FROG BLOG

I’m not easily impressed - especially when I feel as if everything is going wrong. But in the end I have to grudgingly tip my hat to ComEd’s Customer Service Group even though I’m sitting here with only half power 6 days after the storm.

Did ComEd’s electronic response system make mistakes? Looks like it.

Did individual ComEd reps make mistakes? Looks like it.

Did the customer (me) make mistakes? Probably.

First, about my problem - Why am I still at half power? Turns out an electrical spike fried my breaker box. Unfortunately, ComEd kept saying the power disruption was their issue until about 5 pm yesterday so I delayed calling an electrician.

I’m writing this from a computer that is running off a series of extension cords strung from from a kitchen outlet that is also running my fridge and stove. I had never heard of half power before, but for us it means that a seemingly random assortment of lights and outlets are working in the house. When we have a power need we re-weave our extension cords to take care of it.

So, I’m a customer who’s problem was not solved or identified until well after it should have been. Why am I not peeved?

Credit goes to well trained and very sympathetic customer service reps that seemed to care no matter how upset I got.

When their electronic response system seemed to reset my request every time I called, the rep was as frustrated as I was. When I was apparently the last house in town that no one had stopped by, I could tell the rep felt my pain. When the notes from the field didn’t explain why I was still sitting in the dark and no excuse seemed reasonable - I could almost hear the conversation between managers that got a truck to my home in 15 minutes. When it turned out to be something in my house the lineman apologized that communication hadn’t been better. Everyone seemed to care and everyone seemed willing to go off script to try and help.

The empathy was what seemed so unusual and disarming. I don’t know if it was from training, from great hiring practices or both. Maybe the situation of having over half a million customers without power just broke down the barriers to create a “We’re all in this together attitude” had something to do with it.

In the end, I was left with the strong impression that they actually cared - admitting their own mistakes and doing what they could to correct them. Now here’s the question that begs to be asked: With all the emphasis on customer service in our economy, why did this feel so unusual that I felt the need to write about it?

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What started as high concept MBA territory and led to today’s templates and $200 boilerplate, strategic business plans have been adopted throughout organizations of all sizes. Unfortunately this infiltration often becomes filler for three ring binders (or misplaced PDF files) and a neglected memory until the next cycle - instead of the dynamic driver it can be.

Template thinking is often the cause for this mismatch. Choose any of the hundreds of outlines available and you create the need to fill in every bullet point with a jargon filled sentence about how your company is going to be so much better than the competition.

• Of course we’re going to outflank competition through the leveraging of of superior human intellectual capital and technological innovativeness.
• Of course we’re going to increase market share without price discounting by increasing emotional value and value-added strategic alliance formation.
• Of course we’re going to meet customer needs and improve relationships through advanced communication, use of the web, and the empowerment of line employees.
• Of course we’re going to win by simply being better than everyone else.
• Of course, Of course, Of course.

The result can be a document that is unimplementable (We’re going to run in every direction at once!), laughable (If you think you can beat your competitors in every way imaginable this year, why didn’t you last year?), or simply a restatement of business basics dressed up to look like strategic advantage. If your strategic business plan lays out the principles of running a good business and reads as if the title could be ‘Your Name Here,’ it will not have meaningful impact on your business. (Ok, I’m assuming that that principles of running a good business are not earth shattering news at your company.)

Strategic Business Plans are where you have to differentiate yourself. This helps focus resources and decision making. Items where you are going to be just as good as the competition are still important but put them somewhere else. The high concept strategy for each level/division/product category needs to be simple enough that everyone in your organization understands its direction but deep enough that tactics are difficult to reproduce by outsiders and/or secret.

So, to improve usefulness, blow-up the template. Make each section and sentence earn its place. Take the ‘of course’ fundamentals and stick them in an ‘of course’ appendix so that they are out of the way (but not forgotten). Choose which competitive baselines you are going to shift to provide the bulk of your wins and focus your efforts on them.

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Creative fire extinguishers are a normal part of our human nature. Change can be uncomfortable. New ideas can cause disaster. It’s natural to want to find ways to avoid disruption.

It would be nice to develop an organization that would drive these tendencies out, but that won’t happen to these deeply ingrained habits. For each habit you break a few others will pop-up. Creative Fire Extinguishers don’t exist because we have developed bad habits. They are here to serve real objectives of stability that exist for individuals and organizations.

So how do you keep Creative Fire Extinguishers under control? Know them. Understand them. Channel them. And then provide support for ideation and creativity to help overcome them.

Truth is ideas should have to survive a rigorous review. There are bad ideas. There is unnecessary disruptive creativity. The point of controlling Creative Fire Extinguishers is to make that review process as balanced as possible, focused on stated issues - not hidden agendas or misunderstood motivations.

I’ve summed up the ten Creative Fire Extinguishers we’ve gone through here:

#1 - “Did Something Like That 12 Years Ago”
#2 - The Fire Hose
#3 - Expect Customers To Be The Visionaries
#4 - Pursue Everything
#5 - The Universal Buy In
#6 - Efficient Use Of Time
#7 - Wasting Time
#8 - Everybody Knows
#9 - Ignore The Little Things
#10 - Expect Everyone to Just ‘Get It’

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