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Book Review: The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker

August 6, 2022 //
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Meetings, events, networking and sometimes lectures or talks, get a bad wrap these days. The fear of imposing or worse having a bad event that people can’t wait to get out of is a real dilemma for anyone who gathers people together.

In Ms. Parker’s excellent book, The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters, she lays out why meetings and gatherings of people fail and how make a real difference in your own events whether they be for business or in your personal life.

One of the first items that Ms. Parker addresses is that we rarely define and share what the purpose of a meeting is, and to make matter worse when we do, we often confuse category with purpose. For example, what is the purpose of birthday party, wedding, dinner party, or baby shower? If thoughts immediately turn to celebrate getting one year older, getting married, food with friends, or a celebration of pregnancy; Ms. Parker points out that these are the categories of the event not the purpose. To think about why we have a birthday party on a particular year allows us to create something with more meaning at a moment in time.

In addition, The Art of Gathering shows that people meet in particular forms as a type of ritual. We continue with the ritual form because it can show belonging to a group or hierarchy – or just because change is hard. However, the purpose of the meeting may no longer fit the ritual, or the purpose may have drifted over time. Baby showers, for example, were originally held with the purpose of helping to prepare new parents to become a family. While in the past, looking after children was the sole responsibility of women, and so a woman only baby shower made sense; today most parents share parenting duties. Does is therefore still make sense to make a baby shower a female only affair? Likewise does a newsroom need to hold a single mid-morning meeting to decide on what will be printed on tomorrow’s front page, when articles can be published online as soon as they are written and will have a potentially higher readership? In a time before the internet, the front page of a newspaper could often be the make or break or a reporter’s career or a newspaper’s business – those days have gone, but the rituals often continue.  

Gatherings with purpose take a stand. This will not be liked by everyone; however, rarely are gatherings where everyone is happy enthralling. The more focused and narrow the purpose, the more passion it is likely to provoke. When we stop thinking about “what” and start thinking about “why” we start to find the beliefs and values that create purpose. Working backward from an outcome can also help figure out whether a meeting should even happen in the first place.

The Art of Gathering covers purpose, preparation, invitations, content, the host’s role, starting and endings, and why all of these matter. We can’t complaint about lackluster meetings if we are not prepared to think about the why and how we are meeting. And since we so rarely think about these things Ms. Parker’s book is breath of fresh air and an invaluable management tool.

Categories Uncategorized

Book Review: The Courage Map by Franziska Iseli

July 6, 2020 //
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courage
Farnziska Iseli’s book “The Courage Map: 13 Principles to Living Boldly” is a short book that makes the case for adding more courage into our lives to make them more interesting, more enjoyable, and more successful.

Ms. Iseli then further breaks down courage, as the title suggests into 13 key principles. These 13 principles are obviously important to Ms. Iseli, and have informed her business, personal, and travel life. It is also obvious, that some of these principles have been thought about extensively over a number of years give the book a sense of intellectual rigor that is sometimes not found in other books of its type.

The Courage Map can be a little schizophrenic; however, as personal development books go. On the one hand, it dips in and out of travel book territory to underline and exemplify the 13 principles at the core of the book and one finds oneself wanting to either hear more about a particular principle or about the anecdote about Iranian border guards.

This is a little frustrating, because it lends the book the air of a spoiled adventurer, which Ms. Iseli patently is not. For those who do not know, Ms. Iseli is a highly successful serial entrepreneur and speaker. I found myself throughout wanting to find out more about Ms. Iseli’s travels and gain a deeper grasp over what her trips meant to her and he philosophy of courageous living. Almost as if there were two books fighting each other.
This is a shame, because there is some really good thinking in “The Courage Map.” There are short throw away phrases that resonate long after they have passed in the book. Who doesn’t understand what a “poop shower” is? I for one am glad to add it to my vocabulary. Likewise, the insight that “kindness is like snow – it beautifies everything it covers,” a quote from Kahlil Gibran, is an immediate and pivotal idea to glean from any book.

Which chapters resonate with the reader, I suspect, will be wildly different with each  individual reader. I found the chapter on non-attachment particularly illuminating and gave a serious reason for thought and pause – really the purpose for any book of this type. While I found the chapters on “flow” and “love” a little too in the realm of new age mysticism.

There is a lot to take from Ms. Iseli’s book, and it is a book I expect to dip back into. Not all of it is for everyone I suspect. But its central theme, that we should all learn to live a little more boldly if we want to be happy, is an admirable quality and certainly one that is helped with a thoughtful reading of “The Courage Map.” While perhaps a little frustrating for some readers, there is some great stuff here in “The Courage Map,” which makes it worth your time to read and keep on your shelf.

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Categories Books, Career Advice, personal development, Uncategorized

Reviews are Broken, Here’s How to Fix Them

February 3, 2018 //
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To the casual observer, the world of online reviews has never been healthier.

We are constantly asked to leave reviews, or check-in, and the worst excesses of Yelp and the businesses that try to control posts, seem to have been brought under control.
However, all is not well in the world of online reviews, if it ever was.

The story of the gentleman who created a fake restaurant and got it to become the Top-Rated restaurant on TripAdvisor really should have us never trusting a review site ever again. The story is extraordinary in many ways. That the gentleman concerned made a living writing fake reviews for restaurants, and then was able to manipulate the system to such an extent that a non-existent restaurant, that nobody could find (and they tried), are just two. That the whole thing went on to become such a phenomenon that he effectively had no choice but to create the restaurant to service the demand, is just the icing on the cake.

Yelp, that boogie man to most small businesses, are increasingly cracking down on those who request reviews. Always against Yelp’s terms of service, the practice of asking for reviews is considered best practice by most marketing professionals with the occasional caveat for Yelp. One look at the unregulated, and widely gamed world of Google Local reviews, where a significant proportion of reviews seem to be highly suspicious, and that lack even the admittedly flawed tools that Yelp uses to protect their review ecosystem, should give one pause. The wild west of Google’s review space is so out of control that businesses that do not game the system are at a distinct disadvantage.

It is actually to Yelp’s credit that they do care about their review ecosystem. It is easier to report a Yelp review that a business has issues with, than with any other platform. Yelp also takes seriously the practice of Yelp Bombing and the Weaponizing of Reviews;

particularly when it comes to a business in the news. However, far too many customers use Yelp as a threat, or even as downright extortion, on a daily basis. Even with Yelp’s reporting tools, the rules are still so arcane and at times they can seem downright arbitrary.

To add to the bad news in the reviews world we have to add the knots that both Glassdoor and Indeed are tying themselves up in by trying to have their cake and eat it. Glassdoor, which created a space for employees to share salary, benefits, and culture reviews about their former, and current employers reads more like a platform for griping from former employees unless your company is of sufficient size to generate more than just a handful of reviews. In order to monetize their site, Glassdoor are now encouraging employers to advertise on their platform with limited success. Why would an employer help pay for a site that essentially tries to undermine the narrative that an employer tries to portray to new hires?

Indeed, the highly successful job board that bases its pricing model on an adwords like format, now want to try and imbed employee reviews about the companies posting jobs. Effectively Glassdoor is trying to become Indeed, and Indeed is trying to become more like Glassdoor. What both companies are only now coming to realize that businesses are generally not fans of an unregulated review space, which all too quickly devolves into a method for revenge for former employees who feel wronged. Which in turn means employers can feel they have no option but to try and game these sites themselves. Plenty of new employee orientation sessions now include a “write a review” segment.

So, the review world is a mess. How to fix it?

In a twist worthy of one of its own plot lines, the dystopian science fiction anthology show “Black Mirror,” currently on Netflix, potentially shows a way out of the quagmire of everyone trying to manipulate the review space to their own ends. Titled “Nosedive,” the Black Mirror episode is set in the near future where everyone is concerned about their social media profile, which affects everything from their job to where they can live, and follows a young lady trying to leverage a wedding invitation to increase her social standing. However, things do not go as planned.

What is interesting about the episode is the idea of a single social profile that has, for want of a better word, a points system based on karma. Be nice to gas station attendant and your karma goes up. Be a jerk and it goes down. Of course, things work both ways, but it does highlight the problem with the review space as it currently stands. With the possible exception of Facebook, the vast majority review sites do not require, and sometimes do not even allow, real names. None of the review platforms allow for business to review customers, and while on Yelp and Google, one can see what their history of reviewing is like, there are no consequences for constantly leaving bad reviews, or trying to blackmail a business.

Lyft and Uber do have a review platform that works both ways, between customer and driver, however this is less of an open system than just a general ranking. It is a step in the right direction though and one that the more traditional review sites could learn from.

Facebook is probably in the best place to implement a customer ranking, or even a review ranking system. Facebook is become ubiquitous in so many areas. For those who have read Ernest Cline’s superb “Ready Player One” will recognize that Facebook is essentially placing itself as an equivalent of “The Oasis:” a portal on an online virtual reality environment where people work, learn, and play.

There was a time when if a customer had a problem they would complain to what was essentially an independent body, who would help to try and come up with a compromise to customer service issues and arbiter disputes. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) did not fair well in the internet age and is now pretty irrelevant with most customers now turning to Yelp or Google.

Businesses are mostly at fault for not doing a better job of embracing the BBB, however, with the swing firmly going in the other direction now, and the space being corrupted out of all reason and sense by both businesses and customers, things have to change if reviews are to be of any relevance or even any use.

The days of the BBB do seem rather quaint, but maybe their model was right after all. I look forward to a level playing field with or with out a referee.

And remember to leave me a review!

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Categories Business, Customer Service, Marketing, Search, Social Media, Uncategorized

The Ethics of Content Curation

June 16, 2017 //
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Content or social media curation is a fancy term for sharing things with your followers / audience.

This is something that almost all users of social media do almost every day.
If you create content; write a blog, create memes, take photographs, make videos, sing songs, etc., the chances are that you do not have enough content to keep your audience engaged with you. So you do what I, and most everyone else does; you share the interesting things that you come across that are in roughly the same space as your content is with perhaps your own thoughts on that content to give some perspective as to why you are sharing it.

What you do not do is the following:

Steal

I really can’t believe that I have spell this out but given some events recently by people who really should know better I guess I do.
If you download a photo, or image, and then re-upload it, without attributing it to the person who posted it first, its theft. Plain and simple.
Yes, all content creators should brand things they create, or otherwise assert their rights as the owner of the material, but failing to do so is not a license to steal.

What makes matters worse is when you go to great lengths to brand your own content and assert your own copyright, but still do not see the hypocrisy of stealing other people’s work.
And of course, just rebuilding a meme using your own image and then trying to assert copyright over that phrase or image is just theft of a different type. Just ask Scott Stratten about the fun he had with “You are not the Jack Ass Whisperer.”

For those confused about copyright and trademarks, I wrote about them here.
If you do want to share something that does not have a watermark or any kind of attribution and you are on a social network that makes directly sharing difficult, Instagram comes immediately to mind, then just ask. It’s the nice and friendly thing to do.

Click Bait

Recycling content, and then spreading it across multiple pages to increase page views and therefore sell more advertising is click bait. It is a real problem on Facebook. If you are creating content with this in mind please stop. If you are clicking on these articles please stop. And for the love of god, if you are liking these sites please stop. It is the equivalent of a magazine in the checkout aisle.

Linkjacking

Linkjacking covers a multitude of sins, but is generally cross posting from one social network to another via a 3rd party website to create traffic for the 3rd party site. Ignoring the generally agreed upon “bad form” of sharing from one social network to another to one side, linkjacking is again just stealing traffic off of the back of someone else’s work.

Newsjacking

Also known as: “how to ruin Twitter.” Newsjacking is the habit of companies to insert themselves, usually via #hashtags, into news stories to promote their brand. The most awful examples of this are companies that just randomly pick whatever is trending on Twitter or their chosen social network and insert those hashtags into their post in order to generate more views without even checking to see if those hashtags have any relevance to their brand whatsoever.

If there is something in the news that is relevant for your brand and you have content that may help provide context to a story then, of course, use the hashtag – that is what they are there for. But to leverage the news, and potentially the misery of others to sell things, is just wrong. And should be wrong in anyone’s book.

Content Farming

Generating articles purely with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind just so that your site can rank higher in Google should obviously be seen as a self-limiting strategy. Who is going to trust you if your articles are terrible to read? Generate good content and it will be shared. Sure, pay attention to good SEO practices, but if that becomes the reason you are writing something, you are writing for the wrong reasons and anyone who reads what you have written, or published to your site, will know it.

Being ethical about how you use social media is not hard. Social Media is about being social. It’s easy to steal content. It’s easy to film a speaker at a conference and then turn that into a blog post and not to credit them – it is still theft. For most people who create great content, and I like to think I’m one of them, we want it shared and to be seen by as many people as possible.

Just ask, and give credit where credit is due. It’s not hard.

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Categories Content Marketing, Marketing, Search, Social Media, Uncategorized

Book Review: The Kingdom of Happiness by Aimee Groth

February 25, 2017 //
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(Clicking on the image above will take you to Amazon where a tiny percentage goes to help my movie and book buying habit.)

 

 Zappos, Tony Hsieh, and the Downtown Project are controversial subjects in some quarters of Las Vegas – although I have always been a supporter. In my opinion, it is hard to not give credit to Mr. Hsieh for having the courage, faith, and energy, to move his company and sink millions into the depressed center of Las Vegas, a city I love living in and call home.

That makes Aimee Groth’s tell all book about living inside, or at least partially inside, the bubble of Tony Hsieh’s circle throughout the first five years of the Downtown Project all the more difficult, and fascinating to read. With Ms. Groth becoming part, if not the driving force, of the narrative this is very much a piece of Gonzo journalism which gives some first person perspective to the stresses and confusion that many in the story recall.

To give some background, Tony Hsieh is the CEO of Zappos, an online shoe retailer which is owned by Amazon. In 2013, Zappos moved its headquarters into the former city hall building of Downtown Las Vegas. Downtown Las Vegas, and in particular the area east of Las Vegas Boulevard, had been a rundown collection of tattoo parlors, pawn shops, seedy bars, and ultra-cheap motels. With the result, it had all the problems of a depressed city center, with homelessness, prostitution, and drug dealing on most street corners. With Zappos’s move to Downtown, Mr. Hsieh created the “Downtown Project” with $350 million of his own money. Almost half the money was earmarked for the purchasing of real-estate with the rest to be invested in businesses and startups centered in Downtown Las Vegas. The stated goals of the Downtown Project was not only the creation of a new business and a technology startup environment, but to make Downtown a place with a thriving innovation culture.

The story follows Ms. Groth’s intial conversations with Mr. Hsieh and other invited guests to the Downtown Project, through partying and becoming part of Mr. Hsiehs entourage, the first cracks appearing in the startup culture, to the major reorganization of the Downtown Project, and the internal strife at Zappos due to the move downtown and Holacracy. Holacracy is a new management system and communication tool that was adopted by Zappos. I reviewed Brian J. Robertson’s book on Holacracy here.

However, the main thrust of “The Kingdom of Happiness” is on Mr. Hsieh’s, and those around him’s, response to these events and to their motives in the first place. As the story is told there is almost a willful lack of support, and management, given to the early entrepreneurs, lured to Las Vegas with promises of financing to follow their dreams and the expectation of mentoring. With the result that many were essentially setup to fail, or at the very least felt that way.

“…the young entrepreneurs who didn’t naturally seek out assistance or know how to navigate an ecosystem like this were left to fend for themselves.” – From The Kingdom of Happiness.

There is also a darker undercurrent that flows through the book, and that is the potential conflict of interest in the due roles of the Downtown Project as both landlord and investor to various new and startup businesses. At one point in the book an entrepreneur wonders at the oddness of trying to avoid their investor and business partner, because they are also their landlord. There are numerous mentions throughout the book by those in the Downtown Project, that a source of profits for the Downtown Project is the real estate rather than in the businesses they have investments in. An uncharitable reading might question the ethics, or morality, of this arrangement.

 What I feel is the main takeaway from the book, and makes it of particular interest to business people,  is the balance between Vision, Leadership, and Management, and how this seems to have gone awry at both Zappos and the Downtown Project. At one point Mr. Hsieh snaps at Ms. Groth that he is not a leader but a visionary and it is hard to argue with him. But if Mr. Hsieh is not leading then who is?

The move to Holacracy, a system that dispenses with traditional management structures, through the lens of Ms. Groth’s book, seems to be an imperfect answer to some difficult questions. There has been plenty of vision at Downtown Project and Zappos. There is also some merit in the argument that there has also been leadership at Zappos (you don’t undertake something like Holacracy without leadership pointing the way). But the cult of personality surrounding Mr. Tsieh, and Zappos’s focus on its non- traditional internal culture, maybe filling in for actual leadership.

What is clear, particularly at the Downtown Project, is that there has been a failure of leadership through a lack of management. In a drive to be different, focus on making things “happen,” and create a self-sustaining entrepreneurial culture, the basic structures and support networks have never been put in place that would seem to be a prerequisite for this type of project.

I, for one, am a supporter of the Downtown Project and Zappos – particularly for Zappos’s focus on internal culture. One only has to walk through downtown to see the enormous impact that Downtown Project and Zappos have had. However, there have been significant costs, and without examining the issues that The Kingdom of Happiness raises we are doomed to repeat them. In business, but particularly in the startup culture, there is a focus on leadership to the expense of everything else and an almost dismissal of management. What the story that Ms. Groth tells us is that visionaries abandon management at their peril and that leadership, while the key ingredient in all successful companies, cannot survive without good management.

 

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Categories Books, Business, Customer Service, Leadership, Management, Uncategorized

Hiring Unicorns

February 3, 2017 //
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Is is just me, or is hiring getting more difficult due the bad behavior of the un (or under) employed?

I mean I get it, and employers are partly to blame, looking for a job can really suck. Employers rarely respond to applications (guilty), some employers insist on their own applications rather an accepting a resume, interviews are time consuming, and wages in some fields are stagnant.

However, none of the above explains some horrendous behaviors I have seen – in particular in the last year or so.
“Obviously you did not read the resume – good luck to you.” A message from an applicant after receiving a rejection email because they were totally unsuitable for position.

“Hi I’m very interested in the position, although I do not have any experience, could you call me back with more information?” A phone message from candidate replying to ad that clearly stated “NO PHONE CALLS.” I have 100 applications on my desk, if everyone does this I’ll do nothing else for days.

Harassing an employer with voicemails telling them that you are obviously the best person for the job and how dare they not hire you because you probably know more than they do. – Yes, this actually happened to me.

Replies to ads that directly contradict what is being asked for. – I don’t think I need to explain this.

Companies, or consultants, replying to ads for full time employees. – Please don’t assume I don’t know what I’m doing. If my ad explicitly states that telecommuting is not an option, an outside contractor is even less likely.

LinkedIn invites after an interview for an entry level position.- This is not going to get you the job and just makes things weird.

Not showing up – really! You accept an invite for an interview and then do not have the courtesy to call and cancel?

Photos on your resume. – We get it, you think you’re hot, but it really just makes most managers uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable.

Resumes in weird formats. – When did a PDF become so hard to create? Those of us who get a lot of email everyday are very wary of opening attachments from people we don’t know, but PDFs are a necessary evil for the most part. Word files are annoying but I guess I’ll live with it. Wps files? Google doc files? Jpegs? Screen shots from your phone? I get it you don’t have a computer, and are using your phone, but there are better ways. Just looks lazy.

Bringing a coffee or energy drink into the interview with you. – I’m sorry to get in the way of your morning routine, but I may be your future employer. Or not.

Dressing inappropriately. – It is an interview, not a nightclub, or a trip to the store on a Sunday morning, or a day at the beach.

Now a lot of managers blame the Millennial phenomenon for the above behaviors ; however, I’m not so sure. For one I’m not a big believer in the Millennials being that different from everyone else. They just happen to be young people who are not shy about saying what they want. And a lot of the above behaviors have come from people who do not fit into the generally agreed upon Millennial age bracket. I do think there are cultural things afoot, however, that transcend age. A lowering of the value of work, and generally a misunderstanding of a value of first impressions for starters.

As Tyler Durden from Fight Club might say: “you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.”

If you want to impress an employer, try professionalism. There are so few practicing it that it will make you easily stand out

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Categories Business, Career Advice, Management, Uncategorized

Movie Review: Burnt

September 9, 2016 //
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I have been reviewing books for a number of years now; however, movies have always been my passion and on occasion I have used movies in staff meetings for the accessibility of the message. I decided that it was time to share some of these.

(Clicking on the image above will take you to Amazon where a tiny percentage goes to help my movie and book buying habit.

 

Burnt is a great movie. Staring Bradley Cooper, it’s the story of a chef seeking redemption by opening a new restaurant in London and winning a 3rd Michelin star after imploding and ruining his mentor’s restaurant in Paris.

It’s use as a management tool comes from the relationships of running a team and of how not to treat employees. It does contain swearing, so if that is incompatible with your company culture this movie is not for you.

I feel there two ways to use this particular movie. In whole; individually, to help illuminate how abusive management is contagious and ultimately counterproductive and in a general staff meeting. As a tool in a meeting I found the best way was to isolate certain scenes.

Chapter 5: @ 26:30 through to Chapter 6: @ 36:20 – The preparation for the opening of the restaurant. The attention to detail. Staff working at the top of their game, working as a team, and watching that disintegrate due the the behavior of one employee and then the abuse that is untenable.

Chapter 7: @ 40:44 through Chapter 7: @ 43:45 – Again, the preparation and attention to detail and that things have recovered after the events of Chapter 5 and 6. Does this mean the behavior that was seen in chapter 5 and 6 was ok and worked?

Chapter 9: @ 50:58 through Chapter 9: @ 52:23 – Contagion. Demonstrated behavior turns into learned behavior.

Chapter 10 through Chapter 10: @ 56:03 – More contagion, and now it is difficult to control.

Chapter 12: @ 1:11:52 through Chapter 12: @ 1:16:00 – Appalling behavior has a price to pay – even years afterwards.

Chapter 15: working as a team, and working together, is more important than anything else.

It is unusual to see actual work environments, even though this is quite a dysfunctional one, with the real kind of relationships that employees have between each other in a mainstream movie. A thoughtful viewing of “Burnt” should give any leader pause for thought or something to aspire to. And even with taking scenes in isolation it should allow staff to see how bad behavior from anyone can spread and create a workplace where no one wants to work. It is also nice to see a movie where unacceptable behavior is shown for what it is: unacceptable, rather than celebrated.

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Categories Business, Customer Service, Leadership, Management, Movies, Staff Meeting Resources, Uncategorized

Learning to Live with Yelp

September 3, 2016 //
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By Mike Falconer

The most popular post to date on my site is: “Why I hate Yelp (and you should too!).”

I still do by the way; and everything is that post still stands today three years later; however, I have grown to accept it as part of the daily life of being in business and feel that, a few road bumps aside, I’ve made my peace with online reviews and even with Yelp.

That mighty sound a little contradictory, but the bottom line is that reviews are here to stay so we all have to deal with it.

“Scott, we have a Yelp problem. We keep getting these horrible reviews what can we do about it?”

” – Build a better product.”

Scott Stratten @unmarketing

There is no strategy or tip that I, or anyone else, can give you that will fix your business and your online reviews overnight (those that promise to do so are scamming you). If you are a horrible business the chances are you will have horrible reviews online.

Now you can write your own reviews, and risk the wrath of companies like Yelp or Google which are filled with people smarter than you or I (sorry it’s true) who spend a lot of time and energy trying to foil the attempts of those gaming their systems. If you are really unlucky you could also find yourself the subject of a FTC investigation and slapped with a serious fine. It has happened a few times already to those trying to buy or reward those for reviews (many thanks to he great Mike Blumenthal @mblumenthal for this awesome nugget of info and indeed for solidifying my thoughts on Yelp, and online reviews, in general) and expect it to happen a lot more when the government figures out how prevalent it is and how much money can be made. But why bother? It is simpler, easier, and better for your business to just fix the problems in the first place.

Think Yelp or Google (or whatever review site you feel tortures you on a regular basis) does not accurately reflect what your clients think of your business? Prove it! Survey your clients. Make it easy for them to complain and give you feedback. Have a policy to deal with complaints. And, of course, read, learn, and above all, reply to your reviews. If your survey results really are different from what you are seeing from the review sites then publish the data and be honest about what people were complaining about and what you are doing to fix it.

When I started reviewing my business’s clients what I found from the was that they wanted to respond. The feedback I got was overwhelmingly positive, and it allowed me to fix issues, even minor ones, quickly before they blew up online. It also provided real data about what problems we did have and where we were excelling.

A splash page with links to review sites helped make it easy for those who already reviewing us privately to review us in public. As a rule I and not a big fan of asking for reviews – particularly when companies just try to flood one channel. (400 reviews on Google and 10 on Yelp just makes you look shady.) However, a simple splash page with three or four links is tasteful and is the least spam-like way I have found and does not seem to offend anyone.

Unhappy clients will, of course, still happen. How you respond to them is all important, not just for the client, but your future clients who will read your response and see how you deal with complaints.

Apologize – it costs you nothing.

Try to resolve the issue – D’uh!

If you can’t resolve the issue – apologize again!

Do not get into a protracted fight online – would you rather be right or have an unhappy client, a bad review, and maybe worse? Genuinely apologize and try to make things right.

And never, never ever, send, say, or do anything that that you are not completely happy with being splashed all over the Internet. “If you take your review down we will give you your money back” means you care more about the bad review than the unhappy client. If the client deserves their money back – give them their money back!

I am a big fan of responding to even positive reviews – a simple thank you goes a long way. The interesting thing about responding to every review and trying to keep clients happy is that it is not just new clients that notice. Potential new employees use the tools available to them when researching their potential new employer. Those tools are Yelp and Google.

While I still hate Yelp – it really is a flawed product. It exists because customers used to basically be powerless. The balance may have shifted but I know at my business we try to solve issues, I know that we sometimes succeed and sometimes we fail. We are not perfect, but we have not stopped trying and I think even those that view us on Yelp can see it.

And I can live with that.

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Categories Business, Customer Service, Management, Marketing, Search, Uncategorized

Why I Hate Yelp (and why you should too!)

September 17, 2013 //
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I had been a big believer in Yelp and the review site model: treat your customers well and they will reward you. I have also had little time for the Yelp haters: “Stop complaining about Yelp and work on your business.”

Well that is what I used to think and then I saw the real, ugly side, of Yelp. Forbes, PBS, and the New York Times seem to agree.

As a rule, the larger the business, the more clients you have, and therefore the more chance that you are not going to be able to keep them all happy. That is not to say that you should not try, but there is always that reality.

In the veterinary world, there is a great product called Vsurv that allows for electronic surveys to be sent out to clients who visit your practice. It plugs straight into practice management software. The great thing out surveying every client for whom you have an email address, as Vsurv does, is that to gives you real data for client satisfaction. Data that you can track from month to month. Even with a 50% – 60% compliance rate you are still talking about hundreds of responses. If I have 30 online reviews 10 of which are filtered (more on that later) but I see 100 – 150 clients a day the online review numbers add up to the statistical error rate of direct surveying.

So a product like Vsurv is better than online review sites. Then what about Yelp?
Well the big problem with Yelp is its review filter. What’s Yelp’s review filter you ask? Well you wouldn’t be alone in not knowing much about it. Unless you run a Yelp page you probably don’t know about the filter, and many who do run pages don’t know about it until they get bitten by it.

Yelp’s review filter is supposed to protect the integrity of Yelps reviews by filtering out suspicious reviews: Overly positive reviews by users that have only one or a couple of business reviews or overly negative reviews by the same kind of user. A least that is the idea…

The problem is that the criteria that Yelp uses to filter it’s reviews is a closely guarded secret – supposedly to avoid businesses “gaming” the system. The filter is supposedly “automatic” and therefore is not influenced by petty concerns such as advertiser preference. However, individual users, and businesses have no recourse to un-filter filtered reviews.

To add to the problems, consistent reports exist of Yelp filtering only good reviews and leaving only bad reviews after the business concerned refuses to advertise with Yelp. I personally have seen a negative review get filtered and then miraculously become unfiltered – not sure how an automatic filter changes its mind but apparently it can.

You can even read the filtered reviews – and it is quite amazing how different a picture of most businesses you can gather by reading the filtered reviews. Yelp only allows access to filtered reviews via a Captcha – why? To make it more difficult to link to? It is quite an experience to see 15 filtered reviews 13 of which are positive that have basically the same user profile as the six recent negative reviews that have not been filtered.

Then, of course, are the online reputation management companies that promise to get bad online reviews removed from Google, Yelp, and other online review sites. All the major review sites say that the only way to remove reviews is with the same tools that everyone has access to – flagging in other words. There is, however, another way – the reviews themselves have been created by a reputation company which can work “miracles” by removing review that they themselves have posted. On a couple of occasions now, I have seen very odd reviews appear and then been approached by some of the more unscrupulous types of Online reputation managers who say that they can work “miracles.” This issue has been addressed by Yelp, but only in the broadest of sense.

The real issue with Yelp; however, is that is does not practice what it preaches. Concentrate on customer service and customers will give you great reviews. So what does is say when so many potential customers feel that the Yelp system is fundamentally flawed and refuses to engage them on the subject? Yelp encourages businesses to respond to negative reviews however provides no mechanism to challenge its filter. Yelps does provide a flagging system, but no feedback on why it does or does not agree with the business owner flagging the review in question. Yelp also refuses to engage with clients about the review side and will only engage about advertising.

I, for one, do not actually believe that Yelp is trying to extort business owners as some charge. I do, however, feel that the product and company is flawed.

The word from Yelp seems to be do what what say – not what we do.

I’m not a big believer in that.

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Categories Business, Customer Service, Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized, Veterinary

Managing the Unmanageable

January 31, 2012 //
5

We’ve all heard the excuses:

“They just care so much…they are very passionate.”

“You should have seen them a few years back – they are really mellow now in comparison to then!”

“They have a lot on their plate at the moment.”

The bottom line is that a lot of people, in a lot of businesses, get away with being badly behaved because of who they are. Maybe they bring in more business than anyone else, maybe they have been around for a very long time, maybe your business genuinely does depend on their work. None of this, however, overcomes the fact that behavior that would not be tolerated from most members of staff is quite often considered part of who these “superstars” are.

This phenomenon can be called “The Steve Jobs Effect.”

I’ve been reading Walter Isaacson’s excellent biography of Jobs. For all that I admire the man for his dedication to the user experience, and to creating great products (I’m writing this on an iPad, while listening to an iPod, and checking Twitter on my iPhone), I can’t help feeling that I would have had nothing to do with the man had I met him while he was alive. That is not a very popular opinion these days, but even if you ignore all the dubious dealings, and less than perfect life choices, it is difficult to argue that Jobs was anything other than a horrible person to work for.

Tantrums, routinely losing ones temper, and humiliating those who report to you, are not how most people want to be treated, and at the end of the day, as a management or leadership strategy, it does not work and it is not acceptable.

There are essentially three ways to deal with people who’s idea of management is to induce fear and to shout louder than anyone else.

1: Accept it.

2: Fire them.

3: Work with them to improve.

It is interesting to note that Steve Jobs experienced all three.

As mentioned above, just accepting bad behavior from any employee is the road to ruin.

Firing them is a viable option, but since they are a superstar, you will have to think very carefully as to the ramifications of termination.

Working with them on their behavior is really the only option unless you feel it is either you or them.

In reality, most businesses are going to accept bad behavior from their “superstar” employees, but ultimately this does no one any good as the employee will probably end up being fired for going too far. Not to mention opening up the business accusations of creating a hostile work environment. It is important to understand that this kind of behavior is about the person themselves – not the people that surround them and are the aledged triggers. Bad behavior makes the badly behaved feel good. It is a way of telling themselves that they are doing something without actually having to do anything other than shout or throw things.

The challenge, of course, is to try and work with these individuals to limit the worst of the behavior and solve the underlying issues that set them off in the first place. This does require a certain amount of “pandering” for want of a better expression, but since the alternative is to fire them you do what needs to be done. It is important to note, however, that the disciplinary action, up-to and including termination has to be an available option, and as a manager you have to be prepared to use this should the situation demand it.

I believe, that the tools you use to work with the badly behaved “superstar” are pretty similar to those of working with an under performing employee. Coaching sessions, inserting yourself into issues before they turn into explosions, and winning enough trust and respect from both sides to come up with workable solutions. If you can show your badly behaved “superstar” that praise, cooperation, and the basic social niceties (please and thank you go a long way) actually work, and makes their lives better, then hopefully they will adopt some of those tactics as their own.

I am however a realist. I can complain that the Arizona Sun is hot, and I can do things to modify the environment to lessen its impact on me, but I cannot change its nature. Many badly behaved “superstar” employees will fall back into bad habits if you do not stay on top of things and call them behavior that crosses the line. It is important not to back down – but also not to fall into their way of handling conflict. They are wrong, you are right, and you have to have the courage of your convictions.

Ultimately, the badly behaved “superstar” employee may have be a superstar somewhere else. The chances are the superstar of your business is not Steve Jobs. If they are, maybe you need to be somewhere else.

The great Malcolm Tucker from the BBC’s superb “The Thick of It” showing how not to people manage. WARNING: Very strong language!

Do you have any experiences with  the badly behaved superstar – Care to share?

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Categories Business, Leadership, Management, Uncategorized
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