The Long View

Why do I blog?

A friend of mine (one of the dads in my son's scout troop) followed a link in an email to my blog, and asked if I got paid somehow to write this. I had to laugh at that, and explained that it actually costs me money for my TypePad account.

But I also realized that some people might legitimately wonder why I take the time to do these posts.

The first reason is (and I know there are many other bloggers out there with the same affliction) is that when I get a thought I think is worth sharing, my wife, my kid and my dog couldn't care less. (Actually, my dog will sit and listen to me while I explain some new revelation or insight, but I'm not sure she "gets it"). A blog is a "captive audience". This is the same thing that motivated me to write articles for programming journals years ago, and say "yes" twice when a publisher asked me to work on a book. Ditto speaking at conferences - captive audience.

Well, to be honest, at conferences you'll spot folks sneaking out to go to some other session, so they're not actually "captive", but enough will sit politely through whatever topic you are jazzed about at the moment to make it worthwhile.

Writing these entries also improves my own thinking on a particular topic. It's one thing to have an understanding of something, and another thing entirely to articulate it. You gain another level of understanding when you have to put your ideas into words, and to do so clearly and effectively. I won't tell you how many blog posts are sitting in the "drafts" folder, simply because I can't find a way to get across what I was thinking; usually a good indication that the whole idea is a little half-baked. Sometimes I need to read something or hear a speaker say something that relates to a potential topic before it crystalizes for me. Sometimes it never happens.

Then there is the "give back" factor. So many people have helped me in so many ways in my professional life, that I feel obligated to pass along anything that I think might help someone else. It's still going on, too. Now that so many smart people are sharing their thoughts, I frequently will pass along their observations, or encourage folks to check out their blogs directly.

Finally, there is always the hope that someone will read my blog and decide that I'm just the guy to hire or engage in some kind of project.

Hasn't happened yet, but we live in hope...

Writing Improvement

As a blogger, it should come as no surprise that I like to write. One of the reasons is that for me it's not easy. I started writing semi-professionally in the early 90's, and I'll never forget my first experience with an editor. I think I still have have the bruises (thanks, Lisa!).

I don't know how other writers feel, but I really like editors. They help me overcome my pathological aversion to the simple declarative sentence. Marcy, my wife, is a former graduate student and teaching assistant in rhetoric, so I have ready access to a tough editor in my own house!

One of the things I'm always on the lookout for is simple principles that serve to help raise red flags in my writing, and call my attention to something needing some more work. I recently had a friend and colleague review a whitepaper I was writing. She pointed out several extraneous uses of the word "that", and mentioned a former editor she worked with who constantly pointed this out in her writing. Sure enough, I've been able to remove at least half of the instances of "that" in my writing ever since. By the way, In editing this post, I removed about seven or eight instances of "that" from this paragraph!

Yesterday while spending some time on Wikipedia, I ran across an article containing a warning that it contained "weasel words". The link led me to a discussion of what weasel words are, and why they should be avoided in Wikipedia articles - they're a way of introducing opinion or bias into a piece of writing. I found the discussion applicable to any writing.

An example of some "weasel words" are:

• "Some people say..."
• "Some argue..."
• "Contrary to many..."
• "As opposed to most..."

In many cases, this is perfectly acceptable as what I'm writing is clearly meant to express an opinion or point of view. However, I'm often trying to convey clear, fact-based information, and an awareness of the effect weasel words have on my writing is important. The Wikipedia article goes on to explain some of these effects (quoting here from part of the Wikipedia article):

• Passive Voice. Weasel words are often in the passive voice, which weakens the effectiveness of written prose.
• Wordiness. Weasel words are sentence stuffing; they make sentences longer and less      information-dense.
• Convoluted syntax. Weasel words require some convoluted syntax to get a point across. "A square has four sides" is a simple sentence; "A square is widely considered as having four sides" puts the key point into a strange little participial phrase.
• Repetition. There are only so many times in one paragraph you can say "X is widely regarded to have done Y" before it sounds far too constructed.

I've added this list of words to my "red flag" toolbox. This will help me greatly in my self-editing. With a tough editor like my wife, I try to "do my homework" and keep her red-pen marks to a minimum!

You can read the full Wikipedia article here, which includes a pretty extensive list of weasel words.

Making sure you're all speaking the same language

Many of us are often called upon to bridge the gap between technical and business people in our work. This is fairly easy to do when you're the intermediary, controlling the flow of information. However, things can quickly get out of hand in a meeting where you have technical and business people sitting around the same table in real-time. There are many opportunities for subtle misunderstandings.

One of the frequent causes of misunderstanding is the way that the two disciplines respond to questions about the difficulty in getting some task accomplished.

When a technical person responds to such a question, they will be thinking about whether this is something that is pretty routine, or is a bit on the bleeding edge and might require some R&D. The business person on the other hand, is thinking in terms of resources - time and people. This is not to say that the business person isn't also interested in the routine/bleeding edge issue, as this introduces elements of uncertainty into the resources to be allocated, but the bottom-line is "how long?" and "how much?"

Typically what occurs during a meeting involving both business and technical people is that an issue will be raised, and the technical people will respond with something like "oh, that's trivial". Now, to a technical person, "trivial" means "hey, we do this sort of thing all the time, we can put one of our junior developers on that task, maybe even one of the summer interns, no sweat". To a business person, when they hear that something is "trivial", they might imagine something like "hey, no big deal, I can call Joan in finance and she'll fax over those production figures from her last quarterly report". The important thing is that to the business person, "trivial" can mean "no charge", but that isn't what the technical person means at all. The technical person doesn't mention that this "trivial" activity is their bread-and-butter, and still requires the allocation of time and human resources to accomplish, and the unsuspecting business people at some point get blindsided when there is a $20,000 line item associated with this "trivial" task.

When I was in the software development business, we used to tell the story of the homeowner with a plugged drain. The plumber arrives and after perusing the pipes in the basement for a few minutes, sends his assistant to his truck for a hammer, and proceeds to give the pipes a careful whack. He asks the homeowner to again try the drain, and voila, the clog is gone! The homeowner is outraged when the plumber presented him with a bill for $100, exclaiming that he only hit the pipe with a hammer! The plumber shrugs, tears up the bill and writes a new bill:

Hitting pipe with hammer.................................$5.00
Knowing where to hit pipe with hammer.....$95.00

To the plumber, the solution was trivial from a technical standpoint, but the homeowner still needed to allocate funds to pay for the plumber's expertise to apply the solution.

It isn't just technical and business people that can have different frames of reference and different definitions. I know of an angel investor who lost a quick $100,000 in part because during due diligence there was a significant difference (that didn't become apparent until much later) between how the investor and the company defined "intimate knowledge" of the target market!

When participating in a meeting or negotiation be aware of how the people at the table are likely to have different ways of interpreting the same words, and take the time to clarify those possible differences.

Customer Service and Sales Support as "Message Central"

I recently attended a business event that included a panel discussion on the topic, "Marketing & Communicating a Consistent Message". While it was an interesting event, I felt that I'd missed an opportunity to contribute a unique perspective on this topic.

In companies offering non-consumer products or services, there is a department that is usually referred to as "customer service", or in more sales-dominated industries, "inside sales". Under either name, this department is staffed by the people that field most of the operational customer calls coming into the company. Calls placing orders for products or services, inquiring as to the status of current orders, asking questions about invoices or credits, technical questions about product specifications, pricing and company policies and procedures. In many, if not most cases, these people perform the same function for the company's field sales force as well, acting as the primary "sales support" staff. In this capacity, they are able to provide sales staff with the same kind of technical information that is provided to customers, and can help the sales staff to collect pricing and other information to quickly put together quotations and proposals in a timely fashion. They can also provide sales people with information to help them anticipate and defuse situations with angry, dissatisfied customers, turning potential disasters into successful recoveries.

In short, the people that work in this department are the "go-to" people who often have a greater breadth of knowledge about the company, it's customers, products and services, its policies and procedures than any other group in the organization. As a result, as a group, they probably have more of an influence on the customers' perception of the company and the effectiveness of the sales force than most are aware. If you're operating a company offering an industrial product or service and thinking about marketing and communicating a consistent message, this department should be foremost in your mind.

First, ask yourself if your selling proposition and the message about that proposition is real, or is it just glossy posters and a mission statement? If it's just empty sloganeering, this department will be the first to see through it. The emperor can get away with a less-than-complete wardrobe almost anywhere else, but not here!

Second, is the message continually communicated to your customer service staff? It's fine to have a "culture" that everyone understands and buys into, but everyone has some turnover sooner or later, and even for the "old hands", it helps to articulate what differentiates your company and your people from the rest of the pack. It also makes it easier to make subtle refinements and changes in this message if it's formally stated.

Third, do your customer service people have the tools they need to do their jobs effectively? Information is their lifeblood, yet many struggle with information systems designed to provide management with incredibly detailed information, but do nothing to allow CS staff to quickly get an answer for a customer or a sales person. Information systems, knowledge bases, communication, training all keep customer service people on top of their game.

Finally, do your customer service people get the support they need? CS offices often get rather colorful names - "The Pit", "The Lion's Den", "The Hot Seat" - for good reason. This is a department where multiple demands from multiple directions is one of the few constants. Is this the first department cut when you have to downsize? Are there clear guidelines for deciding whether the needs of customers or sales people take priority? Are there clear guidelines for prioritizing other tasks? In other words, do you create an environment where your customer service people are unlikely to be in a frame of mind to care about the "message" as they struggle just to keep their heads above water?

Ideally you want to market and communicate a consistent message throughout the entire company, but the customer service department in a non-consumer product company is the point at which you can achieve the effect of such a consistent message most quickly, and the point from which such a message can begin to spread through the rest of the organization.