The One About When the Dog Broke My Nose
No, it’s not an old episode of Friends, but it could have been.
I arrived home from a few days away and was picking up some things from the sofa. Our dog Yuma, an 80-pound black lab, came out of nowhere, excited to greet me. She jumped up as I bent down and the rest was painful history.
All unintended, all a complete surprise, and an unexpectedly bad outcome.
Lying on my back for an hour or two, ice on my face, got me to stop and look at things from a different point of view. I reminded myself that in most situations, it’s the human’s fault more than the dog’s fault. I was happy to see Yuma too, but how could we re-track her energy to a greeting that makes sense?
Now let’s think beyond “human” and “dog.” From a broader perspective, when a leader gets a black eye – figuratively, not literally – what do you do next? How do you re-track that interaction so you win instead of lose?
How Can We Turn Bad Situations into Good Outcomes?
The problem with being in executive leadership is that the buck tends to stop with you. You’re the “human” in this situation, and many things about the way the “dog” reacts seem beyond your control.
Right now, as you read this, chances are good there’s at least one difficult situation that feels as unruly as an excited 80-pound dog connecting with your face. A project or cutover has gone massively awry, perhaps due to many things in the world or in your company, that are outside your purview. Or maybe your results aren’t where you wanted them to be and despite clear plans, your team just isn’t executing. What do you do to re-track, pivot, and get things moving on a better path?
Having a keen eye for the context and culture of the organization at a specific moment in time is often overlooked as a key element of results. This means you look more closely - not just at the data and results - but also at what is going on in the organization.
The first place my colleagues and I always tune into is how teams communicate and whether everyone is aligned. Leaders must be aware of results, of course, but also of the dynamics of what inspires people to achieve their results. Intentional communication drives real, significant change. A vacuum in communication means all team members interpret the direction and needs on their own, based on their own immediate concerns and responsibilities.
An important underpinning is real relationships. Kim Scott, in her book Radical Candor, has a very simple way of predicting the likelihood of team results. Leaders and managers need real relationships, a focus on getting stuff (she uses a different word) done, and an understanding of why it matters.
I build on this framework by coaching clients and team members that a shared understanding – understanding the what and the why together – is a multi-directional endeavor. It takes investment of time to think through what to say, how to say it, and then to check back to understand how the message landed. But the extra time required for this intentional communication tends to pay off dramatically in the team’s final results.
Collaborating with teams to achieve outcomes has never been as stressful as it is today. People feel tired, burned out, undervalued, and sometimes unheard. Changing that dynamic can represent a fresh start with very tough situations, even before we get results through the process, technology, and execution.
The “What” Matters
While I write mostly about contact channels and technology, the importance of the team’s vision and focus is foundational. I have been working closely with a client recently who is so concerned about short term internal results that the team has lost track of the big picture and how they serve customers together.
It’s a common challenge: our strategy is upended by unexpected results (and hopefully not a broken nose!) and we get distracted about which black eye to fix first.
Whether it’s a situation we walk into with a new client, or a situation that emerges as a team is working together, the core step is to understand where people are coming from.
- What is each person’s motivation?
- Where is alignment required?
- What kind of support does the individual need?
- Who do we all need to communicate with and what stories do we need to convey to continue to build shared understanding?
- What outcome do we achieve together?
By taking the focus off of activities and respecting the human side, it is more rewarding for team members to navigate their roles and responsibilities. Organizational change management techniques like audience, process, and role analysis help a lot. But at the end of the day, these must be delivered with human interaction to succeed.
One of my clients called recently to share that his business is really struggling – and he is really struggling to figure out how to get results. For the first time ever, clients are giving negative feedback about the firm’s service, and he is starting to see drops in customer retention.
Q: “My revenue retention and customer satisfaction results are going downhill. I need people to do the basics right. I know we have had a lot of people leave the business – some by choice, some out of necessity. Our service levels aren’t what they should be. I just don’t understand: why isn’t everyone here doing their work and moving things forward?”
This question from a real client is a great example of a business issue – doing the basics in an optimal fashion to serve the client – exacerbated by internal struggles and labor issues.
When we arrived to rework the customer-facing issues, like how quickly customers were getting the right answers and customer retention, the most significant challenges were not the processes themselves.
The bigger problem was the gaps staff departures had created, compounded by the lack of communication and coaching to support people and ensure they were focused on the right things. In this client’s situation, he wrestled with a black eye on service level and customer satisfaction, resulting in lost revenue. In other words, the people gaps led to revenue gaps, and no one was happy.
The labor market is tough right now. It’s hard to backfill. Without a cocoon of communication and support, team members feel isolated and unsuccessful at what they’re doing.
Customers forced to wait were increasingly ornery with their requests, and team members felt less and less able to help. They were also constantly being asked to help with internal questions, further distracting them and making customer requests take longer.
This rinse and repeat cycle drove decaying customer results and increased attrition. In this case, the leaders didn’t see how much work was rolling to people who were overwhelmed and had to constantly stop customer-facing work to satisfy internal requests. Once we supported leaders in stabilizing the team, we stopped the slide and could move forward to the desired outcomes.
The Rest of the One About the Day the Dog Broke My Nose
I spent the following week trying to avoid video calls so I didn’t have to explain my purple nose and black eye. I struggled to read without being able to put my glasses on.
After consulting with a trainer, our family learned some better techniques to help Yuma with her greetings and the need to communicate and support her consistently. The best part - Yuma’s unintentional gift to me - was that I had enough time to think about what would work in organizational settings.
As you consider your own experiences with your organization, what communication and change challenges are you struggling with? What have you tried that made a difference?
Whether it is basic, hard, or ridiculously complex, solutions are out there.
Take a moment to share this newsletter with your colleagues who may be struggling with similar challenges. If nothing else, you might be the one person in their day whose communication validates their experience, who makes them feel seen and heard. From a “strictly business” perspective, it can be easy to overlook just how important this really is, even if it might feel silly or “touchy-feely.”
What I can tell from the perspective of a Fortune 1000 consultant, this lack of communication and the restoration of a real sense of purpose and alignment for a team is the force that most accurately predicts the eventual outcome - and your reputation - as an effective leader.
Are you a leader or a team member who has benefitted from practical, real-world improvements in fractured communication? We’d love to hear what simple change(s) made the difference. Get in touch>>
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I founded Blue Orbit Consulting in 2014 after running staff organizations in contact centers and building consulting practices in customer service, process improvement, complex program management, and channel operations. My approach – and my firm’s approach – is fundamentally pragmatic, and our clients often achieve benefits in excess of 10x their investment. We develop and deliver world-class customer interactions for our clients, whether it is troubleshooting and optimizing what they already have in place or creating strategic transformations to deliver outstanding customer interactions every time.