In a previous tip; I suggested you to begin with the end - your goals and the purpose behind them. Taking your goal into consideration, I am also telling you to live in the now. Not in the past, not in the future but in the now. If you lose sight of what you need to accomplish in the present, then you most certainly will not reach your goal. I encountered this type of people in an organization I joined when I came back home. I wanted to grow my small network and at the same time give back to society. At first I was excited and had high expectations. My expectations fell flat when I took notice that all we talk about was back in the "glory days." Do you want a brighter life, focus now on what is important. You will then create a wonderful past and bring yourself closer to your goal. Filipinos, in my observation, have a hard time saying 'no.' When a boss or a colleague asks us to do something, we will almost always say yes, even if we are already swamped. We say 'yes' even when it is not in our area of expertise.
Why does this happen? First, I believe it is because we do not want to look incompetent. Second, it could be because we do not want to embarrass ourself. We don't want to embarrass the person asking the favor by saying 'no.' The biggest factor why we Filipinos cannot say 'no' is because we do not think about the impact of what we say 'yes' to in relation to our current commitments. Successful executives I personally know say 'yes' to work that is meaningful to them. They say 'yes' to tasks they are sure they can deliver. They only say 'yes' to things they are passionate about. Successful executives know that if they say 'yes' to every demand at work, they will fail to deliver. This will only damage their credibility. They know that saying 'yes' to every task thrown their way will only hamper their personal productivity. The least important things will get in the way of important tasks. Dave, a British Senior Executive VP I used to work for surprised me one day. He out rightly refused to join a meeting he was being invited to attend by the HR Director. He had good reason. It was very practical. Dave knew he was only being invited for his mere presence, and not because he was going to add any real value to the meeting. In short, he knew he was not really needed in that meeting. It was easy for him to say no. Of course, you do not want to look like a snob by constantly just saying no. When you turn down a request, make sure you say it politely and with a smile. Make sure you clearly state your reasons for turning them down. Remember to emphasize that you are declining the task or activity, not the person who asked. Even if you do not like the colleague who is asking, do not make him or her feel that you declined because of your personal biases. Maintain professionalism at all times. Now, if it is your boss you have to say no to, then do not say it bluntly. Let him first understand and appreciate your current work load. Ask him politely which one he would like you to deprioritize to accommodate the new pressing request. By doing this, you let him decide, and he will either remove one of your earlier taksks or just delegate his request to another staff who's less preoccupied. At the end of the day, your boss makes the call what tasks you need to prioritize. I have always wanted to write an article on this topic. I am truly glad that Brent Beshore wrote a great piece on it. Thank you Johann for sharing it on Facebook.
I have a magic pill to sell you. It will help you make more money, be happier, look thinner, and have better relationships. It’s a revolutionary new pharmaceutical product called Late-No-More. Just one dose every day will allow you to show up on time, greatly enhancing your life and the lives of those around you. All joking aside, being late is unacceptable. While that sounds harsh, it’s the truth and something that should be said more often. I don’t care if you’re attending a dinner party, a conference call, or a coffee meeting – your punctuality says a lot about you. Being late bothers me so much that just thinking about it makes me queasy. My being late, which does occasionally happen, usually causes me to break out into a nervous sweat. The later I am, the more it looks like I’ve sprung a leak. Catch me more than 15 minutes late and it looks like I went swimming. On this issue, I find myself a member of a tiny minority. It seems like most people consider a meeting time or deadline to be merely a mild advisory of something that might happen. I’ve been called uptight and unreasonable, or variations prefaced with expletives. In a world that feels perpetually late, raising the issue of punctuality isn’t a way to win popularity contests and I’m ok with that. There’s a reason we set meeting times and deadlines. It allows for a coordination of efforts, minimizes time/effort waste, and helps set expectations. Think of how much would get done if everyone just “chilled out” and “went with the flow?” It would be the definition of inefficiency. It’s probably not that hard to imagine, considering just last week I had 13 (yes, I counted) different people blow meeting times, or miss deadlines. It feels like a raging epidemic, seemingly smoothed over by a barrage of “my bads,” “sorry, mans,” and “you know how it goes.” The desired response is “it’s all good,” but the reality is that it’s not okay. Here’s what it is.
Paying attention to punctuality is not about being “judgy,” or stressed. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It makes room for the caring, considerate, thoughtful people I want in my life, whether that’s friends or colleagues. Think of how relaxing your life would be if everyone just did what they said they’d do, when they said they’d do it? A good place to start is with yourself and a great motto is something I was taught as a child: “5 minutes early is on time. On time is late. Late is unacceptable.” Author: Tom Huston The customer is always right, the old saying goes. But if a company is big enough, should it care what the customer thinks? Too Big to Care A survey of American consumers conducted by Ipsos found that the organizations with the least to lose—like government services, which often have no competition, or telecom companies, which often have near-monopolies over the districts they serve—tend to have the worst customer service. Forbes translated the results of that survey into this graphic: At first glance, it seems counterintuitive that massive, high-profile organizations wouldn’t make customer experience a priority. After all, they have the money and the means to invest in implementing the best CX resources. And governments, which are among the biggest organizations of all, theoretically only exist to serve their customers. Yet large organizations, especially those with few competitors, can usually afford to suffer through PR disasters in ways that small businesses can’t. It’s easy to be insensitive and get away with it when you dominate the playground.
Recommended for YouWebcast: Build a Powerful Network and Accelerate your GrowthSo at what point does an organization become too big to stop caring about its customers? And why do other companies choose to prioritize CX no matter how big they are? Who’s The Boss? Apple famously began as a small company led by a few guys tinkering around with microcircuitry in a garage and has grown into the most valuable company in the world. And it’s managed to become the king of the corporate world while still keeping its customers at the forefront of everything it does, from its streamlined user experience (UX) design to creating a retail experience that its competitors envy. So what gives? Perhaps it’s all in the company’s attitude regarding the importance of CX. “[O]ne of the things I’ve always found is that you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards for the technology,” Steve Jobs famously said at an Apple conference in 1997. He continued: [A]s we have tried to come up with a strategy and a vision for Apple, it started with “What incredible benefits can we give to the customer? Where can we take the customer?” Not starting with “Let’s sit down with the engineers and figure out what awesome technology we have and then how are we going to market that?” And I think that’s the right path to take. As we have discussed previously on The CX Report, the participation of top executives directly correlates with an emphasis on customer service. And Apple is not the only major enterprise to continue to put its customers first: cue Samsung (especially in mobile), Nordstrom, and UK grocer Waitrose (which is not public but employee-owned). For a large public-traded company, market realities traditionally dictate that revenue is king. Customer satisfaction scores aren’t necessarily what shareholders want to hear about on the quarterly earnings call. But for companies that decide to make the customer king, is it any surprise that revenueusually follows? Growing Pains Or is it company growth itself that lets large businesses think they can ignore CX? A Harvard Business Review article suggests that CX can suffer as a part of scalability efforts. At the startup phase of a business, it’s all hands on deck—everyone needs to be a customer service representative to a certain degree. If you do have someone specifically dedicated to customer service, that person might handle those communications across every channel, naturally offering a seamless customer engagement because the same employee handled a customer’s phone call, sent the follow-up email, and saw that customer’s complaint on Twitter. And when your business has only a handful of customers, it’s easy to track and respond to every problem. You could even say it’s essential to your survival. But as your company grows up, you tend to separate departments and responsibilities, creating silos and trying to keep track of the communications between them. Thousands of customers later, salespeople care more about closing sales than post-purchase support; your IT team focuses on upgrading the network infrastructure instead of investing in expanded CX capabilities; and your CEO is preoccupied with preparations for going public when the focus should be equally weighted on CX. All too often, the customer gets lost in the shuffle. Making CX A Cultural Priority Some evidence suggests that it’s not how big a company is but rather where they are that counts. The Japanese are famous for their focus on hospitality, whether it’s riding the elevator at department store Takashimaya or service at the top-floor bar of the Park Hyatt Tokyo. And a Reuters report found that U.K. customer satisfaction in general was higher than ever last year. Consider also the reputation of pretty much any major U.S. airline against the superior customer experience provided by international carriers like Virgin Atlantic, Emirates, and Qatar Airways. So where does all this information leave us? Small companies have a natural motivation to please their customers, as doing the opposite would probably put them out of business. Just look at Philz Coffee, the San Francisco Bay Area’s most popular local coffee chain. In a world dominated by Starbucks, which built its international empire by providing customers with a unique experience, Philz has managed to compete with them by placing an even stronger focus on the customer and providing what is arguably a superior coffee-drinking experience. “Customers take time out of their day to visit us; this is very valuable to us and we are humbled by it,” reads the Philz mission statement. “This gives us the opportunity to make a positive impact on our customer’s day. We do this by serving an amazing cup of coffee and delivering really great customer service.” Small businesses might also be structurally predestined to provide a more seamless customer service, with fewer customers to handle and fewer employees and departments to silo into isolation from each other. Large companies, with the budget and muscle to choose their priorities, probably don’t make a conscious decision to deliver poor customer service, but if their leadership does not actively prioritize CX, it stands a good chance of falling by the wayside, especially as a company grows. Globalization and the advance of technology might force the big kids out of their comfort zone to play nice. Just look at the reaction of the taxi monopolies worldwide to the sudden threat by Uber. If smaller companies offering a superior customer experience can now threaten larger organizations that quickly and dramatically, perhaps it will mean that the customer isn’t necessarily right, but he’ll find a way to get what he always wants: a good, efficient customer experience, on demand. |
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ChristianFather of two wonderful kids. Archives
February 2017
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