Blog - Real Symple Solutions

Be Flexible: Customize Your Marketing

July 14, 2017 by daniel purdy Leave a Comment

As an itinerant marketing teacher and consultant, I spend a lot of time in coffee shops and restaurants. One thing I’ve learned from this experience is to to be flexible in addressing the needs of your customers.

I’m writing this article while sitting in a bar and grill on the Bellingham, WA waterfront. When I arrived the place was empty but as time passed more and more folks showed up. The afternoon was beautiful and many people asked to sit on outside. Guess what “management,” said? You guessed it the manager said, “sorry the deck is closed”.

Over and over again the manager said the same thing, “sorry the deck is closed”. Sitting in a corner of the bar working on administrative tasks I heard most of those customers grumble about not being able to sit outside and enjoy the wonderful weather.

I wondered over and over again why the staff didn’t just accommodate these grumbling customers. I’m sure they have good reasons; lack of staff, too hard, don’t care? What would be so difficult about serving people in the place they want to consume the service?

What if we could find a way to say yes to our customers? Not because we have to but because we want them to have the best experience possible. Not because it is easier but because it’s better for our customer.

Accommodating the personal needs of these customers required no capital investments or any other long-term commitments. All that was needed was a flexible manager willing to help customers fulfill their needs.

We’ve all been there. The hope to experience something amazing and the denial of that experience by someone who controls the experience. It’s disappointing, isn’t it? When you have the chance to delight your customer don’t disappoint them instead. Doing so is a lost opportunity to create a great experience for them that could lead to many more visits.

Next time you’re in the manager’s seat. Consider making the choice to serve your customers instead of telling them “that’s not available”.

Now I’m off to find a place where they’re willing to let me sit outside on the deck on a beautiful afternoon. Too bad they lost my business isn’t it? Don’t be them.

Causes of Workplace Stress

July 14, 2017 by daniel purdy Leave a Comment

We all struggle with stress at work and from work. A recent study found that 80% of employees in the U.S. are stressed out at work.

Stress results in depression, sickness, and disease. It makes us seek out thoroughly unhealthy things like comfort food, alcohol, and drugs to minimize its effects.

So what’s with stress? If we’re all stressed out why don’t we do anything about it? The reality is that most of us don’t know why we’re stressed, we don’t recognize the underlying causes. Instead, we simply feel as if we’re unique and that there is something wrong with us for not being calm, cool, and collected.

So, what’s our first step in managing stress in a healthy way? Let’s begin by taking a look at the root causes of workplace stress.

1. Complexity of Work
2. Opacity of Work
3. Volume of Work
4. Deadlines of Work
5. Responsible for Results
6. Expectations of Others

What is the tie that binds these all together? The need to feel in control.

The root source of our stress is that we’re trying to control the uncontrollable. We have no control over the way work flows to us. All of these elements are external stimuli that trigger stress. We have no control over external stimuli. We can only control how we respond to them.

The flow of work itself is rapid and massive. The work is unclear (opaque) and complicated with many unknown interconnected parts and outcomes that we are responsible for.

All of our basic human needs are involved in this complex web of external stimuli. Most of us are addicted to our paycheck because we perceive that our needs are tied to them.

Maslow defined basic needs in the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs as:

physiological needs (food, shelter, warmth)
safety (financial, material, psychological)
belongingness (work family, trade groups, professional societies)
esteem (status, approval, promotion, pay)
Self-actualization (meeting our own expectations for our life potential)

It’s completely understandable that we would be stressed out by work. If we don’t perform up to expectations of others, like our boss, they might sanction us in some way.

Social sanctions might include:
• ostracism
• the silent treatment
• sarcasm
• mocking
• bullying
• threatening
• shaming
• etc.

Administrative sanctions might include:
• performance counseling
• warning
• performance write-up
• suspension

Financial Sanctions might include
• reduction in pay
• demotion
• loss of bonus
• unpaid suspension
• loss of pay increase
• loss of promotion
• etc.

Professional Sanctions might include:
• firing
• layoff
• loss of recommendation
• blackballing
• etc.

Those sanctions look pretty bad, don’t they? That’s why stress at work is so prevalent. It’s only natural that our stress system gets triggered when our basic needs aren’t met such as our safety, and the safety of our family, being threatened.

It should make sense why you feel the way you do. You are, in many ways, trying to meet the unrealistic expectations of others.

The good news is that there are methods to deal with all these external stimuli. We can’t change the stimuli because they’re external but we can change how we process the stimuli to create a calm, cool and collected mental space where we can do our best work.

To learn more, stay tuned for the next installment of the series on dealing with workplace stress.

Avoid Interruption – Push Calls to Email

December 31, 2014 by daniel purdy Leave a Comment

Welcome to the inaugural Real Symple Tips, Tricks and Tools email. If you would like to not receive these messages from me please just reply to me personally to let me know and I’ll take care of it. No worries and no hard feelings.

I know you are busy so I’ll give you the “Long Story Short” version up front and the longer story if you want more details. I hope this trick is useful. Enjoy.

Long Story Short

We all have good intentions (New Year’s Resolutions)
It takes more than good intentions to get the right things done
We need mechanisms to ensure we do more of the right things
Mechanisms create actions that lead to good results
Example: Shut off your voicemail and direct calls to your email (See how below)
Benefit? You can avoid interruptions and control when, how and if you respond
Interruptions? Yes, it takes nearly 25 minutes to get back on task after an interruption
Can I do this? Yes, Coke recently shut off voicemail for the entire company
Should everyone do it? No, if you are a “service provider” to customers it may not work
Bottom Line:
- Interruptions are bad because we need to FOCUS on our most important work
- Create mechanisms that help you FOCUS for longer periods of time
Result: FOCUS on the right tasks for longer and you’ll find your stress goes down as you get more done
To learn more about Real Symple check out the seminar we are offering in January

The Long Story

Every year at this time many of us turn our minds to making changes for the better. We call these things Resolutions.

But what is a resolution?

Definition of Resolution. Source: Google

So, a resolution doesn’t actually change anything. It’s just a decision to do something. The challenge with resolutions is that we all have good intentions. But as you will surely remember…

The Real Symple approach is designed to help you move beyond a resolution so you can get to action by giving you methods to go from “decision “to “action“ to “results”.

The methods we use in Real Symple are called “mechanisms” which are simply devices which will cue (or prevent) a behavioral action. I cover a lot of these in the Real Symple Project Management seminar but I wanted to share an effective mechanism that I’ve been doing for years and recently adopted by Coca Cola.

Choose your Work, Don’t Let your work choose you

Get Rid of Voicemail (or email)

What?

I can hear you freaking out now!! We can’t get rid of ______________ (fill in the blank). Yes you can. Believe me, you can. Read on and I’ll show you how. If Coke can do it, so can you

Seriously… Coke is getting rid of Voicemail.

Coca-Cola-Atlanta-Headquarters — Source: BloomberNews via Atlanta-Journal Constitution & AP Photo

Why should you?

Well Coca-Cola did it recently and the Coke CIO describes the rationale quite well when he says they made the move to, “simplify the way we work and increase productivity.”

Read the Story

Focus is what we need. Interruptions are what we get.

Interruptions are a huge problem with our work flow. We get interrupted constantly and research shows it takes 23 minutes to regain our focus after an interruption. This has a huge impact on our productivity. Anything we can do to cut down interruptions will automatically increase our productivity.

Shutting off your voicemail (or email) will prevent these interruptions and help you focus and get more done. But what if my organization isn’t as cutting edge as Coke? How do I get rid of voicemail if my company doesn’t?

Getting Rid of Voicemail: Here’s how you do it.

Set your Voicemail message to say the following.

“Hi, you’ve reached <your name>. I’m not available at the moment and my work flow doesn’t allow for me to efficiently return phone messages. The best way to reach me is by email at <your email>. Send me a note and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

Next set your phone to go directly to voicemail after one ring and silence the ringer. Voila, no more interruptions. It’s as simple as that. You have now reduced the available communication channels by 25%. Why? Because for most professionals there primary communication channels are email and phone calls with occasionally texts and social media being part of the communication stream. If you reduce traffic by 25% you will get much more done.

Will This Really Work?

“But what will people think”, you wonder? Most of them really won’t care. They’ll understand your challenge because they have it too. They may even think it’s a good idea and follow your example.

Will everyone approve? No, probably not. Remember that you can’t please everyone, all the time, so don’t even try. Also remember that your job isn’t to please everyone in your organization. Your job is to get your work done and make your boss look good by helping them achieve their objectives.

If focusing on the work your boss wants you to do annoys someone in IT, consider it the cost of doing business. I’m not saying you ignore the feelings of others but neither should you allow the desires of others to dictate your own behavior.

To make your boss look good you’ll need to reduce those interruptions so you can get more done and do a better job with the work you focus on.

Is this a Silver Bullet?

Will this work for everyone? No, of course it will not. There are no “silver bullets” in life. If you work in some type of service position where you are expected to be available for “customer” (internal or external) calls then this won’t work for you.

But you could set an auto response for your email and route everything to your phone if you have to constantly be available to answer the phone. Which channel you shut down doesn’t matter as much as whether it supports your work flow. If you do great work by phone but not as much by email then push things to your phone so you can be more effective. If it’s the other way around then push it to email.

What’s the Catch?

So what’s the catch? The only catch is that you have to be thoughtful about the audience. If your audience isn’t comfortable calling you then asking them to do so might result in you losing them entirely. For example if I were to ask the college students I teach to call me instead of emailing me I’m sure I would get many fewer questions because young people aren’t very comfortable calling people on the phone. They’re much more comfortable with email or text. So before you create an “execution rule” like this consider who your audience (customer, user, etc.) is and whether your new rule will work with that audience. If it doesn’t work for them then find another mechanism that will work.

The Bottom Line

Author Daniel Levitin, in his book, The Organized Mind, explains it this way, “It takes more energy to shift your attention from task to task. It takes less energy to focus. That means that people who organize their time in a way that allows them to focus are not only going to get more done, but they’ll be less neurochemically depleted after doing it.”

So regardless of what mechanism you choose remember that the bottom line goal of the entire exercise is to reduce interruptions so you can focus on the most important work and avoid losing 20-30 minutes every time someone wants something from you.

What’s Next?

If you’d like to learn more about how to develop mechanisms like this to help you get more things done check out the Real Symple Project Management Seminar we’re running at WWU that begins on January 22^nd. If that doesn’t work for you… don’t worry, we’re working on other formats in the future.

If you’d like to stay in touch you can join the Real Symple Group on LinkedIn. If you’d like to NOT receive any emails in the future simply respond to this email and I’ll take care of it.

Thanks for reading. I hope it is helpful.