The Path of Most Resistance

By Laurie Clarke,  COO, The Tatham Group

As I’m about to become a new parent, I am receiving a lot of parenting tips and advice.  Some I seek.  Most are offered upon spotting my unmistakable baby bump.  I have stopped wasting my time explaining to these many strangers that they are not considering the customer, me, when they share horror stories or unsolicited advice on how to avoid their mistakes or replicate their successes.

Setting my customer focus issues aside, I decided to go with the flow. I am a firm believer that everyone can teach you something and the collective knowledge of hundreds of parents must be greater than my own.  I made the decision to block out anything that will worry or terrify me and accept the other advice for consideration.

Of course, my Tatham mind kicks in and I start to turn these encounters into an opportunity.  I began to ask questions and categorize the answers.  Very quickly I saw a pattern.  The biggest regrets were other people’s biggest success – a parent must always follow the path of most resistance.

Finding Elegance in a Handful of Nails

By Michael Tatham Jr., President, The Tatham Group

I started working in the company at what I thought was the lowest level – producing training materials and processing customer orders. What I learned in this role were the key components to the success of any company: there is no role more important than one that services the customer, the more simple a process is the more elegant and everyone plays a critical part if the company is integrated.

More importantly, I learned the critical success factor for our company over the past forty years: our human nature leads us toward complexity. It is the desire to please, challenge or prove worthiness; the creation of rules, roles and processes to make ourselves feel special; the fear of losing control that creates a convoluted path to the customer receiving what they need; inability to accept and admit failure in order to learn from it; and many more. Since birth our environment has reinforced these behaviors making it difficult for us to change to an environment of success that requires less resources to maintain.

Closing the Loop

By John Munce, Deployment Executive, The Tatham Group

It was a little card sitting in the center of the hotel room desk.  I expected nothing and the maid doesn’t usually leave me love notes.  But that morning, on my way to a meeting, I told the desk clerk “65 degrees (F) is a little chilly for my room in the morning.”  Yes I had tried to raise the thermostat.  No nothing had happened.  Then I didn’t think about it again all day.

The card told me that Our Engineering Representative Was In Your Room Today at 4:48.  This bit of information alone was valuable.  I’ve been in other hotels when I had no idea whether anything had been done to respond to my complaint.

The card then said, “Checked windows, raised T-stat, will stop back to check Rm Temp.”  Now I had the answer to what was really done and a promise that he would confirm whether what he had done really worked.

The card also read, “(Sorry for the inconvenience).”  Wow, even the engineer would apologize.  Few things will make me angrier than service people who won’t even apologize for something not being right.  Even an insincere apology is better than nothing.  It at least recognizes that something was wrong.  How many times have you felt that you were inconveniencing a clerk because you wanted something adjusted or changed?

Adding Steps to Simplify

By John Munce, Deployment Executive, The Tatham Group

We process types often talk about simplifying processes. We’re on a relentless march to find the value-add step and then perform only that step. There can be a rallying cry for a team: Take out steps! Cut rework! Take out checking! Build in quality! Find the absolute minimum number of steps! Less is more!

But sometimes simplifying the process means adding in a step. It can seem unnecessary, even irrational.

My friend Ann is a process type and fierce project manager who’s dying of pancreatic cancer. When I went to see her the other day, she launched into a process critique of end-of-life health care. The medical establishment came off with a strong B. One item in particular fascinated her.

A nurse from hospice had come for the introductory visit. There was lots of chatting and information sharing. The nurse inspected the house and talked with my friend about whether she would want a hospital bed or other special equipment. Then she presented The Gift.

What Do Customers Know?

By Doug Powell, Senior Vice President, Wachovia

The Customer: Part II of III

What’s your favorite product? What’s your least favorite product? Why? We’re all customers and we all like to think that we know something about something, right? In Part I: “Knowing your Limits,” I noted how important it is to talk to the customer and that if we don’t we’re liable, and likely guaranteed, to develop functions in our products that customers don’t want and miss functionality that they do want. Talking to customers is an essential part of building quality into our products and services.

“But wait,” you say. “I’m a professional in my field, have years of experience, I do talk to customers and I know the industry. I know what customers want.” Really? OK. And I’m not calling into question anyone’s experience and intelligence—the business world is full of smart, hardworking people who know their business. Besides, almost everyone at some time or another has said the phrase “Customers don’t know what they want!”

Process for Project Management

By Cristina Lee, COO, The Tatham Group Phils

 If you think managing a project is all about using good techniques and tools, think again. There is a process for managing a project, more than just using tools!

A lot of instances (and I have seen this happen so many times), there is a tendency to start out building a GANTT – and project management software prompts this behavior – without considering the fundamental purpose of the project, or even have any clear idea of how to systematically go about it. In other words, the project management tools drive and manage the project.

It should be the people driving the project.

Prototype Is The Missing Piece

By John Munce, Deployment Executive, The Tatham Group

The bank manager looked at me across the table and said, “We don’t know what we don’t know.”  Bob is an experienced guy who has run several mergers in the past.  However, this one was B-I-G.  He’s talking to me because he knows I’ve been through it all before.  He is looking to buy my experience, scars, stumbles, and mistakes from having been through an enormous painful merger.  But he didn’t ask outright for help.  He just said he didn’t know what he didn’t know.  That set me to thinking.

How do you learn what you need to know when you don’t even know you’re ignorant?

What Does Customer Focus Really Mean?

By Michael Blackman, The Tatham Group

Virtually all business leaders now agree that customer focus is essential in 21^st century commerce.  The problem is that customer focus means very different things to different people, with the key difference falling along emotional vs. intellectual/systematic lines. 

 For those front-line associates and especially leaders who let emotions guide their definition of customer focus, one might expect to find comments and actions like:

• We love our customers
• We will do anything for our customers
• The customer is always right
• If the customer asks for something we will do it

The Future Is Friendly

By Michael Tatham Jr, President, The Tatham Group

Are the members of Generation Y lazy or just searching for an environment to thrive in?

 The late 1990’s introduced an environment that expected more of Generation Y, the group that falls into the approximate birth timeline of 1980-1999.  This was a time when technology and more specifically the Dot Com phenomenon began. According to Wikipedia: “They needed to be faster and more efficient (with the advent of better technology), smarter (increase in college enrollment), and available (40-60 hour work weeks) than Boomers and Gen X. Therefore some of the defining characteristics of Gen Y are tech-savviness, family-centric, achievement-oriented, team-oriented and attention-craving”.  

Building Friendships

By Mari Franco, President, The Tatham Group Phils

The two most important factors in building relationships are TRUST and CONFIDENCE. 

This leads me to my personal practice of handling relationships and friendships. To develop friends and keep my networking alive I am very careful in making sure that they trust me. This is a very key word that many people take for granted and do not necessarily practice. They say they believe in it, but in reality, they don’t practice it.

 There are five letters that are very important to me and I practice them in my leadership ways. The five letters are F F F E and S.

 The three F’s stand for FAIR, FIRM and FRIENDLY.  Always treat people fairly with firm convictions and in a very friendly manner.

 E stands for Empathy.  Always put yourself in the his/her place. Try to imagine how he/she feels before you make decisions.

 S stands for Sympathy.  Again, by understanding people’s feelings you tend to develop long lasting relationships and true friendships.