How are the mighty fallen

We are sometimes asked what is the single most important thing an organisation can do to make sure that the service they deliver to consumers is as good as possible.

The answer is quite simple. Get a manager who cares.

An organisation can spend all it wants on training, it can hire the most talented staff, it can buy enormously expensive equipment but if the CEO doesn’t give a damn then the service will suck. Simple as that.

The trouble is that so many organisations think it’s more complicated than that. They think they should develop fancy mission statements, have endless policies and procedures, go on vastly expensive seminars and workshops and basically throw staggering quantities of cash away if they want things to improve. I’m not saying that these things can’t help at all but they should come later. They should also only be seen as tools, not solutions themselves.

I can think of a very large organisation that has invested truly epic amounts of money on engaging consultants, setting customer service standards, measuring their current levels of customer satisfaction and publicising them but in fact very little has changed. The reason? The person at the top, the person responsible for making the improvements that they so desperately need doesn’t really care. She’s just going along with it because the people above her put it in her job description. Her heart isn’t actually in it.

However, I can think of another organisation whose CEO recently departed for a better job (no, we shouldn’t be surprised and no, I won’t tell you who it was but some of you can no doubt guess) who DID care. This particular CEO was actually the opposite of the stereotypical CEO or MD. Unlike some business leaders who seem to think that leadership is demonstrated by shouting a lot, being a huge “personality” and having a fan club of pretty young girls follow you around all over town, this CEO was surprising. He was fairly quiet, thoughtful and almost reserved. In meetings he would be the one sitting there thinking about what you were saying, giving it serious consideration and then making a remarkably intelligent comment. Critically though, he cared, he really did. That care filtered down the organisation and everyone knew that he was watching. The employees who showed a similar level of care were rewarded, those who didn’t suffered a less pleasant fate.

It was only once people understood what this CEO expected that they engaged consultants, went on expensive training programs and attended the occasional ridiculously expensive seminar by some visiting “guru” or worse still the guru’s son. By the time you’re reading this we will have been visited by the Prince of Wales of Business, the son of Stephen Covey, the imaginatively named, errr… Stephen Covey. OK, he’s actually called Stephen M R Covey and he follows in his father’s footsteps. His Dad of course wrote that business classic, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Who Have Too Much Time at Airports”. Covey Junior has inherited the family business of travelling the world telling us the blindingly obvious for vast amounts of money and as you read this he’s no doubt counting his money from the seminar he attended at the GICC last Thursday.

I saw another example of the impact of leadership (or more precisely the lack of it) a few days ago. My kids were going to the cinema but needing feeding beforehand. Our restaurant of choice at Riverwalk was so busy there wasn’t even standing room. Despite going for a walk to kill some time the place was simply too busy to serve us so we decided to go downstairs to another establishment, a place we had always respected and enjoyed. With the restaurant upstairs full to bursting it was a surprise to find it’s rival downstairs barely a third full. Then we discovered why.

The service was crap. Not just by their previously high standards, I mean crap by anyone’s standards. They mucked up the food, missed certain items and, worst of all, I mean the crime of the century, they forgot my second glass of wine.

So where was the manager you may ask? Oh he was there. Not the owner / manager I knew, a new guy. Flouncing around in dark glasses and with a stylish beard he appeared to be doing precisely nothing. Did he come and see us when our order went wrong? Did he come and see us when the food was sub-standard? Did he come running with my second glass of wine? No, he didn’t.

“How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!” See, even a heathen knows a few good quotes. The tragedy is that this failing restaurant previously set such high standards, it was the example we always used of how good things could be. But what happened? Did the franchise change in nature? Was there a food-poisoning outbreak? Did they have all their staff arrested for being illegal immigrants? No, the problem was that the management took their eye off the ball.

Once there was no REAL management everything started to slip away. I know sometimes I can be a bit too literal but I think it’s worth asking where the word “manage” and hence “management” comes from. It comes from the Latin world “manus” which means “hand”. Management is literally “hands-on”. A manager isn’t just the guy who sits behind a desk doing the accounts, filing the tax returns and spending the profits. A manager must have his or her hands on the business every day, otherwise he’s just a waste of space.

Talk, talk, talk

Here we go again. This happens every year or two.

As you read this we will be graced yet again by the inestimable presence of John Tschohl, the man who was apparently once described by Time magazine as a “client service guru”. He’s been brought over again by our National Productivity Centre who seem to continue to believe that we need people to fly in for a few days, fill up our increasingly expensive hotels and read out the content of their books, as if we’re can’t read them ourselves.

Ahh, but some will say, it’s his presence that matters. His physical presence, his inspirational, motivational, educational speeches will somehow inspire us to become the customer service centre of the world. These people will say that simply being in his holy presence will somehow magically inspire the attendees to go forth and multiply their customer’s happiness. Some of his magic will miraculously wear off on those fortunate enough to have been touched by his message.

So here’s a question. If his presence the last time he was here was so influential, why does he feel the need to come back and do it all again? If he’s so good, if these uplifting speeches are so, well, uplifting, why hasn’t his last trip uplifted anything?

The only thing I can see that it will have uplifted is his bank balance.

Here’s another question. If he is so committed to improving poor little Botswana, if his message is so relevant to us in Botswana, if his powerful presence offers so much to Botswana, why can’t he spell “Botswana”?

Last time he was here in Botswana (I’m repeating the name of our country often so he and his team can see how to spell it) he send out a paper in advance that outlined his message. In it he consistently referred to “Bostwana”. His web site lists many clients including “Bostwana National Productivity Centre” and “Ministry of Local Government (Bostwana)”. In response to this here’s another Consumer Watchdog rule to add to your collection. It’s similar to our rule regarding preachers: “Never trust a preacher who drives a better car than you do.”

Our new rule is “Never trust a highly-paid consultant who can’t spell his customer’s name correctly.”

One of the many ironies is that I bet somewhere in Jon Scholl’s (yes, I DID mean to spell it incorrectly) motivational presentation will have been the word “respect”. Something about showing respect to your customer, empathising with their emotional needs, giving all those non-verbal clues that you respect them. This from someone who can’t even be bothered to spell our country’s name correctly?

I think that you should judge a wandering consultant guru not by the enormous self confidence they possess. I think you should judge them by their actions, their background and their results.

Take the so-called Dr Steven Covey who was also here in Botswana (reminder to the John Tschohl team, that’s how you spell it) recently. “Dr” Covey has a doctorate. Impressive eh? Not THAT impressive when you learn that it’s a Doctorate in Religious Education from Brigham Young University. That’s the Mormon university where he got his doctorate not in business, management or philosophy but in Mormon Church History and Doctrine.

Now I’m not going to ridicule his religion, but I do think it’s interesting to consider that he got his doctorate (which, let me remind you was in Mormon doctrine) from a church whose doctrine until 1978 didn’t allow black people to become priests.

Back to the subject. John Tschohl is back again giving away his tips, experience and an enormous range of platitudes. Well, OK, not exactly giving them away, he’s selling them. By the time you read this he will have finished and maybe I should be optimistic and charitable? Maybe by the time you read this all the people fortunate enough to have received His Word will have become inspirational, entrepreneurial, driven and dynamic customer service champions.

Somehow I doubt it.

I’ve said this before, I know I repeat myself endlessly, but what we need is not to repeat endlessly the same old lessons about customer service. We all know them already, we’ve all heard them before, we know them inside out. What we need is action.

So here’s our free guide to excellent customer service. Tell all your staff, in writing, to do what they KNOW already has to be done. Tell them that from now on it is compulsory for them to use their own intelligence to satisfy customers. It is compulsory for them to treat customers with respect, concern and understanding.

One week later remind them again, in writing, that this is what you require them to do.

Another week later take a walk around your organisation and watch them in action. Every time you see one of your staff greet a customer without eye contact and a smile fire them on the spot. Every time you see an employee fail to apologise when they answer their cellphone while dealing with a customer fire them on the spot. Every time you see a customer walk in and not be helped by someone who CAN help them, fire that person on the spot.

Don’t worry, you’ll get away with it. You gave them two written instructions, their failure to follow them is gross professional misconduct.

The next thing you do is to take another walk around. Every time you see one of your team dealing with a customer well, pat them on the back. The second time you see that person do well give them a handful of cash as a bonus. The tenth time you see them do it promote them to team leader on the spot.

Isn’t that inspirational? And free!

Action this day!

Winston Churchill was famous for many things. For leading the UK during it’s “darkest hour”, for winning a Nobel Prize for literature and for consuming staggering quantities of the hard stuff. He was also a complicated and flawed but inspirational leader. He wasn’t, however, either subtle or very diplomatic when it came to leadership. He was famous for writing on documents, in his trademark green ink, the phrase, “Action This Day!”. Woe betide any subordinate who failed to get something done within the required 24 hours.

Of course that was during wartime when things are different. Despite our power crisis, the impact of HIV/AIDS and epidemic of foreigners who refuse to pronounce Gaborone correctly we’re not in such a desperate state.

Nevertheless I do like that demand for action. I like it when there is pressure for things to get done, I think that’s when people, organisations and countries make real progress.

The problem is that we either are, or have become, a passive nation. Action seems to be rare, passivity seems to be the norm.

Just last week we had a Royal Visit from Steven Covey, the author of a number of management books including his best seller, The Seven Habits of People Waiting For Their Flight In Airport Bookstores. He was here no doubt to talk about the same things that he has written about endlessly. Don’t the organisers think we can read for ourselves? Alternatively is the book written so badly that it has to be explained to us? Or, more likely, is it that we have fallen for this ridiculous fashion for motivational speakers coming here and telling us the plain bloody obvious over and over again?

Just for once I’m going to try my best to avoid going on about how Covey is a very senior member of a church that, until 30 years ago, didn’t allow black priests. Are we really saying that we should take management advice from a man whose doctorate is not, as you may think, in Business but in Religious Education? Above all, is there any real evidence, I mean real scientific evidence based on professional research, that motivational speakers like Covey actually achieve anything other than making millions from selling books and speeches? Do organisations that find something to adopt from this inspirational blather actually make more money than those that don’t?

I’m not entirely against learning from the wise, it’s just that I would rather listen to someone who had actually built a business rather than someone who’d just written a book about it. Giving us so-called wisdom that is actually no more than a sequence of platitudes about effective delegation, thinking win-win and “leveraging innovation” is nothing more than an assault upon the English language.

Without wishing to sound too much like the speakers I despise, change only happens when it comes from within a person, from within a business or from within a community. Not when it comes from without. Flying someone over here from far-flung shores to tell us that successful people are organised, put first things first and “begin with the end in mind” is just a waste of time, money and aviation fuel.

But the big thing is that this is all totally passive. We seem to have become a nation who has things done TO us, rather than doing things ourselves. We want to BE empowered, rather than to empower ourselves. We want Government to help us thrive, rather than getting off our rear ends and thriving through sheer hard work. We want promotions because we’ve served our time and not screwed up too badly rather than actually showing that we are the most deserving candidates for extra money and responsibility.

Our beautiful country will only ever succeed when we make it a success ourselves, rather than waiting for someone else to do it for us. We don’t need motivational speakers, we need action.

What we need is heroes, local heroes. Locals boys and girls who, through sheer hard work, sleepless nights and, above all, passion have made businesses from nothing.

Tragically we now have one fewer of these rare creatures. Puso Kirby, who died tragically and prematurely last week, was great example of a passionate man. When I first knew him he was running Mokolodi Nature Reserve. I’ve done the game and nature thing many times since then but I have never met anyone with anything like Puso’s passion. His overflowing love for his environment was awesome even if he was probably most famous for having one of the cheetahs take out a chunk of his knee while being filmed for the BBC. It came as no surprise that soon after he left Mokolodi his new brainchild, Creations of Africa was born. Supplying locally produced goods for the local and international market his passion was again obvious. Supplying them but also making money and even exporting these goods was a tribute to his team but above all to his energy and enthusiasm.

Doing all this while being a loving husband and father and a really, incredibly nice guy is something very special indeed.

We urgently need more like Puso. People who lead by example, who have probably never read a management book in their lives and if they were given one probably wouldn’t get past the first chapter because they’ve actually got some work to do.

This week’s stars!

• Lemack at the Engen station on the southbound Western By-Pass was wonderfully pleasant and helpful on a chilly Saturday night.
• Thabo and Emmanuel at Game for being “especially pleasant and helpful with a price check/complaint and product information”.

Petunia at the Woolworths at Riverwalk who is apparently always patient and pleasant.