Yesterday morning I caught the tail end of a story on NPR about a small social media company in Seattle, Social Strata, that offers unlimited time off for their employees. It began with one dedicated employee caring for her husband after an accident, and was ultimately extended to all ten employees in the company.
There are so many interesting business topics at play in this story. The two I am going to explore are trust and judgment.
In order for unlimited time off to be successful, employers must trust that employees are using the time off productively and appropriately.
If you trust that those you've hired to help grow your business, then you should trust that your employees are using the unlimited vacation time to actually take a vacation because they want to travel somewhere new, to take a long weekend to visit family far away, or use extended time off to care for a spouse or sick child.
You should also trust that they will return to work with renewed focus and gratitude for the opportunity to spend time away without consequences at work.
Next is judgment. Do your employees have good judgment? If they do, they are probably using their time away from the office because they would have a hard time focusing and being productive at work in the first place!
If employees use good judgment in work related tasks, their good judgment probably extends to other areas in their lives. Making it easier for employees to practice good judgment makes for more satisfied employees. For those who take pride in their individual and team success at work, this means employees will find a way to take their sick child to the doctor and also finish their deliverable, as promised, on time.
Social Strata and Netflix, two companies with unlimited time off, made sure to note that employees must finish projects and duties on time. This is an expectation employees must manage responsibly.
NPR reports that companies with unlimited vacation time are more productive and more engaged with unlimited time off. One piece I found to be interesting is that employees began taking actual sick days off instead of coming in to work to spread their germs to co-workers! Imagine that!
For those of you with decision-making power, would you let your company go to an unlimited vacation policy?
For those of you without decision-making power, how do the constraints of limited time off affect your use of vacation days?
Source: NPR.org, August 12, 2010
So, now I read that many carriers and service providers are struggling with capacity issues. They cut back, mothballed, whatever, when the economy turned down.
But, we've been preaching the need to get ready for recovery for the better part of two years. Those who didn't listen are now paying a price. Those who did are clearly going to wind up ahead of those who chose not to develop rapid response capacity alternatives.
It's difficult to work up much sympathy for either extreme: those who spent like inebriated seamen in the teeth of recession, or those who refused to believe that down cycles are always followed by up cycles. Either approach risks the success of the supply chains involved, and jeopardizes the market position of innocent partners in the end-to-end chain.
I should come as no great shock that the companies caught up in the failure to marshall capacity additions as volume picked up are likely not to be invited to next year's prom - plunging them back into the abyss of the depth of recession while the economy around them recovers.
CNN Money has a great question and answer piece from the manager of a team of customer service representatives.
She wrote in by saying that 99% of the time, she is able to resolve customers’ problems amicably, but every now and again, she has to field a call from an irate customer. Her usual response is to have the manager one level above her take the hostile call.
She says that manager, in response, blames her and her team of customer service representatives, and as a result, this deflates her team’s morale.
The question posed in this article is: How do you handle difficult customers? Who comes first at your company, customers or employees?
Several people weighed in on this conundrum, and the adage the customer is always right pops up more than once in the article.
I can understand the significance of the customer being right. A company’s success—certainly the financial success, but success overall-- depends heavily on the relationship with the customer.
The morale of the employee team is also very important and imperative to a company’s success. If a company cannot retain its employees and has a high turnover rate, it sends a message that the company is not a friendly environment in which to work. Who wants to support a company that does not respect its employees?
In the end, I think it is important to find the balance. Yes, a customer is paying for your product or services, so their needs and expectations must be met. That transaction is very clear.
But I also think it is paramount to treat employees with respect and to show appreciation, because those people are representing the company. Their interactions with customers are a direct reflection of the brand. Therefore, their satisfaction is necessary to maintain the brand’s reputation.
So, what do you all think? In a situation like this, who would you put first—customer or employee?
Business relationships are built and based on many skills we all use daily in our personal lives and our professional lives: communication, trust, respect, strategy. The list goes on.
How many of you extend the same principles that make you successful at work in your home life? Real Simple Magazine guest author Patrick Lencioni employed a few of the strategies that contributed to his success in the office at home and here are the top ten strategies he recommends.
All of these sound good to remember both in one's personal life and at work. I like the application to life outside the office, and it is a reminder that strong relationships--business and personal-- make for successful people who are successful at work.
Source: Real Simple Magazine "10 Business Strategies to Organize Your Family Life," by Patrick Lencioni, accessed May 27, 2010
H. Donald Ratliff, PhD, heads Georgia Tech's SCLI Integrated Food Chain Center in Atlanta. In the April/May 2010 issue of Food Logistics magazine (www.foodlogistics.com), he discusses the increasing necessity of integrated food chains. Not desirability, not advantage, not importance. Necessity.
His thesis is that there's got to be supply chain integration among the several entities within the food chain, that the enterprises involved "must cooperate" to achieve results. So far, so good. He goes on to outline three trends that will force a greater level of integration. They are: 1) impending food safety legislation; 2) technology for monitoring and control; and, 3) the need for better analytics in an increasingly complex environment.
Hey, Don's a cool guy (pun intended). And brighter than a collector's set of mint condition state quarters. But, I think there's an element of success that's missing in this analysis.
No quarrel with the trends and their importance, but the idea that this integration has to be forced doesn't bode well for sustainable collaboration among food chain partners - or for cheerful and wholehearted cooperation. Further, I'd submit that the real secret sauce in food chain integration is building the kinds of business relationships among key players that can take the core ingredients of regulation, technology, and analytics - and transform them into a dish that is not only good for you but that tastes really good, too.
What do you think? Have I been spending too much time watching the Food Network?
I'm grappling with a concept again, which is no surprise - nothing comes easy to someone with my limited candlepower. Malcolm Gladwell devotes considerable space in Outliers to the premise that exceptional intelligence might be of little incremental value in the real world, that being "smart enough" is good enough to provide a foundation for success.
I've been trying to apply the principle to the world of supply chain management and how the players in a given supply chain relate to one another. Apologies if I'm twisting the author's meaning and intent a bit. I do agree that a level of intelligence that makes people - and organizations - capable of operating only in some bizarre parallel universe doesn't help make things go well in everyday life.
But, if I were constructing a supply chain designed for success, I'm inclined to think that I'd pick participants who were somewhat better than smart enough. It's like choosing up sides for a schoolyard game - you want players who are better than good enough, but you might avoid the superstar divas (unless you, yourself, are the diva).
Then, I'd be looking for supply chain partners who were also creative and innovative. Not simply creative enough, but better than creative enough, without being completely undisciplined and wildly impractical, or even irrelevant.
The importance of - and difference between honest enough and better than honest enough is a discussion for another day, but you get the idea.
Am I wrong? Aren't we all striving to create solutions, organizations, and business relationships that are noticably better than good enough, without losing traction in a fruitless quest for the diminishing returns of absolute perfection?
Note: Achieving perfect order performance is not a fruitlesss quest; it is a byproduct of being noticably better than good enough.
Kellogg’s prides itself on quality cereal and other food products. The quality exemplified by Kellogg’s is due to the ability to specialize its team in producing food products, not logistical tasks. For this reason, Kellogg’s recruits other businesses to handle these responsibilities; activity essential to supply chain management and a successful product or service. Stock, transportation and marketing of Kellogg’s products allows the different links of their supply chain to act cohesively. Kellogg’s employs TDG, a storage company, to handle stocking and pallet responsibilities of their product. Kellogg’s also holds a relationship with Kimberly Clark, an industrial supply manufacturer, with whom Kellogg’s shares transportation methods. Lastly, Kellogg’s relationship with Tesco, a food retailer, exemplifies Kellogg’s specialty marketing through creation of an advertising unit for use in retail stores. By Kellogg’s dividing product responsibility, it allows the company to save time and money while increasing competitiveness in product and maintaining brand integrity. Kellogg’s reduced costs by: not having to employ more workers to complete said tasks, decreasing the number of empty transportation vehicles and not having to expand production space for storage purposes. Without Kellogg’s business relationships, they may not be able to hold high standards to their products because they would need to concentrate on other aspects of business than food product creation alone. The information provided can be found on the Times 100 website.
Kellogg’s prides itself on quality cereal and other food products. The quality exemplified by Kellogg’s is due to the ability to specialize its team in producing food products, not logistical tasks. For this reason, Kellogg’s recruits other businesses to handle these responsibilities; activity essential to supply chain management and a successful product or service.
Stock, transportation and marketing of Kellogg’s products allows the different links of their supply chain to act cohesively. Kellogg’s employs TDG, a storage company, to handle stocking and pallet responsibilities of their product. Kellogg’s also holds a relationship with Kimberly Clark, an industrial supply manufacturer, with whom Kellogg’s shares transportation methods. Lastly, Kellogg’s relationship with Tesco, a food retailer, exemplifies Kellogg’s specialty marketing through creation of an advertising unit for use in retail stores.
By Kellogg’s dividing product responsibility, it allows the company to save time and money while increasing competitiveness in product and maintaining brand integrity. Kellogg’s reduced costs by: not having to employ more workers to complete said tasks, decreasing the number of empty transportation vehicles and not having to expand production space for storage purposes. Without Kellogg’s business relationships, they may not be able to hold high standards to their products because they would need to concentrate on other aspects of business than food product creation alone.
The information provided can be found on the Times 100 website.
I found a brief article describing business to business relationships in the agriculture/food industry. Effective communication through businesses can help reduce environmental uncertainty, improve access to crucial resources, and increase business productivity and effectiveness. Agribusiness relationships are disected into four different types: Spot markets, Repeated market transactions, Formal contracts, and Financial participation. Then, the elements of a good agri-food supply chain relationship are discussed. All information is detailed with two specific examples. The first business to business relationship example deals with the cattle-to-beef process, while the second example details the barley-to-beer/whiskey process. Both examples are perfect for describing great relationships where extreme trust is necessary, especially with quality and safety. Finally, research identifies several success factors for sustainable supply chain relationships and communication. Visit the website at
http://www.sac.ac.uk/mainrep/pdfs/relationshipsinagrifood.pdf
Jason Koss
April 14, 2010
ACE 430
Unless you've spent time in Holmes County, Ohio or Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, your impression of Amish life has probably been limited to Witness and Harrison Ford (or Birch Interval and Rip Torn). For the record, Rip takes more alcohol than the norm for the Amish population. This behavior by what the Amish call "the English" would not surprise breakaway leader Jacob Amman, or Menno Simons, who originally founded the sect from which the Old Order split.
The current issue (April 19) of Time magazine devotes a page to the success of Amish businesses, and the Amish styles of working and management. They, for example, have a start-up failure rate only 20% of that experienced by all US small businesses. The telling phrase? "Amish businesses value relationships over onetime deals." There's also reference to working "higher up the value chain." Maybe plain folk aren't as simple as we thought they might be.
That's no surprise in this corner, but it's always encouraging to see unsolicited independent support for our core contention that the quality of business relationships is a compelling difference-maker in sustainable enterprise success, for, in Time's words, ". . . those more dedicated to the Golden Rule than the golden calf."
Ralph Roberts is the President of Worthington Industries Integrated Building Systems.
He took a moment to talk with Kathy Hoyt and discuss the role of business relationships in his success and the success of Worthington Industries.
Kathy: How has your approach evolved throughout your career?
Ralph: I’ve seen the full spectrum from concentrating on personal relations to company centered Value Propositions.
In the economic down turn in the 80’s the personal relationships were being limited due to less money being spent on entertainment. The shift went to B2B relationships and became more professional.
Relationships are being replaced by associations and event shows instead of a high concentration on “entertainment”.
Today it’s about how your business value systems are similar to your customer’s business relationships value system so you can work together.
Kathy: Who helped you develop these skills?
Ralph: When I first started Worthington Industries 37 yrs. ago the company was small so I had access to the Executives. These Executives had a strong customer focus and I saw them dealing with customers on a daily basis.
The WI Philosophy was already in play and was being demonstrated in the contacts with customers. The philosophical needle was very important in all areas of the company and an esprit de core was developed and lived.
Kathy: How have the skilled contributed to your success?
Ralph: The skills applied to all aspects of the business. The philosophy was driven throughout the organization.
You got put into situations and had to deal with it. There were no training programs so you had to figure things out for yourself. Some survived and some didn’t.
The common values were the deciding factor. When faced with a tough decision, I did the following steps:
The Philosophy card “taught” you the skills you needed.
(Note: When Tom Peters interviewed John H. McConnell there were no written policies in place – only the Philosophy card!)
Kathy: Can you think of a time when the relationship saved the customer?
Ralph: The Tenneco Company had had a relationship with Worthington that wasn’t so good. When we called on the purchasing manager he said he would never to do business with us again.
After repeated calls over a period of two years, we were finally able to rebuild the relationship by showing them we could add value to their company. It turned out to be one of our largest contracts.
Allen Bradley was a targeted account for us and when first contacted, the said “no.” The account manager was instructed to call on them every 6 weeks, develop the relationship, show how WI could add value.
Our reasoning was eventually they will get in trouble and when they do, we will be there to help. It worked.
Kathy: How is business relationships managed as a core competency?
Ralph: Today the Philosophy is formally introduced in the orientation program and is reinforced through all facets of training and interactions.
Look at the card to make a decision. We also use the TIPS process we learned through S4 to improve our listening skills and really understand our customer’s needs.
In 2008, we started a “Transformation” that brought teams together to become more efficient. Customers are seeing improved quality, service and cost effective solutions.
When customers tour the plant, an operator is able to talk to the customer and tell them exactly what they are making for that customer. Customers feel good that WI is doing all it can to improve quality, service and cost.
Kathy: When did the relationship cause you to lose a sale?
Ralph: I had a great relationship with a customer and thought he would never take away his business but he told me that we weren’t competitive with our pricing. Just because you have a great relationship you have to remain competitive.
He gave all his business to a competitor! A good business relationship is good to have but not enough to keep the business.
Kathy: What advice would you give about building relationships?
Ralph:
Kathy: If you could give one piece of advice, what would it be?
Ralph: How well do you know your top 10 accounts? Not the statistics and number but what is their growth plan, fears, and can you help them meet their business goals.
Can they articulate how Worthington Industries is helping them? There should never be any surprises in working with one of your top 10 customers.
Kathy: How has the economy effective business relationship?
Ralph: There is now a new normal. Employees are being cut from the work force and organizations have to go deeper than they would like just to stay in business.
Trust gets hurt and will take a long time to recapture it. Some companies have had to cut the number of suppliers they are using just for economy of scale – even if it was a good relationship.
In some cases, some of the preferred suppliers have gone out of business forcing them to buy from a company they might not like.
Companies are worried about the financial stability of the suppliers even if the relationship is good.
These are very trying times but it will come back. As the market comes back WI will be well positioned because we have quality products, a quality company and financial stability.
Ralph Roberts has been with Worthington Industries for 37 years. He currently serves as President of Worthington Industries Integrated Building Systems.
He serves on the Boards for Worthington Armstrong Venture (WAVE), ThyssenKrupp Steel and Worthington Industries (TWB) and Spartan Steel Coating for Worthington Industries.
Ron Maciejowski is the Vice President of Sales for Worthington Industries. He sits on the board of all Worthington Industrial Joint Ventures and Recreation Unlimited.
Kathy Hoyt, a senior consultant with S4 Consulting, sat down with Ron recently. The interview is transcribed below.
_______________________________________________________
Kathy Hoyt: How has your approach to handling business relationships evolved throughout your professional career?
Ron Maciejowski: In the early days (1970's) there was more of the attitude that there was enough in a sale for everyone to be profitable. The pie was always growing and all parties could profit (our company, our supplier, our customer).
Today , many people think the pie is a set size which means you have to take the profitability out of someone else's pocket. To some extent that is true if we don't get back to growing our economy in the right way and making the pie bigger. This has put much stress on the customer/supplier relationship.
Kathy: Who helped you develop business relationship skills and how?
Ron: Mentors, the guys who brought me into the business. They showed me here's how we do it. You have to build the relationship to get close to the customer. You do that by:
Kathy: How has your attitude and/or skills contributed to personal or company's success?
Ron: I learned by example. If I made a mistake, I wasn't called on it openly in public. I learned to do the same things with my people. People are much more productive if not publicly reprimanded.
I also learned to listen to "the other side" of what was being said - try to understand both sides before jumping in.
Kathy: Can you recall a time when someone handled a relationship in such a way that it saved the sale?
Ron: Yes, there's been times when we walked out better than when we walked in. When there was a problem with a customer and it was our fault we would go in, accept responsibility, offer no excuses and get the problem fixed as soon as possible.
Other opportunities can evolve if you just admit it and fix it because if you can't fix it in a timely manner it will kill the relationship. As part of supply chain, we don't have total control over a situation but the main thing is don't make excuses - just fix it.
Kathy: Can you recall a time when the absence of a relationship has lost a sale or a customer?
Ron: We had a customer recently who didn't feel we thought he was important. A quote got to this customer which was completely inaccurate - way too high.
He assumed we didn't care about his business and we were just sending a quote to get it off our desk. We had been doing about 40% to 100% of his business and he pulled it all because we didn't appear to care enough about him. It certainly was not the case (many internal discussions about what went wrong) because it in fact was very important business to us.
We are working very hard to recapture our customers trust and confidence.
Kathy: What does Worthington Industries do make relationship management a core competency?
Ron: Everyone does it differently but our philosophy of treat the customer they way you want to be treated has always applied.
The philosophy is presented during orientation and reinforced. If someone doesn't buy into the philosophy, they usually don't last very long around here.
Kathy: How do you measure to see if business relationship management is working?
Ron: Amount of business from that customer, they tell us about opportunities for new business and if they come to us for solutions to help their business we know our relationship is solid.
Kathy: What advice do you have to give to people who want to develop skills in business relationship?
Ron: Listen to what the customer is saying. Everyone wants something from you. You just have to learn what the gap is (the difference between what they have and what they want) and then figure out what I can do to fill the gap.
Kathy: What one piece of advice would you give the people who are managing customer relationships?
Ron: Put yourself in the customer's shoes and treat him the way you would want to be treated.
Give the customer timely information, correct information and do what you say you are going to do.
Kathy: How do you think the economy has affected business relationships?
Ron: Everyone is fearful right now about their companies staying in business and their keeping a job.
People are more stressed and just want more time at home. The relationships today are on a more professional level than in the past. However, it is a mistake to assume that people don't buy on personal relationships.
That gets back to building trust, gaining confidence by doing what you say you will do and making the customer look good by providing excellent service and providing a high level of perceived value.
_______________________________________________________
Thanks, Ron!
Business Relationships Members, do you have any other questions for Ron or Kathy?
Ron Maciejowski began his career with Worthington Steel in 1972 and held various sales posiions until going into management in 1981. He has served as Vice President of Sales at Worthington Industries since 2008.
In the real world, partners in supply chains typically have widely varying skill, competency, experience, and maturity profiles. That's consultant-speak for "some players are stronger, and some are weaker." In leveraged and progressive supply chains, the stronger partners have responsibilities to lead, mentor, and teach the others how to get better, not only in raw performance but also in risk management and mitigation.
If the grown-up in the room finds that the other organizations in the overall supply chain can't or won't respond to the required leadership, perhaps they aren't the right partners. On the flip side, if the weaker players aren't getting the leadership and instruction they need to grow and eevelop, maybe they're in the wrong supply chain altogether, and need to find new relationships.
It's sad to see the "A" players and the "B" players pointing fingers at one another like 6-year olds in the wake of a problem. The "A" players have got to act like grown-ups, or maybe they're not really "A" players where it counts. Size and naked power alone do not confer grown-up status on a supply chain partner.
This challenge can become mission-critical for ultimate supply chain success in the marketplace when one of the partners is a logistics service provider (LSP, or 3PL). While it is possible that a relatively new 3PL can be manhandled by a big and savvy customer, it is frequently the case that the customer is less-experienced and less-aware than a diversified multi-customer service provider.
That's when the LSP - in a genuine supply chain business relationship - needs to be the grown-up in the room, and lead the customer to success, taking every care to not let the customer slip off the path into a dismal swamp of risk and failure.
Bill Drayton and Valeria Budinich at the HBS blog wrote the following paragraph in a blog entry earlier this week-- it really resonates with me.
"To be effective in this new world, you will need to master the skills of empathy and teamwork, as well as leadership and driving change. You will need to know how to function in a world that is not a hierarchy but a kaleidoscopic global team of teams, with no boundaries between sectors and change that happens at an escalating pace."
I am so glad that empathy and teamwork are acknowledged as keys to success!
They are important characteristics that I see in many successful business leaders and are critical for strong business relationships.
Click to read to blog entry, Get Ready To Be a Changemaker.
(Excerpt is from Get Ready To Be a Changemaker, 2 Feb 2010)
Anthony Iannarino is President and Chief Sales Officer for SOLUTIONS Staffing. He is a consultant with B2B Sales Coach and Consultancy, and teaches at Capital University.
Joe Sperry sat down with Anthony Iannarino last week to discuss how his handling of business relationships contributes to his success.
Joe: How has your approach to relationships in business contributed to your personal or your company's success?
Anthony: My personal approach to relationships in business is based upon the idea that creating value together requires a relationship based on trust.
Mutual trust allows us to share ideas and information that might not otherwise be shared to explore potential ideas that allow us to exploit opportunities together, to solve problems, and to share business metrics that help both our companies do better work together than we would otherwise.
For example, 30 days after we start a large staffing project for a call center, we will share our turnover data. Initially some of our clients don't want to share their internal hiring data, but eventually they see it's the best way to discover how we improve our results together. Sometimes we have lower turnover numbers, and we share our on-boarding process with the client to help them improve their own results.
It's not always easy to build this trust, and sometimes there are individuals within some companies who cling to the idea that vendors are disposable. But once they have a successful business relationship, they understand the great value that a trusted business partner can help create.
Joe: How has proactive relationship management impacted both your organization's top-line and bottom-line performance?
Anthony: We schedule quarterly business review meetings with our clients. In addition to being a differentiator, this proactive approach has allowed us to improve our top and bottom line by defining the relationship as something more than a "vendor" could offer. In many cases, this approach by itself has helped a number of clients to move to us exclusively. This, in my opinion, is the response to "act like a vendor, I'll treat you like a vendor." Because we take a serious interest in our performance and how it impacts our client's performance, we are treated as something more than a vendor.
Joe: Do you have any advice for beginning relationship or account managers?
Anthony: Create value before claiming it. Understand that trust takes time to build, and you have to walk the walk before that trust will be developed as much as it can be. Have a presence. Have a presence. Have a presence. Never hide from problems or challenges, even if it makes you uncomfortable.
Thanks, Anthony! Business Relationships Members, do you have any questions for Anthony? Leave a comment if you do!
Anthony Iannarino is the President and Chief Sales Officer for SOLUTIONS Staffing, a professional sales coach, and a consultant for a firm he started, B2B Sales Coach and Consultancy.
Mr. Iannarino is also Adjunct Faculty at Capital University, where he teaches Persuasive Marketing, Social Media Marketing, and Personal Selling in the School of Business.
First, some definition. Lieder are love songs of primarily Dutch and German origin, with lyrics that evidence literary aspiration. I first encountered the "liedership" term a dozen or so years ago in connection with productions at London's South Bank Centre. The celebration commemorated the 200th birthday of Austria's Franz Schubert, an iconic master of the genre.
Leadership, on the other hand, wasn't in great demand in the earliest days of physical distribution. How much leadership was really needed when all we did was move stuff from Point A to Point B, and put it someplace once it had arrived? Slowly, but thankfully, some leaders in the field began to emerge. They began the processes of extending our understanding of the scope of logistics and supply chain management, and they elevated our appreciation of the value of our role(s) in organizational performance.
In today's complex and interconnected supply chains, leadership - strong leadership - is an absolute necessity. For the really good supply chains that are built on the foundations of well-managed business relationships, leadership is the magical mystery ingredient. The process of building strong business relationships is not a grass-roots movement, although it does require grass-roots execution. Only leadership can provide the vision for future state success, as well as command and commit the resources of people, programs, and time needed to keep relationships working at high levels.
And Liederkranz? For some of us, it means a funny little American cheese, characterized by an indelibly pungent aroma, and now extinct. But liederkranz ("wreath of songs") is actually a singing society, and is far from extinct wherever German heritage and tradition are preserved. Curiously, a liederkranz may be one of the few environments in which both liedership and leadership are vital to sustainable success.
Visionary author John Naisbitt introduced us to the high tech/high touch concept in his 1982 best-seller, Megatrends. He revisited the concept in 1999's High Tech/High Touch: Technology and Our Search For Meaning (also issued in paperback in 2001). There, he identified our two greatest concers as: 1) the application of technology in our daily lives, and 2) how to escape the ravages of technology in our daily lives (going so far as to characterize technology as a "tin god").
So, experts have been telling us for nearly thirty years about the importance of maintaining high touch in communications and relationships as high tech applications grow in routine application in our business and personal lives. Have we forgotten - are we deliberately ignoring - that vital piece of advice?
Get real for a moment. How silly is it to talk about “friends” on Facebook when they might be people we’ve never met in the flesh, and our only interactions are electronic? How inane is it to follow Twitter tweets from professional golfers, college football players, or D-list celebrities?
I’m more than a little concerned that we are seeing a generation – OK, a few generations – that see no need for human interaction, when they think that all one needs to know is available on the internet at the click of a mouse. The implications are staggering. The commoditization of both business and personal transactions; the confusion of acquiring facts with learning; and the dilution of the quality of personal and organizational relationships. Consider for a moment the differences - both implied and actual - between electronic reverse auctions in the Purchasing world and collaborative, face-to-face, product development with key supply sources in the universe of intimate business relationships.
We live in lively electronic times. G3 technology giving way to G4. Web 2.0 enabling startling levels of communications and interaction. High tech is fabulous. It enables communications, problem-solving, analysis, business interactions, and more, all undreamed of a generation or two ago. But, by itself, it’s only a set of tools, powerful in the right hands and in the right setting, and dangerous if misapplied or in the wrong hands. I’ll go a step farther and posit: High Tech + High Touch = High Hopes; High Tech + Low Touch = Low Hopes; Low Tech + Low Touch = No Hopes. This concept is particularly relevant and critical in organized and managed business relationships, in which ultimate success or failure rests on the quality of interaction, and not the speed of the technology involved.
What do you think? Am I merely getting crotchety in my dotage? Or, do we need to refocus on the role of high touch in our business lives? Let me know where you stand – and why – on this question.
The Economist, which steadfastly continues to call itself a newspaper rather than a magazine, recently ran a provocative - in the sense of provoking - column. The October 1st Schumpeter opinion page (www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14540023) discussed elements of thriving on adversity. It cited several cases of companies that havelearnt how to prosper in difficult times, and have even started up with transformational busniess concepts during recessions.
The column cited some positives from leaders that distinguish them from industry laggards, including ground-breaking product innovation, customer/product re-focus, and prior good management that husbanded resources - including cash - against a rainy day. It regrettably went on to include using "muscle" to "squeeze" costs, a tactic that is short-sighted on a good day and destructive to effective high-trust business relationships in the end.
Curiously, several of the titans mentioned are among the global leaders in supply chain management (and supply chain relationships), e.g., Cisco, P&G, Coca-Cola, Nokia, IBM, PepsiCo, and the like. Leveraging the creativity and power of intimate relationships with supply chain partners was not mentioned.
I am generally mad with admiration for The Economist for the quality of its writing, for the substance of its content, and because it is one of the few "newspapers" that really understands about supply chain management - and assumes that its readers also do. Schumpeter, with some excellent content and research, went only halfway on this topic, then missed the boat on what might be the most important element for success in tough times, the quality and caliber of business relationships in the supply chain.
What's your take?