On a train the other day, a man is talking on his mobile phone about a business partner. It’s hard not to overhear the conversation, because the man is talking in that strange way that people have on a mobile phone, as if there is nobody else in the same county. He’s discussing a business opportunity, and in particular one of the key individuals involved, by name.
My partner Lesley is one of the others on the train. She is sitting with a friend, and both are working on their laptops. As the overheard conversation continues, and starts to reveal some things that perhaps ought to be confidential, the friend twists his laptop screen around so that Lesley can see it. On screen is her friend’s Outlook contact information for the person being discussed. Lesley has her 3G card, so is able to look up the person on LinkedIn at the same time.
The world isn’t just small any more, you can actually fit quite a lot of it into a railway carriage.
The annual Bollywood film awards in Thailand recently were visited by many more stars than previous ceremonies. It seems that they were keen to attract as much attention to Bollywood as possible, because audience numbers are down. Numbers are down, because of a new form of cricket that launched in India a month or so ago. The games are not just popular, they are actually affecting the size of film audiences.
Somewhere in the Bollywood marketing departments, people are asking ‘how did that happen’? How did a new form of entertainment, apparently with no link at all to films and film audiences, come to affect them?
It’s not enough to scan your horizons, you have to keep checking whether they are still the right ones to scan.
Why is training and personal development so often neglected at work? Everyone agrees it’s a ‘good thing’, yet it’s very often the last thing that gets done.
Computer programmers expect training and education to be part of their employment package. In all probability, you will not be able to hire a good programmer unless they can see that you have sound plans for their continued professional development.
I have often been asked to justify this ‘extra’ expenditure on training. It’s not hard:
- they won’t join without it
- they will stay longer and be more useful with it
- their world keeps changing, and they need to keep up to date
- they will tell a good story about you to their peers
- they are going to leave you anyway at some point, and there’s a very good chance you will come across them again, maybe even as a client or prospect.
So which bit of this doesn’t apply to your entire organisation?
Well, maybe the first bit’s different. Good people may readily join you without a commitment to their continuing personal or professional development.
All the rest is the same though. And one day soon, you’re going to find that the very best candidates will have learned from the programmers, that personal development is not an option, it’s a requirement.
You probably guessed most of this from the title. Except it’s about a UK insurance company with a fantastic reputation in a competitive and profitable niche …
I call to change the starting date on an insurance policy. I talk to the Customer Services team (I’m skipping the part about how it took seven minutes for my call to be answered). I am told I will need to cancel the policy and start a new one – OK, not ideal, but no problem, until I learn that Customer Services can only do the cancellation part; “No, we can’t set up a new policy for you, you have to talk to Sales for that”.
Where to begin with this … well:
1. You could at least have offered to put me through to the other department
2. You could have recognised that this was possibly a bit of a pain for me, and therefore it was a distinct possibility that I just might not do it
3. This is a competitive marketplace – why don’t you behave as if you know that?
4. How come we are still dealing with companies organised around the needs of the operation, rather than the needs of the customer?
It’s amazing, and pretty sad to witness a corporate mentality that seems not to recognise the link between service and sales