I Hate Change!
Just as you’ve mastered doing things one way, someone comes up with a better way and your company, boss or whoever is fooled by
the sales patter of that slick salesperson into adopting it. Alternatively, a competitor comes on the
scene with a newer/faster/better/cheaper or better quality way of doing things
and you either adapt or perish. Or someone changes the regulations...
Result: more time spent on learning yet another way of doing
things with corresponding impact on you, your team, your boss, IT, customers
and so on. Tempers fray, people ask “Is
this another white elephant?” or “Is this just another fad?”
Sound familiar? Change
is one of the few constants in our lives, along with death and taxes. New technology means that change is hitting
us faster and more frequently than ever.
As an example, it took telephones more than 70 years to reach 50%
household penetration, 28 years for radio and 10 years for internet access (not
sure in which market or markets). Facebook
took 852 days to reach 10 million users; Twitter took 780; Google + took 16. Ernst & Young see the future happening
ever faster.
The message is clear: keep up with the pace of change, or
lose relevance. Some businesses are
learning this the hard way. Just to make
life more complicated, different generations adopt different technologies
and/or change at different rates. The
focus now is on “Generation Y” (or “digital natives”) – the current crop of
youngsters.
The implications of change are varied: loss of control or
perceived expertise, loss of relevance (and loss of job), uncertainty,
re-allocation of resources, motivating staff, communication. People resist change for all these reasons and
more. It has been the cause of
considerable industrial unrest (strikes) and even litigation. In some cases, heavily unionised labour
forces act in concert to prevent change that is actually beneficial, but
results in losses of jobs or other benefits.
The businesses that “do change” best are often highly
skilled at communicating the change, the reasons for it and how people will be affected,
what is expected and how they will be rewarded.
Sadly, this skill seems to be monumentally lacking in most cases, with
the distance between those who see the need for and advantages of change being
outnumbered by those who don’t growing ever wider.
How do you effect change without bringing your business
down? The key, as mentioned above, is communication. A simple starting framework would be to use
Kipling’s “Six Honest Serving Men”, i.e. what, why, when, how, where, who. In other words:
1. What
is the change required?
2. Why
is it needed?
3. When
does it need to happen?
4. How
will it happen? How much will it cost?
5. Where
will it happen (country, location, building, department, team, individual)?
6. Who
will be affected (not just staff in the buisiness, but others in the wider
community)?
Just answering the questions above is a start that many don’t
even make – they jump straight to step 4, announcing the plan, where it will
happen and who will be affected as in their eyes if it doesn’t, then disaster
will strike so everyone has to get on
board!
Staff concerned will be asking:
·
What does the change mean to me (longer hours,
less overtime/pay, change in methods)?
·
Why should I support it?
·
When will it happen?
·
How will I need to change?
·
Where will I work (or need to find new work if
my job is no longer needed)?
·
Who will support me during the change?
Managers/team leaders will be asking, among other questions:
·
What does the change mean to me and my team
(longer hours, less overtime/pay, change in methods)?
·
Why should we support it?
·
When will it happen?
·
How will we need to change our processes,
systems, etc? How long do we have?
·
Where will I and/or others work (or need to find
new work if my job is no longer needed)?
·
Who will be most affected?
Another group who need to be considered are other stakeholders – the local community,
shareholders/investors, bankers, accountants.
What could their concerns and questions be?
As you will realise, change management can be a daunting
process but, if managed well, will raise your business’ profits, productivity,
profile and perception well above the rest.
The keys are involvement and communication.
I have spent more than half my life working in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in the world financial services industry running different service, operations and lending businesses, I started my own Performance Management Consultancy and work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.
Labels: Career, Crisis Management, Productivity, Strategy
Missing The Moment
At
the end of June I sent an enquiry to a company whose product I wanted to
buy. The total price would have been in the region of £250. Not much, perhaps, in the bigger scheme of
things, but a significant personal investment for me.
It
took the company 14 days (of which four were Saturdays or Sundays) to respond
to my email. Ironically, I had phoned them for the answer two days before
receiving their email reply. Even then,
they only responded to my specific question in both cases. What didn't they do? Two things:
1.
They showed no real interest by letting me
chase them and by taking 10 working days to reply to my question AND:
2.
They failed to try to convert my enquiry into a
sale.
They
made me feel that I didn't matter to them, as well as that customer enquiries weren’t a priority. I was the one who had to chase
them and all I received was a short answer to the basic question. Either this
company is doing so well that enquiries can wait, or people need some training
in handling customer enquiries and understanding the opportunity that they
present.
When
someone calls your business or emails an enquiry, you don’t know at that stage who they are, whether they
represent a large buyer, whether there may be a bigger order or whether you
might get repeat business. That’s what you need to find out. In this case, the two employees concerned just
weren’t aware of the impact of
their behaviour or the opportunity that they were missing.
I
started wondering how many similar opportunities I may have missed. How often have I been too busy or stressed
out that I missed those vital moments to earn some customer goodwill and to
increase my sales and reputation for customer service? There’s always the excuse of “Oh you called on a very busy day for us.”
However, as a potential buyer, I’m not interested in whether
the other side is having a great day or a terrible one. I want my question answered promptly and
professionally.
According
to research, people tell three friends about good experiences and nine about
bad ones. You’re therefore three times more
likely to lower your reputation with poor service as to improve it with good
service. Sounds unfair? Yes, but you can’t argue with fact. Nowadays, with the ability to reach out over
the internet to thousands of others, unhappy customers can reach out
further and faster (and make life difficult for big business as a result).
If
you have several staff handling customer enquiries, they need to understand
that these are opportunities and how they
should be handled. In particular, how
can enquiries be converted into sales without seeming to be pushing the
enquirer in a direction in which they may not be ready to go?
Even
if the enquirer isn’t willing to commit to a
purchase just yet, leave the door open by giving them your name and contact
details. Whether they buy or not, they
now have a “real person” whom they can contact in future and recommend
to other friends as someone who cares.
Mastering
this art will see an increase in both reputation and sales, with the former
driving the latter.
I have spent more than half my life working in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in the world financial services industry running different service, operations and lending businesses, I started my own Performance Management Consultancy and work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. Labels: Customer Care, Selling, Strategy
Banks In The Dock - Again
The recent exposure of Barclays (and perhaps other banks as
well) for mis-reporting borrowing/lending rates to the British Bankers
Association (BBA) for London Inter Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR) fixings has brought
more unwelcome attention to the banking industry. The
fact that only a tiny minority (as usual) are guilty of this behaviour is
irrelevant; “those unethical bankers” are screwing the public yet again.
One of those under investigation is claiming that comments from senior figures in the government and one particular Bank of England (BoE) official resulted in his bank doing what it did. The investigation will no doubt be lengthy
and cost taxpayers a fortune. The BoE
official has denied giving any guidance; the words that he allegedly used could
be interpreted as comments rather than guidance.
LIBOR is calculated by a panel of selected banks submitting
their “estimates” of what it would cost them to borrow over certain periods of
time and submitting these to the BBA.
The four highest and lowest rates are then eliminated and the remainder
are averaged to produce a “fixing” for the period concerned.
In terms of the Sterling Pound LIBOR panel, nine of the 16
panel banks are foreign-owned. Of the 18
banks that make up the US Dollar panel, only 4 are UK-owned. Any investigations may have effects on the
USA, Japan, France, Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands and Canada. However, it all seems to have happened in and
to have been driven from London…
The effects of reporting low borrowing rates include:
Con:
·
People think that your bank is stronger because
it pays less interest on borrowings (it is seen as lower risk). This misrepresents the situation to other banks that may lend to that bank
and to investors.
·
Interest Rate Swaps are based on LIBOR. Depending on the deal, the bank may not have
to pay out under these contracts, thereby inflating its own profits whilst its
counterparty “loses out”.
·
Should rates be corrected upwards, loans become
scarcer and more expensive. Worthy
projects may be abandoned and scaled back, hurting the economy in
different ways.
·
People will earn lower rates of interest on cash set aside.
·
Investors may switch to equities if interest
rates on cash are too low, thus inflating equity prices for the wrong reasons.
·
Potentially expensive litigation may arise
against banks from “injured parties”.
·
The reputation of the City of London as a major
world financial centre is tarnished, possibly leading to reduced business and
job losses.
Pro:
·
Large loans to clients may carry lower interest
rates than they should as interest rates on such loans are usually expressed as
LIBOR plus a “spread”. The effect is
that businesses find it cheaper to invest in new projects to create wealth.
·
In times of economic crisis, lower borrowing
costs help to stimulate the economy – an advantage for the government of the
day.
On the face of it, it would appear that if the result of
“manipulation” is that borrowing costs fall (especially during an economic
crisis), then there are more advantages than disadvantages.
The main disadvantage, however, is lack of trust in the financial institutions that are meant to be
renowned for their probity. This in turn
leads to damaging (and expensive) investigations, financial penalties, litigation,
possible jail sentences, ruined careers and reputations, an increased
regulatory burden that may stifle beneficial financial innovation for the
benefit of consumers and people taking their money out of shares in the financial institutions in a
country. Add to this, in London’s case,
a possible shift of business to other financial centres.
Conclusion? This needs
to be investigated, and a judgement call made on who said what to whom and what
it may have meant. Suffice it to say, a
number of highly placed people will not come out of this well and London’s
reputation will suffer.
I have spent more than half my life working in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in the world financial services industry running different service, operations and lending businesses, I started my own Performance Management Consultancy and work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.
Labels: Crisis Management, Customer Care, Regulation, Risk
