Management Craft

Home Sweet Home

I made it back home!

9,400 miles done, 34 states visited.

It's drizzling in Seattle.....nothing changes, it was raining when I left!

Lots of breakthroughs catalyzed, tons of flapping going on. Keep flapping!

Hazel was amazing - no breakdowns. She deserves a big spa day soon.

It feels great to be home.

Thanks to everyone who helped to make this tour so amazing. I will write more about final reflections soon.

Thanks to my sponsor, Motto Magazine - what a great team!

I may take a couple days off blogging and emailing, but will be back in business early next week. I have two feet of mail to sift through and dogs and cats that are in need of attention. Hazel needs a serious bath to get rid of all the bugs embedded in her crevices. Bill gets back from India on July 2.

Yippee!!!! I made it. What an adventure.

Thank You For Not Being So Perky

I am in Sioux Falls, South Dakota today. I decided to go to IHOP next to my hotel for eggs and corn pancakes. Everything was fine. My only complaint is that the waitress, Chris, was too nice. She smiled, was pleasant and paid attention to me. Perhaps the big Dakota sky makes people grow up with smiles on their faces.

I am used to the breakfast joints where the servers are rude, the food slow, and the check hits the table with a glare that says, "get out," half way through the meal. The famous Sip 'n Bite in Baltimore is (used to be) a great example of this style of dining,

My personality makes a slow reveal in the morning.

I think I prefer a grumpy server because I seem absolutely delightful in comparison. Great service is relative.

I know that food servers are generally overworked and underpaid and I always tip well. I tried to not hold Chris's perkiness against her when it came time to calculate her tip.

Best Leadership Blogs

I received a very nice note from the fine folks over at the Kevin Eikenberry blog and company - They have nominated Management Craft as one of their top 10 leadership blogs.

Golly gee, that's very nice. Click on over and check out the other nine blogs, too. Kevin and team wants to know which one if YOUR favorite and is asking you to vote. You can vote for your favorite here.

I am so thankful to you for reading Management craft. In August, it will be three years old. That's 90 in internet years, right?

Management (and leadership, here's my view about leadership) is noble and important work. I enjoy sharing best practices and stories with you. We have a management shortage that is only going to get worse. Not because we don't have enough talented young professionals, but because so many young people don't want careers in management. Many of the jobs are so poorly designed that only crazy people would apply. We need to fix this because our companies need great management. We need to align and design the jobs and make management a satisfying work experience.

That's my goal with this blog - I want to increase conversation about great management such that we can together fix the jobs and find great people to lead our teams. Join in!

Looking for Mgt Book Reviewers

***UPDATE***
Thanks to everyone who volunteered. I'm closing the request and have sent the list to my editor.
************

Would you like to get a sneak peek of my upcoming book, 10 Ways to Be a Successful Manager? I am looking for a few people to scan/read the draft and offer blurbs for the book cover or inside pages (and website).

The book covers 10 areas that I think all managers ought to review and tune on a regular basis. It is suitable for both newer and experienced managers. Newer managers can use the book to ensure they are set up for success and experienced managers can use the book to re-tune and align their practices for optimal results.

If you are interested, you will get the manuscript directly from my publisher and you will be asked to send your blurb directly to my editor. You will get the manuscript around July 7 and be given two weeks to provide the blurb.

If you are interested, please email me:

Your name, company, and title
Mailing Address
Email address
Phone number (for verification of blurb if email is not used)

Please send that to me at: lhaneberg AT gmail DOT com.

Thanks! I can't wait to see how people like the book! By the way, for the trainers/coaches out there, a facilitator's guide will also be available so the book can be used for management training.

Marcus Buckingham on the Phone - Free

Click here to sign up for six free teleconference calls with Marcus Buckingham. Space is limited.

What's Your Brand?

Here is an interesting article about brand. It's an interesting follow-on to the post I offered yesterday about my impressions about business hotels. What do you think - does each customer define your brand and might you have very different brands based on the customer?

Your Brand Is Everything
By Joe Calloway, author of Work Like You're Showing Off: The Joy, Jazz, and Kick of Being Better Tomorrow Than You Were Today.

Your brand is everything. Don’t think that just because you’re not Nike or Coke that you don’t have a brand. You ARE a brand.

Your brand is not your advertising. Your brand is not your logo. Your brand is not your company name. Your brand is not your product. Your brand may not be at all what you think it is. Your brand may not be what you intend for it to be. You do not own your brand.

Your brand is owned by your customers, the people you work with, and anyone else who has an impression of you. Your brand is other people’s perception of what it’s like to do business with you, work with you, or be with you.

Nothing is more important than your brand, because it’s what defines you, regardless of the work you do. It has equal importance whether you are one employee of a worldwide company or a one person business working out of your home. It should be your top priority to build, protect, and represent your brand to the best of your ability in every interaction you have with others. The essence of building a strong brand is simply this: keeping your promises and creating great experiences for others.

You want customers to love you, not just know who you are. You literally have as many brands as you have customers and people who have an impression of you. If those impressions are bad, or if you don’t keep your promises, then your brand is weak. Consider all the brands that you may have created without even knowing it:

·         You transfer a customer four times to different departments and she never has her problem solved. That’s your brand.

·         You charge a customer extra for something they thought was included in the original price. That’s your brand.

·         You replace a defective product but no one apologizes to the customer for his trouble. That’s your brand.

·         You put a telephone customer on hold for over a minute. That’s your brand.

·         Your web site is confusing and hard to navigate. That’s your brand.

·         A repeat customer for many years comes into your store and no one greets her by name. That’s your brand.

Most feelings about brands are based on comparison. You may think that your competitors are the other companies that do what you do, but customers don’t limit their comparisons like that. All customers may know is that someone else in a business completely different from yours did something great for them that you, in their opinion, were unwilling to do. You may not think it’s a fair comparison, but who cares? It’s the customer’s call. Anything that another company does for your customer can have a strong influence on how she rates your brand.

• The other company returns my calls within a couple of hours. You usually take at least twenty-four hours.
• Everyone at the dry cleaners knows my name. I spend about thirty dollars a week with them. My company spends tens of thousands of dollars every year with you and yet I feel like you have no idea who I am.
• My stockbroker calls me to see how I’m doing or if I have any questions about how my stocks are performing. You only call me when you want to sell me something.
• The owner of the service station came out to the self-service gas pump the other day to tell me how much he appreciates my business. You’ve never made that kind of gesture of appreciation to me.

Experiences like these are what make up an individual’s impression of you, which then becomes your brand. The lesson that the market teaches is that every single encounter that anyone has with you is what ultimately makes up your brand.

It takes an on-going commitment to take your personal brand to the “Category of One” level. It doesn’t happen by accident. Once brand takes hold, however, with proper attention it becomes the essence of who you are and what you do. It transcends policy, which enables you to transcend commodity. Brand becomes the way you do everything, almost without thinking.

Brand is everything. One more time -- it should be your top priority to build, protect, and represent your brand to the best of your ability with everyone you meet. And remember, it’s all about keeping promises and creating great experiences.

Author
Joe Calloway is a business author, performance consultant, and restaurant owner whose client list reads like a “Who’s Who” in business. From Saks Fifth Avenue and BMW to American Express and IBM, a wide range of companies depend on Joe for insight into today’s marketplace.

Joe is on the faculty of The Center for Professional Development at Belmont University, and is a partner in Mirror, an award-winning restaurant in Nashville, which was recently featured on television’s Food Network.

Sales and Marketing Management magazine called Joe “an expert on developing customer focused teams,” and a National Customer Services Advisory Board called Joe “one of the most innovative and compelling people in customer service.”

Joe is the best-selling author of Becoming a Category of One, which received rave reviews from the New York Times, Retailing Today and many others. He is also the author of Indispensable: How to Become the Company Your Customers Can’t Live Without.

Joe’s newest book is Work Like You’re Showing Off! -- The Joy, Jazz, and Kick of Being Better Tomorrow Than You Were Today.

A John with a View

Speaking of hotels, this one gets the "best view from the john" (toilet) award. It's in Baltimore, from the view of my bathroom at the Peabody Court Hotel. That's the George Washington monument and the Cathedral church. I am having a Maryland crab dinner with fellow author and pal "Herman" (a self-proclaimed failure guru) today before my event at the Pratt Library at 6:30pm (stop by!). I did a podcast with him here and you can check out his book, Hermanisms: Axioms for Business and Life, here.

Observations About Business Hotels

Being on the road for three weeks, each night in a different hotel, I have the following unscientific observations about hotels:

Note: I have stayed at a broad range of hotels, from the Ritz Carlton to a scuzzy hotel I would not stay in again if they paid me to do so.

1. On the lower end, Marriott's Fairmont hotels are tons better than comparably priced Best Western and Holiday Inn Express. Their beds are of higher quality and their internet is more reliable (always wifi). Best Westerns seem more run down and saturated with grime. Also Marriott staff seem more intelligent and well trained. The Best Western I stay in near the Birmingham Airport was the worst room of the trip so far. It stunk, had ants, and made me feel unsafe. The people working there were very nice and let me park Hazel up front so they could keep an eye on her, but the place ought to be de-certified by Best Western - it does not reflect well on their brand. The other objection I have of Best Westerns is that the rooms often don't have enough outlets or they are all used up with the hotel appliances. I need two plugs - one for my laptop and one for my Blackberry charger.

2. When it comes to online booking, I prefer Marriott and Holiday Inn to Best Western. You have to re-enter too much information on Best Wester and you can't see a list of all your reservations. Also, a somewhat slimy tactic - on the Best Western site you have to UNSELECT two boxes to NOT get added to their spam list. It should be the other way around and I should not have to do this with every reservation. I like Marriott's site the best - it is easy to find hotels and see a list of my reservations. Their reward program is better, too. The Holiday Inn website is pretty easy to use, too, and I like that I can see a list of my reservations and they don't make me reenter data.

3. The more I pay for a room, the more I seem to get nickeled and dimed. This seems backwards to me. I stayed in a Ritz Carlton in Atlanta for four nights and I got hit with more charges there than at the hotels where I paid one-third the rate. They charge for internet (not acceptable in these times), newspapers (even though I did not ask for it, I have to tell them to NOT deliver), room service (21% gratuity plus $3.75 delivery charge?), and minibar ($5 for a small diet coke, how it that possible). I loved the room, and the hotel, but I don't understand why these charges are tolerated. And the Ritz is not the only example, I was going to stay at a nicer hotel in Minneapolis, but found that the more expensive hotels charged for internet and often did not have wifi, which I strongly prefer to wired internet. I stuck with Marriott Courtyard.

The number one mistake made at all the hotels? Housekeeping often fails to turn off alarm settings. I never use the in-room alarm clock, I use my Blackberry for an alarm. It is quite annoying to have the alarm go off when you don't want an alarm.

The thing that irks me? Several hotel chains tout that they offer HOT breakfast, which often means that they have one of those waffle making machines (with very fake tasting syrup to go with it) or Pop Tarts and a toaster. To me, this is still just a continental breakfast - sure there are some things that get hot, but it's all carbohydrates. I understand that most hotels don't have the infrastructure to do a full breakfast, but advertising that they have a hot breakfast seems like s stretch.

I am looking forward to a vente soy latte at Starbucks this morning - my first of the trip! I have been surprised that I have not run into more Starbucks on this trip.

This Week's Events - Join me!

This week, I have three public events and one private one. Here are the details for the public events. I would love to meet you!

City	Date(s)	Event
Baltimore, MD	June 11, 6:30-8pm	Pratt Library, Main Branch
Philadelphia, PA	June 12, 6-8:30pm	Philadelphia CoF hosts in partnership with Temple Univ. & the Philadelphia Chapter of ASTD. Books sales from Joseph Fox Bookshop. RSVP here. Location: Temple University: Fox School of Business, 1515 Market St., Philadelphia / Room 222.
Milwaukee, WI	June 16, 2-3:00pm	Schwartz Business Books in Brookfield, 17145 W. Bluemound Rd.

The Aim of Management Training

I am at ASTD International, and so I have training on my mind.

What ought to be the goal of management training?

• To provide a lesson?
• To create a conversation?
• To create behavioral change?

How does the structure, pace, and style of training change based on how we define the goal?

Who ought management trainers be?

• People who can present material?
• People who can facilitate a great conversation?
• People who are themselves, effective managers?

How does our selection and development of management trainers change based on how we define their core responsibilities?

I think we tend to favor training programs that offer a lesson and trainers who can present materials. And of the items listed above, I think these are the least important goals and responsibilities.

What questions would you ask in an interview if you sought a trainer who could facilitate great conversations? Where might you look for trainers who are effective managers?

How would you define "effective manager?"