Andrew Sobel

On November 14th 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt sat at a conference table in the White House with key cabinet members and the top officers in the U.S. military. In an atmosphere of isolationism, Roosevelt was struggling to mobilize the United States for the inevitable war with Germany. His latest plan, an impractical compromise, was to get Congress to appropriate funds to purchase 10,000 airplanes—but to appease the isolationists, he recommended that no budget be set aside for crews or ground forces.

As Roosevelt outlined his proposal, heads nodded in sympathetic agreement. One by one, he asked his advisors what they thought. “Good plan, Mr. President,” they each intoned as Roosevelt went around the table. General George Marshall, newly appointed deputy chief of staff of the Army—and one of the most junior officials in the meeting—came last. Experienced in European trench warfare and knowledgeable about the German military, Marshall came to his new job with a deep sense of conviction and integrity. He knew what it would take to wage war on a global scale.
“Don’t you think so, George?” the President asked Marshall. “ Good idea, isn’t it?”
The faces in the room blanched at Marshall’s reply:
“Mr. President. I’m sorry,” he bluntly told Roosevelt, “but I don’t agree with that at all.”
Roosevelt gave him a startled look and abruptly ended the meeting. As the other shocked generals and cabinet secretaries left the room, they each shook Marshall’s hand to bid him goodbye. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morganthau whispered to him, “Well, it’s been nice knowing you.” Everyone knew that Marshall would soon be removed from his post and sent to some far-off military installation. Quite the opposite happened, however: from that day onwards, Roosevelt adopted Marshall—one of the few of the president’s men who had the courage of his convictions—as his closest military advisor. Just a year later, Roosevelt pinned another three stars on his shoulders, appointing him secretary of the Army.

The willingness–indeed the courage–to speak truth to power is rare today. A new book called “Money for Nothing” chronicles how ineffectual corporate boards are, for example, at truly providing independent oversight to CEOs and the companies they run. As a board member who may well be friends with the CEO and who has been selected by him or her, it requires a lot of courage to vote against board resolutions and to oppose internal executives who will always know more than the board about specific proposals they are seeking approval for.

Oil barge heading up the Hudson river, looking out my apartment window in NYC

Many problems in client relationships can be traced back to working with the wrong client in the first place. Often, the main selection criterion is “anyone who wants to hire us and can pay their bills.” That sounds a big overstated, but honestly it’s more often than not true. Here is a three-step screen you should think about using:

1. Is this the right client (company)? Are they large enough? Do they have strong leadership (weak organizations usually make for weak clients)? Remember what Machiavelli said: “A client that is not wise can never be well-advised.”
2. Is this the right executive? Are they respected in their organization? Ambitious? Are they an economic buyer–that is, can they actually approve working with you and fund your work? Are they interested in a long-term relationship or a transaction?
3. Is this the right issue? Does it play to your strengths? Will solving it yield a significant payoff? Is it complex and multifaceted (if not, addressing it may represent “commodity” work that will go to the lowest bidder)? Does your contact actually own the issue?

(I explore these in more detail in chapter 8 of my book, All for One.)

Other criteria could include financial risk, brand name value, the opportunity to create valuable intellectual capital, as well as fun. Remember what entrepreneur Richard Branson wrote in his autobiography: For him, “fun” was one of the principle criteria for getting into a new business area. Would it be fun for him? I like that one.

Sunset over the Brittany shore, France

This month I held the winter meeting of the Client Leadership Forum in London, which I direct along with James Kelly. The CLF is a best-practices sharing group of senior executives from a group of leading services firms. While our focus is strategies for building long-term client relationships, we discuss any and all aspects of service firm management. Don Lowman of Towers Watson gave a fascinating presentation based on his book, “Closing the Engagement Gap,” which is based on a study of 88,000 employees around the globe. Great client relationships are built on talented and engaged employees, and we all found Don’s insights valuable. The top drivers of employee engagement, it turns out, are:

1. Senior management interest in employee well-being
2. Improved my skills and capabilities over the last year
3. Organization’s reputation for social responsibility
4. Input into decision making in my department
5. Organization quickly resolves customer concerns

How do you know someone is “engaged” at your company? According to Don, these are the things to look for: An employee is engaged when he/she:

• Sees problems…and offers solutions
• Takes ownership for change…and makes it happen
• Seeks new challenges…and gets frustrated without them
• Helps colleagues and customers…selflessly
• Speaks with pride…about the company and its stakeholders

Sadly, a recent Conference Board study shows that only 45% of Americans are satisfied with their work–the lowest level it has been at since they began tracking this 22 years ago!

What has been your greatest customer service experience? For some of us it’s hard to focus on that question, since we’ve had so many poor ones. When Steve Jobs of Apple was launching the Apple Store concept, they built a prototype of the store in a secret warehouse in California to test if it was the right design. They scrapped the first one, and made many changes to it. Jobs does not believe in market research, but apparently they did hold some focus groups to help flesh out the store concept. One of the questions was, “What has been your greatest customer service experience?” A number of people answered, “The concierge at a hotel I was staying at.”  This led to the creation of the “Genius Bar” inside the stores to give advice on using your MAC, something which is a very popular aspect of the total Apple Store experience. I was having lunch in London with two friends and colleagues yesterday, after a week of client meetings, and we talked about this question. Interestingly, the examples we gravitated to were when a service provider did something valuable for us without us having to ask for it–for example, getting re-instated to gold or platinum level with an airline even though we hadn’t met the full mileage requirement. It’s almost as if when you have to ask, beg, and cajole the thing loses 80% of its value!  What’s your greatest customer service experience been?

Below–the Saiho-ji Zen Garden in Kyoto, Japan. This gentleman meticulously cares for it. Visit Japan if you want to witness a truly genuine customer service attitude.

A client of mine, whose job it is to help improve his firm’s “client experience,” recently told me that the one thing he was really focused on these days was the idea of walking in his client’s shoes. This isn’t just important for clients–it’s essential for any relationship we are trying to build. Can we really tune into and understand the pressures, fears, influences, and challenges experienced by the other person? (If we did, by the way, we’d probably be far less judgmental and critical of others!).

President Obama’s initial non-reaction to the attempted terrorist attack on Christmas day, when a man on Northwest flight 253 tried to blow up the plane with a bomb hidden under his clothing, is a case-in-point. We, the American people, were thrown into a serious state of anxiety over the incident–after all, this guy (Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab) almost took down a full-body jet with hundreds of people on board. My reaction was, “What the heck is going on?” and I was waiting to hear from our government. Instead, there was silence. The President was not walking in our shoes. PS: The January 3 incident at Newark airport only made matters worse–it turns out the TSA cameras were not even functioning, and it took the Continental Airlines security camera system to capture the man who walked the wrong way into the terminal, without clearing security–thus triggering an evening of chaos and agony for travelers as they were ejected from the terminal to be re-screened.

Think about it: What can you do to better walk in your clients’ shoes, or those of others with whom you are trying to build a relationship

Snowfall in the foothills of Santa Fe over the holidays

I believe we are at a tipping point when it comes to sending holiday cards and other paper-based communications that we employ to stay in touch. Holiday cards are starting to disappear for multiple reasons, not least peoples’ increasing environmental consciousness. Several of my clients have sent me email greetings which note that they are contributing to a charity rather than spending money on paper greeting cards and postage. Sending cards is time consuming, and without any personalization even a nice holiday card seems a bit impersonal and ineffectual.

Don’t kid yourself, though–there is often a direct correlation between the thought and effort required to send something to someone, and the impact and value it adds. An email greeting card, frankly, doesn’t do much for me, and not surprisingly it requires virtually no effort. There must be some personal or business value for the recipient. That means either a personal note of some kind that is on the card, or something else of value. For example,  I recently published a new article in Strategy+Business, called “What’s So Special about Special Ops?”. It’s about what the private sector can learn about the Military’s elite special operations training programs. See http://www.strategy-business.com/, it’s the headline article on their site right now. I had reprints made, and sent them last week to several hundred clients and contacts, with a short note. A few years ago, I sent an 11×14 laminated sheet with best practices for developing clients for life. Some may say I’m a dinosaur for sending anything by mail these days, but I do think something that is interesting or valuable will get noticed. What often doesn’t get noticed is one more email among thousands, or a holiday card with no personal message.

There is an old concept in Economics called the “GDP Multiplier” or “Fiscal Multiplier” which refers to the fact that a dollar spent in the economy–by the government, for example–ends up creating 2 or 3 dollars of economic output and activity as it circulates through the system.

I am convinced there is an analogous but negative effect I have dubbed “The PowerPoint Time Multiplier” (PTM).  It goes like this: In many companies, anytime someone has an idea, a presentation to make, or a meeting to run, they are compelled to create a PowerPoint presentation. But there is an insidious and wasteful multiplier effect that occurs because the time you spent creating the first draft of the presentation gets vastly multiplied as the slides are reviewed, reworked, and endlessly edited not just by yourself but by many others in the organization. After you take the time to create these slides, your assistant or project manager has to go through them. Then others read them and suggest changes. Perhaps your boss wants a new graphic added. All in all, I believe the PowerPoint Time Multiplier is at least 2:1 and may be as high as 5:1. It may only take you an hour to whip those slides into shape to begin with, but between 2 to 5 hours of additional time will most certainly be consumed above and beyond that.

Putting all these presentations together, in short, may be covertly consuming huge amounts of time in many organizations.

What’s the alternative? Well, the simplest approach would be a one-page handwritten list of key points you want to talk about, illustrated during your conversation with examples and stories.

I spent some time this week with David Allen, author of the mega-bestseller “Getting Things Done” (Amazon) and a top CEO coach on personal leadership and effectiveness. Coincidentally, the WSJ recently reviewed three leading “personal productivity” systems, among them David’s (WSJ Article). I liked David a lot for many reasons, including his very eclectic background (he has a black belt in Japanese karate, as do I) and his broad, humanistic perspectives. I asked him about an issue that has been a source of contention or at least “dialog” between my wife and me, which is drawing a boundary between work and home life. David said this:

“I don’t care if you attend to work while at home–but whatever you are doing at home, it has to be the only thing you are doing and you cannot be thinking about anything else.” In other words, if you’re watching TV with your spouse, you shouldn’t be thinking about answering an email; and vice-versa. In Zen this is called Mindfulness–being absorbed in the moment, and also being non-judgmental about what you are seeing and experiencing.

David’s organizational philosophy can be summed up as follows:

“Most of the stress people experience comes from inappropriately managed commitments they make or accept.” David talks about “open loops” in our brains–nagging thoughts about “stuff” we have to do or respond to. It weighs down on us and causes stress and anxiety.

He makes three key points: First: “If it’s on your mind, your mind isn’t clear. Anything you consider unfinished in any way must be captured in a trusted system outside (my emphasis) your mind, what I call a collection bucket.”

Second: “You must clarify what your commitment is and decide what you have to do, if anything, to make progress towards fulfilling it.”

Third: “Once you’ve decided on all the actions you need to take, you must keep reminders of them organized in a system that you review regularly.” Simply and powerful. I’m going to try it.

My mother, who was 87, passed away a few days ago. An Army nurse and  Lieutenant  in World War II, she followed the D-Day invasion into France and the heart of Germany. She raised four children, and later got her Masters in Social Work and became a family therapist at the famed Ackerman Institute in New York. My relationship with her was no piece of cake, but I can never forget one really terrific piece of advice she gave me many years ago. I was living in Italy at the time, and serving as country head for Gemini Consulting. She was visiting us at our apartment in Rome. I was having some kind of meltdown about something that had happened at work, and was obviously incredibly anxious and distraught. I remember we went for a walk along the small, flower-lined street that ran by our apartment building, and I talked about how upset I was. She told me,

“Andrew, in 10 years you won’t even remember what it is that you are upset about today. What will matter instead are your family and friends, and your relationships with them. That’s what really counts in life. So forget about this.”

She was right: Today I cannot even remember the incident. I just wish I had taken her advice more to heart at the time.

I have yet to meet a company which purports to be “Not Client Focused.” Indeed, everyone says they are client focused (and that their people are their greatest asset!). The truth is that not everyone is in fact truly focused on clients and customers. Their behavior is well meaning–they just get hung up on the usual internal politics and complex organization structures that quickly can become bureaucratic. Here are some questions you might ask about your own firm:

•    What fraction of their time do your top executives actually spend with key clients? (5%? 20%? 50%?)
•    Are clients regularly discussed in executive forums and at the management committee level?
•    How much power are relationship managers given in order to act on their clients’ behalf?
•    Is there a gap between senior management’s pronouncements about “client focus” and its actual policies and actions?
•    Does the firm do anything to independently verify the success of its relationships? (e.g., market research, independent reviews, etc.)
•    Does the firm have metrics to assess relationship health? (e.g., retention, breadth, relationships with decision makers, number of referrals, etc.)
•    Are professionals allowed discretionary time and budget to build networks and relationships that may have little short-term payoff?
•    Does an interest in and focus on clients pervade the organization and extend beyond those professionals who are managing client relationships? (e.g.—to receptionists, administrative and support staff, functional specialists in IT, legal, and so on?)
•    How easy is it for clients to do business with the firm?

I don’t buy the “if your employees are happy then your customers are happy” maxim either. Yes, they are correlated. But I have worked with professional firms with extremely happy, well-rewarded employees who had every perk in the book, and yet they had lost that relentless focus on client service and were out of touch with the marketplace.

A small pond with autumn leaves. Every year a Kingfisher swoops down and eats all the fish in it.