All Posts by Bob Lewis

|In: Career Management|Last Updated:

We had company over the weekend. My youngest daughter and new son-in-law (a phrase I’m still getting used to) came to visit, which meant taking time out to write a new KJR just wasn’t going to happen.

So instead, enjoy this oldie but very, very goodie (in my not very humble opinion, at least). I’ll be back live next week.

– Bob

—————————————————————–

Dear Bob,

I know this is a rather odd question, but I need your help with ManagementSpeak. No, it’s not translating it, it’s me translating to it!

I’ve been told that although I speak very well to and/or with end-users, I need to work more on talking with upper management. Three different managers have suggested this, so for the sake of my career and IS survival, I’m taking them seriously.

I’m pretty sure the very thing my manager wants is what you lampoon in your columns. Do you have any suggestions on learning how to translate into ManagementSpeak instead of your normal practice of translating from it? Just as important, can you tell me how to not snicker while I’m doing it?

Dancing around issues and trying to put a positive spin on everything, even when they are potential issues that need to be addressed, seems rather hypocritical. However, in the interest of my career, I have to at least try to overcome this particular “weakness.” Any suggestions, thoughts, or comments would be greatly appreciated.

– Talkin’ Trash in Tennessee

Dear Talkin’,

Here are a few suggestions that may help out. They may sound cynical, but they’re intended to help you be more persuasive, not manipulative. Use them with restraint, or you’ll go home every day feeling like you need a shower.

Rule #1: Never say “no.” You can present alternatives and estimate costs. You can explain that you don’t have the authority to say “yes” on your own. You can “see what the committee thinks about it.” “No” wrecks your image.

Rule #2: Never argue. “I think you’re wrong” just entrenches your opponent. If possible, make your own idea sound like a simple modification to your opponent’s moronic notion. If that isn’t possible, you can usually get away with, “I used to think the exact same thing. Then I ran across a book by Irving Slobodkin, and it made an interesting point.” That way you aren’t arguing — it’s Slobodkin who’s arguing.

Rule #3: Never present an idea as new or original. “I’ve read that some other companies are doing this [this being your great idea] when they’ve found themselves in this situation,” is far better. Why? First, new ideas are risky; “others are doing it” reduces the hazard. Second, nobody inside your company is allowed to be an expert. Why? That would make them better than the rest of us — who do you think you are, anyway? By quoting the experts rather than presenting yourself as one, you maintain the appearance of humility.

Rule #4: Find the upside. There are, after all, no problems, only opportunities. To avoid the cliche, make it a question: “How can we turn this to our advantage?” Many problems really are opportunities in disguise. Most are solvable challenges when faced with the right attitude but disasters when faced with the wrong one. (Don’t be asinine, though. The atmosphere gets icky when managers say brainless things like, “Don’t think of it as being unemployed and unable to feed your family. Think of it as an opportunity to broaden your horizons.”)

Understanding why you should follow these rules should help you keep a straight face and stay inside the fine line that separates diplomacy from stupidity on the one side and simple deception on the other.

Management has a lot in common with chess strategy. Each move you make has more at stake than achieving a single objective. Each should help you build a strong position as well. That means your speech should enhance relationships and alliance while avoiding the creation of antagonism or antagonists.

If all you want is to be right all the time, fine — just forget about your management aspirations. Being right is for staff. Leadership roles require you to be effective as well. Among the many skills this requires is the ability to present intrinsically unpleasant notions in ways that make them seem palatable.

Think of it this way: Somebody once figured out how to make raw oysters sound like a delicacy, not a pile of slimy goo. Sometimes, when you’re leading people, you have to achieve the same, seemingly insurmountable goal or nothing good will ever happen.

Comments

|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

When Bad Things Happen to Good People was a popular book once upon a time (1983, to be precise). But it was based on a false premise — that bad things happening to good people is somehow puzzling or unusual.

It is, of course, neither. As I pointed out a few years later, it’s When Good Things Happen to Bad People“ we find seriously annoying, and stupidly common.

Last week’s missive asked about the commercial version of this — how so many businesses that are, according to the dictates of evidence, logic, and standard formulations of what constitutes a well-run business, poorly run, do so well. And continue to do so well, not only for short bubble-like periods but for decades at a time.

I’ve run across a few theories regarding this distressing phenomenon over the years. Isaac Asimov proposed, for example, that “The lesson of history is that it isn’t who outsmarts whom that matters. It’s who out-stupids whom.”

Another, which I don’t like at all but that seems to fit the evidence well enough that we can’t just discard it out of hand, is that businesses only need to do one or two things really well. The rest they just need to be good enough at to muddle through.

This isn’t as preposterous as it might seem. To understand why, consider the Case of the Perturbed Perfectionist.

As pointed out in this space once upon a time, to the perfectionist the world is an infinite pile of flaws, each and every one of which must be ferreted out and fixed.

It isn’t that flaws are good things. It’s that, to put it in automotive terms, no matter how repairs you make, you won’t turn a Gremlin into a Bentley. Which is why, I think, Six Sigma is so often disappointing: Minimizing variation results in better Gremlins, not better cars.

Which in business leads to the only question that matters: What customers care about when deciding between your product, a competing product, and not buying anything at all.

The list of what customers care about isn’t all that long. Customers, defined as people who make or strongly influence the buying decision, care about:

  • Product assortment
  • Price
  • Convenience, which includes support and service
  • Features
  • Aesthetics
  • Quality (that is, absence of defects)
  • Image (visibility, perceived coolness, brand, liking the sales rep …)

This list isn’t comprehensive, but it’s close enough, because what matters is that different customers in different markets will rank these differently. In most markets only a few matter very much, but it’s a different few for different markets.

Take, for example, the benefits manager responsible for choosing her company’s group health insurance provider. Price and convenience will matter a lot. The rest will range from mattering a little to who cares?

For an insurer, great pricing comes from the actuarial and underwriting functions, accurate provider scoring and negotiated discounts, and ferociously efficient claims processing. Convenience mostly translates to customer service … at the benefits manager level, that is. Business functions that don’t contribute to these are business functions where being good enough is probably good enough.

Which is different from say, a company that retails consumer electronics on line.

For e-tailers, like health insurers success depends on price and convenience, and price does depends in part on how effectively merchants negotiate with vendors, and how well procurement negotiates shipping rates. In place of claims processing, e-tailers need ferociously efficient warehouse fulfillment operations (pick, pack, and ship).

Convenience comes mostly from merchandising, only it’s web merchandising. Image depends on advertising.

For e-tailers, unlike health insurers, their product assortment matters a lot. For some but not all, so does image. The former? Merchandizing again — how accurately merchants predict which products will be most interesting to customers. The latter usually belongs to an ad agency.

So for e-tailers, anything that doesn’t improve merchandising and warehouse operations falls into the just-good-enough pile.

Here’s what this means to you.

Unlike flaws, the pile of money and executive attention available for investing in business success is far from infinite. Where you can convincingly connect the dots between what your organization does within the business to one of the short-listed success factors, you can argue for more of this pile.

That’s quite different from anything else you do. If you want some of the pile for those responsibilities, you have a harder case to make:

That without more budget you can’t achieve the exalted state of good enough.

Comments