The Sorcerer's Apprentice

“The key to being a good manager is keeping those who hate me away from those that are still undecided” Casey Stengel

I was listening to a new podcast that my friend Barry Doctor recommended.  It's called Product Life and this is their inaugural broadcast.  Their first guest was Kim Phelan.  A Product Management VP at Clear Fit.  She was very knowledgeable and well-spoken.  One thing she said of interest (to me) was talking about where Product Manager's come from.  She said that seldom do they come from just out of school, that they need to experience other customer-facing jobs first.

I understand and agree with that but still find it sad.  And, I’ll tell you why.

It means we don’t have apprentices anymore.

It used to be that you’d start a new job and you’d be assigned to someone (a senior, supervisor, etc.) who knew the job and would take you by the hand and teach you the job. Then as positions opened by expansion or void or sometimes….sometimes….wait on it….by retirement supervisors would become managers, seniors would become supervisors and you’d become a senior. Thus, you worked for people that actually knew what you did because they had done the job themselves.

To be fair, that didn’t make them good managers, but it did make them good trainers. And once they got trained at being good managers it got passed along.

Today that entire system is out the window (and has been for a long time in the tech field) as people hop madly around for the next upward step in position and salary. So what we’re left with are administrative placeholders looking for their next hop. They’re new to the company as is their VP and probably CEO all wanting to quickly make their mark so they can swim on to the next island.

What has all this caused?

There are tons of lists from places like Glassdoor who research the lowest rated companies when it comes to employee satisfaction. This comes on top of an Art Petty blog on Evil Leadership and another of my favorite bloggers – Michael Hopkins – and his Customer Service experience from his Lead on Purpose site.

Wow, a new record. Six links in a single blog. This should keep you busy enough that I don't need to finish the post.

But, I will anyway.

I guess it should bother me that I have worked for companies on the "worst" list, but it really doesn’t mainly because it gave me so much material for this site. What does bother me is I’ve worked for companies that would have easily made this list had they been big enough to be noticed.

Big or small they each suffered from the same basic deficiencies in management, leadership and regard for their customers. It does, and has always, come from the top.

If you’re in a position of power take the time and steps to make sure your people know who they work for and what they do. If you can’t do it then assign them to a “master tradesman” who can.
Let’s get back to knowing what we do, why we do it, and who we do it for.

(And yes, Mrs. Gilbert, I know I ended that sentence with a preposition).

Dancin' with the Devil

“You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.” James Thurber

One of the challenges of being in a key position of a start up that is funded by outside investors is establishing a working relationship with those whose money you’re playing. Investors take many forms, from benevolent angels to ruthless venture professionals.

The old joke goes that everyone wants an investor who "gets it” until they have one. I once said to an angel investor when launching a Series “A” round, “let’s try to find some smart money”. He said, “Son, all money is dumb”. Thus the never-ending search to find investors who are smart, knowledgeable, friendly, supportive, patient, involved but not too involved. Most of all, you want your investor’s pockets to be deeper than their intellect.

The fact is, any time you’re using other people’s money they are going to have more than just a casual passing interest in what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, when you’re doing it, and how you’re doing it.

I’ve had two interesting conversations over the past couple of weeks. One was with a friend who took investor money last year and one with a friend who’s debating taking some. Fortunately they happened in that order so I was able to quote to the one debating taking investment things I had just heard from the one who just took investment.

Highlights included:

“I field ‘how’s it going?’ phone calls for three solid weeks then go to the board meeting where I answer the same questions again”

“Most of the questions revolve around ‘is there a market for the product?’. It’s like the due diligence they did 6 months ago has been totally forgotten”

“Their solution for all revenue shortfalls is ‘we need to drastically cut expenses’.

“They constantly bring up other companies they deem to be successful, most of which are in different markets, have been operating years longer and have ten times the capital to work with.”

The net of all of this is the management team gets little chance to run the business. The distraction of constant inquisition means a business flow is never achieved. It now appears that my second friend is going to continue to run his self-funded company at a slower pace without outside investment. I think he’ll end up healthier, wealthier and wiser.

However, if you choose to take the money, or if you’re in a company that already has, here are some universal truths:

• The longest line is between an investors "yes" and their signature on a check
• The only thing faster than the speed of light is bad news
• Good news will be treated with skepticism
• No, they don’t have to understand
• Yes, it is their money
• Anything you say can and will be used against you in board meetings
• Anything your people say can and will be used against you in board meetings
• No, someone didn’t switch those nice people you met before you got the check
• No, they probably don’t remember all those conversations about how the money would be used

If you’re considering taking outside money then please understand these universal truths and plan accordingly. That is, plan on not having time to execute your roadmap, develop your product, develop your sales force, plan a marketing campaign or talk to your customers. You can, however, go ahead and get started raising the next round of funding that you’ll all too quickly find out you need.

Flatties don't come back

“The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other going in opposite directions.” George Carlin

Back when I was new to the business world, when research meant going to the library and all information came from reading the newspaper and watching the evening news (one hour only) the Wall Street Journal ran a series of one-page, thought-provoking pieces. Today they would be a blog but this was a couple of decades before Mr. Gore invented the internet.

One that has always stuck with me was titled “We flatties don’t come back”. Flatties is a term used by carnival people (county fair type not cruise line type, though it might apply) to describe their customers. The life of a carny is short-term in every sense and their only goal is to survive this town to go to the next one. They have no interest in “getting to know their customer”. What they want is to extract as much as they can as quick as they can and get on to the next person, place or thing.

The gist of the article was that companies that treat their customers like carnival flatties will one day find themselves without any customers to worry about.

I promised in a recent post to never again complain about the airline industry. So I have this story about a company in the transportation business whose name implies either a variance between two numbers or a swampy region between two rivers in the South.

I used to frequent this transportation company and they once gave me a number in which to keep track of how much I transported myself with them. Let’s call them T1. Now they have bought another transportation company that I have also frequented and thus also have a number. Let’s call them T2.

So T1 wants me to merge my information from T2 into their system. Easy enough except to do so requires a personal identification number. The last time I used T1 for transportation was before personal identification numbers existed. So, since I’ve never had one I have been locked out of their system. No service representative has been able to help, no email has been answered and when I asked for the number of the group that handles these things I was actually told, “You can’t call them. I can’t even call them. We can only communicate with them via email”.

“Can I get their email address?”

“No”

NO ONE GETS IN TO SEE THE WIZARD, NOT NO ONE, NOT NO HOW!!!!

Talk about feeling like a flattie?

So?

How are you doing with your customers? Are they a treasure or a ball and chain? Are they an ally or an enemy? Are they a flattie?

In a time when getting new customers is, as my mother would say, “like pulling hens teeth” the last thing you can afford to do is lose good customers.