The Trouble with Travel

October 25, 2013 //
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The connected economy makes it increasingly easier for us to be productive from the comfort of our laptop or smart device. You still can’t beat a face-to-face, though, and for that you need to travel.

I had occasion to travel yesterday, for a meeting in London, in and out from Ireland in the space of a few hours. Three events reminded me of how travel is still not the experience it should be, and it boils down – like most things, to how you treat customers and your peers, or in this case, fellow travellers, and how you plan.

Firstly, boarding the plane. It always amazes me how people will be oblivious to their fellow passengers as they block the aisles, take ages loading up their bags or taking things out of their bags before they sit down. And this is despite the gentle encouragement of the airline to find your seat as quickly as possible.  Is it so hard to plan out in your head as you look for your seat: ‘now what do I need out of my bag before I sit down and where is it? It’s like those people who queue in a shop to pay for something and then when it’s their turn they don’t have their money ready, as if the last thing they expected in the world was for them to be expected to pay for their item. Sheesh.

Secondly, near monopolies are always a problem from a service point of view. Take the much touted London Heathrow Express. I can’t think of a more expensive train journey on a per mile basis. I opted to go straight through Terminal 1 on arrival to use the bathroom on the train. Guess what? There was only 1 toilet on the train and it was out of order. I also have data roaming switched off when I travel overseas, so I wanted to use the wireless. Guess what? No wireless. ‘Oh dear, no toilet and no wireless,’ mused the conductor almost wistfully. Oh dear indeed. It’s 2013, you need to provide a better service for a 15-minute, £20 journey.

Thirdly, sometimes airports just don’t help themselves. The competition for your patronage among airports is really fierce, yet Shannon Airport must have taken the news about new Ryanair Routes coming to Shannon as a chance to take the day off. As we were coming into land, we started ascending, increasing in speed and circling. It turned out the Airport’s landing system and radar had become unserviceable (unserviceable – hello?!) and we were diverted to Dublin, where we refuelled and waited for them to fix things. As I waited in Dublin, I noticed on the airport website that the Ryanair flight (I was flying Aer Lingus) from Manchester had landed anyway. Maybe it’s true they don’t cary excess fuel and were landing come hell or high water. The fact that there either is no back-up system, or the back-up failed is amazing to me in an industry where ‘5 nines’ uptime is the sine qua non of being in the business. This meant I arrived 2 and half hours later than planned, and I went to enquire whether the airport would be prepared to pay for the extra parking. The airport in turn blamed Aer Lingus and the Irish Aviation Authority. I went to pay for my parking and found that by 9 minutes I had tripped over into the 12-24 hour rate, which was a staggering €19.50. When you drive into the parking the signage recommends you stay short term for under 24 hours, which is a serious disservice to those coming in and out in one day.

When we did land, we had the most labyrinthine route you can imagine to get out of the building, despite the fact that we were the only passengers left in the place.  It was as long as it takes to get out of Terminal 1, which is 10 times the size.

This kind of experience leads you to voice your frustration on the social media and online review channels, which in the connected economy comes back to bite the service provider. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you provide a good service, it creates a virtuous cycle, not a vicious one, to borrow from Michael D Watkins terminology.

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Categories Customers, General

It’s vs Its: A Primer

October 23, 2013 //
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I checked my daughter’s homework today and her grammar questions were on the different uses of it’s and its. She’s 10. She got them all right.

It amazes me how many times you see the incorrect version used in emails and signed off communications from senior people and established companies. Have they forgotten the rule, or did they never know it? It must make every teacher or former teacher cringe when they see these kinds of mistakes.

Of course, the confusion lies in the fact that the apostrophe can denote both a missing letter and possession.  Paul’s a simpleton stands for Paul is etc, whereas Paul’s friend is a simpleton denotes the friend belongs to me. The exceptions to the ‘apostrophe for possession’ rules are – inconveniently – his, her and its, otherwise known as your possessive pronouns.

So, therefore, I offer you a primer.

It’s is ONLY EVER USED TO DENOTE A SHORTENING OF ‘IT IS’ or ‘IT HAS’ .

Its is ONLY EVER USED TO DENOTE ‘IT’ POSSESSING SOMETHING.

Thus, you say: It’s a dog, and it’s got its bone.

Does this post help, or does it come with its own headache?

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Categories Communication, Language

More on the Word ‘Just’

October 21, 2013 //
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Just a few more words on the word ‘just’, dear reader. I was recently talking about the much maligned (and rightly so) adverb, not the deeply important adjectival version which is worth a post or two in its own right. In fact, it’s worth dwelling on the panoply of meanings that accrue to this 4-letter word. I’m struggling to think of another that works so hard for our beloved language.

It seems there are other people who have issues with the word. Only today, the highly esteemed (and rightly so) Seth Godin posted his concerns. In Seth’s post, the context of ‘just’ as a throwaway is what rankles with him.

What it boils down to is this. You’ve got to know your context, and use ‘just’ when it positively qualifies what you’re trying to say. Don’t use it if it obfuscates or reduces what you’re trying to say. You need to know the ‘mot juste’ for just. And rightly so.

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Categories Communication, General, Language

The Indivisibility of Time

October 18, 2013 //
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In a recent post, I talked about the fact that time is the one resource that proves the most valuable and most elusive.

It’s amazing to think how much our lives are governed by time.  Work, transport departure times, classes, meetings; they’re all governed by this ever-present dimension.  It’s not always been that way, and we take for granted now how difficult it has been to measure time accurately.

But here’s something to ‘wreck your head’, as the Irish may say.  There was a chap two-and-a-half thousand years ago who reasoned that time was infinitely divisible, which effectively makes it indivisible.

His name was Zeno, and his ‘Achilles and tortoise’ (for which these days read hare and tortoise) paradox is perhaps his most famous.  Achilles is faster than the tortoise of course, but he never gets past the tortoise.  He never gets past the tortoise because in that second he has moved, the tortoise has also moved a small distance, which he still has to recover.  Take the measurement down further to a split second, a nanosecond, or even a picosecond, and in that minutest of time, the tortoise has still moved a fraction further that Achilles still has to cover.

Confused?  There’s perhaps a better explanation here, but what this paradox points to in my view is how, in an effort to control time and not let it control us, we divide it up into smaller and smaller pieces, only for it still to exert the same pull on us.

And what I’m most conscious of is this.  The time it took you to read this post – you’ll never get it back.  I hope you found it a good investment.

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Categories General

I’m Just Saying Don’t Say Just

October 16, 2013 //
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Last year a colleague of mine said: I’m never using the word ‘just’ again.  The more I thought about this, the more I realised how right he was.  It’s a nothing word, an excuse of a word, a word that devalues what you’re trying to say.  It’s practically a synonym for ‘erm’.

Consider these examples:

“Hi there, just a quick call to find out when you’re making a decision on our deal.”

“I’m just saying we shouldn’t do this.”

“I was just wondering what will happen if we get this wrong.”

‘Just’ belittles the worth of our contribution.  It negates us.  It’s a signal to the other person in the dialogue that subconsciously we don’t feel up to it.

Don’t use the word.  Just Do It®  🙂

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales

Making Someone’s Day is the Best

October 14, 2013 //
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It’s so much better to give than receive, isn’t it?  That feeling of satisfaction when you improve the lot of someone else and level the playing field somewhat.  It’s sensible business practice as well, as what goes around will come around, which is the golden premise of social media.  You give, while expecting nothing else in return, unless or until you’ve earned it, and only your customer decides that.

Big or small, it’s the thought that counts.  A compliment to someone who’s served you a great meal; a thank you to someone who’s not used to getting them; a repayment of a favour with a bigger favour.  It doesn’t cost anything to be thoughtful.

Here’s a thought: we’re used to receiving gifts from our suppliers, but when was the last time we gave them a gift?  How many awards do you see organised for suppliers by their customers?

Make someone’s day, pay it forward and you’ll never know what you might start.

Categories Customers, General

Time is a Killer

October 11, 2013 //
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Time – we measure so many things by it.  Miles or kilometres per hour, revolutions per minute, dollars per day.  Time governs so much of what we do and it’s the one resource we can’t ever stop expending.  The march of time continues regardless.

In business, it’s rarely money that presents us with the biggest barrier to success, it’s time.  Time is the killer resource.  We need that software release, that big deal, that important new senior hire to start as quickly as humanly possible.  It’s never soon enough.  And what happens, to make things even worse?  Things always take longer to come to fruition than we hoped: pipeline is sluggish, deals slip, development is delayed.  These are complex things we do in business, with many variables.  Throw in the human element and you have a recipe for stuff not turning out as you planned.

To combat the ravages of time on your precious schedule, I offer these two seemingly contradictory pieces of advice.  Firstly, wherever you can, build slack into your planning, so you have room to manoeuvre and still be on time.  Secondly, don’t let work or what your doing simply fill the time available (much easier said than done).

It’s a fine balance, but isn’t everything that’s worth doing well?

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Categories General, Planning

The True Professional

October 9, 2013 //
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It’s interesting to me what we understand by the word ‘professional’ these days.

To ‘profess’ comes from the latin words ‘pro’ – in front – and ‘fateor’ – to confess openly – and can be echoed closely in the phrase you often hear in the business world these days: ‘I’m just putting it out there.”

From profess we can see how the words professor and profession come to be.  While a profession comes to mean an occupation, however, these days when we use the term ‘professional’ we don’t just mean someone who does their job.  We also mean someone who does it well.

In the main the term has been appropriated for the white collar jobs.  A sales professional sounds better than a sales woman or sales man.  The exception to this is in sports like soccer, where you hear people refer to someone as a ‘true’ or ‘real’ professional, which says more about the immense majority who are not.

So my ask of you is this: what is people’s view of you?  Are you fulfilling your profession, doing your job, or are you a professional?  Which one has more chance of being considered indispensable?

 

 

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Categories General

Is the Strategic Holy Trinity Still Valid?

October 7, 2013 //
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Even though business is complicated, it always pay to keep things simple, because this gives us clarity and focus for making decisions. Speaking of which, they used to say that a company had basically three broad strategies to follow.

Either you could focus on customer intimacy, and compete by being super close to your customers.  Think Zappo’s, the celebrated US online shoe retailer now owned by Amazon.  Or, you could go for product leadership, and design and build the best product on the market.  For this you could name Apple.  Lastly, you could major in on operational excellence, and do things much more efficiently than your competitors.  Ryanair would be a good example.

Imagine that each strategy sits at the point of a triangle.  When crafting your strategy you can only move around the outside the triangle.  You pick your strategy, or perhaps you opt for a combination of 2 strategies – a bit of one and a bit of the other.  But you can’t hedge your bets and go inside the triangle, looking for a combination of all three strategies.  That’s no strategy at all, just a big compromised mess.

In this sense it’s just like the holy trinity of delivering software, the price-quality-time conundrum.  If you move in one strategic direction, you lose elements of the other.  For example, focusing on quality has an impact on price and time (to market).  (You’ll also hear people talking about the triangle of cost, time and scope, all of which determine product quality, but you get my point.)

The trouble is, everyone’s starting to realise they HAVE to be customer intimate, regardless of their strategy.  If you’re not customer-focused, it will always come back to bite you.  For a long time I’ve been arguing that Ryanair’s drive towards operational excellence at the expense of customer happiness will rebound.  Charging you excessively to check in a bag reduces weight in the plane, fuel required for transportation, and flight turnaround times.  But your customers resent you.

Interestingly, Ryanair has started to acknowledge that its lack of respect for the customer has to change.  Furthermore, and if you have time, for an altogether funnier take on the resentment people feel that the initial price of a flight is never the final price, this song is well worth a look.

So if customer intimacy should be everyone’s strategy, we now need to think outside of the triangle.

Categories Customers, Strategy

Are You Even Listening to Me?

October 4, 2013 //
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The latest argument with Mrs D – or, as I like to call it, a robust discussion – reminded me of how important it is in both our personal and business lives to communicate well.  Have you ever been in a group dynamic (dinner party, dialogue for 2, meeting) and noticed how often people interrupt each other?  How often somebody asks a question and the next person chooses not to answer it, and asks their own question or makes a statement pushing their own view or agenda?  Annoying, isn’t it?

I’m no saint, and it’s something I have to work on all the time, but I try to respect the other person and wait til they’ve finished talking, and then either answer their question or further the topic in some way.  It’s about respecting the person and what they have to say, and contributing something that gets you both nearer to where you need to be.  It’s basic marketing isn’t it?  Listen-absorb-consider-contribute.

OK, so sometimes people will ramble, have nothing of worth to say, or love the sound of their own voice, and you need to work with them a little.  But generally speaking (pun intended), it’s a case of ‘I know you’re hearing me, but are you listening?’

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Categories Communication, General, Marketing
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