Big Telco and the Art of the Apology-driven Sales Pitch

June 17, 2009 By 3 Comments

Apologies are everywhere these days. I wrote a post on leaders and apologies last week, and this week, Letterman is in the news apologizing to Sarah Palin for a joke that went awry.

Yesterday, as I prepared to get even with my evil Telco provider by dropping them like a bad habit, I ran square into an onslaught of apologies followed by a brazen sales pitch. What follows is my own recollection of events during this phone call.

In a world where Dilbert meets Seinfeld…a funny, bizarre and slightly twisted place, I was exposed to the latest sales pitch of my phone/internet and wannabe television service provider. It went something like this:

Me: “I’m calling to drop my service. I’ve had enough. I’m going with cable for internet.”

Big Telco Rep: “I’m sorry for your troubles.  Have you heard about our latest “universal” offering? It fixes all of those problems. Now about your package, we need to get you off of cable and on to our latest and greatest new service. How many TVs do you have?”

There it was. Without batting an eye over my threat to discontinue service, this rep offered a short and even genuine sounding apology for all the past misdeeds of service interruptions, nefarious contract commitments and endless conversations with Gertrude who sounded strangely like she was in a call center in some country that doesn’t speak English as a first language.

Coincidentally this new “universal” service eliminates your cable or satellite provider, takes over your phone service, and ensures that every single communicating device in your household is now dependent on the same company that can’t keep my DSL internet running much longer or faster than a man on horseback delivering mail for the pony express.

The apology was supposed to make things right for all of the wrongs. This rep was good. I mentioned a neighbor’s frustration with the new universal service and he apologized. “I’m sorry for that,” he stated.

I ratcheted up my rant with him on the internet. “Did you know that your DSL internet service stands for dog-slow and lame,” I added with satisfaction, knowing that he would have no retort to that playground taunt. (Sorry to owners of fast dogs!)

He chuckled and added, “I’m sorry. Now, do your children use a gaming system on the internet?”

This guy was really good.

Other than a few grumbles over past use of contract commitments…”We don’t use those anymore,” and my momentary, “Aha, I bet you jack up the rate after a year!” exclamation, which he assured me was not the case, I was out of ammo.

Me: “OK, we’ve got four televisions and you better be prepared to give me your best rate…”

I might just go with him. But first, I’ve got to call my cable provider and give them a piece of my mind. I better hear some darned good apologies! Maybe even real remorse and a few months of free service.

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

The Struggles and Mental Toughness of a Leader

June 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Imagine Lincoln’s thoughts as he watched the smoke from Confederate campfires rise into the sky just a few miles from the White House, well aware that there were insufficient troops to defend the city should they choose to attack. As a backdrop to this disturbing situation, all evidence suggests that Lincoln understood that HE was perhaps all that stood between a nation united and one perhaps forever divided.

How lonely must Washington have been as he struggled for most of the revolution without resources and without anything that would have passed for a trained army to even the most near-sighted observers? No money, no food, no guns, no army, no shoes, no uniforms and little reason to hope. Yet, here we are.

Churchill lifted and carried a nation’s hopes on his back for much of a war where the nation’s survival was in question.

Recently, Chesley Sullenberger in all of his humbleness reminded us of the toughness and determination of a leader and master technician that used all of his skills to land a jet in the Hudson and then help get everyone off safely.

Patton willed his army to march what must have seemed like halfway to hell to ensure the outcome of the war and Pershing built an army in record time for a nation that had none and in the process helped save a continent from collapse.

So, how important does that budget meeting sound now?

I suppose it’s not a fair fight to grab the headlines and headliners of history and then compare them to our daily existence as leaders and managers of institutions and organizations, even if our organizations are struggling. Nonetheless, the lessons of these leaders ring true long after their days have passed.

I’m particularly drawn to the quality of “mental toughness” in great leaders. Where most would have cut and run, the best stare at adversity and seem to draw strength from the enormity of the challenges in front of them. Failures are but mere setbacks and when conventional wisdom and all of the advisors preach capitulation, these leaders see and seize opportunity.

I look for this quality in leaders in the business environment, but often our hiring and screening processes get in the way. We tend to focus on hiring those that package themselves as flawless. Their victories sound grand and their defeats and flaws are hidden behind a veil of carefully wrapped histories.

Tell me about your adverse circumstances and where you stared down capitulation and the mistakes that you learned from and my eyes will light up and my mind begins to wonder whether I’m dealing with someone that has the extraordinary mental toughness that I need and we need to win the war.

Show me honesty by highlighting that you were uncertain in approach but unwavering in direction and I’ll know that I’m dealing with an honest leader.

And most of all, share with me the reality that many others did the work and that the victory was not yours, but rather theirs and I’ll hire you three times over in spite of the best advice of those that favor the well-polished and eminently that recruiters and other pros are so comfortable presenting.

Mental toughness wins everyday in my world.

Filed Under: Crisis Leadership, Decision-Making, Leadership, Performance, Values Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Leadership Caffeine for the New Week: Leadership Lessons from Twitter

June 15, 2009 By 2 Comments

It’s a great week of slowly rising temperatures here in Chicago, but still not prime time for iced coffee in the morning. Today’s cup is a dark, bold Papau New Guinea, roasted locally of course.

Now before you skewer me for suggesting in the title of this post that there are leadership lessons to be learned from people reporting on what coffee they are having for breakfast and what the weather in Chicago will be like this week, have another sip and read on.

As just a bit of background, I jumped into Twitter like I did into blogging…with one toe and very, very cautiously. Blogging has become a part of my daily dna and a rich part of my professional life, and Twitter has served to remind me of some important lessons that we as leaders tend to lose track of as we move through our careers.

Leadership Lessons & Reminders from Twitter:

-It takes a certain amount of curiosity and yes, even courage for forty-something corporate types to even admit that there might just be something to a social networking tool like Twitter. Many of my contemporaries scoff and mock the tool and anyone participating.

As leaders, we often lose our intellectual curiosity and courage as we move through our careers. We’ve seen it all before and we’re well aware in our own minds that when you take risks and do something a bit edgy, most of the time, bad things happen. We’ve seen fads come and go, and to many of us, this is just one more fad.

To those involved, it is part of the fundamental rewriting of the rules of how people engage and converse. And while the lessons of networking and the exchange of ideas are as old as humanity, the reach and speed here are remarkable and unprecedented.

-Twitter is a meritocracy of ideas and the lack of hierarchy and internal politics ensures a much more open exchange than you get in the traditional workplace. There are some truly rich conversations and great ideas being exchanged here daily. Imagine if we can create systems with our customers and even internally in our own organizations by cutting out the natural stifling of great thoughts due to politics and hierarchy. The opportunities for idea generation and ultimately innovation are endless.

-Talk with smart people and you learn a great deal. I’ve managed to expand my professional network of smart people from around the globe considerably and I learn everyday from reading the posts and gaining feedback from some great professionals that I’ve met here on Twitter. A year’s worth of conferences and networking events would not have allowed me to equal the networking quality or quantity in just a few months of 15 minutes per day.

-In life and in business, there are incredible opportunities to waste time and energy, and the same potential exists in the social networking arena. I choose to tune out the infomercials and ignore those that appear not to be genuine in pursuit of giving ideas to gain insights.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

  • Participate in the events of your times or you will be relegated to the past.
  • Keep moving and keep growing or you will rust in place.
  • With new tools come new rules and if you are involved in the business of creating value for customers and leading others in the process, you must understand the new tools and rules. Your customers and your employees are engaged in a whole new universe of conversations that you might just be missing.
  • Passive participation is the same as non-participation.
  • Don’t mock what you don’t know.
  • Don’t waste your time with the time wasters.

Oh, and by the way. How is it that you are planning on leading teams of globally dispersed, multi-generational professionals when you don’t even understand how entire groups communicate, collaborate and socialize?

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , , , ,

A Fresh Voice and Leadership and the Art of Apology

June 11, 2009 By 6 Comments

There’s an excellent post entitled, “Sorry is not the final word, just the beginning,” by guest author and Product/Project Management Consultant, Lisa Winter at one of my favorite blogs: The Art of Project Management. hosted by the UCSC-Extension in Silicon Valley.

Ms. Winter describes a situation where she inadvertently upset a valuable but delicate team member on a conference call, and then went to significant lengths to apologize and regain his support. In addition to the happy ending, this fine post prompted some thoughts on a topic that I confess I’ve not spent a lot of time thinking about: the role of the apology as a leadership tool.

I can’t help but feel a little guilty that I’ve not raised this topic in the past, and for that, I apologize. (OK, I had to work it in somewhere…)

I have written extensively here at this blog and in Practical Lessons in Leadership on the need for leaders to not mask their own faults and shortcomings. In the book, I suggest that the point in time where everyone on the team sees the leader’s mistake is a powerful moment of truth. The leader can run, hide, dodge and deflect or she can show the team that she is human and leverage the failure as a teaching tool. Of course, this only works if she practices this same technique in the other direction when groups or individuals face setbacks.

But what about the apology? How many times have you observed someone in a position of authority make a decision that turned out to be horribly wrong and come back with an apology?

What about the leader that responded to you in a curt or less than respectful manner?

Good thing you didn’t hold your breath, waiting.

At least one of our national leaders went to the opposite extreme, seizing the opportunity to apologize for all of the nation’s historic mistakes ad nauseum (in my opinion). Rumor has it however, that he might not have been quite so apologetic for his alleged personal mistakes. Frankly, it was hard to tell when he was being sincere and when he was selling. You can draw your own conclusion, but I think Bill would have been a powerful force on a used car lot. (Sorry to those that I offended and Bill, I’m sorry too! Hey, this is getting easier!)

OK, enough tongue-in-cheek. Here are some of my thoughts on the issue and use of the apology as a leader. I’m looking forward to hearing from you, and again, if I’ve offended…

Leadership and the Apology

  • Learning how to say the words, “I’m sorry” or “I was wrong” should be mandatory training for all leaders. Part of gaining trust and building credibility is showing everyone that you are human. Knowing how and when to use the words is the art of apologizing.
  • You can easily adopt “apologizing” as a tactic and that is as incorrect as avoiding the apology when you’ve erred. Abuse the tool and people will quickly see through your disingenuous approach. I’ve observed early-career and first-time leaders that would assert themselves (appropriately) and then apologize for having had to assert themselves. This destroys the leader’s credibility.
  • As a leader, you have to make tough calls and often those calls result in some pain. There are many, and perhaps most circumstances where an apology is not needed and would horribly derail your credibility.
  • In circumstances where you’ve slipped and truly offended someone, run, don’t walk to apologize to the individual.
  • Too many apologies for program failures or not hitting your goals and targets, and you will find yourself apologizing to your significant other for losing your job. As a subordinate, you might get away with this once, but as soon as it becomes a pattern, your boss will see your apologies as a mask for incompetence.

The Bottom Line for Now

Does leadership mean never having to say you’re sorry? I don’t think so. Nonetheless, I suspect that most leaders rarely utter the words, more out of fear of showing weakness than due to their lack of remorse for their transgressions.

What are your thoughts? I’m interested and suspect many readers are as well on the role and use of the apology as a leader.

Filed Under: Career, Leadership, Product Management, Professional Growth, Project Management, Values Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Executive Behaviors, Your Boss Has No Clothes and Revolution from the Bottom

June 9, 2009 By 4 Comments

Gary Hamel offers a post well worth reading on “Why Success Often Sows the Seeds of Failure,” in his Management 2.0 blog at the Wall Street Journal.  He takes some tough and well-earned shots at the narrow-minded thinking of executives that foments the eventual demise of formerly good organizations.

In my opinion, the habits and traps that bedevil formerly successful companies also exist in those less-than successful organizations.   Regardless of starting point, the tendencies and habits of ineffective executive leadership are not hard to see.  In theory, they shouldn’t be hard to call out and change.  However, we don’t.  Why not?

A few of Hamel’s observations:

Hamel: “Years of continuous improvement produce an ultra-efficient business system—one that’s highly optimized, and also highly inflexible. Successful businesses are usually good at doing one thing, and one thing only. Over-specialization kills adaptability.”

Art’s Comment: Motorola (Cellular) is my poster child for this one.  This early adopter and advocate of Six Sigma become great at providing playgrounds for legions of engineers to create a smorgasbord of products that no one wanted or wants.  Processes were golden, but no one had a clue about the customer or what competitors were doing. 

They hit a low when the new CEO brought in to turn-around the Cell division (success doubtful) gave a phone to his wife and after trying to use it she gave it back, indicating (paraphrase) “If I have to use a manual to figure out how to use the phone it is too complicated.”

Hamel: “Long-tenured executives develop a deep base of industry experience and find it hard to question cherished beliefs. In successful companies, managers usually have a fine-grained view of “how the industry works,” and tend to discount data that would challenge their assumptions. Over time, mental models become hard-wired.”

Art’s Comment: I’ll pick on the hiring authorities for this one.  Many boards and management teams demand that hires walk in the door with such precise level of industry and sometimes technology knowledge, that they guarantee Hamel’s hard wiring.  Entire industry trade talent over time and ensure that the same bad-old ideas and ingrained biases of the industry remain in place, stifling creativity. 

Hamel: “Caretaker executives who’ve never been entrepreneurs and have never built something out of nothing are prone to view success as an entitlement, rather than the result of innovation, gut-wrenching decisions and perseverance. Isolated from the bleeding edge of change by subservient minions, they start believing their own speeches.”

Art’s Comment: Wow!  That’s a lot to take in in one sentence.  Amen to the need for executives to be faced with the challenges to build and innovate and to feel the pressure of Hamel’s self-described gut-wrenching decisions.  Nothing like a good dose of real-world accountability to knock some hubris out of the leader.

It seems like the auto companies, especially GM, missed this memo.

Why Can’t We Tell the Emperor About the Lack of Clothes?

It’s easy and fun to pick on the people in charge. They are big, easy targets with plenty of faults to single out.  The bad habits, poor attitudes and ego issues that Hamel points out are painfully easy for all of us to see.  Yet time and again we allow ourselves to be blinded and made deaf and mute by the light and actions coming out of the executive suite.

Perhaps part of the cure for what ails us is for people to screw up the courage to talk about problems and pursue actions to fix them.  Maybe the revolution doesn’t start in the executive suite

My friend and a sage leadership advisor, Wally Bock, writes frequently at his Three Star Leadership blog about the power and importance of the Supervisory-class of leaders—those front-line leaders and the import that they play to a firm’s success.  Maybe we need to retool top leadership by modeling the right behaviors from the bottom of the pyramid. 

A few of these “Right Behaviors” include:

  • Frank discussions about what’s working and what’s not
  • Environments where challenging the status quo is appreciated and encouraged
  • Hiring practices that don’t involve cloning and that do allow for creativity in bringing on-board unique skill sets and talents.
  • Development practices that include “Charan’s” apprentice model so that upcoming leaders can face the gut wrenching decisions and grow in the process.

Last and not least: making it a core value and behavior inside a firm to cry “Foul” when the leaders up above pontificate while walking sans clothing through the business day.

What’s to stop us from starting to get this right?

 

 

 

Filed Under: Crisis Leadership, Decision-Making, Leadership, Management Innovation, Performance, Surviving Lousy Leaders, Values Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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