simplerich

A friend of mine sent me this and it is/was timely and sums up how I felt about New Year’s Resolutions this year.

I didn’t make any resolutions this year. I instead thought I should work on personal improvement overall… Not one area, but generally. I wasn’t clear on a process but it was starting with better health, and I started eating more in line with that. More vegetables, less eating out, more cooking from fresh, less meat, and smaller portions. I quit my gym membership, but that was a money thing. I wasn’t using it any more so paying was stupid. I’ve got home gym stuff I can use and it’s already paid for. I plan to continue the work on my NaNoWriMo novel, it needs work. Just lots of stuff to do, but no plan. I know me and that was, already a recipe for failure. If I don’t have a plan of attack I tend to flounder. It’s why I was so successful learning to run with the Couch to 5k Program. It was very structured. I do well with structure.

Enter Train your Monkeys.

An inner “monkey” is a drastically undeveloped part of yourself. You may think at it like a long term goal which was never attained. Or like a deeply buried dream you never dared to dream until the end. Or something you declared to yourself you’re going to follow up through, but never did.

A “monkey” is a goal frozen in its evolution. Like a genome which was never able to reach the human form. It was only strong enough to mimic its human shape but at the core level it’s just an unfinished project.

That is perfect! He’s got a previous post where he is going to Train 12 Monkeys this year, one a month. That’s a little more erm… that time line won’t work for what I’m going for with some of them, but I like the idea. I also like the idea that if I can pick a certain number and areas I can post progress as it happens… some sort of bloggy-accountability. So, look for me to be listing my monkeys soon.

One tool I know I’ll be using is the Seinfeld Calendar. First — I need to get a calendar. This is one where online isn’t as good. I want it on the wall and I want the big visible to everybody checks on it.

I’m excited. I’ve gone from vague numinous thoughts to something a little more concrete. Yeah. I know we’re all supposed to start on January 1st, but I was so incredibly sick then… it wasn’t a good time to start. I want this to be well thought out. So, first step is to name the Monkeys and post to you guys what my goals are and how I hope to measure them. I may or may not give the metrics and time lines on some of them… I haven’t decided yet. What I will do is have the post where I name the monkeys done by next Monday. Come back and see what the monkeys are.

You got any monkeys that need training? Let me know!  I’d love to hear about them!

I haven’t blogged in ages. During November it was because I was participating in 2010′s NaNoWriMo event in which writers all over the world attempt to write a 50,000 word novel during the 30 days of November. I managed to complete the word count in the time… but I don’t feel like the story’s finished. Rather than re-hash the whole idea I’ll aim you towards the post where I talk about that over at simple-writing. I encourage you to go read the most recent post if you’ve read the previous posts there and are wondering what happened next.

Work since the step down, I hesitate to use the word demotion as it was only in title and pay, but in personal and professional satisfaction I’m much happier now. I believe I was promoted to a place of increased happiness by stepping down from a place of increased stress, what was I saying again? Ah yes… Work since the change in position has been interesting in the Chinese sense of the word. “May you live in interesting times.” I lost an employee. I gained an amazing employee as my assistant manager. He’s every bit as good as I am when it comes to salesmanship. For the first time ever I’ve got an employee who can beat me in $/ticket. (That’s how much each receipt is worth and is used to measure the sales associate’s salesmanship along with the items/ticket.) It took him two months to catch me, and in his third month here, this past month, he passed me. I was elated. So was he.

Other employees watched and one wondered aloud if I wasn’t threatened by him. “Aren’t you afraid he wants your job?” I was asked.

“Not at all! I KNOW he wants my job. I also know that I’m not a sales person. I’m the manager who also sells. So just being a great salesman doesn’t automatically make him a great manager, or even a good one.”

“I’d be afraid of him if I were you.”

“You’d be nuts if you were. I hope he keeps trying to beat me. It makes both of us better. Makes both of us try harder.”

We had a sales contest, just a local one at the store I put on. See who can sell the most of a product that’s a good product at a good price, easy add-on material. We tied. He was crushed. The other employees were elated. They were scared to death he’d win and I’d be crushed. So, when we got more in (we stopped the contest only because we sold 4x more than our stocking level in a week and ran out.) he started a “Sudden Death” re-match to see who would win. He couldn’t abide a tie. He won and has been very gracious about it, but he’s thrilled. It’s so exciting to see an employee so excited to sell, to excel, and to want to be better than me rather than just saying, as many have, “He’s the best. Just let him do it. I can’t ever be that good.” He’s a breath of fresh air.

I’m thrilled to have him on my crew.

I’ve been manager here for three weeks now and I think the number one thing that’s made a difference in the crew hasn’t been inspiring speeches, reams of paperwork filled out on them, or the wealth of memos and written instructions I’ve left, but is instead, the example I set. Surprisingly this most basic piece of management advice was Rosa Say’s most recent blog topic over at Talking Story:

It’s advice all managers hear, and will never question, for it sounds so sensible, so right. “Set a good example.”

As I inherited this crew from the previous manager there were a lot of cultural things that were different from the way I do things and the way I wanted things done. The previous manager wasn’t doing things wrong necessarily, just differently. I wanted things done MY way. Not out of a power trip thing, but out of an “I do things differently” sort of sensibility. 

We have a book we use every shift at the start and ending of shift change. It would wind up wherever it wound up. There was no place for it. So, every shift change started with looking for the book. It was a minor time-waster, and a minor aggravation, but it was unnecessary. So, I made a place for it. I made a place for almost everything behind the counter and at the meeting I walked through the importance of being able to find things to looking competent and feeling confident behind the counter. It’s frustrating to be looking for the stapler when there’s a line. So, after going over it and talking about how important it was to me. (Yeah, I know, doesn’t sound important, but it’s a safe/easy example.) Then after that I made sure I put everything back where it went every time I used it. If I found it somewhere else I put it where it went. I didn’t say anything to them, I just moved it. If I saw them put it somewhere else, almost everybody had a favorite place to put it but no two favorite places matched up, I would, while talking to them about something so I know I had their attention, move it back where I wanted it. I’d put it there and extend my hand as if I were saying “Stay!” to a dog. In under a week everything stayed where it was supposed to be.

This sort of thing is minor I know, but I’ve applied the same way of doing things to everything I want changed, steady, unrelenting pressure by example. I greet every customer every time. I make sure to BE the behavior I want to see. I make sure they see it. I make sure I don’t take any “warm body” days right now. (A warm body day is one of those days when you’re just not feeling it so you sort of coast through the day as a warm body, not bringing your A game, but you’re there so it counts right? No, not really.) 

How’s it going? I think the store’s numbers show that it’s working.  Customer service is improving, the store’s appearance is improving, and it’s happening by my making sure I’m modeling the behavior I want to see more of. If I forget to do something I apologize to them and fix it. I draw attention to where I dropped the ball, and they’re not stupid, they get it that if I’ll point out where I made a mistake I’ll certainly notice where they did. This also means to them that I don’t have a set of rules for them and one for me.

Some managers do the “do as I say, not as I do,” thing when managing. They’ll take short-cuts or leave out steps they want their employees to follow, and I’ll admit to having done it in the past, but not when I’ll get caught. I know. That sounds terrible. Just like a parent can drop the F-bomb when they’re in the car alone if they do it when the kids in the car it’d be pretty disingenuous of them to think the kids wouldn’t pick up on it. So, the more I make sure I do it right all the time, the more likely I am to always do it right as well. It becomes a habit, and my habits will, hopefully be the habits my employees pick up on as well. 

So hats off to Rosa for her timely post. And all you managers out there… if you do as you say too things will go better for everybody! 

Today I had my first employee meeting with the crew of my new home and I think it went well. I’d be curious to know how they thought it went, but they’re still a little hesitant to talk to me yet. In their minds I just fired their old manager. That or I was demoted from a District Manager position to take their old manager’s job from him. Either way I’m still a little unapproachable feeling to them. That will probably get better with time.
The meeting was a lot more top down than a lot of my meetings will be in the future. There was very limited time that I could have it in and I had an awful lot of information to go over with them. Some were simple stylistic differences between me and their previous managers. I wanted to make sure they knew what my priorities were so they’d know my primary focus. Our priorities are very different and I wanted the crew to know mine.

At one point in the meeting toward the end one of the employees, when I stopped to take a drink and inhale a couple breaths, raised her hand tentatively, “I have a question?”

It wasn’t the question part of the meeting but I didn’t want to squash the first person to show any interest in speaking up so I replied with, “We’ll always have questions at the end but go for it. I can take another drink while I listen. Thanks for the break, my voice is tired.” I did a little laugh and waited.
“Some customers are really annoying when they ask… (whatever it was they were asking).”

“Oh! Well, see, here’s the thing,” I take another drink and pause as I think how I want to say this, “Customer service jobs are a lot like musical taste. Some people like Rock and some like Hip Hop. Some people think classical music is the bee’s knees and some people LOVE Jazz. And none of those people are more or less right than anybody else. Customer Service, and that’s what we are. We’re in retail and our job is to help the customer find what they want and make sure they leave happy. Now, I’m not being a smart-alek or a jerk when I say this because we need all sorts of people in this world, but if you really believe that customers are annoying then maybe Customer Service isn’t your calling. Now, I’m not saying it is or it isn’t, but if you dislike the customers then maybe a job where you don’t have to work with customers is a better idea. We’ve got custodians that have almost no interaction with customers, and if you’re interested in a transfer I’ll see what I can do.” I stopped to take another drink, holding up a hand to indicate I wasn’t finished yet.

She interjected, back-pedaling quickly, “I didn’t mean they’re annoying…” I swallowed my water quickly, shaking my head.

“No, I get it. You’re asked the same question over and over again, day after day and it gets repetitious right?”

“Exactly!” She said, pleased to see I understood.

“Perfect! That means you have new customers who haven’t asked you yet. This is the perfect time for you to help someone new and impress them with how we’re able to make this the best shopping experience they have all week. We have to answer those questions with a smile. It may be the fifteenth time you’ve heard that exact same question this week, but it’s probably the first time they’ve asked you today. Please, answer it like you care about the person asking it. Smile, nod a little bit, lean forward slightly, look at their face at least even if you don’t want to make eye-contact, and then, when they know they have your full attention, help them. Answer their question. You now know something about them you didn’t know before. Next time you see them, remember that question and call back to it. Mention it in someway, let them know you remember them and their question. Let them know the product’s not in, or hasn’t come in yet, or did come in, or we got something similar or that you’re still keeping an eye out. That does a lot of things. It lets them know they are important to you. It lets them know you haven’t forgotten them. It also, and this is the key part that addresses your question directly… it stops them from asking the question again. You’re anticipating their need and addressing it pro-actively. EVERYBODY likes that.”(1)

We then went on to talk about the various questions and I suggested they practice giving directions to the store coming from different directions because that’s one we get a lot and maybe they could jot down directions and put the different directions in our Pass Down Log so we could all help each other. (That was fresh in my mind because I had to interrupt the meeting to take a call and give directions to the store.)

I won’t lie… I will be watching for more chances to help that employee quit thinking Customers are a nuisance to be handled rather than an opportunity to be taken. There have been customer complaints, but I suspect most of the crew is willing to come around to my way of thinking.

(1) Two of the people at the meeting “got it” and I could see them nodding in agreement with me as I spoke. Two were thinking, and I’m SURE they were thinking it, that I don’t know what they have to deal with on a day to day basis since I’m all supervisory and I’ll come around to their way of thinking soon enough. Now, I know I know what they go through. I’ve worked in this store as Sales Associate and Manager for 7 years. Someone remind me to link to my meeting outline and see if I can’t dig up the source. It’s pretty good and I use it all the time in all my meetings.

This is part 2 in my short series of posts revolving around my job change. They’re a cross between a farewell letter to my managers and a helpful advice from a lame-duck district manager. I’m torn between looking forward to the challenge of it, missing the people involved with my old job, and obviously the income change will take some getting used to. When you go from being over 11 stores to being over 1 there’s a definite change in disposable income! This post will be about the priorities of a manager. My last post was a bit rambling, but was supposed to be about the manager needing to advocate for their store. My hope is that these posts give me a sense of closure to a job/position I’ve held for 10 years that I’m walking away from now.

Priorities.

We pay attention to the things our bosses pay attention to. Sure, the memos from the office and from our boss may talk about things like improved customer service, better cleaning, more consistent branding, and being friendlier, but what do the bosses talk to us about when they come to the store? What does the office send follow up things about? What are they looking at? What gets us in trouble? What are we accountable for?

If they talk about the customer service part of things only at employee meetings, but then the rest of the time we talk to them harp on us that our paperwork isn’t legible or how many widgets a week are we cranking out then we have to assume that customer service is something we talk about, but widget cranking is the important bit. If we get in more trouble for forgetting to fax a piece of paper whose information is already available on the computer somewhere else than we get into if we’re rude to a customer then it’s obvious where priorities are. They’re on the paper.

If the District Manager calls and expects the person answering the phone to drop everything, including the customer they’re waiting on to help them with whatever special project they’re working on that tells the person answering the phone that the customer is second to the DM. That’s the slippery slope we start down as DMs when we get full or ourselves. I tell my employees all the time, please, if you’ve got a customer put the phone down and wait on them. I’ll hold while you help them. I don’t even mind holding! What I mind is if I hear they’re doing both because then they’re doing neither very well. I’m not a fan of multi-tasking.

So, when you’re working the store and 12 boxes of who knows what comes in and you start ignoring customers to get the product checked in and put out you’re doing exactly what you have to do to keep your boss off your back. It says right in the rules & regs or policies & procedures, that we’re not to leave product sitting around un-checked in. The problem with that is… the trainees see that. The Sales Associates see it. Then they assume that their work, their assigned tasks, their widget polishing, or gadget alphabetizing is the same as receiving all those boxes… something that’s more important than the customer. We teach them that by what we do, not what we say. None of us say, “ignore the customer to get your work done,” instead, we do it while saying not to.

I ask that we hit the floor and offer to help customers periodically and get an amazing amount of push-back. It makes me mad to have Sales Associates tell me, “customers don’t want us to talk to them.” ARGH! When the SA’s say that I don’t want them to talk to me! That’s for sure lol. Don’t just stand behind the counter and wait for them to come to us but a lot of people do exactly that, saying, “Well, I’m polishing widgets, or ordering gadgets” so I don’t have time to wait on the customer. And that’s just not true! It’s so frustrating to me to see it. That’s when I go do it and then go back to what I was doing. I try and show, by example, that you can indeed stop doing something to go help customers. Helping customers shouldn’t be an interruption to your ‘real job.’ It should BE the real job!

I can tell you now, after having met with, visited with, and talked about priorities with the new bigger than big shot that priorities need to be customer first. Your new DM is that way too. We’ve been “getting better” for a long time now. It’s time to “get great” at it! Not just at employee meetings, but all the time. It’s what I intend to do in my new job to increase sales. I hope it works immediately. One of the areas we can continue to grow and beat the competition is outstanding customer service. I don’t mean to say that it’s not better today. It is. But better isn’t good enough any more. It really is time to get great. It’s also an area where first impressions are hugely important. If a DM walks in and sees customers on the floor and people checking in product or polishing widgets or whatever, and never talking to the customer they’re not going to know that you JUST got back from making the rounds, offering to help them all, and helping them. They’re going to only see that the customer is being ignored right now, at the moment they turned on the live surveillance cameras or walked in the back door. We have to not just make sure we are providing great customer service, but we actually have to look like it! Not just to the cameras, but to the customers.

When the customer walks in and sees us busy behind the counters and a floor full of people they immediately think we’re too busy to help them. If we all shout the greeting at them without looking up at them and making eye-contact that doesn’t mean anything. Shouting our greeting with offers to help before they’re even in the door all the way may meet the letter of the law in regards to greeting customers but it’s not the intent. It’s not a greeting or welcome that is meant. It’s a pro-forma going-through-the-motions greeting that is as insincere as it sounds, and as someone who’s heard lots of them… There are a LOT of bad sounding greetings out there.

I hear people now clamoring that the product must get checked in, and their store sees hundreds of people a day and how the heck do I expect them to pretend to sincerely greet each and every one of them? The thing is I don’t expect you to pretend to be sincere. I want you to feel it. I can’t make someone like customer service, but if you don’t you shouldn’t be doing it.

There will be the occasional customer you DO have to fake it with. The man with the nervous tick where he ALWAYS coughs into his hand before reaching into his pocket to get his cash. That guy, I have to pretend to like him. I don’t like him. I don’t like him at all! He makes me sick, sometimes literally as well as figuratively. But I greet him like I’m happy to see him because he’s my customer and I want him to stay my customer. The lion’s share of the customers, I am glad to see. And I never mind a break from receiving product to talk to customers. It’s a break from the receiving. I’d rather wait on customers than work on receiving product any day of the week. I was a shipping clerk at a warehouse for a year or so. It was so boring I quit. The other end of that, receiving clerk… not my cup of tea at all. I’m in this job for the customers. If you’re not then maybe it’s time for you to consider a different job too.