When Numbers Don't Matter

I'm looking over the scores from last night's baseball games while emitting a groan. The sound rolling up my chest and out my throat starts deep and ends deeper. It's in synchrony with a nodding of the head side to side about an inch each way. Try it yourself and you'll get the feeling right away. Now think of your team with a record of 64 wins and 66 losses. Yeah, now you're getting it.

The San Diego Padres baseball team is my team. They're the local boys, and since this is my home, they are my team. As a kid, I never had a favorite baseball team so it was natural for me to choose the local boys as my team when I moved here several years ago.

The local boys are two games under .500, meaning they have lost more than half their games. That fact is a good enough catalyst for the groaning to start. They had among the best records in baseball in the month of May. They had among the worst records in baseball in the month of June. Since June, they have been, well...a little worse than average. Now the head starts nodding.

Does it Really Matter?
Yet, as I contemplate my frustration, I begin to wonder if any of what I just told you even matters. I mean, the local boys are still in first place in their division. With a record of losing more games than they've won, they are still in position to make the playoffs. So, why am I frustrated?

At first thought, my frustration is because this team "has so much potential." We use that phrase a lot, particularly when it comes to kids and their performance in school and all that. And, on paper, the San Diego Padres are a good team. They have potential. They are a Good-on-Paper team. Not great, just good. In actual fact, they are performing to the level of Good Enough. If the season were to end today they would have performed well enough to make the playoffs with a losing record because they were better than the other teams in their division.

So, do the numbers that show their historical performance truly matter?

What was the Goal Again?
The fact is, my team, the local boys, are in the hunt to make the playoffs as a division leader with a losing record. Is that optimal? Well, I don’t know. I suppose that depends on what you're looking for. If the goal was to have the best record in baseball, no, it’s not optimal. It may still be good enough, though. If your goal was to make the playoffs this year then it's just fine. What does it matter if they make the playoffs with a bad record or a good one since the goal was to make the playoffs?

It matters a great deal in determining who my boys will play once they make the playoffs. But, in a sense, even that doesn't matter because the goal the team set for itself was to make the playoffs. So, they can succeed, indeed, they are succeeding in spite of having lost more games than they have won.

Anyway, I'm not sure this team has a lot more potential than has been activated so far. Their performance in May would lead me to say they do. But, their performance over a much longer time would lead me to say they are doing their best and still winning less than half their games.

Not all the teams we'll be on in our lives are going to be full of the most amazing, gifted, talented, creative, Nobel-Prize winning, perform-at-the-tippy-top-of-their-field-every-single-day-month-and-year kinds of people. You may not even be that kind of person. Sometimes it doesn't matter. It matters to meet the goal that was set, as long as the goal was reasonable. The goal is to make the playoffs. It appears that the goal is reasonable, because they team is headed to making the playoffs.

The risk is, of course, that the team continues to lose more than they win as their competition begins to win more than they lose and my local boys don't make the playoffs. That would be failure. I'm not suggesting they stop working their arses off to win more than they lose. I'm not suggesting that their performance so far means they will do well in the playoffs; it doesn't. I’m not suggesting management shouldn't make changes and strategy upgrades in an endless attempt to improve performance. Of course they should. What I am suggesting is that in a sense, the numbers relating to past performance do not matter to achieving the goal.

The Power of Now
All they need to focus on is doing better today than yesterday. (They lost yesterday.) Their focus should be present-day and future - not in the past. The numbers reflect what happened in the past - and so they don't really matter to how well they can do today.

Sure, the numbers hint at what can be reasonably expected...but they don't determine the outcome. Today's effort determines the outcome. Nothing more. Nothing less. What will happen today is a function of what I do today. Why is this exciting news? Because my boys also win games. So far they have won 64 of them.

When I play hookey with my friend Adrienne at the game on Wednesday afternoon, I'll remember that and give up my frustration. I'll just focus on the moment, and know that each player is doing all he can to perform optimally in that moment. I bet management is, too.

Again, don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating for poor performance. I am advocating for focusing on what can be done in this instant to meet the goal. If the rest of the season goes as it has so far, the numbers will still be not-good and my boys will still be in the playoffs. Interesting…

Jiffy Lunacy

Recently I took the Jeep to Jiffy Lube for an oil change. I arrived about 2:30 P.M. on Saturday afternoon to the surprise of a short line.

The young man took my order promptly at the computer terminal beside the service car. He asked a couple questions like, "What model car is it?" "A Jeep," I said a little surprised. "What model?" he asked. "Wrangler," I replied. "What year?" he continued. "2004," I replied. He checked the mileage and the car was promptly driven over the hole in the floor below which stood another young man ready to dump the oil.

I entered the waiting area, which was clean, smelled of coffee and was buzzing with the voices of the cashier and the customer who was just paying. I went outside to watch the guys work on the Jeep.

They were systematic in their work. The work was finished in ten minutes. One man lowered the hood, pushing down on the plastic bug deflector and secured the hood using the external latches on each side of the hood. I went back inside thinking, "Can't they see the deflector is just plastic and it shouldn't be pushed on like that?" No harm was done so I proceeded to pay.

At the counter was a woman so mechanical in her routine she seemed robot-like. My paperwork was pulled up. She told me what work was done, how much oil was put in and what the charges were. I was offered a frequent customer card and asked to sign on the dotted line. At no point did this woman make eye contact with me. She was perfectly engrossed in the efficiency of the transaction.

And then came the line that let me know their entire value system. "I've attached a satisfaction survey about your visit today and we'd appreciate you giving us a rating of excellent," she said, spinning the line out of the automatic script in her head. I signed the form and thought to myself, There is no way I'm giving a score of excellent now. "Thank you. Have a nice day," were her parting words.

One sentence and she showed me what they value; they want excellent ratings and nothing else. They don't want the truth, they want "excellent" ratings. And, any business that doesn't want the truth is facing a gathering storm.

Telling a customer you would appreciate a particular rating is silly. Attempting to influence my satisfaction rating is a silly way to generate good marks. The truth is the only thing that should be relevant. But, I can guess why they don't want the truth.

The shop is a franchise. The mother company, Jiffy Lube International, Inc. evaluates their franchisees on a variety of performance metrics, one of which is customer satisfaction. By encouraging "excellent" ratings, local management thinks they will achieve a higher customer satisfaction rating, improving their standing, if not financial rewards, from Jiffy Lube International. I understand that perfectly well - and it's still silly.

And anyway, I would not have given them an excellent rating for two primary reasons; the cashier never made eye contact, and they don't want the truth. She sounded like a robot. The service was efficient to a fault. Any person in a service position who does not take the time to talk to me like a warm human being and make eye contact so I know she is actually engaging me is not giving excellent service.

The only thing that matters is the truth. Everything else is delusion, and not the good kind. Just let people tell you what their experience was like the way they want to tell you. If you've created a truly excellent service experience, you'll hear about it. If you haven't, you can attempt to jury rig the survey results, and that may get you higher accolades with your management, but it may cost you customers. You can still get the ratings you want and still lose customers - as is the case with me.

Not every process in the Jiffy Lube business should be as mechanically systematic as the changing of the oil. Some parts of the customer experience should be about the human customer.

Why the Soft Stuff is Hard

Ah, the soft stuff. That part of management and leadership that perplexes and outright frustrates many businesspeople. If we could just focus on tasks and goals and forget the squidgy emotional soft stuff we'd get a lot more done, right? Well, certainly, especially if we were made of metal.

After the first week of a masters program in executive leadership, I remain convinced that the soft stuff - values, creating high morale, interpersonal intimacy, idealism, non-caustic relationships and the like, is very hard for many executives to make sense of, much less employ wisely. Why? Well, at the very least it's because the American business system does not place much emphasis on it. The very term, "soft" (fluffy is another one) hints at how much credence we place give it; it's a scoffing term.

The Harder the Better
Another reason businesspeople skip over the interpersonal or "fluffy stuff" is that we're not taught in our education at any level outside perhaps kindergarten, useful strategies for working with it. Heck, we hardly learn how to prepare ourselves to be married or in a long-term relationship, but for trial and error. We are not taught enough about enriching relationships and maintaining high ethics while achieving concrete goals. We didn't start learning early enough. We're warned what might happen if we transgress against laws, but we're not really brought up appreciating the tangible advantages of being part of a harmonious community, much less strategies for creating one. Heck, I bet many of you read the word harmonious and thought of group hugs or singing Kumbaya. If you did, you are not alone.

Too many heads of business have little appreciation for blending a relentless goal focus with the relational attitudes and behaviors that make for strong and vital working communities – and because they have little experience with it, they don’t understand it – and so place little value in it. And wherever there is little appreciation, there is little investment.

Hard is good. Soft is bad. Numbers are easier to work with than values. Hard is results-oriented. Soft slows things down. Why do we need to talk so much? Hard is measurable. Soft defies measurement. What's the tangible value of this morale approach? Hard is rewarded. Soft can't be deposited in the bank. You either make the numbers or you don't. And on and on.

A Strategy for New Possibilities
What I find most interesting and distressing is how pervasive is the belief that we can't have both numerical success and demonstrable values of enriching relationships and maintaining unwaveringly high ethics. Shouldn’t we be going for all of that simultaneously? Of course we should, and it requires a new way of thinking.

If you've read my other articles, you've seen this idea several times: eliminating binary thinking - the habitual on or off, all or nothing, you're with us or against us, you or me, up or down, right or wrong, black or white, soft or hard, this or that, either/or mentality – is perhaps the wisest upgrade executives can make in their thinking. This single shift of awareness...this evolution of awareness to choose more than one thing, will invite you into a realm of possibility never imagined. The upside is your options for outcomes and ways to achieve them will multiply considerably. The downside is you’ll be required to think a lot more, which requires more time, more dialogue and more likelihood of having to say the most terrifying phrase an executive can say, “I don’t know.” All of that may be uncomfortable, and still the right way to go.

Outside the tiny world of either/or - in the expanded realm of options sits creativity just waiting to help you solve problems and seize opportunities. When you learn to see more than two options, you become wildly more valuable to your organization, whether you own it or someone else does.

But, in order to see more than binary options, you've got to want to see more...and I wonder if a lot of people aren't just a little too comfy with either/or thinking to really step out of their mental and emotional cages. You've also got to have a system for engaging with more options than just two. But, since we commonly think in pairs of mutually exclusive possibilities, we have not trained our minds to process even the idea of mutually INclusive options. Put another way, black and white is easier.

Yeah, I know, that sounds so philosophical and that just makes it difficult to put into practice. Well, it may be difficult, but that is not the transformative issue. The transformative issue is: How much more can we achieve (numerically and holistically) with an improved process than we do now?

What has this got to do with the soft sides of business? Well, if we’re uncomfortable with the ambiguity that comes with looking at questions from many more sides than either/or allows, we’ll set up our decision making systems for very short conversations. In very short conversations people are told to get to the bottom line, “How much money will it make us? How much will it save us?” Short conversations tend to be fixated with hard outcomes, like a sort of obsession, at the exclusion of everything else, including healthy interpersonal connections and creativity, and possibility, and unwaveringly high ethics. "What’s the bottom line? We haven’t got time!”

When any possible outcome is put opposite “the bottom line” what usually wins? If you play this approach all the way out, the bottom line could be used to justify any behavior, right? Is that what we really want? Most people I talk with say no. But because they either don’t know how to or are scared to think more holistically, they revert (very quickly I might add) to using the bottom line as the justification for the way things are. Nothing can change. Status quo. Steady as she goes. It is not until we replace either/or with the intention to achieve the bottom line and other important “soft” objectives that our work-life experiences can change.

A Challenge to Expore
What if the goal for your department or your business were to achieve all the numerical goals and enrich relationships among everyone involved at the very same time? How might the bonding of these two commonly unpaired ideas upgrade what you achieve?

What do you need to learn in order to upgrade how your group operates?

If you are not in charge, what do you need to do to have a hand in creating how your group operates, and perhaps even what goals they go for?

What do you think an improvement would do to morale? (Did you know morale is a more meaningful predictor of performance than skill?) What do you think it would do to your reputation with your customers?

What do you think it would mean in your personal life if you refused to separate goal achievement and interpersonal harmony? Don’t think for a minute you can be all hard at work, 50, 60, 70 hours a week and not be too hard in your relationship, too. I have seen very few people who can maintain two sets of behavior like that.

To learn the most in this exercise, discuss these questions with people who do not think like you do. Otherwise you’ll have done little more than construct an argument for how right you are.

Is the hard stuff really the be all and end all, or might the soft stuff be equally important?

Please share your thoughts. I’m interested.

No Reply at All - Part III

After all the invitations, I had one terrific meeting with a chap who runs a private investigation agency. I found him to be interesting, skilled and generous. I went away optimistic that more enjoyable and productive meetings like it will follow.

I have resolved to do the work that most people don't do; I will continue to extend the invitations and meet with the people who accept them. And, I'll be patient; some people accept invitations a long time after they are extended.

Don't get me wrong. This doesn't mean I won't invite someone several times. I will - but I am not begging.

I think there is a way of working that follows the energy of positivity and connection more than the energy of negativity and strain. This is not an argument for sliding through without fully engaging, or taking the easy way when it is merely easy, and not fully productive. On the contrary. It is a strategy for noticing where connections are strongest and following that path. It's the path of least resistance and most connectivity, the path where the greatest of potential energy is turned kinetic. Put another way, it is the path where progress is made.

I've also resolved to extend a great many more invitations. I've realized I really, really enjoy these meetings. To learn about someone is fascinating business. To help them with resources is fun. To accept their generous help is fun, too. It's also a privilege. We won't all have an electromagnetic connection, but some of us will...and that is enough to keep me in the game.

No Reply at All - Part Two

As you know, four phone calls and one email were sent asking people with whom I'm in a business development/referral group to join me for coffee so that we can get acquainted. The idea was to learn about one another. I can't refer someone to a person I care about without knowing them. And sitting in a room for 90 minutes once a week does not mean I know the people in the room. So, I invited four of them to coffee.

One person has a reputation for not returning emails or phone calls. His reputation is in no danger of changing.

One of the businesspeople said, "Hi David. You called me while I was out of town last week." That was it, nothing more. A statement of fact. Now, keep in mind that I don't leave blank or mysterious messages like, "Hi Joe, this is David Facer, please call me. I have something to talk with you about." Rather, I leave a detailed message, as their voicemails often request. What did I get in return? An acknowledgment that I called. Well, an acknowledgement that I called is something, I suppose.

Another person said that no message was received. He did apologize for not returning the call. He would have had he received a message. I appreciate that. He even asked me what I called about. I said I called to invite him to coffee so that we could learn about one another's businesses and so forth. Again, a heartfelt apology - and nothing more.

I pressed this person a little and told him he may have a service quality problem in his firm. I left the message with a person, I told him, and apparently he never got the message.

"Did you speak with a man or a woman," he asked.

"A woman," I replied.

"Oh, I don't have a secretary," he said.

I was speechless. Apparently someone took a message and did nothing with it, yet there was no curiosity as to how that might happen. And, there was no attention given to why I actually called.

What's going on here?

I really don't know. Someone was out of town. Someone did not receive a message taken by someone who is not a secretary. Someone doesn't return calls. The fourth person has not responded either. I'm Zero for Four in attempts to connect with people who I am supposed to refer to friends, clients and family.

I am curious about a few things, though. Do I have too high an expectation? Should I lower my standard and just expect people to not return phone calls and emails? Should I call and call and call? Is it reasonable to expect courtesy to be returned? Are we too full with stuff to do already that we cannot process additional requests and inquiries? Are we so busy that attempts to connect with us are missed altogether? Why do we miss potential quality problems like a message not getting through? Are invitations to connect being perceived as just more things we need to do when we're overwhelmed already? Are we being lazy? Should we have higher standards for relating with other professionals? Do we care that approaches to business like this undermine our reputations? Do we have any concept of our reputations?

Because I am so curious about these questions, I will persist. I will continue the experiment. This week, I will invite three of the four to coffee again and tell you what happens. I'll invite them in person at the meeting on Thursday.

Any guesses?