garygilliland:

Avinash Kaushik from Marketing Profs Daily Fix has pointed out a rule that younger professionals would do well to remember. Although the article talks about it in the context of websites, it’s pretty much universal for all types of projects and ideas.

“HiPPO’s rule the world when it comes to creating customer experiences. And that’s a bad thing. No matter what you think the optimal customer experience should be on the website it is quite likely that you walk into a meeting room, or office, and regardless of your competence the HiPPO decides what goes on the site. “

HiPPO stands for: the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion.

Most young professionals live under the mistaken belief that their opinion matters and their good ideas will be taken on merit. Sadly this, generally, isn’t the case. Time and bitter experience will teach you, if the idea doesn’t gel with the thoughts of the HiPPO then it probably won’t happen. There doesn’t need to be a good logical, business or operational reason. It’s just human nature. They’re having a bad day, don’t want to be undermined by a junior, they’re pursuing their own agenda, etc.

The most successful solution to this that I’ve done and had done to me is the ‘uniced cake’. Take the idea to the HiPPO, present 99% of it and explain you have difficulties in making it a winning solution. Unless they are genuinely opposed to the idea in any form then the general reaction is that they add the icing and push the idea through whilst taking some or all of the credit. You’ve validated their position as the expert, the idea has been approved and hopefully you’ve scored a few points in the HiPPO’s good book.

I know it disheartening to discover that the authority figures in your organisation are sometimes no better than petulant children but the sooner you grasp that simple fact the sooner you can start to make a difference.

From Experiment or Go Home

Thanks to El for pointing me to this article.

I was in the post office today and saw a poster proudly proclaim "4 out of 10 of customers are using the wrong service. Ask a member of staff for help."

A 40% error rate is not a problem with customers. Either staff have allowed customers to use the wrong service and / or the services on offer are too complicated for the target customer.

In either case why would you point the finger at the customer and say they are using the wrong service? Surely a positive approach to the situation would yield a better response. "We’ve made our service simpler", "We can save you money", "We’ve improved our service". Anything but declaring 40% of our customers are wrong.

The same is true of any situation where you’ve identified a problem.

• Never accuse the customer.
• Be honest but try to position the solution as a positive.
• Always remember it doesn’t matter how elegant you think a product / service / solution is, if it doesn’t work for the customer it doesn’t work.

Everyone likes to have their work acknowledged or their ego boosted from time to time. Saying ‘thank you’ or ‘well done’ to people makes them happy, it makes you seem more human and encourages others to seek out the same praise. Everyone wins when we acknowledge the efforts of others so why is it so many managers forget the simple truth that happy appreciated people work harder?

This isn’t a new touchy feely directive, Giorgio Vasari describes the effect of praise in his book The Lives of the Artists first published 1550.

“There is nothing which more arouses men’s minds or causes them to consider less burdensome the discipline of their studies than the prospect of the honour and profit that is later to be derived from the exercise of their talents, for these benefits make difficult undertakings seem easier for everyone, and men’s talents grow more quickly when they are exalted by worldly praise. Countless numbers of people, who see and hear others being praised, take great pains in their work to put themselves in a position to earn the rewards they see their compatriots have deserved. Because of this in ancient times, men of talent were either rewarded with riches or honoured with triumphs and statues.”

Take a few minutes to recognise, praise, thank. It’s the best few minutes you’ll spend today.

I was going through some old notebooks and came across the notes I made after a talk on the quest for money I had given to group of young Christians. The group were all in the early twenties and just starting out in their life and careers. The discussion moved around a variety of topics but one area that struck me was the questioning about whether the businesses we worked for were ethical or were they driven purely by money. This wasn’t the purpose of the talk so we didn’t dwell on the topic.

When I say we, I mean they didn’t dwell on the topic. I spent the next days and weeks trying to rationalise the radical difference between their opinion and mine. I said ‘the company will drop you as soon as you don’t make economic sense’. They said  that their companies / managers were driven by higher ideals like professionalism, care for employees etc.

Was I older and more cynical by nature or were they youthful and too naive?

Is business really founded on the bottom line of money over ethics? If this is true am I as complicit as the business if I work for them but don’t buy into their ideals?

I still haven’t come to a conclusion but I thought I would post some of questions I generated and considered as a result of the discussion in the hope that someone else might find insight through them.

• Is maximizing profit the same as greed? At what point is efficiency greed?
• Obviously business ‘needs’ money but is it actually driven by the pursuit of money?
• How many entrepreneurs would do it for rewards other than money or for basic wage?
• How far along the supply chain is it necessary to be ethical? Is buying jeans made by a company with a no child labour policy ok or should we be check where the cotton comes from?
• How can we justify buying low cost supplies from 3rd world or oppressive regimes? Is it right to buy / sell products from those who are known / suspected to exploit or abuse workers. E.g. Goods from China where human rights are routinely abused and workers often live & work in appalling conditions. Food from Africa where farmers can barely feed themselves and yet are expected to produce food cheaply so that supermarkets can cut prices. Timber from forests which contribute to global warming & desertification.
• Business is competition therefore there will be winners and loser. But in this case the losers are not only the ‘competition’ but more importantly the employees? When multiples enter a town and force small businesses to close? When competition forces prices down leading to wage cuts & job losses.
• Shares are gambling (betting on an essentially random market)? Is it right that 1000′s of people’s livelihood’s can be gambled with.?
• Insurance is betting – funded by shares and betting against unfavourable outcomes?
• How much of business is lying? Negotiations – I couldn’t possibly do it for less or offer you more for it etc Describing products with superlatives and ignoring shortcomings
• Is encouraging excess consumption wrong? E.g extremely cheap beer, supersized meals, extreme luxury goods, bling
• Is loaning money via credit to others for extravagant or unnecessary purposes wrong? Does someone on minimum wage really need a flat screen TV at 29% apr?
• Is it right that senior management can earn hundreds of time the company’s basic salary? Is this exploitation? Bankers with a multi-million bonus verses a cleaner on minimum wage? Is fair that someone’s ‘gifts’ and luck should be prized so far above another’s?
• Richman eye of a needle – At what point do you become rich, verses your country men or a standard of living or the genuinely poor, starving & destitute?
• Is capitalism good or just least bad? It’s given us  health, wealth, technology etc but at what cost, wars, greed, slavery, loss of faith.
• Is money the root of business’s problems with ethics or is business just a reflection of society?
• Is capitalism just a form of exploitation which has replaced older feudal systems / oligarchies?
• Is it even possible to be 100% ethical is today’s business world? Would you be a sheep amongst wolves destined to be devoured?

Imagine, your waiting for a meeting. You’re told the person your meeting will be delayed by 15 minutes. Ten minutes later your told to wait another 15 minutes. Then your asked to wait another 15 minutes and so on until you’ve wasted hours.

The project management equivalent is what I call the death by a thousands cuts. That is someone constantly tweaking their budget and timeline upwards. They never ask for anything big. Just another 10%, an extra week, one more person to solve the problem, until the project becomes unrecognisable.

Constant tweaking is caused by one of two things:-

• They are unwilling to present changes as single batch because they’re afraid they will look incompetent.
• They were unable to present changes as a single batch because they are incompetent.

When a project manager does this they damage their reputation,  they hurt other projects in a programme and they strain finance and resources throughout the organisation.

A project manager has to have the ability and courage to prepare and present a plan which encompasses all of the changes within their control. Don’t make people suffer through the death by a thousand cuts, tell them it’s going to cost an arm and leg. You won’t receive a medal but at least you can come out with a reputation for being realistic and honest.

Stuff happens, that’s a fact of life for a project manager. How you react to that stuff is what separates the good from the bad.

“The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.”

- Bertrand Russell

Having spent too many years working with consultants from the big firms I can sympathise with the ideas George Orwell presented in his 1946 essay on Politics and the English Language. Swap out politics and replace it with consultant, business or marketing speak and you can see that the trend for poor ideas disguised with fancy writing which Orwell identified sixty years ago is still going strong.

Three quotes in particular have stuck with me

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”

“….language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought”

“Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

If you recognise any of these things in your own communications then maybe it’s time to change your writing or examine the ideas behind it.

George Orwell: Politics and the English Language

I was in Galway for a few days holiday and if you know Galway you’ll know that the prospect of heading out for dinner is always good since there are so many good places to eat. As we walked through the restaurant area we spotted one that took our fancy and walked towards the door. At door we were greeted by a young lady who said "Hello, I’m sorry but I have to let know that we can’t take cards tonight because our machine is broken, so it’s cash only"

We had cash so we walked in, only to find the place almost empty. We were hungry and the menu looked good so we decided to stay. As the night progressed almost no one else arrived. I asked the waiter if they were normally so quiet and he told me  that most people changed their mind when they heard about the cards.

The cost of setting up for the night’s service, staff, fresh produce etc, vastly outweighs the cost of actually cooking and serving the meals on the night. So considering that most of the costs for the night had already been absorbed any income would have been a bonus.

It was nice night and the ATM was only 20 yards away, offer a reasonable discount and a member of staff to escort customers to the nearby ATM. Arrange to use the card machine at the restaurant next door. At the extreme operate an honour system with customers coming back the next day to pay. Option like these will cut into profit but not as severely as having no customers at all.

“You think your users want to use your software. They do not want to use your software. They want to ‘have used’ your software.”

David Platt

If only more developers would learn that this the truth.

Most software is not an experience to be enjoyed but a tool to be used. Make the tool, simple and efficient so that the job can be completed quickly and painlessly.

I saw this t-shirt a few days ago and it struck me that not so long ago we needed other people to answer our questions. We live in world where people would rather send an e-mail than talk to a someone.

Undoubtedly the web has given us freedom to learn, made us more productive and better able to make decisions. At the same time it has left us poorer.

Previously we had to speak to other people, a friend,  a colleague, someone from another department or a stranger. Today we query a database or send a e-mail possibly never knowing or caring whether a person or a machine is at the other end.

A computer will almost always answer the question you asked. People have an annoying tendency to give opinions, go off at tangents and even give the wrong answer. It’s in these annoyances that we can learn something that we didn’t expect but which is more valuable. We can develop insights in to the world of others, make new connections between things, discover unexpected ideas and best of all learn about people.

If we had more face time and less facebook (I know this is cheesy), we would have the opportunity, or excuse, to meet new people, form new relationships and learn new stuff. So f**k google, ask a real person more often