Category: Culture

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Client Transitions and Competition

I was responsible for client transitions at my company. The double edged sword for a larger business is that in situations, that would otherwise carry significant emotions by someone closer to it, a healthy objectivity about the client relationship.

Our two big rules for this are
1) help the client transition as quickly and efficiently as possible
2) don’t cause an outage.

I see all sorts of versions. Some clients are incredibly peaceful and non-dramatic. Some clients are incredibly noisy, dramatic, and frustrating. Also true for other providers. For all the good and easy transitions, there is at least one in the bunch with unreasonable expectations.

-3 months ago I had a provider say there was something in the environment that we should have told them about while what they were complaining about was completely out of scope of our contract with the client.
-2 months ago I had another provider convinced that we need to go on-site and deploy tools for them as part of our offboard because they had no engineer in the market.
-1 month ago I had a provider who didn’t understand how to setup MFA despite us sending them all the information (including secret key). 5 emails explaining the situation with screenshots and KB links they complained that we hadn’t given them any help.

There are also providers that have been a pleasure to work with.
-Many have only needed our agent deployed and a date of turndown to work.
-One sent us a script they found that helped us export specific piece of data they needed that would have taken us hours to click through all the screens, saving us a bunch of time.
-One did have a negative experience initially and sent me an email “offline” from the client to explain their experience. I cannot describe how grateful I am for that. Incredibly professional.

Here’s the thing, if someone is good at their job then they understand that not all transitions are bad. 90% of the time, my understanding is the client just made a business decision. Totally fine. Even with that truth everyone has to understand that
1) everyone has their own processes and your outside experience only informs your experience and not the other providers intentions
2) the incumbent is not responsible for the incoming provider’s onboarding activities
3) We are all vendors and there is literally no value in having a vendor fight in front of a client. NO. VALUE. EVER.

What’s the point of this? There’s an observable increase in posts about competitors needing to help each other because it’s the right thing for the industry and accusing providers of being difficult in transitions. The other right thing for the industry, is to not have expectations that other providers will do your job and then creating drama in front of a client because you don’t like that their process isn’t yours.

Entirely removing friction in a process like this isn’t possible, but it is possible to avoid throwing another provider under a bus in front of client.

Let’s all do better.

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Invest for Your Future

There are few things more powerful in the world than the power of compounding. If you spend an extra 1% every day for a year(1.01 to the 365th power) you’ll be at 37.7 at the end of the year. That’s a 1377% increase from where you started.

Doing something consistently in the same way over time is significantly more powerful than trying to spend massive efforts at random points in time. When someone starts excercising and tells me that they went to the gym every day I tell them to back out a bit. They’ll burn themselves out doing that. The same is true about finances. Time in the market is way better than timing the market. The downside of $1000 is losing $1000 while the upside could be and additional $500 or more this year alone layer in subsequent years and at a normal rate of 9% you’re talking about $32000.

If you’re a 20 something and you haven’t started an 401K or a roth, start one now. If you want a model for calculating a wealth target, I have one I can send you. Just email me and I’ll forward it over.

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How We Learn Matrix

How do you feel about learning and how do you help others learn?

There are four stages of growth into competency of any activity.
1) I think I know.
2) I know I don’t know.
3) I don’t know that I know.
4) I know.

There is also a method for each stage of growth.
1) I Do. You Watch.
2) I Do. You Help.
3) You Do. I Help.
4) You Do. I Watch.

The question today, is who is “You”, and who is “I”? Where are you being shown by an “I” and where are you the “I” showing the “You”?

I’m a firm believer in growth and helping others grow.

Who is your “You”? If you don’t have another person there, look around and find one.
Who is your “I”? If you don’t have another person there, look around and ask for one.

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Goodhart’s Law

I was talking with one of my staff about some service design issues yesterday. The point that was brought up was about how some action around poor service is coming from a need to present numbers and I brought up the concept of GoodHart’s Law.

If you’ve never heard GoodHart’s Law it goes like this “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

This has show to be true many times over. So if you’re dealing with a problem in your culture, service delivery, etc. Look at the incentives you’ve put in place by what your team believes to be the target.

Often i’ve found the better version is to have a less numerically clear ideal state as a target and the metrics inform if your distance to the ideal state.
E.G. “We never want a client to get off the phone and feel like their problem will never be solved. We want them to get off the phone with us and think ‘they have this.'”
Then you add metrics, not as goals, but as informers of the distance between where you are and the ideal future state.

Thoughts? Have you seen this in your own org?

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Measure What Matters

There’s a trope that continues to track as sensical.

“Measure what matters.”

I was talking to someone the other day about a feature in a product and asked about reporting on it. There wasn’t any reporting against the feature yet. e.g. who used it and how it was used. The thing is, if it really was valuable, you’d want to track the results. Are you adding features without a thought about how to communicate the value the feature gives back out? If so, then the reality might be the feature is useless. If it were useful you’d want a feedback loop to understand how.

Adding something custom without a mechanism to report back it’s use tells me it’s busy work.

What do you think? Is this true? Have you ever found anything valuable for which you didn’t have a subsequent reporting mechanism?

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Consipracy Or Just Broken Stuff?

Conspiracy theories are fun and they tend to come out in droves around this time of year. For fun I try to one-up the other person’s crazy. e.g. “The moon landing didn’t happen.” “Oh, you believe there’s a moon?”

Here’s the thing, not all conspiracy theories are wrong, and not all are right. Applying Hanlon’s Razor is important “”Don’t attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance.” The question is how do you approach all subjects with a healthy level of scepticism against whatever the subject matter is to sus out the underlying incentives and corresponding actions to that.

Sometimes it’s bad actions, and sometimes the world around us is simply it’s own treatise of what we’ve asked for as a collective of people in a market. I mentioned to someone earlier today that Coca Cola only has 39 grams of sugar. The reason they don’t go higher or lower is because they found out in testing that they sold less on both the over and under. 39 Grams isn’t an evil corp putting too much sugar in so much as it’s what everyone was asking for through the nature of a market.

This leads you to the question of what have you been asking for? Many drips fill a bucket. When you look at the world around you, where are you going with the market and shouldn’t? Where should you be the first drip? Where are you ok with what you’re living with?

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Seek Wisdom

I’ve been managing a situation with my staff that is causing stress lately. The phrase “most people overreact as quickly as possible” comes to mind. I’ve been using it a lot this week and helping lead people to slow down and take a breath.

In the middle of that, I sent one team member this list of old sayings about words. They cannot all be applied together, they’re individual. So you’ll see the conflict on some. I read a book of them for at least one month out of every year. If you read these particular sayings below once per week for the next year, I think it’ll pay dividends on how you navigate what you say. You’ll find yourself speaking up at times you wouldn’t have before and find yourself not saying things you might have otherwise said.

->”When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise.”
->”The mouth of the fool is his ruin, but the wise man’s lips guard him.”
->”Even a fool is thought wise when he keeps silent, and discerning when he holds his tongue.”
->”Sin is not ended by multiplying words, but the prudent hold their tongues”
->”The soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit”
->”Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits”
->”Just as damaging as a madman shooting a deadly weapon is someone who lies to a friend and then says, I was only joking”
->”Patience can persuade a prince, and soft speech can break bones”
->”Kind words are like honey— sweet to the soul and healthy for the body”
->”Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed”

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Stories behind the Stuff

I used to think this house was obscene. Clark Griswold unrestrained. Then I heard the story behind the lights. The family who lived there started this so their daughter could see the lights while in the hospital one Christmas. It’s amazing glow knowing the story behind something, having the context, gives something an entirely meaning.

How true is this also for people? What are the stories you don’t see. How could they change your experience of a person? What are the other questions you might need to ask yourself or those you lead?