Today we cover part 2 of our series on mergers and acquisitions. Hopefully, with this podcast, the idea of a merger or acquisition will be just a tad less scary. Put some of the ideas we discuss to work today and you’ll benefit handsomely even if there isn’t a merger on your horizon!

I hate corporate dress codes. They’re just another policy that won’t get read, in my experience. But they’re also in a special category of addressing “things that I might care a great deal about that I really don’t think you ought to be telling me anything about.” It’s one thing to have a policy about changing your benefits choices - that seems reasonable to me. (Not that ‘reasonable’ and ‘likely to be read’ necessarily coincide).

But when you start trying to codify how people should dress, organizations are getting very close to…home.

And, in my experience, we’re really bad at it. Show me a dress code, and I’ll show you a loophole (to say nothing of a navel).

Written dress codes exist for one sad reason - managers at some point stopped doing their job of educating and aculturating their organizations to the larger corporate culture. They either didn’t know how to, or didn’t want to, have tough but professional and reasonable conversations about what to wear to work.

So the organization put it on paper. And it took way too long, and to all who were involved it felt like wrestling 20 pounds of jello into a 5 pound bag. And as soon as the mess was signed off on, someone challenged it and its credibility started a long slow slide to zero.

Dress codes don’t enforce or encourage appropriate attire.

Managers do.

Spend some time this week noticing your team’s attire, and give them each some feedback on it. (Different feedback to those who have different goals, perhaps).

It’s okay - no, it’s GOOD - if maybe your team’s standard is a little higher than the organization’s. Your directs might complain a little…but they’ll like being part of your team is it shows AND it means something. (If there is a chance that you are a jerk, don’t do this - it will be perceived as fascism. If you’re not, it will be standard setting.)

More on policies soon…

Folks, my apologies. I had done pretty well with the Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays schedule until week before last, and then I failed to keep my commitments. When Mike and I were plebes at West Point (almost 30 years ago!) we were taught that we were not to speak unless spoken to, and when spoken to, were to respond with one of four answers: “Yes sir!” “No sir!” “No excuse sir!” and “Sir I do not understand!”

One guess what the right answer is today.

I’ll make up for it this week and next…because “Sir, I stopped thinking!” is not one of my four answers.

Whether you’re at a small or big company, the competitiveness of the commercial world and the demands for growth make your firm either prey or predator. If a company can’t grow organically - by growing sales of its own products - often leadership looks to be acquired or acquire another firm.

But what does that mean for a manager? What is our role in helping two organizations come together? How do you navigate the stressful, water-cooler-talk-filled, flurry-of-emails world of a merger or an acquisition? In this series of casts, we lay it out for you.

Thanks to you, Manager Tools won the Podcast Awards in the Business Category. Also thanks to the many of you who have been emailing well wishes.
(Written on my Treo in the Philly airport after having just called Mike with the news).
We are humbled by your support, and will work harder than ever to earn it.

Members ROCK!

If you’ve ever had to deal with two of your directs fighting about something, this is the cast for you. Mark likes to say that “the definition of conflict is two human beings in the same COUNTY.” If that’s true, then 500 or 1,000 or 5,000 people in the same organization is not just ‘a conflict waiting to happen’, it’s conflict guaranteed to happen.

Yes, conflict is inevitable. Unfortunately, the natural response of most managers to conflict among their staff or team [can you guess what it is?] is completely, totally ineffective.

Sure, some conflict is good - the creative tension that produces better ideas, disagreements that lead to a third way. But most of us don’t describe that as conflict - that’s just “different ideas”. The conflict we’re talking about here is by definition dysfunctional and ineffective.

This cast lays out a way to address it and move toward effectiveness.

Today we cover the 2nd part of our series on Preparing For Your Review. After you’ve listened to the podcast, I think you’ll agree that if you follow this simple process you will be in a position to not only get the best possible review possible this year, you will also have all the information you need to improve your performance (and your next review!) over the coming year.

And, as a reminder, you’ll find a number of documents to assist you in this process in the Tools section under Preparing for Your Review Documents.

1. A complete transcript of the entire show
2. A Powerpoint presentation (in PDF form) with a detailed outline of the review preparation process
3. A detailed note-taking form to guide you through the process.

I read a great article in Fortune recently, about how Enterprise, the auto rental company, has quietly become the biggest and most successful company in its industry.

Not Hertz. Enterprise.

It’s a family-run company, private, and absolutely focused on customer satisfaction. There was a lot that struck me about how they did this, but this was my favorite:

If the customer satisfaction score of your unit doesn’t at least meet the company average, you absolutely won’t get promoted.

That’s beautiful. Here’s a company saying, we know what we want. We want happy customers. We know that the only way to get that repeatedly is to reward managers who make customers happy. So, we’ll make customer satisfaction one of those metrics that is so important you can’t miss it.

People (managers too) do things for one of two reasons: to seek pleasure or to avoid pain.

If you want managers to get aligned to your vision, differentially reinforce the right behaviors in their review and promotion criteria.

Some won’t like it. And that’s the point.

My brother was an All American volleyball player in college and competed for the national championship. He was on a club team once that often won matches with scores like 15-2, 15-4, 15-3.

Sometimes, though, match scores looked like this: 15-7, 8-15, 10-15, 15-5, 15-2.

What happened there?

The “dangle.”

They KNEW they could beat the other team… so they took it easy for awhile, and lost a couple of games. They thought of this as “dangling” a possible win in front of their opponent… only to win easily in the end.

This is a technique similar to a recruitment technique used by companies, and you should know about it.

Say you’re a manager. You dream of being a VP someday. (You are not alone). You meet a customer COO, and she is impressed by your presentation. She calls you the next day, after the meeting, and says, “I’d like to talk business over dinner.”

Over dinner, you hear, “I was impressed by what I saw yesterday. I’m building a new team, and we need sharp professionals like you. You have all the skills to become a VP for us. I can see you being a manager for about 6 months, and then when your director leaves, that slot will be yours, provided you perform, and there’s no doubt in MY mind you will. A year or so after that, our succession planning will leave you in the perfect position to take over the Ops VP role, reporting to me.”

Do you see the dangle?

That VP role is a complete and total dangle…. and it’s probably all you heard in her pitch.

(By the way, you know how you can tell she earned her COO title? She’s smart enough to have mentioned the VP title FIRST of all the jobs she discussed. She knows that once you hear THAT, the rest is just white noise.)

I’m not saying you’re not VP material. And she would NOT say it if she didn’t believe you were capable of it. But being capable of something and actually earning it are two different things. You must, as a professional manager, learn how to separate the pitch from the offer.

In this case, the pitch is VP. The offer is manager.

There’s lots more to recruiting. But I’ve had three conversations this week with folks who never thought anyone had ever dangled them. And they were wrong.

Our resume cast may be one of the most appreciated casts we’ve ever done. When we posted that show, I decided that I would give in to my “Dark Mark” side and just tell everyone how I felt. Thus, “Your Resume Stinks.” It’s true. I meant it, and hoped my candor would motivate change ( I think it did).

And no one seems to have minded the title. Thus, this post’s title.

Your customer service is probably far worse than your resume.

[And hey - I’m talking to YOU. Not the customer service “department”. YOU. Your team has customers, internal or external. If salaries are paid to your team, there are people who think of themselves as your customer.]

Customer service has gotten so horrendous its collapse is pandemic. Everywhere I go, I’m treated to ill-mannered employees, rudeness, lousy interpersonal skills, and reliance on rigid policies designed to save money regardless of customer impact.

Imagine walking into a financial services institution as I did today, and having no one to greet you behind the desk. This is an office specifically designed for customers. But there was no one at the desk. I waited for 2-3 minutes, and finally someone whom I knew to be a receptionist from another part of the office came in. She stopped when she saw me, raised her eyebrows, and said, “yes?”

As you might imagine, my thought was, “NO.”

I went by my bank to check on a transaction today. I asked the teller whether a client check had come in (my intern had run the errand.) I was told no. I asked again, and showed the teller a deposit slip. Again, no. By then , the bank operations manager corrected the teller. I called the ops manager as I drove away, and asked her what happened, and she informed me that the teller hadn’t paged through all her screens. I asked her, “so, next time, I need to ask if they’ve paged through all their screens?!?!?” It wasn’t until then that the absurdity of me doing their jobs struck me.

At lunch with a client manager, the restaurant acting manager came around with iced tea. I held my hand over my glass to indicate I didn’t want anymore - I had the tea and sweetener mix just right, and the glass was 7/8 full. I was explaining a point to my client, and surely I didn’t need to actually verbally answer the service person, right? Just keep talking, and hold my hand over the glass. SURELY that’s the universal sign of , “No more tea, please.”

But not in today’s customer service world. He reached under my hand - hovering above the glass by an eighth of an inch! - and took the glass and filled it.

I recently called Dell to get some basic help on a Windows reinstall. I pay for Gold Technical Support, and have LOTS of computers to do that for. Surely I’m a good customer…we’re talking 20 computers in the last few years, and not ones with low margins, either.

The “Gold” representative REPEATEDLY interrupted me. At one point, he chuckled and said, “you know, sir, you’re making it hard for me to control this call.”

Oh, really.

Okay, but this isn’t a rant. This is Manager Tools. What should we DO about this?

Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to recur to this topic in the future, both in the blog and in our casts. If I have a choice, I’m going to offer clients some customer service consulting and training. It’s gotten so bad, even I could do it.

What can you do?

Your team has customers. Answer the phone like you’re happy to hear from them. SMILE.

Do your technical people answer the phone like they hate to do so? Most do, and it’s WRONG. Time for some feedback.

Do they treat internal customers like just another employee? Or customers?

When others in your org ask for help, do they get passed around? Or does someone champion their need?

Take a look at YOUR part of the organization. Call your team from an internal customer’s desk, and see how you’re treated. Ask your team to step up and answer the phone with pleasantness.

When someone comes into your team’s area, ask team members to stand up, stick out their hand, SMILE, and say, “Hi. I’m Chuck. Welcome to IT. May I help you?”

SERVE your customers. Subordinate yourself - that’s where the REAL power is.

Otherwise, they’ll take their business, or their budget, and go somewhere else.

I’m looking at Macs.