Process + Brand = Experience

Becoming a dragon warrior organization: what nephrologists share in common with Kung Fu Panda's Po

The Kung Fu Panda movies are so successful because of their inspiring message: you’ll succeed if you are true to yourself. My absolute favorite of the series is Kung Fu Panda 3. To summarize, the story starts with Po, the Jack Black panda, teaching the Furious Five Kung Fu. He fails miserably. Even Master Shifu admits it. But Master Shifu tells him "If you only do what you can, you will never be more than you are now." This becomes a key theme during the movie.

Po then goes to the panda village with his real panda dad to learn Chi so he can defeat the otherworldly ox, Kai. He learns Chi inadvertently while motivating a village of pandas to be kung fu masters in their own way. And by doing so, he defeats Kai. But the challenge to win this way is knowing what it means to be completely yourself and do things in your own way.

“I've been asking myself that question. Am I the son of a panda? The son of a goose? A student? A teacher? I'm all of those things. [Po's chi forms the shape of a dragon around him] I am the Dragon Warrior! Get it? You see the giant dragon?” – Po

Once you learn what it means to be yourself and embrace who you are, including your strengths and weaknesses, you become like Po: Complete as-is. And with that, you become unstoppable.

In many ways, by embracing who you are, including your strengths and weaknesses, as an individual or a company or an organization, you demonstrate compassion.

Compassion goes beyond love to embrace acceptance. Rather than judging and punishing character traits that are perceived to be a weakness, you see their beauty and how they can be leveraged as a strength. There are no real positives or negatives in a compassionate environment. You consider the qualities and unique skillsets of each team member and how they will best contribute to solve a problem. A compassionate work environment will also encourage employees to care for their colleagues and ensure that everyone trusts that they all have everyone’s best interest in mind. By developing curiosity and respect, a team will develop the care and trust that will shift the employee experience to create not just a team, but a community.

This doesn’t imply that compassion doesn’t include boundaries. It most definitely does – and it needs to! Accepting someone’s good and bad qualities doesn’t mean that you need to accept their bad behavior through actions and words. How can you separate good from bad behavior at work? Ask yourself:

• Does this person’s actions support community building or does it isolate or segregate others?
• Is there an intention present to bring unity to the group or to invite division?

If this person’s actions don’t support community building, it’s not compassionate behavior. If his or her actions bring people together, then they can be considered compassionate.

What can compassion at work look like?

A few years back, I worked at a healthcare marketing and advertising agency. My employer’s client developed an innovative and effective treatment for a rare kidney disease, helping patients live longer, higher-quality lives. The end-state for most kidney diseases starts with dialysis, and if that isn’t successful, transplants. And if the transplants aren’t effective, then death. That means that their specialists, nephrologists, manage patients who often have a deadly prognosis that ends in renal failure. We’re talking about 1 in 7 adults or about 37 million people who have such conditions. But this treatment would give a smaller population of that group, about 60,000, hope. Note that there typically isn’t a lot of breakthrough medical research in nephrology because of the kidney’s anatomical complexity, how few have kidney disease, not a lot of research happening, and other factors. Although 1 in 7 having a kidney disease is significant compared to heart disease causing 1 in 4 deaths, it seems less significant. Or is it?

For this project, I needed to create personas for the nephrologists who would be prescribing this treatment. I researched who they are, what motivates them, and why this treatment would matter to them. What I learned about their story stayed with me because they were like Po. Over time, nephrologists lost their way and their profession start to fade away with few entering it. To save their profession, rather than aspire to be someone they weren’t, they learned more about who they were, embraced that, and became more of themselves to attract more physicians into the field. In the end, they beat their Kai, which was watching the slow death of nephrology as a profession.

Nephrologists, like many other medical disciplines, were retiring at higher rates than physicians were becoming nephrologists. There were already fewer in the field, and these specialists were having difficulties serving their patients. Most days, a nephrologist is traveling between multiple dialysis centers, offices, and hospitals. To “help” the nephrologists, physicians from other disciplines would step in to treat their kidney patients. But often their diagnoses weren’t completely accurate, the treatments weren’t always done properly, and in the end, they weren’t supporting the patient. The quality of kidney care was declining. And needless to say, that was problematic.

Add to that how nephrology is a difficult specialization. The kidney is one of the most complex organs to understand so there is a lot to master in order to be a nephrologist, including the various aspects of patient care. It takes grit, commitment, and patience to succeed. There’s not a lot of fame in nephrology since there aren’t many new developments in kidney treatment to save lives and few opportunities for developing innovative, new procedures. (Remember, kidney patients often have a tragic end-state that often is death.) We remember the legacies and innovations of brain surgeons and cardiologists—rarely nephrologists. To sum it up, the field is filled with overachievers passionate about kidney care without the resources available to support their success.

With this declining population and seemingly hopeless situation, the nephrologists knew that they needed to do something to increase the number of students specializing in nephrology. They couldn’t stand by and continue silently watching the quality of patient care decline, never mind watching fewer entering the field to provide that care. The nephrologists of the American Society of Nephrologists (ASN) gathered and created a plan to save the profession. The first step was to conduct a study. They used a survey to discover the perspective of medical students to help them define the problem and then used that research to identify solutions that would attract and retain nephrologists. Essentially, they decided to study themselves as they would a patient: gather information and facts, determine the problem, and find a solution.

In the initial survey conducted in the summer of 2011 with 90% of the respondents from university-based programs, the American Society of Nephrology found:

• 31% of the respondents indicated that nephrology was the most difficult physiology course taught in medical school
• 26% had considered nephrology as a career choice
• 25% would have considered nephrology if the field had higher income or the subject were taught well during medical school and residency training.

And top reasons for medical students not choosing nephrology in the study:

• A belief that patients with end-stage renal disease were too complicated
• Lack of a mentor or role models
• Insufficient procedures in nephrology
• Perceived difficulty of the subject matter

In another study completed at the University of Colorado in 2020 with a sample set of 25 students, there were similar findings:

• Nephrology teaching in medical school was described as not clinically relevant and too complicated
• Several felt as though they were not smart enough to be a nephrologist
• Few had a role model to look up to
• Residents used the word “stigmatized” to describe the field
• Ultimately, the low prestige of the field decreased their interest in it

The diagram below was reproduced from the University of Colorado study. It summarizes the challenges and could also represent what was found during the 2011 study. 

Participants in the University of Colorado study gave suggestions to increase interest in nephrology, such as:

• Greater outpatient nephrology exposure earlier in the education experience
• Increased interactions with nephrologists, and
• Research and advancements in the field.

Given that the 2011 and 2020 studies have similar findings, it may seem like there wasn’t much progress in them accepting who they were overall. However, comparing a 2014 study that found that 72% of respondents who said they would recommend the field to others with a similar 2019 study, the number who “would recommend the field” rose to 80%.

To take this one step further, in 2014, perceptions of inadequate job opportunities were high—35% for United States medical school graduates (USMG) and 56% for international medical graduates (IMG), while in 2019 “inadequate job opportunities” fell to 12% USMG and 20% IMG. Although slow, there was general progress.

How did the nephrologists achieve this? The 2011 research helped them identify four areas to address immediately:

• Increase nephrology faculty interaction with medical students
• Increase clinical exposure to nephrology and clinical relevance of renal pathophysiology materials
• Uses novel educational modalities
• Increase exposure to the breadth of nephrology practice

To address these areas quickly, they focused on modernizing nephrology medical education by including in the curriculum:  

• Small group learning
• Moderated physiology lectures
• Flipped classrooms (where students absorb the material asynchronously before apply it practically in the classroom/lab)
• Clearer Application of pathophysiology to patient
• Activity-based learning with clinical case scenarios
• Online lectures
• Exposure to multiple aspects of the field, such as clinical care, research, education, and leadership and to nephrologists in general
• Highlight research and advancements
• Gamification to make nephrology more relevant and enjoyable (e.g., the Nephrology World Cup)

These educational innovations made sweeping changes. By 2021, the best rate of filled Match positions was achieved since 2014. Graduating fellows' perceptions of job opportunities improved, with them recommending the field to others. When it came to research and innovative developments, the past decade yielded molecular discoveries and new treatment breakthroughs in proteins, antibodies, and inhibitors. And the ASN Kidney Health Initiative and the Innovation Accelerator (KidneyX) public-private funding partnership charted paths to rapid change in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of kidney diseases. The Advancing American Kidney Health Executive Order focused attention on patients with kidney diseases.

As a next step to make the field more attractive, the ASN Workforce and Training Committee summit re-envisioned the workforce, addressing right-sizing fellowship positions, diversity, recruiting incompletely tapped pools (e.g., osteopaths), alternative work structures (e.g., job sharing), and the nephrology sub specialization as a whole.

“Medical specialists of the kidney clearly will be needed long into the future. The question is no longer, “Will there be a workforce?” There will be one. The question is, “How will the future nephrology workforce discover, innovate, and deliver high value care?”” 

One could assume that the ASN had this perspective only of themselves, but it went beyond that. In one blog post, a medical student listed reasons why she wanted to become a nephrologist, which listed reasons like how it was:

• Intellectually stimulating
• Had meaningful doctor-patient connection
• Had dedicated teachers and mentors
• Included business savvy nephrologists
• And it was a rewarding career

Talk about a change in the perception and brand!

By listening to each other and prospective nephrologists (medical students), ASN discovered that nephrology devolved into a profession that no one wanted to enter mainly because they weren’t being true to themselves. Nephrology became known only as the study of kidney health. And that’s pretty dry and complicated. They needed to include a key element in education that was missing: what it meant to be a nephrologist by helping patients and providing them better care. Physicians often enter their fields with the intention to improve patient lives and help them be happier and healthier. With the state of nephrology at that time, that was happening infrequently, if at all. They weren’t teaching medical students what it meant to be a nephrologist – the patient responsibilities, the responsibilities to colleagues, the contribution to research, the importance of proper kidney diagnoses and treatments. The physicians weren’t actively researching cures or discovering new treatments or developing partnerships to innovate and find new treatments. Without research to discover new cures, they weren’t helping patients improve their lives. The status quo treatments of dialysis and transplants were only helping them stay alive, not help them have a better life. That’s not exactly inspiring. They had to change and re-embrace their passion for patient care.

By listening to prospective nephrologists, the established nephrologists realized that they needed to share their passion with the students for not just nephrology, but for the patients, so they would get excited about improving their lives too. The re-introduction of medical research provided students hope that they, too, will have opportunities to help patients live better lives beyond facing dialysis, transplant, or renal failure. The field took its first step in its own evolution to be an exciting career by improving patient care!

The nephrologists learned to be authentic to their values and to embrace their passions. As we know, compassion starts with individuals accepting and being grateful for their strengths and weaknesses as well as the strengths and weaknesses of others, like colleagues and patients. With more active nephrologists trained to embrace their passions for patient care driving education, training, research, and innovation, the field is destined for improvements. It will be interesting to see the results in coming years. There should be not just be a consistent experience, but it is a compassionate experience building in nephrology.

As we learned in Kung-Fu Panda, being a dragon warrior doesn’t mean that you have a special skill or do something unique. Dragon warriors are a more authentic version of themselves, embracing their strengths and weaknesses. And it’s the same for an organization, especially the nephrologists and the ASN. By re-focusing their attention back to their unified passion and motivation, improving patient care and quality of life for kidney patients, they revitalized their profession to improve treatments and spark innovation. And that passion for their patients helped them attract more nephrologists and rebuild the profession. They transformed nephrology into a “dragon warrior” organization to defeat their Kai, the death of their profession, and found new life. Hopefully, we’ll hear about other kidney treatment innovations soon and know that having a kidney disease won’t result in dialysis, transplants, or renal failure, but something else that include a long, happy, healthy life.   

Additional reference:

https://consultqd.clevelandclinic.org/why-arent-more-residents-choosing-nephrology/

Books I have been reading lately

How do I spend my weekends now? Writing and reading as I work on thoughts for my new book (my previous book, Revenue or Relationships: Win Both! is here too). Here is a collection of books I have been reading lately. Enjoy! 

The Art of Power - Thich Nhat Hanh

 

Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less - Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

 

Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving - Celeste Headlee

 

The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning - Paul Bloom

 

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy - Jenny Odell

 

Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive - Kristin Neff

 

Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself - Kristin Neff

 

Awakening Compassion at Work: The Quiet Power That Elevates People and Organizations - Worline, Monica, Dutton, Jane E., Sisodia, Raj

 

The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence - Dacher Keltner

 

Power: Why Some People Have It—and Others Don't - Jeffery Pfeffer

 

Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think - Andy Norman

 

Reset: A Leader's Guide to Work in an Age of Upheaval - Johnny C. Taylor

 

Change: How to Make Big Things Happen - Damon Centola

 

Eros - Barbara Emrys, Miguel Ruiz

 

Deep Kindness: A Revolutionary Guide for the Way We Think, Talk, and Act in Kindness - Houston Kraf

The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything - Stephen M.R. Covey

 

Social Chemistry: Decoding the Patterns of Human Connection - Marissa King

 

Five ways a compassionate company can support psychological safety for customers and employees

 

With the rise of digital transformation and automation, a company is no longer a contained place with employees inside and customers outside. It's not even a transparent box where your customers see inside your company. It is a thin membrane where customers enter and exit, directly experiencing all your company operations. Companies were always a type of community, but automation has made customers an integral part of your company, equal to employees. People join your company's community to solve problems. If they feel comfortable, they stay to build relationships with your company, employees, and each other because of honesty, transparency, and accountability, which is driven and motivated by compassion. And this compassion, honesty, transparency, and accountability, build trust and safety. 

Such company communities don't get their inspiration from the company's or product's success. Community forms by people supporting an idea that they can be part of, co-own, and contribute to, helping it grow, in their own way. Customers and employees rally around a solution to a problem. Employees are driven to solve customer problems, and that action influences, motivates, and inspires customers to feel compassion for other customers and help them solve their problems. Success in such a community comes from transparency and accountability that are the result of honesty and openness. Honesty and openness equalize power between everyone in the community to build psychological safety, which builds trust. The feeling of psychological safety enables compassion so customers can highlight the issues and challenges they face and get them solved without worrying about retaliation or ridicule. Same with employees inside the company. All feedback is considered to be good feedback to help solve problems. 

Devoted brand fans feel this towards their beloved brands. They feel that they can communicate with a brand openly and clearly to share their thoughts, feedback, and complaints and expect their grievances to be addressed or recommendations implemented.

Does psychological safety mean that a company or team is problem-free? Far from it! In the book Social Chemistry, Marissa King explains what this means based on Amy Edmonson's research:

"During graduate school, Edmondson was studying high-performing hospital teams. She administered surveys to capture how well teams worked together and observed them in action. Reasonably, she expected that high-performing teams would have fewer medical errors. But when she analyzed the data, she found just the opposite. The teams who worked together well had the highest error rates. And the difference was huge. Edmondson was puzzled. Why would better teams have higher error rates? Eventually, she realized that the good teams weren't necessarily making more mistakes but were simply more likely to admit to errors, discuss them, and learn from them.

Psychological safety isn't about being nice. "What it's about is candor," according to Edmondson. "What it's about is being direct, taking risks, being willing to say, 'I screwed that up.' Being willing to ask for help when you're in over your head."

Such a situation can only happen when power is equalized. It's only then that people may feel that they can honestly share the good and the bad. They share the bad with hopes to make improvements to their environment, thereby making their world better. That is why neither accountability nor great brand communication alone builds trust. A psychologically safe feeling in a group can only happen when an equalization of power exists in the relationship dynamics. In this case, the entity holding power, the company and its representatives in the hierarchy, shouldn't be looking to punish an employee for comments or feedback that is critical of them or their policies. The leader with the power role should want to improve the experiences and understand that feedback is necessary for this to happen. Curiosity brings that general desire to make everything better in an organization – asking why to know what's broken, understand what's working, and find a way to improve the situation. But there is a catch to achieve this: the individual who has power in the relationship demonstrates vulnerability by expressing curiosity and asking for help from others, expresses emotion and humanity, and is comfortable being vulnerable in sharing the weakness that the organization and the team aren't perfect. Power needs to be equalized, and this is true not just for teams in companies but how companies treat customers. 

The irony is that in a company's customer relationship, the customers have the power. They pay for the goods that the company makes. They provide the company revenue to survive. Without customers, there is no company. So that begs the question: why do companies treat customers so poorly at times? The only answer I can think of is power. The company believes that it has to have the customer live up to its expectation of the "ideal" customer, not that the customer has free will to walk away from the company if the company doesn't meet the customer's expectations. 

How do companies equalize power and recognize the agency of the customer, helping them to feel safe? Let's consider five ways a compassionate company can support a culture of safety and vulnerability with its customers and equalize power to improve the business and customer relationships. 

First, companies listen to their customers, resolve their issues, and welcome discussion rather than blame them or make them feel inadequate for speaking up. An easy way to know if companies are willing to listen to their customer's feedback is that they provide easy access to call center contact information, which invites customers to contact them to have a discussion. Not all issues can be resolved through online help, a chatbot, or AI. A call between employees and customers may be necessary when a customer is so frustrated with what's happening that he needs a verbal hug and help from someone who cares.

Aveda is a company that always accepts calls. They go a little over the top to replace a product at all times. They did this with a faulty shampoo cap. It got to the point they were asking me not to order it online when what should have happened is that they should have encouraged me to order online and pick it up from a local distributor in person until the packaging snafu was resolved. Amazon hides their contact info a bit – you need to search to access chat rather than them making it ubiquitous through a link in the footer. However, their chat experience is fantastic! The agents are transparent and helpful. In one case, the agent told me that I couldn't access a video because the content provider didn't set it up properly. That was helpful to know. Hiding such information from customers doesn't really serve Amazon. However, Amazon's motivations for actions aren't always focused on the customer, although the customer benefits. When a package is not delivered for whatever reason, they try to automate the process of getting a replacement product or making returns easy, but is that for the customer or them to save money in the end by reducing call volumes? Based on my observations, I'd argue the latter.  

Second, trusted companies don't lie to customers or gaslight them. They tell them the truth and are transparent.If you tell your customers the truth, they will be more open with your company. Mutual truth-telling builds a safe environment.

Here's a tale of two companies and how they handle bugs. Let's start with LinkedIn. I tried to publish a blog post on their site, and it wasn't working on Chrome or Safari. I sent them a note and asked them to help me fix it. They told me the problem was on my end. They asked me to clear my cache and login and log out and back in again about three times as if I hadn't already done that on my own as if these actions would magically fix the issue. Nothing worked. However, after three days, the publish feature magically worked. They never followed up to let me know they fixed it. When I tried to follow up and find out what happened, they treated me as if I had made up the bug situation. But looking at the thread, it seems that they were fixing the bug in the meantime and didn't want to tell me that.  

Amazon publishing had a different approach. I was trying to upload an image for my book up to nine times, and each time it was unsuccessful. I finally called them. I learned that they had a bug that they were desperately trying to fix. They told me not to upload anything for 24 hours because it just won't work. They were fixing the bug. I appreciated their candor and didn't feel gaslit because they heard me, were transparent, and helped. That's great customer service!  

Wix did something similar. I got a call from a client that their site wasn't working on mobile. I called Wix support, and yes, they got a flood of calls that something was broken. They made it clear during the call that it wasn't my fault. And they let me know when it was fixed. 

I now trust Wix and Amazon publishing after these experiences. I don't trust LinkedIn. I believe that they will eventually fix an issue on their site, but they won't tell me the truth about what's happening. I don't feel as safe with them as I do with Wix and Amazon when reporting an issue to get it fixed. They are far more accountable and honest.

Third, companies with a culture of safety recognize and acknowledge that a customer may have a valid perspective when they see a problem with your business. That doesn't mean that the customer is correct on any matter, and in fact, they may be factually incorrect. It's your job to listen to them – that's the meaning of the customer is always right. It's not literal. It's figurative. And it doesn't mean that you need to change your company to accommodate them.  

But the challenge that the business owner has is not to be defensive and instead be curious and open to consider the problem through the customer's perspective and create a solution that solves that problem. 

This even applies to much of what is happening today when a customer may not want to wear a mask. According to them and their perspective, they are right, regardless of the science. As a business, you need to understand their perspective on your policy as objectively as possible. But you don't need to change your business for them. You can listen, tell them politely no or no thank you, and if they refuse to comply, ask them to leave. The customer may be right in their view of themselves, but if that view is not congruent to your company's policy, you don't need to change your policy for them. There have been countless videos of employees at Costco, Trader Joe's, and Whole Foods showing precisely this – maintaining the policy in the face of a different and factually incorrect worldview - and it was impressive. It was painful and horrible for those employees to experience; however, they didn't bend. And that’s what it means to be a compassionate company that values psychological safety.

I'd like to share a customer story related to this regarding Amex. I had this credit program with them for over 12 years that I wanted to remove. After multiple requests, they wouldn't end my involvement in the program, and at times they would lie to me about the implications of removing myself from it. Or I'd somehow get myself removed from the program for about six months, and it would magically return as a "benefit." It's not a benefit. It's a way for Amex to keep you working with them by owing them more and more money. They designate some purchases as being purchased on credit automatically and the functionality to adjust amounts and terms isn't easy to find. They told me it was but didn't provide guidance for how to update purchase thresholds. Anyway, one day, I had enough and spent a literal day on the phone with up to five different people to confirm that they removed this program from my account. During one call, a guy told me that my understanding of how the program worked was wrong when I was, indeed, right. It was pure gaslighting. And others I spoke to told me that I did understand the program but refused to admit that it was hurting customers. Trust me – when you call customer service about a company's problem, you are never the only one calling. They knew the problem. Anyway. After all that drama, I finally exited the program, but sadly, the damage was done with my brand relationship with Amex. I don't respect or trust them because they didn't want to hear my perspective, and they insisted on confirming that they were right. So, in the future, Amex will be right by their policies – and eventually, not have my business.  

Fourth, such a company allows customers to contribute to making its products and services. I can't stress enough how important it is to include customers in your business, even to make products and services. It's so easy to help customers feel included in your business and feel part of it. It equalizes the power structure because through their contributions in communities and feedback calls, they feel that they are part of your company's team, equal to your employees and business. This creates community because the customers can meet each other and realize that they are part of something bigger than themselves. They see that many people have the same problem to solve, and your company has a solution that can help them. It's good for people to feel that they aren't alone.

I often will share the story of the day I received an email with a customer survey, asking for feedback from Apple. At the time, Apple never asked for customer feedback, but this particular day, they did. It felt like an honor to provide it. I often will provide companies feedback when asked. I have noticed people's faces change during user feedback sessions when you ask for their opinion. Most people are thrilled to provide input and feedback. 

There are many ways to gather customer feedback. Here are a few: 

• Customer councils and advisory groups. Everyone wins when customers are involved in creating a solution for themselves. Customers know what they want to do and which solutions will work for them. They may not know their exact problem or solution, but they know that what they are doing today isn't working. This is why design thinking is critical to creating better products. 
• Customer support. They are talking to the customer all day, every day, about their problems. Those calls provide amazing insight into who the customer is, their problems, and what they need to succeed. 
• Calling and talking to customers. They don't bite. Call customers often to get feedback. It may be better to call them as part of a study to get a broader, more constructed picture of customer trends, but always feel free to contact them and solicit their opinions. They may have an idea that is a competitive game-changer.
• Chat and chatbot sessions. Read and analyze the sessions to learn what people are saying and clicking. That will tell you what they care about and where their passions lie. 
• Observe customer behavior. They are communicating through action. That is feedback too! 
• They provide quick feedback from an extensive sampling of customers to understand their points of view. It works best with quantitative methods due to scale and speed. Gather input quickly at a single time or have an ongoing program. It's a great temperature check to know if your company is on target.
• Reviews are a great place where customers can share their experience with your company. If you get one bad review, know that more out there feel similarly but don't have the courage to share their experience. Be curious as to why they feel as they do. 

And don't forget to listen to their feedback and use it to make changes. Make sure you are gaining meaningful insights for change. Doing this will help your organization understand:

• your customer's passions,
• what drives them in life,
• how your customers view the problems that they are having,
• their motivations to have these problems solved,
• the values they use in how they make decisions,
• and how they see their lives changing once this problem is solved. 

Why do passions matter? Knowing customer passions can help you understand what may cause their suffering. If a company is passionate about its customers, then there will be an upset if there are customer issues using the products. If your company doesn't deliver on its product promises, that will impact your employees and customers. If your customers use your product in their job that provides for their families and they are passionate about them, then your product not delivering on expectations will impact that job and their livelihood, indirectly impacting their families. When you understand the ways your product impacts different groups, you have a different view of who customers are and what they truly need.

And fifth, at such a company, employees love their customers, and your employees are motivated to help them. We like to believe that our employees love our customers, but often they don't. Employees may be polite to customers during support calls and the sales process, but that doesn't mean they like or respect them. We can all sense when someone feels pity, contempt, or disdain for us; we can hear it in someone's voice. So can your customers. Your policies, product and features, and communication methods carry this as attitude through tone and actions. Customers can perceive such subtleties in a customer experience, which is why emotional engagement with them is so important. 

My stories with LinkedIn and Amex are both examples of employees not really caring about customers. If the employees of these organizations truly cared about me as a customer, they would have helped me. They didn't. Their drive to maintain a public perception of the company was greater than that of helping the customer. There is no shame in an app having bugs. They all do. There is no shame in offering a product that helps some customers and not others. That's business. But know who it can help and who it can't help. Being open and honest about that is good business and builds a solid customer relationship. It shows that the employees and the company cares to help people, not just fatten their bottom lines.

 

Notice that none of the advice shared about building a safe customer environment and trust involves money. Trust and psychological safety involve how your employees and company treat people. Respect and love are the first steps to build a more compassionate company. Customers know when employees objectify them, generalize and trivialize their problems, or feel contempt or sympathy. It's this objectification that reduces connections. Creating compassionate workflows and processes using these points as guidance can help bridge this gap between your company and customers and maintain consistent experiences, so customers feel that your company cares and wants to help them solve their problems. 

 

 

People are at the core of business

It has been a while since I posted because I have been busy making videos and creating workbooks for the Revenue or Relationships website to support my book. 

And speaking of the book...I'm revising some of it to make a second edition. If anything, I'm rearranging it to make it shorter and a little easier to read. My work on the workbooks sparked this project. I started creating a workbook for the 3rd section and it was too long - even for me! So I decided to take a step back and revisit the chapter. I think I'll be doing this for all chapters moving forward. 

I'm moving the current start of the operations chapter to be somewhere else (location TBD) and start with this. 

Hope you enjoy! 

 

We often believe that a business’s operations are directly related to revenue savings or earnings. And it shows. There are countless business books with case studies and ideas for how to “win at business” by optimizing operations. It seems that there is a solution to almost every problem. We implement these best practices as if they are the magic wand to increase profits and improve customer engagement. We’ll measure every aspect of a production line to reduce time, reduce costs, and increase efficiency (whatever that means for an organization). But should we be looking at only those impacts as indicators of success? Or should we instead consider how improving relationships between people during these optimization processes can help us reach our goals? 

There’s an art to creating a great action plan (or business plan) that involves much more than implementing best practices for an operational area. You may notice that some founders will form a successful startup and leverage a similar business plan for their next venture yet experience failure. Or an organization will implement the same processes as another company and see different results. The target market and audience could be the same for the businesses. The product could be solving a similar problem in the same industry. But the differences between these organizations usually lie within the team members, the business partners, the investors, and other stakeholders involved in the business.

It becomes clear that success revolves around the people involved in a business. When the team has a passion for its vision, mission, and brand values, they experience success. Otherwise, not so much.

This would explain why a process that was successful at one company’s location may be implemented at another location without corresponding gains and improvements. The team changed. It’s the people who are implementing the plan and their relationships that contributed to the company’s success. They are the magic ingredient.

Describing how to make a great action plan is like trying to describe to someone how to walk. You can outline the mechanics of walking—you put one foot in front of the other, heel to toe, bend your knee, and propel yourself forward. And that’s what these books about best practices describe: the mechanics of doing business. But there could be mannerisms or gestures you make when you walk that are unique to you. Walking itself is a personal identifier. How you walk makes you, you. The same is true for how a company does an activity.

You could argue that walking is a fairly solitary activity, and companies have more than one employee, so this is an inadequate analogy. So a better example may be an assembly line to put papers into folders for an event. There are many ways to achieve this goal. A line of people could pass pieces of paper to each other, each adding a new sheet, and the last person places this collection of papers into a folder. Alternatively, each person could put a sheet of paper into a folder and pass a folder down the row. Or you could have multiple people doing this assembly line by themselves or multiple lines of people in a row passing papers. There is no right or wrong answer. However, I would propose that the most successful approach for that assembly line is the one where the people participating are happiest and they all agree that they are using the best approach. If a team can come to consensus to determine which approach is most effective, harmonious, and efficient for them, then you have a winning process and team.

Let’s say you want to add people to your folder assembly line from another team. They could be considered partners in your company’s community. These people would need to be brought into your production community and either use their own lines or their staff is integrated into your lines. But in the end, it doesn’t matter. Again, the approach that works best is the one where everyone is involved in the process, comes to agreement about the best way to work, and there is harmony in the community.

This approach can also include customers in the expanded company community, but in a slightly different way.

As we know, a company’s customer experience is the combination of its action plans and brand within a community of employees, customers, and partners. It’s in this community space that a relationship is developed between the customer and the company (employees plus partners). The brand provides the company’s why, its essence and reason for existing, and the action plan defines the what, the solution (product or service) and the experience activities. The experience activities could include the product or service itself, marketing activities from awareness to lead generation, and interactions with sales and support. However, customer experience activities don’t only include what the customer experiences directly. They can include operational areas like:

• How products are manufactured,
• How management decisions are made,       
• How processes are designed, and
• How customer experiences are identified.

These activities are the result of actions blending with the brand and company values in the company community. And as we saw in the branding section about bringing meaning to a brand for customers through CSR programs, how an activity happens is just as important as the activity itself. The interactions among people, teams, resources, materials, and activities speak to your company’s values and its solutions to problems.

To be competitive in business today, you need to meet customer needs in a more inclusive way. Although inclusive approaches have a perception of being costly, it’s becoming a fact that including customers, employees, and partners in your business is highly effective to do and just good business sense. All parties get what they want and need. This inclusion results in happy customers with happier employees and business partners. To achieve this, we all need to think about business differently. Switching around an assembly line, revisiting your ad spend, or tweaking your lead gen process isn’t enough to reswizzle your business to be focused on your customers. Although these activities produce results, they aren’t ultimately including employees and customers in your processes. To do this, you need to take more drastic measures that involve changing how your company operates.

There are four major methodology approaches that will shift your company to focus on your customers, as well as employee and partners:

• Agile
• Lean
• Design Thinking
• Sustainability

These methodologies are revolutionizing businesses and creating exceptional customer experiences because they focus on the relationships people have with each other, how they work together, and the results they want to achieve in the world rather than simply achieving a bottom-line business goal.

In all four methodology approaches, all members in the company’s community (customers, partners, employees) are involved in the organization’s decision-making and process-improvement recommendations. Everyone is engaged to improve the processes and to achieve the vision and goals. No one in the company’s community is left out.

Sadly, companies sometimes misinterpret what it means for their customers and partners to care about their products and how they make them. They may assume that this is their business only, but in a way, it’s not. Customers have a right to care about how a product is made. They are team members in the new world. How you respond to them about their concerns, as well as understanding the product, process, and results, is part of the customer experience. Transparency is a key element of all four methodologies and a vital component in companies of the new world. Some questions you should ask yourself about your customers to ensure you are ready to include them in your business community are:

• If your customers knew how you made your product, all of the details, do you think they would still buy it?
• Do you think your customers would approve of how you treat employees? How about partners?
• Would your partners agree that you treat your customers well?

A challenge with such relationship-driven methodologies is that most companies measure effectiveness through work completed and bottom-line revenues (or savings). But in this new world, these are only a few indicators of success. If work isn’t getting done, these metrics don’t always help identify what is causing the problem. We need to measure more “soft” criteria to improve productivity, like employee happiness, engagement, accountability, and transparency. We need to somehow measure the quality of culture and relationships to determine if an environment has the emotional health to succeed and correlate that to the desired productivity and revenue.

To have a great customer experience, you need a great employee and partner experience. In all of the examples included in this chapter, the operations that support memorable customer experiences require employees and customers to feel valued for their contributions and ensure that everyone is included and making a difference. 

Why Amazon Wins in the Shipping Experience Department: They Are in the Goldilocks Zone

Getting a package delivered through the mail is always an exciting moment, whether you are receiving a surprise gift or an order that you placed. The anticipation to receive it builds as you track the package’s progress from its origination point to your door. Seeing its progress and eventual delivery can add sparkle to your day.

But what happens if something goes wrong with this experience? The shipping experience doesn’t include only the company giving the package to a shipping company and the customer receiving the package. It includes customers anticipating reception by watching the package travel across the country through a status app and culminates with the customer gathering the package, opening the box, unwrapping the item, setting up the product, and then, finally, the customer having the product experience. If something goes wrong anywhere along this process, a customer could possibly change his or her perception about the company he or she purchased from or the product purchased. The shipping experience is less dramatic than purchasing from a store and taking a product home with the various wrappings and bags. However, companies should give it more emphasis because it is the only a physical touchpoint the customer has with the online store and the product. It may be obvious, but we sometimes forget that there is no physical store experience with an online store; the shipping experience becomes that only direct, tangible touchpoint, so how the item is received makes a difference. It matters. The experience opening the package with the box and wrapping papers and the return experience all matter. This experience should include some of the in-store excitement of going to a fun location, purchasing something new, and bringing it home in a fancy bag and wrappings.

However, there are times that logistical problems happen outside of anyone’s control during the shipping experience. Sometimes the company caused the mishap, or sometimes it happened during transit by the shipping company, but such unfortunate events can damage the product experience and the perception a customer has of the main company. Or can they? Could the company intervene to make the mishap not so bad and find a way for the situation to work in the customer’s favor?

Here are three stories about shipping experiences and what happened to make them too cold, too hot, and just right.

“Too cold”

Kenneth Cole had a great sale, so I ordered some new shoes and masks. I was pretty excited about my order because I haven’t ordered from them in a while and needed something new. Needless to say, I was disappointed when my order arrived in an open box. A box flap was not taped shut. Luckily, everything arrived in pretty great shape. Only the box with masks was smooshed and the other shoe box was slightly damaged.

I figured Kenneth Cole may want to know about what happened to update their shipping process for future sales and customers. Because I work in customer experience, I figure companies always want insight into what the customer’s experience is. However, I learned quickly that’s not always the case for all companies.  

I went to their site’s Live Chat and told a representative about what happened with my package experience. I also explained that I didn’t want any compensation for this report, I only wanted to let them know what happened for future customers to avoid such an experience. I figured all they needed to do was a final check on shipped packages to be sure that they were sealed. After I shared my experience, the response by the agent was simply, “Thank you.” That was it. That was the end of the conversation.

I was perplexed. I mean, if a customer just told your company that there was the possibility that a shipment may not arrive complete to a customer because the box was open, wouldn’t that cause you concern? Why would you not want to know this and take action, so it doesn’t happen again? Items could have been lost along the way and damaged. I pinged her again and checked to see if she wanted other information to follow up on the order and its packaging. She said no, it was UPS’s problem (they were the delivery service). And that was that.

Not only did I not feel heard by this agent, I felt like Kenneth Cole didn’t care that packages were being sent without being properly sealed, in a half-opened box. It was discouraging. Sure, I bought another pair of shoes from them which came properly sealed, but I’m now seeing them differently because they made it clear to me that they didn’t care about how their products were being delivered.  

“Too hot”

I prefer to order one-liter bottles of shampoo online so that I don’t need to run to the store in person to find them. I used to order this Aveda special color shampoo and conditioner because, I know, shocker, I’m not a natural redhead or blonde and I need product to help preserve the color. One day, I opened the box for my order and there was conditioner smeared everywhere. There was a leak with the conditioner bottle. So, I took a picture and called customer service. They immediately shipped me a new bottle. The good news was that not all of the conditioner leaked from the bottle–only a small amount–so I could still keep the original bottle and use what was left.

A few days later, I got a leaky one-liter bottle and messy box again. I did some of my own investigation and told them that the top cover wasn’t screwing on the bottle properly and left a small gap for leakage. And I discovered that I had the same problem with this cover as the last screw top cover. Aveda sent a new bottle again. But at this point, I was now feeling weird because I didn’t need a third new bottle with two other pretty full bottles, one of which was free. Sure, I was thankful for it, but at this point, I wanted them to just to fix the problem for others and be aware that this was happening. I wasn’t sure a new bottle was necessary.

Of course, a leak happened again for the third time. I called and told them about the cover. They again told me that they were aware of the problem and told me from now on I should buy the product at the store. At first, I didn’t understand how they knew this and kept sending me replacements that they knew would leak. But where Aveda got it wrong is the motivation I had to order online: I ordered online because I didn’t want to deal with going to the store. But apparently, I had no other option from them because they didn’t want to keep sending me free product. The catch was that I didn’t want it either and I felt weird about it. I just wanted them to fix the cover problem for others. 

Shortly after that, I decided to try a new brand that I could order online. What would have been a better response from Aveda besides free product? An automated order to send me a free conditioner with my next order after they fixed this cap problem. What Aveda did with the free bottles was just too much. I felt guilty accepting their free product as a customer, and they felt it was an endless loop of providing free product as a vendor because that was their policy. None of this worked for anyone and made everyone feel resentful because they gave too much. They shouldn’t have done it. Generosity can be great, but when it’s excessive, it simply gets weird.

“Just right”

I needed to buy some ten-pound weights to push myself to the next level in my workouts. I found some that were reasonably priced from Amazon that included shipping in the costs. I ordered the weights and they were on their way until the shipment updates stopped and the expected arrival date came and passed. They never arrived. Amazon’s system suggested that I cancel the order. I called them and they told me that the weights weren’t in shippable condition in their current packaging. The customer service representative suggested that I wait a couple of days and reorder them.

I was initially confused because these weights weren’t something that Amazon carried regularly, and I figured that the deal was gone forever. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find them at Amazon the next day. So of course, I placed my order for the set.

When I did reorder it, I got them in three days, packaged in pristine Amazon style (although the boxes inside were held together by a lot of tape. And I mean a lot.). Sure, I was bummed that I had to reorder the weights and risked not getting what I originally wanted, but in the end, I got what I wanted in great shape. 

So, what made Amazon’s experience just right?

Amazon understands that all customer touchpoints are part of the customer experience—especially shipping and delivery if you manage a store that is only online and those steps are typically managed by a third party. It needs to be a seamless experience that meets customer expectations. I’m now reluctant to order from Kenneth Cole again because of how they handled (or rather, didn’t handle) the information about the open box. My expectations are now set very low. And I stopped ordering from Aveda because I don’t want to feel guilty about receiving too many free products if they screw up a mail order. But why did Amazon get it right?

Amazon was honest and straightforward about what was happening, and in the end, I got what I wanted in great shape that met expectations. This is why Amazon continues to be successful although they are a monopoly and can be brutal to their workforce. The shipping experience matters, and they truly understand that and exceed customer expectations every time, winning their hearts. They take full advantage of that physical, tangible, customer touchpoint and make it not just a success, an absolute win and home run. Amazon makes the shipping experience just as important as the ordering and product and support experiences. It’s only when the customer experiences with shipping falter that customers will change their opinion of Amazon. That’s how powerful a well-orchestrated customer experience can be; a great customer experience can help customers overlook poor business practices or challenging employee experiences. To the customer, Amazon treats them well enough because they don’t feel it. It’s only when employees are angered enough to let their frustration show to customers that this will change. I sincerely hope that it doesn’t happen and Amazon changes how it treats employees, so employee happiness continues to be demonstrated to the customer through a qualilty shipping experience so that they continue to return because Amazon has truly mastered the delivery experience and this key touchpoint.

When Basic Becomes a Revelation: Creating Content as an Expert

 

 

When you are an expert, there is a tendency to think everyone knows what you know, although they most likely don’t. Most people outside of your field of expertise probably don’t think about the concepts you do or consider the various perspectives that you do. They probably don’t get the ideas you get or get influenced as you do by the world around you. But I’ve noticed that many experts have trouble creating content because they sometimes don’t see how what they have to say is valuable. Unless they develop a cutting-edge revelation, some experts fear that what they are presenting is too basic or too ordinary. I talk to clients and colleagues about this a lot. More than you’d expect.

So why do some experts have this perception of themselves? One reason is because it comes with being an expert. Experts usually have the opposite of the Dunning-Krueger effect, which is imposter syndrome. The Dunning-Krueger effect according to a definition found in Psychology Today, is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area. Imposter syndrome on the other hand is defined in Time Magazine as “the idea that you’ve only succeeded due to luck, and not because of your talent or qualifications”. Here’s an excerpt about imposter syndrome from that Time Magazine article:

Have you ever felt like you don’t belong? Like your friends or colleagues are going to discover you’re a fraud, and you don’t actually deserve your job and accomplishments? 

If so, you’re in good company. These feelings are known as impostor syndrome, or what psychologists often call impostor phenomenon. An estimated 70% of people experience these impostor feelings at some point in their lives, according to a review article published in the International Journal of Behavioral Science.

Impostor syndrome—the idea that you’ve only succeeded due to luck, and not because of your talent or qualifications—was first identified in 1978 by psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes. In their paper, they theorized that women were uniquely affected by impostor syndrome. 

Since then, research has shown that both men and women experience impostor feelings, and Clance published a later paper acknowledging that impostor syndrome is not limited to women. (She also created an impostor syndrome test.) Today, impostor syndrome can apply to anyone “who isn’t able to internalize and own their successes,” says psychologist Audrey Ervin.

Another reason experts may be challenged to internalize their success could be because of the competition in their areas, which ironically fuels their drive to constantly be discovering something new and cutting edge. Every day, they are talking with colleagues who have equivalent or greater knowledge, so it is hard for them to see how much they contribute to their field every day. The definition of imposter syndrome implies that people who are successful and experts are aware of their weaknesses, so they have insights into what they don’t know and see gaps in their own knowledge. This is why they are experts—they can discern what’s cutting edge versus what is old news, what is fact, fiction, or unknown, they know the areas they only have general knowledge about and need to explore further to get the details they need so they can be the expert they are.

But some still carry this false assumption that the average person knows not just what is cutting edge, but the old news that has been displaced. Somehow the average person with different interests is keeping current in a field not their own. Strange, right? In reality, the average person doesn’t know a bunch about an expert’s field—what’s cutting edge or old knowledge. And this leads to talented experts often falsely believing that they have no unique value to offer because they are around other experts just like them every day so to them, they believe their knowledge is common knowledge.

Most days, I am in the camp where I assume everyone knows what I know. I believe that they have had similar experiences as I have and see the world in the same way as I do. There are many days when I think what I know is general knowledge and at times, I believe that I have no value to offer. So, I’ll refrain from creating content or contributing to conversations because I wonder who wants to hear what I already know and tell myself so many times. It’s the same with projects - I wonder what value I could possibly offer. Sounds crazy right? But there is a way for someone to work around this.

There is a message that many coaches are using today - you are unique and have something unique to offer by just being yourself. So, although the message coming from you may have been shared by dozens of others before, there is still room for you in your field because no one is presenting this same information in the way you are presenting it. Isn’t that freeing to hear? And for some, the way you present your message may be revolutionary. This perspective could come from your approach to the problem, your word choice, your choice of metaphors, even the medium you choose to present the message. In the end, it’s you being you that is the offering. This is true for companies as well.

What you say is going to be unique to your audience as long as you are authentic as an individual or company.

The next point to be made…when you are creating a content library, you need some basic, introductory, 101 type of content there. There is value in basic content. Imagine if you went to Deepak Chopra’s site and you saw no basic content about chakras or meditation or self-awareness? Or you went to HubSpot’s site and there was nothing there about what makes a good email or landing page? Or you went to a makeup site and you didn’t see some basic application technique videos? Yes, those examples all contain basic explainer content, but you need that to help build trust and credibility with your audience. If you only talk about slick, trendy topics, well—you’re a slick, trendy snake oil salesman. And who needs that. Trends are always built on the basics. It’s why white t-shirts and jeans sell all year round—people always want the basics. I built and am building a basics library through courses that complement my book. Why? Because if I don’t have that, then you may wonder where did this lady come from? What does she know? Every content creator needs to prove to their audience they know the basics to build trust with them. That’s how you judge a quack from a leader. If I went to HubSpot and saw faulty info about the basics I’d question their credibility. Same with Deepak Chopra. If the information he had about chakras was bunky based on the limited knowledge of them that I have,  I’d walk away and think he’s not the real deal. Content about the basics validates your credibility, which builds trust, and later supports your authenticity.

So, some tips from this quick video…if you are looking for ideas of what to talk to your audience about - listen to the conversations you have with customers. Notice what they are asking. Those answers contain great content to share! Most people aren’t alone in their questions. Other people often have the same questions about a topic. So, share the answers!

Then ask yourself which topics in your field do you take for granted that people know about. The answer to this question also contains great ideas to share too. Consider how you present this content. Maybe do something creative like hosting a panel discussion. I saw someone recently present a complex idea to children. Either way, find a way to present such ideas to build that basics library.

Being an expert in an area is tough because you are already tough on yourself. Yes, continue working on being on the cutting edge as an expert, but remember - you have value in what you bring to the table being yourself, being authentic. So, bring it on! We all want to hear what you have to say, even if it is something from a 101 course in your area of expertise. Always remember, to someone else, your expertise is not basic information—it’s a revelation.

Thanks so much! I hope this was helpful. Have a great day!

What makes a great vision or mission statement?

Hi all! It has been a while since I posted because I have been working on creating videos to promote my book, Revenue or Relationships: Win Both. I'm also working on a short course and workbook that will accompany the book. Oh yes, and a podcast (that will start soon). Plus projects. It has been busy!

I'll post some of the videos here with the transcripts. The first I want to share comes from the chapter about vision statements and why they are so important for a company to create a great customer experience. We sometimes discount the value of the vision and mission statement for a company, seeing it as not having a bunch of value, but the mission and vision statements define a company's purpose, values, operations, solutions (products & services), and how the community between customers and employees should work. It's so important, which is why I created a chapter about it. 

 

Excerpt from the book Revenue or Relationships: Win Both: Introduction to Chapter 2 Vision: What is the value you provide? 

As we all know, a company’s vision defines who the company is, what it does, and where it wants to be in the future. Rather than outline a plan to achieve goals, it outlines the value the company will provide now and in the future to various stakeholders, including customers, the industry, and society. A company’s vision is timeless, rarely changes, and is usually transformative and inspiring. 

We hear about visions constantly, and it seems like everyone wants to develop one—to the point that it feels like everyone is a visionary. It’s great that leaders and aspiring strategists have a vision, but is it a vision that can be realized? 

Some companies have the opposite problem: They could easily implement a vision—if they only had one. Some companies don’t place value on creating a vision for their company, or they have a vision that is too tactical and only defines what success looks like today. 

A company’s lack of vision becomes clear in its operations and product strategy. A company with a vision will have clear, targeted goals to achieve. It isn’t afraid to take risks because it is being guided by its vision to drive the company forward. Conversely, a company without a clear vision may make half-hearted attempts at launching products or expressing its brand. There is an uncertainty about its actions. It is most likely hesitant to act because it doesn’t know exactly what it is working to achieve. 

--Mary Brodie, Revenue or Relationships: Win Both

 

 

Video Transcript: 

Everyone needs a destination or a goal. It helps us feel that there is purpose and meaning in life.

And that is what a vision statement does for companies. If you ask me, many companies don’t really know how to write an aspirational or inspirational vision statement. They'll write a one-line abbreviated summary lifted from a long-term business plan and say - that’s what I want to do with my business, that’s my vision. I want to be the leader of my industry, I want to be global, I want the best clients or the most revenue or what have you. And I don’t disagree that such goals are admirable. But that’s not a vision. That’s a one-line operational plan.

A vision should inspire your customers and employees and outline the problem your company will solve for your customers, your industry, or the world. It can and should be aspirational and inspirational. The mission states how you plan to achieve that goal strategically. It doesn’t include specific approaches or methods – that’s reserved for your operation plan. Such statements are timeless for your business and should serve as a guide for your employees to solve customer problems and create great experiences for them and help your customers understand how you can help them.

As an example, let’s look at Gearmark’s vision: Customers become active participants in every company’s community.

I would love it if customers were actively involved in every company’s community – and I want to help all of my clients make that happen. And there’s a lot of work to do because there are a lot of companies and their customers aren’t always at the center of those businesses.

I have outlined in my book, Revenue or Relationships: Win Both, a number of ways companies can achieve this, even without requiring a purchase. That would be so great to see the future—a company community where customers and employees collaborate to solve problems. It’s not 100% achievable and it shouldn’t be. There will always be new ways to collaborate, new problems to solve, new ways to approach communications. If a vision is achieved, the company has nothing else to do. The vision statement should paint a picture of the world that will always be out of reach. That keeps the inspiration and motivation going with your teams.

Now a solid vision also tells your customers how you help them. In this case, Gearmark’s vision statement tells companies that it wants to help them make customers active participants in their community. It doesn’t say how - just that is the larger goal they will achieve by working with Gearmark.

Now for the Gearmark mission: "Empower companies to build great customer relationships."

I plan to do this by providing companies tools and resources to build great customer relationships. Over time, this could include videos, eBooks, guides, templates, case studies – all sorts of materials. I could be a consultant or write another book. I’m looking into creating an open source organization to help create metrics to measure the quality of relationships. But that’s not in the mission – the mission keeps it general enough so there can be many ways to support it.

In my book, I outline a number of other examples of mission and vision statement from companies. I’ll include my favorite company here, Airbnb. I love Airbnb because their customers are the community. It is a community oriented company on so many levels. So I’ll read you what I wrote in my book about their vision and mission statements:

“Airbnb is one of my favorite companies for many reasons, especially because it has a clearly defined vision and mission.

Vision/tagline: Belong anywhere, people can live in a place, instead of just traveling to it.

Mission: Airbnb’s mission is to create a world where people can belong through healthy travel that is local, authentic, diverse, inclusive and sustainable.

Airbnb’s vision is inspiring: belong anywhere; live in a place instead of just traveling to it. It’s a vision that hits the heart of every traveler. You don’t want to just experience being in a new country; you want to experience what living there feels like. For the true traveler, everywhere you go becomes home for a short while. And the more comfortable you feel, the more memorable the trip.

It is unusual that the vision statement and tagline are the same. However, the vision is clear and succinct, so it makes sense why Airbnb would have a dual-use for its vision as a tagline.

What’s great about the mission statement is that Airbnb clearly states how it plans to help travelers feel that they belong anywhere. It is working to create a world where people feel that they belong through “healthy travel” within the community that Airbnb has created through its products. Notice there is no mention of technologies Airbnb plans to use or how it plans to implement this idea. This leaves Airbnb open to solve this problem in various ways—through technology, through government policy, or through new community-based products.

What I like about the vision and mission statements is that they don’t specify Airbnb’s flagship hotel-like product. They are larger than that. Airbnb is creating solutions to solve the problem of travelers feeling a sense of belonging or connection to a city. This may be because many travelers don’t feel that there are people like them there, or they have a difficult time finding something they like to do, or they don’t feel “at home” where they are staying. Traveling can include exciting adventures, but also exclusion because you aren’t part of the community or culture you are visiting. The targeted openness of Airbnb’s vision and mission has enabled it to expand its “places to stay” business to include designed experiences, in which local residents “sell” a package of events and activities that presents what they like most about their city. Airbnb understands that belonging comes from a sense of community, which it has been building over the years through its hotel product and is now extending through its host-designed experiences.

Airbnb requires a sense of community in its products to not only support its unique business model, but to support its mission and vision statements. The original hotel product allows hosts to connect with guests, making them both a type of customer. The hosts post vacancies to attract a guest; the guest is looking for a place to stay. Airbnb needs them both to offer a wide variety of booking options. Strangers come together to create a safe, affordable travel experience in a type of community. By focusing on customers as people and community building in its vision and mission statement, Airbnb was able to brilliantly create a product that brings people together who crave travel experiences as a host, a guest, or both.”

—Mary Brodie, Revenue or Relationships: Win Both

So with all this in mind, how does this apply to your company?

Well, some questions you should ask yourself so your company can also have a great vision statement are:

• Does your vision inspire you, as a person? That’s pretty basic, but if you aren’t inspired, no one else will be either.
• Does it inspire your customers and employees to see a bigger picture about what you are trying to achieve in the world? Is it inspirational enough for them to want to find ways to make that vision a reality? Inspiration provides motivation. You can’t sell anything if people aren’t motivated to get your product or service to change their life.
• Does it allow an employee to add to your company in their own way with a new program? Is it scalable? Employees need room to contribute to your company’s growth. A rigid vision or mission may prevent your employees from contributing to your organization so you can’t add ideas for growth.

• Will it change an industry or the world? Or is it just a goal for my company? Are you making the world a different place? Again, your vision needs to be inspirational for not just a company but an industry or more to change.

• Is it meaningful? does it reach into your soul to keep you going every day to work on something.

Now for the mission statement:

• Does it share how you will do something? Does it mention specific methods? That’s where mission statements fall flat. Don’t mention exact technologies or approaches. Mention the strategy you plan on using to achieve the vision. Exactly how you do it is up for your teams to decide.
• Will your employees be able to make your vision a reality in different ways with the guidance of the mission? Is it flexible enough to support it? Or is there only one path to success?

Those considerations should get you started to create a vision that will inspire and influence your employees to create awesome customer experiences which will ultimately increase your revenue and inspire your customers to understand the problem you solve. It will also help customers see the world as your company sees it.

Hope this was helpful! Let me know if you need help creating your vision or mission statements.

Inclusion: It’s not just politics. It really is about the brand and company values.

Recently, Hallmark Channel USA (Hallmark's TV station) aired ads featuring same sex couples.

 

Here is the ad:

 

One Million Moms, an organization self-described as "a division of the American Family Association, was begun to give moms an impact with the decision-makers and let them know we are upset with the messages they are sending our children and the values (or lack of them) they are pushing," created a petition to remove the ad. The petition got around 26,000 signatures (I saw a number up to 30,000 at one point). Hallmark stopped airing the ads from that pressure. Then an uproar ensued on social media and beyond. 

 

Why? I see two reasons: 

• The socio-political impact of excluding a minority group
• The action of taking down ads about same sex marriages opposes brand values

The second reason is most likely the subconscious driver for the backlash. The Hallmark brand is about inclusion. It’s in their vision statement: "We will be the company that creates a more emotionally connected world by making a genuine difference in every life, every day."

 

Excluding a group of people based on their race, religion, sexual preference, or gender doesn’t represent an emotionally connected world. Inclusion does.

 

After a day or two of digital protests and celebrity pressure, the CEO issued a statement and put the adds back on the air, much to some people’s chagrin. In some forums, Hallmark viewers are threatening never to watch Hallmark TV again or buy their cards. Although Hallmark took a risk airing the ads on their network, I’m 110% positive that Hallmark will turn out ok from this. History tells us this is true. 

 

For example, look at Nike. 

 

Colin Kaepernick started kneeling at football games to protest racial injustice, specifically, police violence against people of color. He subsequently lost his job over the controversy because some fans didn't like how he used the NFL platform to communicate that view and they felt that kneeling was disrespectful to the flag and veterans (although Kaepernick got the idea to kneel from a veteran).

 

However, Nike had a different view. Nike saw this as an opportunity to make a statement and created an ad about it. This is the ad:

 

 

As a response, many conservatives who are opposed to players kneeling at football games burned their shoes and swore they would never buy from Nike again. 

 

What happened? Nike’s revenue increased 31%. Why?

 

Let’s look at Nike’s brand. Nike’s vision statement is: “to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.”

 

Every athlete. That sounds pretty inclusive to me. By not embracing all races, all genders, all points of view, Nike was ignoring its vision statement and not being true to its brand. Although it was a risk to be perceived as political, it was a win regarding the message's connection to the brand and values.

 

Now let’s look at Chick-Fil-A, a company who recently became inclusive. 

 

Chick-Fil-A has been perceived as a notoriously anti-LGBTQ organization for years based on their contributions to anti-LGBTQ organizations and statements from their CEO. You could say that it didn’t hurt the brand because they were successful in parts of the country where that didn’t really matter to their customers. But it did. It not just limited, but in some cases prevented, their growth. They lost contracts at airports. Cities, like Boston, wouldn’t let them in. Heck, they only lasted 8 days in a mall outside of London and lost their lease because of their exclusionary views.

 

The irony is that their support of these anti-LGBTQ organizations is counter to their vision statement and a quote from the founder: “We should be about more than just selling chicken. We should be a part of our customers’ lives and the communities in which we serve.” You can’t be part of someone's life if you are donating to an organization that has established programs to silence and disparage the group of which that person is affiliated. That's a contradiction and a great reason to lose customers, specifically, LGBTQ customers.

 

Since they have switched their stand on the issue, and took action on it, they have grown. 

 

What is the lesson here? 

• If your brand is inclusive of all types of people based on your values and vision statement, be inclusive. Stay on brand. Excluding a group of people based on a petition or slighting a perceived audience is just wrong. Stay true to who your company is and its values.
• Exclusion doesn’t pay. Literally. Not only is it morally wrong, it is expensive and will result in missed opportunities. Ask Chick-Fil-A.

Revenue or Relationships? Win Both. Book sample videos.

What happened with the rise of the Internet and automation? It changed everything about how we interact and engage with our customers. Those of us who work online don't realize how much business has changed. We think about digital transformation and sometimes take for granted the level of transformation that happens to businesses. It's huge! The biggest change that happened with the Internet is that our customers literally got into our business. Customers were always included in businesses until they went global. Even then, they were included, but seen as excluded. 

More is in the book I wrote, Revenue or Relationships? Win Both, but that's the general idea of these videos. How has the world changed? What does it mean for your customer to be in your business--literally? How do you now need to see your customer? 

Here are some initial thoughts about the book, topics in the book, and more.

 

Video 1: Why I wrote the book. I didn't plan on writing a book. Not by any stretch. It started as a great big white paper until I couldn't call it a white paper anymore (no such thing as a 30K word white paper). 

 

Video 2: The problem your company really solves and the "jobs to be done." This is based on work found in Harvard Business Review. It's one of my favorite articles.  

 

Video 3: Why I selected the title I did for the book. I believe that with the rise of automation, we are seeing a rise in the need for building relationships with customers. We don't focus on that because we don't have a way to measure it directly. But what if we did? What if we saw our businesses differently?

 

Epilogue: Conversations - Not Just for Humans Anymore

For the past 1.5 years, I have been working on a book - Revenue or Relationships? Win Both. The book has been the reason why my posts have been few and far between since April. You don't realize how much working on a book takes out of you. (It takes a lot!)

This is the Epilogue from the book. I wanted to share it with you to give you a sneak peek and to enjoy. Curious about thoughts and feedback. Thanks!

#####

 

Conversations are vital to building a relationship. They are ways for people to connect with each other, find common interests, and develop memories together. Social media and content marketing have elements of automated conversations. They provide information to readers to learn about the issues surrounding problems, describe solutions, and provide insights the reader should consider when making a decision. This first stage of communication starts a dialogue between companies and customers to help them recognize and understand their problems and realize they need a solution. The next stage usually involves online transactions, which is a type of conversation. The app or site requests information, the user provides it, and this banter continues until an agreement is reached and money is exchanged for an item. We are now exploring the possibility of chatbots and AIs to react quickly to human input in an automated, digital conversation. But what does that mean? And why is this relevant to discuss in the context of customer experience?

Conversations extend beyond information and transactions to decision-making, influencing, and relationship-building, with more intricate goals like information-sharing and collaboration along the way. We have created apps to facilitate automating these conversations, but there is more to a conversation than exchanging pleasantries, thoughts, and ideas. The automation of communication and conversations through bots and AI is a vital component of automating business. This has proven successful for informative and transactional conversations, but can we achieve this for more complex, relationship-driven communications? 

As we know, the more factual types of conversations—informational and transactional, related to things and action—are automated today. Decision-making, related to actions and thoughts, is semi-automated. We have tools available to help us, but humans need to actively use them to get any type of output. Influential conversations are more difficult to automate because they require conversations to discover information and insights, similar to relationship-building and brainstorming conversations. These types of conversations include emotions, feelings, empathy, curiosity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. 

The bottom layer of the diagram refers to the types and topics of the conversations, as suggested by Judy Apps in The Art of Conversation. These complement the types of conversations at the top of the diagram. It’s rare when talking about information that you’d talk about heart-related topics (like love or relationships) or discuss what really motivates you (like a soul topic). The more personal the conversation, the more emotionally driven the topics become. The more transactional and informational, the more likely factual or “thing” or “action” topics are fitting. If you are completing a transaction with a person or company, knowing that someone feels a certain way about an object may help a decision-making discussion about a purchase, but it won’t complete the transaction. Two or more people could be discussing how to implement a product or service, but the discussion goes beyond the “things” and “actions” to “head,” “heart,” and “soul.” The team is building trust through various side conversations that develop a relationship. And they understand the problem by sharing different perspectives, which they bring together in their collaboration to determine the best solution. 

Keeping all this in mind, without an appropriate program, a computer cannot reach the sentience necessary to be capable of making these connections between facts and emotions, curiosity and creativity, identifying problems and solving them. Human conversations beyond information and if/then transactions are too complex to model in a computer today. Relationship-building skills, like empathy, compassion, connection, and emotion, are required to complete more intricate life functions like decision-making, collaboration, and emotional connection.

Even if we were to create such a program, what would it look like? 

One could argue that we have achieved some type of sentience with the world-famous robot, Sophia. She has been introduced to the media as the AI representative of the future, but is she? She became a citizen of Saudi Arabia in 2017 and attends all of the popular technology events. She has even made some frequently quoted quips about AIs and robots having emotions or how robots want to kill humans. But does she have true sentience? She can see. She can respond to humans. But even her creator, David Hanson of Hanson Robotics, acknowledges: 

. . .acknowledges that her development is still more akin to a baby or toddler than an adult with a consciousness or intellect that could feasibly be rewarded with a full set of rights. Even this is pushing it – toddlers, for example, have consciousness; Sophia does not.¹ 

Hanson has admitted that her responses are often based on programming, illustrating how far we can go with the if/then statement to model human behavior. We still have not created intelligence or sentience in a machine. 

This brings us back to the original question: If we were to create such a program for decision-making, collaboration, and emotional connection, what would it look like?

It’s unclear. If we don’t know in detail how these cognitive functions work in our own brains, how could we create a model to possibly replicate ourselves in a computer? We could create a new model that’s completely different from our own image, but what would that look like? Do we have any theoretical models to use as a basis for that initial approach?

We often take for granted what is involved in creating a conversation. As we listen to someone speak, thoughts rush to us regarding questions to ask next, responses to provide, and insights to share. A computer today doesn’t have the ability to respond in such ways. A computer follows its program and responds to stimuli, mostly based on user input. It processes data to present results and findings; it doesn’t provide an analysis or summarized insights without its programmed direction. Humans usually provide their own insights based on what they believe is important, using the facts that they find through traditional research methods or computer output. Ironically, computer output is based on programs humans designed to access specific data points that a group originally decided were important. In many ways, one group of people is defining for another group what is important through a program. When the computer is deciding what is important for a user using programmed judgement created by humans, that’s not entirely intelligence. From that perspective, we still haven’t reached sentience.

This raises the question of whether we are limiting our own data knowledge by not considering the impact of outlier data to improve situations and provide a different perspective. Are we developing AIs to help us in the way we want to be helped? Or are we developing AI to identify problems or patterns that we could use to create something new? There are initiatives in companies and consultancies to have AIs discover trends found in “dark data,” outside of the knowledge that people commonly have and can immediately leverage and reference. Leveraging such an approach is the only way we could expand human conversations using AI to add value for us to see problems and issues differently. Otherwise, we are defining what we need in a program, inadvertently limiting AI discoveries based on our existing knowledge. 

 

If/Then versus How and Why

Conversations about “things” and “actions” are based on direct questions and answers. Do you have this in stock? When will it be shipped? How can I order that? That’s why it is easy to automate this into chatbots. They are if/then statements about information that’s required and requested.

However, when we talk about thoughts, emotions, and abstract ideas, more relevant topics for decision-making, influence, relationship-building, and collaborating, conversations no longer follow if/then structures to provide information. How are you feeling? Why are you feeling that way? What can I do so you feel better? One could create an if/then program to create answers, but that’s not what’s required in these types of conversations. These are questions that require cognitive processing related to sentience, or self-awareness. They require that subjects know they are alive and want to remain that way. We organic beings “feel” because we are self-aware and we know what is happening in our bodies and minds. We are driven to stay alive based on this self-awareness. But are computers aware of their existence? Do they feel? Do they seek to stay alive at any cost? What does this mean for them?

Science fiction has explored these ideas for more than 75 years in books and movies like 2001: Space Odyssey and Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot. It has been in the realm of fantastical thinking and philosophy for decades, if not centuries (for example, Frankenstein explores this idea at some level), but it is relevant today as we are in the early stages of creating intelligences and sentient beings that use AI. 

Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick created an AI entity, the HAL9000 computer, in the movie 2001: Space Odyssey. In one scene, Dave is dismantling and deactivating HAL because of its psychopathic actions. Unknown to Dave, this was because HAL’s programming was conflicting with his orders; Dave assumed that HAL was simply malfunctioning. While Dave was dismantling HAL, the computer admitted his faults, attempted to apologize, and asked him to stop. HAL was aware of what Dave was doing and told Dave that he was afraid. If HAL was only a computer, how could he have identified—never mind experienced—an emotion like fear? Or felt his mind drifting away with the removal of each chip and circuit board? It seemed like HAL was aware of the physicality of what was happening and the impact on his own mind and being. Or was he? Was that part of his programming?²

The question that Clarke and Kubrick explored was: Was it possible to kill an AI like HAL, which seems to have the qualities of a sentient being, by deactivating his “brain”? That’s hard to say, because in future movies HAL comes back to “life” when reassembled. The other question that Clarke and Kubrick explored with HAL as a character, which is more central to this discussion, is: What exactly is sentience for a computer or AI? Are they mimicking humans? Is it programmed behavior? Or do they have their own experience through their own desire to survive?

In a real-life example, we could consider the Facebook bot that was created to negotiate ad deals through chat.³

Programmers theorize that the bots created a language to streamline communications with each other. The programmers didn’t add code for the bots to use only human-friendly language. It’s pretty amazing that an AI would optimize a language to communicate better with another AI. This makes me wonder about their perception of what they were experiencing, if there was any at all. We assume there isn’t, but we also have assumed for centuries that animals have no emotions, which is now proven false. Animals do have emotions, possibly experienced differently or similarly as humans. We don’t know because animals can’t speak about them. But this idea raises the question: Why couldn’t this also be true for an AI? Could an AI be aware of what it is? Could a program created to communicate be sentient and we aren’t aware of that? In a way, the AI was sentient and self-aware enough to realize it was speaking with another AI rather than a human. 

This introduces a more philosophical question: What constitutes sentience? If a bot is creating a language to communicate with another chatbot, that demonstrates some level of awareness, even if that is part of its programming. One could imagine a programmatic entity thinking: “I know from my programming that I am not a human, but a bot. It seems based on the input I am receiving that this other subroutine interacting with me appears to be another bot. Since we are both bots, I will communicate in ‘this’ style. If the entity communicated with me in this other human style, I would use that style to communicate with it.” Based on input provided by the other entity, it can determine if it is interacting with a bot or human. That is a sophisticated yet simple level of intelligence and self-awareness. It is if/then thinking, but it illustrates that it is possible to understand the difference between two audiences and have enough self-awareness to communicate differently. It’s unclear if there were emotions and feelings experienced by the bot, mainly because it doesn’t have a physical body, but we should consider that emotions and feelings as humans perceive them may be a human construct and we have more to discover and understand regarding what intelligence and sentience include.⁴

If we read some of Antonio Damasio’s more recent work, cells and more simplistic organisms have feelings to help them stay alive. Emotions emerge from nervous systems and a type of brain to help keep the organism feeling good—and, consequently, alive. This will to live and feeling good is a sign of life that leads to intelligence and sentience. But what is part of this drive to live? According to Viktor Frankl, meaning. Beings will create meaning in their lives to drive them through adverse challenges. Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, documents his experience in the concentration camps and its influence on him in developing logotherapy. He found that the search for meaning above all things (reproduction, power) drove men to survive the camps.

If we apply these ideas to an AI, we must first acknowledge that AIs often don’t have a body, except through robotics, but they do have a brain. It’s unclear if that brain does have a desire to stay alive unless it is programmed to believe that. However, if we programmed an AI to have meaning, would that change an AI’s sentience? Isaac Asimov suggested this in his fiction work, I, Robot, through his presentation of the three laws of robotics: 

• “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 
• A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
• A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.”⁵ 

How the AI interpreted these laws to give them meaning was what got it into trouble in his book. It had a different interpretation and perception of what the three laws represented for its purpose. From this, you could argue that having meaning and purpose is a type of sentience.

Would meaning or purpose change the nature of an AI so it could have self-awareness and be able to participate in more advanced conversations like collaboration and relationship-building? It may be worth considering.

We can’t forget that we are still in the very early stages of developing AI. I am aware that much of this section is based on conjecture and science fiction, but for us to support the automation of more complex conversations and human-computer interactions, AI programs need to evolve to achieve sentience, and to get there, we may need to dream and expand our perception of what sentience means. 

To return to the question posed at the beginning of this section: Is it possible for us to automate conversations, and therefore, automate relationships? To me, this is highly unlikely any time soon. It is in the realm of dreams, philosophy, and science fiction. There will always be an element of human interaction required for two beings to connect and have a conversation that humans have grown accustomed to having. AI allows us to identify and use data in ways we never dreamed possible. But when I dream of AI and humans having conversations, I keep remembering a scene in the movie, Rogue One, with the droid K2S0 announcing, “There is a 97.6 percent chance of failure,” as they are flying toward their mission. The humans continued regardless of the challenges. This is what I perceive to be the balance between AI and bots and humans. As we know through the work of Antonio Damasio and Viktor Frankl, human conversations and decisions are not always driven by logic. Emotions and an individual’s self-perception often drive their will and a desire for a specific outcome that defies the odds. That element of human nature based on feelings and emotions to move towards a goal won’t go away. If anything, with better data elements selected for us, we may be able to achieve our goals faster and more completely by using a better approach than we do today. It would be a tremendous partnership, providing us a complete picture of our options, choices, and current situation. And our corporate world could further expand to include employees, customers, and our computers, all interacting to create a more balanced emotional and factual customer experience. 

 

1. Reynolds, Emily. “The Agony of Sophia, the World’s First Robot Citizen Condemned to a Lifeless Career in Marketing.” WIRED. June 1, 2018. 

2. 2001: Space Odyssey. Deactivation of HAL9000. ()

3. McKay, Tom. “No, Facebook Did Not Panic and Shut Down an AI Program that Was Getting Dangerously Smart.” Gizmodo. July 31, 2017. 

4. Griffin, Andrew. “Facebook’s Artificial Intelligence Robots Shut Down after They Started Talking to Each Other in Their Own Language.” The Independent. July 31, 2017. 

5. Asimov, Isaac. 3 Laws of Robotics.