Doug Kreitzberg

Who not What

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Let’s face it. It’s always all about us. The world we see is a world where we see ourselves, often only ourselves, what we want and what we do. And our self-centeredness is fine and probably necessary as some darwinian self-selected survival instinct.

But there are limitations. When we focus only on ourselves, we sometimes make the mistake that others are also focused on ourselves. We forget that they have needs and wants and may be focused on themselves. This creates problems for relationships, certainly, and also in business.

As a business grows and becomes successful, it creates an organization that initially is built to enhance and ensure future success. After a time, however, many organizations lose themselves in self-adoration; internal discussions focus on what the company does and the products it makes as opposed to the people or businesses it serves. It’s a well-worn tale. Business starts out extremely customer-focused, becomes successful because of that focus and grow processes and bureaucracies which detach strategies from the customer. Business then crumbles to more nimble-footed competition that is as focused on the customer as the original business once was.

I’ve been engaged in too many conversations recently which has been focused more on what is sold than who actually buys it. Sure, there’s talk about market segments, such as lawyers versus doctors or baby boomers versus millennials, but there’s no dimensionality to that part of the discussion; the talk about products is real and tangible — the talk about customers is vague and almost an afterthought.

Technology has provided us with tremendous and low-cost tools to engage customers and prospects as unique individuals (or businesses) with unique interests, needs and desires. But all those tools will be useless if the organization retains a culture that is more inward focused than outward, that talks about the features of its products rather than the benefits to the customer.

If you listen to, and think more about the who, the what will take care of itself.

Give the Ability to Receive this Year

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This is the gift-giving season.  And, as we know, it is better to give than to receive.  If you’re like me, you’ve bought and exchanged gifts (and perhaps had some of those gifts exchanged at the store afterwards) and, maybe, even now Aunt Minnie is wearing one of the sweaters you bought her and nephew Andy is playing the new Wii game you gave.

It feels good to give.  And yet, for me, there’s that nagging sensation of “how long will it last”?  When does the sweater get placed neatly in Aunt Minnie’s dresser rarely to be seen again and when does the “new” Wii game get shuffled to the back of the deck of Wii games?

One thing I’m also trying to give during this season as well as strive to do more of next year is to give the ability to receive; give those I care about — whether my family, friends or business relationships — the time to connect with them, to really hear what they have to say, to engage with them at their level, to set aside the multi-tasking jumble that my brain usually becomes and receive their ideas, passions or idle thoughts.  Even if it’s nothing more than a few minutes a day, it’s at least something.

Because, just perhaps, in these days where we are frantically trying to “stay connected” via e-mail, twitter, facebook, and voice mail, the greatest gift we can give is to push all that aside, empty our minds, reach out to someone and let them become connected to us.

Surface Area

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I’m on a green tea kick and this weekend I was researching tea pots, specifically one called a Yixing tea pot.  The Yixing is a clay pot and, according to the description, because it is clay, it is porous, which means that the surface area is many times larger than a traditional teapot.  This provides, among other things, a faster heat time and the ability for the pot to retain water, or to be seasoned.
 
Of course, this got me thinking about business.  If a business is to be successful, it must be continually searching for ways to increase its surface area, to increase it’s touch points with its clients, its competitors, its vendors and its community. Businesses which focus too much within may have great processes and procedures and even a great “culture”, but are so dense that they let nothing in — whether innovation, dissention or new customers.  These type of businesses have a contracted surface area and are less adaptable to change or growth.
 
This is a danger I think every organization faces as it grows — that more time is spent on internal issues than external, and that the time spent on external issues is not adequately communicated to the rest of the organization to help overall growth.
 
The way I’ve tried to address this is by focusing on growth areas on a weekly basis; not so much as to follow up on what was to be accomplished, but to brainstorm ideas to promote growth and to communicate what’s working and not working as quickly as possible to the rest of the organization.
 
But if these discussions don’t reach out into the frontline, then you won’t take full advantage of the resources you have.  Managers need to be focused on: 1) engaging with customers and clients and frontline staff; 2) improving methods for the overall organization to engage with customers, clients and frontline staff; and 3) sharing, learning and communicating what works and doesn’t work with their peers.
 
Increasing the surface area of your organization doesn’t make you weaker.  As you know, clay has a tremendous capacity to withstand extreme heat.  It makes you stronger.