Monthly Archives: July 2012

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The Olympics and The Silliness of Judged Sports

Spoiler alert: If you’ve not yet watched the coverage of women’s gymnastics from the Olympics you may not want to continue.

If you HAVE seen the coverage, or at least the results, then you already know that reigning world champion Jordan Wieber failed to qualify for the all-around individual championship. Although her score was fourth best amongst all competitors she was third best on the US team and ran afoul of a rule that says that only the top two from any country can advance to the individual competition.

REALLY?!?

So, you’re telling me that it isn’t about pitting the top gymnasts in the world against each other, it’s about putting on some sort of global ratings show?
Some sort of  “let’s be fair to those countries whose athletes made it here but aren’t as good” or “wouldn’t want one country to dominate” kind of thing?

I really don’t have a problem with it if Wieber gets beat in the semis on the track or in the pool, measured on a objective scale where the tape or the clock doesn’t lie. But to miss out by less that .3 because some judge decided, even subconsciously, that “as world champion I expect more from her” is kind of sad.

Yeah, yeah, they all know the rules going in but that doesn’t make the rules intelligent. Especially the whole, lets be fair to everyone, thing. I’m starting to wonder if the same folks who created the BCS weren’t somehow connected to this approach to gymnastics.

That’s why I am in favor of eliminating all judged sports from the Olympics. Granted we’d lose a good source of humor fodder by not being able to refer to the scores from the Russian judge but I’m willing to sacrifice.

Or…if you’re really in love with gymnastics…and figure skating…then let’s use some advanced technology. It would be simple matter to include small sensors in costumes and uniforms that would allow a digitized assessment of an athletes movement. In fact you could eliminate name and country this way allowing “judges” to assess without prejudice.

Eliminating one of the worlds best from competing because some shriveled bint decided to tick off a tenth of a point based on the position of her toes is ridiculous. It moves sports into the realm of beauty pageant. I think that’s plain silly.

What are your thoughts on judged sports in the Olympics?

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Three Reasons to Understand the Customer Perspective

I received an email offer the other day that was attempting to persuade me towards an upgrade of a graphics software package I’ve used off and on for a couple years.

I went to the web site and discovered there were three different versions available: Basic, Advanced, and Pro. I could click on each of them, even compare them side by side, and in the end couldn’t decide which one I wanted based on anything other than price…so I bought nothing.

The trouble was that the descriptions of the packages were all written from a sales perspective, this or that attractive feature designed to entice me to buy. But when a feature is described in technical jargon, Dyspeptic Flabberhaven Interface, it sounds impressive but confusing. WHY do I need a DFI? Who knows.

A web site I have really come to appreciate and frequently use is CNET.com. CNET reviews products like cameras and laptops and home appliances but the bit I like best are the buying guides. The CNET buying guides aren’t there to help you compare Flabberhaven capability but to solve your problem.

You want to buy a digital camera? Cool. What do you want to do with it? Kids sport photography? Portraits? Landscapes? Start a business? The buying guides use a series of question to guide you toward the right model and feature set. In short, they take the customer perspective.

In my last post I suggested that the customer experience is guided by a couple of simple questions:

  • Should I explore?
  • Should I buy?
  • Should I promote?

So much of what you find on web sites these days is designed to drive right to that second question: Should I buy? Without providing anything other than a call out of feature and function to persuade a prospective buyer.

And if that seems to work why think about the customer perspective at all?

Reason #1: It says you understand the customer
As mentioned above the CNET buying guides are a great example of how to communicate an understanding of the customer. If I am looking for technology I go there first before I go to any retailer of manufacturer site BECAUSE those guides scream out…we know you.

If you can show that you know me as a customer it helps convince me that your product will meet my need.

Reason #2: It changes the way you present information
If you understand that there are a number of people coming to your web site or contacting you via phone or email that are exploring, looking to learn more about you as a possible solution to a need, you start to present information differently.

I love using churches as examples. Think of one major reason an non-attender would decide they want to go to church. Life Crisis? Return to childhood faith? Searching for meaning? Curiosity?

Go to most church web sites however and what you’ll find…well, you’ll find a mess if you look at enough of them…but what you’ll find it a list of features and functions. “We’re a welcoming community where you’ll feel right at home.” “We’re not like your parents church.” “Church for today’s generation.”

Understanding WHY people are exploring you changes the information you present. True for churches, true for purveyors of software.

Reason #3: It sets the foundation for customer loyalty
When a vendor shows from the outset that they care enough to help me explore them and assists me in buying by displaying an understanding of my need they communicate an expertise that drives me towards loyalty from my first interaction.

If you can show that you know as much about me as a perspective customer as you do about your product you build trust from the start.

This simple list doesn’t come close to uncovering all the changes in business process and strategy that a deep understanding of the customer perspective engenders but it is a good place to start. Which leads me to today’s question:

How well does your organization, business, newsletter, understand the perspective of your customers and if you understood that perspective more intimately what would you change?

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Managing Customer Experience: Two Perspectives

There is quite a lot being said, and written, about Customer Experience Management these days and it can easily be overlooked as something that only applies to a small number of specific industries: retail, services, CPG etc.

The truth is that the thought process around managing customer experiences applies to just about ANY interaction between an organization and the people who use the goods or services of that organization.

  • Non-profits like to think of these people as donors of constituents, but they ARE customers.
  • Churches like to think of these people as members but they ARE customers.
  • Youth sports organizations like to think of these people as players but they ARE customers.

I think you get the idea.

When thinking about managing a customer experience it is important to remember that there are two distinct perspectives involved, each with their own set of drivers.

Perspective #1: Inside Looking Out
This is the easy one to think through because it is the perspective of the organization that has customers.

The inside looking out perspective is generally guided by four questions that drive ever deepening levels of engagement with customers. The answers to these questions help shape the experience from the inside looking out point of view:

  • What do we Know? (General customer demographic info)
  • What do we Do? (Segmentation and campaigns)
  • What do we Suggest? (Loyalty and engagement)
  • What do we Create? (The set of experiences that drive movement)

Obviously a lot more could be said here but these four question provide the framework for developing progressively more robust customer experiences.  Using one of our less obvious “industry” choices from above:

  • Churches first need to know who is attending, even basic name address and phone number helps, but learning more about their family is even better information: kids? ages? interests?
  • Then they need to target communication that is pertinent to the attender. You wouldn’t want to send a new visitor who is a 65 yr old retiree information about nursery services on Sunday morning.
  • Once they get to know the person and their family suggesting ways to get involved, ways to feel plugged in, that are specific to them becomes important in terms of creating stickiness.
  • Thinking through how you then keep the new family coming based on multiple anchor points is important. How many churches have had the discussion about having services for everything from pre-school through high school on the same night mid-week in order to create “family time”?

Perspective #2: Outside Looking In

This perspective is often the forgotten point of view. Customers are the one “having the experience” so it is crucial to remember they are looking at it through a different set of questions:

  • Should I Explore? (Deciding if they want to know more about you)
  • Should I Buy? (Deciding if they will buy)
  • Should I Promote? (Deciding if they’ll recommend you to friends)

How about a youth soccer program this time:

  • Parents know about clubs other than the ones their kids are involved in and have to make a decision about whether or not to explore a competitors policies, costs, teams, and coaches.
  • Once they becomes educated the next decision is whether or not to have their child play for that club.
  • If the experience is a good one they can become a significant recruiting source based on what they tell other parents.

I’ll write more about how to manage these two perspectives in days to come but for now it is important to remember that they both exist and they’re both driven by different sets of questions. Understanding how your customers move through their own questions is key to bringing these two perspectives into alignment.

What do you provide that helps your customers make their three decision to explore, buy, and promote?

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If You’ve Got Nothing, Just Admit It.

I just spent and entirely fruitless half hour searching the internet for a picture.

We’ve been in Las Vegas with my daughter this past weekend at a national dance convention. She’s had a great season and had some nice kudos along the way.

I was trying to find a picture of her on the internet since all of MY stuff is on my home computer. A search on her name brought back a couple, and by this I mean maybe three, decent results but it also brought back, among other extraneous things, a link to a web site on the Chinese Tarot written almost entirely IN Chinese except for where it translates Chinese into Latin.

Now, I get it when it brings backs a picture with some random “Fletcher” in it but the Chinese Tarot? Really?

In an attempt to bring back multiple results the search algorithm must have chosen something that I’m sure makes technical sense but in the real world provides no practical value. And THAT made me wonder…

How often do we do that? How often do we try to provide SOMETHING when it would be best to admit we’ve got nothing?

Businesses do it all the time if they believe they have a solution that comes somewhere close to answering a potential customer problem.

Politicians do it all the time by restating a question to move it from something they don’t want to answer into something for which they have prepared answer.

Maybe I’m just worn out by several days in a town that seems to be built on the empty promise that your life can be perfect if you just have the right amount of money. And if you don’t have the right amount of money then by investing the right amount in gambling you’ll increase your odds of getting the right amount of money to make your life perfect…at least while you’re here.

Maybe I’m just feeling that the world needs a little more Simon Cowell like honesty in it…perhaps without the sarcastic edge…but he essentially tells people they can’t sing, they should save their time and effort and choose something else.

Maybe I’m worn out by the angst coming from all these parents at this dance convention some of whom are seeing their kid as the next star on “So You Think You Can Dance” when really they should just be encouraging the kid that it is good they’re trying hard and getting exercise.

Somewhere along the way being directly honest, “I’ve got nothing for you” or “This isn’t your thing”, seems to have gotten a bad rap and has been replaced by “No really, if that’s what you want let me see what I can find that is at least two steps removed and holds out a modicum of hope without being dishonest.”

And that’s how you wind up with Chinese Tarot.

Perhaps you’re feeling this post is a reflection of that. That I should have admitted I had nothing for a Monday morning and saved you the time and trouble of having read it. Fair enough…I’ll take that.  🙂 But I’ll still finish with a question:

Where do you wish you could get a little more of the direct kind of honesty that, in the end, saves time?

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3 Tricks for Silencing the Self-Critic

I got my camera remote working yesterday which of course meant I had to play around a bit with some self- portraiture.

To be a bit transparent the result at the left here is about my fourth or fifth attempt. Every previous attempt had something I didn’t like about it, lighting, color, pose… the self-critic was in full effect as I sought to expose him through photographic imagery. (I’m not even sure I like THIS one the best but I had to just shut him down.)

Having just been through the battle against the self-critic I thought I’d share a couple tricks for defeating that nagging voice that stifles creativity and oft times leaves us staring at a blank page.

Trick #1: Dust
I find it incredibly difficult to come up with ANYTHING creative when my office is in a shambles, the state in which it most typically exists. It’s funny how much more easily the ideas start to flow when I have a clean desk. Even funnier that the process only gets better if the floor in front of my desk…which I cannot see when sitting there…is clean as well.

There is something about a well organized environment that frees up the mind to focus on being creative. In case you’re in need of a pithy reminder: Cleaning up your space allows the mind to race.

Trick #2: Doodle
Far too often we get focused on creating the specific outcome we’re after that we get bogged down at the start. Looking for just the right word, or chord, or color combination. One of the best ways I find to give myself a kick start is just to doodle.

Now, to be fair, I am a doodler. Most of my class notes, meeting notes, notebooks are filled with doodles. Doodles don’t take thought, they just take shape.

In this case though I don’t necessarily mean drawing squiggly lines. Doodling could be writing down bits of dime-store-novel-like dialogue. It could be putting on a piece of music and playing along with it. It could mean editing a photograph that has nothing to do with your current project.

Don’t let the critic tell you you’re wasting time doodling…you’re stirring the creative juices. You’re bouncing out of the rut you’re stuck in to get a different run down the path. The creative freedom of expression in doodling loosens up the log jam and get’s you going.

Trick #3: Drink
No, I didn’t pick this one just because it starts with the letter D, and yes, I know some people might find this one mildly offensive, but any college student can tell you that the first thing alcohol consumption does is lower your inhibitions. Guess what the self-critic is? An inhibitor!

There are actually studies that show that consuming a moderate amount of alcohol results in people engaging in more creative problem solving. Somehow loosing the inhibitors loosens the creative juice.

I’m not advocating getting sloshed, just a glass of wine or a good scotch will do the trick. But hey man, it’s science!

Next time you find the assembled self-critics yammering in your ear try these tricks to get them to just BACK OFF!

What other trick would you suggest for silencing self-criticism and getting a creative project moving to the next level?

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Think You’re Not Creative? Guess Again…

I enjoy creative endeavors. I draw, paint, sculpt a little and dabble in computer graphic art.

I’m a musician, song writer, photographer, writer, and speaker.

I’ve done radio, television and theater and I’ve even dabbled in stand up comedy a time or two.

I’m the guy that gets the “creative” tag. I’m the guy that is expected to think outside the box. (Truth be told I lost the box years ago.)

More and more regularly I find myself coming across people who say, “I’m just not creative” as though they’re leaving that bit up to me. They always say it with a hint of sadness in their voice as though they WISH they were creative but, it just isn’t their bag.

If you’re one of those people who think you just aren’t creative let me let you in on a little secret…that’s crap. Let me provide three proofs:

Proof 1: The first man
As a Christian I believe man was created by God, in God’s image. When we’re told that in the Bible the only “image” of God we have is that of a creator. If man is created in the image of God then man is created, all of us not just Adam and Eve, to be creators…to be creative.

Proof 2: The foundational job
Pastors tell us, and the Biblical record supports this, that the first thing God gave Adam was a job.

Genesis 2:

15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

Now we know Adam didn’t have to tend the ground for food, that comes later, he was a vegetarian at this point, he was naked and unashamed so he didn’t have to make clothes,  so what were his jobs again? Decorative gardening, ornamental horticulture is you will, and coming up with creative names for the animals. HIS JOB WAS TO BE CREATIVE!

Proof 3: The forgotten tree
We always remember the tree of the knowledge of good and evil being in the garden. You know, the apple tree? But we too often forget the tree of life was there too. Supposedly eating from the tree of life made it possible for Adam and Eve to LIVE FOREVER. That was why they were kicked to the curb by the way, so they wouldn’t live forever in their post apple eating state.

So in other words…

God created man as a creative being, gave man a creative job, and gave it to him in a place where he was supposed to be forever. That means we’re all BUILT to be creative!!!! If you think you’re not it is only because you’ve forgotten how!!!

I hate the fact that there is a growing trend, in churches and beyond, to refer to a certain select group of people as “creatives” Yes, I know it easier than saying: musicians and artists and writers and painters and, and, and…

But if we call one group the creatives then the other group is the “not creatives”. I really do believe this subtly reinforces the notion in many people that they are not creative.

But if God created all of us to BE creative, and we start to tell one group of folks they’re not, whose message are we spreading there?

What is one creative activity you can engage in today that will produce a tangible result?

 

 

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And Now a Word from Our Founding Fathers

I generally try to stay away from political topics as a rule but I thought I might have some fun with the Fourth of July. Please take this as tongue in cheek and have a GREAT fourth!

James Madison, our fourth President and “Father of the Constitution”, might have had a little something to say about the whole notion of affordable health care… Of course he was a rich Virginia aristocrat so he could afford it.

Not to be outdone Thomas Jefferson, our third President and slightly more radical thinker…who was known to cavort with the French from time to time…probably would have made a more all encompassing observation. Love how their expressions seem to fit the quote…

Ol’ Ben Franklin would probably have let that whole hot issue go but he certainly couldn’t ignore the spectacle of the Occupy Movement could he?

Or was he talking about Tea Parties? At least perhaps those not in Boston?

George Washington, our first President, may have taken the high ground on the political conversation and chosen instead to provide his two cents on the spiritual state of the union.

What do you think of his choice in rouge? I’d say he’s more of a winter really..

John Adams, our second President, would have followed suit with George I suppose. No need to rock the boat too early on.

Of course we might never agree on what “moral and religious” means so we’d have to enlist the aid of one last patriot…

Samuel Adams, who was NOT President but who made quite a name for himself in beer would probably have chosen to make comment on a much more comical period in our recent political history…assuming of course he had read Bill’s quote:

“It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the—if he—if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not—that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement”
-Bill Clinton

Ahhh…don’t you just love politics?

Enjoy the day, don’t take politics too seriously, speak up for what you believe in but not at the expense of the other person in the conversation, and  celebrate this great country in which we get to live.

To my friends in other countries, feel free to have a chuckle at our expense. We probably deserve it!

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Three More Ways to Make Work More Like Sports

Euro 2012 concluded yesterday. For those not into soccer that’s the European championship. It happens every four years, kind of like the Olympics or the World Cup.

Spain won as predicted and although Italy lost, they showed up in the finals as a complete surprise to most folks. They made a fantastic run and came up just short when all the luck, ans skill of the Spaniards, seemed to turn against them.

During their run to the finals I was captivated by Gigi Buffon, the Italian goalkeeper and captain. This guy has been around for quite awhile and is still considered one of the top keepers in the game but what impressed me most was the man beyond the play.

  • Camera’s couldn’t stay off him during the Italian national anthem and commentators kept coming back to the passion with which he sang his countries song.
  • During their semi-0final penalty shoot-out against England he could be seen slapping hands with Joe Hart, England’s keeper, between penalties.
  • After the loss in the finals the cameras followed him as he comforted his teammates and even his coach.

Back in January I posted “What’s the Difference Between Life and Sports?” where I explored some of the ways in which our work environments often conspire to make life a whole lot less exciting than following sports. As this summer wends its way though Euro 2012 and the Olympics more and more Gigi Buffon’s are going to come across our radar screen.

So what can we learn from Buffon’s example?

1. We like to play for something bigger.
That’s why Buffon belting out his national anthem is impressive. He gets that, he connects to it, he’s proud of his country. How often in our work places to we as managers try to instill in our people a sense of something bigger than just a paycheck?

The opposite is true in sports as well…we don’t care for the selfish player who is just in it for the money. How much heat, pun intended, has Lebron gotten for that?

2. We like a class act.
Even in the tension packed moment of a penalty shoot out Buffon makes the effort to connect with the opposing keeper, a guy who he openly respects as an up and comer. That’s class.

How do we create an atmosphere of class even in the midst of competitive tensions in the work place? How do we reward “class”? Typically I find we don’t. We like it, we applaud it, but we hope it doesn’t get in the way.

3. We like team guys who lead.
I watched this world class athlete who had just loss put aside his own grief long enough to comfort guys who may well get a second and even third chance at this tournament. This was a captain leading his men even after the battle was finished.

How many leaders in business have you seen take that approach? We more often see them focused on responsibility and blame for the loss. How do we instill not only this level of teamwork, but leadership in our people?

I wonder who we’ll see emerge from the Olympic games in a few weeks time. I wonder what lessons we’ll be able to take away from these games about how to create more passion, more life, in our work environments.

How much of this connection to class, leadership, and a connection to something bigger is cultural? Do you think it is the same for people outside the US?