The old saying that the “customer is always right” really doesn’t provide much guidance on client satisfaction. And actually it does the customer a disservice. Much of the reason why the customer is purchasing (or potentially purchasing) a service or product from you, it is because they don’t have the skill set to complete it or create it themselves. Instead, I would propose that the motto should be the “customer may not always be right, but they always have the power.” It has helped lend me a new perspective on client interactions.

Yet, even with this “enlightened” frame of mind, customers will still go off the reservation and create headaches. So I offer another help to the situation and keep you focused on your task at hand:

It’s the same old story
Everyhwere I go,
I get slandered,
Libeled,
I hear words I never heard
In the Bible
And I’m one step ahead of the shoe shine¹
Two steps away from the county line
Just trying to keep my customers satisfied….. satisfied.

Nothing like a little folk music from Paul Simon to keep a smile on one’s face in even the most difficult of client situations. And the most important lyric puts it into perspective: you only have to be “one step” ahead,  not solve all of the client issues at once.( And, yes, I have been caught humming the tune to the song in the middle of one of these situations. )

References

1. There is no definitive interpretation of ‘shoe shine.’ I always that it akin to what a baseball coach does to an umpire when he doesn’t like a call: give him a ‘shoe shine’ by kicking dirt at the umpire.

My recent move to NYC was no exception; being out of the larger (a.k.a. non-startup) company environment my attire definitely needed to move away from worn out jeans to business casual, or what someone once described to me as, “client respectful” attire. Many things were donated, others turned into a second life of cleaning clothes.

First stop on the recommended clothing store list from my sister (a now five-year veteran of the Manhattan corporate consulting scene) was Uniqlo, a modern, white walled, brightly lit, 3-floor store in SoHo. Jam packed with tourists and NYers alike, this store was the only of its kind in the United States for the Japan-based company.((although I learned that this was their second location, having upgraded spaces from some where on 5th ave to this Broadway location.)) At first glance, the store reminds one of the other stores in the hip and trendy clothing genre: Express, Banana Republic and H&M.

But it is not its clothing nor store design that makes it distinct. Subtle at first, when I went to make a purchase of three sweaters that I realized what had been in my peripheral vision. When the cashier (and from his name badge, it said he was a manager in training) returned my credit card after swiping it, something curious happened; he returned it with two hands. Fingers curled, thumbs up, held between thumb and forefinger. At first, I was sure it was just a quirk. But when my receipt and bag were handed to me in a similar manner, I began to notice the other signs that Uniqlo was not only bringing its wares to the U.S. but cultural mannerisms.

At this point I should note, none of the people around the store carried a noticeable Japanese accent. And the cultural background looked to be a typical New York snapshot of diversity: equal parts of men, women, Caucasian, African American, Asian, et al. So the way in which they said thank you (a slight nod of their head), their distinct posture (think movies of people practicing by balancing a book on their head) and the signal they give to inform you they are available to checkout your purchase (raising their hand farthest from you in a graceful, yet firm manner. think miss america with a little more straight arm).

So although it is subtle Uniqlo seems to be making sure their personnel not only follow company policy of good behavior, they clearly are taking the time, money and resources to train American in the Japanese culture.

Questions linger though: will Americans notice? or even if they did, will they care? is it subtle enough for folks not to notice but still be subconsiously affected? What will happen when (if?) Uniqlo tries to expand beyond this store? Does this kind of training scale? and can its costs be justified?

However, the one difference that was never mentioned (and I found most striking) was the level of efficiency in the different organizations. I once heard Lou Gerstner, former CEO of IBM, describe leading a large corporation “like captaining an an oil tanker. The ship has a lot of momentum; turning took a very long time.” In contrast, startups made lightning fast decisions and changed everything from their resources to their business model on a day-to-day basis. And when laid out, this makes a lot of sense. Startups require fewer people to align and even “big” decisions have a relatively (and absolutely) smaller risk and impact to the company.

So, I began to wonder, as an organization grows in size, is it possible for it to maintain efficiency? Or is it inherent and inevitable that an organization will become more inefficient as its size, in terms of people, revenue etc? Does it scale linearly?

Certainly large organizations are subject to (some would say burdened by) regulations, especially public institutions. One must inform investors or share holders when certain business decisions are made, some which even require waiting until a board of directors convenes. Overhead in order to report financials certainly adds an additional resource burden. Changing culture in a startup requires a few beers at a bar, while changing the mindset and embedded history of a large organization can take months, if not years.

With more employees, communication and processes required to create alignment of goals and consistency of execution contribute to the lack of ability of an organization to make decisions and react quickly to changes. With more people, comes a greater possibility of ideas and solutions to problems. But also more opinions to decide between and build consensus with.

I have seen large organizations try to become more efficient. But in the end, and beyond all the above reasons, it is actually inefficient to remove the inefficiencies. It requires more resources, time and cost to investigate and understand the issues and create the processes for improvement than just to leave the inefficiency in place. So perhaps it is actually economic efficiency at work all along…

Startup life was fast paced, big decisions (or at least big relative to the size of the company) were made quickly. People were hired, re-tasked and/or fired on a regular basis.

In contrast, large companies move slowly, have a hard time making decisions

In these

References

1. See “allure (and the fallacy) of startup life“

I could be my own boss. I could set my own hours. I could work on what I wanted to work on.

It all sounds really good. And most entrepreneurs still believe and dream of these. Perhaps a little perspective will allow people to breathe easier when these “untruths” are revealed.

Everyone has their own way of describing it. Being less controlling, more trusting or just saying that one has to “let go.” But what is at the core of these responses to delegation? Well, most of the time, it’s because a manager used to be doing the job that he or she is now delegating. And probably, they excelled at it and long ago mastered the skills needed. So they can probably complete the task better and faster. And to add, insult to injury, someone else is going to get the reward and praise.

So, I keep reminding myself. Every task I complete is learning so that I can teach it to someone else. True, I feel less a sense of ownership of somethings at times, but that allows me to delegate it when I need to without any “separation anxiety.” And in my experience, the trade off is worth while and it rarely effects the quality of the outcome as learning something thoroughly enough to coach someone else requires a mastery that produces excellent results.

As a new manager, we are taught project organizational skills which calls for breaking a large problem into smaller discrete work efforts. We then assign a different person to each and call this delegation. However, handing it out tasks is equivalent to being told to take out the garbage, clean up your room or doing the dishes. And no one likes to be told to do the dishes.

Instead, I remind myself, delegation isn’t about the task, it’s about the responsibility. Yes, sure, there are times when the chores need to be done and someone will need to do them. But providing the sense of ownership to someone else is really the litmus test for proper delegation. So, it’s not a surprise that people rarely complain about increased responsibilities; most complain about additional work.

So, it’s rare, even with an open door policy of management, that one of the “troops” is going to enter and tell you that you’re being a schmuck. ( And if they did, it would be even rarer for you to take it well. )  So, then, how are we to know when something is wrong with the department, group or team that we are leading?

It has been my experience that in any organization, large or small, the most junior of employees are the first one to notice that things aren’t going well. They may not be able to articulate the problem but things that are irking them tend to be symptoms of the issue. If they’re not sure what they should be doing day-to-day, try looking at project management. Maybe they don’t feel collaborative work environment; perhaps more senior team members are arguing or not being communicative. They might be perplexed as to the rationale behind project priorities; perhaps, the project is being influenced by unnecessary politics or is more complex than it needs to be.

In a freshman anthropology survey course, the professor walked in and started explaining to us the course background and a bit of anthropology’s origins. Bright-eyed and busy-tailed, I sat in rapture as my expectations of what college was going to be like was forming in front of my eyes. Balding, gray-bearded man, talking way too fast for his own good and rattling off all sorts of interesting tidbits about the language of gorillas, the origins of man, and adventures through the back country of Australia studying aborigenes. Near the end of his introduction, in a sly smiling, fairly toothy grin, he said: “…and if your parents ever ask what anthropology is good for, tell them it makes great cocktail party conversation.”

The obvious paradox of high unemployment and lots of job openings is a well known and studied topic; in any economic shift, the labor pool that is unemployed lacks the skills needed to fill the needs of employers. But given that technology sector has been growing for the past 15 years, why has the labor force not adjusted?

By my observations, the real answer lies not in 2011, but, instead in 2004. During that year, two things happened. First, students who were graduating college had entered school in the dot-com bubble burst, where technology companies looked unstable and uncertain at their prospects of longevity. Students were graduating in areas other than computer science and engineering, with the lowest graduation rates of these disciplines seen in decades. The focus was more on business (real estate, finance, consulting) and the biological sciences.

Second, by that time, most companies had ridden the initial wave of digitization, giving access to every person and moving much of their operations into the digital space. Investment in technology improvements had declined dramatically. Productivity had sored and companies were riding on their successes not just four years earlier.

Then, why, during one of the most difficult economic times the economy has seen, is there another resurgence in technological investment requiring a workforce like anything I’ve ever seen? Companies have realized that their installed systems are now, after 10 years, reaching the end of their life expectancy. Also, the move away from installed systems and into more web/cloud-based computing paradigms, all of these applications are being redeveloped from the ground up.

Good news for technologist? And for students entering college who are starting down the path of studying technology? Even as late as the 1980s and 1990s, business philosophy looked at some investment was a more long-term focused strategy: Xerox-PARC, IBM Research,  Los Alamos, etc.  Now, however, I fear that with the much shorter-term focus on investment is going to get us caught in a difficult cycle of mismatching labor needs and labor skills. Colleges and universities are now, not five years later, seeing the highest enrollment in technology fields they have ever seen. But it remains to be seen if the jobs they yearn for and are available now, will be there when they graduate in four years. Companies may well be done with this wave of technology investment and find that they have enticed the labor pool to move into careers they will no longer need.