All I wanted to do was sync my blackberry calendar and contacts with my computer. The Mac did this automatically with built in programs for both contact management as well as an excellent Calendar program. How they did this without anti-trust problems like Microsoft has I don’t know… maybe anti-trust lawyers can’t afford Macs. I don’t know. But to have as good as I had with the Mac I had to buy Microsoft Outlook otherwise my Blackberry would sync with exactly nothing on my PC. Swell.

I toddled over to the Microsoft store where I could buy a digital download of Microsoft Outlook 2007 and if past history was any indication with every other digital download purchase I’d ever made I’d be downloading, installing, and clicking away in under an hour. That was the plan.

Twenty hours later I still hadn’t gotten an e-mail from Microsoft with download instructions… my card had been hit but no love in the download department so I complained about it on Twitter. Complaining on social media isn’t new. What is new, and impressed me was someone from Microsoft contacted me through twitter and then through e-mail and finally by phone, seriously… he called me! (Of course they know all my vitals, Microsoft downloads and scans the contents of your hard drive at night, you know this right? JOKE! I sent him my phone number!)

So, because I twittered in exasperation someone from Microsoft, MICROSOFT, got in touch with me and stayed in touch with me to fix the problem and fix it in a way that took me from frustrated to happy customer. They didn’t give me giant piles of free stuff, but they can if they like… they’ve got my contact info! (hint hint) But he fixed the issue, personally took care of the sale and made sure that I got everything I’d asked for and was a happy customer.

This is not a trivial thing that Trevin from the Microsoft Store (online version, not from a mall) did. I’m in retail. I know how hard it is to take an irritated customer referring to your business as pathetic and then be calm, rational, and helpful with the upset customer and turn their bad experience into a good one. Trevin did an outstanding job of it. And I officially apologize for saying his store was bad. I should have contacted them at least one more time before I was so insulting.

The lesson here isn’t that they messed up although I’m sure there are plenty who will say “See, Microsoft screwed up again!” They’re ignoring the important part. From a customer service point of view they didn’t just screw up. They recognized it and then they reached out to me, their customer, and fixed it in a way that was fair. It didn’t give away the store and it didn’t make me feel like they weren’t giving an inch after messing things up so badly.

I wasn’t after a free lunch. I just wanted to shop with them. Today at my work I had one of my employees tell me about an upset customer experience she’d had and how the customer was going to come back. Whenever I hear those I wince. I want them to come back to shop, not to complain. She’d really tried to make the customer happy and things had just conspired against her. I suspect this is one of those customers who won’t be happy until we fire him. (Yes, I’ve fired customers before and it’s not something that’s done lightly but they quit being customers when they quit paying… and he’s getting close to the part where he’s an expense in a bad way.)

So, we’ll try to do as good by the upset customer as Trevin did by me. I’d started the conversation on twitter, effectively yelling “Your company is pathetic!” and he responded with “How can I help fix it?” And then went on from there to fix things. He didn’t react to my emotion or my hostility. He reacted to my problem and worked to address it. In doing so he took me from hostile upset customer to happy customer who will shop there again. His parting words on the phone, were that if I ever had any problem again to get in touch with him. I don’t expect I’ll have troubles, and if I did I would probably do things more right with e-mail through the proper channels, but I feel, as a customer, like I have an “in.” That makes me more likely to shop there again, even if I never use the in… and even though he’ll never remember me and probably handles a dozen cases a week just like mine. (Not because they’re that bad but due to the sheer volume of what the biggest software company in the world must do… at least I think they are, maybe it’s Blizzard.)

So. This week the challenge is to be as good at customer service as Microsoft was to me… and this time when I say that, I mean that in the best possible way. Good job Trevin from Microsoft, and thank you.

The Daily Five Minutes (D5M) as talked about, shared, given away for free on the Internet, by Rosa Say is the single most important management tool I’ve run into. I found it on her blog, bought her book, and have built a relationship (online only – no jealous husbands coming after me please!) with her almost entirely because I fell in love with this practice of hers.

I don’t do it often enough. I intend to, but I get busy and I forget. I do it more than I used to. I need to do it more. Here’s the thing. Doing it mostly is better than doing it never. Doing it all the time… I can’t imagine how powerful that will be. She’s starting a program, this is an alpha run of the program in conjunction with Ruzuku.com (A site I’ve never heard of until now).

The shortest one-liner version of The Daily Five Minutes is to listen to your employees with active listening and find out what’s important to them. (Go read more about it here, even if you’ve done this before, bear with me. I’ve got a point to make here.) This is huge. It’s me shutting up and letting them talk. It’s me getting out of their way and letting them have the talking conch for a while. That’s hugely important at work right? It helps build relationships. It helps us their bosses find out what they’ve got going on in their lives and what they’re struggling with and gives them a chance to feel safe and ask for help without feeling like they’re whining. It allows them to bounce ideas off us.

If it’s that great for work think of how great it would be with your friends and family! Seriously. Pay attention on the next phone call to a friend or family member. How often are you planning your next thing to say or looking at the Bush’s baked beans wondering which ones to get while Aunt Mable tells the story about how her Beagle Indiana Jones (We named the DOG Indiana!) got into the garbage for the fourth time this week? How often are you talking about your day and not asking and listening to theirs? Seriously? At dinner how much time you do you spend listening, really listening, and engaging the person talking? If it’s a great idea for us and our employees it’s an amazingly super-fantastic idea for family and friends.

So, join us November 2nd, whether your manager or not, in the Alpha test of Rosa Say’s The D5M Challenge: 15 Days to Build your Daily 5 Minutes Habit online coachy thing. Rosa Say is an author, coach and speaker who has been making her living doing this stuff for a while now. She knows what she’s talking about and if you do it… I mean really do it and find at the end of the fifteen days  that you didn’t get anything out of it. I will personally return every dime of the cost of the program to you myself out of my pocketsess…

PS: If any of you say “Why Richard, this is simply Dale Carnegie with leis and words I can’t pronounce!” I’ll say it again slowly… go read the link I gave you and come back. My abbreviated version doesn’t do it justice. I’m abbreviating. There’s more to it than my thumbnail OK? OK. Mahalo, punk! (That was in my Clint Eastwood voice. I even squinted some when I said it.)

Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must first set yourself on fire.
Fred Shero

I once told my Mom that I couldn’t figure out how to motivate somebody and she pointed out to me that I couldn’t motivate anybody. I could inspire, but the motivation would come from within. When had anybody motivated ME to do something I hadn’t wanted to do? I’d been inspired by other people to do something, but I can’t say anybody had ever gotten me off my butt to actually do it. That was me getting off my butt.

So, I’m a manager who wants his employees to be motivated and I don’t believe I can actually motivate anybody. It sounds a lot like I’m in the wrong line of work doesn’t it? Not to me. I don’t mind that I can’t motivate them. I also can’t get to Des Moines from my house in under two hours by myself. But I have a car that helps me do that quite handily. So, I don’t need to motivate the employee as much as I need to try and inspire the employee. If I can get them to want to do something then my job is done.

The thing with managers who make employees do things is that at some point the manager is going to leave the room/building. If the employee is only doing something because the manager wants it done it will be done the way the manager wants it done while the manager is there watching. As soon as the manager leaves or isn’t watching it’s being done in a way that the employee wants it done, which is typically faster and not always as well as the manager wants it done. I don’t say that because I think employees are lazy. I say it because the manager didn’t inspire the employee. The manager left the employee doing what he was doing “because I said so!” That’s no way to manage! (OK. It is a way, and I admit to having used it, but it’s not a good all-the-time strategy.)

Tom Sawyer didn’t make his friends paint his fence for him. He made his friends WANT to paint his fence for him. If I can do half a good of a job inspiring my employees to want to paint my fences I’ll quit getting yellow guard-rail paint all over my jeans! I can’t wait.

So, live it. Work hard, work with your employees, help them be better at what they’re doing and try and help them understand why what they’re doing is important. If it’s not important, and they’re doing it out of habit let them know they can stop if they want to. Sometimes procedures hang around years after their importance has faded. We’ve got pages of paperwork that we used to use, and I still find managers using it but all the information is now in the computer and used from the computer. Some managers still do it though, still like doing it, and find comfort in it. If it helps them sleep at night I let them. But I let them know that if they’re tired of it they can stop doing it.

There are plenty of things out there for employees to do. There’s more work than there is time, and there are fewer people doing it. The workplace stress is at an all time high according to recent statistics and workplace suicides increased faster this year than they’ve ever increased before and this is in spite of a smaller workforce than previous years due to the recession. So, help inspire your employees. Help them burn with passion for the job. Help them to find the spark of joy that keeps them coming in and help them develop the parts of the job they like and focus on those. I heard a Pepsi man say once that he got paid in the summer for the work he did in the winter (delivering soda in ice and snow is NOT fun) and that’s how most jobs are. There are parts we love, focus on those and get through the parts we don’t love. Those are the parts we get paid to do.

Watch your employees though. Watch to see if they’re burning out. The biggest thing I have to beat into my new managers’ heads is how important their time off is. They want to be on call 24-7 and they are, don’t think they’re not, but they need to dial it back. There are times they need to say “This is my time and while they may call me if it’s not important I’ll tell them I’ll call them later.” They have GOT to prioritize their private life and make sure to make time to smell the roses. If they don’t recharge at a hockey game or while running or playing video games they’ll burn themselves out.

If I find a manager who brags about their 60 hour weeks I’ve got a problem. They’re not developing their employees. They’re not allowing their assistant manager to grow into their position. They’re not letting their employees do their job. They’re getting in their employees way. And they’re running themselves so close to their capacity that if it does hit the fan and I DO need them to pull a double unexpectedly they’re too far gone to do it. Nobody should run on empty on purpose.

Managers need to be managers, but they need to be people too, and people need time away from their job, even if it’s only a long weekend at Worlds of Fun on Halloween weekend. They’ll be better managers for it. They’ll be better able to inspire their employees if they’re rested and energetic.

This is the last of my posts that have a fire theme. October is National Fire Safety Month, and I hope none of you have any cause to ever need your fire extinguishers or smoke detectors, but if you do. I hope they’re charged and ready to go… just like you after you’ve taken some time off from work.

Continuing my month long on-again, off-again fire themed posting in honor of October being National Fire Prevention month is a post about fire as a gathering place for chatting, socializing, and seeking comfort.

One of my favorite management tools is the Daily 5 as talked about by Rosa Say over at Say Leadership Coaching.  The daily five minutes is, short-version, go read the long version, time for you, the manager, to take five minutes to talk with AND LISTEN TO your employee. This isn’t five minutes to tell them what to do or five minutes where you top down all over them. This isn’t five minutes of your critiquing their performance on some recent project and then ending with a “So, what’ve you got to say for yourself?” It’s five minutes of conversation with them. Yes, I said conversation which means there will be a point when we, as managers, need to shut up and listen… actively listen to our employees. Ask leading questions, repeat back to them what they’ve just said in your own words so they know you understand them. Make use of that information later to blackmail them into covering extra shifts so their HA! Didn’t think you were paying attention, that was a test. Obviously I don’t mean the last part. That was a joke.

But engaging our employees to actively talk to us about what’s important to them can only help us be better managers. It’s a great time to find out what the rumors are out there that are keeping people up nights and address them. Those little things, rumors, can be tremendously destructive. But they’re hard to bring up to a manager who an employee is nervous about talking to or with. If we build a good relationship with our employees and make sure they know it’s important to us that we communicate with each other about things that are important to each other we’ll both win.

It doesn’t just help by opening lines of communication open either. It helps all day long when you’re NOT engaged in conversation and see them. If they know they’ll have your ear at a future date they interrupt less frequently because they know they’ll get a chance to bring things to your attention, or ask questions later. If your employees think they’ll be able to talk to you once in a blue moon they’ll grab you whenever they see you or call or interrupt what you’re doing because they’re never sure when they’ll have a chance again. Once they get in the habit of talking to you, and know they’ll be able to again very soon they’ll dial back the pestering… most of the time. Some people are so needy they won’t stop pestering… those you can tell, “You know what. I’m buried right now, how ‘bout we catch up on that during our talk later OK? Thanks. Take care. Bye. Don’t let the door hit you in your codependent… See… I did it again there. Glad you’re still with me. But seriously, you can defer them if they’re not playing by the rules. Some people don’t have a filter. Some people think of something and call you on the phone immediately, afraid they’ll lose it if they don’t. Those people are in need of organization more than they’re in need of my advice or answers… typically I think they just need to read and implement a version of Getting Things Done, but that’s another topic for another time.

Fire Safety around outside fires is a big matter of being ready if it spreads. Fire’s a hungry beast and it’ll eat anything it can get to. If you’re burning brush or yard waste good on you for living somewhere that you can! Nothing says fall like the smell of burning leaves! That being said, you’ll want a fire break of some sort between your pile of leaves and your Porsche. You’ll also want something nearby in case the wind picks up and moves some embers from your fire to your front porch. Remember the fire extinguisher I suggested for the kitchen? That would work. A bucket of water would work. A garden hose turned on would work. Heck, a bucket of sand would work if you had one of those nearby but why would you? What wouldn’t work? A bucket or pan of cheap kitty litter. Some of that stuff is dusty and might explode on you if you threw it on an open flame and if you really want exploded used kitty litter on your front porch please… don’t invite me to any of YOUR fireside chats.

I’m going to do my first cross-blog post involving both simplerich.com and my simplerunner blog over on blogspot. I’ve started running recently (First recorded run was on June 20th or so.) so it’s been slightly less than a month that I’ve been running.

I’ve been doing the Couch to 5k training program to ease me into being able to run a 5k race from being a couch rider who didn’t do much more than walk and hike. I read Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. The thing with running books, running podcasts, and stories about runners, is that they’ve always hit me on an emotional level. This isn’t true of all sports. I read and really liked The Blind Side by Michael Lewis but it didn’t resonate with me on an emotional level. I just really liked it.

Running for me though is something that is singular in the sports world to me… I know it’s not. Golf is all you too. But with Running there’s no technological advantage to be had by the wealthy. I don’t think you can buy your way into being a good runner. I do believe you can build a good football team with money. I also believe you can pour money into cars to have an edge in racing. Running though is a guy and the road and at some point it quits being about muscle and starts being about personal drive and desire.

There’s a point in running when the runner is running not on strength but on will power and those stories are the ones that hit me in the stomach. The story of Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope makes me cry every time I hear it. He ran 3339 miles in 143 days and he only had one leg. The other’d been lost to cancer. Phedippidations, a running podcast that I enjoy a great deal and have listened to for hours for the past couple weeks, has a great podcast about Terry Fox.

When I was in college I ran. There was a track between the University of Montevallo where I first went to college and the off campus house I was living in. I would go at night, in secret and run around the track. I never ran very far, and I never ran very long. I remember listening to the soundtrack to Joan Lui while I ran though. Still when I listen to my favorite song from that album I remember those night time runs.

I never told anybody, and didn’t stick with it because I was afraid I wasn’t very good at it. I’d never run track in high school and if you ever look at runners while they’re running… they’re not beautiful creatures. Nor are they graceful or awe-inspiring. They’ve got a sort of zombie-like shuffle that they do, and their faces are either pale or flushed, and always glisten with an unhealthy wetness. I was far too self-conscious then to admit to anybody that I was a runner.

I’m still self-conscious but there’s something about it now that’s different. Something that hit me when I was playing golf with my Dad. There is only one thing I can think of that looks more ridiculous and laughable than a golfer’s posture and swing… and that’s doing it badly and looking like an idiot and still having to chase the ball. It dawned on me that day on the fairway that golfers don’t look stupid to other golfers unless they golf badly.

Running’s the same way. I’ll look tired. I’ll look like I’m shuffling along and look nothing like the tall lithe Kenyans who break land speed records. But I’ll be doing something that I’ve wanted to do for over 20 years but was too embarrassed to do because of what other people would think. What a stupid waste of my time.

So. I run. I love to run. I like finding limits and pushing them. I like that I’m doing something that most people don’t/won’t do. I’m not doing it for my health or to lose weight. I expect it will improve my health and my weight’s not bad enough to really bother me that much. I’m doing it because I like it. I like it outside, and I like how I feel after I’ve run.

I’m going to run a 5k race in the spring. I don’t know where or when yet but I’m going to. I haven’t got a goal time yet either. But I want to run at least one 5k in spring and maybe a 10k in the fall. I doubt I’ll ever be good enough to run a marathon, but by next year I wouldn’t rule out a half-marathon if the running gods smile on me.

If you decide to run, or if you’re a runner, I’d love it if you’d drop me a line, say “Hi” or even point me towards some more good running podcasts or websites I might find helpful. Like I said. I’m a complete newbie to this running thing and while I enjoy it, it doesn’t mean I’m doing it right at all and I can use all the help I can get.

Thank you all for reading this. I know it was longer than my usual blog posts. Take care of yourselves and the ones you love.

It’s National Fire Prevention Week and that means lots of Public Service Announcements (PSA’s) about fires, how to prevent them, and what to do in the case of one. There’s more to fire than destruction.

"Each of us has a fire in our hearts for something. It’s our goal in life to find it and to keep it lit."
– Mary Lou Retton

We, as managers who have a calling for management have that fire in our hearts and it’s our job to spread the fire to our employees. To do that, according to the fire triangle we’re going to need three things to get a fire going and keep it going. We’ll need heat, fuel, and air.

Heat: The heat we’ll need to kindle the fire in our employees is from our own heartfire*. It’s the heat of our passion for what we do and how we do it. Our employees need to see us doing what we care about and what we say we care about. If we say we care about customer service but we ignore the customer while we talk about a newest memo there’s no heat transfer there. The employee sees that we care about the customer until something else comes along. We need to pay attention to our attention. Our attention, our focus, that’s where our heat is going. If we want our employees to think something is important and get excited about it we need to do more than just say it. They need to see us live it. They need to see our excitement. They need to see our involvement. They need to catch the fever from our heartfire so they can burn with it as well.

Fuel: Fuel is what they’re going to burn with the heat we give them from our heartfire. We have to give them work to do. Yes. You heard it. Delegate, involve your crew in the work you want them excited about. Get out of their way and let them be great. Micromanaging is smothering their fire’s. It’s using your fire to burn up their fuel so they can’t catch fire themselves. Give them work, help them do it if they need it, coach them, kindle the fire in them and then, like they do on the TV show Survivor, tend the fire as it catches in the tinder and help it to grow. Don’t pile more fuel on the new flame and bury it. You’ll burn them out if you do that. Keep the fuel coming, and keep sharing the heat of your excitement and your heartfire to keep theirs going as they burn through the work you ask for their help on.

Oxygen: You’ve shared your excitement, and you’ve given them work to do and they’ve done it and if you want to keep them doing it, and keep that fire going you’ve got to fan the flames. You’ve got to reward good behavior with genuine, specific praise. Let them know that what they’re doing is good, appreciated, and important. Let them know that you noticed. Coach them if there’s need for improvement, but do so in the spirit of encouraging a fire to grow inside them. Rewarding good behavior is as important as any other leg in the fire triangle. When an employee knows that what they’re doing is important work, and it’s noticed by other people it helps keep the fire going. If you give an employee a job and never notice if it was done or how well it was done, it wouldn’t surprise me to come back a month or so later and find it being done worse than the first time they did it. Feed the fire with your praise.

There has to be a balance with these three things, and that’s where management becomes an art. The balance is different for different employees. Some think that praise is too much sooner than other people. Some people need it daily, and some think that sounds phony. Some need it weekly and any less is that management is ignoring them. Some will ask for more work and some will wait for you to notice if they’re capable of more or not. They’re testing you to see if you notice. So many employees and so many management styles, it’s the part that keeps every day fresh and different.

It IS National Fire Prevention week and I said I’d talk about fire safety. When I was 20 years old an on leave in the Navy I was driving home and saw a van on the side of the road with the hood up. I was in traffic and didn’t stop, but what struck me was that the engine was on fire. They were on the side of the road, the engine was on fire, and there was nothing they could do about it. Since then I’ve carried a small fire extinguisher in my car and kept one in my house. It may be that an engine fire does a lot of damage really fast, but letting it burn itself out isn’t going to make it any cheaper to fix. Same at the house. If you haven’t looked at getting a small fire extinguisher for your car or kitchen think about it. You may never use it, but if you need it and don’t have it well… I’m not one to say I told you so, but drop me an e-mail. I may start being the kind.

*Heartfire is a word I got from Orson Scott Card’s book, Seventh Son. It’s the first in a series called the Tales of Alvin Maker. It’s an alternate history series about colonial America and that doesn’t do it justice at all. It’s a great series of YA fiction I recommend whole-heartedly.

October is National Fire Prevention month and the first full week in October, the 4th – 10th of 2009, are National Fire Prevention Week.

When I was little, single digits, our kitchen caught fire through the back of the chimney in the old house we lived in. It was mostly smoldering and nobody was hurt. There was property damage and the wall got knocked down. My sister noticed it. Had it happened at night while we slept things could have been much worse.

So fires and their prevention is an important topic. What does a fire need to survive? Fire needs heat, fuel, and air. Those three things are parts of the fire triangle. If any one of the sides are gone then the fire will go out. Through the week we’ll talk about the three things needed to keep the fire going in your organization.

Fire alarms, smoke detectors (there are two types, did you know that?) are important for not having injuries as a result of a fire, and they can help warn you about a fire before it spreads, but both those things, fire alarms and smoke detectors, warn after the fire has started, or is very very close to starting in the event of smoke detectors detecting a smoldering fire before it actually flashes into fire. What would be better would be a way to detect a fire before it started! We don’t have a system for that in homes yet that I know of, but towards the end of the week I’ll talk about a tool I’ve used to great effect to detect fires in my organization and try and stamp them out before they get started.

Today I’ve talked about putting out fires and keeping them going… It’s a schizophrenic thing fire is. I use it at home for heat and I use it in the yard to get rid of yard waste, but it’s the kind of fire I want when I want it. It’s a tool that is directed, controlled, and used by me for me and by my organization for my organization. There are other fires though… and there are other types that are destructive to an organization. That’s this week’s theme. I’ll be including links to the actual fire safety topics I’m talking about in addition to the management related issues I’m talking about as well.

Fire safety is important… when you finish reading this, go check your batteries in your smoke detectors. There’s no reason not to check them now.

I see signs in stores and on buildings that end with “Thanks, Management” or even worse, and more impersonal, “Thanks, Mgmt” and I cringe. I am a manager and have been for a lot of years and I’ve never signed a sign with my title. Now that I have managers who work for me I discourage them from it as well. “Management” isn’t a person. It may be an all consuming time-sink at times but managers are people and people have names, and while the people reading the sign may not know who you are… they don’t know who Mgmt is either.

It’s been my belief for a long time that people will mess with unnamed entities. If they feel like they’re “Sticking it to the man!” it is easier for them to commit shenanigans if “the man” they’re sticking to hasn’t got any name but is just a faceless entity. If they might well be looking across the store at the person who wrote the sign it might, in some few cases make a difference. That’s one reason, but it’s not the primary reason I sign my name and not my title to things.

The primary reason I sign my name is I want the people reading the sign to know who I am. Obviously I’m someone. I just put a sign in a place of business and the employees seem OK with that. Heck, this especially applies to employees! They know who “management” is so for me to have to remind them on a sign is almost me undermining myself. If they don’t know that “Rich is the manager and it would be a good idea if I was aware of and listened to this sign” then I’ve got a huge problem as a manager. If I think signing “Manager” to something carries more weight with my employees than signing my name… ouch. That would mean I was pretty insecure about my relationship with my employees. I see “Thanks, Management” signs as a sign of a weak manager or a posturing manager when they’re aimed at the employees. But, I digress. I was talking about my signs being bridge and relationship builders with my customers.

When the sign carries my name, some times they will ask “Who is Rich?” and that’s an opportunity for me to introduce myself and for us to start building a relationship. It’s not that I would say “The manager… and the manager is me.” That’s crazy talk. They don’t care if I’m the manager yet. They care who “Rich” is and why he put up a sign. That’s the question and the hidden question. So, I answer both, and take it as a chance to make a conversation where, at the end of it, they fell like they’re on a first name basis with a local business manager. They’ve got an “in.” They’re now able to call up the store, ask for the manager by name, and see what I can do to help them with something.

If I sign my signs “Management” they won’t know who I am or feel like they know me, or feel that connection that is so important for a sales people to make with customers, especially in small town retail. (I say small town because the store I “grew up in” has a population of around 25,000. It’s not exactly a village, but it’s no city either, there’s a definite small town feel to it, and part of that feel is when customers know their store’s managers by name.

Thanks,
A blogger

*Photo by Mike Smail on Flickr.

The Levity Effect: Why it Pays to Lighten Up by Adrian Gostick and Scott Christopher was sent to me recently to review and I asked people on twitter how they felt about my reviewing books sent me for free. The consensus was as long as I fessed up to it then there was no harm done. This is me copping to getting a freebie and enjoying it.

I’m reading The Levity Effect: Why it Pays to Lighten Up and listening to Brain Rules from audible at the same time and they’re surprisingly related. I’ll cover Brain Rules later. For now The Levity Effect is being reviewed. It was good. I enjoyed it. It’s a book that will be enjoyed, I believe, by people who already believe what it’s saying. I don’t know that the people who don’t believe it will be persuaded by the book. It’s not that there isn’t enough evidence suggested in the book. It’s just that it’s not terribly persuasive. As such I think it will mostly preach to the converted. I can’t, for example, see my boss reading it and embracing it. That’s now how he does things stylistically. That’s not fair. He does try.

One of the things the book does work hard to point out is the difference between fun and funny and it’s a good distinction. It can be fun at work without someone having to be funny. Fun is not the same as funny. It’s been said at my work that if one enjoys their work then their work will be fun, not fun like volleyball fun, but fun as in “I enjoy what I do and feel fulfilled doing it” fun. I totally see that and agree with it, but that doesn’t mean a little silliness doesn’t have its place at work. According to a lot of the research presented in The Levity Effect the bottom line is always better if people are enjoying themselves at work. Morale is up, people are more productive, and turn-over goes down… how is this not persuasive? I don’t know.

My favorite part of the book is where they discuss how important fun is as a measure of the strength of a relationship. Trust, Communication, and Creativity are all increased by the precepts put forward by The Levity Effect. That part was a surprise to me, but the truth of it came to me as I read it. The people I was most comfortable with and most trusted were the people I was most able to joke around with. I’d never put that together before. I use humor to establish relationships and maintain them.

The list of things to do that help introduce levity also look as if they would be good for team building and morale building. They don’t expressly say that, but people who have fun together I think will perform better together. If you’re a person who believes that work is something that we do an awful lot of and so it should be fun because we’re doing it a lot you should read this book. If your boss tries it then leave this book laying around where the boss will see it. Maybe he’ll give it a read. If your boss is a reader let them read it. It’s a good book. I don’t know how persuasive it is, again, it persuaded be because I already bought into it.

If you’re a manager and you want to be a more effective manager this book will help. Please though, don’t forget you have an HR department. Read the back portion of the book. Remember that mean isn’t funny, and the authors are spot on when they warn that if you’ve got to start a joke with “I hope nobody’s offended but…” or end with “just kidding” then you probably shouldn’t say it. Those things are typically not a good idea. This book is a good idea, after the recession we’ve been in lately and the grim news about it and the cost cuts and lay-offs many companies have been through I’d say it’s a book whose time has come.

I’m in a store and I’m shopping and an employee asks if I need help finding anything. This is normal at every store. It’s part of the training to tell employees to notice customers and greet them that way. Where it gets different is when the training actually has a Day 2 and the employee knows to try and help the customer.

I’m in retail. I’ve been in retail for years. I notice customer service as often as I notice if vents are clean or not. It’s a curse. Rosa over at Talking Story recently brought up a retail incident involving the check-out procedure at a grocery store. I encourage you to go give it a read. It brought up the questions sales associates ask that they don’t really need or want the answer to. Questions they’re trained to ask, but then the training stops… or the trainer assumes the employee will take it from there.

I recently shopped at a Hy-Vee and the employee asked if I wanted help finding something. When I said a papaya she offered to order me some and was more concerned about having them for me on time than about what she would do with the rest of the ones she’d have to order to meet her minimum order. Later, at the same store an employee offered to order me crab fingers and assured me that the rest of the minimum order would be sold to someone, and again was more concerned that I got them on time. Hy-Vee is an employee-owned grocery store in Iowa. As you can see from the customer service they provide it’s a popular one. I’ve never had a bad experience at my Hy-Vee. The employees there are trained not just to ask questions, but to listen to the answer and help the customer get what they want.

Another store that often, but not always does a good job at this is Home Depot where when I ask where something is, often the employee will take me to the item. There are those where you can tell the manager isn’t as customer focused as others because they’ll just point or say “Aisle 23 on the right.” The ones that take me to what I want… those are the ones I go back to.

When at the cash register how often have we been asked “Did you find everything all right today?” What are they going to do if we were to say “Nope. I couldn’t find the peanut butter and jelly flavored freeze-dried astronaut food ice cream packs.” My guess is they’re going to say “Awww. I’m sorry,” and BEEP BEEP BEEP their way through the rest of the stuff on the conveyor belt. They’ve just asked me a question they had no intention of listening to the answer to.

A more frequent example is when people say “How are you?” as part of a greeting but then they don’t stop for us to answer. If there’s no intent to listen to the answer, don’t ask the question. The part of the post where I come to a radical conclusion or offer an insight or training technique to help make the world a better place is going to be woefully missing here. The thing is, the answer is easy. I’ve said it a couple times in the post and title. Employees should be trained not to just offer help, but actually follow through on the help. When an employee asks a leading question but doesn’t follow up on the answer they’re failing the customer and the store.