Due Diligence 101: Customer Satisfaction

Having the largest customer base in the market sounds great, but you need to know more. Customer satisfaction is one of those things. This may sound basic or obvious, but I'm amazed at how often I have seen this overlooked - myself included.

When conducting due diligence on Company 'X', ask what service aspects they believe their competitors are poor at and what differentiates customer satisfaction at Company 'X' from the comptition.

Then ask to see the results of the most recent customer satisfaction survey they have conducted along with the results of previous surveys. This will give you an idea of what direction they are heading in. If the most recent survey is too old to be considered useful, ask for it to be conducted again and compare results with a previous one. If one has never been conducted, ask for one to be put together and sent out. Also ask that you may review it before it is sent out.

In both previous or newly created surveys look for questions that address the answers to the first questions posed in this article: what is the compitition poor at and what differentiates. If the survey doesn't address these then ask why.

If a company's customer base is about to walk out the door, you would want to know this before acquiring them or investing in them.

Infectious Leadership

I was flying on Southwest Airlines this week and they have some great articles in the current issue of their magazine that profiles their top leaders. One article, Wheels Up by Joseph Guinto, has a nice statement in it:

"Successful companies often mirror their top executives. If Apple Computer were a person, it'd be a lot like Steve Jobs. Same with Microsoft and Bill Gates, or maybe GE when Jack Welch ran it. Certainly Sam Walton and Wal-Mart. And, in the same way, Southwest Airlines is Herb Kelleher."

If you were the head of your company and that company mirrored YOU, what kind of company would it be?

He Knows How to Be Diligent About Due Diligence

Good common sense advice about conducting due diligence;

He Knows How to Be Diligent About Due Diligence: "Barry Rhein"

Making Decisions

From A. Weber Morales' "The Human Factor" commentary in the February 2006 edition of Software Development:

"The higher you go in an organization, the more clearly you see that often, decisions aren't choices between obvious outcomes. Instead, where arguments pro and con may be nearly equally compelling, the key is to make a decision and then embrace it." "...intuition and focus can make a decision the right one, while vacillation can kill crucial momentum."

WWFD?

What would Firefox Do?

Setting expectations

Great point here that is so often overlooked because we're concerned about being the messenger of news we assume will be negative. I've had several experiences where customers (or users) just say "oh, O.K." when the 3rd degree was expected.

Seth's Blog: Fifteen minutes?: "People will be incredibly patient if you set expectations and keep your promises."

Signum sine tinnitu--by Guy Kawasaki: After the Honeymoon

I really like this statement. I've heard and used "you've got to lie in the bed you make" or "eat your own dog-food" before, this statement has a slightly different slant and an elegance about it:

Signum sine tinnitu--by Guy Kawasaki: After the Honeymoon: "The clock is ticking. You need to prove that the dogs will eat the food. Sure, you can try for the AKC champion German Shepherd, but I would recommend finding a few hungry mutts."

The Beauty of Simplicity

Great article, in case you can't tell, I love Google. The core of what I love is the simplicity. Another great quote from the article addresses why the simple Google homepage is so effective: "It gives you what you want, when you want it, rather than everything you could ever want, even when you don't."

Read more:
The Beauty of Simplicity: "why making things simple is the new competitive advantage."

Escape from Cubicle Nation: Open letter to CEOs, COOs, CIOs and CFOs across the corporate world

Interesting thoughts....

Escape from Cubicle Nation: Open letter to CEOs, COOs, CIOs and CFOs across the corporate world: "if you lose some smart, creative, entrepreneurial and positive minds, you can't say I didn't warn you."

Software development

Are you struggling with producing software and adding people doesn't seem to help? Do you have great people but it still isn't "getting done"? I included a snippet from a newsletter I subscribe to, it is interesting that though the four points defined below were not dictated at the start of the project, rather they were the result of the constraints placed on it.

-------------------------------------

by Shahar Larry from SIT Ltd. SIT is a
company that provides Systematic Inventing Thinking consulting and
training to companies around the world. They provide services to
companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Pearson and Bayer. Visit their
site at www.sitsite.com.

The Tower of Goo
Or how to Prototype a Game in less than 7 days: In this short list I would like to share with you a synopsis of an interesting case study I came across lately.

It's a game... a surprisingly simple game. All you need to do is to drag trash-talking, squirming and giggling gobs of goo in order to erect a tower. You must build it well and solidly or it will fall. The higher the tower, the better you score.

"Tower of Goo" was downloaded over 100,000 times within months of hitting the net (a remarkable figure in gaming-industry terms) and has received enthusiastic reviews from the net-gaming community. I tried playing it a couple of times. As simple as it might sound - there are no levels, you can't die, it is virtually never ending - it is neither boring nor easy!

But the interesting point for me about this story is that the Tower of Goo was created, designed and written in less than a week, by one person. Moreover, the same holds true for some 50 other games. All of these games were created as part of the Experimental Gameplay Project (www.experimentalgameplay.com) at Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center.

The project started in the Spring of 2005 with the goal of discovering and rapidly prototyping as many new forms of gameplay as possible. A team of four graduate students (Kyle Gabler, Kyle Gray, Matt Kucic and Shalin Shodhan), worked in a room for a semester with three rules. Each game:

1. Must be made in less than seven days;
2. Must be made by exactly one person;
3. Must be based on a common theme, i.e. "gravity", "vegetation", "swarms", etc.

The four students published a comprehensive and detailed analysis of their achievement. Reviewing all of it might be a tad long, so for now I'll focus only on some aspects of the setup stage.

1. Constrain Creativity
The team's most successful games grew out of specific themes like "toys", or "gravity" or "swarming". As they report: "Somehow, it became easier to be creative when there were restrictions in place."

2.Enforce Short Development Cycles (More Time is not More Quality)
The team found that generally any gameplay idea could be prototyped effectively in less than one week. Extra time tends to yield diminishing returns. As they report: "Surprisingly, we found that there was no correlation between time spent in development and how successful the game ultimately turned out."

3. Gather a Kickass Team and an Objective
a. Kickass Team - Each member of the team was comfortable with all aspects of game development i.e. programming, art, sound, and everything else that went into the final product. Although development was done individually, the team did cooperate in what we might call "non standard team work" (see below).
b. Objective Advisor - The advisor's tasks, as he himself (Jesse Schell) testifies, were "To make sure that the team tried several different techniques... that the team was learning from their mistakes...that no one dwelled too long on an idea that wasn't working out... I gave suggestions along the way about how to improve the games as well, but mostly I tried to stay out of the way."

4. Develop in Parallel for Maximum Splatter
The minute the team was assembled, they stopped working with each other.

As it turned the benefits of not collaborating were too great to ignore:

-Risk Mitigation; By developing four prototypes simultaneously, the team could make risky design decisions with the comfort that at least one or two were likely to be successful.

- Friendly Competition; Everyone benefited from being kept on their toes. Like capitalism!

- Wider Thematic Exploration; Four minds all focused on the same theme forced the team to plumb the depths of each topic for fear they all make the same game. This forced the team into some rewarding creative realms avoiding obvious points of attack.

- Sharing and Caring; Though the team didn't share code (by choice, not requirement), they found it helpful to share concepts and understanding into a cumulative pool of knowledge. If one team member, for instance, discovered an effective way to represent spring systems, everyone would benefit.

- Non-standard teamwork; One of the interesting insights the team discovered was that teamwork was most valuable at the beginnings and ends of each cycle (week). In the beginning of each cycle, the team was useful for helping to solidify and compare ideas. At the development stage teamwork was more distractive than helpful. By the end of each cycle, the competitive flare of teamwork would again help finalize the work.


"The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that shackle the spirit. " - Igor Stravinsky (1882 - 1971), Poetics of Music

* * *
ASIT for new products development: http://www.start2innovate.com
ASIT for problem solving http://www.start2think.com

Being Copied (Paul Graham)

Being Copied (Paul Graham): "Worry most about how to make something people want. If you're building anything good enough to copy, you're way ahead."

When people complain about each other, make them work together.

How many times do you hear one department of your company use another department as the reason why they cannot be successful? This indicates a need for change. I find blame is the path of least resistance and then the tennis match begins, swatting the reason why things are not working back and forth.

If both parties wprk on the same side of the net, then what?

Thus, one of my maxims: When people complain about each other, they should work together and share accountability. It may fly in the face of all your company's procedures and org structure but I find people generally want to succeed and usually will if barriers are removed.

The "Pink Slip" should not be a surprise

In the past few years, several times I've been asked "how to fire someone", and the first question I usually reply with is "do you have an HR department?" Amazingly the answer is usually "yes". The HR department is there to serve and the result is that HR builds an administrative, red-tape type of image rather than a place you can turn to for help.

When people ask me how to fire someone, they are usually looking for the magic statement that makes it painless for them. Here's the horse-sense that I use:

1. Involve HR. Your HR department should be ready to assist you through the process. If they are not helping you, at a minimum keep them informed BEFORE each step you take and be sure to keep an audit trail of your communication.
   
2. Give the employee the benefit of the doubt. First, always make sure that the problem is not with you. You need to remember that you are terminating someone's employment which will have lasting a lasting effect on them. I suggest you have a meeting with the employee and clearly state that they are not performing as expected, good HR departments will have a form or template for you to use; it may be called a "Disciplinary Action Form" or something to that affect. If there is more than one problem area, list them all individually. Plainly state when you expect to see improvement - immediately or within X days. This is where you decide how severe the message needs to be. Also state that if improvement is not seen within the stated timeframe, the next action will be (termination, final warning, etc.). Personally, I usually don't have a follow up or warning meeting. Be sure to have everything you plan to discuss documented before the meeting, keep your discussion to the points you have documented, and ask the employee sign the document. If they refuse to sign, note that and sign and date the document yourself.
   
3. Use a sharp axe and swing it with conviction. You have documented the performance problem, informed the employee, and issued requirements for improvement. If the problem has been corrected, stop here and congratulate yourself (and thank the employee who improved). If things have not improved then it is time to sever the relationship and for both parties to move on. This part is the most nerve-wracking for most managers but now that you have prepared well, it will actually be the easiest. Keys in this meeting: (a) Respect privacy. Use an office or meeting room that is private and reserve at least 30 min after your meeting for the employee to recover. (b) Keep it short and to the point. In my experience most employees will be surprised despite the fact that you laid the terms out earlier. They will also want to start a debate about how invalid your view of their performance is. Do not engage in this conversation, this is why you had the previous meeting - as a warning. Your only response should be to let them know that is why you had the previous meeting and that you have not seen the needed improvement on the items discussed in that meeting. (c) Have the DisciplinaryAction Form that they signed in the meeting to show them but do not discuss it. (d) Maintain compassion. You need to remember that despite how unpleasant this is for you, it is worse for them but again, don't start any discussions.
4. Respect their needs. This will be traumatic for them. No matter how dysfunctional the employee was or is, arrange ahead of time to have an HR member available for any counseling after you deliver the message and make sure that the employee knows they can have time to themselves (because you reserved extra time for them).
5. Think about peers. Be prepared to deliver a message or answer questions about what happened to the company or employees peers. The details of why the employee was let go are personal and not to be disclosed. If your organization is prone to rumor or fear then I suggest sending a message out announcing the employee's last day and that you wish them the best in their future endeavors, HR can help you craft the message. Informally make yourself available for questions but do not ever discuss details, your may be violating HR polices and you will ultimately be respected for it. Just let people know it was a decision you had to make, that it was difficult, and that you worked with HR (if you did). I also tend to declare that there are no other terminations planned to defuse any fears of "cutbacks".
   

I hope that this helps anyone that comes across it.

Cutting a frog's legs off does not make it deaf.

Story:
A researcher puts a frog on a table, the frog just sits there. The researcher then, with his mouth just inches away from the frog's head, yells at the top of his lungs: "JJJUUUUMMPP!" The startled frog jumps forward.

The researcher amputates one of the frog’s legs and repeats the test: "JJJUUUUMMPP!" The startled frog jumps forward.

The process is repeated with the same results until there is only one leg left, when the researcher yells "jump" the frog attempts to jump and hobbles forward.

The final leg is removed, "JJJUUUUMMPP!" but nothing happens. No movement from the frog. The researcher's boss comes and asks "What have you learned today?" to which he replies: "cutting a frog's legs off causes it to go deaf."

I used to work in cancer research and was given this example of false positives. I'm posting this because it seems that despite how knowledgeable you are or how long "you've been in the business", even the best people readily accept things that they cannot explain simply because the symptoms can no longer be seen or felt.

ACS :: Glossary Search: "false negative: test result implying a condition does not exist when in fact it does.
false positive: test result implying a condition exists when in fact it does not."

How to demotivate

Fast Company Now: "'Nothing demotivates people like the equal treatment of unequals. When you hire a bozo and treat him the same as a rock star, it deflates the rock star.'
--Joe Kraus, founder and CEO, JotSpot

From Fast Company's recently released book, The Rules of Business: 55 Essential Ideas to Help Smart People (and Organizations) Perform At Their Best"

You cannot control what you are not measuring

The title of this post is something I live by and have trouble getting people to actually understand. Related to this I read a great statement on Seth Godin's blog that illustrates horse-sense.

Seth's Blog: Making your numbers: "When increasing the metric doesn't increase the benefit, then you have the wrong metric."