Tag: Personal development

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Personal development Strategy

Running with the baton v’s ping pong

Companies use the terms CX, NPS, CSAT , but unless your company employees run with the baton, customer experience will always be poor.

Customers hate being passed around from person to person, re explaining their needs. They want to have some one run it to ground to get the outcome for their Customer.

The converse is ping pong, where you get handed from one person to the other, no ownership, just someone trying to move you into someone else’s queue. The lack of ownership or willingness to find the answer, leads to hours of frustration and no outcome and appalling CX.

How do you build a culture of running with the baton?

1. Recognise great behaviour by calling out individuals demonstrating the traits

2. Build it into your values and call it out

3. Build a knowledge base to accelerate finding the answers

4. Be careful not to create a band aid, ensure the root cause is identified and an owner assigned to fix the underlying process.

5. Make sure the customer is updated regularly. Even if there is no news. Better to check in regularly than leave the customer guessing

Next time you deal with a frustrated customer run with the baton.

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Coaching Mentoring Time Management

Time Management

Moving from reactive to proactive has been the key skill I have had to coach for individuals to progress in their career.

Reactive activity: Activity driven by Emails and phone calls, demand from stakeholders including customers

Proactive: developing and overall strategy, steps to achieve and setting up cadence calls. Building stakeholder relationships, focus on the projects and only check emails once or twice a day.

If you are the most productive in the morning, dont check email, allocate time for a project where we are at our peak in terms of attention and focus.

If you have worked in a customer service role where you have been responsive and reactive and then move into sales, you will need to adjust to Proactive work from mainly reactive. To make this transition look at training, reading the below book and also getting a coach.

It takes time to change behaviours but this adjustment is well worth the effort.

https://gettingthingsdone.com This is a great book to really nail your productivity.

If you are starting out in your career, learn project management skills as this will be a core skill for the Proactive time management.

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Personal development

When passion is dangerous at work

I’ve had personal experience and witnessed too many highly-passionate people risk their relationships, risk their reputations, and neglect to appreciate the people around them in order to pursue a dream. I’ve seen too many fail–because their focus on the future makes them oblivious to the present. https://www.inc.com/todd-nordstrom/how-passion-can-destroy-your-potential-according-to-5-experts.html

There is so much written about pursuing your passion at work. There is a health warning that comes with it in the corporate context. In the wrong environment, over used passion is seen as emotion that represents in an imbalance in the person. In startups and entrepreneurial organisations it is celebrated and rewarded.

So why the extremes of perception. I have worked in both and seen it from different lens.

Corporates are looking for calm leaders, who never get emotional or passionate, (may be beneath the surface) just calm and considered. Gravitas. In start ups and SMB, passion is seen as essential to drive success and the team.

When passion is dangerous at work?

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Career planning Mentoring Personal development

Tips for young women starting out in their career

carreer womenIf you are career minded and want to get on, there are 5 things to start doing now, don’t leave it too late to achieve the following:

1. Sales and Finance

Both skills can lead you to a CEO role. Rarely is the top role filled from other disciplines in a business. So nailing one or the other or both, is essential is you plan on getting to the top. Sales has had a bad wrap, but it is the best place to prove yourself by delivering outstanding results.

Action: Land a sales role or finance and get exposure to the other, by working with those teams, understand what they do and how you can learn from each other.

2. Public speaking

If you are not able to hold a room, then your career will come to a screeching holt. No matter how good you are, public speaking is key.

Action: Join Toastmasters and practice practice practice

3. Mentors

Find great mentors inside and outside the business. Ask your boss to help find the person in your organisation. Outside ask your family or friends. Once you have established contact, its your responsibility to schedule the catch ups ie once a month.

Always go prepared with questions for your mentor. This is a great opportunity to seek out advice on how to deal with situations, understand what they have done to get on in their career. Most important: Be vulnerable.

Ensure you thank and acknowledge feedback. Get comfortable as you cannot get to where you are going without feedback. It’s a lifetimes work.

4. Networking

Meeting new people, making new connections, helping them with their goals, is the only way to get on in life and business. It’s also gratifying helping others and they never forget your generosity. Use every opportunity to get out and network.

A great read, to help you learn and implement great connection with others is How to win friends and influencers people by Dale Carnegie

5. Develop an opinion on whats happening in the world

Not only develop an opinion, share and challenge others. This will build confidence. You dont have to agree with anyone, be seen as holding your own views. One of the criticisms of women by senior men, is that women don’t have an opinion on whats happening in the world.

Also look at your behaviour, ie giggly girls is not how you want to be remembered.

Good luck with your ambitions, ensure you get as much support as you can and remember to let others know your plans along the way otherwise they will fill the void with wild assumptions that I can guarantee are not going to help you. As my business coach says to me ” never die wondering” in other words ask the questions and speak up!

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Book Quotes Coaching Mentoring

The grass is never greener

grass is never greenerThere are many times in my personal and business life I have given this advice “on the grass is never greener” to others. We always look fondly at what other people have or at our past and wonder why we are not fulfilled today and the answer is that you can never be happy if you have this mindset.

The rest of the well known saying is “unless you water it” in other words work on the present.

Feeling content with what you have and keeping your ego is check is the only way to happiness. When we are constantly craving what others have we can never be happy.

A year ago an ex peer of mine landed a role that I thought was ideal, recently I spoke to her and she said the money is poor and environment not good, for a moment I had to check myself, as I really did think she was better off. The grass is never greener.

So to keep yourself in check, practice gratitude every day. You can write them down or just find 5 mins every day for reflection.

Also read Eckhart Toll The power of now for dealing with the ego. He has some top tips, which mean you live in the moment and stop craving what you dont need!

 

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Entrepreneurship Influence Intrepenuership Leadership Personal development Sponsor Strategy

Opportunity to work abroad

working abroad (2)At age 44 I had the opportunity to work abroad with an Australian company that I had worked for for 4 years. I set up the European arm of Quofore a mobiles apps solution for Consumer Goods field representatives and we had done very well, so I was invited to come to Australia and become Managing Director for APAC.

Personally I have grown as a result, especially the opportunity to expand in to Asia, where my team landed a large contract with Unilever in China for 10,000 mobile users across 2000 cities. Ten years on, this is the success I am most proud of.  The reason:

  • Setting up a business in China of which I am extremely appreciative of all the advice and support from Austrade.
  • Delivering one of the most successful ROI projects for Unilever globally
  • Delivering a complex project in less than 10 months.

In Quofore I had worked with the global CEO and CFO for over 15 years, I had extreme trust and I was treated always exceptionally well.

Since joining corporate which I did just over 7 years ago I have had similar opportunities. In July last year I was given an opportunity to drive a new segment of the business, something I had been doing as a side project. My new boss backed me gave me a team and said there is no one more driven than you to make it work. This opportunity was to grow a $300 million business from 0 in the next three years.

I was amazed at the number of people who said to me, why are you taking on this opportunity you had a far more prestigious role before managing a team looking after the larger accounts.  Seven months on those same people, now get it. Proving yourself through taking calculated risks that are high profile is a great way to get noticed.  I am indebted to my boss for supporting me and creating the opportunity.

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Coaching Influence Leadership Mentoring Personal development Work life balance

Taking responsibility to how we get treated

treatmentToday I was in a coaching session with a young female I have mentored for over 6 months. She has grown so much in a short amount of time, she is also happier and equipped with skills to ensure her success. Today I asked her about how she is getting on with repair bridges that have been well and truly burned. The same question I ask her each time I see her. She had made no progress.

I asked her what was getting in the way of having the conversation. She opened up and said that it would be too painful. Do you practice forgiveness? She looked alarmed. Forgiveness is the opposite to resentful, when you let you go, the emotion and time spent feeling resentful is released into positive energy that you can use far better.

Holding on to resentment is not helpful or healthy.

It’s too painful, she repeated. I asked Why is it so painful? She replied: It was bullying and it went on for months. What did you do about it? She stopped, I did nothing, I was embarrassed. Did you speak to anyone about it? No. So you suffered not knowing what to do. Yes she replied. She went on to say I want to forget it and move on. I replied, it will happen again, I can guarantee you, so what are you going to do about it when it happens? She looked surprised and taken back. It will happen, I talked through some incidents that I had personally dealt with. As a women, certain leaders(men and women) need to assert their authority and the way they do it, is not acceptable: Humiliating, raising voices, aggressive and threatening. If they do it once they keep doing it as the boundaries have not be set properly.

These are the steps to take post incidents with people who put you down or harass you or raise voices and aggressive:

1. Straight after incident document verbatim what has happened including time and date.

2. Within 24 hours and when you are calm, take the person to one side in a room and not where others can hear

3. This is what you say: The incident yesterday where you said quote un quote, you made me feel inadequate and very uncomfortable. Your actions destroyed my confidence, something that is extremely fragile in women. I dont want you to ever do that again, do you understand me?

Once the accused has acknowledged and apologies. Say this is not going to be discussed ever again, this is between you and me. Lets move on. Confidentiality is critical as it rebuilds trust.

I promise you will never have another incident, with this person.

In that moment the lights came on and she said ” I own this, I can take control”. Absolutely you do! Never let anyone make you feel bad, people who do this are fundamentally insecure. There is no excuse for the behaviour, but you are responsible for setting the boundaries.

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Personal development

Pray and Spray leadership

Great leadership is where their is a clear strategy, clear product lifecycle and all the programs fit the strategy for 12 months ahead.

In the absence of the clear strategy and plan, it seems to be that you just keeping coming up with ideas and execute rapidly in order to deliver the target number.

The customer needs are completely ignored as its all about what the company needs to make the numbers. The customer and employee experience is unbearable: conflicting priorities, messages, lack of clarity on how things fit together, poor lifecycle execution, no listening to the customer needs and air of desperation as one program cannibalises another. The poor customer overwhelmed looks to alternative providers to work with.

In the absence of a solid strategy, poor leaders resort to “busyness”, the Leader utilises Pray and Spray which is costly and unproductive.

How do you know if you are hiring or working for a organisation and leader that has this is their kit bag? Ask people who have worked for the leader and organisation, was their an annual plan of programs or where they created on the fly throughout the year?

As a people leader in a Pray and Spray organisation, these are the tips for protecting your team and customers from the chaos:

1. Make it clear to the leadership that your customer can only run with three key initiatives at once, when we have fired off 15, each will pick out three as they have not got the capacity to consume it all.

2. Communicate to your team that they are not expected to take on all 15 and every new initiative and get the customer onboard, just pick up to three only.

3. Hold the initiators responsible for the ongoing success, support and reporting, to prevent them having the time to create more initiatives, without execution of the ones in train. its a bit like kids on a football pitch, all chasing the ball.

4. Get the initiators in front of customers so they can hear first hand the chaos they create, and get them to listen to the customer.

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Collaberation Influence Leadership Personal development Strategy

Its within our control to fix it

All to often we get caught up in why are management not fixing this! No matter where you are in an organisation you can influence an outcome. Everyday we are held back from success, but often the things that are holding us back are not clearly laid out, for others to understand or to solve or we dont see it as our responsibility to resolve. Living in hope that someone will find a solution.

Hope is not a strategy. What we walk pass is what we accept. So how do we address? Firstly understanding the problem we are trying to solve:

1. Problem statement.

2. Get a cross section of people together to discuss

3. Brainstorm solutions to the problem.

4. Agree on the best solution.

This is a far better approach than coming up with the solution when there is no recognition or understanding of the problem you are solving. The other benefit is the owner of the solution emerges. No matter how many times you go through the process the owner always emerges, as people naturally want to help and always want to be delivering outcomes that elevate pain.

An example: a team of account managers are dealing with many questions from their customers a day. Due to the newness of the business, many questions are being asked for the first time, and then again and again by different customers. The time management and CX is very poor, as the time it takes to deal with each request is not always straight forward. The problem statement ” How do we remove the burden of multiple questions from customers to Account Managers, increase the consistency and timeliness of responses, to free account managers up to focus on driving initiatives and enablement of their customers”

Because this problem statement is broad, having a cross section of staff across the business, enables solutions to be sought and the owner emerges.

STOP saying: thats not my teams issue, as it is because it impacts your team. The team that own the solution often are unaware of the issue or size of the issue, so framing the problem statement and finding solutions together is far more effective.

It’s within our control to fix it.

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Collaberation Influence Leadership Personal development Strategy

Why context is so important in delivering a message

My coach always reminded me “context equals meaning”. Without context you message is lost and we leave the audience confused.

Context is so important in conversation and in delivering a message. I observe it in others but rarely identify when I am not doing it! It struck me when seeing one of the leaders from our company talking about having the critical conversation the conversations we avoid, it was a great message to leaders, but it lacked authenticity and context as there was no personal story. 

From this I learned  what was missing from my presentations. When delivering the vision for my team for the year ahead at a recent kick off I used a story to describe a customer who has mortgaged their house to set up their business, the stress of a growing payroll and the responsibility of collecting enough cash to ensure all your staff get paid, they have a billing issue that drags on for 6 months and the stress of this large bill which is incorrect. The message: Take extra special care with your customers, get the wider team involved to resolve critical issues for the customer. The feedback from the team was incredible, they said no one has made them think about the customers perspective and what they are dealing with.

Key learning is always spend more time on the scene setting, background and why you want the audience to listen, all these give context to your message.