Does the Internet Have Any Compassion?

Music Store Puts in Question: Compassion in Commerce

"More Compassionate than the Internet" Reads Their Home-made Sign



Last Friday, as I was leaving a coffee meeting with a new business acquaintance, I was broadsided by the most simple, and perhaps clever, form of advertising: the sidewalk sandwich board.

Now, I'm left wondering: does the Internet have any compassion? Any at all? This blog entry, representative of more than a few minutes of my time (I have the hardest time getting pictures into these posts): will it get noticed? Will I get a response? Is it "monetizable?"

I think the music store with its board is making a point: the Internet is impersonal, uncaring. Unless one has an "inside guy," most of these sites are unapproachable. I thought it was a stroke of genius when PayPal got "Customer Service Reps."

The interesting piece of study for me is that the Internet, as a tool, as a device, is moving so swiftly forward that the inertia pulls up seeming neanderthals, like me, in the wind of its wake. Like a bullet train whisking me along; it's anything but friendly. Scary is more like it. Wild.

I love movies and, often, I'm educated by them and given lines that I like to share in conversation. This one comes from "Jurassic Park" when Jeff Goldblum's character, a Chaos Theory scientist, soberly states to John Hammond, the flea circus pioneer cum dinosaur cloner: You were so busy asking "could you" that you never thought to ask "should you." Reminds of large bank bailouts, too.

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Overcoming Resistance to Change: Allow Choice

People Don't Resist Change: They Resist Being Changed

People, in their personal lives, make all sorts of life changes every day: they buy new cars; new homes; deal with the death of a loved one; adapt to Twitter; get married; develop new skills; relocate; hire a daycare provider.

"Not all of these changes are smooth.  But most of the time we seek those changes ourselves and make them successfully."
-- Peter Bregman, Professional Coach and Consultant

So why do seventy percent (70%) of all corporate change efforts fail?  Simply, in organizations, people feel coerced.  And so they respond with the only power they have to regain control: they resist.  The really bad news: instead of working to dissolve resistance, management creates it.  And, then, wonders why their efforts fail. 

You'd have to ask: Why do people embrace change in one instance and resist it in another?  Simple: people resist being changed. 

How to fix this?  Choice.  (BTW, choice is exactly the way that nurturing Montessori teachers deal with obstinate two-year olds.) Bregman provides a simple three-step plan:

1. Define the outcome you want.


2. Suggest a path to achieve it.


3. Allow people to reject your path as long as they choose an alternate route to the same destination.

The changes we're speaking of could be small: a new piece of software; an office remodel.  Says Bregman:

 Give them control. Let them make decisions.  If you offer them two choices (apple or grapes) and they pick a third (banana) you have the opportunity to cede control to them as long as their choice achieves the outcome acceptable to you (fruit). Then they own their decision and are happy with it because they made it themselves.

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Tissue Quality Links to Customer Satisfaction at Major Teaching Hospital

Goldratt and Theory of Constraints Applies to Customer Service Perceptions

Eliyahu Goldratt in The Goal, originally published in 1984, hypothesized that we need to eagerly search out the "constraints" in the system that are preventing higher performance, throughput. I'm going to use that Theory to examine the results of a tiny change that improved customer perceptions in a major teaching hospital's Ob/Gyn unit that performs ultrasounds and other radiological services.

The problem is that cost-cutting for this hospital has gotten out of hand. Nurses are ferrying patients on gurneys back to their rooms because they've saved money by laying off two "transporters." Myopia at its
best.

But, this story is about a box of Kleenex -- premium facial tissue. This Ob/Gyn unit, often, has to break bad news to its patients: malformed fetuses; stillbirth; stunted growth whose origins are a mystery. So, the mothers, and fathers, find themselves in tears after these scans and subsequent consultations.

The hospital, in another cost-cutting measure, provided facial tissues that were so cheap and flimsy that it literally took a whole box for some patients. That was the report from one M.D. She personally invested in the Kleenex, ahem premium facial tissues; patients felt cared for. Without even knowing it.

This is a classic case of applying Goldratt's theory to the Customer Service / Satisfaction dimension and shift thinking about what it takes to delight a customer, or a group of customers. It also demontrates, with ease, how short-sighted cost cutting measures can be. In the early 80's, one of the tenets during the recession was to cut the fat, not the bone; now, it seems we don't even know where the meat is: keep the Kleenex.

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Malcolm Gladwell: "Socially Horrifying" Tactics Can Yield Winners

David Beats Goliath More of the Time Using These Strategies

Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers and Blink, writes in The New Yorker on how the underdogs win battles, basketball games, simulated water wars.  What lessons from these illustrations can we apply to the business world? 

In Goliath's time, duels with Philistines were a formal affair: they began with the crossing of swords. David, a shepherd, "came at Goliath with a slingshot and staff because those were the tools of his trade." He brought a shepherd’s rules to the battlefield.

A young girls' basketball team in Redwood City, California -- while not as talented or as tall as their competitors -- used the "full court press" to bewilder their opponents and force them to make more mistakes.  The smaller girls would steal the ball and, then, make high-percentage layup shots.

Their Coach, one of the girls' dads, cricket and soccer player and new thinker/software pioneer, made his analysis: It was as if there were a kind of conspiracy in the basketball world about the way the game ought to be played, and Ranadivé thought that that conspiracy had the effect of widening the gap between good teams and weak teams.

Thirdly, a computer scientist named Lenat developed an artificial intelligence program to help win a war game competition. What he found proved to be "socially horrifying."

But, Eurisko didn't have that kind of preconception, partly because it didn’t know enough about the world.” So it found solutions that were, as Lenat freely admits, “socially horrifying”: send a thousand defenseless and immobile ships into battle; sink your own ships the moment they get damaged.

Detective of fads and emerging subcultures, chronicler of jobs-you-never-knew-existed, Malcolm Gladwell's work is toppling the popular understanding of bias, crime, food, marketing, race.  What does his theory about "socially horrifying" tactics tell us?  That there are "gentleman's rules" by which all competitions engage?  That there are tactics, while valuable and effective, which can be repugnant? 

Some would just call this stuff, these "inappropriate" methods  "out of the box" thinking.  I'd be in that court; time for some big change.  Break the norms. 

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Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions

Basic Foundations of "Systems" Theory
Finds an Application In The Real World of Socialism

A close friend, now living in suburban Chicagoland, who grew up in Holland / The Netherlands shared a piece from the Sunday NY Times Magazine, May 03, 2009: "Going Dutch -- How an American in Holland learned to love the European welfare state." Russell Shorto is the writer.

The BIG lesson I gleaned from his thorough comparison of the cultures had to do with how Holland became so defined by its sense of interdependence. And, therefore, a system of government and rules that is, at one time, highly opportunistic -- they are fervent capitalists -- but also spins a latticework of cooperation. Some call it socialism.

What's this got to do with business? This situation touches on one of the underpinnings of "Systems Theory" or as it used to be called in the old days: "Chaos Theory." One of the tenets of this new science is that a system's outcome can often be traced to the conditions that existed at the outset of that system: sensitive dependence on initial conditions.

Holland? More than five hundred years ago, land was prized; the advancing sea was the nemesis which had to be battled. But, my land, next to yours, could be compromised if you didn't take care to keep out the water from your land. If I'm going to farm on dry land, yours has to be dry, too.


What kind of country comes out of cooperation like that? Legal euthanasia. Legalized, free and government sponsored heroin clinics. A pension while unemployed. These are the trappings of the Dutch culture. One that has learned, first hand, about the logic of cooperation: the better you do, the better we all do. They even pay the unemployed to go on vacation. The logic? If you're depressed, you're probably not going to do very well at finding a job.

I digress: Holland's culture, today, has some features that could be a product of those challenges that the population faced 500 years ago: they figured out, without bashing each other, that they needed to work together, find common ground. What was good for the one was good for the many. The country, now, is a system whose structure and operation is a sensitive product of those initial conditions.

A modern application? What I do today, however small, could have lasting implications down the road. For example, an auto company's response, in the 1970's let's say, to the encroaching incursion of, let's say, a Japanese automaker. Without being coy, is it possible that GM's response, more than 30 years ago, could have determined how things are turning out now? It's not impossible.

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Southwest Airlines: Innovation or...Ho-Hum?

Some Think I Must Be Out of Touch

A colorful notice of, I think, a generous voucher.  When none was expected, I was quite surprised. Isn't that a good thing?  Some of my colleagues think not.

The story is familiar: last weekend we boarded the plane at Chicago's Midway.  Midwest violent  weather (which I still miss in California) constrained the take off and we sat on the tarmack for almost two hours.  I slept quite peacefully, thank you.  Was this delay the fault of Southwest Airlines?  I didn't think so. 

So, when the well-worded (and perfect grammar and spelling, too) notice of a voucher arrived hand-signed (yes, I know it's digital), I was impressed and...thought it was an event worthy of mention.  (OK, I like Southwest's perky culture, too; I am prejudiced: this is true.) 

My call to obtain permission to reprint this email was promptly returned (what's wrong with these people?) and when I asked for permission, this Assistant Manager, Adrienne, put me on hold for about two minutes.  I'm surprised she didn't have to go to "legal" for approval. 

When I shared this with one of my newfound consulting colleagues, his response was:

"Yes, good customer service, but giving a voucher is not that unusual. I would hardly call it innovative. They do this all the time for various reasons. That's why they have voucher forms printed and voucher procedures. Routine, really. Not innovative."

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