Do you respect your employees’ needs and wants the way you respect your customers’ needs and wants? If not, why not? Are your employees chattel or business partners with whom you maintain a win/win relationship? Respecting needs and wants doesn’t mean satisfying each and every one, whether customer, employee, or supplier. But if you respect and understand the wants and needs of others, you can develop more productive, mutually beneficial, and sustainable relationships. You will serve your customer better, you will get better service from your suppliers, and you will get better service from your employees. Unfortunately some don’t understand this. They think employees owe them and should be thankful to have a job.
When someone reacts with emotion, especially at work, people often get weird. Not the emotional people, it’s all the people around them who get weird. They start tiptoeing around the issue so as to prevent provoking something other than a plain vanilla reaction. Or perhaps they become manipulative and devious. After all, if someone has an emotional reaction, they are beyond logic, right? So that leaves only three choices: trick the emotional person into agreement, hope they don’t notice when you slip something past them, or drop the issue entirely along with any hope of progress on whatever front is involved. This set of options is pitiful, pointless, and painful, though not uncommon. Fear of emotion in the workplace drives bizarre and counter-productive behaviors.
The health care debate has returned: public option or not. It’s driving me nuts. Why are they debating the route when they have yet to agree on the destination? What is it each side wishes to achieve or avoid with a public option? If they can’t agree on that – on the destination – they will never agree on how to get there. They will never even agree to disagree on the virtues or short-comings of a public option.
When out for a walk or run, most of us head for the high and dry path, the even steps, and smooth pavement. If you are in a hurry, dressed-up, or bird-watching, this makes all the sense in the world. But if you are out for exercise, hit the mud and the ruts. Why? Walking on sinking or uneven terrain is more work, and thus, more exercise. If you don’t believe me, try it. Ask yourself why you keep gravitating back to the smooth path. Walking at a tilt strengthens and stretches under-used muscles.You need more and different muscles to walk on uneven ground. Toning those other muscles improves balance and reduces the chance of falling. This is not my area of expertise but if you think about it for a minute, it can’t not be true.
I said goodbye to my website and email host recently, who was also my original website designer. During those 5 years, I paid each invoice promptly and made a few frantic phone calls when my email failed. Otherwise, there was no interaction. No questions about my satisfaction. No offers to upgrade. Simply no contact. Likewise, when I sent them an email to tell them that I had moved on, there was no response. Now perhaps they have also moved on. Perhaps their target market no longer includes my business. Perhaps they never intend to serve businesses like mine ever again. Perhaps they expect a vast gulf to open up between here and there so that our paths will never again cross. Perhaps they have reason to believe I will never meet any of their prospective customers.
Email is just WAY too easy. That “reply-all” button in particular should require a license to operate. Here are 10 tips to save all of us time. Pass this article around your company and community and maybe together we can reduce some of the unnecessary volume that is clogging inboxes, increasing stress, and destroying productivity. If you don’t know what you are trying to accomplish, don’t try to accomplish it via email. If your email is going to lead to an email, which is going to lead to another email, which is going to lead … you get the idea, don’t use email. Get on the phone or out of your chair and have a real conversation. Only use email when you believe you can accomplish your purpose in one round trip – one message and one response.
PRESS RELEASE January 8, 2010 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Ann Latham Uncommon Clarity®, Inc. info@UncommonClarity.com EASTHAMPTON, MA – Ann Latham elevated to Master Facilitator The Society for Advancement of Consulting® (SAC) has approved another member to achieve the rare SAC® Board Approved designation. This approval means that the consultant has worked in a specialized area for a considerable length of time; has provided detailed, documented evidence of success directly from clients in that specialty; and has conformed to the Code of Ethics of the society, serving as a thought leader and exemplar in the profession in general and their specialty in particular.
Now here is a brilliant growth strategy for the auto industry: Despite Risks, Internet Creeps Onto Car Dashboards If you help drivers crash more cars, you can sell more cars! What could be better?! And with any luck, all those air bags and other safety devices that you’ve concentrated on in the past will prevent you from killing off your entire market. Has anyone stopped to really picture the risks? Are the risks unlikely? This feature will not be limited to passengers and drivers in parked or fully stopped cars. If you think otherwise, I’d like to sell you a bridge.
The phone rang as I was trying to finish up a little project before a 1:30 appointment. It was the salesman scheduled by the regional office to visit my home the next day. He needed to reschedule. Unfortunately, that is not what he told me. Instead, he told me about his son’s flight time and how he couldn’t get to the airport from here fast enough. He listed every town he was scheduled to visit all over New England on Wednesday and then did the same for Thursday. There were no openings on Wednesday or Thursday anyway. He never let my response regarding best times dampen his enthusiastic narrative, nor influence his suggested times. I was watching the clock tick down to 1:30 as I heard about surgery appointments, more towns, and his frustrations with the regional office. Maybe I would like to just place an order over the phone now if I knew what I wanted? I repeated for the fourth time that a late afternoon or evening was needed. I was about to suggest he call me back when he finally found one in the evening that was just fine, thank you.
On a dreary day in December when I wasn’t feeling particularly upbeat, I set out to write a holiday letter recapping the year. By the time I had finished recording the highlights and remembering many wonderful occasions and people, I felt much better and more excited about the year ahead. You don’t have to send such a letter to anyone, but it is still worth writing. It is easy to get caught up in the rush, forget the high points, dwell on the low points, and lose track of the bigger picture. If you haven’t done it already, take the time now or in the next few days to reflect on your professional and personal accomplishments and activities in 2009. Uncover and smile about the high points. Don’t compare your accomplishments to anyone else. Feel good about the progress you made, the fun you had, the relationships you built, the people you helped, the lessons you learned, and more. Then picture yourself doing this again a year from now. What do you want to be writing about then when you look back at the highlights of 2010?