Month: March 2018

Good customer service doesn’t mean saying Yes to everything that the customer wants.

Cars can’t be cheap and luxurious. Music can’t be popular and indie. Frozen food can’t be instant and gourmet.

You have to pick your quality, something that you can hang your hat on, the thing that you can deliver that no one else can.

(What are you best in the world at? Of course, not the entire world–the best of your customer’s world.)

Because no good, product or service is for everyone, it is for someone.

Good customer service means:

• Staying in business to serve your customers.
• Being empathetic.
• Connecting with another human being.
• Being able to identify their pain points.
• Helping someone solve a real problem.
• Throwing away the script.
• Saying Yes and No.

It isn’t pandering to every need. And all too often we fall into this trap of asking What do you need rather than that saying This is what we do.

“There is an exception to every rule.”

“Rules are meant to be broken.”

Actually, no–when the intent is to ride off the efforts of others or to cut in line or to take more than your fair share–it’s not okay to ask.

It’s just selfish. No matter how it is sliced.

On the other hand, it doesn’t hurt to ask when we are afraid that our question might make us look stupid. It doesn’t hurt to ask when we expose ourselves, when we admit I don’t know the answer.

No physical harm comes from asking the right questions.

It doesn’t hurt to ask when we choose to be vulnerable.

Roger Bannister passed away this week. He was the first to break the four-minute mile.

Here are three important lessons to take away from his life and example:

1. He didn’t break the four-minute mile by running as far and fast as he could each day. In fact, he usually ran no more than 30 minutes per day. He did it by studying neurology. You are not going to do something that has never been done before by doing the things that everyone has done before.

2. Many thought that breaking the four-minute mile would be “impossible”. People are too quick to label something really hard as impossible. When in fact, “improbable” or “unlikely” are more appropriate words to use. 

3. In 1855, Charles Westhall set the first official mile-run world record at four minutes and twenty-eight seconds. It took nearly 100 years for the first person to break the sub four-minute mile afterwards. The second person to do it? It only took a month. Because it is far easier to do things that we can imagine.

Thank you Sir Bannister for showing us how to enable a world of possibility.

Fear of not being good enough, fear that I don’t have anything worth saying, fear that my question is stupid, fear of taking the wrong stand, fear that I am going to be judged, fear that I will fail…

No matter how hard we push, our fear pushes back. Bringing to center stage all our flaws and mistakes we have ever made.

And yet…

Yet, we can learn to dance with this fear.

We can be productive when no one is watching. We can show up when no one is willing. We can stand up and stand out for noticing something that no one notices. We can push through the dip. We can make something and share it with the world.

It’s merely a choice.

Don’t wait for the fear to go away before you decide.

Because it will never leave.

Which of your excuses are factual? Are there real economic challenges? Are you denied access to the same tools and information that levels the playing field? How much of your time is really constrained? How much energy is really left? Is your ceiling a giant iron plate?

And…

Which of these excuses are fake? Which ones do we hold onto so we can make ourselves feel better? Am I avoiding important work–the kind that might fail? Which excuses keep us from leveling up? How much of your time, energy and resources are squandered? Do you need to re-prioritize? Are you easily distracted? Is your ceiling made of glass?

We know what a scripted life looks like.

We grow up, go to school, find a career, start a family, accumulate large debts, work the rest of our lives to pay them off, retire, set up our children to be in a better situation than we are in.

The scripted life is one of safety and predictability–trying to control potential failures and risks while making outcomes more certain. There is nothing wrong with living a scripted life. It is admirable and noble. And there are many out in the world that would gladly trade their situation for ours.

Every once in a while though, we find someone coloring outside the lines, exploring the edges, seeing how far it is she can go. This life has no script. You just do. They don’t live inside the mold of what is expected. They live in the now. They take paths less traveled to see where it will go.

When yesterday and tomorrow is the same as today, it isn’t going to fulfill you and give you the life that you deserve. 

The answer then is to improvise. Happiness is marching to the beat of your own drum.

Knowing what you know now is what makes you who you are.

Fixing the mistakes of the past would create new experiences. New experiences mean new regrets. You would be different.

Chances are if you are unsatisfied with things how they are now, you won’t be satisfied later.

There is no such things as living a perfect life. Living life is perfect.

Change things going forward, not backwards.

We all say or do things that we don’t mean. And quite often, it only takes a couple seconds to realize we have made a mistake.

What happened?

The amygdala reacted and took over. It initiated your fight or flight response. The frontal cortex, the one that actually controls language, takes two seconds longer to respond.

The question then becomes:

When we are angry or frustrated or afraid, who is doing the talking?

When someone is mad at you, is that their amygdala talking?

As a rule: When in the heat of the moment, it is your/their amygdala talking. After a few moments, when emotions calm down, that is when real dialogue can take begin.

Resist the temptation to snap back, it’s just your amygdala talking.

Have you noticed that the ones who benefit from life the most are the ones who say Yes?

Yes opens the door of possibility. Yes invites us to a life of adventure. Yes allows us to be vulnerable. Yes means this might not work but what the heck, I will give it a try.

No, on the other hand, is a way to control our futures. No makes outcomes certain. No stands in the way of us doing the things that bring us joy and meaning and forward motion we desperately seek.

Follow the words of Leonard Bernstein, “I’m no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.”

Trust waivers every time a campaigner breaks a promise. Trust falls apart when our package doesn’t arrive on time. Trust is lost when the toast is burnt (resulting in more one-star reviews).

One wrong step could mean that you’ve lost everything that took years to build.

Think about that for a minute.

Change makers understand this, that the only currency that matters in the connection economy is trust.

The most effective way you can build trust is by keeping your promise.

When you keep your first promise it indicates that you will keep further promises.

Building up more trust in the process.

It’s a privilege to be in such a position.

Handle with care.