Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?: And Other Provocations, 2006-2012 (13 page)

A newspaper asked me the following, which practically set my hair on fire:

What inherent traits would make it easier for someone to become a linchpin? Surely not everyone can be a linchpin?

Why not? How dare anyone say that some people aren’t somehow
qualified
to bring emotional labor to their work, somehow aren’t genetically or culturally endowed with the seeds or instincts or desires to invent new techniques or ideas, or aren’t chosen to connect with other human beings in a way that changes them for the better?

Perhaps some people will insist that there are jobs where no humanity is possible. But you don’t have to take those jobs.

Some people want to tell you that your DNA isn’t right, or you’re not from the right family or neighborhood. I think that’s wrongheaded.

Bob Marley grew up in one of the poorest villages in the world. Sir Richard Branson has dyslexia, which makes it difficult for him to read. Hugh Masekela grew up in Witbank, a coal mining town in South Africa. It’s not just musicians and entrepreneurs, of course. The Internet makes it possible for a programmer in Russia or a commentator in South Africa to have an impact on a large group of people as well.

We’ve been culturally brainwashed to believe that the factory approach (average products for average people, compliance, focus on speed and cost) is the one and only way. It’s not.

We make a difference to other people when we give gifts to them, when we bring emotional labor to the table and do work that matters. It’s hard for me to imagine that this way of living and working is available to only a few. Yes, the cards are unfairly stacked against too many people. Yes, there are too many barriers and not enough support. But no, your ability to create and contribute isn’t determined at birth. It’s a choice.

If you worked on the line, we cared about your productivity, not your smile or your approach to the work. You could walk in downcast, walk out defeated, and get a raise if your productivity was good.

No longer.

Your attitude is now what’s on offer; it’s what you sell. When you pass by those big office buildings and watch the young junior executives sneaking into work with a grimace on their face, it’s tempting to tell them to save everyone time and just go home.

The emotional labor of engaging with the work and increasing the energy in the room is precisely what you sell. So sell it.

Traditional corporations, particularly large-scale service and manufacturing businesses, are organized for efficiency. Or consistency. But not joy.

McDonald’s, Hertz, Dell, and others crank it out. They show up. They lower costs. They use a stopwatch to measure output.

The problem with this mindset is that as you approach the asymptote of maximum efficiency, there’s not a lot of room left for improvement. Making a Chicken McNugget for .00001 cent less isn’t going to boost your profit a whole lot.

Worse, the nature of the work is inherently unremarkable. If you fear special requests, if you staff with cogs, if you have to put it all in a manual, then the chances of amazing someone are really quite low.

These organizations have people who will try to patch problems over after the fact, instead of motivated people eager to delight on the spot.

The alternative, it seems, is to organize for joy. These are the companies that give their people the freedom (and yes, the expectation) that they will create, connect, and surprise. These are the organizations that embrace someone who makes a difference, as opposed to searching for a clause in the employee handbook that was violated.

These are the words that entrepreneurs, painters, artists, statesmen, customer service pioneers, and writers need to hear.

Not true. They don’t need to hear them, they need to
feel
them.

No artist needs a fair-weather friend, an employee or customer or partner who waits to do the calculus before deciding if they’re going to be there for the artist.

No, if you want her to go all in, if you want her to take the risk and brave the fear, then it sure helps if you’re there, too, no matter what. There’s a cost to that, a kind of pain and risk that comes from that sort of trust. After all, this particular bit of art might not work. Failure (or worse! embarrassment) might ensue. That’s precisely why art is worth so much. Because it’s difficult and scarce.

Later, when it’s all good and it’s all working, your offer of support means very little. The artist never forgets the few who came through when it really mattered.

Who’s got your back? More important, whose back do you have?

Here’s what most businesses do with their best customers: They take the money.

The biggest fan of that Broadway show, the one who comes a lot and sits up front? She’s paying three times what the person just three rows back paid.

That loyal Verizon customer, the one who hasn’t traded in his phone and has had a contract for six years running? He’s generating far more profit than the guy who switches every time a contract expires and a better offer comes along.

Or consider the loyal customer of a local business. The business chooses to offer new customers a coupon for half off—but makes repeat customers pay full price.

If you define “best customer” as the customer who pays you the most, then I guess it’s not surprising that your first instinct is to charge him more. After all, he’s happy to pay.

But what if you define “best customer” as the person who brings you new customers through frequent referrals, and who sticks with you through thick and thin? That customer, I think, is worth far more than what she might pay you in any one transaction. In fact, if you think of that customer as your
best marketer
instead, it might change everything.

A powerful marketing tactic: tell me
exactly
when I’m going to get it.

“This project will be done noon on Tuesday.”

“You’ll get the shipment at 4
P.M
.”

FedEx has made billions shipping packages that didn’t even have to be there fast. They merely needed to arrive at a time that we knew about in advance.

We don’t want to hear “up to 11 business days.” We hope you care more about our project than that.

Productivity comes from interactivity and the exchange of ideas and talents.

People are happiest when they’re encouraged and trusted.

An airport functions far better when we don’t strip-search passengers. Tiffany’s may post guards at the door, but the salespeople are happy to let you hold priceless jewels. Art museums let you stand close enough to paintings to see them. Restaurants don’t charge you until after you eat.

Compare this environment of trust with the world that PayPal has to live in. Every day, thousands of mobsters in various parts of the world sit down intent on scamming the company out of millions of dollars. If the site makes one mistake, permits just one security hole to linger, they’re going to be taken for a fortune. As a result, the company isn’t just paranoid—they know that people really
are
out to get them.

This is the fork in the road that just about all of us face, whether as individuals or as organizations. We have to make an assumption about whether people are going to steal our ideas, break their promises, void their contracts, and steal from us, or assume, perhaps, that people are basically honest, trustworthy, and generous. It’s very hard to have both postures simultaneously. I have no idea how those pistol-packing guys in the movies ever get a good night’s sleep.

In just about every industry (except electronic money transfer, apparently), assuming goodwill is not only more productive but is also likely to be an accurate forecast.

Trust pays.

Thousands of doctors have signed up for a service that, among other things, they can use to try to prohibit patients from posting reviews.

In Iowa, in a surprisingly similar move, the state government is moving ahead with a law that will make it a crime to take or possess videotapes of factory farming that might harm the commercial interests of the farmer.

In both cases, an organization is trying to maintain power by hiding information from the public. Can you imagine being arrested for possession of a photo of a pig?

It’s easy to argue that from the public’s point of view, laws like this are a bad idea. The public certainly benefits from the outing of bad doctors and from the improved hygiene of factory farms. In that sense, it’s unethical for doctors and legislators to subvert their responsibilities by ordering the unempowered to shut up.

I think this issue is interesting to think about from the doc’s point of view (and the chicken farmer’s), as well. The temptation is for those in charge to defend the status quo by fighting transparency. But doing this ignores a simple truth:

When book reviews are posted, book sales go up.

Yes, the argument of fairness matters. The patients have no choice, the chickens certainly have no choice, and the consumers don’t have much choice either. There’s an argument that goes beyond choice, though: it turns out that transparency increases profitability.

If every chicken coop has a video camera in it, quality will obviously go up. Confidence in the product will go up. Employee behavior will improve as well, because it’s hard to torture a chicken if you know you’re going to get caught.

But wait, you might argue … if we have to take better care of the chickens, our costs will go up as well.

Here’s the thing: when consumers get used to transparency, they’re also more interested in the quality of what you sell, and are more likely to willingly pay extra. They’ll certainly cross the street to buy from an ethical provider. And once people start moving in that direction, the cost of being an unethical provider gets so high that you either change your ways or fade away.

Chicken farms don’t need a law prohibiting possession of images. They need a producer who will make a ton of great (true) chicken movies. Inundate us with images of cleanliness and quality instead of blacking us out. Don’t race to the bottom (you might win). Instead, force your competition to race you to the top.

[Aside: the same objection arose when we started regulating hygiene
in restaurant kitchens. Yes, it got more expensive to clean the pots and kill the rodents, but it was okay, because post–Duncan Hines, demand for quality went up enough to more than pay for it.]

The same argument holds true for doctors. Once information about good doctors becomes widespread, patients will be more willing to seek out those doctors, rewarding the ones who consistently take better care of their patients. The entire profession won’t suffer (we’ll still go to a doctor)—merely the careless doctors will.

One more: A leading politician in India is arguing that bribery (in certain transactions) ought to be legalized. Why? Because if the briber feels free to rat out the bureaucrat, bribery goes down.

In all three cases, sunlight is an antiseptic and the marketplace rewards those that behave well—and the entire market grows when the standards increase.

Consumers and those that want their admiration ought to reward those in favor of transparency (what a great opportunity for McDonald’s). And the antidote for speech that a provider doesn’t like isn’t a contract or a law. The antidote to speech you don’t like is more speech.

What do customers, friends, the socially networked, users, neighbors, classmates, servers, administrators, employees, and maybe even brands, want?

notice me

like me

touch me

do what I say

miss me if I’m gone

A shortcut to customer and coworker intimacy is to respond in real time.

A phone call is more human than an email, a personal meeting has more impact than a letter.

On the other hand, when you do your work on someone else’s schedule, your productivity plummets because you are responding to the urgent, not the important, and your rhythm is shot.

The shortcut analysis, it seems to me, is to sort your work by how important it is that your interactions be intimate. If it’s not vitally important that you increase the energy and realism of the relationship, then insert a buffer. Build blocks of time to do serious work, work that’s not interrupted by people who need to hear from you in real time, right now.

On the other hand, for interactions when only a hug or a smile will do, allocate the time and the scheduling to be present.

Confusing urgency with intimacy is getting easier than ever, and it’s killing your ability to do great work.

If you show up only when you want something, we’ll catch on.

If you learn only the minimum amount necessary to get over the next hurdle, you’ll fall behind.

If these short-term choices leave you focused on the urgent, you’ll almost never get around to doing the important.

A professional salesperson refuses to engage in the short-cycle process of cold calling, selling, and moving on. An urgent plea from the boss before the end of the quarter isn’t enough reason to abandon your consistent approach. That’s because cold calls are painful and rarely lead to sales. The professional salesperson realizes that closing a sale and then moving on wastes an opportunity for both you and the person you’re working with.

A flustered programmer who grabs the relevant library without understanding its context or the role of the libraries around it will be in the same urgent state in just another few days.

The politician who shows up only when it’s time to raise money, probably won’t.

We remember what you did when you didn’t need us so urgently.

If you’re going to make a career of whatever it is you do (and of course, if you want to excel, you will), that means taking the time to
understand the texture of your field. It means investing, perhaps overinvesting, in relationships long before it’s in your interest to do so.