There’s 2 basic reasons

1. Genetics.  In a really fascinating series of studies, Georges Potworowski at the University of Michigan identified some of the more common causes and correlates of indecisive behavior.  (For more on the 4 types of indecisive behavior, check out my now infamous Psychology Today blog post on Kim Kardashian).  Among the list are high neurticism, low self-esteem, high conscientiousness (i.e. perfectionism), low conscientiousness (i.e. impulsive and disorganized).  All of which are personality variables that ...  [ Read More ]]]> If you haven’t noticed by now, I think decisiveness is pretty important. (For example, see…everything I’ve written in the past 12 years).  Most people tend to agree that decisiveness is a key attribute for success as a leader of team and a life.  So why isn’t everyone decisive?

There’s 2 basic reasons

1. Genetics.  In a really fascinating series of studies, Georges Potworowski at the University of Michigan identified some of the more common causes and correlates of indecisive behavior.  (For more on the 4 types of indecisive behavior, check out my now infamous Psychology Today blog post on Kim Kardashian).  Among the list are high neurticism, low self-esteem, high conscientiousness (i.e. perfectionism), low conscientiousness (i.e. impulsive and disorganized).  All of which are personality variables that are largely inherited.

That said, genetics are not destiny.  Some people are more genetically prone to obesity than other people.  But that doesn’t mean that diet and exercise can’t reduce our weight. Similarly, everyone can become at least 20% more decisive with very little effort.  In fact, I would argue that’becoming more decisive is a heck of a lot easier than losing weight.

2. Faulty Beliefs. Some of us believe that decisiveness and diligence/prudence are incompatible or somehow mutually exclusive.  The thinking goes, “sure it would be nice to make faster decisions, but I’m not impulsive.”  Or “I’m just analytical.”  Or “I just don’t settle for less than the best.”  Or…any one of the eight basic myths and misunderstandings about what it means to be decisive.  It’s not impulsive and it’s not about “trusting your gut.”  It’s about taking the available evidence or information and then choosing a course of action in a timely manner.

All the same, becoming more decisive will be harder for some people than others.  So, I suggest you take 2 baby steps.  The first step is to write down “I am a decider” on a sticky note and stick it on your bathroom mirror where you’ll have to look at it at least twice a day.  (Warning: You will feel like a dork, unless you live alone and never let guests use your bathroom.)  But I can promise you that this incredibly simple tactic works in a big way. So get over yourself, and give it a shot.   The second step is to take the 20% Challenge if you haven’t already done so.

The Action Gap – In the space between employee knowledge and organizational results is the Action Gap.  With regard to customer service and consultative sales, the action gap manifests itself in two ways.

1.   Failing to act.  The research literature conclusively shows that corporate training is highly effective at teaching people new knowledge.  An average manager could expect to leap from the 50th percentile (i.e. middle of the pack) in a specific topic area up to the 83rd percentile following a training course on that ...  [ Read More ]]]> Last week, I explained our research on the “Direction Deficiency” how it prevents employees from differentiating their company’s experience from that of their competitor’s.  This week I’m covering the second major obstacle for enabling your employees to grow your customer base.

The Action Gap – In the space between employee knowledge and organizational results is the Action Gap.  With regard to customer service and consultative sales, the action gap manifests itself in two ways.

1.   Failing to act.  The research literature conclusively shows that corporate training is highly effective at teaching people new knowledge.  An average manager could expect to leap from the 50th percentile (i.e. middle of the pack) in a specific topic area up to the 83rd percentile following a training course on that topic.⁴ However, rates of training effectiveness fall off into the Action Gap when training is expected to change an actual business outcome. In this case, the average employee will likely move only from the 50^th percentile to the 61^st percentile.⁴

The fact is that teaching people what to do and realizing business results from what they actualy do are two very different things.

This is due to what I call the Mike Tyson Rule.  When asked what he thought about an upcoming opponent’s ironclad plan to beat him, Tyson replied “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”  Every customer has an inner Mike Tyson who is just one hot button away from delivering a knockout blow to your service or sales associates. Because of the sheer quantity and diversity of personal interactions they encounter each day, customer service representatives must deal with more right hooks and left jabs on a daily basis than any other position in your organization.  At any given moment, they have a far greater likelihood of getting punched in the mouth and failing to execute your strategy the way they were trained.

2.   Customer-pleasers lose. Customer-leaders gain.  On the other hand, customer-facing employees also hold more potential than anyone else in your company for growing your customer base.  It is common knowledge that a dissatisfied customer will tell between 9 and 15 people about their experience, and that 13% of those dissatisfied customers will tell more than 20 people.  A lesser known fact is that when a service rep or sales associate helps a customer solve a problem, that customer will tell 4 to 6 people about that experience.  Imagine increasing your marketing effectiveness by four to six times.

The rub is that employees must be more than “nice” in order to solve a customer problem. Nice is merely a hedge against customer dissatisfaction–it prevents a new problem (i.e. an angry customer problem) from creeping up, but it doesn’t solve an existing problem.  Training service people to be nice will prevent your customer base from shrinking, but it won’t make your customer base grow.  That is most likely why a 2007 study found that departments run by customer service managers with a confident, action-oriented mindset deliver significantly better customer service than departments run by their less decisive peers.

Key Finding: Bridging the Action Gap requires more than effectively conveying knowledge about how to solve customer problems. Training efforts must focus more on conditioning employees to habitually take decisive action on the customer’s behalf.

At the same time, the numbers present an opportunity.  Even during poor economic times, 85% of consumers will pay more for a superior customer experience.1  That is probably why last year, 90% of North American businesses rated customer experience as “important” or “critical” to their strategic plans.3 In the race for growth amid an economic slump, companies are also paying close attention to the fact that ...  [ Read More ]]]> Just four years ago in those halcyon, pre-recession days 59% of customers would stop doing business with you because of a bad customer experience. Today that number has jumped to 82%.¹ That is an especially scary number considering that the cost of finding a new customer is a staggering 5 times higher than the cost of retaining an existing customer.²

At the same time, the numbers present an opportunity.  Even during poor economic times, 85% of consumers will pay more for a superior customer experience.¹  That is probably why last year, 90% of North American businesses rated customer experience as “important” or “critical” to their strategic plans.³ In the race for growth amid an economic slump, companies are also paying close attention to the fact that 55% of customers will refer friends to a company because of its service, whereas only 49% do so because of its products, and only 42% because of price.¹ 

Decision Pulse research reveals that the majority of organizations are already placing an appropriate amount of attention on customers and the customer experience they provide.  However, our research indicates that the are still missing the mark in four critical areas.  For the next four weeks, I’ll be covering each area one by one.

1. Direction Deficiency – A full 80% of North American companies surveyed in 2010 said they would like to deliver a customer experience that differentiates their business from their competitors.³ Good customer service in a general sense is now an expectation that all customers place on all companies, all of the time.  Delivering a generically “good” or “pleasant” customer experience is merely table stakes.  It is no longer a differentiator for any company, especially when 8 out 10 of their competitors are explicitly striving to do the exact same thing.  To properly use the customer experience as a differentiator, companies must make their customer experience not just good, but unique.

Upon closer review, that uniqueness can almost always be found hidden somewhere within the company’s strategic direction. The greatest challenge customer service managers and trainers face is not empowering their customer service representatives and sales people, but in providing them with clear direction about how to execute the company’s strategy with every single customer interaction.

Key Finding:  Managers must translate their company’s unique strategic direction to front line service and sales associates in a way that is both simple enough to remember and easy enough to act upon during every customer interaction.

Next week, we’ll cover the second reason, “The Action Gap.”

The Negative Multiplier

Indecisiveness has an incredibly strong multiplier effect.  When you delay a decision, you are also delaying someone else’s progress–a vendor, a client, an employee, a spouse, a child, a teacher.  When you can’t decide what to order when you go out to dinner with friends or colleagues, you delay everyone else at the table from moving on with their dinner conversation, from receiving their food (not to mention your food) and from eventually leaving the restaurant with a full belly.  You have also delayed that server ...  [ Read More ]]]> Here’s a deal for you:  If you make a conscious effort to be 20% more decisive in just 1 out of every 5 choices you make today, you will improve your effectiveness by at least 80%.  Here’s why:

The Negative Multiplier

Indecisiveness has an incredibly strong multiplier effect.  When you delay a decision, you are also delaying someone else’s progress–a vendor, a client, an employee, a spouse, a child, a teacher.  When you can’t decide what to order when you go out to dinner with friends or colleagues, you delay everyone else at the table from moving on with their dinner conversation, from receiving their food (not to mention your food) and from eventually leaving the restaurant with a full belly.  You have also delayed that server who is now delaying everyone else in his section of the restaurant and the people waiting for a table and so on.

When you delay or waffle on a decision at work, the same thing happens.  You cost yourself as well as everyone else on your team time and creative mental energy.  You’ve also stretched out the feedback loop so that it now takes longer for you and everyone else to learn what’s working and what isn’t. In the worst case, you might delay a customer right into the arms of your competitor.

The Positive Multiplier

On the other hand, if you make a conscious effort to be more decisive just a fraction of the time, you then make the multiplier effect work for you instead of against you.  Now, everyone around you also has 20% more time and mental energy to work with (add an additional 20%  for every person on your team and you wind up with a pretty astonishing number).  You’ve also significantly condensed the learning curve for your team.  The bigger your team, the stronger the effect.

What’s even more amazing is that a 20% increase in decisiveness is actually really simple to achieve.  Weeks after a recent workshop, one of my clients said simply “it was an awakening.”  The insights alone made him instantly more decisive, before he had even had time to turn our decision process into a habit.  That’s because most of us have been trained to think about decisions only in terms of accuracy, rather than effectiveness.  Whether it’s a home decorating decision or a business strategy decision, we rarely consider how we might have arrived at the exact same choice (or a better one) in far less time with far less mental energy expended.

So, this week, take decisiveness for a test drive.  Make a conscious effort to be more decisive in just one out of every 5 decisions you make, and see where it takes you.  If at the end of the week, it works for you, then pay it forward by asking a friend or colleague to take the 20% Challenge.

Enjoy!

Yes, he founded one of the most successful retail businesses in history (Starbucks), and yes, he also resurrected that same business during one of the worst economies in the history of the nation.  And yes, he revolutionized employment practices for part-time workers.   But I’m pretty sure, what secured his top standing in the eyes of Fortune magazine’s editors was the article I wrote about him in my September BusinessWeek column. It’s really the only logical answer, isn’t it?

Okay, maybe my article wasn’t the only factor.  But as we kick off 2012 and begin executing our shiny new strategic plans, I ...  [ Read More ]]]> Howard Schultz was recently named Fortune Magazine’s  top Businessperson for 2011.  I think I know why.

Yes, he founded one of the most successful retail businesses in history (Starbucks), and yes, he also resurrected that same business during one of the worst economies in the history of the nation.  And yes, he revolutionized employment practices for part-time workers.   But I’m pretty sure, what secured his top standing in the eyes of Fortune magazine’s editors was the article I wrote about him in my September BusinessWeek column. It’s really the only logical answer, isn’t it?

Okay, maybe my article wasn’t the only factor.  But as we kick off 2012 and begin executing our shiny new strategic plans, I think it will pay off in spades to take 2 minutes of your time to brush up on how Schultz pulled off his dramatic turnaround of Starbucks.  What he did flies directly in the face of much of the common wisdom and intuition about strategic change.  Before you “reinvent” your company, your team or your sales pitch, do yourself a favor and review the 3 Ways to Reassert your Brand.

Wouldn’t that be nice if you found that the key to your success in 2012 has been right in front of you all along?

I went on an early Sunday morning ride with two friends who work for the same corporation. One was an executive and the other had been with the company for about a year.  During the one-hour ride, we talked about all sorts of topics.  Only about 10% of the conversation pertained to my friends’ mutual work interests.  But afterward, the younger friend, Dan, made a telling comment when he said “I got more accomplished with Jason in that short bike ride than I did with weeks of attempted emails and phone calls.”

Dan was right.  This bike ride did more for his career than months ...  [ Read More ]]]> On a bike ride a few months ago, I learned an incredibly powerful lesson: 80% of leadership development is just being there.

I went on an early Sunday morning ride with two friends who work for the same corporation. One was an executive and the other had been with the company for about a year.  During the one-hour ride, we talked about all sorts of topics.  Only about 10% of the conversation pertained to my friends’ mutual work interests.  But afterward, the younger friend, Dan, made a telling comment when he said “I got more accomplished with Jason in that short bike ride than I did with weeks of attempted emails and phone calls.”

Dan was right.  This bike ride did more for his career than months of keeping his nose to the grindstone at the office would have.  Not because he was able to get in some grade A tail-puckering, but because he received invaluable, uncensored leadership coaching from someone who understood how to get things done in that organization despite red tape and bureaucracy. I think that is the real power of today’s informal–and yes, traditionally male-dominated–networks.

It’s like that old episode of Friends where Rachel tries to start smoking because she saw how her boss gave favor to the people with whom she took smoke breaks.

But it’s not about kissing the right toosh or being the right sex.  It’s about making yourself present at a time and place where leadership lessons can be imparted without the daily grind interrupting.  The fact is that good leaders are in high demand.  Which means they are busy people.  Between the hours of 8 and 5 Monday to Friday, you just aren’t going to get much Q.T. from them.  They have too many urgent missions to accomplish and too many fires to put out.  You really have only three ways to learn high quality lessons from good leaders in your organization.

1. You can watch them in status meetings and other group settings to see how they conduct themselves.  That’s important, but you aren’t going to get insights about why they said or did what they did.

2. You can (hopefully) volunteer for extracurricular projects that give you frequent access to them. This is a great method whenever the opportunity presents itself.  It will, however, require lots of extra time.

3. You can make their hobbies your own.

Number 3 is the one that so often makes people squeamish and is so often derided as “brown-nosing” or “politics.”  And to be clear, it is indeed brown nosing if you’re only trying to “be seen.”  But if you make yourself present and ready to learn often enough your can glean the leadership lessons that really set great leaders apart from good (albeit, ho-hum) managers.  And if you learn those lessons you won’t need to deploy any brown-nosing skills on order to advance your career.  Your results will speak for you.

1. Adding Clarity not Complexity.

In an interview last week, she told Worthen that “I want to be able to answer the question what is H-P very crisply.”  Her first order of business, was undoing her predecessor, Leo Apotheker’s decision to transform the hardware company into a software company.  In a move very similar to Howard Schultz’s decision to reassert Starbucks ...  [ Read More ]]]> When Meg Whitman took over at Hewlett Packard, she inherited what could best be described as a corporate cluster f…uuuddggge.    In the Wall Street Journal this weekend, Ben Worthen tracks how Whitman is attempting to get the computer giant back on track.  Here’s how she’s doing it:

1. Adding Clarity not Complexity.

In an interview last week, she told Worthen that “I want to be able to answer the question what is H-P very crisply.”  Her first order of business, was undoing her predecessor, Leo Apotheker’s decision to transform the hardware company into a software company.  In a move very similar to Howard Schultz’s decision to reassert Starbucks as “the Coffee Authority” by 86′ing breakfast sandwiches for nine months,  Whitman made it crystal clear that H-P would remain first and foremost, a PC company.

2. Encouraging Decisiveness in Her People

One thing Whitman appears to know very well is what she doesn’t know.  After clearly setting the direction like every good leader should, she is actively encouraging her executive team to make decisions.  She understands that, as the leader, if you’ve done your job by establishing a clear strategic direction, you have to trust that your team will successfully execute that strategy one decision at a time.

3. Putting the Right Talent in Motion

Whitman also seems to understand that rules 1 and 2 can’t be effectively applied without the right people onboard.  According to the WSJ article, she has “has been aggressively putting in place retention packages over the past two to three weeks.”  You have to have people with the right talent and the right experience.  But the only way they will be able to put that talent and experience into action is if the leader provides clear direction and encourages decisive action.

Over the coming months, Whitman and her team will almost certainly make some decisions that splatter egg on her face.  We should expect that.  But if she stays true to these rules, methinks she has her best shot of returning H-P to its former glory. What do you think?

Psychologist Peter Gray of Boston College says that fear of the dark might be more than stalling.  Dr. Gray argues that fear of the dark has strong evolutionary roots.  Before the invention of Alarm Force and door lock,s our ancestors spent millions of years living in ...  [ Read More ]]]> Just as sure as the sun rises and sets every night, we are sure to hear two words from our two year old the second we shut the bedroom door.  “Tooo daawwkk!”  (That’s “too dark” for those who don’t speak Toddler.)  With Halloween on our doorstep, I’ve begun thinking that maybe, just maybe this is more than a delay tactic.  What if the Bogey Man weren’t just a figment of our imagination?

Psychologist Peter Gray of Boston College says that fear of the dark might be more than stalling.  Dr. Gray argues that fear of the dark has strong evolutionary roots.  Before the invention of Alarm Force and door lock,s our ancestors spent millions of years living in the wild where infants and young children were the easiest prey for all sorts of animal predators.  Kids who didn’t instinctively throw a fuss about being left alone in the dark were….well, let’s just say they weren’t likely to pass on their genes.

Today, virtually all living humans are descendants of whiny babies.  We all have an instinctive fear of the dark, because for 99.9% of mankind’s existence “the monsters under the bed are real,” Gray suggests.

How the Bogey Man Terrorizes Grown Up Kids

Realizing the power of this instinctive fear, the world’s greatest master manipulators—parents—discovered that if they gave the object of the fear an identity, they could use it to keep their kids in line.  That’s why some version of the Bogey Man exists in almost every culture on earth from Nepal to New Jersey.  Whether it’s El Bolo in the Spanish-speaking world or Butzemann in the Germanic world, the Bogey Man is simply a catch-all title for any scary creature that lurks in the shadows of reality.  Creatures like, ya know, Wall Street executives.

By the time we reach adulthood, most of us have recognized the Bogey Man for what it is—an irrational scare tactic.  But I’m not convinced that the Bogey Man every totally disappears from our imaginations.    Witch hunts follow disease outbreaks.  Occupy Wall Street type movements happen in the wake of economic collapses.  That’s because if there is no devil, then how will we know who to burn at the stake so we can finally have some peace of mind?

Uncertainty is the Spookiest Ghoul of All

When compared to the unknown, the Bogey Man is a comfort.   We prefer “the devil you know” because there’s rules for protecting yourself against that Bogey Man.  Don’t go into the woods.  Don’t stay up past your bedtime.  Don’t say “Bloody Mary” three times in the dark.  Don’t deposit your money in a bank.

It sounds strange, but I think most people would almost prefer tragedy in the form ghosts and goblins over the kind of uncertainty that slowly sucks the life out of you over a course of months or years.  At least you can derive some purpose and direction from tragedy.  Uncertainty gives us no such direction.

That’s why our best weapon against uncertainty is not to identify a Bogey Man to kill, but to identify your Personal Direction.   Regardless of whether you’re in a peak or a valley, a clear sense of direction can arm you with the focus and confidence necessary to keep making progress and keep moving forward.  So before you take the kiddies out trick-or-treating tonight, take 5 minutes right now to find your direction and then proudly proclaim “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.”

Find Your Life Decision Pulse

“You say that [Patrick Ferrari's] good decision would be a bad decision for some other people, depending on their decision pulses. To what extent do people need to diversify their decision making, even if it means going against their decision pulse? I, for example, tend to fall most often in the Achievement or Stimulation category but I would think that without some humanistic decisions from time to time, I would create a very self-involved and unfulfilled life. I sound really cynical…lol…I actually really wanna know more about this.”

It’s a ...  [ Read More ]]]> After posting my Biggest Loser article on Decision Lab blog on Psychology Today last week, a friend (Ian) asked me a great question about how to balance competing priorities.

“You say that [Patrick Ferrari's] good decision would be a bad decision for some other people, depending on their decision pulses. To what extent do people need to diversify their decision making, even if it means going against their decision pulse? I, for example, tend to fall most often in the Achievement or Stimulation category but I would think that without some humanistic decisions from time to time, I would create a very self-involved and unfulfilled life. I sound really cynical…lol…I actually really wanna know more about this.”

It’s a great question and we all know exactly how he feels.  But the answer is not really “balance” in the way that has so many of us chasing our tails trying to serve 8 different masters.  We can indeed have multiple priorities, but we have to understand how they work together, rather than viewing them as separate bags of sand that need to be balanced.

For example, my Decision Pulse is Freedom, but my number 2 direction is Humanity.  In practice that means that the vast majority of my decisions need to take my need for Freedom into account. Of course, there are often times when I choose to do things that move me in a Humanity direction. The key is that overall in the big decisions about life, career and even about the specific way I support Humanity, I take Freedom into consideration.  So, my favorite form of Humanitarianism is micro-lending, because I feel like it’s helping the less fortunate achieve freedom.  Also, if I’m really being honest with myself, it’s because microlending allows me to preserve my personal freedom (i.e. I don’t have to do much else besides pick a worthy recipient–and I’m free to choose who that is–and provide him or her with funds).

My wife, Alison, on the other hand, has a Decision Pulse of Relationships and her number 2 is also Humanity. So she really likes helping Humanity not as much in the broad sense like me, but in forging deep personal connections with suffering people who might need some one-on-one TLC.

In some ways, you could say that mine is a self-interested Humanity because I put my own Freedom needs first.  And that’s probably true.  But I’ve found that the alternative often makes me bitter and resentful, which is also no good for Humanity.  Also, in Patrick Ferrari’s case, Humanity is clearly his #1, but he clearly holds Achievement highly too as evidenced by his personal goals.  But when he has to make important decisions like the one to pull himself from the competition, Humanity will trump Achievement, and in his mind even his “achievements” move him toward Humanity.

The key is always getting clear on the pecking order and knowing which Pulse takes priority when you inevitably have to choose.  You can always find out your pecking order by (sales pitch!) taking the online assessment for free.