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Perception and reality; are they mutually exclusive? Discuss.
It’s a funny old world at times. People talk about their rights; their right to be told; their right to the truth and all that, but what is it that they want to know? What is the truth, and will they believe it?
Over the years that I have trod the planet I have had, at times, to judge. I have been a soccer referee, I have done jury service, I have investigated accidents, I have investigated complaints and grievances, I have interviewed people for jobs and promotion, I have judged for awards and I have been a parent.
In all of these roles I have had to arrive at decisions and to decide what I believe to be right, or wrong. Judgement and experience play their part and, yes, I have made mistakes. At least, in the case of some decisions that I have made, I know in hindsight, that I made my decision on the basis of something that I now know was not as I believed it to be at the time.
People will believe what they want to. Take the flat earth mob; there was clear evidence that the world could not be flat, but they believed it for a long time after some had realised the truth (it isn’t round either of course). Conspiracy theorists love to ignore the reality that many others hold true, and there are those who will always believe in an ulterior motive for any action.
People’s expectations can colour their judgement significantly. Take the Obama situation. He was swept to power on a wave of optimism and yet now is rated possibly the worst US president. Is he really that bad? Almost certainly not, but compared with expectations the gap is so big. The bloke probably didn’t have a chance from the start; he was never going to live up to the hype.
When we put in place business deals, we set out all of our expectations in the form of a contract, we have key performance indicators and service level agreements and all those fine things, so we are going to be basing our monitoring of service delivery against reality aren’t we? Well we usually think so, but how many times does it all go wrong? We’ve seen a high profile one in recent weeks where two big organisations have parted company only a couple of years into a contract.
So what is the problem? I see it as one of not having used the right base for the agreement. The usual basis for working things out is on the basis of prior experience plus what we think that we want in future. The first problem is in measuring; that hackneyed old phrase “if you can’t measure, you can’t manage” gets trotted out without any understanding of what that means. Measures get taken from what can be measured rather that what should be measured, and then, because there is the desire to compare year on year, and to prove that the new contract is an improvement, it will be the same measures as last time.
I’ve been placed in the position of being drafted in the manage contracts like this. You can turn up at the review meeting and show that you’re delivering what the contract demands, but in the full knowledge that it isn’t what the client needs, or that you are delivering the latter, but failing the contract.
Perception and reality. They can be the same, but only once we get clients and suppliers working towards the right sort of deals and measures. We’re not there yet.
if we want the best to choose from, someone has to make a difference
We often choose something; sometimes because we want to, and other times because we have to, but how do we choose? There has to be some form of measurement that helps us to compare. It may be as subjective as colour or style or more objective as in, say, performance or size. These choices may be personal or business, but we all make them every day.
Those who try to influence us in these choices will strive to pander to those choice triggers. The world of advertising had a field day in the post WW2 eras as the production capacity switched from military needs to consumer goods and fed an increasing affluent society.
From the 1970s onwards a series of events; oil crises, financial downturns and such saw the boom years come to an end and competition to persuade us has become more and more sophisticated, these days with social media and the like playing their part in parting us with our cash.
Some of all that is on a personal level, but business has seen a parallel experience although the choices here are normally much less subjective. Whether we are in facilities management, logistics or any other business discipline we are much more performance related in our decision making and so those who would sell us have looked to raise the bar in that area.
We talk of excellence in what we sell and what we seek. Consider this quotation; “In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away” Antione de Saint-Exupery sums it up well there, but what is this state to which we aspire?
Does competition drive excellence? To some degree it does, but if we take sports as an example of competition, there are those who will demonstrate how to win with minimum effort; Sir Jackie Stewart will tell you all about winning at the slowest pace for example. Following this example there are a lot of companies that are content to just be better than the rest rather than to excel.
Am I suggesting that we abandon the quest for perfection just because of this? No I’m not. The point I’m making is that what happens when we look at competing solutions is that we pick what we see as the best to fulfil our need as we see it at the time. Now that may not be a great solution, but better than what we have now and better than anything else so we choose it. If it helps us achieve something then it may well be worth accepting but, if not, we probably won’t, or shouldn’t bother. Hobson’s Choice, as we used to say.
What we want is to have great things to choose from, and that is what those of us in the service industry try to create and deliver. It is what competition should be all about in this context, and there will be times when we have the right thing for the moment; when we catch the wave and ride it in. It will be a transient moment, sure, but getting it right and creating the thing of choice is such a buzz that you’ll want to do it again and again.
If we truly want to make a difference we have, as my friend Ian Berry down under will tell you, you have to change what is normal.
Perfection made be hard, even impossible, but doing something extraordinary is within reach of us all, so why not try? Make a difference.
putting it right when it’s all gone horribly wrong
The fact that most of the major retail success stories are down to managing that margin so well is something I admire. The evolution of retail logistics, information systems and facilities management have been entwined with my own working life for the last 40 odd years and have fascinated and involved me.
So I hold retail as a sector, and retails units as a specific, up as paragons and an example of how to really do it when I write here and talk to groups and, in general, I can see no reason why I should need to change my mind. I think that the retail sector will continue to lead the way in many fields of business.
So it comes as something of a smack in the face when my nearest hypermarket provides a shopping experience that reeks of massive neglect and also demonstrates how not to do it in so many directions; the chillers and freezer cabinets are always on the blink with leaking water all over the floor and that means lost hours mopping up, wasted product, lost sales and frustrated employees and customers (last Sunday most of the freezer area was empty and cordoned off). The place is generally scruffy and it is easy to sense the people problems that knock on from a site in trouble. These are not just the occasional clump of moaning employees blocking up an aisle while they vent their spleens on the management in front of customers, but also in the attitude to customers.
Further signs of leadership not being up to scratch include empty roll cages blocking aisles , shelf pricing and offer information not being consistent and often missing and poor shelf stocking. Almost everywhere I look there will be something that is a classic example of doing it the wrong way.
The place is pretty much a model of everything that could be wrong, and yet this is one of the country’s leading retailers, and at a site that is busy with both regulars and, because of its location, somewhere that must get a fair deal of passing trade.
Enough of the problems, how do you turn this sort of situation around? The first stage is to work on the people. Morale is hard to lift when people see the place running down, so you have to instil some belief in the leadership so that they will start to follow. Getting the basics right and enthusing your team is a leadership fundamental, but requires some support from above in a big organisation. The people are not stupid and will not get behind someone who they think will not be around for too long.
Next you do need to be able to find some money to spend on the place. This is not just about lifting your team, but also about that other group of people that you rely on; your customers. This particular store has had some money spent on it, but for a store within store operation who no doubt contributed towards their pitch.
Turning things around takes time, effort and cash, but the results tend to pay back handsomely if you can get it right. We know a lot of the people who serve us at the emporium I refer to above and would love to see them have somewhere better for them to work as well as for us to shop. This weekend, we’ll be somewhere else though, and they’ll find takings are down by a few more bob each week for a while, because we can’t rely on them having what we need.
don’t fear failure; just live and learn
Somewhere amongst all my various scribbling is a line about my successes having shaped me, but it being my failures that have made me. It is a play on the Einstein quote along the lines people who haven’t made a mistake haven’t tried anything, but I do believe that it is the things that I’ve done wrong, or not well enough, that I’ve truly learned from.
Of course you do also learn from success, but it is sometimes easier to just party and enjoy your moment of triumph. Another of my little mottos back in the days when I had a team was that the team succeeds, but failures are mine. That one was largely about me taking it on the chin when things went wrong, but it was also about letting the team celebrate the wins whilst I got to think about why we had won.
You can’t win them all. That’s not being defeatist, it’s being realistic. If you’re good enough, whether as an individual or as a team, then you can enjoy long runs of success. You can win more that you lose, but sooner or later there will be someone who will beat you. That is healthy, and one of the other lessons that I have learned along the way is that you don’t take defeats personally. Business is business; allowing emotions to get in the way is a waste of energy that you could put to better use on positive things.
Of course I’m still competitive and I don’t like to lose, but I’ve come to accept that there are times when what I have isn’t what is needed on the day to pull off the win. And I don’t take too much notice of luck either. Gary Player once said that the more he practised the luckier he got. You make your own luck most of the time.
Another factor is in being willing to compete. Would you rather be played 3 won 3, or played 30 won 27? Even if you’re played 30 won 3 at least you are trying, and I’ll always applaud a trier over someone who is afraid to go into the arena. You can always develop someone who is willing to try, and they are often more likely to be consistent winners than someone with talent who won’t risk themselves. Just look at the talent that the England football team squandered at the last World Cup where a fear of losing appeared to be greater than the desire to win.
Sport and business are not the same, but there are the parallels; a well motivated and led team will do well in either. And those who are prepared to push themselves hard will do well in either; and what is the point if you’re not going to keep on challenging yourself? I’ll offer another sporting quotation; “To do something well is so worthwhile that to die trying to do it better cannot be foolhardy. It would be a waste of one’s life to do nothing with one’s ability, for I feel that life is measured in achievement not in years alone.” That was written nearly 50 years ago by Bruce McLaren following the death of his team mate Timmy Mayer.
Most of us don’t have the risk of death implicit in our business life, although some do, but, as I wrote last week we don’t know how long we have on this planet. We might as well do something worthwhile with the time that we have, and if that means a few mistakes then so what; live and learn.
putting customers first takes more than just calling them customers
At one time there was great trouble throughout the land. The people were not getting their just desserts, but this had gone on for so long that they had ceased to complain and they had become stoic in their acceptance.
It came at first as a whisper, as the first stirring of a breeze breaks the calm when a hurricane is due and, like a hurricane the word was to sweep through the land uprooting the trees of resistance in its path. And the name of this hurricane was Customer First, although it was to have as many names as it had priests, for each was to brand it according to their own ways (and fee scales).
And Lo! The people did become customers; not just those in the shops and retail premises, but no longer they that travelled by train, ship, ‘plane or bus would be called passengers. No longer would those who occupied premises, whether domestic or for their trade, be called tenants. No longer would those in ill health and needing to see the physician be called patients. No longer (yes, yes, all right; we get the picture – ed).
From that day hence they would all be customers and all would be well. Their time of strife would be over and they could rest easy for, when they handed over their hard earned coin, all would be well and they would be treated in the manner to which they should.
And so the priests, gurus, mentors, consultants and trainers did prosper, their pockets full of their client’s gold, and there was great rejoicing throughout the land. Those who proclaimed the way of the Customer grew rich and, in some cases, famous. Those who had sought their help (he’s off again. Enough! – ed).
Ok, let’s cut the pseudo biblical stuff, leave this fantasy world behind and consider ours. Are you getting better service because your train operator calls you a customer? Or anywhere else where you have become “a customer”? I doubt it. Sure there have been improvements in some places, yes, but that is because people have been better trained, not because of a name change. You might argue that the name change brought about a change of thinking, but I would suggest that such influence was limited. When I travel in someone else’s vehicle I am a passenger; when I have treatment at the medic’s I am a patient and so on. I find inappropriate use of customer patronising, how about you?
Maybe I am in a minority on this (that would be good, I might have rights), and I know I am being a bit obtuse here, but the point of this missive is that you have to mean it to make a difference. Just calling something by a different name doesn’t, on its own, make a change. For me it is the equivalent of the old dodgy car dealer’s “change the plates and give it a re-spray”, and is about as salubrious.
My train of thought here came from having been pulled up for referring to the people who were renting premises as tenants. “They’re customers” I was told, but then the attitude towards them would not have been out of place for the inmates of a labour camp. Calling them customers made no difference to the way they were seen or treated, so why bother with the pretence. OK, this is an extreme example, but does calling me a customer improve my rail service? No, but what would make a difference is changing the service I get for my money. That’s the challenge.
bribery and corruption act – one man’s opinion
I must first stress that what follows is a personal opinion; as they might say, don’t try this at the office. I’m not a lawyer; I have contract law qualifications as part of my professional tickets, and I do have the practical experience of having been in the front line for a long time, allied to a spell where I was involved in investigating fraud, fiddling and other dubious practices. So treat what follows with caution, but hopefully it might get you thinking.
Business in the UK has seen hundreds of new pieces of legislation introduced over the last ten years or more (I shall hold my pen on the politics for once) and most of it has been largely incapable of proper implementation. Personally I am a great fan of precedent over statute; let the courts set the tone. The law may be an ass, but the due process that we have, whilst it might be a lottery sometimes, is generally a decent way to go about conducting our affairs. Having a bunch of idiot politicians, however well meaning, setting out all sorts of daft regulations is a recipe for disaster. The only winners are the lawyers (now what was that bloke at No10’s real job? And what about the one with her hand up his back?).
My feeling is that a lot of this regulation is falling out of the same philosophy that brought us the non competitive business in schools; “we don’t have winners, because that mean we have to have losers”. Hard bloody luck – life is about winners and losers, just ask the Starling that got taken by a Sparrowhawk outside my window this morning. It’s tough out there, but that’s the way that it should be. I know that I can’t win on every deal and I also know that I’ll probably do better as a buyer than as a seller because on any deal there is only one buyer. It is that competition that ensures value for money and healthy commerce, not having to comply with daft rules.
Of course there are fine lines to walk when doing a deal, and the art of getting a deal done is often about steering a course on the edge at times, but regulation is not the answer, especially when it is as ill thought out as the anti bribery nonsense. What is the point of having an offence of failing to prevent a bribe being offered if there is no offense of failing to prevent acceptance?
What we need is what we already have. There are laws to deal with people who stray, so we should just use them and come down like a ton of bricks on anyone caught misbehaving. That is an adequate deterrent if properly applied. Sure you won’t stop everyone, but regulation won’t either.
One of the things I’ve seen managing security over the years is that the more you put in the harder you have to manage it. The more you have the easier it often becomes to breach it because people get complacent. The same applies to many other systems; people trust them, especially if they have paid a lot of money for them. It’s the Emperor’s new clothes syndrome, and that is all that the bribery act will be if it is allowed to come to fruition. We have a new law, so it’s all fine now.
Utter drivel. It will not change anything other than to allow companies to be fined for, allegedly, not having taken proper precaution. Just another stealth tax? Ah, now it suddenly makes sense.
Partnerships or Competition?
Competition, taking sides, winners and losers or true partners taking things forward for common good? My thoughts on this started off from work I’m doing for a client where we have some EU competition issues, and then I read a tweet from Cathy Hayward where someone had mentioned the reaction of their purchasing team to talk of partnerships.
I’m often labelled as a Purchasing Expert, but it is just one thing that I have experience of. I see myself more as a businessman who has, over the years variously been John the Buyer, John the Salesman and finally John the Operations guy trying to deliver what the Sales people have sold with what the Buying people have bought for me. It ain’t easy, believe me, but I’ve made a decent living along the way and had a lot of fun.
One of the things that can hold a business back is functions not getting on, so let’s look at the three tribes:
Purchasing people tend to thrive on the competitive element of their profession. Keeping the market on its toes and keeping their pencils sharp so that the best deals are struck. Shaking up the mix is what it’s all about.
Operations people prefer an element of stability so that they can build up working relationships with both customers and suppliers and have enough other issues that bring instability to the daily lives without any artificial stimulus.
So where does that leave Sales people? On the one hand they want the stability because they can build relationships, cross sell and have a quiet life enjoying the expense account and the Mondeo but, on the other hand, if there is too much stability, how do they break into new markets and clients? It’s ironic, but they actually need the world that the buyers are trying to create because that instability is a major source of opportunity.
Competition does mean that there will be winners and losers, and there is nothing wrong in that. It is a fact of nature that we can see all around us any day of the week if we bother to look. The plant life that we all pass by daily reminds us of how the struggle for survival works and it is foolish to ignore that competition is a fundamental element of what has made humans what we are. Look at the stupidities of trying to eliminate the competitive element factor from schools as a prime example of where that leads.
Whilst competition is good there is also strength in combining efforts to work towards common good. For me the point about competition is that it has its place, but collaboration does too.
Like so many things, competition is a tool and, like all tools, you need to use it well and in the right circumstances. I could buy the best saw on the market, but if I went down to the lumber yard and bought a dozen different sorts of timber there is a fair chance that I would ruin both my new saw and some of the wood in short order because you need even different saws for different woods.
So blindly applying competition to sourcing needs is as much of a waste (and don’t get me started on e-auctions) as trying to do fret work with a panel saw. The art of good buying is to use the right method for each requirement. If you can do that then the right deals will generally fall into place.
So to get it right requires collaboration between good people, but isn’t that always the way?
Put people at the heart of what you are doing
It’s all about the people. Not the first time I’ve covered this, nor will it be the last, but a few things have drawn me back to this subject. First off sorting out a problem for a client where things had bogged down into an email war. This must be the modern equivalent of trench warfare; you dig into your position and hurl stuff at the other party who is equally well dug in on their side. No-one wins. After two weeks of cyber missives flying back and forth the problem was solved in 45 minutes face to face working around the table.
The next day came another example of the power of people. A client has a supplier problem where legal people are involved on both sides, but half an hour on the phone has seen the first progress for about 10 days. Once again you get things moving when people start to talk and work with each other.
Humans are social animals and we like to congregate of our own accord, but we also have the problem in some countries, the UK being one, where we are all thrown together because there are so many of us in a small space and are forced to get along. Making it easy for us to do what we need to do helps remove some of the frustrations that cause problems between people. If the roads are not clogged we don’t get road rage, for example.
And that brings me on to the role of facilities management people. We have our definitions of FM, and they are fair enough, but since I’ve been involved in FM I’ve seen the role as one of facilitation to a large degree. The make it easy for the people in the building to do what they come there for. When you go to work there are lots of little things that can act like a handful of sand in the gearbox; no one grain will break it, but the combined effect will be to wear it out quickly. Problems at work have the same effect. The copier won’t work, the lift is out of order again, the car park is always flooded (see last week’s Musing) and so on.
All of these distract people from doing what they are there to do and make them less productive. Amongst other things FM sorts all of that out. It’s people working with and for each other gives you team work and synergy, the sum of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.
The buildings and the technology are just tools. If no-one uses them they will just sit there and crumble away eventually, but they are created by people. It’s people that have the great ideas to move things forward and it’s other people that have the skills to translate the ideas into physical reality. So why do we so often forget that it is people that will have to use what we create?
All too often I see projects where there is some glorious aim in mind, but none of it gives much thought to the people that will have to work with or around it. New shiny technology is bought and deployed without any real thought of the people who it will be inflicted on. How many new buildings have I spent the first year on just making them user friendly?
People power is huge (just look at Egypt right now) so make it work. Put human interaction at the heart of what you do and you won’t go too far wrong.
how easy is it to buy from you 2 – sell me the deal
Continuing my theme of last week, let’s look at the stages of a typical B2B purchasing exercise.
The common problem that you encounter in these situations is that the company is trying so hard to sell to you that they frequently miss the point completely. They are so busy telling you how wonderful they are that they make it hard for you to buy from them, and the further you get into the process the worse they get.
At the pre-qualification stage you are seeking information, so case studies and some background on the supplier in terms of their customer base is needed, but you are looking for objective evidence of capability and capacity, not subjective advertising puff. All too often what you’re given is more towards the latter than the former.
When it comes down to the tender you have already narrowed down your possible to the ones that you have identified as capable of doing the job, but you can reckon on getting reams of sales pitch, including repeating most of what you’ve already had, to wade through as you try to find the convincing arguments that this is the bid that you should really be accepting. Why they do this is a mystery, but you can almost guarantee that you’re going to get it. The black humour in this is that, along with this blatant waste of paper, there will almost certainly be something there explaining their green credentials. Now and again you get someone who avoids the sales pitch and just sells you the solution to your problem, but this just isn’t that common.
Next up will be conducting supplier visits, and these will include both the supplier’s premises and one or more of their current customers. The purpose of these visits is to validate the supplier’s ability to service my client. I’m looking for demonstrable evidence that they can do what they say they can, that they are already doing it for someone else and how well it is being done. Now the clever supplier will just let you get on and see whatever you want to, warts and all, and will be prepared to have a sensible discussion on the good and the bad. Mostly though you get the sanitised tour, and that overlooks one of the key things that people want to buy into; honesty.
Then we get to the short listed suppliers presenting. You have, say, forty five minutes to convince you that they should be the chosen one; half an hour to present and fifteen minutes of questions maybe? Now thirty minutes is not long, so what should happen is to focus in on how they will do for you what you have asked for in the tender. Start with a quick intro to the problem, the meat of the session on how they will solve that problem, and a quick sum up of the key points. But all too often the first half of the presentation is made up prom the standard sales slide set and then they rush faster and faster through the rest with all of the slides on your requirements vanishing in a blur.
You are being scored at all of these stages. If you want the deal, then focus on what is going to get points on the board and put all of your efforts there.
Make it easy to buy from you: We put you on the list because we are convinced that you could do the job. What we need from there on is convincing why we should engage you and not the others.
how easy is it to buy from you?
I understand that you need to have a set of processes to enable your company to run, and some of these will be around ordering, pick, pack, despatch and customer enquiries. This is a particular area of my own expertise, but why do you inflict this stuff on the customer?
Buying on line shows up the worst of this for me. Some examples:
• Crude product search engines that give you almost the entire inventory regardless of what you ask for.
• Page links that don’t work.
• Where you view the product, select a quantity to buy, get through a convoluted checkout process and only then get told that it is out of stock.
• Convoluted checkout process.
• Contact Us links that don’t work.
• Drop down lists in the Contact Us section that never seem to cover the query type that I have.
• Comment boxes that only allow too few characters for your query
Some company web sites are great; Amazon for example, but others are dreadful. Amazon relieve me of a lot of my disposable cash because they make it easy for me to spend with them and the overall customer experience is great.
On the other hand there are at least two or three companies a month that fail to extract funds from me because I can’t be bothered to go through all the hassle. Do people at these companies ever consider the customer experience? Do they ever try to buy from themselves? Somehow I doubt it.
And it isn’t just web sites. A lot of face to face experiences are no better. Two big gripes here; firstly the assistant who has to finish talking to their colleague when you’ve obviously arrived, and are waiting, to ask a question, and those places where you can’t enjoy looking without assistant after assistant walking up and asking if you need help.
OK, so all of that is B2C, but what about B2B? Well in many cases that is no better. Web links that don’t work, “Contact Us” buttons that either give you an email address with a promise to get back to you within 2 business days(!) or a phone number to a call centre somewhere that doesn’t even seem sure if the company you’ve called exists, let alone what they do.
Some web sites are so hard to navigate you doubt that you really want to deal with the company; if the web site is so badly organised, what are their other business practices like? For a start make sure that there is a consistent way of navigating around your site. Next, if you are going to engage with people on the web then you need to put something on there that people can play with and find things out. You also need to have something useful behind the contact details so that when someone does get in touch they get prompt responses. We’re using the web for its immediacy, so keep the ball rolling.
The next area that drives me to distraction is how hard some people make it to pay them. In this day and age a bank transfer is quick and easy, as is using a corporate purchasing card, so why are so many people still asking you to put a cheque on the post?
Generally there is room for improvement, so come on people. Get some thinking done on how people can trade with you. Things may be tight currently, but there is some money out there to be spent so make it easy for folks to spend it with you.
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