If you are like many businesses, you may have a couple poor employees — consistently under-performing.

Some would suggest that they need to be pruned in order for the business to remain healthy and grow. Philosophically I agree — however, before pruning ask yourself why they are under-performing. Here are a couple thoughts for consideration.

Is it because they are a round peg in a square hole. Do they have all the character elements but yet still aren’t successful in their role. Maybe you need to consider a change in role to one where some of their strengths may have the opportunity to shine.

I once had a team member who had all the character elements but just wasn’t succeeding in the marketing area. His attention to detail wasn’t strong, which was fundamental when proofing ads and hitting deadlines. So we moved him into a sales role where he had administrative support. Because of his character and personality, he quickly rose to become one of the top performers in that new role. If we had pruned too early, we would have lost a valuable asset and who knows what we would have gotten in return. If they have the right character — look for a win. Remember, most skills can be taught.

Or perhaps they made an error at a critical time. Maybe they failed to hit a deadline or blew a key initiative — resulting in a loss of confidence. The residual effect over time, is that fellow employees will see them as a weak link. Possibly you will too.

Ask yourself what it would take to rehabilitate that team member. Remember, at one time they were considered a valuable member of the team, but once they have fallen from grace, it may be too much for them to get back on track on their own.

What can you do as a leader to help lift them up? If they are worth saving, how could you help them become successful again. Maybe a special assignment that leverages their strengths. Maybe they just need a show of confidence from the key leader to help them over the hump and let others take notice of your faith. This doesn’t mean you lower your standards or expectations — maybe just a little personal coaching to get them over the rough spot.

My Perspective: Before you prune, make sure that is the best step.

The key thing to remember is that at one time virtually every employee was deemed to be a good fit — that’s why they were hired in the first place. So before you take the harsh step of pruning — look for the upside.

After all, if you spent time working to improve a high performer, you might get a little incremental improvement. However, if you can help a poor performer become a high performer — think of the positive impact on the organization and the time saved to find a new person to replace them.

Then if it still doesn’t work, when you prune you will know you have given them the best of yourself  personally — and that is a sign of a great leader.

SurveyGizmo had a service outage this weekend. It inconvenienced their customers. As a result they built customer loyalty.

On the surface that doesn’t make sense — but the manner in which they dealt with the situation demonstrated the character of their company and their commitment to service. You can see their communication here.

My Perspective: SurveyGizmo did number of things right. Here are a few that jumped out in no particular order. Let me know if you see more.

1. They communicated quickly and honestly. I didn’t even know there was a problem, but yet they communicated the issue to everyone and didn’t try to hide the problem.
2. They were transparent and thorough in their explanation. I have a complete understanding in practical terms what happened and why.
3. They shared a solution to avoid the issue in the future. I have confidence that this issue won’t happen again.
4. They accepted full responsibility for the issue and didn’t try to shift the blame elsewhere.
5. The message was from the CEO and they offered a number where you could call for more answers.
6. They identified any lingering issues and what they were doing to resolve them.
7. They offered workable, alternative solutions to customers to address the problem until everything was resolved.
8. They made me feel like I was an insider.

Overall, they convinced me by their actions that they are committed to supporting my efforts no matter what happens. They will be there for me when I need their service.

So rather than being upset about this issue — I now have a stronger, more trusting relationship with SurveyGizmo than I had before.

Do your service recovery initiatives do as well? If not, have a look at how you handle issues and discover how you can turn adversity into opportunity.

Most of us have regularly scheduled meetings that were created to provide updates on something to someone. Initially they were intended to communicate, inform and move the business forward — but lately you have been wondering whether they are a valuable use of time. Some have degenerated into boring and unproductive time wasters — but they continue because they were once deemed important.

One of the main reasons standing meetings degenerate is that they become common place and people tend not to prepare for a standing meeting as much as for a specific meeting that has been called for a specific purpose.

My Perspective: Here are a few tips to get those standing meetings back on track.

1. Re-evaluate the purpose of the meeting. Is it inertia that has keep them going or is there still a purpose in getting together. If so, get clarity of the expected outcomes that are expected.
2. Make sure people have a specific role in the meeting. If they don’t — maybe they don’t need to be there and could use their time elsewhere to add more value. Too often we invite people  just to keep them “in the loop”. Look around the room and evaluate what value each person is adding and receiving for their attendance — and then pare back the invite list.
3. Insist that every meeting has specific topics for discussion that have been identified in advance — versus the  standard “update agenda”. Put the onus on attendees to commit in advance to the topic they will be sharing. Monotonous “updates” don’t do anyone much good.
4. Make sure action items are identified and summarized at the end of the meeting — then hold each other accountable for delivery. Too many meetings are “updates’ and never seem to generate any action. If no action is required, you have to wonder what the purpose was for the meeting.
5. Be prepared to cancel the meeting if there is no reason to meet. When people leave a meeting feeling they have wasted their time — they feel dis-respected and dis-engaged. However, if they know that real movement takes place — then they will arrive energized and engaged, ready to get something done.

Today, customers are no longer looking for great customer service — they want more. Today customers demand a great customer experience and will not settle for anything less.

It is no longer good enough for companies to provide good customers service — rather, companies need to create memorable interactions with customers that help establish a loyal relationship and promote brand advocacy.

Creating a memorable customer experience is based on the creation of an ideal experience that your customers would want to have throughout their relationship with your company. These interactions take place on a number of channels such as in person, over the phone, through email, and on social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

Successful customer experiences are scalable and can be managed consistently across multiple channels. Your customers experience must be unique. And, for it to be successful it needs to be clearly defined so that each one of your employees understands how to deliver the experience you want to create for your customers.

10 tips to improve your customer experience

Here are 10 ways that you can improve and refine your customer experience and improve your relationship with customers:

1. Make your customer experience clear: A great customer experience must be scalable across your company, consistent, and be easily understood and implemented by your employees. Have you defined the key elements that must be delivered to every customer? Review your customer experience documents and ask your employees if they understand what is expected of them.
2. Make your customer experience simple: If your customer experience is too complex, your employees will have difficulty delivering a consistent experience. Keep it simple. Do your employees understand what is expected of them? Are there too many rules? Consider relaxing the constraints on your employees so they can focus on creating an experience that creates a positive customer outcome rather than simply following a list of rules.
3. Define customer experience by channel: Customer experiences will vary by the channel that customers use to interact with your company. In person and online experiences are different and this needs to be reflected in how companies approach their customers on each channel.  Does your ideal customer experience vary by channel? If not, clearly outline the experience you want to create for each platform and point of interaction with your customers.
4. Address the emotional need: The focus of customer experience management needs to be on addressing your customer’s emotional need. Do you understand your customer’s emotional needs? What are you doing to ensure their emotional need is addressed?
5. Make sure all levels of your organization are involved: Creating a truly great customer experience is a company wide effort. There needs to be a consistent experience across the board. Does your company have an internal feedback process in place? How do you know your customers experience is consistent? Implement a regular review process and collect feedback about the customer experience.
6. Get your employees to buy in: If your employees do not buy in, your customers experience will suffer. If employees are not buying in, it is often a sign that your customer experience is too complex, or worse, isn’t relevant to the customer. What are you doing to ensure that your employees are buying in and creating the experience your customers want?
7. Talk to your customers: Ask your customers what they want. Be direct — ask them what your company can do to improve their experience. These conversations will help to build relationships. What can you do to better understand your customer’s emotional need? Create feedback channels that will help you capture and respond to your customer’s emotional needs.
8. Test your customer experience: Before launching any new customer experience initiatives, ask some of your customers to test drive your approach and provide feedback. You will be surprised what you will learn and uncover some of the oversights that you have missed. Plus you’ll avoid the expense of a false start that doesn’t really resonate with customers.
9. Narrow your focus: If you do not understand your ideal customer, then the experience you have created for them will be off target. Who are your customers? Do you have an ideal customer profile? What do your customers want to get out of their interaction and relationship with your company? Offer incentives to customers to get their opinion through surveys and focus groups.
10. Measure the experience: Measure, measure, measure. If you do not have the tools in place to measure your customer’s experience, then you will not have the ability to refine the experience and gain new insights. What tools are you using to measure your customers experience? Develop a system to measure your customer’s experience.

Creating a highly engaging customer experience will lead to better relationships with customers that will not only generate consistent income, but also develop brand advocates out of current customers that will help generate a new stream of business.

Recently had lunch with a client — we agreed to meet at restaurant near their office at noon.

I arrived 15 minutes early due to favourable traffic conditions — so I checked for a reservation (there was none) and asked to be seated.

About 12:10 I was a bit concerned. My client is very punctual, so my first thought was not that they were running late — but had they arrived and we had missed each other.

A quick tour of the restaurant proved me right. She was sitting at another area of the restaurant wondering the same thing. I am also habitually punctual and always call when delayed.

By the time we connected and were re-seated it was now after 12:15. Both had afternoon commitments.

The Manager came by to apologize and when the bill came, the entire lunch was complementary due to the aggravation and inconvenience.

So how did the restaurant do? Did they put the customer first? Did they create a “Woo Hoo” experience?

My Perspective: As you might guess, I feel they missed some opportunities.

Obviously there were some issues at the front desk that need to be addressed, but that is not what I want to talk about. I’d like to think about the end result — a free lunch. I should mention it was a simple meal with no alcohol, so the cost was not significant — approx $30.00.

I think the Manager gave too much away. Rather than giving us a free lunch, a significant discount would have been fine. That would have shown they appreciated the situation they had created yet they could still have made some revenue. But even that point is debatable.

The real loss was not providing us with an incentive to return and experience the type of service they were capable to providing.

They should have given us each a coupon/certificate of some kind for a discount or free appetizer with a comment something like this;

“I apologize that today we failed in our promise of an exceptional experience. In addition to the discount to address our failure today, I would like to give you each a coupon to entice you to come back again and give us the opportunity to demonstrate the exceptional service we are known for.”

With the discount we were very pleased, but had no compelling reason to return. They fixed our current problem — but weren’t thinking about the future.

With the coupon, the restaurant had now created a reason to choose their restaurant above another. They had made a commitment to do better and had created some positive pressure to get us to return to see if they were up to the challenge.

So when you are dealing with a recovery — are you just looking to correct the current situation? Or do you have an intentional plan to create a positive reason for the customer to return to your location and give you another opportunity to demonstrate that you deserve their business.

Make sure you don’t leave any lost opportunity on the table.

January 15, 2009 marks the date of one of the most famous disaster aversions in history. US Air Flight 1549 made an emergency landing in the Hudson River approximately 6 minutes after take-off and saved 155 people.

Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullivan might not look like the typical corporate leader, but the skills he demonstrated that day provide a key lesson for all leaders.

Imagine, you were Captain Sullivan, when you recognized that you were in serious trouble over one of the most populated areas in the world. What questions might have been running through your mind?

• How many lives are at stake? The families that would be affected.
• How will my family be affected?
• How can this be happening to me? I can’t believe that a flock of birds has taken out my entire engine system?
• When do we land? Which airport?
• What are the rest of the crew doing? Are they looking after the passengers?
• What am I going to do? Can I do what needs to be done? Was I trained for this?
• How fast? How slow? What rate of descent? Nose up or down?
• What happens if I screw up and everyone dies?

The list is virtually endless.

But Captain Sullivan was able to successfully ditch the plane and everyone survived. In under 3 minutes — the time between the bird strike and the landing — Captain Sullivan needed to process an untold number of variables and outside influences and make the decisions that ultimately saved lives.

That’s leadership.

My Perspective: When we are faced with a leadership decision, it is imperative that we focus on the issues that are critical and block out the noise that is constantly crashing the decision-making process.

Captain Sullivan made very few critical decisions that day. He quickly evaluated and decided which option to pursue for landing. He focused on the key issues that were his responsibility for landing the plane. And he cleared everything else from his mind so he could focus on the decisions that were critical.

How often do we as leaders get so caught up in the non-essential chatter that surrounds decision-making that we get distracted from the core elements that we must focus on.

Captain Sullivan was calm, clear and focused on his task.

Blocking out the noise can only happen when we have clarity on what we stand for and where we are going as an organization. The tough decisions of leadership can only be made when we have clarity around our values and the purpose of the organization.

Leaders need to develop the ability to filter out the chatter and focus on the critical elements.

Recently I was working with a client and was reminded just how destructive email can be when used incorrectly.

Like many companies, their standard form of communication is email. They are spread across Canada and internationally. People work together who never meet, and the default form of communication for all issues is email.

The problem is that people will often say things by email they would never say to your face. People use email to avoid dealing with conflict — it’s easier to fire off an email than deal with the issue head-on. Plus, there is always a record — the ultimate “cover your ass”.

Too often emails don’t get at the substance of the issue — or important elements do not get addressed because they rightly should not be put on paper. Words on paper can often be misunderstood by the recipient, causing escalation when none is needed.

My Perspective: Leaders build rapport based on emotional connections. If you really want to build relationships — you won’t do it unless you create an emotional connection with people — and that requires individualized interactions.

Here are a few thoughts to keep in mind the next time you think about sending an email when a phone call might work better.

1. When you speak to someone personally, you have the opportunity to build rapport with your colleagues. The emotional context of the conversation is much easier to communicate. Too often the tone of an email is misunderstood. On the phone you have the modulation of your voice and it’s easier to communicate the feelings behind the words.
2. The phone allows you to listen and build on their contribution more efficiently.
3. If you misspeak, you have the opportunity to immediately address the situation. It doesn’t create an opportunity for the recipient to fester and contemplate their response. Although email does offer time for reflection, it too often is used to launch a counter-attack.
4. Email prolongs discussion. I am sure we have all experienced entire conversations played out via email, with the entire company copied, looking for input from anyone and listening to no one.
5. It’s not always what you say, but how you say it. Electronic communication removes the emotion and personality and we are left with the stark words. This is especially problematic when people are trying to resolve problems or communicate the subtleties of thought or emotion.

I agree that email has an important role in communicating — as do Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and a host of other electronic channels. They have fundamentally changed how we communicate. They may deepen and broaden and existing relationship — but they cannot, on their own, create a deep relationship with a real emotional connection.

The digital channels cannot replace the live emotional connection we can create face to face or on the phone. That’s hard to replicate electronically.

Often if you ask a colleague who is having some difficulties with another colleague if they have picked up the phone — too often the response is “no”.

So the next time you are preparing to dash off an email — ask yourself, could this situation be better served through a phone call (or even a face to face). Then pick up the phone and build a relationship.

When discussing leadership, we often hear words like teamwork and collaboration. People tend to shy away from words like conflict and disagreement. But are these bad?

Strong leaders encourage disagreement, because it ensures that everyone on the team is using their full potential to ensure decisions are bullet-proofed.

We are all trained from an early age to defer to authority. however, people who are closer to the issue or opportunity often have a different, more informed, perspective than more senior people.

My Perspective: If you are always getting agreement to your thoughts and ideas, then your people aren’t contributing their own valued ideas. As a leader you need to ensure that your team feels safe disagreeing and challenging your thinking. If your team automatically defers to the boss, then you and the team will miss out on critical input and thinking.

Make it easy for people to speak up with a dissenting opinion in a safe environment. Actively ask for their input — and then ask again to demonstrate you are serious about hearing their thoughts. Disagreeing with the boss requires courage, so recognize people when they voice a dissenting opinion and challenge your thinking with good ideas of their own.

When discussing projects, share your  comments as initial thoughts as opposed to formed ideas, then ask for input in developing the ideas further. This will encourage people to build on the thinking versus just agree.

Make sure that you don’t react negatively if someone disagrees, even if you think it is a bad idea. This will just shut people down in the future. It’s much better to allow the group to determine that the idea doesn’t make sense based on evaluation — and better ideas that come forward.

Lastly, never confuse dissent or disagreement with disrespect. Disrespect doesn’t belong in any discussion.

Recently I executed an employee engagement survey across a client organization. When I compared the senior executive team with the blended front-line results I discovered a very troubling outcome.

The senior executives were almost unanimous in the belief that they had done an excellent job of communicating the core values of the organization — yet results from the front-line indicated exactly the opposite.

Even worse, some of the comments indicated that the values the front-line were observing were inconsistent with the “advertised” values.

Too many organizations believe that the values are clear in their organization. However, all too often, the values that are communicated are coming via actions rather than words — or the actions speak louder than the words.

Here are few questions to ask yourself.

• Have you crystallized your values and written them down?
• Does everyone at the senior level of the organization agree and commit to live by these values?
• Did you involve your employees? Were they involved in establishing the organizational values? Do they feel ownership?
• Did you solicit buy-in across the organization and give them an opportunity to discuss them and what they mean in their daily lives?
• Do you regularly communicate the values? Do you explain your decisions in the context of your values so everyone understand how the values come to life?
• Do you live your values? Actions speak louder than words — are your values being demonstrated on a daily basis in your decision-making?

My Perspective: If you don’t have clearly defined core values, this is a missed opportunity to influence and engage employees. Too often organizations have a communications plan — but it doesn’t do a very good job of communicating internally.

Having a clear set of values also let’s people know what kind of organization is being built and they have an opportunity to decide whether they want to belong to that kind of organization. And in return, you have the evaluate people for a good fit with your team.

Clarity is key.

Are you finding that you are not hearing the fresh ideas and new thinking in your organization that you would like. Are you often faced with sitting through presentations that sound like the same ideas rehashed again and again.

Well maybe you are burying good ideas under a bad process.

Before you hear their ideas — are your teams spending time getting them “right”? Are they vetted, reviewed, revised and debated around in circles until all the edginess and excitement has been “fine-tuned” right out of existence.

Imagine if ideas for the iPhone had been fine-tuned to death before they were presented to the boss. Of if space travel had been fine-tuned before making the suggestion to president Kennedy?

My Perspective: As a leader it is your job to foster an environment where good ideas become great — not where good ideas get ground down into mundane ideas.

Instead of insisting that ideas are thoroughly vetted before your hear them, instead find ways to be part of idea generation sessions where you have the opportunity to hear raw, unfiltered ideas that need championing, not fine-tuning.

Skip the fancy presentations, remove the filters, roll up your sleeves and create idea incubation sessions where people present raw ideas and concepts that aren’t well thought out, but still hold the promise of greatness. Then embrace some of these ideas and help them grow with your support.

Just think, one of those ideas might turn into the next Google, Zappos or iPhone.

Just imagine