New Book Published! “250 Insights” by @lidpublishing. Delighted that an extract from our book has been included at number 124 in this special commemorative book. Congratulations to LID on their 25th anniversary. hashtag250insights hashtagsharingknowledge hashtagbooks hashtagpersonalgrowth
Thank very much indeed to Dr Paul Johnston for his 5* review of the Reputation Book, it is much appreciated. Published on Amazon on 23rd May 2018
“I really enjoyed reading this book. It is packed full of ideas for any business professional looking for action orientated ideas that will improve and develop their business reputation and generate powerful referrals for future business growth. This handy book is published as a hard back just smaller than A5 which means its compact, easy to carry and keep with you for quick reference. The content is displayed in easy to read text and supported with clear unfussy practical diagrams that show how the topics connect together. This book gives you a complete reputation building system that has been proven to work.
One thing I really liked were the tips and exercises for getting practical value from the book which were built around the author’s eye catching idea of ‘Thinkabouts’ each relevant to the 5 key sections of the book. Thinkabouts act like mini personal homework exercises to help you get the most value from the ideas presented, there are also helpful tips on topics for additional research. The 5 sections in the book takes the reader on a journey that starts with a close look at the importance and nature of the social interaction and reputation building in business before progressing through two highly practical sections on how to become more referable and generate more references. At the end of the book the reader is given a summary of reputation building that is memorable and useful.
Throughout the book you will find helpful insights on management psychology that will help you get the most from your reputation building efforts. Many of these ideas will seem intuitive to experienced business people and its helpful to see them set out on paper.
I found the whole content of this book really refreshing because so many business books are dry reads about technique in isolation and seem to forget that in business ‘people buy people’. This is clearly a book written by two people who have got the experience, wisdom and insight to know what they are talking about and why reputation is crucial to personal success.
One really appealing thing throughout is the scepticism towards one -way mass marketing communication, so called marketing communications bull-shit of over promises and flannel, and the mistake of thinking good business is based on just being ‘nice’ to your customers. I’ve read lots of long winded academic articles on this subject and this book nails it on one page. The accessibility of this book speaks volumes about the gap that exists between academic research and everyday business practice too. As a university lecturer who has worked and continues to work in business this book appeals to the ‘pracademic’ in me, informed but not ponderous and arcane, thought provoking without being ‘head squeezing’ and all about the social art as well as the management science of building and leveraging reputation.
Written in plain English, straightforward easy to follow processes, with neat dashboard type
metrics, in my opinion, this book is perfect for the busy business professional who doesn’t want to give up their precious customer facing and business building time for specialised study. The authors have done the heavy lifting for you.”
Here’s a link to the article published on Linked In
The 4 Key Reasons Most Organisations Underperform Against Targets
Please follow this link to see the review published in Edge Magazine from the Institute of leadership and Management
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6369869543795363840
So, you are committed to discovering your own Customer Focused Mission (CFM). The collection of words, crafted by your organization, that expresses your beliefs about your organization and the vanguard for development and progress that everyone is going to stand behind to deliver their actions to enhance the reputation of your organization.
At some point, I am sure we have all had something like the flu or the horrible symptoms of it. Cold, shivering, runny nose, coughing and spluttering, no energy and really hot, a fever.
It stopped us doing anything apart from feeling sorry for ourselves. Maybe it became an excuse for not getting things done or avoiding something we just did not feel we had the energy to commit to.
If you are going to discover your CFM then be prepared for similar symptoms if you are going to do it justice. It is not achievable without effort, commitment and engagement. You need to continually ask your team “ What are we trying to achieve here?”
Discovering your CFM can be thought of as a FEV(V)ER! I recommend you approach it on that basis for the best outcomes. It’s a bug that needs to affect everyone in your organization.
There are cures for this FEV(V)ER, and they are simple, but each one is equally important. In discovering your CFM (note: discovering, not developing) there’s only six simple things to consider:
FOCUS – on delivering your Customer experience, not sales.
EMPOWER – your people so that their actions are based on the CFM they have developed.
VISION – think through your vision of the organization
VALUES – the foundations you are putting in place
EVERYONE – it’s a shared responsibility both internal and external
REAL – keep it clear, short and simple. Make it easy to understand and measurable.
We deal with these “cures” in our book in more detail and consider how the CFM is interwoven with the other key steps to building your reputation.
Just picking up on the “Everyone” statement. It takes effort to get everyone involved, explain it to them and gain their engagement. To do that, you must be genuine and honest in discovering your CFM with both internal and external customers. Discovering a CFM is not something that can be communicated by email or developed on a shared drive and thought about on the commute to work. It needs face to face engagement ( Facetime or Skype permitted ) in groups across your organization. So long as you can look into people’s eyes and know they are engaged!
Please! Please! Remember that a Customer Focused Mission is not to be confused with a corporate mission statement. Mission statements are mostly short term platitudes, developed by the few and misunderstood by the many. A great CFM will be timeless!
Russell Wood
We must have a Mission Statement! Our competitors have one and it sounds really good. In reality, it is just corporate peer pressure.
Many of the old-fashioned Mission Statements were forged out of the corporate need to satisfy investors or to sound good in the corporate world amongst competitors. I am not saying that they were all bad but many were not, and are not fit for purpose because;
In the Social Revolution world, the world of instant judgement, your mission must be customer focused. We call it the Customer Focused Mission (CFM). What’s the difference?
Firstly, the CFM is yours. You develop it and you own it. It expresses Your beliefs about Your organization.
You need to discover your CFM by continually asking your team “ What are we trying to achieve here”?
If you are going to genuinely think about this and you want to build the reputation of your organization then the best advice I can give is to do it yourself and engage with your own internal and external customers. By starting with this approach, you are demonstrating that your people and customers are important; you want to understand their real needs and you want to imbue great pride in what you do.
After all, why hire people if you are not prepared to listen to them? Everyone in your organization must be important. You are paying them a wage. You chose them, and I assume that you are content with your recruitment process.
So, most folk want to add value, or at least do a good job. Most folk like to feel like they belong and most folk take pride in what they do. Therefore, everyone has a view about the organization. Whether listening is formal or informal, it’s worth just putting the kettle on and asking your employees what they think.
It’s no different with customers and your feedback systems need to provide simple opportunities to understand the Customers Real Needs and listen to what they are saying effectively.
People are BEAR’s so invest time in understanding your customers Beliefs, Actions, Emotions and what Results they expect and you have the foundation of a fantastic, relevant CFM that your organization can genuinely believe in and not just buy into as part of a personal induction process and tick yet another box.
In this Social Revolution world having the bedrock of a relevant CFM reinforced by genuine feedback and managed by your team is more powerful that any tweet or post. It is much easier to engage in social media, it is just the click of a button to the sender, than it is to actually speak to someone and truly understand what they are saying to you. That takes a little bit of organization, a lot more confidence and you just cannot hide behind your screen.
Of course, it will be deemed to be more efficient and easier to score if feedback is done electronically. You will always be able to justify the fact that 8 out of 10 is good, or at least better than most! It’s much more revealing when someone tells you personally that the service you provided was either “Great” or “Poor”. There’s no hiding place there! Be honest, isn’t that what you really want in 2018? To be effective, to plan your next development inches with your team and to use your resources efficiently at the lowest cost?
Yes, you can get a feeling about how well you are doing from social media interaction but most responses are fully considered, particularly if you are asked to rate 1-5 stars. I am beginning to find those surveys inconvenient, if not intrusive.
It seems as if social media has failed if you cannot connect with everyone, or have thousands of followers, but a good feedback system doesn’t need to talk to every customer because the value and depth of each personal interaction is more likely to lead to a greater number of genuine referrals than relying on the number of “likes”.
2018 is the Chinese year of the Earth Dog. “Dogs” are loyal and honest, but cautious and prudent and according to my research “Dogs” will do everything for the person who they think is most important. There’s no more important person than your customer. 2018 should be the year to make sure you create or review your CFM honestly and collectively with your team and one of the best actions you can take is to talk first and tweet later, the responses will be more insightful and have greater value.
For better or worse we are wedded to the web!
Each of us has our own skills personality and appearance, we all have a different blend of these attributes. It’s what makes us what we are and how people perceive us.
We are in the Social Revolution generation where the web and our individual personas challenge each other. By that I mean that our lives are so interwoven by the web and social media that they are becoming part of our personality. How do we interact with them? How are we expected to interact with them? Should I feel guilty if I am not doing what my peer group do?
There’s huge expectation in the Social Revolution world. One of celebrity culture, instant fame or notoriety and instant access to a global audience which only a couple of generations ago was limited to our family, friends and co-workers and news travelled more slowly and was more personal.
Being yourself is more of a challenge now than it ever has been. So, understanding customers could be seen to be an impossibility, certainly more difficult than it ever was, and more and more customers hide behind their mouse, on line, not face to face. Fewer physical one to one transactions and certainly more limited opportunities to get to really know customers in the SR world.
However, there are four common traits in every customer that you can rely on.
Beliefs
Emotions
Actions
Results
People are BEARs. In our book we explore each of these attributes and how they relate to customers and their relationship with your organization and importantly vice-versa.
Think about yourself. In a relationship with any organization what are your beliefs about them? Do their products or services satisfy your emotions; do they care about you? Do their actions satisfy your emotions? Is the result of their actions what you expect?
Do you refer, or talk to others positively about those organizations which satisfy your BEAR needs? Conversely, do you criticize or complain to others about those that don’t? When you do either of those things, you’ll probably do it instantly on social media more than word of mouth.
As an organization, and accepting that customers are BEARs, you can understand the Customers Real Needs by investing in Feedback. Not 5 star on-line box ticking, short, interactive, verbal Feedback based on a simple system and process to validate whether you are achieving you Customer Focuses Mission, and if not how you can improve.
So, quality Feedback that you really understand, is meaningful, and allows you to plan your next development inches, only comes from really understanding the common traits of people. You don’t need to second guess their personalities.
People are BEARs, go hunt the ones that like what you do and have the potential to refer you and ultimately have a partnership relationship with you. It’s the best investment you can make.
Russell Wood
Beautiful things symphonies, visualized and written by geniuses and captured on paper forever. Some rousing, some melancholic, some you really must concentrate on to understand the meaning of each movement. Some you cannot understand at all without a good interpreter!
I’m no Andrew Preview (classic Morecambe and Wise, look it up on line!) but isn’t every organization an orchestra? Teams and departments interact, their actions are interwoven. Every individual is an instrument and together, and in harmony, their orchestration can deliver a harmonious output, a glorious symphony with an outstanding result which may receive a standing ovation.
Without Feedback your organization is exposed. Exposed to the inaccuracy of hearsay or organizations not understanding what their customers WANT to hear. Often, organizations can be deaf to real opinion and blind to the Customers Real Needs.
Organizations want Feedback to be GREAT music to their ears and not a POOR cacophony of complaints. The problem is that not enough time and energy is invested in obtaining that quality Feedback.
There’s no rehearsal time. The Feedback systems and processes are not set up and worked on relentlessly. Rarely, did any composer create a masterpiece first putting pen to paper. They all needed an eraser to fine tune their work. Gathering Feedback IS quality rehearsal time!
Great symphonies are also interpreted by their audience. Individuals will hear different nuances in the work and the work itself will be played differently depending on the conductor and the orchestra. The interpretation of what your products or services offer is no different. You cannot assume that what you do is fully understood, by everyone, all the time. You must obtain regular feedback to check your performance and that your Customer Focused Mission is being delivered and that you are are still meeting the Customers Real Needs.
Interpretation is about moving forward. A new twist on a well-established musical work. Fit for a new generation in the Social Revolution world. In the same way, interpreting your Feedback will create more customer loyalty, increased customer engagement and ultimately more value. More importantly, the interpretation of your Feedback will help you to understand where to make improvements inch by inch and which inches to focus on next.
Your organization, just like a symphony will be more attractive to customers if it feels contemporary and your customers can relate to it, and if your reputation for meeting the Customers Real Needs is upheld.
Every business, whatever size and whatever it does can be a” Tour de Force” in its own marketplace. If you get your Feedback right, you will know it because your customers will be the first to say “Bravo!”
Russell Wood
I was driving along listening to the radio. On came a catchy earworm from the 70’s believe it or not. A song classic that has stood the test of time by a classic band and brilliant songwriters.
It is not what the song was written for but it struck a chord with me, literally! Have a read of the lyrics and I’ll bet you can relate some of the great, timeless phrases to your business and your working relationships with people!
“I’ve got the feeling something ain’t right!”
So, get some Feedback, speak to your internal and external customers and understand and accept the issues. Once understood, plan the development inches to improve your products or services and then measure.
“Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right”
Interesting one this. Are the issues always someone else’s fault? Is it your direction and leadership which makes you colleagues act in the way you perceive them? Look inwardly and honestly first. Reflect on how you do tasks, how you brief them and how you delegate. Check everyone understands and has the opportunity to ask questions.
“I’m wondering what it is I should do”
Again, gather Feedback but look at your Customer Focused Mission first and check it is still valid. This phrase may be said in response to competitor activity or legislative changes for example. Go back and review before you respond. Share the discussion with colleagues.
“Trying to make some sense of it all”
You’ve got the Feedback now and it is pointing to a few items you need to attend to. You cannot do them all at once, so select the first 2 or 3 development inches that will re-energise your organization first. Energy leads to sales. Write them on a wall, the natural order of things will be evident and it’s a collective discussion amongst the team so everyone buys into the strategy.
“‘Cause I don’t think I can take any more”
Remember, Martyrs used to die for what they believed in. We live in the 21st Century and there’s no need to be a Martyr anymore. You have a team; you employed them because you saw talent. So share the burden by discussing the challenges openly and asking them for input. Put your trust in them. If you cannot, think about replacing yourself if you accept you have the right people.
“And you started off with nothing and you’re proud that you’re a self-made man”
That’s probably because you were focused on what you wanted. In reality, there’s no such thing as a lucky break when you really think about it. You had a Customer Focused Mission; you actively sought customer Feedback and you were clear about your development inches. You then objectively reviewed your progress on a regular basis making more often than not, the right decisions because you had the best, simple processes in place.
“I’m so scared in case I fall off my chair”
Please don’t do that! You’ve worked hard with your people to sit in the big chair. Nobody is expecting you to be right all the time. They would rather see direction and action and help to mould the organisations strategy than expect you to come up with all the answers. If they don’t they are the wrong people. Buy some colleagues the same chair and watch them fly!
The song, the sentiment and the meaning in the lyrics are of course written for a different scenario, but some of the phrases at least make you think if they were applied to your business and might help you to reflect on what you can do.
There’s no need to get stuck with anything. If you don’t try you’ll never know, just apply the simple processes you know work for you and your team. You are more likely to make the wheels turn faster than fall off your chair!
Acknowledgement: Lyrics from “Stuck in the Middle with You” performed by Steelers Wheel and written by Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan 1972
Russell Wood
Guy Arnold is Founder and Managing Director of Sales Through Service and Investors in Feedback. Russell Wood is a professional trainer and business advisor in the leisure and gaming industry. They are co-authors of of “The Reputation Book” LID Publishing 2017. Find out more at www.salesthroughservice.com or www.waypointleisure.com or email russellwood@waypointleisure.com
Visit our book website at www.thereputationbookproject.com
Criticism. Complaint. Confrontation. Usually, all difficult to accept, rationalize or understand. Our metaphoric hands quickly slap against our ears to filter out the words we can hardly believe.
I’ve been to concerts where the feedback screeches so loud through the sound system that you automatically stick your fingers in your ears to protect your hearing. It’s a natural protective reaction. Your ability to listen and interpret ceases.
We worry about the negativity of feedback, so the natural reaction is to avoid it or even worse, engage in seeking it, but fudge the results.
It’s really impossible to deliver a great product or service without understanding the Customer’s Real Needs and having great engagement and feedback systems. They used to say that ‘Fortune Favours the Brave” but in the new Social revolution world it’s more “Feedback Favours the Brave”, and you must be brave to obtain it honestly and genuinely, because sometimes it is not what you or your business wants to hear.
You ideally want feedback because you care and you are prepared to listen. Listening not hearing. Hearing has too much background noise or distraction. Listening is an art. It’s the ability to really focus on the speaker and correctly interpret what they are saying.
If you can listen properly, you will benefit from the considerable effort and commitment you have invested into your feedback system. Your sole focus will be on obtaining feedback to validate and improve your Customer Focused Mission (CFM): the objectives and beliefs that are critical to your business development.
The more you listen, the better you get at it. So, obtaining regular feedback and then acting on what you have heard by using it to develop the CFM inch by inch becomes not only an efficient process, but an enjoyable one because your results improve.
You will naturally hone your listening skills so that your questions become more succinct and you will enjoy the feedback interaction. Even when something is said that hurts your ears and you did not like it, your experience through the regularity of the feedback process will prevent you from reacting inappropriately.
What’s more, unexpected feedback is a stimulus to look at things in a new context. A shock to the system will cause a reaction and reflection. It’s a great catalyst to refueling the feedback system within the team. Remember FUEL – Feedback Underpins Engagement and Loyalty.
Really negative feedback is just an opportunity to sense check the CFM and the feedback system. Either or both may need a tweak. Your next development inches may change priority as a consequence. None of this is a bad thing!
Many companies warn you that the interaction is being recorded ‘ for training purposes”. I genuinely hope that is the case, but I fear that too often it can be more about wielding a stick or legal protection than personal development. If you do have this facility in place, use it to genuinely improve the quality of your feedback system and the skills of your team. They will thank you for it because you are improving their personal skills, particularly listening.
So, feedback should never hurt your ears, it is never too loud even if someone is shouting. Listen to it; interpret it; act on it! It is the inaction that will hurt you, not the volume.
Russell Wood
Guy Arnold is Founder and Managing Director of Sales Through Service and Investors in Feedback. Russell Wood is a professional trainer and business advisor in the leisure and gaming industry. They are co-authors of of “The Reputation Book” LID Publishing 2017. Find out more at www.salesthroughservice.com or www.waypointleisure.com or email russellwood@waypointleisure.com
Visit our book website at www.thereputationbookproject.com
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