What If That’s Not How I See it?

How often are we in situations where what we want and what others want are not aligned? We make assumptions daily, mostly about other people. These assumptions enable us to take shortcuts and at the same time, they cause disagreement that perhaps wasn’t there to begin with.

  • We assume a person attended or didn’t attend an event because…
  • We assume a person responded to us a certain way, because…
  • We assume a person took an action or didn’t take an action because…

What if instead of assuming, we paused and asked:

  • What is the reason you made this choice or took this action?
  • When your customer complains about “service”, do you probe to understand what is really going on?
  • When we see something, as the TSA reminds us, do we say something?
  • When an employee behaves a certain way, do we ask what is going on?

And when what we want seems far from what “they” want, what if we asked and explored the possibilities..

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain

As We Search For What Matters, Must We Choose?

The Choice

The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story’s finished, what’s the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day’s vanity, the night’s remorse. 

William Butler Yeats, 13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939

I came across this poem some time ago and was reminded of it in a recent discussion in my Vistage groups about “what matters”. Today we constantly talk about achieving balance; we perceive that it is the stress of modern times that creates this challenge. Yet this poem was written in the early 20th century. A reminder that this quest is the human condition, a daily challenge of choice. Here are the questions that come to mind:
  • Must we choose between success in life and work?
  • Or is it the search for perfection of one or the other that forces the choice? e.g. Albert Einstein was portrayed by his biographers as a poor husband and father. Was he, or was this the judgement of the biographers?
  • As we search for meaning in our lives, must we distinguish between what defines “life” and what defines “work” or is it possible to simply pursue what matters to us?
  • On this day devoted to mothers, what are you telling or demonstrating to your children about this question?

 

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain

Care, Attention, Competency

Care, Attention and Competency (CAC), these are the watchwords of the client service model for one of my Vistage member’s business. This business is in the construction industry and as he explains, bottom line of what they deliver is service, not construction.

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the progression (regression) from Better, Faster, Cheaper to simply faster and cheaper. So where does CAC come in? Perhaps as several of my readers responded, the bifurcation is already happening, certainly in the consumer world (think airlines premium seats/status vs. economy/discount seats), and beginning in the B2B world. If this is so, then in order to deliver better, CAC must become the standard.

What exactly does this mean? For me it means, we meet the customer where they are, we provide care, in the manner they want us to show it. We give them our attention when they ask, and not wait until they demand it. And, we remind ourselves that competency, while the baseline, isn’t enough. In fact, studies show that customers who receive care and attention are more tolerant of errors, because they trust we will resolve them.

In short, CAC begins with the Golden Rule, and reaches it’s full value with the Platinum Rule. The Golden Rule implies the basic assumption that other people would like to be treated the way that you would like to be treated. The alternative to the Golden Rule is the Platinum Rule: “Treat others the way they want to be treated.”

Here are the questions I leave you with:

  1. Assuming the bifurcation is happening, where is your business on the continuum?
  2. Are you focused on Faster/Cheaper or are you seeking to differentiate by offering Better?
  3. How might CAC apply, or not, to your service delivery? And are you delivering by the Golden Rule or the Platinum Rule?

 

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain