Some words are so offensive we just can't bring ourselves to accept their use in common speech can we? Yes, there are 'swear words' that we may feel are inappropriate in certain situations (although Stephen Fry's fantastic documentary series 'Planet Word' certainly made an excellent case for the function of swearing in our language), but other words are becoming taboo in some civic context particularly as they are seen to expose the organisations using them to criticism on the grounds of favouring one particular (religious) culture over another.
The specific 'C' word I'm talking about here is, of course,
'Christmas'.
Several city councils have, in recent years, changed their use of language at this time of year to studiously avoid using this particular 'C' word in order to be more 'inclusive', replacing it instead with 'Winter Festival' or similar. As a non-religious linguaphile I find this mildly amusing. Christmas is, of course, a word with Christian etymological roots (although scratch beneath this and you have Christ/Krishna and the Indo-European linguistic heritage of English to consider), and I appreciate the dilemma faced by councils, but really, the meaning of the word has evolved in common speech just as thousands of others have over time. This is the great strength of the English language, its ability to adopt and adapt.
If you're a Christian you might mourn the loss of the religious connotation of the word in its use by some today; equally, if you are concerned about consumerism, you might think the word has been exploited by business. That's placing a heavy burden of political, ideological and religious thought on one little word. For me Christmas is just a word which we all understand, a signifier (as Saussure called it), which describes a cultural event that many people in the world participate in. The meaning we each ascribe to the cultural event itself, our views on it and concerns about it, are a separate set of issues. We need signifiers to be able to discuss the bigger issues, so let's not take them away...
With that in mind, and on a less serious note, earlier this week I made a video for my first year students with the answers to their Christmas quiz. This little Christmas message from everyone at Swansea Business School was the by-product. No religious connotations, just a bit of fun :)
Have you noticed how busy everyone seems to be at the moment? What an inane statement that is. Everyone is always busy (or at least that's what they'll tell you). Well, I've been one of those people this month. Too busy to complete anything to my usual standards (pernickity at the best of times), too busy to maintain friendships (bad friend), too busy to get a haircut (slatternly), and too busy to get the new brake discs and pads on my car the garage recommended during my MOT a few months ago (risky and stupid). These last few months have been so physically and emotionally draining that I may have even considered postponing breathing for a while, I was so busy being busy.
So, this is my first blog post for a month, and I love blogging, so why
haven't I been doing it? Busy. I had to dust my piano the other day -
why hadn't I been playing it? Busy. My PhD proposal is sitting there
beckoning me towards it, but I can't seem to find a stretch of time long
enough to do it justice. Why? Busy.
Sometimes we get so sucked into servicing the everyday demands placed before us, replying to emails, tweets, knocks on the office door etc., that we end up on a rollercoaster that is just going round and round the same track. The initial adrenaline soon wears off and we just become sick and tired. That's what has happened to me; I've become sick (physically) and tired (emotionally), to the point where I'm desperate for a little Christmas respite. Not just because it's a break - but more particularly because it's the only break where you know no-one else is going to be stacking up the work for your return.
This is a classic of the self-help book genre, it's a 'don't sweat the small stuff' and a '7 habits' lesson - goodness, it's a lesson the ancient philosophers could have taught us. Yes, there is beauty in the small stuff, but if you let it prevent you from doing the big stuff, you're never going to get off that rollercoaster (the ancients are, of course, unlikely to have mentioned a rollercoaster - they were good engineers, but I don't think they'd progressed to pointless thrill-seeking at £30 a pop).
So, for two weeks this Christmas, I'm banning busy, getting off the rollercoaster, and taking a train somewhere instead. Destination? Who knows.
Oh the irony...last week I blogged about the decline of the electrical goods salesperson, and this week Tesco launches its cosy 'Ask our friendly Tech Support Team about the perfect Christmas gift' ads.
So, were they listening? Have they resurrected personal selling? What are the chances someone will be willing to sell me something this weekend if I try again? And..have they put the staff member nursing a hangover who failed to make any money out of me last week on a course ? (Not the guy in this picture - I'm sure he's brilliant at his job...although perhaps on closer inspection he looks a little like a robot...)
Robot or not, I'm willing to believe, Mr Tesco.
Watch this space, I'll report back when I've checked for vital signs...
Image by Seattle Municipal Archives via FlickrBecause the sales staff in the three stores I went to just didn't want to know. It was a somewhat surreal experience for me. Normally I shop for electronics online, but today I wanted to buy a product and use it today. I was a willing customer, ready to try out the products and with money to spend, in fact I could probably have been persuaded to buy a more expensive version than the one I went in for. However, I was treated with variously, disdain, disinterest, and downright disrespect. Not only did the retailers make no effort to locate the product I wanted (which was out of stock), but they lied to me about the reasons and made no effort to sell an alternative, order one for me etc. etc. All the things a motivated and engaged saleperson might do. Several of them even failed to make eye contact, and I'm pretty sure I saw one of them roll his eyes at having to break off a conversation with a colleague to serve me. My reaction in such cases?
Walk.
Then Tweet.
Then Facebook.
Then blog.
What does this mean for the company? Reputational damage, lost sales, wasted showrooms. Haven't electrical retailers got enough to worry about with the threats to their businesses from their online competitors, without actively discouraging sales in their stores. Haven't they got enough PR problems without causing potential customers like myself to have a little rant about their poor service online? It seems not.
The eerie quiet in both Currys and Comet was telling. Not only have they lost out on price to the online stores, but it seems they've given up on service.
It makes me wonder whether the Internet is having far broader implications for business and business skills than we've even imagined. If we lose our ability to engage as humans in a sales process, then I think we've lost something of value in our society. Don't get me wrong, I can't stand being pestered by pushy salespeople. Neither do I expect sycophancy and obsequiousness. What I expect is to be treated with respect, to be able to buy the products I want with good advice, and for buying to be a pleasurable experience. I work hard to earn my money, and every now and then I'd like to enjoy spending it.
So, what have we lost? Well, it's not simply salesmanship that we're losing - it's a service culture, and more than that a joy in our work. Clearly the employees in the places I visited this morning lacked any sense of responsibility, pride, and equally clearly they were not enjoying their work. They didn't even seem to be working on any incentive system based on sales. I am incredulous because I know it doesn't have to be that way.
Back when I was a student I worked in a soulless out of town shopping centre as a sales assistant for a major fashion retailer. The hours were long and anti-social, the pay was rubbish, the staff facilities cramped, and taking all this into account it could have been an incredibly boring and unrewarding job, but it wasn't.
Why not?
Culture.
Plain and simple.
The company used to train its staff using the Pike Place 'FISH' principle. If you haven't heard of this, take a look at the video of the Pike Place Fish Stall at the Seattle Farmer's Market below. The method is based on making work (and particularly sales work) fun, friendly and social for everyone. The customer gets a better experience, the staff enjoy themselves and are motivated; it's a win-win. I was not a natural at selling, but thrived in this environment where everyone had shared targets and we were incentivised as a team.
Where has this emphasis on service culture gone? Certainly in our major retailers it seems to be lower and lower on the list of priorities. It has driven me back to buying online in this case (I refuse to buy from a company that treats me badly), but I wonder also whether it offers an opportunity for independents. Those who can, and want to, add value by training their staff well, providing the best customer experience and therefore helping people spend their money in the ways they want to. I'll certainly be first in the queue...
Image via CrunchBaseWe live in a society that worships specialism. We look to our 'experts' for advice and to share their depth of
knowledge in all fields. Yet, anyone can describe themselves as an
expert, or a guru, specialist, consultant etc etc. What does this
mean? What are the qualifications you need to become an expert in
something? How can we separate the charlatans from the real deal? Does
a white beard, spectacles and tweed make you an expert? Does a
certificate that says you have been through a factory process of
learning suffice? Do the scars of battle gained through years of bitter experience give you the credibility you
need? And why do we need experts - can't we just find all the answers on Wikipedia anyway?
I'm being facetious here, of course, and I know that we are dependent on specialists to move science and technology forwards. They are the people that have made many of the things we take for granted in our world possible. However, as much as we need specialists, we also need those who have breadth of knowledge...and in a strange way, despite the great leaps we've made in terms of enabling access to information for the masses, it's the generalist that seems to be undervalued in society.
Our education system, for example, is a funnel designed to narrow and deepen your field of knowledge as you progress. This channels us as learners to the point where, on completion of a PhD or post-doctoral research we may be the person in the world who knows most about the secret life of cardinal beetles, the etymology of lapidary terms, or the social impact of 'The Only Way is Essex'. Noble causes all, I'm sure, and of course we need these specialists and their work chipping away at the coalface of human understanding, but we must take care not to idolise them.
Whatever it means to be an expert we know we need them, but sometimes seem to forget that we also need generalists. We need people who can make connections between disparate fields to create new ideas and possibilities. An education system predicated on the need to narrow and deepen knowledge may result in a society with extremely able scientists and technologists, but breadth of knowledge is, for me, equally likely to be the source of ideas for truly disruptive innovations. The American college system seems to do this so much better than we do. A liberal arts degree will give a student the freedom to explore human understanding in a way that is personally relevant and yet interconnected. Here in the UK there are similar options available, but they are not the norm, and not valued as highly by some. We seem wary of anything that does not lead our students on a path towards specialism because of the reverence with which we view the expert.
We can't all be polymaths of course, with a great deal of knowledge in a number of fields, but in a world where the tools to gain a breadth of knowledge are freely available to the vast majority of us we should be better at encouraging a broader view of learning.
It would be wrong to let today pass without writing something about the passing of Steve Jobs - a man who has, whether we own an Apple product or not, had a massive impact on all our lives.
Before I go on I should say that I'm not an Apple devotee - and tend to have pity on those disciples of Apple who treat the brand with such reverence that they think it can do no wrong. I buy Apple products when I think they provide superior value, utility or delight, and buy other brands when I make a similar judgment. But, the very fact that this man created a brand that inspired such cultish and evangelical following is something that, as a marketer, I can't help but admire enormously.
Steve Jobs has, of course, been the driving force behind the Apple brand, but the brand has a life beyond him, and that makes his work an even greater achievement. What we see in Jobs is a man who had such drive, passion and vision that he drew people into his world; his sheer enthusiasm for his product was infectious in a way that the Apple product announcements by his successor a few days ago proved is going to be difficult to replicate.
In a bizarre coincidence I showed a video of Jobs in class yesterday, he was speaking in 1997 about what he believes marketing to be. It's pure Jobs, stripping it all back to emotion. 'Marketing is about values' he says 'it is about passion':
I admire Steve Jobs as a marketer, a charismatic leader to the 'n'th degree, and I use the above clip in class as a discussion point, but I admire Steve Jobs more as a man who lived by his values, and to that end, the Jobs speech that inspires me most as a human being is the one below.
I believe this to be one of the best motivational speeches of all time, a must watch for all students. Yes, Apple as a company may be a fantastic legacy for jobs, but this speech, for me, has equal (if not greater) value...
I've been reminded this week of how important it is to take care of the little things. The little things are the things that, if you don't keep an eye on them can become very big things. That tiny pebble thrown into the sea that becomes a tsunami - and in business these tiny pebbles are everywhere. Getting the little things right matters.
Much business education is based around planning - and the creation of business plans, marketing plans, financial plans is something that forms a core part of most business school (or management education of other kind) syllabi - but what often seems to happen is that plans are created because they are a requirement, a box to be ticked, a funding bid, an audit trail. These plans are, of course, difficult to produce. Predicting the future is hard, and although past experiences can be useful, last year is another time and tomorrow will, necessarily, be different. This often results in plans that remain vague and superficial - and in some businesses planning can end up being a process that simply plays lip service to an organisational system but bears little relation to the reality of organisational activity.
Of course there has, over the years, been much discussion of the benefits of planning amongst both practitioners, theorists and (best of all) the practitioner/theorists. The benefits of planning have been called into question by the complexity theorists and a quasi-planned approach has been suggested by those who believe strategies should emerge based on an adaptation to current conditions. I agree that there can be considerable benefits to these approaches.
However, I also believe in that, particularly at an operational level, there are many businesses who fail to plan the small things well. They forget about the tiny pebbles and look to the horizon.
BT, for example, are dealing with huge volumes of customers. This means an individual customer appears low-value to them. So, they feel happy to subcontract out their repair services and create complex, frustrating customer services processes that suit their need to 'manage the herd'. I've recently experienced BT's monopolistic attitudes and lack of customer care and was shocked that they feel able to get away with it. They appear willing to forget that each customer is a human being, and that those human beings each have an influence on their business whether large or small. Whilst some may switch suppliers and have a very small negative effect, there are others in that large pool who may be able to have a dramatic impact on their business. BT don't know if they are upsetting a Watchdog journalist, the son/daughter of the CEO of one of their major business contracts, a tech blogger with a massive audience - all these people can create a crisis for the company if they receive poor service. But don't get me wrong, I don't think BT should treat these people any differently to any customer - rather I believe they should take into account the danger that poor customer service poses to their organisation and make sure it simply doesn't happen - for any customer.
So, how do they get it right? Involving the right people in planning is crucial when it comes to getting the detail right. Senior Managers who have worked their way up from the bottom of an organisation, or who take/make the time to get to know the challenges and successes of every job role in their organisation are clearly in a better position to make decisions. This, however, may simply not be possible in a large organisation or where senior managers are recruited from outside. This is why listening is so crucial.
If you can provide a channel through which every member of staff in your organisation can flag up potential problems or opportunities, if you give them access to strategic plans and the right and responsibility to comment on them and contribute to their development, you may find that the tiny thing you overlooked, that one missing or problematic detail in your plan, the ripple-effect of which could become a tsunami, could be prevented before you even get started.
