ with Joseph. During our numerous status meetings, I had accepted his rationalizations of a hectic travel schedule, numerous new team members, and uncooperative clients to justify his less-than stellar performance. I asked myself regularly: Why wasn't he performing to the level I knew he could? Why wasn't he communicating with the other...