Category Archives: Accountability

Scalability

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From the Ask Tom Mailbag –

Question:
When a medical service based business begins to scale and the customer experience becomes inconsistent, how do you typically determine whether the issue stems from personnel training or organizational structure?

Response:
It’s both, and a basket full of other things. Inconsistent customer experience usually stems from a lack of well thought out internal systems that bring that consistency. Your internal systems have to identify the common elements in all service delivery and be flexible enough to account for individual nuances. Those nuances need to be looped back in for consideration to how the system handles them, to constantly refine your system. And, then you have to train for the system.

That training will also teach you (as management) what realistic system deployment looks like, in terms of its predictability, repeatability and whether it can be delivered within the confines of your revenue stream (meaning, is your customer willing to pay for and value your system delivery). Sorry for the length of the response, but your question is not a binary either/or.

And, if you are truly looking to scale, your system is not just your service delivery. Scalability requires the integration of all of your systems. You have to have a well-thought out, consistently executed marketing system, a sales system that guides the right clients to your services. Most companies only focus on the operational system, but you also need consistent appointment and reminder systems, post-service follow-up systems, a privacy system, insurance and self-pay system. If you want to scale, you have to integrate ALL of your systems.

Second Guess

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“Why the long face?” I asked.

“I’m concerned about Rafael,” Eliana explained. “He was our best lead technician, always enthusiastic, knew his stuff, the team really respected him. We promoted him to supervisor two months ago and since, I noticed a slow disheartening withdrawal, from the work and from the team.”

“What does your intuition tell you?” I wanted to know.

“I don’t know, it’s like he is a different person,” she replied. “He seemed like a natural born leader and I wanted to give him the opportunity to shine. So when his supervisor got promoted, it was an easy decision. He said he wanted it. He got a raise, a small office off the production floor. But, now, I am having second thoughts.”

“I am flattered you wanted my advice, but you might find the conversation more productive if you talk to Rafael. He is the one who knows what is going on. Don’t avoid the conversation. If we made a mistake, we can easily correct it now, we have many options. If we wait another six months, the fix may be more difficult and we will have fewer options.”

Clarity

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“I don’t get it,” Elizabeth shook her head. “We hire MBAs, engineers, and industry veterans. Individually they were all great hires. Yet our projects still miss deadlines.”

“And what have you concluded?” I asked.

“That we need better people,” she said with a downbeat.

“Maybe. But tell me, who designed the roles they occupy?”

Elizabeth looked straight at me in an unspoken question.

“The smartest person in the world struggles in a role where the accountability is not clear,” I replied. “And a capable team member fails when they are given work beyond their current capability.”

“So the problem might not be the people?” Elizabeth showed a bit of doubt on her face.

“Most often, it’s the structure,” I nodded.

Elizabeth leaned back. “We’ve been replacing players when we should have focused on clarity.”

“And, clear to you may not be clear to the team member.”

 

Premeditated Culture is now available from Amazon.

Culture is Not a Poster

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Al Ripley arrived at Outbound Air on a Monday. The teamwork posters arrived the Friday before. He ordered them from Chicago, in the period when Outbound Air was simply the next assignment. One poster showed fifty people jumping out of an airplane holding hands. He used this poster before. It communicated, in a single image, the two things Ripley needed the organization to believe simultaneously, that everyone was in this together, and that they were all in freefall.

Premeditated Culture is now available from Amazon.

Technical Contributors as Managers

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“When did you notice the slowdown in throughput?” Catherine asked. The response from the client was consistent and overwhelming.

“Right after we promoted Duncan to manager.”

“And what was Duncan doing before he was promoted to manager?” she wanted to know.

“Duncan is an engineer. He was doing engineering. Best engineer we have, so we promoted him to Engineering Manager.”

Catherine knew engineers and the worst decision was to make an engineer a manager. She interviewed the team and documented her observations. Her initial report was so precise, so descriptive that it climbed the ladder to the client’s executive team, in charge of engineering integration with every other function in the company. She did not expect the email, but there it was in front of her. “We know we had a small budget for this project, but we want to expand deployment across all teams. What could we expect?”

Vision and Mission

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Calhoun managed by proximity. He preferred to have his people close, to overhear, to intervene when necessary. He described the publication’s editorial philosophy with genuine conviction.

“We cover the new economy,” he said, “which means we cover people who are building things that have not been built before, where the rules are written as the game is played. That produces a specific kind of story, the founder ahead of the regulation, the protocol ahead of the infrastructure, the valuation ahead of the revenue.”

He leaned back in his chair. “Our job is to find those gaps and report them accurately. We have to gain access to the people inside, which means they have to trust that we will treat them fairly.” He paused. “And we will treat them fairly. Fairly does not mean gently. It means accurately.”

Premeditated Culture is now available on Amazon.

Hiring Talent

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Renata Voss was the firm’s head of recruitment and in her fourteen years conducted, by her own estimate, somewhere between four and five hundred candidate interviews. She sat in a small, dedicated conference room on the interior of the suite, no window, one door, designed to make the candidate feel the conversation was the only thing happening in the building. She developed, over fourteen years, a very precise model of who she was looking for, and a precise intolerance for candidates who did not fit the mold.

Her conversation with Gus opened with standard behavioral questions. “Tell me about a time when a project got stuck? What was the external obstacle? Resolution to the problem?”

Then, she watched him do something novel, not seen in five hundred interviews. Before answering, he leaned forward slightly. “Before I tell you this story, I need to make sure our conversation is confidential. I won’t reveal the names of anyone involved. But it’s important that you don’t share what I’m about to tell you.”

Renata put her pen down. Gus was about to say something that would require her to end the interview.

Premeditated Culture is now available on Amazon.

The Baton Pass

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Pruitt glanced at the other two shareholders with the brief eye contact of a shared understanding. “Documentation discipline,” he said. “Every document is right the first time. Every classification is accurate. Every valuation is current. The customs brokers we use on both sides know our paperwork before it arrives.” He paused. “You’ll want to get to know Carlos. He is our customs broker out of Nogales. He has an office on the US side. It’s his relationship that makes the clearance rate possible. Whatever he needs, he gets it.”

Everyone but Jarrad stood to leave the room. The clock on the wall showed 8:38. Jarrad stood and met their grip like a baton at a relay race. The handshakes were warm, but with a visceral quality of relief, an apology that none of them made explicit. Each finished their segment, it was Jarrad’s turn to be the runner. They escaped what all shareholders escape when they exit. They escaped the routine, the pressure, the obligations. The visible obligations and the hidden obligations now belonged to Jarrad.

Premeditated Culture is now available on Amazon.

When You Allow It

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“David,” she said, “you are one of the most capable people in this program. Your work is genuinely good. Your analysis is rigorous when you allow it to be.” She paused. “You don’t allow it to be, often enough, because allowing it means staking a position that someone might disagree with. And you learned, this program taught you, very effectively, that the risk of being wrong in public is greater than the cost of being right in private. So, you seek consensus. You look for permission. You ask people like me what you should do so that when it goes wrong you can escape accountability.”

Premeditated Culture, now available on Amazon.

What We Tolerate

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“But I want this place to feel like a family. I want people to feel warm inside when they think about our company. That’s the kind of culture I want to create,” Tracy explained.

“First, I can’t see what someone thinks,” I replied. “I can only see behavior. Culture may impact the way we feel, but culture drives behaviors. Culture starts with beliefs, but even beliefs are invisible. Tell me what people do, and it will give you insight into what they believe.”

“I should look at behaviors?” she wanted to know.

I nodded. “For example, let’s say we want to focus on safety, we want to create a safety culture. This is not your warm and fuzzy culture feeling, but a belief that every team member goes home each and every day with ten fingers and ten toes. If that is what we believe, what behaviors does that drive?”

“That they wear safety glasses, steel toed shoes,” she said. “That they watch for unsafe work practices. They watch perimeters, safety walk equipment, pay attention to balanced loads. Most important, watch out for each other.”

“So, you have a whole series of behaviors connected to ten fingers, ten toes,” I smiled. “What if your best technician shows up in tennis shoes? You see, behaviors get tested by reality. You don’t stand for the aspiration, you stand for what you tolerate.”

“Our best technician does not get a pass,” Tracy was firm. “He goes home, gets the right work boots.”

“And those behaviors that survive the test of reality become our customs and rituals. Daily safety huddles, site specific safety exposure meetings, maintained safety equipment, those become rituals. And those rituals reinforce what we believe – ten fingers, ten toes.”

Premeditated Culture – Consequences of What We Tolerate is now available on Amazon.