A Process of Discovery

July 31, 2012 Tripp Babbitt Leave a comment

Functionally separated organizations have one thing in common . . . they don’t have a clue.

Each function absorbs the demands placed upon them from some IT application and off they go to work. The unfortunate workers that have to interact with customers that encounter such work design bear the burden of brutal backlash when the service delivered is pathetic. Such is the life of workers on the front-line.

Management meantime is busy in their respective offices pouring over the latest scorecards that can’t help them manage. Both worker and manager are frustrated that the other just doesn’t get it.

Does it really matter?

The pointing of fingers does little but create a divide and some kind of organizational class warfare. both sides so sanctimonious in their debate that each side is deaf to the real problem. And we think the US political system is a mess, this is – by operational definition – deadlock.

The deadlock can be broken in service organizations. Customers represent the tie-breaker and focus of to break the deadlock. If functionally separated organizations cannot agree on anything, they can agree the importance of the customer. This is true even with the clouded glasses in which they view customers. Especially, when they see the same thing at the same time.

Debate ensues when we see things together, but can ultimately be resolved by what matters to customers. It is a process of discovery that bridges the gaps and refocuses our aim.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public). His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work. Read his articles at Quality Digest and his column for CustomermanagementIQ.com. Learn more about the The 95 Method for service organizations. Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

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The 67 Year Thinking Problem

July 29, 2012 Tripp Babbitt Leave a comment

If it wasn’t bad enough that SPC charts disappeared from the Hawthorne Plant after WWII as management adopted a mass-production mindset, 67 years after Japan kicked our collective behinds we still think the same about management. Worse, we have even fallen deeper into insignificance in the US. Short-term thinking driven by the financial markets and management with an attention span of the TV generation struggle to compete and innovate.

Buying and selling companies for profit and mergers for economy of scale. Except profit comes from satisfying customers in new and different ways . . . and mergers have not achieved the scale needed to increase profit as this comes from economies of flow. The scale fantasy continues to drive the wrong behavior.

With great embarrassment, the US still tries to copy Japan. How do you catch a competitor by copying? It always keeps you behind. Finding out what matters to customers leads to innovation that is emergent from what you learn.

Instead of thinking for ourselves, we embrace “gurus” that study Japan and have never actually applied the hypothesis. Because if they had they would discover the truth through application.

The clock is still ticking . . .

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Our “Rank and Yank” Culture

July 28, 2012 Tripp Babbitt Leave a comment

English: The first verse of Yankee Doodle, a well-known US song. The words are from a well-known song that first appeared in the 1700s. Any copyright for the words would have expired. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The word Yankee or the shortened form “Yank” is an offensive word when used by foreigners, especially those residing in the UK. Yankee dates back in time, the song Yankee Doodle developed by the British as an insult in 1775. In true American form, we adopted the term in a complimentary sense. We won the war and set the standard from that moment forward.

Now, you can call Americans anything you want, except . . . late for dinner.

Now, we have organizational cultures with a “rank and yank” mentality. We should reference it as “mental.” “Gee, I wonder why employees hate our company” is a oft heard lament of HR. Well, it could be that teamwork you build by stack ranking employees creating competition and the brown-nosing manipulator too often takes the top spot. Real ideas are lost to pleasing the risk averse hierarchy.

The revelation that Microsoft and many other organizations throughout the US embrace stacked ranking and the “rank and yank” mentality exposes either our stupidity or ignorance – choose one. We have so many difficulties in competing these days and coming up with new ideas that can unleash growth and employment that we have no time for this silliness.

For more read this article on better thinking.

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Monthly Archives: July 2012

A Process of Discovery

The 67 Year Thinking Problem

Our “Rank and Yank” Culture

The 95 Method