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In: Achieving Operations Goals, Change Management, Operations Humor

It is probably human nature, but when asked about a business problem or the reason for a dip in performance results, the responses that I often hear are about something or someone else and the responder forgets to look in their own backyard. If we changed this tendency and did look internally first, we would solve problems and improve organizational results at a much faster pace. Here’s what I mean…. In Sales: I worked in sales organizations for many years and when employees were not meeting their sales quota the most common reasons given were that their sales quota was too high or that theirRead More →

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In: Achieving Operations Goals, Customer Experience

It’s not all about the SLAs or speed of resolution. When we consider options to improve the customer experience, discussions often lead to complex process improvements or expensive tool enhancements, but there is something we can all do that is relatively easy and almost free. This is to keep our customers well informed during the problem solving progress. There are three major components to the act of keeping a customer well informed: Acknowledge that work has begun on their problem. Share the problem solving activities. Set and follow through on time frame expectations. When I receive feedback in customer satisfaction surveys and directly from clients, keeping customersRead More →

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In: Achieving Operations Goals, Change Management

What do working out at a gym and running a business operation have in common? A few thing. We might look around and see some bad fashion choices. We might find ourselves surrounded by a few muscle-heads. But, the focus of this blog post is that in the gym and in the office, there are comparable techniques that will improve our productivity. Background: It all started because I was bored. I had been working out regularly since I was in my early 20s and reached a point last November where both my brain and my body were bored with the routine and needed a jump-startRead More →