Hold Your Horses!

We love problems. It gives us a chance to showcase our abilities in finding solutions. And when we have resolved the issue, we do all love a nice beer around the BBQ to rejoice. After all, it is a job well done, a pat on the back, and a time of celebration, that is until the next problem happens.

When a problem is identified, many of us think we know the solution. Some of the fortunate ones in authority may simply define a project to resolve the perceived ‘problem’. We start engaging a team of people. We may even assign a project or a programme manager, depending on the size of the project, to turn the solution into a reality. If we are in government, we might even birth an entire ministry. Whether it is the Agile methodology or ‘Waterfall’ strategy for project management, or the formation of a department, the horse has bolted.

But what if we are solving the ‘wrong’ problem? What if solving that ‘problem’ result in giving us a less-than-optimal solution? What if the ‘real’ problem remains while the illusion of resolution sits comfortably with everyone? Heaven forbid, but is it possible at all that such a case might exist even among well meaning and capable managers of businesses?

Let me illustrate with a real problem. I was working for an outsourced business partner of New Zealand Telecom. The company was having a problem meeting its call centre service level as it was unable to find sufficient staff to man the phones. Ringing-in customers were made to wait for a long time on the phone. Telecom was unimpressed. The outsourced partner needed to increase its manpower level to meet the call targets. But in a tight labour market, Human Resources was running out of solution. I was approached to offer more avenues.

I decided to take a different approach by looking at the problem through an analogy; I treated incoming calls as water and asked myself what I would do if it was a case of a heavy deluge. By so doing, I reframed the problem from “How do we find more people to man the phones?” to “How do we drain away the heavy call volume?” In so doing, my solutions became quite different from the original plan which was to look for more avenues for manpower. Instead, I started to look at the possibility of making use of the Interactive Voice Response system (the thing that people hear when they are waiting on the phone). I explored the option of using the internet to redirecting callers to find their own solutions. I reviewed alternatives available to get call centre representatives to help reduce the number of incoming calls.

In a short period of intense work, we were able to resolve our problems that looked insurmountable at the beginning; we simply practiced problem reframing.

Problem reframing is possibly the most important job of a leader. Leaders are expected to create reality for the organisation. To reframe a problem is to change what people consider as important or pay attention to. Because all solutions flow out from the way that we ‘frame a problem’, the ability to use this skill is so critical to all that we do, especially so if one is a leader.

Problem reframing is practiced my politicians, marketers, and managers alike. We may recognise this as ‘spin’ in politics but it is a powerful tool. Consider the case of the late US President Ronald Reagan, who when his opponent Walter Mondale commented that Reagan was probably too old for the position simply responded that he did not think age should be an issue and he had no intention of making an issue of his ‘opponent’s youth and inexperience.’ In one comment, he reframed the question in a way that made sure that age would not be a major factor in the race to be President.

Again, let me demonstrate how reframing can force our minds to work differently. Because of the astronomical demand of the narrow 737 planes, Boeing had to increase the production dramatically.

Airplanes have always been built on the premise of bringing workers to the plane, i.e. keep the work-in-progress (WIP) plane stationary and bring in the workers. After all, a plane is mighty big and how would you move it?

However, car manufacturing is quite different. It is made on a conveyor belt, when the work-in-progress car creeps up to each set of workers located in a ‘station’. The question was, could planes be made like car production? And the production system became a reality.

That reframing resulted in the following reduction:

• Assembly time from 22 to 11 days,
• WIP inventory by 50%, and
• Number of crane lifts - from 8,000 crane lifts per month to less than 100 crane lifts per month (3 crane lifts per plane).

It allows its production to grow astronomically and it is projected to deliver 38 planes per month by end of 2012 (Production as of June 2011 was 31.5 planes). If they did not reframe the problem, it would be a mighty achievement even if assembly time had come down to 20 days. But we know that would not solve Boeing’s problem.

Boeing 737 video

 

Problem reframing is a powerful tool. The earlier a problem is reframed, the better it is. Because once a problem definition is accepted, and people start investing their time and effort into how they understand their problem ought to be, it will be far too great a price to pay to change that perception; consider the issues of the politics of time investment.

The message is obvious. Be clear about the problem you are solving. If the problem you have identified is ‘I need a negotiation skills training programme’, get more concrete examples. Go and see and do some analysis.

Don’t fall into the trap of accepting the first problem definition. Try different ways of reframing (NB: There are techniques that help you do so but that is for another time).

Here are four golden keys that I learned:

• All problem definitions are based on assumptions,
• Once a problem is defined and accepted, it is almost impossible to change that view,
• The way we frame our problem determines the way we plan for the solutions,
• Always get your bearings right. That way, you will be sure that you are solving the ‘right’ problem.

As a leader, it is simply too expensive to solve the wrong problem or miss the right solution.

Organisation - A Real Big Elephant

Organisational problems are not the same as individual problems. Organisational problems tend to be more challenging. And herein are some challenges:

• The older the organisation, the more systems and processes they have. And some of them have been around for so long that no one is prepared to take the bold step of removing them. So systems pile on top of systems.
• With technology, we see the increase in computer systems. But for two interacting systems to work, they must be able to communicate with each other via ‘interfaces’. Like bringing together two surfaces, there is a need to make sure that the two are glued properly so that they do not come apart at critical times. Now, the ‘glue’ is the interface and the two surfaces are the relevant computer systems. Depending on whether the two surfaces are made of the same materials, the type of ‘interfaces’ might be quite different.
• Some key systems have been in organisations for many years and no one dare to do anything to it. What if someone ‘breaks’ it?
• Business Analysts, when preparing to write a process in a system, fail to consider all business requirements and ask the key questions, effectively having a less-than-optimal solution in the system and that will require subsequent visits later on.
• Cost of upgrading anything within the system is mighty costly. So, no one wants to do anything because it is in a ‘too costly’ and ‘too hard’ basket.
• The bigger the organisation, the more systems, processes and people are involved. Complexities and management increase.
• For big organisations, those who do the job may not want to document the processes because of inconvenience, not having the skill or simply to protect one’s own job. These people handling the process may determine precisely not to do any process documentation.
• Even if these processes are documented, the organisation may go through restructuring over time, be it a retrenchment, merger or demerger (Think of the merger of city councils as a result of political realignment, e.g. the Auckland City Council). All these make documented processes redundant. In addition, unless they are updated, reviewed and managed regularly these will over time become irrelevant.
• Even if they are documented, there are the issues of finding them and making sure that staff are communicated, trained and updated every time a change takes place. Documents maybe kept in different forms in different places. Now, which is the correct version again?
• Then there are the issues of politics and silos. Organisations are made up of people who are structured by departments. People tend to operate comfortably within their own departments but a ‘product process’ is likely to touch several departments. Each department tends to view only to aim for their own benefits, sometimes forgetting the impact that their actions may have on their other business partners. They do not know what the other department is doing.
• Next, there is the issue of ‘process owners’. If the process is handled by two big divisions, e.g. wholesale and retail, then which division is responsible for the process?
• Culture of ‘empowerment’ can complicate things. ‘Empowerment’ to the point of each department looking after their own areas.
• What about the other ‘people’ aspect of staff turnover and promotion? An organisation that has a high staff turnover will face more problems than others. People do move on and they bring along the organisation’s institutional knowledge in their heads.

I hope by now you see where I am going with. Solving organisational problems is likened to untangling a messed up ball of wool; where would you start? 

Sometimes, it is much easier to begin all over again but, with big and entrenched organisations, it is impossible to do so. The ‘best’ least intrusive long-term solution is to make sure that the discipline of governance, documentation, and review is carried out.

Ever been to an old building that has been well maintained regularly and still spick and span? That is exactly where organisations ought to be when we apply the same level of discipline.

Let me know if you need help.

Call Centre Fundamentals Part 2

Contact Centre - Systems & Technology

The Contact Centre has two main elements of Systems & Technology and Customer Service Representatives (CSR). ‘Systems and Technology’ helps CSRs to perform their function well while at the same time provide data in regard to the contact centre’s performance.

The key elements under ‘Systems and Technology’ are as follows:

• The Knowledge Bank,
• The Call Management System (Queue Management),
• The Quality Assurance System, and
• The Feedback System.

The Knowledge Bank is the BRAIN of the contact centre. It is a one-stop information centre and, in its perfect state, it contains all processes, with detailed business rules and procedures, to enable CSRs to refer to and do their job consistently (one-way, same way) across the business. It allows CSRs to diagnose a customer’s issue with minimum fuss.

Most good knowledge banks have two main things going for them – they are structured for simplicity using a product life cycle approach and they are managed by specialists whose task is to be gatekeepers of information. It is also the job of the specialists to practice good housekeeping, maintaining and keeping it relevant, current, and accurate.

The Call Management System tracks that CSRs are resolving issues quickly. It provides statistical performance, especially that of customers wait time, i.e. the time that the customer is waiting to be answered. ‘Wait Time’ affects a customer’s perception of the Company.

Software to manage contact centres are plenty but they generally would be tracking data gathered from the phone systems, e.g. how long it takes before a call is answered, how long it takes to do after-call work, time away from phone.

These reports help the contact centre manager to manage its contact centre while, at the same time, monitor critical issues.

The Quality Assurance (QA) System aims to answer the question: How are we doing relative to the basic goals of a contact centre. Quite simply, to answer the questions set out at the front:

1.       Are CSRs diagnosing customers’ queries ACCURATELY?

2.       Are CSRs resolving these queries QUICKLY?, and

3.       Are customers going away with a positive impression of the Company?

Statistics captured in the Call Management System might help us answer Question #2, that is, the speed of completing the call but unless there is someone listening in on that call and understanding how it went, the CSR might just be closing off the call without resolving the query. 

Hence, implicit to the QA system is a need for specialists to be involved in listening and independently assessing the performance of that call. A good QA practice follows these guidelines:

• Set Performance Service Standards,
• Train CSRs on these Service Standards (in order to calibrate organisational expectations with the individual/ CSR),
• Monitor adherence to Service Standards (that include both verbal and visual),
• Provide feedback to Management and CSRs,
• Review and update Performance Service Standards in line with rising customer expectations (via feedback from customers, CSRs, the industry),
• Provide feedback to Recruitment so that the hiring requirements are altered.

The concept is that Service Standards are met not once but repeatedly so that they eventually become part and parcel of the centre, or effectively they become the culture of the place.

Finally, there is the Feedback System. This is over and above the QA system because it is intended to provide ‘real-time’ information to address ‘real-time’ issues. Sometimes, a contact centre uses an online survey within the system. Other time, the contact centre might have a Ops team to track real-time issues. Effectively, a contact centre must create a triage system to manage real-time issues quickly while balancing the BAU activities.

All these systems should feedback into the Capability Team so that they are aware of ongoing training essentials.

Contact Centre – The CSR

The CSR is the most important person for the contact centre. Technology and Systems help the CSR to perform his/ her tasks but s/he is the company representative and, hence, the real face of the company.  There are TWO Cs that the CSR must possess:

• Competencies – that is, the technical, product, and customer-service knowledge and skills that the person possesses in order for them to perform their role proficiently, and
• Commitment – that is, the readiness of the CSR to adhere to a scheduled plan in taking calls.

Going back to the fundamentals of a contact centre is critical. Now, I might be a bit longwinded but let us refresh our goals:

• To diagnose a customer’s issue accurately,
• To resolve it quickly, and
• To convey a positive impression of the Company to the Customer.

At a contact centre’s level, to ‘resolve issues quickly’ is dependent upon the number of CSRs available at any one time to take calls. This is the concept of ‘The Power of One’ where each CSR is scheduled to be present is present to take the calls. Really, what it means is that there must be the RIGHT number of the RIGHT people in the RIGHT place at the RIGHT time that will make the difference. While forecasting for the right number of people is important, it is just as critical for CSRs to adhere to their planned schedule; ‘adherence’ is a most important requirement for a CSR in a contact centre. ‘Adherence’ is a big part of ‘Commitment’ as failure to adhere will directly impact on the availability of CSRs to take calls. ‘Commitment’ impacts on unpredictable ‘shrinkage’, ‘shrinkage’ being the amount of time lost due to things relating to vacation, breaks, lunch, holidays, sick leave, and training.

‘Competencies’ is a function of many things but the big ones being Training and the Knowledge Bank (in supplying the right information at the right time).

In effect, a competent and committed CSR is someone who achieves a sound answering time, provides consistently good customer service, identifies the customer’s issue quickly and resolves it within one single interaction.

In Summary

Why are contact centres so popular these days? Contact centres primarily exist because customers do contact an organization from time to time.

Whether we are buying something, or changing some account details, or resolving an issue, we are likely to call rather than visit a Company.

But because a Company cannot afford to have a person sitting on the telephone just to answer to OUR query, we have a contact centre scenario.

Looking at it as a Service Triangle, we may now include as seen below:

To a Company, we can convert the above into the following, that is, answer a Customer:

• A set of ACCEPTABLE SERVICE MEASUREMENTS that have been identified and agreed to by the Company,
• In a manner that provides you with a relevant PLANNED SERVICE EXPERIENCE, and
• One that results in meeting all your queries within the same single call. The term used in call centre is that of ‘FIRST CALL RESOLUTION’.

What Do You Have In Your Hands!!!

In the early 1920s, Dick Drew created the masking tape to meet the need of the auto paint shops. Most of us could have stopped there because the sales for masking tape were substantial. Not Dick. Instead, he wondered what else he could do with the masking tape technology. He saw his role as creating new uses for adhesives, not marketing more masking tape.

He progressed onto Scotch cellophane tape that has become a ubiquitous product in our households. Scotch tape was invented in 1929 for an industrial customer who used it to seal insulation in an airtight shipping package.

Then, there are 3M reflective traffic signages. As you travel down major highways at night, you will come across huge, bright green signs with the road names in either white or yellow, and reflective, to catch your attention. These are 3M products. In 1939, 3M combined the masking tap technology with the glass beads project technology and developed a weatherable film with reflective properties for traffic road signage. Today, improvement to the original version of traffic road signage can be found in products like Scotchlite, High Intensity, and Diamond Grade, all 3M patented products. Most road signs around the world are serviced by one of these products.

You board a double-decker bus in London. You are impressed by the huge ads hugging the sides of the bus. You wonder how long it took for advertisers to paint the bus. Now, here is the value. The advertisers do not pain the buses. Using a process called silkscreen, they transfer the ad messages onto non-reflective films that are then carefully positioned onto the buses. You guessed right. It is yet another 3M product called Scotchcal that was invented in 1953 to meet the needs of aircraft signage. Scotchcal combines the adhesive technology with another newly discovered 3M technology in polyester (PET) film.

You are walking towards a glass wall. The glass wall is so well polished that you would hardly know that it is there. You could almost have crashed into it if it were not for a thin, blue strip in the middle. Another 3M product? Yes, and it is called Controltac. Water is used to adjust the film’s position onto the medium. eM’s Controltac graphic markings are used as effective travelling ad. They are used for fleet markings, car decoration and awning designs. The word, ‘Fedex’, on the sides of the Fedex vans is probably made from 3M’s Controltac. So are colourful awnings on top of Z and BP petrol kiosks.

You drive along a particularly hazardous stretch of highway. You recognise that not only are the signage reflective, even the road pavement markings do the same. You have probably encountered yet another 3M product called Stamark. Stamark’s strength is its ability to retain retro-reflectivity.

You are going overseas. With your passport, you visit the immigration booth. The officer scans its data into the computer system. She verifies your passport to ensure that it has not been tampered with. With her blessings, you are cleared to proceed. Your passport may yet be protected by a unique 3M security film.

You injured your finger while cutting a pineapple. Blood is oozing out in small drops onto the cutting board. It is not serious but it requires attention. You open your pantry to look for your first aid box. Inside, you find 3M’s Active strips, flexible foam bandages as well as Micropore. You choose Active because it adheres better to moist skin. Active is yet another 3M product that represents a combination of the masking tape and medical technologies. Then, there are 3M Tegasorb ulcer dressings, 3M Tegaderm transparent dressings, and 3M Minitran transdermal delivery system that are able to dissolve the drug in the adhesive.

You enter your office. On your desk is a file with a piece of Post-It note paper informing you who will be coming by later in the afternoon. You look at the Post-It board on your wall. It shows you the key tasks that you have to complete by the end of the day. You are reading the documents in your file. Your colleague has flagged down a document for you to sign using, yes, yet another 3M product – the Post-It tape flag.

I could go on and on. The point is clear. 3M people have this uncanny ability to ask the right questions and come up with different uses for the same product or, if I may add, the same technology. They have also been able to combine existing technology with new ones to create new products.

Now, that is creativity.

Call Centre Fundamentals Part 1

(This write-up is useful for someone wanting to get a better understanding on how contact centre functions. It came directly out of notes designed to train contact centre leaders in a global contact centre operation.)

All big corporations, especially service companies that have ongoing relationships with customers, e.g. power, telco, banks, are likely to have one thing in common … the existence of a contact centre (or call centre). Contact centres have been around for more than 50 years, with Pan Am (Pan American World Airways) being one of the first 24/7 contact centres; it provided customers a local phone number to ring for every market. With the advent of cheap telecommunication cost, contact centres are even based overseas in places where the staff cost is astronomically lower than the local environment.

Such corporations have quite similar goals for their contact centres and these can best be described below as follows:

• They want a customer’s query to be diagnosed accurately,
• They want a customer’s query to be resolved quickly, and
• They want a customer to finish the call with a positive impression of the Company.

To bring about these goals, I have developed the Contact Centre Service Triangle to better explain the requirements of a contact centre.

The Customer

At the apex is ‘The Customer’. S/He is the most important reason for the existence of the contact centre. Hence, it is at the apex. At the base is the contact centre. It consists of TWO elements – CSR (Customer Service Representative – The human voice and front-facing staff with the customer) and Systems and Technology (The non-human elements that assist and track the performance of the contact centre).Right in the middle is ‘Service Measurements’ which are ‘measurements’ that we use to gauge how the contact centre is responding to the Customer.

For the ‘Customer’, there are THREE critical questions that we need to answer as follows:

• Why do customers ring a company?
• When do they call?, and
• How prepared are they to wait?

Why do customers ring a company?

Customers generally avoid calling a Company unless they have an issue. The best way to guide us to answer these questions is to work out the Product Life Cycle of the Company’s products involved. For example, customers may ring us because of one of these events: 

• Enquire – A Customer rings to make an enquiry,
• Buy – A Customer rings to BUY something,
• Change – A Customer rings to change some details in their accounts,
• Pay & Bill – A Customer rings to pay or enquire about their bills,
• Resolve – A Customer rings us to fix something for them, and
• End – A Customer rings to terminate an account.

Knowing the relevant product life cycle will help the Company to structure its systems but more on that later.

When do Customers call?

Practically, any time but there will be certain patterns even within that ‘randomness’. However, there are THREE factors that we can cover off:

• It is possible to predict when customers generally call. There will be some predictable patterns, e.g. time of the day, and day of the week,
•  Although we can ‘predict’ when calls come in (e.g. a Marketing campaign), they can still come into the centre in an erratic manner, and
• Finally, it is not possible to predict all call scenarios as human behaviour and the unfolding of daily events will impact on call arrivals.

A good contact centre is always using systems to capture the data so that it can analyse the predictable patterns and plan its staffing accordingly.

Next, how prepared are customers to wait?

Contact centres are built across the concept that ‘customers are prepared to wait on the phone’. This is what is termed as ‘Caller Tolerance’. There are possibly SEVEN factors that will impact on the way we plan staff resourcing and these are as follows:

• Degree of Motivation – If a Customer is experiencing severe inconvenience, e.g. power outage, they will most likely wait longer to reach their utility company than those with questions relating to their bills. If it is a case of medical emergency, you can assume that they will want an answer immediately.
• Availability of Substitutes – If the Customer is severely inconvenienced AND the telephone is THE ONLY mean of solving the problem, then they will stay on the line or keep calling
• Competition’s Service Level – The Competitor(s) will have an impact on the way that Customers view our resources,
• 0800 Line – Who is paying? For a 0800 line, customers may be encouraged to keep hanging on,
• Human Behaviour – The weather, a caller’s mood, the time of the day. Would you believe that there are more calls coming in when the moon is full?
• Level of Expectations – Customers in big metropolitan cities used to speed and convenience maybe less tolerable to wait, and finally
• Time Availability – Retirees would react quite differently from, say, stockbrokers.

Service Measurements

Remember, at the start, we said that the Customer is the most important reason for the presence of the contact centre. Having said that, ‘Service Measurements’ becomes the most important ‘next’ element. ‘Service Measurements’ are measurements designed to gauge the level of ‘quality services’ delivered by our staff to all customers. They represent the glue between the Customer and the Contact Centre.

‘Targeted scores’ are set, based on the Company’s understanding of customer and their needs as seen above. Any abnormalities will then be reported as they could represent issues. There are TWO types of targets:

• Service Level – It represents the level of tolerance set for calls; it is quantitative. In a one-sentence definition, it may be seen as follows - ‘Service Level’ is defined as the ‘X% of calls to be answered within Y seconds’. Here, we articulate that it is not just about answering the calls but answering them within an acceptable range as pre-defined by Management. Service Level should be tracked on a ½-hourly basis. (More on ‘Service Level’ in another write-up.)

Service Standards – These are the subjective ‘softer’ elements of service. They are behavioural – e.g. how are the CSRs performing in terms of ‘Call Opening’, ‘Establishment of Customer Needs’, ‘Hold/ Wait Protocol, and ‘Enthusiasm and Professionalism through the voice’? 

Now, look out for Part 2 to conclude this write-up.

Problem Sensitivity

At 73, Shirley was still a buzz in the office. Once I asked her for some A3 paper to put into the photocopier and she wanted to know the precise number of sheets that I required.

One day, she exclaimed how it was a pity that some internal mails continued to have a P O Box number on them. These mails were inadvertently considered as external, got franked and came back into our mail box. "If only the department replaced the P O Box with an internal address, we would save money, time and indeed effort."

Peter, a Training Consultant, was approached to run a negotiation training workshop for a sales call centre. Senior Management had observed that call centre staff were compensating customers at an alarmingly high rate. In fact, the estimation was that if nothing was done, the compensation level could hit an all time high of $24 million for the year. The Director of the Call Centre’s response was to do more training around negotiation skills.

Instead of agreeing with the Director, Peter asked permission to investigate the problem further. He started by analysing the compensation data; fortunately, these were captured by the computer system. He, then, broke them into logical categories of time, team and staff member. The Goal? To see whether any pattern could be observed.

He next spoke to team members at the call centre in order to get their perspective; people at the frontline often have the ‘best’ solutions as they knew the root cause(s) more than anyone else. In Kaizen terminology, Peter went to ‘gemba’ (the place where the ‘problem’ took place or, simply, the place of action).

He next studied the available documents including the ‘Compensation Policy’. The policy read as follows:

“The Company does not compensate unless the error is definitely made by the Company and ONLY IF the customer asks for it. And if they are adamant, then the limit given to each call centre team member is up to $200 per incident per customer. If the amount asked is higher than that, then the team member can escalate it to their team manager.”

At first glance, the limit of $200 per incident per customer seemed rather ‘generous’ to Peter. In fact, further discussion showed that a customer might be compensated far higher than the $200 limit as s/he might have more than one incident per complaint. When he probed some of the longer serving staff, he was told that the limit was set up at a time when the Company was promoting the value of ‘empowerment’. To make it simple for ‘empowered’ staff, Management encouraged them to treat the Company as their own and they were given the ‘flexibility’ to compensate based on their empowered judgment.

Problems are generally caused by either a Policy, Process, System or People issue. If it was a ‘People’ issue, then training is potentially a good solution. Together with the more insightful front-liners, Peter drew up a Cause & Effect diagram to identify the ‘root cause’. The conclusion of the group was that ‘Policy’ misalignment seemed to be the root cause. In addition, the group could also see how the Policy statement created more downstream problems as the statement ‘ONLY IF the customer asks for it’ meant that different customers could end up with different experience although the incident might well be similar. It potentially could create a ‘suspicious customer-public’ as the Company did not consider the impact of customer chatter (talk among customers).

Peter’s recommendation to the Director was to alter the ‘Compensation Policy’ by reducing the limit of each centre’s team member to $50 per call and to involve team leaders to decide on anything up to $200. He also added that there was a need to provide clarity around what could be compensated and by how much. That way, frontline staff would be more consistent in administering compensation to customers depending on the type of issues.

Shirley offered a ‘simple’ solution. Peter’s was a bit more complex. However, both were applying the trait of ‘problem sensitivity’, ‘Problem Sensitivity’ being the ability of a person to recognise that a problem exists or to be able to cut through misunderstanding, misconception, lack of facts, or other obscuring handicaps to recognise the real problem, and hence, devise the real solution.

‘Problem Sensitivity’ is a critical trait of a creative person, a trait that is often ignored by people who talk about creativity. Most people would think that ‘Imagination’ or ‘Originality’ represent creativity. That is true but there are other equally critical ones.

Research shows that other than ‘Imagination’, ‘Originality’ and ‘Problem Sensitivity’, the other key traits are ‘Curiosity’ (this one is obvious), ‘Fluency of Ideas (the ability to generate many solutions), and ‘Flexibility of Thoughts (or the willingness to consider a wide variety of approaches to a problem).

The good news in Shirley and Peter’s case was that both had a good ending. Shirley’s idea was adopted; all internal mails had since had their PO Boxes removed. Peter’s idea was handed over to another team to complete the task. The savings? A mouth-watering estimated figure of $7.9 million.

Good ideas are everywhere and they do offer payback, some bigger than others. But, like Forrest Gump said infamously, “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are going to get.” The moral of the story is to keep fishing.

More important than financial payback is the element of motivation for its staff, that their ideas matter and do make a difference. Because fundamental to our human need is the element of feeling valued.

The crux is still how do we unleash ideas to flow within the organisation. That tends to be more difficult than we think and it will be for another time that I follow up on this issue.

Happy reading.

You are firstly a Performance Consultant and not a Training Consultant

A request was sent by the Sales Centre Business Team (incoming telephone centre) to Training to conduct a refresher training programme for its Small Business Power Plan, a set of business telecommunication services. The brief that I was given by Susan Mockford, the Manager, was simple:
“Reps (or staff members of the Sales Centre) were not confident in selling these ‘Power Plans’. They were uncomfortable with answering queries from customers.”
That was about it. Now go and develop a training programme that meets the needs of the Team.
Now, if you have read my earlier article on ‘Training: A Panacea of Organisational Pain?”, you will have realised that ‘Go and See’ is a big part of what I advocate. Because as much as Management likes to believe what they want to believe, the issues are deeper than what appears on the surface.
In addition, when a manager gets too close to the action, it is sometime difficult to see the forest from the trees and s/he may be seduced by what s/he wants to hear. It is always good to have a 3rd party to give a second opinion.
I avoided defining my role as a “Training Consultant” but took on that of a “Performance Consultant” – a helicopter view. These were what I found:

• The critical Power Plans had many concepts that nobody really know. Over time, the Business Team developed sub-products, e.g. Nominated Number, Frequently Called Number, Calling circle, and then Calling Group. None of these had written definitions and resided in the heads of team leaders; some ‘older’ leaders remembered but no one had a reserve of all information,

• In some plans, there was no clear expectation as to the number of allocated phones under Nominated Numbers. As the creator of the services moved on, the rules were non-existent,

• Some plans, e.g. the Extension Calling Plan, were hardly used and not documented. Hence, when a customer rang, no one, including the back office, knew what to do,

• The processes were unclear and confusing. Reps could choose whatever code they felt were appropriate to put into the system,

• When a rep forgets to input tandem numbers into the plan, a requirement for the Power Zero Plan, customers were charged the full rate when a different rate should apply. Net of it? Angry customers,

• Frontline procedural documents were not owned by anyone. Hence, documents were never updated.

To go ahead and train based on the information that we had would have been a disaster. There was a need to do more preparation work before training. This was not really a ‘People’ issue; this was a process and knowledge bank issue.
Hence, we completely overhaul the procedures and knowledge bank.

• Marketing provided clarity across the terms for the various Power Plans. Where things were unsure, we kept digging,

• The knowledge bank was then cleaned and tidied with the new information in it, including very clear definitions and business rules,

• Some plans had to be removed and others streamlined. The greater the complexities of Power Plans, the more problems we anticipated.

With these steps, we were ready for training. But this was more of a ‘Knowledge’ training and main job of the training designer was to make it simple through conceptualisation, that is, arranging all the concepts in a simple manner for all to understand. A skilled training designer must possess this ability.
Training took place in September. When we did a ‘Before’ and ‘After’ measurement of the plans, we were able to attain Kirkpatrick’s Level 4 challenge on ‘Return on Investment’. We collated the numbers and ensured that they were not skewed by marketing events. Thankfully, there was only one event which we could ‘control’.
Susan was impressed. In fact, with the Farm Plan, a lucrative product, the jump was practically from zero. Although November had a dip as we moved into Christmas, the overall total numbers was up from 96 in August to 204 in Oct. Below is a table showing the true achievements:

There is always more to training than meets the eye if you choose not to be a post-box.

Elevator Speech to Promote Staff Thinking

I was in an elevator going up. A courier runner had just entered the elevator. And then, he hesitated. When I reached my floor, which incidentally was the top level, the courier runner remained inside. Apparently, he had forgotten which floor he was meant to be going to. Although he knew the department, the floor was not indicated.

Every day, I would observe this same behaviour meted out by various people. As an idea, I decided to put in a suggestion into our official Staff Suggestion Scheme; why not include in the name of the department next to the elevator’s button? I thought nothing of it until I received a reply that it could not be done ‘because departments do move’. In my head, I was wondering, how often do departments move floors? Fortunately, my boss was wondering the same thing.

But it took us three whole months before the idea came into fruition. My boss had to take this suggestion to the Productivity Steering Committee chaired by the 3^rd ranking person in the company. The Committee, which consisted of managers in the Executive Team, met once a month. At the meeting, my suggestion was one of the items tabled. The Chairman turned to Michael, General Manager of Properties and basically asked him what the issues were. Michael promised the team that he would report back the following week after talking to his manager.

Guess what? After 3 months from my suggestion, the department name now sits next to the appropriate floor button. Organisations are not naturally structured to listen to their staff members for improvements, especially if these members are front-liners or come from another department.

Organisations consist of people of different personalities and outlook. Some personality types do not favour new ideas because the profile prefers things to be status quo. In addition, when we have a Manager-Staff or a Department to Department interaction, the element of power comes into play because most managers (or departmental experts) see themselves as being the sole custodians of ideas. It is always easier to say ‘no’ to an idea then to agree because two things happen:

• It shows that the manager/ experts knows better, and
• It reduces the need for the manager to ‘think’ because ‘thinking’ is an intense activity. Routine work is more ‘predictable’ and is ‘lazy on the brain’. ‘Change’ is too tough.

Most people gravitate toward a problem being more complex than it can possibly be. The problem with us is the more we think, the more complex it gets.

Consider the case of the elevator sitting outside of a building. A group of architects and engineers was trying to figure out how to put an elevator inside a building. Even as an engineer was viewing the El Cortez from outside to figure out how to resolve the problem, a bellboy suggested simply, “Why not put the elevator outside?”. And the world's first outside hydraulic glass elevator was created in 1956.

Hence, organisations build structures to get people to contribute their thinking. And good organisations see thinking as an essential culture. Consider the time when I was with the newspaper group again. Can you imagine the 3^rd ranked person and the executive managers of the leadership team meeting once a month just to review ideas submitted by staff members? Or consider the influence of the CEO of Marriott Hotel Group who reads all the complaint and complimentary letters coming in from their customers? Surely they have better things to do than that. Or do they? At senior level, their action has a telling effect on shaping the culture. They are role models. It tells you how serious they are at what they do.

When I was a manager having staff members reporting to me, one of the things that I am always mindful is that as staff, we should never suffer from organisational incest. We must look out. So, twice a month, I expect my staff to visit another company and learn one or two things new that they can use in our organisation. I arranged for the organisation to pay for their visits. And I ask them for a one-pager report. That way, I kept staff members fresh and enthusiastic and always looking for new and creative way to improve.

So, if our organisation really wants to believe in its people, it starts with senior management role-modeling and an organisation structure that builds new ideas and promotes managers who do.

Food for thought even as you are in an elevator.

Training - The Panacea to Organisation Pain? Part 1

“Members in the Communications Team write poorly. We are getting many angry customers ringing us to complain about the emails they are receiving from us. Can you organise a training session for the Communications Team?”

“We are giving far too much money away as compensation. Can you put a training programme to teach our staff how to negotiate better over the phone with customers?”

“Our customer service level has gone from back to worse. I think we need a training session to get our guys back on track.”

Most people think training is the panacea to all organisational problems. Of course, this is never the furthest from the truth.

The above comments were requests that I received when I was doing training. The easiest, and probably, the most painless and least heartache way to accept the diagnosis of issues by the line managers and design the training programmes. But that would effectively reduce the training professional into a ‘post-box’ function; very scary. Years ago, when I was attending a workshop at the American Society of Training & Development’s annual conference, a couple, Dana and James Robinson, challenged me to move beyond merely being a Training Professional to that of a Performance Consultant. They articulated convincingly that most perceived training problems were actually performance issues that needed attention. 

There is never a single cause to a problem. It is always easy to blame the people doing the job. Or attribute it to their lack of training. In the first instance involving a bunch of communication staff members, I took some time to visit the team and understand their issues. This was what I found. The staff members were originally working in the frontline answering phones. However, because they were turning customers off through their rude replies, Management, for good measure, decided to move them to some backend job, in this case, answering letters from customers. The only problem was that while, in theory, the staff members were now not talking to customers, they were still interacting with them. And they were writing how they were answering over the phones. 

The big issue lied in the fact that when a customer wrote, s/he was likely to be extremely upset. Now you can well imagine the explosive combination of customer’s frustration and staff member’s rudeness! It was not funny.

What if we have gone down the communication route and train the staff to reply politely? Would that have worked?

Whenever there is a problem, there are many possible causes. ‘People’ is but one of the elements. Ishikawa-san, the creator of the Root Cause Analysis diagram, simplified possible causes to four main elements, all beginning with the letter ‘M’; that of Man, Method, Material, and Machine.

Only when we satisfy ourselves that ‘Man’ or ‘People’ is the root cause, should we consider ‘training’ as a real option. The next challenge is to understand what exactly is ‘wrong’ with our people. Here is where we tap a doyen of educational psychology, B S Bloom.

When looking at a ‘People’ issue, Bloom further sub-categorised that into the elements of Knowledge, Attitude, and Skill as seen below:

• Knowledge can either be cognitive or mental;
• Attitude is generally considered the emotional element;
• Skill is generally the psychomotor or physical elements.

For example, why are our staff members having a problem? Is it a ‘Knowledge’ issue? An ‘Attitude’ challenge? Or a ‘Skill’ gap?

To illustrate, let me demonstrate with a real case. The problem relates to the Faults’ Department of a telephone company. Just like in my various cases, I was approached to investigate as the Faults Department’s frontline telephonists were perceived to be giving poor services based on the number of complaints going to Management. “We need a training programme,” barked Ron Saxby, the General Manager of the Centre. 

As usual, the first action I took was to visit the place, observe, and talk to the staff. Here is what I gathered in terms of my observations based on ‘needs’:

• The Faults’ Department had 150 staff consisting of both new and ‘old’; the ‘older’ ones had been around for a long time,

• Over time, the staff members had been given many different forms of training. Business rules and processes had changed but adoption had not been streamlined,
• Staff tended to keep their notes after induction,
• There were inconsistent practices across the department since different batches of staff members were trained differently (regarding rules and processes),
• Some staff members were unfamiliar with how to read an NTS chart (NTS chart is a tool to help staff members to know whether there is a problem on the telephone line. For example, staff members were unfamiliar in reading ohms, kilo-ohms and mega ohms. These were critical concepts,
• Some staff members did not know what key diagnostic questions to ask when conversing with the customer (What noise do you hear when making calls? When receiving incoming calls?),
• There were different NTS reading guidelines given over time. Different staff members have different versions,
• Some staff members were unfamiliar with what and when to tell the customer at the end of the conversation regarding access and technician diagnostic charges (These were important conversations),
• Some staff members did not put in sufficient information into their end notes. As a result, technicians did not understand what they need to do when they received a work ticket.

Now, you might like to pause here for five minutes and try and offer some solutions. When you have done that, please carry on.

Here is what I did next. I distinguished these observations into Bloom’s elements of Knowledge, Skill or Attitude so that I could devise a set of learning objectives for creating our training modules.

Here is my attempt at asking the ‘why’ question and analysing these statements. I have used ‘red’ to represent ‘Knowledge’, ‘green’ to explain ‘Skill’, and ‘blue’ to indicate ‘Attitude’.

1. The Faults’ Department had 150 staff consisting of both new and ‘old’ staff members; the ‘older’ ones had been around for a long time – possibly an ‘Attitude’ issue,
2. Over time, the staff members had been given many different forms of training. Business rules and processes had changed but adoption had not been streamlined,
3. Staff tended to keep their notes after induction,
4. There were inconsistent practices across the department since different batches of staff members were trained differently (regarding rules and processes) – You might like to note that this was a System issue as well. It demonstrated that the Department lacked a single source of truth and people were using whatever information that they were taught,
5. Some staff members were unfamiliar with how to read an NTS chart (NTS chart is a tool to help staff members to know whether there is a problem on the telephone line. For example, staff members were unfamiliar in reading ohms, kilo-ohms and mega ohms. These were critical concepts,
6. Some staff members did not know what key diagnostic questions to ask when conversing with the customer (What noise do you hear when making calls? When receiving incoming calls?),
7. There were different NTS reading guidelines given over time. Different staff members have different versions,
8. Some staff members were unfamiliar with what and when to tell the customer at the end of the conversation regarding access and technician diagnostic charges (These were important conversations),
9. Some staff members did not put in sufficient information into their end notes. As a result, technicians did not understand what they need to do when they received a work ticket.

From a problem-solving perspective, Points #2 to #4, #7 – Multiple Sources of Truth – had to be arrested quickly. So, one of the first solutions immediately agreed by Ron was to create a new up-to-date and accurate knowledge base (Single Source of Truth) in the intranet (how we create the knowledge is another story for different time) while getting rid of all existing ones post-training; the latter was vital as it eliminated confusion, information mistreatment and different versions of truth.

BS Bloom also created a ‘Learning Taxonomy’, affectionately called the ‘Bloom’s Taxonomy’ to help us create learning objectives. He classified them from ‘Basic’ to ‘Complex’. For example, under ‘Knowledge’, the most basic level was ‘Recalling Data’ with the ability to ‘Evaluate Data’ being the most complex level. In effect, it is saying that the greater the ability of a staff member to answer the ‘Why’ question, the greater the achievement in a ‘Knowledge’ learning outcome since to ‘evaluate’ will mean that the learner will have to know why the data is there in the first place.

The BS Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning is found here:

Now we are ready to design a set of learning objectives to meet our observed needs as follows:

By the END of the Training, staff members of Faults should be able to:

•   Understand all critical concepts including ohms, kilo-ohms, and mega-ohms (Knowledge – Comprehension),

•   Apply the relevant physical diagnostic questions to the Customer (Knowledge – Application),

•   Study a NTS’ Parameter Table and evaluate the data before coming to a conclusion with regards to the status of the telephone line (Knowledge – Evaluation),

•   Complete a Ticket with all relevant fields (Knowledge – Application),

•   Internalize the importance of completing a Ticket with all relevant information (Attitude – Internalization),

•   Develop consistent practice to ensure that we have covered the relevant information of Access (Gaining Access into the house), Diagnostic Conversation, and Commit Time (Time when the technician finishes the job) (Skills – Precision).

Most training professionals would be happy to get to this stage as training outcomes get articulated. However, there is yet another level that we can progress further and here is where we have to turn to another well regarded expert, Donald Kirkpatrick. 

Dr. Kirkpatrick came up with a way of evaluating training successes at 4 levels in 1959. The four levels of Kirkpatrick's evaluation model essentially measure:

1. Reaction of student - what they thought and felt about the training, or you may term this as a ‘Happy Sheet’ evaluation,
2. Learning - the resulting increase in knowledge or capability. Most times, a test can determine this element,
3. Behaviour - extent of behaviour and capability improvement and implementation/application
4. Results - the effects on the business or environment resulting from the trainee's performance. Sometimes, you may be able to include ROI (Return of Investment) into the mix, something that accountants love.

If we combined Bloom's approach and Kirkpatrick's targets, then we can truly design a training programme while effectively measuring our results.

Coming back to our example at Faults, we can include in the following goals:

• Reduce rework by xx%

Conceptually, I have provided a way of helping you to understand that training is only a solution if it is a ‘People’ issue. Also, in identifying a training programme, it is critical to understand the issues around Knowledge, Attitude and Skills. Once you have this information, you are ready to design the training programme. Here is a model that you might like to use:

So far, I have only explained the ‘Green’ rectangle as well the ‘Yellow’ triangle. In another article, I will expand on the ‘Blue’ triangle.

For now, let me return to the story of the communication department. How can we help these staff members who could not write politely? It is true that this was a staff issue. However, the solution that we adopted was a very non-staff one. We identified the typical type of letters coming through and we developed company endorsed templates for these staff members to cut and paste, thus removing the need for them to be wordsmith.

From a purist perspective, this looked like an attitude issue relating to the staff that we can perhaps train. But ‘Attitude’ or ‘Mind-set’ is really the toughest thing to train. Hence, for a failed safe solution, templates were considered more predictable and better managed.

Hopefully, you would have by now picked up that training is not a panacea of all pain, including the ones involving the ‘People’ factor. Even if training is favoured, the toughest programmes are those that involved mind-set shift. The next article on ‘Design and Development’ will demonstrate more. Happy reading.