Have you been fooled by a company you have done business with for many, many years? When I say fooled, I mean the broken kind of trust fooled. And yes Seth, I do want to talk about it. It involves bad customer experiences that my daughter and her husband had with their credit union. Turns out it is our credit union also.
You can’t fool people all the time, not even most of the time. And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience.
–Seth Godin
Michelle and Matt are the victims here. They were in the process of a mortgage approval with another bank (purchasing a new home and the builder’s company offered a good deal and speedy approval). During the process, they received a telephone call from the new banker wanting to know what the payments of $836 over the past 9 months to their credit union were for. They had no idea.
But here was the deal. The credit union was charging them $3 each to transfer money from their savings to their checking account for the first 6 transfers each month. After the first 6, the fee for the transfer was $25 for each transfer. This was going on for 9 months with no communication from the credit union whatsoever (totaling $836 in fees during that time). So $836 in fees for using their own money. When they called for an explanation, the bank’s only response in that was their policy on fees for that type of transfer. End of explanation.
Their next move was letters to the bank CEO and the member services committee, explaining the situation. Here is a copy of their letter:
We have been Visions Credit Union members since we graduated from college 15 years ago. Until now, Visions is the only bank with whom we have done business. The same is true for my husband. That is something that will change. Let us explain.
Over the last few weeks, we have been in the process of buying a new house and selling our old one. As a result, we have been in the process of a loan certification process. One question that surprised us was why we had paid Visions $836 over the last 9 months to use our own money. In doing research on the question, we realized you have charged us a $3.00 service charge to automatically transfer from our savings account to our checking account. And to top that, once we reached 6 transfers per month the service charge went to $25 per transfer.
We went back over our correspondence with Visions and could find no notification of the change in your process of adding service charges to move our money from one account to the other. We accept responsibility for not reviewing our account on a regular basis. But to our defense, a sense of trust was involved on our part. That was obviously a big mistake.
After our research on the issue, we immediately called Visions to discuss the issue and seek a refund. Your response: there was nothing you were going to do because your process was to respond to appeals only and we had 30 days to appeal each service charge. This is a very poor response for 15-year loyal customers holding a mortgage, home equity loan, and a respectable amount of money in our savings and checking accounts. We asked why this had happened and your response was that this was according to your policy. We asked why, when we had over $10,000 in our accounts, we were being charged anything. Again, we were told that was your policy.
We are sending this letter to you, as bank CEO, because we feel it was important for you to hear concerns such as these, directly from your members and not your staff. We believe it is a crucial reason you are losing valuable customers.
We accept responsibility for not checking our account each month. But we trusted we would hear from you if there were issues. But that was not the case.
Given that we have researched what other banks do in similar situations (nothing close in terms of fee policies) and our lack of trust in your bank, we will be selecting a new bank.
Why are we sending this letter directly to you? It is simple. You apparently are the only one with the ability to deal with this issue and consider changing your policies.
Sincerely,
Matt and Michelle Ellis
So what was the response? The Vice President in charge of Member Services called our daughter and could not have been more apologetic. He said that he and the CEO had been with the credit union for a little over a year and were in the process of reviewing all fee processes and putting them in line with their competitors.
These fees were clearly not good policy or in line with the competition. He returned the $836 in fees completely. He also stated that they were giving the branch manager much more ability to make decisions with customers. Certainly much needed, don’t you think?
(Want to see how another company handled a bad situation? … How Marriott Courtyard Turned Customer Failure into Service Recovery)
All we can say is that good customer experiences start and end with effective communication. In this case, the absence of communications created the significance of the surprise, didn’t it? They also greatly depend on keeping up with the competition … it is a comparative thing. And finally, employee empowerment is a necessity. Without good empowerment, things can get out of hand in a hurry.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you.
It’s up to you to keep improving your customer attention and focus. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons. When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
More reading on customer focus from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
10 Laws of Customer Experience DesignWhat Little Things Small Businesses Can Do To Build Customer RelationshipsCustomer Experience Improvements Begin with Understanding Their Value
It takes a great entrepreneur with a vision to start a business, but it requires strong leadership collaboration skills and the collaboration of many people to make it a success.
Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals.
Note that collaboration is NOT cooperation …it is more than the intersection of common goals, but a collective determination to reach an identical objective by sharing knowledge, learning, and building consensus.
Collaboration is an attribute that cuts across many businesses and business processes. We need to make it an intentional process and cultivate it into the team’s culture.
That’s where leadership comes in as a key ingredient, to drive the collaborative process to make the whole team better than the sum of the parts.
It all starts with how to be the leader in your own life, but then extends to learning the following skills she outlines for building a great collaborative team:
Build and maintain trust …trust is a key element we all need to set aside vulnerability, but it is hard to build, and easy to lose. It is not built on words but through actions and evidence. Only when it works can a team address the necessary issues to win.
Expect conflict to reach consensus … conflicts and fights are not the same things. Conflicts are normal and required factual push backs in business, whereas fights are emotional, often personal, disagreements which do not lead forward to consensus.
Embrace change …change is the only constant in business, so make it your competitive advantage. Initiate change rather than react to it, and give clear instructions to help the team understand why the change is necessary, and how it will make the situation better.
Establish a level of analysis, structure, and control …the challenge is to strike the right balance. With none, things fall into chaos, but too much can have the effect of stifling innovation and creativity.
Make decisions …in general, any decision is better than no decision. Usually, a blended approach is the best, between independent decisions, and collaborative decisions factoring in the best team input. Picking the best team members is the right starting decision.
Foster continuous communication …communication is the glue that forms the bond between leaders and teams and holds great teams together. Credibility is a required base.
Provide recognition …recognition drives motivation and human behavior, and human behavior drives results. Recognition validates people and their purpose. Intangible rewards can have an even greater impact than tangible ones, but they must be relevant.
Create learning experiences … we all have a desire to learn and grow. The best learning opportunities are experience and sharing.
In today’s fast-moving digital business age, we face an entirely new environment for innovation and collaboration. The best companies are the best collaborators.
In the new networked world, more and more business will be done through collaboration within, as well as, between businesses. This will occur for a very simple reason: the next layer of value creation – whether in technology, marketing, service or manufacturing- is becoming so complex that few companies or company departments are able to master them alone.
The bottom line
So in the future, we will all need to learn how to collaborate with machines much as pilots do. In effect, rather than depend solely on our personal databases of experience, we will apply the sum total of human knowledge to our everyday and professional tasks.
Have you ever heard the remark that age is relevant only if you are a cheese? All of my career it seemed I was one of the youngest guys in the room. Then, overnight, I looked around and was shocked to discover my perspective on age.
Especially since I was the oldest guy in the room. Working on my third career, I don’t know why that should have been a surprise to me.
It was though … a reality check. But why? Who knows, especially since I have no fear about the value I bring and my ability to keep delivering relevance in a young person’s world going through rapid change. Luckily the feeling did not last long.
When we are young, we ask lots of “why?” questions. Why is the sky blue? Why can’t we fly like birds? Why do I have to go to bed at a certain time? It is through asking why that we learn basic things about the world. Yet as we get older we tend to think we know things and stop questioning fundamental assumptions.
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, one of the first things he did was develop a marketing campaign to rebrand the ailing enterprise. Leveraging IBM’s long-running “Think” campaign, Apple urged its customers to “Think Different.” The TV spots began, “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes…”
The truth is that while people like the idea of being different, real change is always built on common ground. Differentiation builds devotion among adherents, but to bring new people in, you need to make an idea accessible and that means focusing on values that you share with outsiders, rather than those that stir the passions of insiders. That’s how you win
There’s even a technique called the 5 Whys that is designed to uncover root problems. Nevertheless, if you want to get beyond fundamental assumptions, you need to start by asking “why?”
Here are my top 5 tips on how I focus on keeping ‘one step ahead’ of the cheese:
There is nothing more dangerous to life success than a great last result, is there? We are ‘only as good as our next result’. Stay paranoid.
Age is relevant … make yourself a project
Hairdressing icon Vidal Sassoon was famous for having said: “The only place you’ll find success coming before work is in a dictionary.” We have to work on ourselves. Put pressure on ourselves. Critique our days.
Give back to society. Be our own very best coaches and cheering squads. All of this applies as much for our personal lives as for our business lives.
Continue to add to your connections and be a continuous learner …
Woody Allen said: “85% of the secret of success is just turning up.” Turn up to events. Make that phone call. Read that book. Do that training. Have the courage to ask that question. Make the effort. Stay connected to what’s happening around you.
Age is relevant … is a priority ‘ninja’
Getting more of the important things done every day. Be obsessed with getting priorities rights, on what’s really important, every day, and make sure you spend the majority of your day on these priorities.
Creative minds online … embrace change
Darwin said it was not the strongest of the species that survived, but the ablest to adapt to change. There will be more change in the next five years than we’ve seen in the past 50. Get excited by change. Be part of the most movements that you can. Help shake things up.
We’ve got one shot in our lives.
Work hard on yourself to stay relevant if you want the chance to avoid being the cheese.
The bottom line
So never be scared of being curious. It is the roots of discoveries and inventions. It opens up options. You think and expand possibilities. Through curiosity, you can move from the ordinary to the extraordinary.
Just by being curious, you make your life interesting, you are always self-motivated to learn, and your imagination is always fired up.
Need some help in capturing more customers from your social media marketing or advertising? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with your customers?
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to innovating your social media strategy?
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on mentoring from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Have you ever heard the remark that age is only relevant if you are a cheese? All of my career it seemed I was one of the youngest guys in the room. Then, overnight, I looked around and was shocked to discover I was the oldest guy in the room.
The oldest guy in the room
Working on my third career, I don’t
know why that should have been a surprise to me.
It was though … a reality check. But why? Who knows, especially since I have no fear about the value I bring and my ability to keep delivering relevance in a young person’s world going through rapid change. Luckily the feeling did not last long.
Let me share a story about Dr.Seuss with you.
In 1960 two men made a bet. There was only $50 on the line, but millions of people would feel the impact of this little wager.
The first man, Bennett Cerf, was the founder of the publishing firm, Random House. The second man was named Theo Geisel, but you probably know him as Dr. Seuss.
Cerf proposed the bet and challenged that Dr. Seuss would not be able to write an entertaining children’s book using only 50 different words. Dr. Seuss took the bet and won.
The result was a little book called Green Eggs and Ham. Since publication, Green Eggs and Ham has sold more than 200 million copies, making it the most popular of Seuss’s works and one of the best-selling children’s books in history.
At first glance, you might think this was a lucky fluke. A talented author plays a fun game with 50 words and ends up producing a hit. But there is actually more to this story and the lessons in it can help us become more creative and stick to better habits over the long-run.
Here’s what we can learn from Dr. Seuss…
The top 5 tips on how to focus on keeping ‘one step ahead’ of the cheese:
Do not rest on past successes
Past successes.
There is nothing more dangerous to life success than a great last result, is
there? We are ‘only as good as our next result’. Stay paranoid.
Make
yourself a project
Hairdressing
icon Vidal Sassoon was famous for having said: “The
only place you’ll find success coming before work is in a dictionary.”
We
have to work on ourselves. Put pressure on ourselves. Critique our days. Give back
to society. Be our own very best coaches and cheering squads. All of this
applies as much for our personal lives as for our business lives.
Continue
to add to your connections and be a continuous learner
Woody Allen said: “85% of the secret of success is just turning up.” Turn up to events.
Make that phone call. Read that book. Do that training. Have the courage to ask that question. Make the effort. Stay connected to what’s happening around you.
Is
a priority ‘ninja’
Always get more of the important things done every day. Be obsessed with getting
priorities rights, on what’s really important, every day, and make sure you
spend the majority of your day on these priorities.
Darwin said it was not the strongest of the species that survived, but the ablest to adapt to change. There will be more change in the next five years than we’ve seen in the past 50. Get excited by change. Be part of the most movements that you can. Help shake things up.
The bottom line
We’ve got one shot in our lives.
Work hard on yourself to stay relevant if you want the chance to avoid being the cheese.
Please share one of your
self-motivation experiences with this community.
Digital
Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change.
We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
Want
to learn more about
Digital Spark Marketing?
Reading from Digital Spark Marketing’s library:
Six Business Lessons Learned From the Bamboo
Build an Effective Team by Being a Talent Hound
Giving Gratitude … the Story of the Entangled Whale
Dwight Eisenhower certainly understood the concepts of being an effective, influential leader, didn’t he? Spot on. I have been in the military and business world for forty years, and I often get asked what it takes to be an effective, influential leader. And often leadership is not what you think. It is about lessons from the school of hard knocks.
Being a leader is a lifelong learning process. You are never done learning. Every great leader always looks for ways to improve their ability to lead and influence.
Related: Increase Influence through Good Leadership Qualities
Leadership can be deceiving if you let it, however. Consider these different thoughts on lessons from the school of hard knocks:
Understand expectations
It’s so easy to launch yourself into a project, to get straight to business when working with a new boss, and think that we’re productive. Take the time to clarify expectations upfront. This can avoid a whole lot of time wasting.
The same applies as an independent consultant. You can dive straight in and try to solve everything you think needs fixing, but that may or may not be what the client wanted. Clarifying those expectations at the beginning of the relationship, identifying three main areas where you’re going to focus your time and deliver results, will allow you to deliver the most value while making sure that the client is getting what they want.
Understand expectations.
Clear communications
At IBM in my early days, there was a whole system of words and expressions and those dreaded TLAs (three-letter acronyms) that you needed to understand to be able to communicate. Once you have the lingo, this will give you shortcuts to getting your point across and will ultimately get things done more quickly and in a way that everyone agrees with.
While this language code can be useful, we also need to remember the poor souls who aren’t quite up to speed. This can include new hires, of course, and external agencies, but you’ll be surprised how sometimes even the more experienced managers won’t have a clear idea of what you’re talking about.
Agree on a common definition upfront, and you’ll be more effective in delivering something that everyone is happy with. In fact, this goes beyond language to encompass fundamental values as well – establishing these upfront will ensure that everyone is on the same page.
School of hard knocks … take ownership
At school, we had parents and teachers telling us to do our homework – at work, not so much (especially when we’re freelancers or business owners). Of course, we have our managers and clients, and if we don’t deliver our projects we’re going to hear about it, but what we’re not going to have is someone leading us by the hand and telling us exactly what to do. We’re responsible for getting the job done in the time that we have and in whatever way we deem appropriate.
Even then, though, there are different levels of project delivery, and taking real ownership means going beyond just the bare minimum. Taking real ownership means being proactive and taking the initiative, staying on top of all the milestones and deadlines, following up with others to get their input, and looking beyond the obvious of what you’ve been asked to do to deliver added value. (In fact, you may remember that ownership is another of P&G’s top values.) This is again how you meet and exceed expectations.
Consistent goals and priorities
This is a big one! As “keen bean” junior managers, we bombard people with emails, we interrupt them at their desks, and we get huffy when they don’t deliver to our schedules and our specifications. Following up relentlessly shows commitment and drive but what it doesn’t show is emotional intelligence. Your priorities are just that, your priorities.
At IBM in particular, the whole organization was built on a system of checks and balances, which by definition meant that each function had a different set of priorities. Finance, of course, would have one set of success measures, marketing another, and the consumer research department yet another.
Working effectively with a multi-functional team means being sensitive to the context, understanding the particular perspective of each and what their goals are both globally and in specific reference to the topic at hand, and adapting our behavior accordingly. Step one here is treating the individual as a human being! Build a rapport and seek to understand where they are coming from and you’ll be much more effective working together in the long run.
More than performance
There was a “secret” model at IBM that we weren’t supposed to tell junior managers for fear that they would misunderstand it and change their behavior in an ill-advised way. The model was PIE and told you the “formula” for how promotions and salary increases would be applied. ‘P’ stands for ‘performance’ and this is what you’d expect, how well you do your job.
There are two more elements, however, which are ‘I’ – ‘image.’ This is how you are perceived by your peers and most of all your seniors – and ‘E’ – ‘exposure’ i.e. it’s no good doing wonderful work if no one knows who you are or what you’re doing.
So the trick is not to become a political animal and forget about doing any actual work, but likewise, there’s no point in putting your head down and getting on with it like a good girl and expecting someone to notice and reward you accordingly.
Instead, you need to be aware of these other two parts of the puzzle, image, and exposure, and make sure that while you’re delivering excellent work you’re also thinking about who needs to see that work and what impression you’re giving more generally in the organization. If nothing else, you never know who will be your next boss!
Do not rest on past successes
There is nothing more dangerous to life success than a great last result, is there? We are ‘only as good as our next result.’ Stay paranoid.
Make yourself a project
Hairdressing icon Vidal Sassoon was famous for having said: “The only place you’ll find success coming before work is in a dictionary.” We have to work on ourselves. Put pressure on ourselves. Critique our days. Give back to society. Be our very best coaches and cheering squads. All of this applies as much to our personal lives as for our business lives.
A priority ‘ninja’
Getting more of the important things done every day. Be obsessed with getting priorities rights, on what’s really important, every day, and make sure you spend the majority of your day on these priorities.
Darwin said it was not the strongest of the species that survived, but the ablest to adapt to change. There will be more change in the next five years than we’ve seen in the past 50. Get excited by change. Be part of the most movements that you can. Help shake things up.
Accountable for continuous learning and development
At IBM, we changed assignments every several years, giving us an opportunity to gain experience in different aspects of our function (in my case, what we called marketing “design” and “delivery”) as well as different business units.
I was a superstar, of course, and I expected the offers to be falling at my feet – but I quickly learned that I needed to go out and look for the roles that I wanted. In doing so, I looked for something that would challenge me and let me learn new things while exposing me to different people (see #5!) and giving me broader experience that would stand me in good stead for future roles.
I also took ownership of my learning early on, making sure that I signed up for every possible training that I could benefit from in one way or another. Your boss will be busy, and may not be on top of exactly which courses you have and haven’t been on.
Personal growth and development are a top value for me, so this was particularly important in my case, but it’s something that is important for everybody in both their personal and their professional lives.
Woody Allen said: “85% of the secret of success is just turning up.” Turn up to events. Make that phone call. Read that book. Do that training. Have the courage to ask that question. Make an effort. Stay connected to what’s happening around you.
Focus on strengths, not weaknesses
Training and development are great, but while it’s admirable to try to get good at everything this is simply not possible, and both you and the business will be better served if you learn to focus on your areas of strength.
Of course, when we first start in a company or a role there will be certain things we need to learn to do – project management, time management, and so on – but beyond that, there will always be some freedom to discover what we’re good at and use that to our advantage.
IBM did this well: in our annual rating sessions we were asked to highlight our three biggest strengths and only one weakness, and even then we didn’t call it a weakness but an “opportunity.”
So you’re good at public speaking and delivering training workshops? Maybe you’re a number-crunching guru and a superstar at drawing up possible scenarios? Or what about creative brainstorming, getting the team excited behind a common vision, or mentoring interns?
Find opportunities to use your strengths, and you will shine.
Power of effective communications
I was amazing at writing at school, in fact, I was so good that my English teacher would make copies of my essays and hand them out to the rest of the class. Get me!
So it was a bit of a shock when I started my first job at P&G and found that essay writing was not the same thing as business writing. On top of that, an international environment where most people were not native speakers meant that simple and unambiguous communication was crucial.
Effective business writing had a specific objective, used clear and concise language, active tense rather than passive; it wasn’t about sounding clever or being poetic.
Learning to write an effective business document – a recommendation, a report, or just an email for that matter – will allow you to get your message across quickly and effectively, to influence people with a more persuasive argument, and to impress people with your convincing business results.
The ability to distil complicated matters into a clear and well thought-out message is a useful skill in all areas of life, above and beyond the corporate world.
Lessons from the school of hard knocks … making tradeoffs
Ah, choices. This is a biggie. The long-time guru of IBM, Tom Watson wrote about this frequently. We even had a made-up word, “choiceful,” that every manager worth his salt would drop into any given conversation. We have to be choiceful.
So what does this mean? Well, you can apply this at a couple of different levels. First, look at your project list. You need to identify which projects will have the biggest impact and then focus your time on those projects. It’s far too easy to get bogged down in little tasks and trivial details.
Second, at the macro level, a brand strategy is a choice: we’ll focus on this market OR this market, we’ll invest here OR there, we’ll prioritize this OR that. Giving a laundry list of every possibility, or saying that “it’s all important,” is the path to failure.
The bottom line
Being a leader is a lifelong learning process. You are never done learning. Every great leader always looks for ways to improve their ability to lead and influence. Never stop learning and relearning.
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork, and collaboration? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a team or leadership workshop?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your continuous learning?
Do you have a lesson about making your learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on mentoring from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
Are you one that settles on things easily? How about on technology projects? If you are looking to improve your design creativity skills so as to impact your breakthrough thinking, keep reading.
Don’t believe you are creative in design? Creativity is often defined as the ability to connect ideas that are seemingly unconnectable. Connecting ideas are how new ideas and the best designs originate … it is the basis for creativity.
Most importantly, what business leaders need to understand about technology and artificial intelligence is that it is not inherently utopian or apocalyptic, but a business tool. Much like any other business tool, its performance is largely dependent on context and it is a leader’s job to help create that context.
Contrary to what most people believe, design creativity is not limited to the gifted ones of the population. It can be taught, nurtured, and enhanced.
Another area where digital technology is just beginning to have an impact in medicine. Healthcare makes up almost 10% of the GDP of most advanced countries and nearly twice as much in the US. So even a small improvement in efficiency will have a major impact.
So what are the creative skills you need to acquire and/or develop to improve breakthrough creativity in technology design projects?
Check out these 14 ways to give you a hand:
Technology projects … start with why
Technology for technology’s sake is dangerous. Highly effective teachers who use technology always have a reason for using new technology tools.
Whether it saves them time, improves learning outcomes, or helps with lesson planning, highly effective teachers always start with the why.
Network with people in different fields
Go out of your way to meet people with vastly different backgrounds and perspectives from your own. Examine different views as a means to expand your knowledge and stretch your thinking.
Go to breakfast or lunch with someone new every week.
Technology projects … adapt easily
Technology is constantly changing, and the classroom environment will be drastically different in 2 years. Understanding the big picture is key.
Consider an example ofInternet Privacy
Running a business today almost certainly means having a digital presence, and being connected to the Internet.
While the benefits of this transformation are many, the Internet privacy and security issues are still a daily challenge, with many solutions in the marketplace to address them.
Yes, internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T are free to track all your browsing behavior and sell it to advertisers without consent. ISPs have access to literally all of your browsing behavior – they act as a gateway for all of your web visits, clicks, searches, app downloads and video streams.
This represents a huge treasure trove of personal data, including health concerns, shopping habits, and porn preferences. ISPs want to use this data to deliver personalized advertising.
Looking for a valid VPN solution?
Eliminate barriers
Luck and chance have always played a role in creativity in design, haven’t they? There is no doubt, technology has transformed the human experience. We are no longer separated by time and space but are largely working off of the same massive database.
The sum total of human knowledge is merely a few clicks away. Domains are no longer hidden behind barriers of circumstance or tradition but are accessible to anyone with a search engine.
And it is not just information that has become accessible, but personal contact. Whether through social media or web video conferences, it’s far easier for people to meet and collaborate than ever before in human history.
Searching the domain is no longer a matter of chance. Technology and information access through the internet have redefined the process.
Technology projects ideas … mixing and remixing
Do you believe there is a difference between knowledge and information? I certainly do. Knowledge is personal.
I may know how to play the piano or to get to the store, but transferring that knowledge to another can be a cumbersome affair.
Information, on the other hand, is a storable entity. We can store and transfer it with any level of accuracy we choose, which makes it easy to combine with other information.
In fact, it’s become so easy to combine ideas through information that we’ve come to think of mashups as trivial. That’s because combining ideas no longer takes any significant skill.
Connect the dots
Connect seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas from different fields.
Imagine how someone from a different industry would look at your challenge from an entirely new perspective. What is different?
Technology has opened the door for collaboration beyond our walls. A person in Romania can now collaborate with someone here is the United States.
Knowledge is power, but it is also free (and it should be). Technology lovers share best practices, which benefits everyone (which is the point!)
Never stop questioning
Ask questions to understand how things really are, why they are that way, and how they might be changed or disrupted. Brainstorm questions about the problem.
Create a list of 30 questions and pick the best 5 to explore further.
Think win-win
Technology cannot work properly if there is not buy-in from the majority of us.
First and foremost, there is nothing worse than having a leader not embrace technology.
Secondly, it is imperative that you show the value of technology.
Think ahead and be thorough
How are you going to present new technology to others without explaining the need to embrace change?
The highly effective designers who use technology already know the answers to any question, and they have concrete examples showing its effectiveness.
Increase your caring
Those designers who use technology typically are the ones who can’t sleep at night because they are so excited about new ideas, and are thinking of ways to engage others with them. \
They don’t just care; they actively care, and they embrace technology, not because it makes their job easier, but because it allows them to make a greater impact.
Experiment and prototype
Constantly visit new places, try new things, seek new information and understanding, and learn from new experiences.
Join new social/professional activities beyond your normal groups and spheres of influence.
The bottom line
The good news is that digital technology allows us to access more than ever before, but we still need to make the effort to reach out. In a networked age, competitive advantage is no longer the sum of all efficiencies, but the sum of all connections. So we need to work to design our organizations to widen and deepen those connections, rather than hamper them.
And it all starts with basic generosity and good intentions. Power no longer lies at the top of the heap, but at the center of networks and you get there not by vanquishing rivals but through cultivating friends.
Don’t let the technology of today just sit there. Put social media monitoring to good use. The “internet of things” is being taken to a new level. And brands that can use it to their advantage will make their mark. Use technology and its data to better understand your customers and their needs, so that you can deliver content that they crave. Dive deep into tools like SumAll to connect data and get insights.
The truth is that creative technology is hard work. There are no silver bullets. The only way to create success is to get your ideas out there, find the flaws and get to work fixing them.
Remember to practice these design skills as well as creative convergence, the ability to discover new relationships between different ideas to form new ideas.
Look for ways to combine these skills in new and different ways. Don’t be afraid to fail … stretch yourself and your thinking.
Practice often.
What are your thoughts?
Need some help in finding ways to grow your customers? Such as creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers? Or perhaps finding ways to work with other businesses?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of collaborative innovation. And put it to good use in adapting to changes in your business environment.
It’s up to you to keep improving your learning and experience with innovation and creativity efforts. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
Check out these additional articles on business and its performance at our library:
More reading on business technology from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
11 Ways Information Services Growth is Leading Dramatic Change
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
Have you ever heard the remark that age is relevant onlyif you are a cheese? All of my career it seemed I was one of the youngest guys in the room. Then, overnight, I looked around and was shocked to discover I was the oldest guy in the room. Working on my third career, I don’t know why that should have been a surprise to me.
It was though … a reality check. But why? Who knows, especially since I have no fear about the value I bring and my ability to keep delivering relevance in a young person’s world going through rapid change. Luckily the feeling did not last long.
Marketing, at its best, is about the future. Unfortunately, we spend most of our time stuck in the past. We research what already happened and extrapolate forward to produce a plan. It’s not that we’re lazy, we simply know a whole lot more about the past than the present or the future.
We already know that marketing is becoming more social, local, and mobile, just as we know that big data and new interfaces such as touch, voice, and gesture are becoming increasingly more important. What comes next?
Here are my top 5 tips on how I focus on keeping ‘one step ahead’ of the cheese:
Look around mentoring minds.
Do not rest on past successes …
There is nothing more dangerous to life success than a great last result, is there? We are ‘only as good as our next result’. Stay paranoid.
Age is relevant … make yourself a project
Hairdressing icon Vidal Sassoon was famous for having said: “The only place you’ll find success coming before work is in a dictionary.” We have to work on ourselves. Put pressure on ourselves. Critique our days. Give back to society. Be our own very best coaches and cheering squads. All of this applies as much for our personal lives as for our business lives.
Related post: Lessons Learned in LIfe … Class Contiues Daily
Are you a mentoring minds reader?
Continue to add to your connections and be a continuous learner …
Woody Allen said: “85% of the secret of success is just turning up.” Turn up to events. Make that phone call. Read that book. Do that training. Have the courage to ask that question. Make the effort. Stay connected to what’s happening around you.
Age is relevant … is a priority ‘ninja’
Getting more of the important things done every day. Be obsessed with getting priorities rights, on what’s really important, every day, and make sure you spend the majority of your day on these priorities.
Creative minds online … embrace change
Darwin said it was not the strongest of the species that survived, but the ablest to adapt to change. There will be more change in the next five years than we’ve seen in the past 50. Get excited by change. Be part of the most movements that you can. Help shake things up.
The bottom line
“I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.”
For some reason, many of us have been conditioned to be more afraid of failure than we are of inaction. However, failure, in addition to being inherently valuable as a learning process, contains within it the chance of success. And no matter how small that chance is, it’s better than the chances of success when we choose not to even try.
We’ve got one shot at our lives.
Work hard on yourself to stay relevant if you want the chance to avoid being the cheese.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to innovate your social media strategy?
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on mentoring from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
It takes a great entrepreneur with vision to start a business, but it requires strong leadership collaboration skills and a collaboration of many people to make it a success. And belive me Neil Patel would know about leadership collaboration skills.
How good are your leadership collaboration skills?
Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, Note that collaboration is NOT cooperation …it is more than the intersection of common goals, but a collective determination to reach an identical objective by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus.
According to an old military axiom, the weakest point always follows success. At those times it’s hard to resist the temptation to loosen up, take a breather, and abandon the intense concentration needed to fight your way up the next hill.
Once a battle is won, soldiers are liable to ignore the sound of a twig snapping beneath the boot of an approaching scout, or overlook the glow of a distant campfire. Like soldiers, mountaineers say the most dangerous moment of their ascents is after they’ve reached the peak of a mountain. That’s when they’re most likely to fall into a crevasse or slip on a ledge.
Surgeons, too, can find it difficult to stay focused once an operation has apparently succeeded. Until then, the demands of operating absorb their attention so completely that the scalpel seems almost to move itself.
Collaboration is an attribute that cuts across many businesses and business processes. We need to make it an intentional process and cultivate it into the team’s culture.
That’s where leadership comes in as a key ingredient, to drive the collaborative process to make the whole team better than the sum of the parts.
If you don’t mind, let me ask you the importance of collaboration in your business team? We would love to hear an example of it. As a favor, please share it below. It would be greatly appreciated by us and our readers.
Let me illustrate a point about difficulties with collaboration with this story.
Once upon a time a scorpion looked around at the mountain where he lived and decided that he wanted a change. So he set out on a journey through the forests and hills. He climbed over rocks and under vines and kept going until he reached a river.
The river was wide and swift, and the scorpion stopped to reconsider the situation. He couldn’t see any way across. So he ran upriver and then checked downriver, all the while thinking that he might have to turn back. Suddenly, he saw a frog sitting in the rushes by the bank of the stream on the other side of the river. He decided to ask the frog for help getting across the stream.
“Hellooo Mr. Frog!” called the scorpion across the water, “Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the river?”
“Well now, Mr. Scorpion! How do I know that if I try to help you, you wont try to kill me?” asked the frog hesitantly.
“Because,” the scorpion replied, “If I try to kill you, then I would die too, for you see I cannot swim!”
Now this seemed to make sense to the frog. But he asked. “What about when I get close to the bank? You could still try to kill me and get back to the shore!”
“This is true,” agreed the scorpion, “But then I wouldn’t be able to get to the other side of the river!”
“Alright then…how do I know you wont just wait till we get to the other side and THEN kill me?” said the frog.
“Ahh…,” crooned the scorpion, “Because you see, once you’ve taken me to the other side of this river, I will be so grateful for your help, that it would hardly be fair to reward you with death, now would it?!”
So the frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. He swam over to the bank and settled himself near the mud to pick up his passenger. The scorpion crawled onto the frog’s back, his sharp claws prickling into the frog’s soft hide, and the frog slid into the river. The muddy water swirled around them, but the frog stayed near the surface so the scorpion would not drown. He kicked strongly through the first half of the stream, his flippers paddling wildly against the current.
Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog’s back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.
“You fool!” croaked the frog, “Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?”
The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog’s back. “I could not help myself. It is my nature.”
Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river…
Well, I guess scorpions are going to be scorpions.
And people are always going to act according to human nature.
We can try to fight it and resist it, but at the end of the day, people are going to be people.
So here it is … it all starts with how to be the leader in your own life, but then extends to learning the following skills for building a great collaborative team:
Build and maintain trust …trust is a key element we all need to set aside vulnerability, but it is hard to build, and easy to lose. It is not built on words, but through actions and evidence. Only when it works can a team address the necessary issues to win.
Related: Building Collaboration and Sharing Skills in your Staff
Expect conflict to reach consensus … conflicts and fights are not the same thing. Conflicts are normal and required factual push backs in business, whereas fights are emotional, often personal, disagreements which do not lead forward to consensus.
Embrace change …change is the only constant in business, so make it your competitive advantage. Initiate change rather than react to it, and give clear instructions to help the team understand why the change is necessary, and how it will make the situation better.
Establish a level of analysis, structure, and control …the challenge is to strike the right balance. With none, things fall into chaos, but too much can have the effect of stifling innovation and creativity.
Make decisions …in general, any decision is better than no decision. Usually a blended approach is the best, between independent decisions, and collaborative decisions factoring in the best team input. Picking the best team members is a the right starting decision.
Foster continuous communication …communication is the glue that forms the bond between leaders and teams, and holds great teams together. Credibility is a required base.
Provide recognition.
Provide recognition …recognition drives motivation and human behavior, and human behavior drives results. Recognition validates people and their purpose. Intangible rewards can have an even greater impact than tangible ones, but they must be relevant.
Create learning experiences …we all have a desire to learn and grow. The best learning opportunities are experience and sharing .
In today’s fast-moving digital business age, we face an entirely new environment for innovation and collaboration. The best companies are the best collaborators.
In the new networked world, more and more business will be done through collaboration within, as well as, between businesses. This will occur for a very simple reason: the next layer of value creation – whether in technology, marketing, service, or manufacturing- is becoming so complex that few companies or company departments are able to master them alone.
The bottom line
We all have our talents, but the innate ability will only take you so far. In the final analysis, what makes transformational leadership different is its ability to transform themselves to suit the needs of their mission.
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork and collaboration? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a team or leadership workshop?
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy innovating your social media strategy?
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More leadership material from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
