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Feel the Client's Pain

Author's Note: This post ran last week at the Daily Fix, but for my readers who did not see it there, I thought it worth re-posting and sharing.

We've all been there. In fact, I just visited this place of client frustration and fear a few days ago. It usually happens when the solution provided to the client's (or boss's) problem will cost them time, money and stress. At that very moment, we stand at the precipice.

We can recognize the pain, and come up with an alternate solution that will ease the client's mind and make them feel good in the short term. Or we can do the right but difficult thing by sticking with our convictions, knowing that the solution we recommend is the right one, even if standing by our beliefs means we lose the job.

Not an easy choice, but one all of us will come to reckon with on occasion, regardless of whether we run a firm or an agency, work for a firm or an agency, or work for a small, mid-sized or large business. It is best to be prepared for what we will do and how we will respond before the situation arises.

When I took my first corporate job, I was 28 years old and had served two tours in the military. I was used to saying "yes sir" and "no sir." But there are practical reasons for obliging higher ranks in the armed forces: It can save a person's life. Not so in the business world. In fact, I believe that those who go along to get along are doing their company or their client a disservice. On the other hand, they seem to be liked and have a certain level of job security that those of us who speak out risk.

The description given to those who speak out is often said in this way: "Well, you have to cut Jane/John some slack. SHe's a creative person," as if being creative was a bad thing.

People who speak out, in addition to being creative and innovative, often can be described as honest, passionate, caring, smart and unafraid. They want to make a difference. They don't come to work every day for the pay check. They come for the challenge, for the adventure of achieving goals and objectives and to travel the road less traveled. They are always searching for better and more productive ways to do things. They rock the boat. They are change agents and they make terrific consultants. They don't necessarily make up the wealthiest consultants.

In my experience, most executives and managers lean toward conservatism. They got where they are by being smart, by working long hours and by going along to get along. So when they hire a consultant, they often seek someone who will tell them what they want to hear and then just go do it. It is unlikely they would hire my firm or most of the consultants I know. And that's okay. However, as I said at the top of this post: "It is best to be prepared for what we will do and how we will respond before the situation arises."

I did that preparation while making waves in the corporate world. So that when I left, I knew that I wanted to run a firm that always gave its best ideas, no matter the risks; always guaranteed its work; always strove to exceed expectations; and never took a job if it meant we would compromise any of those values. Before I came to that conclusion, I asked myself some important questions:

1. What does a consultancy that stands for a set of beliefs look like? What are its best practices? In what areas are we most likely to innovate successfully?
2. What does turning down work or not getting work that isn't a good fit mean for my family and for me? Is it a risk worth taking? Are we willing to refer those jobs to a competitor?
3. How do we prevent arrogance within the firm while maintaining a belief that no one can do the things we do better? (Although many do it just as well.)
4. When we feel a client's pain, how do we sympathize but not give in to it? How do we ensure the client that we have their best interests at heart?
5. What does our guaranty look like and is it sturdy enough to be worth a client's risk?

Those were some of the questions we asked, and we built our consultancy on a set of values and strategies that respond to those questions. Using a synthesis of my consultancy and several others who fall into this category of being change agents, of always looking for a better way, here, in general, is what the resulting consultancy looks like. (By the way, without mentioning names, the synthesis includes more than a few of the contributors here at the Fix.)

The consultancy understands who and what it is and is usually not a full-service marketing firm. Instead it specializes in a few areas of marketing and often is an adopter of new tools and solutions (e.g., social media and social networking). The owners have strong family relationships and supportive significant others willing to ride the roller coaster. Work is regularly referred to other firms, including those they most are in competition with for the same work. Employees are smart, polite, passionate and firm in their beliefs; but in every instance they are a perfect fit within the firm's culture and are let go when that fit forms a crack in it, as sometimes happens. Account executives listen more than they talk, work diligently to understand the client's pain, and don't offer solutions on the spot. Proposals are created in a team environment and often include tactics that are new and different to the client. The guaranty is solid and represents most if not all the firm's profits. Creating great client experiences and ensuring the client's customers share in those experiences is always a goal.

Seth Godin says this about the experience and creating word of mouth: "What will change the game is actually changing the game. Changing the experience of talking about you so fundamentally that people will choose to do it." When people have great experiences, they will choose to do it.

So there you go. Is this a business model that scares the hell out of you, seems silly to you, or attracts you to want to be a part of that model? In the marketing and communications consultancy world, a firm that looks like the one above would be one that always puts people first, ahead of profits, and works to make people happy. It isn't easy and failure happens--so do quick recoveries.

People are the Bottom Line

I am preparing for those looks one gets when we blurt out something that most everyone else finds hard to believe. It is quite certain that I will experience more than a few of those faces next week when I present my take on business growth, ethics and values. Faces will contort, eyes will narrow and more than a few folks will offer stares of disdain. All that will happen immediately following my opening:

Products and services do not a great business make. Nope! To grow a great business, we must always put people first, ahead of profits, products and services.

It took every page of Lead With Your Heart to thoroughly explain this business philosophy and model, and to show readers how to implement the principle as the foundation of their business. By the end of page 231, I am able to show readers not only what the principle looks like but also why and how it works to grow a business's brand and bottom line.

But I don't have the time to share 231 pages in a presentation. So here's the bottom line: Putting people first is a different and a better way to think and to measure success. When we filter everything we say and do through the principle that people come before all else, we end up with a company that features the following:

• The best products and services we can produce, because that is what people want and need.
• Employees who are enthusiastic about their job and are given the responsibility and the ability to always say "yes" to customers by providing a solution, because that is what people want and need.
• Products and services that offer great value at a fair price, because that is what people want and need.
• A growing number of loyal and new customers, because you provide what people want and need.
• Strong revenues and increased margins, because you provide what people want and need.
• A company that never violates its values nor acts unethically, because your focus is on people, not profits.
• A company that communities vie for, because you provide what people want and need.

P.S. Check out Seth's take about who we remember and who remembers us: That guy who saved my life.

A Decline in Personal Responsility is Bringing us Down

I believe that over the past four decades Americans have become increasingly less responsible and independent. In place of those values, which drove our culture's success in life and business, we have adapted and adopted an entitlement philosophy that we use to blame others for our failings. Here's what I mean:

• As children, we learn from parents and our culture that if we do poorly in school, the blame lies with teachers, with gender or ethnic biases, with government (local, state and federal) or with some disorder that we have no control over. Therefore, neither failing children nor their parent(s) can be held responsible for their doing poorly in school.
• As young adults, we learn from our parents and our culture that life is full of safety nets. It's okay to live at home until we get a job or until we have earned enough money to get our own place. And if we can't get a job, we fall back on the excuses learned as children. If we get arrested for drugs or booze, we are warned not to do it again. If we have no sense of service to others, that is okay.
• As adults who are now on there own, those with jobs often believe they are entitled to raises and increases in benefits, whether or not they contribute beyond expectations to help a business succeed and whether or not their company has a profitable year. By the way, this entitlement is held by everyone top to bottom, from President and CEO to the newest hire.
• Adults without jobs often take little to no personal responsibility for their plight, and eventually end up on the streets, on the dole or in prison.
• Marriage is something we commit to as long as it serves our needs. Many of us don't want to invest the effort it takes to make the marriage succeed. And divorce is almost always the fault of the other spouse.
• As older adults, we expect to retire on a pension and Social Security, and we expect it to be enough to allow us a comfortable lifestyle, whether or not we judiciously put money away over the years to live on once we retire. We are entitled, whether or not the business has gone belly up or Social Security is going bust.
• Businesses and individuals expect both lower taxes and government benefits. We are entitled.

I could go on but you get the idea. Instead of looking to ourselves for solutions, we look outside ourselves. Am I talking about all of us? Of course not. Many, perhaps most, individuals and businesses continue to practice personal responsibility. But I believe the scales are tipping toward the U.S. becoming an entitlement society, and as I look around the world, I don't see entitlement cultures as ones in good shape.

Their businesses often are inefficient and not competitive; poverty per capita is greater than non-entitlement cultures; strikes and civil unrest are more frequent; and their future looks bleak.

Will we look like those cultures in the near future? Will businesses collapse and jobs disappear to the rising stature of China, Korea, India and other nations? Will we become a society no longer able to compete? Will our stature go the way of England and France?

P.S. I welcome disagreement but ask that we keep the tone civil. The above is not an attack, it is only what I am thinking. I want diverse opinions. Thank You

Is Greed at Fault?

The mortgage industry is in turmoil, and foreclosures are hammering home owners who are no longer able to make their payments. Where does the fault lie for this calamity? Who owns responsibility for the foreclosures?

There is more than enough irresponsible behavior to go around, and I believe it is a mistake to single out a single reason or to place the blame entirely on an industry. The bottom line is that both lenders and borrowers own responsibility--the first to ensure that responsible lending practices are in place; the second to ensure they understand the details of their loan and that they can afford to meet their payments regularly. Both lenders and borrowers failed in these areas of responsibility.

I write about business, so let's take a look at the role of the nation's largest bank, Citigroup, in terms of lending practices. To do so, I visited Citibank's web site, always a good place to start. Two things stick out, and both represent Citibank's declared guidelines in their own words:

1. Citibank boasts about education, claiming a large financial investment in education all sectors of the industry, including customers/borrowers.
2. And they state that their "Personal" focus is: "helping people save, invest, borrow, and spend wisely, and manage debt responsibly."

During the week of February 14, 2008, Citi posted losses in mortgages on leveraged loan bets that saw a fourth-quarter writedown of $18.1 billion, leading to a record loss of $9.83 billion in the quarter. The bank also said it planned on raising some $14.5 billion from foreign and domestic investors and slashing its dividend by about 40% to 32 cents, to steady the troubled financial conglomerate. And of course layoffs are going to hit its workforce.

Is there any other way to look at this than to argue that Citibank failed to educate and to practice responsible lending? And now it is paying for its apparent inability to walk its own talk. They aren't alone. But what went wrong here?

• Citibank failed to follow its own guidelines. One suspects that these guidelines on education and responsible lending are merely wall dressing for public consumption, not beliefs practiced and followed with a passion.
• It is obvious that loans were given to consumers unable to qualify for other than sub-prime lending, which in hindsight does not seem responsible. Can we assume greed played a role in these mortgage and lending practices?
• Most important: Did Citibank and other lenders such as Countrywide put people first and delivered products and services with the intention of creating an environment in which they meet or exceed people's wants and needs? Did the industry put people ahead of profits? And finally, did these lenders do anything to make positive changes that create a world that is a better place to live and work?

In Lead With Your Heart, we call for a business model in which the current mortgage crisis would not, and could not, happen. Why do we continue to make the same mistakes over and over again? My call for change in the way businesses operate is not a lone voice in the wilderness.

For decades, consultants and business school leaders have called for value's based businesses that walk the talk, by putting people first and by filtering all their decisions through their values, principles and guidelines. In this instance, Citibank knew what it needed to do to practice responsible lending but for some reason, failed to follow its own guidelines. And now the business suffers, employees will lose their jobs and borrowers are losing their homes.

Again, all the blame for this fiasco cannot be laid at the doorstep of Citibank or others within the industry. And borrowers need to recognize that they failed in their individual responsibility to borrow wisely, as well. The lesson here seems to be that the industry knows what responsible lending looks like but failed to walk the talk. It does appear that short-term greed got in the way.

Success Begins from Within

Companies that lead with their heart understand that to achieve success and profitability, the culture  must be built based on shared values and a passion for those values. When Howard Schultz bought Starbucks in the late '80s, he had a vision of a different kind of company. A company built on values and passion for everything it said and did, which was shared by other executives such as Howard Behar. Walk into almost any Starbucks store and watch employees interacting with the customers. You will see  happiness. It comes from what Starbucks calls the Third Place Experience.

Enter the headquarters building and you will see more of the same, as well as the stress and the angst that comes from working in any business. Since its founding, Starbucks has made billions of dollars. Starbucks, however, does not exist solely to make money nor do they measure success only in that way. In fact, Starbucks does not exist only to sell coffee. Its lifeblood is creating an experience that results in happiness, even though they don’t use that word to describe it.

How does Starbucks measures success? The Mission Statement tells us:

Starbucks Mission Statement
Establish Starbucks as the premier purveyor of the finest coffee in the world while maintaining our uncompromising principles while we grow.

The following six guiding principles will help us measure the appropriateness of our decisions:

1. Provide a great work environment and treat each other with respect and dignity.
2. Embrace diversity as an essential component in the way we do business.
3. Apply the highest standards of excellence to the purchasing, roasting and fresh delivery of our coffee.
4. Develop enthusiastically satisfied customers all of the time.
5. Contribute positively to our communities and our environment.
6. Recognize that profitability is essential to our future success.

The first five principles have to do with leading from the heart and mind (and, as a result, creating happiness). For the most part, Schultz's vision and Starbucks was built on the principal that people come before profits, as you can see not only in the words above but in the order of the principles--profitability is listed sixth of six. Furthermore, the executive team in years past believed that creating a great company means sharing its wealth and striving to do good in every community where it has a presence, and that begins with the employees. For the eighth time, Fortune named Starbucks one of the 100 best companies to work for in 2006.

Schultz and Behar and others believed that their most important business edge came from the store partners (employees). In addition to providing competitive pay and exceptional benefits, Starbucks executives worked tirelessly to build and maintain the trust and respect of partners. In return, the partners did the same with customers. In other words, by putting people first, great experiences resulted and profitability was achieved.

When I interviewed at Starbucks, I didn't get it until after I returned home from the interview and thought about the strangeness of my interview. In addition to being interviewed by the VP to whom I would report, I sat before six partners who questioned me. They didn't care much about my retail experience, my coffee knowledge, or my past successes. They wanted to hear me describe my values. No other company that I had interviewed with or worked for seemed to care. But I quickly learned once I began working at Starbucks why questioning values is key to success. By doing so, a culture of passion, trust, credibility, innovations, respect and dignity can be maintained because the company hires primarily based on shared values.

In conclusion, by building and hiring on a foundation of its guiding principles, Starbucks believed that brand, growth, profitability and success equal people and experiences, so that is where the focus and operational funds should be targeted.

What are your experiences with this kind of hiring or culture? Do you believe that people, not profits, should come first? Why or why not? What other companies hold a similar philosophy?

P.S. Most of the executives who were hired by Howard Schultz are no longer with the company. I am beginning to see changes in Starbucks operations that indicate the concept of people first might be getting lost in the day-to-day business of running a company. Your thoughts?

What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen. Henry David Thoreau

Today, It's About You

As a business person and writer who believes it's always about you, the customer and the reader, today  this post is all about you. What I mean by that is this: As we move through our second year of blogging, please tell us what you think. What do you want to read about more? less? What do you just want to get off your chest about anything?

To get you started, here are a few questions:

1. Why do you read bizsolutionsplus?
2. How often do you read bizsolutionsplus?
3. What do you want us to write about?
4. What do you want us to stop writing about?
5. If you ran this blog, what would you do differently?
6. What bugs you the most about marketing, PR, advertising and social media?
7. What do you like the most when it comes to marketing, PR, advertising and social media?
8. What is the one thing the makes you shop one place instead of another?
9. If we turned this space over to you one day next week, what would you write about? (Caution: You might be invited to share your thoughts with our readers?
10. Who is your favorite blogger (excluding yours truly)?

If you don't comment, there is no post today. Feel free to answer any question that I didn't ask? Today, you can share anything you want, including event notices, things you think we should know about, whatever, as long as it doesn't violate good taste.

Are You True to Yourself?

What kind of person are you? Are you the same as a business person or is there a second you once you enter the office?

These are important questions in life. They can mean the difference between having a few good and  close friends or having lots of not-so-close friends. They can mean a business culture willing to go the extra mile to achieve goals or one in which people come to work to make a living. The question born from the first two is the one I challenge you to think about: Are you true to yourself?

Here are a few traits that may indicate you are cheating your family, yourself, your friends and your co-workers out of getting the best of you:

1. You have lots of ideas but you don't share them.
2. Opinions are kept to yourself lest you offend someone.
3. You never display frustration or anger.
4. You tell people what you think they want to hear.
5. You worry more about what others think of you than what you think of yourself.
6. You are more comfortable around strangers than with friends and family.
7. You never cry.
8. You say one thing but mean another.
9. You cannot name your top five values.
10. You don't like your company's values but you refuse to leave.

It's likely that the list above is far from perfect, as am I. But this is an exercise to get us to look deep inside ourselves and ask, are we authentic? Please share your thoughts. As Dr. Phil says, "This can [will] be a changing day in your [our] lives." Why? Because when we understand who we are and project that authenticity, we can then be the best we can be at everything we do, from love to work.

Are Bloggers Allowed to Make Money?

If you read lots of blogs, you likely have come across several posts that discusses selling blog advertising or exchanging space for such things as iPods. The most recent and the best, I think, is Mack Collier's post at The Viral Garden entitled Blog Monetization; How Do We ALL Win?

Mack is a friend, a smart blogger and a big-hearted soul. I admire him in many ways. But on this subject we disagree. Inherent in Mack's title question is the idea that if we bloggers make money on our blogs, we should find ways to share it with our readers. I love you Mack, but either I don't get it or you are just wrong on this one. Here's my view, and then let's get all of yours.

Read the entire article at MarketingProfs Daily Fix.

When is enough, enough?

A friend of mine who I met at a speaking gig in Dallas sent me an article from The Dallas Morning News, written by business columnist Cheryl Hall. In it, Hall quotes John Bogle, the 78-year-old founder of Vanguard Group, Inc., who is now the President of Bogle Financial Markets Research Center in Malvern, PA.

I want to share part of what Bogle had to say to the MBA graduates at Georgetown University. I hope every business person takes note, as should all of us no matter who we are or what we do or how old or young we are.

"Our world already has quite enough guns, political platitudes, arrogance, disingenuousness, self-interest, snobbishness, superficiality, war and the certainty that God is on one side or another.

"But it never has enough conscience, tolerance, idealism, justice, compassion, wisdom, humility, self-sacrifice for the greater good, integrity, courtesy, poetry, laughter, and generosity of substance and spirit."

To that and to Mr. Bogle I say, Amen. We need to spread the word.

To hear more of John Bogle's wisdom visit The Bogle eBlog.