Category Archives: Coaching

Why it’s important to make time for play

Posted on by
1

Do we spend enough time playing? As adults, have we forgotten how to play? Have we in fact been conditioned to stop playing once we “grow up”?

Bigshot Front View

Most of us would probably recognise that a lack of play during our childhood can have serious consequences for our psychological development. Dr. Stuart Brown of the National Institute for Play makes the case that a lack of adult play has a negative impact both on our energy levels and on our mental well-being. Again, most people would appreciate that taking time out from our daily tasks and routine can lift our spirits and put us in a better frame of mind – it can also help us with problem-solving and creative thinking – but few of us make a conscious effort to schedule some dedicated and regular play activity into our day. (And I don’t mean simply spending an hour or two playing computer games.)

How we play is just as important as what we play with, and the type of play activity that engages us – in short, we are what we play. So the absence of any play may suggest something is missing in our lives.

When I was a child, some of my favourite toys enabled me to design and build things, to construct working models with clockwork and electric motors, to assemble, disassemble and re-assemble simple electronic circuits for radios, light-operated switches and walkie-talkies. I even built a rudimentary synthesizer using parts stripped from an old TV set, and a keyboard made from an ice cream tin. OK, so I wasn’t going to get a gig with Kraftwerk, but I did learn about capacitors, resistors, transistors, diodes, rheostats, transformers and relays, even if I couldn’t get a recognizable tune out of the instrument itself.

This avid curiosity about how things work once caused me to take apart a clockwork motor, which I was then unable to get to work again. My father, an engineer, simply said, “Never take something apart unless you know how to put it back together”, sage advice which is helpful even today in my role as a strategist, executive coach and business consultant.

I would suggest that there is a link between abandoning play in adulthood and a growing lack of curiosity about how things actually work once we get older, coupled with our increasing passivity towards new technology. For example, how many of us would know (or care) how to repair simple mechanical or electrical appliances in our homes?

While there has been an understandable effort aimed at encouraging children to learn how to write code, this emphasis on software comes at the expense of learning how machines work, how hardware is designed, how electronic and mechanical components combine together. This software bias has prompted a team of educationalists to launch the Bigshot digital camera kit designed to help children learn through play by making a real digital camera, and to understand the relationship between software and hardware. Others are teaching summer schools that combine software programming with engineering and robotics – but the broader goal is to develop problem-solving, logic, comprehension and reasoning skills.

Our pursuit of creative or constructive play in adulthood is not helped by the obsession designers and manufacturers have with producing “sealed units” – hardware that comes with “no user serviceable parts inside”*.  Even if we succeeded in taking the back off a gadget and having a look inside, it would probably invalidate the warranty and extinguish our consumer protection rights.

If we don’t understand how the things we use are designed to work, how can we tell if something is wrong, how can we learn to improve them, how can we find new ways of using them?

Smart companies and organizations understand the importance of learning through play and actively encourage their people to spend time “playing” – either through the pursuit of pet projects, or through creative, collaborative and social activities designed to instil innovation and fresh thinking.

As such, I’m very interested to hear from organizations that incorporate “play” into their regular activities, to understand why and how they do it, and to learn about the outcomes and benefits it delivers. I can be contacted via this blog, LinkedIn or Twitter.

*Note: Software is often just as bad with so-called “default” settings that get in the way of our ability to play around with and explore the programs we use.

10 Rules for Effective Blogging

Posted on by
2

Here are 10 useful rules for effective blogging. These are my personal rules, and they work for me. Yours may differ, but that’s OK:

  1. Maintain a regular publishing schedule
  2. Say what you mean …. and mean what you say
  3. Use opinion to establish your argument
  4. Deploy relevant facts to support your case
  5. Draw on personal experience to make it real
  6. Credit your sources
  7. Sometimes, less is more
  8. Declare any vested interest
  9. Find your own voice
  10. Keep it interesting and original

Note: This post is a tribute to the late Elmore Leonard, whose recent passing has prompted many writers to revisit his 10 Rules of Writing

The Music Collectors’ Guide to Personality Types

Posted on by
12

ShelvesSomething a little less serious this week. Recently, I’ve been working with various clients across executive coaching, career development, talent management and psychometric testing. Given my former experience in music retailing (it was like Nick Hornby’s “High Fidelity” without the romantic interest….) and in deference to my own lifelong hobby of record collecting, I thought it would be amusing to classify people according to their collecting habits, as a way of helping HR managers and team leaders everywhere understand their colleagues.

So, in no particular order:*

1. Listomaniac – Always making lists of their favourite songs, and then constantly updating them. Whether it’s “Top 10 songs about ice-cream”, or “All-time Top 5 pop songs featuring saxophone”, or “10 Songs containing the word ‘toothbrush’ in the lyrics”, Listomaniacs love to demonstrate their arcane (but selective) musical knowledge, and are so absorbed with the process of list-making that they are incapable of committing to a final, definitive choice. Don’t expect the Listomaniacs on your team to make a decision, let alone stick to it. Definitely don’t give them too many choices or too much time to select the catering menu for the office party. (Cf. Mixologist)

2. Completist – More than a mere fan, the Completist is compelled to collect every record ever released by a particular artist (and some Completists are also driven to seek out unreleased recordings, including juvenilia, studio out-takes and rehearsals…). In more extreme examples, this form of OCD involves collecting the entire output of specific record labels or whole musical genres. While the Completist can demonstrate deep knowledge of their chosen subject, they can also get lost in the detail and don’t realise that not everyone shares their passion. When assigning roles to your team, make sure the Completist is in charge of their chosen specialist subject area, but set well-defined boundaries, and don’t let them near eBay. (Cf. Archivist)

3. Anthologist  – The Anthologist doesn’t have time to read music reviews or even listen to anything that hasn’t been recommended to them or curated for them by someone else. In fact, the archetypal Anthologist relies on the end of year polls and critics’ lists to decide what music to buy. Now, of course, the Anthologist’s task is made even easier through music subscription services, podcasts, and personalised web-streaming. Although capable of making discerning choices and informed decisions, the Anthologist often lacks any original thought, and would be lost without apps like Spotify. On the other hand, the Anthologist can give you the low-down on the latest thinking around best practice in agile software development, productivity tools and structuring compensation packages (because they’ve read some blogs and a few trade newsletters).

4. Populist – Never one to let taste get in the way, the Populist knows that a song is good because it went to Number 1 in the charts. Those “Now That’s What I Call Music…” compilations are made to measure for the Populist, who simply wants to buy the biggest-selling hits of the year all in one go. While many Populists might include a few “Greatest Hits” and “Best Of” albums in their collections, the more adventurous types have been known to buy a “proper” studio album (as long as it has at least 4 top 10 singles on it). On a positive note, the Populist will likely be happy working with numbers or in customer service, as they don’t need to exercise personal discretion, and because the data never lies.

5. Audiophile – The Audiophile has to have the latest and most expensive music hardware, with full 7.1 surround sound, if only to play Dire Straits. (I’m pretty certain that every hi-fi shop in the world only has one customer demonstration CD, namely “Brothers in Arms”.) Some would say that it’s the software not the hardware that matters, but the Audiophile knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. History is littered with music technology that promised the world, but failed to deliver – 8-track cartridge, Quadraphonic, DDC, MiniDisc, DAT – so it may be unwise to let the Audiophile on your team manage any IT projects. Likewise, they may insist on having the most expensive laptop available, but if they only use it update their Facebook page, maybe you should be a bit concerned.

6. Archivist – Like the Completist, the Archivist is a fount of musical knowledge – but unlike their counterparts, Archivists know enough of the received musical canon to be able to differentiate the great from the merely ordinary, and they know that not every artist has an immaculate back-catalogue. The Archivist also understands why Big Star’s “Third/Sister Lovers” is rightly regarded as one of the best (if flawed) albums of all time. At the extreme end of the spectrum, the Archivist is a neo-Trainspotter, able to recall minutiae such as the album catalogue numbers, recording dates, orchestral arrangers and sleeve designers (and studio caterer) of every 5-star album since 1957. But on a good day, the Archivist will display great perseverance in pulling together internal knowledge, external data and other essential information to get the right answers.

7. Mixologist – Finally, the music collector who is so enthusiastic about their personal taste in music that they just have to share it with everyone else, via lovingly created mixtapes. Adept at making tapes for every occasion and at every significant stage in their lives (the break-up tape, the road trip mix, songs for a sunny day), the Mixologist will also have regard to and openly acknowledge their sources, influences and inspirations. Unlike the Listomaniac the Mixologist’s choices demonstrate exquisite musical taste and are backed by erudite concepts, connections, and cross-references – they are not simply motivated by the compilation process. True Mixologists are happy to allow their tapes to be circulated, to be copied, and even to spawn “response” tapes in return. As team players, Mixologists will be more than happy to share information, and they like nothing more than to see their ideas taken up and then built upon by the rest of the team.

*Note: This list does not claim to be exhaustive; and of course as with all profiling tools, music collectors may display two or more of the above traits, often at the same time. But they will likely demonstrate a leading preference for a particular style of collecting. As the music critic once observed, “a little knowledge can be dangerous – but too much can be deadly boring”.

Some gratuitous advice for customer service managers – 7 handy hints

Posted on by
2

I make no apologies for the fact that this week’s post is something of a rant. But in venting my spleen I hope to offer some invaluable and sincere feedback to customer service managers everywhere.

Over recent weeks, I have had numerous phone conversations with front line customer service staff working for utilities, telcos and financial institutions. From my personal experience, these companies appear to be among the most frustrating companies to deal with, but my comments could equally apply to retailers, hotels, travel agents, software vendors, local governments or logistics companies.

Here are my suggestions on how customer service managers could improve their performance:

1. Train team members on the full product or service life-cycle – There is nothing worse than being passed off to a never-ending chain of “specialists”, people who know only their own few centimeters of the billing or fulfillment process (albeit their knowledge is probably several kilometers deep…). I am not saying they all have to be experts at everything, but having at least a common and consistent understanding of the end-to-end process would be a great start.

2. Update all team members on latest product and service changes on a timely basis – Following on from the above, I get really annoyed when given contradictory information from different client-facing employees, especially when the person I am speaking to is clearly not up-to-date with the company’s own offerings.

3. Tell the teams not to keep blaming the “system” – For one thing, the “system” is only as good as the humans who designed it. For another, the “system” is not some abstract or imaginary force over which nobody has any control. Often those designers are their colleagues. So in criticising the system for any shortcomings, the customer service representatives are in effect criticising their fellow employees and by extension, the company itself.

4. Listen to customer feedback relayed by the front line employees – For the most part, customers actually want to help service providers to do better. They don’t give their feedback so it can be ignored and disregarded – they would like it to be acknowledged, followed up and acted upon. No doubt most front-line employees would also like to think they are being taken seriously – but often I think there is an element of “shooting the messenger” which dissuades employees from raising genuine customer feedback and criticism with their managers.

5. Give customer service teams clear parameters to exercise their discretion – I understand that organizations require consistency, and they also expect adherence to operating guidelines and protocols. However, it gives me very little pleasure to have to go over the head of a front line employee to speak to a supervisor or team leader, who then ends up making their subordinate look ineffective because they have the “power” to reverse that erroneous charge on my bill. Rather than forcing customers to escalate issues in order to get attention from further up the chain of command, how about providing front line teams with more individual discretion as to how they can resolve customer complaints? I once heard of a major hotel chain that empowered front desk employees by granting them a program and quota of refunds, rewards, upgrades, discounts which they could allocate and award as they saw fit to address guest issues.

6. Learn to be more customer-centric, not product-led – So many service providers like to believe they focus on the customer. In fact, we know that customers are managed according to the products they purchase and the services they subscribe to. How often are internal systems jargon and inward-looking product terms used as a justification for a particular client outcome? To me, this demonstrates that many organizations are not interested in serving their customers – they are often rigidly organised around product processes and internal systems.

7. Don’t expect customers to train customer service staff (and certainly not for nothing) – Finally, we know that many organisations record in-bound customer calls. Sometimes, they bother to listen to the recordings. Occasionally, they might even contact the customer to seek more information. But rarely, if ever, do they contact their customers to say they listened, they heard and they did something about the issue. Sure, feel free to use my customer feedback for “staff training and coaching purposes”, but please give credit where credit is due. A voucher or a discount off my next bill would be a nice gesture!

While most retail markets are competitive, and customers have at least some choice between providers, the reality is that we all need access to gas, water, electricity, telecommunication and banking services. All of these sectors are highly regulated (and in some cases they also enjoy government protections), which by necessity reduces the amount of choice. Wouldn’t it be nice if these powerful and monopolistic companies used their enviable market position to benefit their customers, rather than taking them for granted?