Entries from April 2008 ↓
April 25th, 2008 — Blogging, Influence Without Authority
How to become an underdog blogger’s Superhero?
You subscribe to her blog, leave helpful comments, and give her link love - just like Hare Krishna does.
This post is a response to comments left on my 3 Easy Steps To Become A Superhero.
@ Jason Rakowski
I am using Copyblogger template by Chris Pearson. It was long road to this one. Check on JD’s comprehensive research on templates - How To Choose an Effective Blog Template or Theme. Jason, I liked a lot your blog’s focus on customer service.
@ Vered - MomGrind
Vered, first off - thanks for warm words on writing. What is the hardest part for you? Seeing everybody as a customer or these:
- Decide what you want. <- This one is hardest for me.
- Discover what the customer wants and…
- … deliver plus one.
Seeing everybody as a customer was for me a wake up call. Especially with my kids. It hit me when I yelled at my daughter “stop bothering me - I need to work!” Duh! Work for what purpose? Who’s the first and the best customer? My family. Would I yell at my customers at work? No. Then why I yell at my most important customer?
Same with my boss, co-workers, reports, and any other around me.
Me and my wife never fight - we do have tense situations though. Too often. We cope with this. Just like any unexpected situation with the customer. No one will benefit just accusing the other side. We all manage our business. Fighting never helps. Do you think these doctors see their patients as a customers? - Medical Mistakes Kill 100,000 Americans Each Year.
@ J.D.
No, JD. I won’t be wearing a cape when we meet - cape is so passé. I am trying something less common, how’s this one? 
Working hard to visit the US this summer and meet you once more. BTW, the “work” is totally based on Performance Frame.
@ Shilpan|successsoul.com
Thanks for warm words. The main idea behind the post is not mine. I just digested what I read in the “Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service”
book. Hard to believe but I was both laughing out loud (like LOL, you know…) and crying with tears in my eyes when reading it. It hit me with its simple and true content, content that resonated with so much. I truly believe it is all about value - a match of the value I offer and the value the customers seek. Your latest, 4 Fallacies of Myth about Wealth, resonates with it a lot. Here is another quote by Einstein that leads me “Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.” Another one is more recent from 10 Golden Google Design Principles : “Focus on the user and all else will follow.”
@ blogrdoc
Thanks for warm words, buddy. I like your way of unleashing a hero inside by sharing human errors and the way to avoid it at http://dohe.blogrlab.com/. BTW, I have a nomination in the end how not to set up FeedBurner feed on the blog. Read on.
@ Mike King
Thanks for warm words and for the Stumble. I liked your recent Sharing your opinion reinforces your beliefs. One of my blog goals is just about that. It is easier to believe in something that is written. Judaism is one of the oldest religions and it comes as written and oral (which is written too). It is ton of complex read. Although I am agnostic, my favorite is 82. Each male must write a Torah scroll. I saw another interpretation to this one, and it goes like this - “each one must write his own Bible” - which I like best.
We *All* Made This FeedBurner Mistake
- How do you manage your subscribers? You use FeedBurner.
- How do you set FeedBurner feed on your blog? You add fancy image linked to your feed burned on FeedBurner.
- What you forgot to remove? Built-in feed that comes with WordPress or other blogging platform.
- How your potential subscriber usually subscribes? She hits this button in Internet Explorer or FireFox
- What it shows when your potential subscriber hits it? Built in WordPress feed. Ouch!!!!
- What I’ve done to fix it? Found this line in Header.php:
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml”
- The I replaced <?php bloginfo(’rss2_url’); ?> with hard coded URL of my FeedBurner feed.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/PracticeThis?format=xml
Got better solution? Share.
April 24th, 2008 — Getting results
Would not you like to be a superhero? I do.
by Xurble
Superhero by Wikipedia:
A superhero (also known as a super hero) is a fictional character “of unprecedented physical prowess dedicated to acts of derring-do in the public interest.”
How do I become a Superhero?
- I am not fictional - I am very real.
- I do not posses unprecedented physical powers.
- … dedicated to acts of derring-do in the public interest. A-ha!
Here is my take - I turn all my customers into Raving Fans by serving them and exceeding their expectations.
In their book “Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service” Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles share 3 secrets of turning customers into Raving Fans:
- Decide what you want.
- Discover what the customer wants and…
- … deliver plus one.
Step 1 - Decide What You Want
Ask yourself this simple question “What do I want? What do I really want?”. Think of your boss as a customer, think of your wife or husband as a customer, think of your co-workers as a customers, think of your customers as a customers, think of your blog readers as a customer. Think of your kids as a customers. What do I really want it to be like? Close Your Eyes And See Bigger Picture, visualize it, create your vision. Put the customer in the center. Can you see it? No? Try again. It is hard to deliver something if you do not know what it is.
Step 2 - Discover What The Customer Wants
Ask your customers what they want. “Dear customer, what you really want it to be like?”. Ask questions, Get Criticized - The More The Better. Read between the lines. It might be much simpler than you may think. For example, your wife just want you to stop yawning at lunch time. Create your customers’ vision. Find out the gap between yours and customers’. If the gap is small then adjust your vision. If it is big then “tell the customer to take his vision elsewhere to be fulfilled”, it is not your customer.
Step 3 - Deliver Plus One
You have perfect match of your and your customer’s vision. Success is When the Response Meets the Challenge. Deliver. Not just deliver but deliver plus one, exceed expectations. Under-promise, over-deliver. Good surprises are better than bad ones.
You Are A Superhero!
You do what you really want, you deliver what your customers really want, you exceed expectations. The customers become Raving Fans of yours. You become a Superhero. Easy, no?
Somebody stop me! - The Mask
April 18th, 2008 — Getting results
How often do you hear complaints about how life is unfair? How often do you hear excuses for work is not being done? Does not it sound like “quack, quack, quack”?
In their book “Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service” Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles mention a quote from Wayne W. Dyer who wrote another book, “You’ll See It When You Believe It: The Way to Your Personal Transformation“:
“If you get up in the morning expecting to have a bad day, you’ll rarely disappoint yourself… Stop complaining! Differentiate yourself from your competition. Do not be a duck. Be an eagle. Ducks quack and complain. Eagles soar above the crowd”
by Savannah Grandfather
During the speak Stephen Covey gave at Microsoft he mentioned “victimism” term. This is what JD captured on that one:
Six Metastasizing Cancers (Victimism)
Covey showed us a slide that listed what he called the Six Metastasizing Cancers:
- Criticizing
- Complaining
- Comparing
- Competing
- Contending
- Cynicism
The take away here is that these are ineffective behaviors and you end up acting like a victim.
Recent Shilpan’s 5 Ways to Identify Whiners and Winners adds few more angles to the topic talking about Failure, Opportunities, and Time.
My Takeaways - Do’s and Don’t’s
- Criticizing - do not criticize others, do Get Criticized - The More The Better.
- Complaining - don’t complain unless you do have something useful to put on the table.
- Comparing - do not compare. Do what you love, go with the passion. Take a look at Mike King’s Passion Enhances Productivity.
- Competing - do not compete. Do offer unique value.
- Contending - do not contend. Do collaborate, do find common ground and multiply the end result.
- Cynicism - do not be cynic, it makes people get offended. Be supportive, it turns folks in Raving Fans.
- Failure - do not afraid to fail. Do fail fast. Do Not Let Failure Drain Your Energy But Empower, be motivated by failure - The Mindset Of Failure
- Opportunities - do create the opportunities your self, do not wait them to just show out of the blue.
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” - Thomas Alva Edison
- Time - do not waste no time. I used to call special occasions “quality time”. Then my good friend opened my eyes telling me that “all time is quality time”. Do value time, it is one of the 3 Most Precious Things In The World Are Free
April 14th, 2008 — Influence Without Authority, Leadership, Motivation
Mastered Emotional Intelligence Core Skills? Are you able to manage your own emotional energy?
Now you can use EI to lead and empower others by utilizing EI higher order skills
by s-t-r-a-n-g-e
Daniel A. Feldman offers higher order EI skills in his book Emotionally Intelligent Leadership: Inspiring Others to Achieve Results
- Taking responsibilities
- Acting independently and with accountability
- Owning a problem as well as a resolution
- Generating choices
- Be open to varied possibilities in anything
- Discover available choices and help other recognize it
- Embracing a Vision
- Committing to a particular view of the future
- Need to have guide actions and to be communicated to others.
- Having courage to:
- Look at my choices and myself
- Take responsibility
- Buck trends and standard modes of operation
- Make tough decisions
- Demonstrating resolve
- Make decisions what to do with firm determination
- Demonstrate commitment to a plan of action
Techniques
- Responsibility checklist
- Am I making a contribution?
- Am I fully accepting the consequences of the actions I’ve taken?
- In light of my subordinates’ reactions, is what I am doing discouraging them or uplifting then?
- Based on my actions thus far, whom am I serving?
- Choice building
- Let go of the need to be always right, of having only valid solution, of the need to control.
- Solicit choices from others
- Invite ideas from outside my current experience and culture
- Vision linking
- Select vision that I can willingly and actively embrace
- Use metaphors to make accessible by others
- Own it and live it
- Incorporate it in my daily language
- Lighting the fire
- Recognize what I am afraid of
- Focus on the benefits, not fear, of taking the risk
- Tolerate the discomfort
- Practice by envisioning the steps to success.
- Firming up
- Choose reachable and worthwhile long-term goals according to my values
- Build short term targets
- Develop a support network for my intention
- Anticipate and prepare for difficulties and obstacles
- Continually renew my resolutions.
April 10th, 2008 — Getting results
Stephen Covey wants you! He seeks to build the network of like-minded highly effective people.
Following JD’s coverage on Stephen Covey Speaks at Microsoft I discovered that Stephen Covey is building his social network of most highly effective people
If you sing up (free of charge) you get the chance to be coached by Stephen Covey in very systematic way:
Stephen Covey Is Blogging
I also enjoy the blog.
My favorites so far are (guess why?):
I liked this post most because of its starting quote:
‘The top software developers are more productive than average software developers not by a factor of 10X or 100X or even 1000X but by 10,000X.’ Quality knowledge work is so valuable that unleashing its potential offers organizations an extraordinary opportunity for value creation.” - Nathan Myhrvold, former chief technology officer at Microsoft
Join The Beta
Stephen Covey invites to participate in beta launch of the Covey Community.
Are you in? Are you joining other more than 8,000 highly effective community members? I am in.
