Business Etiquette DOES Matter – Revisited

This is a repost from last November; but is still as valid today as it was ten months ago:

I realize that people are being asked to “do more with less” these days.

That doesn’t mean that common courtesy and business etiquette are no longer required to do your jobs.

It’s more important now than ever before.

• It doesn’t cost anything to smile or be friendly.  It doesn’t cost anything to say “please” or “thank you.”
• For any business call, return the call in a reasonable period of time.  Twenty-four hours is reasonable.  A week is not.
• If you initiate a request for pricing and promise a return call, return the call when promised – especially if the answer is “no” so that you’re not dodging follow up calls.  It’s business – people hear “no” all the time.
• In the middle of a project, don’t go “dark” for weeks on end.  This applies to both ends of the vendor / client relationship.
• Do what you say you are going to do, when you say you’re going to do it, at the price you said you’d do the work for.
• Be a person.  Be accountable.  Corollary: Never, ever, say “it’s not my job.”

Maybe being polite is strictly a function of how we are raised as children.  Maybe it’s directly related to our work environment.  Maybe it’s a direct reflection of your “I-just-don’t-give-a-damn” threshold.

Whatever the case may be, being polite, accountable, and timely will set you apart.

Because for all of us making our way in the wilds of this Recession, doing business with courteous companies makes the difficult journey a little more bearable for all involved.

Troubled Times

I don’t need to tell ya – times are tough.  All over.

Every day, I talk to friends who have been with their current employer for ten years or more, either on the hunt for a new job or fearful that their job is in jeopardy.

Friends with a wealth of experience – smart, loyal, dedicated to their professions.

All fearful of the uncertainty the future holds and what this will mean for them, and for their families.

It’s been said – a recession is when someone you know loses their job; a depression is when YOU lose YOURS.

I think it’s fair to say, that for most of my contemporaries – that is, folks who came onto the job market in the early 1980s – this is by far the toughest job and economic environment we’ve faced in our professional lives.

And no one really knows where the bottom is, or where the next shoe will drop.

I’ve been doing what I do now for about 25 years or so.  And doing so as the head of my own company for the past almost thirteen years.

Even in good times, the fear of failure has been a tremendous motivator for me.  In one sense, it has been my traveling companion for many years.  I say that like it’s a bad thing; it’s not, really.  It’s simply the way it is.

I’m just used to the fact that unless I’m out there selling every day, that unless I am constantly marketing, if I don’t show up consistently, if I don’t grow continually, if I don’t execute each and every time…  I’m toast.

But for a lot of my friends, friends who have been with maybe one or two employers their entire professional career (don’t laugh – it USED to be normal), this is probably the most stressed that they have ever been.  Ever.

I really struggle for words of comfort to share with them.  Words with meaning and solace.

And I guess, my only useful advice, is that every day you gotta get up, and DO.  Do something constructive.  Network with friends.  Use slack time to learn a new skill.  Go out on a limb and take on a project WAY outside your comfort level.  Build something on spec.  Mentor someone.  Talk to a counselor.

DO.  SOMETHING.

No one is immune to this market.  And I honestly gotta tell you, not a day goes by that I’m not worried that things can totally go to Hell.

But it doesn’t rule my business approach, and it doesn’t rule my reason, and it doesn’t rule my judgment.

It simply makes me aware that every day I need to be generating the maximum amount of value in everything that I do, so that I can keep doing what I do, the way I want to do it.

Or else.

And that is motivation enough.

Follow Up From SmartMoney Magazine

This is what I hope to be the ** last ** update on my appearance in this month’s ( July 2008 ) SmartMoney Magazine.

I was contacted this week by Anne Kadet, the author of the feature article in which I was quoted, “Trophy Kids.”  Anne called after reading my response post here to the article, genuinely upset over the fact that the magazine had gotten my son’s name wrong in the article and wanting my feedback on what my expectations were going into the article and thoughts afterward.

Anne offered a correction on my son’s name, and we had a very open discussion over the article and my reaction to it.

I learned a great deal from the whole experience – positive and negative – and I know I’m better prepared to ask more questions for any similar situation in which I may find myself in the future.

Again, thanks to Anne for being stand up and calling me when she could have just let it ride.

And one final thanks again to SmartMoney for allowing my son and I to have a blast at a fun photo shoot and creating a great memory in the process.

For those of you in the market for a great photographer (and a really nice guy), here is John Schweikert’s (the photographer who took the fine photo in the article) contact information:

John Schweikert Photography
113 Westover Park Court
Nashville, Tennessee 37215

http://www.schweikertphoto.com/

News and Rememberance

Regardless of one’s politics, the news concerning Senator Kennedy today is sad and not very promising at the moment.  The type of brain tumor he is said to have is usually very aggressive – and once you get to the seizure stage things go down hill very quickly.

Almost exactly ten years ago a good friend of mine, Eric Martin, had a seizure while doing contract work here in Nashville.

Eric passed passed out in the hallway of a common client of ours.  Later the next day, he received word that he had a malignant brain tumor.

This occurred March 10th, 1998 (my wife’s birthday, as it turned out).  Eric died on July 2nd of that year, a mere four months later.

Eric and I had been through a couple of startups together and numerous “death march” programming campaigns.  I had given Eric his first paying programming job, testified in court on his behalf in a civil suit, mutually sued a former employer for back pay, and helped him move out of his house following his divorce. 

Eric has been on my mind lately, even without the news of Senator Kennedy’s diagnosis.  He was a friend – if not THE friend – of my youthful adulthood.  Ten years passes very quickly.

As sad as the news is today, and as much as I miss Eric during such times, I also remember some of the great times we had together, like:

• Meeting Steve Miller backstage at Starwood Amphitheatre in Nashville.  Eric used to be a sideman (he was a drummer) for Slim Whitman (of “Mars Attacks!” fame), and his old drum instructor was Steve Miller’s drummer on that particular tour.  Pretty cool to toss back a few cold brews with the “Space Cowboy.”
• Trout fishing together on the Caney Fork River below Center Hill Dam.
• After one night of all night imbibing (I guess I was 28 at the time), I came into work in the same clothes I wore the night before.  Eric had one of our salesman come in and tell me that I had to do a technical presentation for new investors in 30 minutes and that I had to go back into the warehouse and get a machine to demo.  I went back to the warehouse, only to find the demo machine in a million pieces and the two of them laughing their heads off.
• Eric and I played darts a few nights a week, and at one particular Comdex in Atlanta we played some guys in Buckhead about 50 games in a row (or so it seemed) while watching Ayrton Senna drive in what was to be his last Formula One race.  I had to pay the hotel for an extra half-day because I couldn’t drag Eric’s hung over tail out of bed to check out the next day.

Here’s hoping your memories made today will be the good old days of tomorrow – and that you are blessed to have a friend like Eric.

Is It Really A Conversation If All You Do is Talk?

I’ve recently set about cleaning up some of the social networks and contacts that have stuck to me through accretion over the past couple of years.

My impetus for doing so has really been two fold:

1. I am no longer actively participating in a network, the network and I are no longer providing any benefit to one another, or one of us is an unequal partner in the conversation, and
2. Dialog is not taking place and I am expected to be a passive customer or consumer.

Pertaining to number (1) above, I could happily go along and reap the rewards of whatever Google Juice is to be reaped by being connected to any given network.

In fairness, by my reckoning, my participation in a given network or community is a tacit approval or endorsement of that community. If I am not actively engaged on a regular basis, and that community becomes something contrary to my beliefs and values, my online rep suffers through the association.

Conversely, by not removing myself from those forums where I am nominally a member, but not really a participant, I am still rewarding those sites, even in the very smallest infinitesimal way, with whatever little influence I might have over swaying anyone. Better to simply part ways as friends and call it a draw.

As far as number (2) above goes, I have found myself connected to and / or “friended” to several people (as many of you may have) that are either simply takers (use your own definition) or simply talkers (guilty as charged in some cases).

After a while of finding myself blowing past their posts or finding myself diametrically opposed to whatever agenda they are pushing I began to ask myself – “why I am doing this? “

For the influence? Exposure? Because all the cool kids are doing it?

Please don’t misunderstand. I don’t look at Social Networking as some zero-sum, favor bank undertaking (see Thomas Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities). All people are definitely not created equal and there will never be complete reciprocity across the web within our virtual networks.

But there should at least be the mere appearance of a conversation or interaction occurring. If YOU are doing all the talking (or worse, if I am doing all the talking) and no discourse takes place at some regular interval, then what’s the point? You’re not gonna buy what I’m selling and I sure ain’t gonna transact with you (primarily because I’ll never get your attention long enough to say “how can we help each other?”).

I’ve made a deal with myself that I’m gonna try and be straight up and cut down on much of the social media noise that frankly is stealing away moments of my life with nothing tangible being returned.

Not looking to monetize every waking moment; not trying to make money in my sleep; but I am looking to learn, grow, and expand my knowledge every day beyond what I knew yesterday – and hopefully be able to do tomorrow what I am incapable of doing today.

To that end, I’m working on being a conversationalist and not simply another babbling voice among the multitude.

Just hoping that it’s not a soliloquy I’m conducting.

No Where to Hide

One of the side-affects of the transparency required when making meaningful social media connections is that when one makes a serious misstep, or faux pas, or fails to deliver in a very high profile way… it is now visible in a way that it never was in the past.

There are consequences of this new phenomena. In the past, if you made a serious career misstep, more likely than not you could pick up stakes, move to the next gig, and start anew without too many lasting emotional scars or after affects.

Now, a career misstep can follow one for a significantly long time. And everyone knows about it. Or can Google it.

Thankfully, people have short memories. Still, transparency on the web is going to have longer lasting implications than most people are realizing at the moment.

I came across a great example this morning on LinkedIn of just this very thing. A person had posted in their LinkedIn profile that they were “Unemployable because of career interference.”

Now, whether this is true or not, whether it was the wisest thing to expose your plight to the network of connections who were either the cause or the cure for your plight is not really the point.

The point is that this person perceives that their employability has been hindered, they are perpetuating some Google-Juice now with their negative perceptions of the new reality, and may even be contributing to a self-fulfilling prophecy. And it is all out there for everyone to see, each and every time that they do a background check for a new position.

This is of course just one example. The failed high profile project, the vocal disgruntled ex-employee / ex-customer, the unexpected change in market conditions that turned you into a buggy whip manufacturer in the new world of the automobile. All of these types of situations will be forced multiplied by social media and personal transparency.

Be warned – there is now no where to hide.

Customer Service – The SLA is the MINIMUM Expected

When you are under a Service Level Agreement (SLA), this spells out the normative and expected response times for service, failure response, and resolution protocols. SLAs are usually in place to outline what the minimum level of responsiveness to a customer issue will be, and what the penalties for missing these minimum levels of service targets will be (monetary, free services, discounts, whatever).

THEY ARE NOT INTENDED TO BE THE BENCHMARK FOR SATISFACTORY SERVICE.

I had the ol’ “we had the server up and running under the time allowed in the SLA” canard thrown up in my face this morning. Technically, the Managed Hosting Firm DID have A server running ONE of the customer’s web sites restored, after a bad hardware failure.

However, the main customer sales application was down all weekend, and was unavailable for a trade show that the customer had over the weekend.

In fairness, the customer did not make the Managed Hosting Firm aware that things weren’t 100%. They called me, who wrote the sales software, to see if I could figure out what was wrong. I found the issue, and we resolved it a few minutes ago. Four hours into Monday, from a Friday failure. Unacceptable.

The ultimate reason that the software did not come back up is that the Managed Hosting Firm (a) did not take reasonable care to notify the customer of what failed and what corrective actions were taken, (b) the system was NOT restored to working state as it existed prior to failure, and (c) the system was not tested in full before signing off.

This wasn’t a $15 a month hosting deal. This is a managed services contract where the customer is paying a Steak Fee for apparently Baloney Service.

If you are running a services company, don’t stop at the minimum. Worse, don’t NOT do the minimum and act huffy when it is pointed out that you didn’t DO the minimum; and don’t blame the customer for not checking your work.

Attaining Critical Mass, without Exploding

I’ve always been one to not suffer fools gladly.

One of the challenges I face in my adult life is to harness my inclination to say the first thing that pops into head whenever someone says or does something utterly stupid, myself included. Honestly, I am a stupidity carrier at times.

But something is happening to me as I travel the wilds of the Social Networking ecosystem. I find that I am connecting with more and more people who talk a lot of game, but are more interested in the how many ways the game may be played rather than the objective of the game itself – namely, produce something of value; more profits, better living conditions, better products, smarter kids… name your favorite metric of success.

I’m finding more and more people are simply concerned with attending the next conference, meetup / Tweetup, breakfast, lunch, dinner – and less interesting people who are doing. Doing. Doing.

My realization shouldn’t be all that surprising, because all of the doers ARE doing, not tweeting about it. Not blogging about it. And before anyone hits me with the “irony” tag, yeah, I do realize the irony of blogging about the futility of blogging as opposed to doing something useful. I get it.

Believe me – I am not ranting against social media and how it can transform our reach.

Social Media and the great tools coming from the community are tremendous force multipliers – but for both bad AND good.

Like Springsteen sang, “Fifty seven channels and nothing on.” We are becoming a community of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

People, if the world of communications is really going to be transformed in a positive way, the end result should be a better workplace, a better world, better products, better standards of living, better knowledge – and not just more of the same people attending conferences and contributing to the mutual circle jerk of self congratulation.

Still seeking critical mass without having my head explode. I am failing miserably this morning.

Brands, Trust, Relationships, Engagement

I had an interesting lunch yesterday with Jay Deragon discussing online connections and trust.

One observation that I made during the course of our discussion was that a major weakness of any and all social networks as they exist today is that they all suffer from a lack of a real analog to what “trust” means in the “real world.”

In truth, trust can only be gained over time and with experience.

Saying I trust someone who is known to me only by way of an avatar or email address or Twitter account is akin to saying “I love you” on the first date. It has no meaning, or worse yet, it exposes your lack of understanding of what you think you mean.

All good relationships (personal, professional, social, familial) are predicated upon some degree of trust. One’s trustworthiness is proven over time by how one fosters their end of the relationship contract. An unfaithful spouse is an untrustworthy partner; a business contact who delivers on time and on budget – consistently – has a higher degree of trust than a first time contact who does the same thing, one time, but has not proven themselves able to repeat their performance over time.

In short, no matter how viral our connections are, no matter the velocity in which we build our virtual networks, the ingredient of trust among our connections cannot be short circuited.

Our trusted connections are trusted because they are prolonged, they have continuity, and they have consistency.

In short, these are the ingredients for experience.

On the Uncommon Sense blog today there is an excellent post on Brands on the Brain. It touches upon the concepts of consistency and frequency of brand presentation, but could just as easily been talking about personal reputation.

Simply replace the word “reputation” for “brand” in any marketing discussion. Substitute “brand” in any discussion about personal reputation on the social web. The intersection of these concepts is the “lightning in a bottle” that marketers, hucksters, salesmen, developers, and common citizens are trying to capture and grok.

From my vantage point, there are no shortcuts. To garner the same rewards one reaps in the real world with one’s virtual networks requires the same amount of, if not more than amount of, attention and intention.

I’ve said it before: engagement does not mean connecting and walking away. Engagement is a conversation, with both sides making , and fulfilling, commitments.