Managing Busyness

I've concluded that if too much busyness is what drove me to regrettably stop blogging and stop reading a year ago, then perhaps I can use all the help I can get in learning how to better manage busyness.

I've been trying to glean wisdom from authors and mentors about managing busyness, and in the process, a few thoughts have surfaced in my mind:

• Busyness in itself isn't a bad thing, provided that it doesn't rule our lives. As with everything else in life, busyness needs boundaries. Healthy human beings know how to be productive and to make the most of their time, but they also know how to rest, enjoy life, be at peace, and build relationships with those they care about. They give equal importance to both busyness and stillness. They manage their busyness; their busyness doesn't manage them.
  


• We ought to be busy about the right things. Highly motivated and highly competent people, perhaps most of all, seem prone to pursue too many things at once - because they see that those things are good ideas, because they believe that no one else will do those things correctly if they themselves don't, or because they fear missing a good opportunity. But not every good idea is the right idea to pursue. Healthy human beings know how to say "no" to some good ideas in order to say "yes" to the right ideas.

An Inc.com article from yesterday offered me some good insight about this last point. Please enjoy the wisdom from this brief conversation between Inc.com writer Marla Tabaka and author Peter Bregman: "Mastering Distraction in 18 Minutes"

Ideas. And the Return of Haley's Marketing Blog.

Dear readers,

It's been a long time - a year, in fact - since I last wrote to you of any ideas surfacing in this young, developing marketer's head.

After a year's hiatus, I now return. I look forward to sharing with you some of the things I've learned over the past year, and many more things that I will continue to learn as I recommence exploring marketing ideas with you.

For now, let me share just one thing I've learned during my break from blogging - the reason for my return:

When we stop growing, we start dying.

I'd heard this adage before, and thought it applied mainly to biology: when a creature stops growing (for humans, around age eighteen), it slowly starts to die. I didn't realize how much this maxim applied professionally.

When we as professionals stop learning and observing and growing, our ability to contribute and improve and add value in our profession starts to die.

Business professionals must keep growing and learning if we're going to keep contributing value. When we stop learning from new ideas, and start relying on our old thoughts and ideas and ways of doing things, we stop being effective and relevant in the work we do.

I stopped blogging last September because I felt that the busyness of life was causing my blog to suffer, and that it would be better to step away from blogging until I could reduce the busyness and more fully devote my attention to searching out and writing about fresh ideas in marketing. I thought this decision would help me to stay sane (or at least, get enough sleep at night), be happier, and improve the quality of my work all around.

I was wrong.

Quite the opposite happened, actually. For when I stopped blogging, I stopped reading the marketing journals and magazines that inspired my blog posts. When I stopped reading, I stopped learning. When I stopped learning, I stopped discovering fresh ideas to apply to my work. When I stopped discovering fresh ideas, I stopped contributing as much to my organization, and stopped feeling as happy at work.

This year has reminded me how important it is to keep learning. In their book The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make Them Happen, Andy Boynton and Bill Fischer emphasize that successful professionals continuously and intentionally "hunt" for ideas: they observe, they ask questions, they take a deep interest in diverse subjects and people, and they immerse themselves in the ideas of others. They "sell" the best hour of their day to themselves for the purpose of learning, searching out, and discovering ideas.

It makes sense. We can't make something out of nothing. Everything - whether an organism, an automobile, or a manufacturing plant - requires inputs in order to produce outputs. If I'm to produce new ideas that will improve the quality of our products, the efficiency of our processes, or the way we serve customers, then I must first - and continually - take in ideas from the world around me.

And so I've returned to blogging, partially to continue serving you with ideas, but mostly for selfish reasons: I want to start generating ideas again, and blogging is my impetus to read, observe, and receive the inspiration that will let my ideas start flowing again.

I encourage you to join me in searching out ideas. Ideas that will serve your industry, your organization, and your customers. And as a result, your career.

It's good to be back.

Cheers,
Haley

Taking a Hiatus

Human relationships are founded upon mutually understood - and usually unwritten - social contracts. That is, the trust required for healthy relationships is maintained through the understanding and fulfillment of certain expectations.

A friendship, for example, rests on a social contract that includes respecting one another, standing up for one another, listening to one another, being there for one another, investing time in one another, etc. An employer-employee relationship rests on a social contract in which the employee follows the instructions of the employer, the employee shows respect to the employer, the employee pursues the goals set for him by the employer, the employer pays the employee the agreed-upon wage, the employer provides a healthy working environment for the employee, etc.

These social contracts may vary depending on the culture in which they exist; however, social contracts do exist for every type of relationship, and when a social contract is broken, the relationship deteriorates.

The social contract between an organization and the community stipulates that the organization will provide some benefit or meet some need in the community; that the products or services of the organization will maintain a consistent quality; that the organization will steward its share of the community's resources; etc. The social contract among users of social media includes meaningful interactions, consistency of communication, timely responses, etc.

As a blogger, I operate within social contracts described in my last two examples. My blog is a product offered to readers; the social contract mandates that my blog posts benefit my readers and offer consistent quality, if I am to maintain healthy relationships with my readers. As part of social media, my blog is expected to be consistent in its frequency and responsiveness to readers.

My blog posts have gradually been declining in frequency and consistency. I suspect that some readers may have found them to be declining in quality also. For all of this I do apologize.

As I allocate my resources of time - much like an organization allocates its resources - I am finding it difficult to devote the kind of time it takes to produce well-written, thoughtful, frequent blog posts without detracting from my performance of other obligations. Since I cannot commit the time to fulfill the social contracts implicit in a good blog, I am hereby going to take a hiatus from Haley's Marketing Blog.

This will be my last blog post for some time. I expect - and hope - to return to steady authorship of Haley's Marketing Blog at some point in the future. Until that time, I will not waste my readers' time as they wait for a new post, only to be disappointed.

Be sure that I will continue expressing marketing ideas on Twitter (@HaleyDD), and when the time comes for me to revive Haley's Marketing Blog, Twitter will be the main channel by which I announce the blog's renewal.

For now, I must bid my readers adieu. I look forward to chatting more later.

Blessings to all! Happy marketing!

Thanks for reading,
Haley

To care or not to care?

Last Sunday, mechanical failures caused a four-hour delay for my first flight on the way back from vacation. This delay, not surprisingly, caused me to miss my connecting flight - and all of the remaining flights that day.

When I arrived at my connecting gate thirty-five minutes after the last flight had left, the American Airlines gate agent heard my story and quite promptly provided me with a $15 food voucher, a free hotel stay, and a boarding pass for the first flight out the next morning. Standard operating procedure for flights missed due to the fault of the airline. Have a nice day.

Now, I'm very appreciative that American Airlines has a policy like this. I'm thankful that I can book another flight with no hassle, and that the airline covers my meal and hotel bills incurred from an unexpected overnight stay. I'm thankful that I don't have to fight the airline on this; I'm thankful that they provide these services automatically when the airline is at fault in travel delays.

However, this is not the first time that I've been in this situation and received this response from American Airlines. And this time, the response seemed almost too automatic. The gate agent simply followed procedure; she didn't apologize on behalf of the airline for the inconvenience. It was as if the airline was making things right, but only because that was their system, not because they actually cared about my thwarted travel plans.

Contrast this with the way Disney handles one particular customer inconvenience:

When a family arrives at Walt Disney World with a car full of overjoyed, rambunctious kids, and manages to find the closest available parking space (which still seems miles away from the front gate), and unloads all the kids, packs the littlest one in a stroller, grabs the backpacks and cameras, and begins to dash off toward that land of magic, there is an odd chance that they might lock their keys in the car.

This circumstance, in contrast to my missed American Airlines flight, is completely the fault of the customer. In their excitement, they locked the keys in the car, at no fault of Disney. It's not Disney's problem.

However, when this happens, all a customer has to do is contact Disney customer service. The sympathetic customer service person assures the customer that Disney can help. Within five minutes, Disney's on-site locksmith crew arrives at the customer's vehicle, uses their tools to open the door without any damage, and retrieves the keys for the customer. The customer reaches into his pocket to pull out some cash to pay the locksmith's charges, but the Disney locksmith stops him and says this:

"No charge, sir. I'm sorry the keys got locked in the car. You and your family have a magical day."

I'm sorry the keys got locked in the car. Even when this inconvenience was completely the fault of the customer's absentmindedness, Disney sympathizes. Disney apologizes. Disney solves their problem. And Disney encourages the customer to continue on with a wonderful day at the Mouse House.

Now, this is a standard procedure for Disney, just like the food-hotel-flight-reimbursement is a standard procedure for American Airlines. But when Disney employees follow their procedure, they do it with an attitude of caring for the customer's predicament and wanting to do everything they can to redeem the customer's experience with their brand. When the American Airlines employee followed her procedure, she completed the right actions, but the caring attitude was missing.

And that attitude is what makes the difference.

At your organization, do employees have an attitude of caring, or just following procedure?

Good communication covers over a multitude of sins

We see that communication is critical to any human relationship - that between a husband and wife, between parent and child, between employer and employee, between teacher and student, between roommates, between friends. And between company and customer.

A countdown timer announcing "time until next ride" can help reduce impatience among customers waiting in line for a ride at an amusement park.

A response email acknowledging receipt of a complaint and assuring a quick resolution can help a customer feel that his issue has been heard and is being addressed.

An easily-found set of guidelines for what constitutes an acceptable submission can help customers to contribute better customer-created content to a social media campaign.

A periodic phone call to check on a client can help her to feel that she is cared for and that her vendor is eager to meet her needs.

A notice that a service provider has not received payment from a customer can help to uncover the oversight and elicit payment before service is discontinued.

A voluntary recall of a defective product and an immediate, free replacement can help to prevent customer injury and mitigate ill-will toward a brand.

Good, timely communication is such a simple thing, requiring little of your time, effort, and money. Regular communication - even a quick "how are you doing? what can we do to serve you?" helps to maintain a strong customer relationship. An immediate and courteous response to a frustrated customer helps to restore the customer's sense that the company really does care and really is working to make things right. These forms of communication are quick, painless, and inexpensive (or free).

Lack of communication causes the tenuous, tense, or broken customer relationships that lead to expensive fixes - customer service wars, legal battles, reparation to soothe an irate customer, or a lifetime of value lost when a customer leaves.

What damages might have been reduced, whose reputation strengthened, or which customers retained through simple, clear, timely, reliable communication from your company?

Caring about customers - at home

Yesterday I used my brand-new Kitchenaid electric hand mixer for the first time (baking banana bread - yum!). Inside the instruction manual (yes, I admit that I actually flipped through the instruction manual), Kitchenaid had printed a dozen recipes that involved the use of my mixer - some cream cheese spreads, whipped toppings, coffee cakes, and other desserts.

Now, it's not uncommon for purveyors of foodstuffs to print recipes on the outside of their food packages, for obvious reason: a consumer is more like to purchase a food item if they have a delicious-sounding recipe for which that item is an ingredient.

But why would Kitchenaid bother to print useful recipes in the instruction manual inside the box of a kitchen appliance? In a location where the recipes would only be discovered after the consumer purchased the appliance and took it home?

Could it be that Kitchenaid wants consumers to have a good experience actually using their product? That the company wants their product to be useful to the consumer, not just a wasted expense that sits in a cupboard? That they care about the Kitchenaid brand experience - not only before the purchase, but after?

Sometimes we marketers get so focused on acquiring new customers that we forget to take care of the customers we already have. We spend our time making a product look useful enough for customers to buy, and forget to make it useful enough to use. We work to improve the in-store or online experience, and forget to improve the at-home experience.

As marketers, we ought to spend 80% of our time improving our product - making it more useful and more enjoyable for the customer - and 20% of our time improving the way we communicate about that great product. Sometimes we get this backwards.

It looks like Kitchenaid is getting it right.

Look, Ma, the moon's on sale! Let's buy it!

Allsup's, the convenience store chain local to Texas and New Mexico, is currently offering a promotion called "Pump. Drink. Win."

When customers buy at least eight gallons of gasoline and a twenty-ounce Pepsi product in the same store visit, they receive a game card that gives them the chance to win prizes from any one of a number of brands, including Allsup's, Pepsi, Frito-Lay, Wrigley, Blue Bunny, Jack Links, Kellogg's, Mars, Cadbury, and Tyson.

A promotion like this one is great way to (a) reward customers who purchase gas and Pepsi products at Allsup's stores; (b) motivate customers to purchase Pepsi products over another brand of soft drink - that is, if those customers have no strong preference for one brand over another; and/or (c) motivate customers to purchase a full tank of gas at Allsup's, rather than just a few gallons at a time.

This promotion is meant for those customers who would normally (or who might) buy gasoline and a drink during the same stop at the gas station.

Now, when I stop for gasoline and sees a promotion like this one at the gas pump, I have to avoid the temptation to go inside and buy a bottle of Diet Pepsi just for the sake of getting a game card. I don't normally buy soft drinks when I stop for gas, and I don't need to get soft drinks when I stop for gas. I wouldn't even have really wanted to get a soft drink at the gas station if I hadn't seen the poster. And if I had bought a soft drink and gotten the game card, I wouldn't have really been interested in drinking the soda anyway.

As a consumer, I have to remember that the fact that an item is on sale is not enough reason for me to buy it. As a consumer, I should buy on-sale products when those are products that I needed anyway. Just because the moon is on sale, does not mean that I need to buy the moon.

As marketers, our promotions are meant to provide a product to consumers who needed that product (or a similar one) to begin with. We do not market to convince people to buy products they don't need.