Let us be clear, the number of individuals that report up to someone is not a measure of success.  Many managers measure themselves this way and classify the acquisition of increased headcount as a promotion.  To operate in this manner gives control of your success to those that have the power to approve requisitions.  What happens when the economy faces a retraction?  If you are a “manager” and find that you must face the unfortunate reality of letting team members go, does this get classified as a demotion?  Vying for position be ensuring that you have a lot of people reporting to you in an effort to ensure that your own position is secure is managing toward protectionism as opposed to growth.  People are smart.  Leaders see through this headcount manipulation.  It is not protection at all.

A leader will take time to consider whether they have the resources available to them to take on the added responsibility of adding members to the team.  This is because a true leader is not focused on themselves, but rather the success of those in their care and it takes a ton of energy and focus to truly lead someone.  Every leadership position that I have been in is driven by one main core principle.  Service.  When I dig into the idea of “service” from a leadership perspective, I generally start with major militaries’ use of the rank “Sergeant”.

Sergeant (normally abbreviated to “Sgt”) is a rank used in some form by most militaries, police forces, and other uniformed organizations around the world. Its origins are the Latin serviens, “one who serves”, through the French term Sergent. (via Wikipedia)

Generally, when one unfamiliar with the system thinks about the military, they generate in their mind a hierarchy of commands that come from the top down and nothing more.  However, the military cannot accomplish anything if those who serve do not have the proper tools and training to accomplish their tasks.  This is where the idea of Sergeant comes in.  When a directive does come from the upper chain of command, leaders along the way need to ensure that everyone is ready: that they have the tools and training necessary to carry out this command.

A servant leader in the business world is much the same.  I always lead my teams by ensuring that they have everything that they need to support the vision and strategy of the organization.  Beyond that, I hope to find time to grow each team member’s talents to the point that they could replace me at any given moment.  Herein is major difference between a protectionist manager and a servant leader.  A manager will hide just enough information so that they can remain in power while giving their employees just enough information to squeak by.  Since no one is really growing, the manager needs to hire more people to get more stuff done.  I believe that managers call this “job security.”  A leader will maintain an open rapport so that the team members can think critically and apply their own unique thoughts toward creating amazing solutions to problems.  Team members become very creative and very effecient and can handle harder challenges and more of them.  And please note, it is not a requirement to actually have team members reporting directly to you in order to show dedication as a leader.

Again; people are smart.  Even as I lead people toward levels that they can replace me, that just means that I have more and more truly amazing people doing amazing things for the company.  Other leaders in the company will realize this.  They will never say “what do we need him for anymore.”  Instead, they will generally recruit from my team because they too want truly amazing people doing amazing things for them as well.

I believe that a focus on service is a major part of my success, and I generally never focus or dwell on my own success.  I focus on wanting others to succeed and from time to time that means that I must offer my own experiences as evidence.

So… are you a LEADER or a MANAGER?

Last week I found myself cleaning my kitchen in preparation to entertain guests for dinner.  The laundry room is unfortunately part of the kitchen in that the fridge is right next to the laundry dryer and the microwave is right next to the washing machine.  Thus, when I say I am cleaning the kitchen and as part of such cleaning the kitchen floor, I am ipso facto cleaning the laundry room floor.

Generally this is not much of an issue, except we recently purchased a large discount-chain bottle of laundry detergent.  This is one of those that has the button to let you pour the detergent so that you don’t have to wrestle a twenty pound bottle all of the time.  The problem this time around is that there seems to be a tiny annoying leak such that the front of the dryer (upon which the bottle rests) and the floor beneath the dryer have a bit of soap collecting.  To compound the problem, the soap has been drying a little bit over time, not so much that it is actually dry, but enough that you can’t simply wipe it away.

Here is where the paradox lies… laundry detergent is meant to clean things, yet in its current semi-dry state there is no good way to clean up the soap.

Option 1:  Since the soap is only semi-dry, and we know that soap moves a lot better when it’s wet, grab a damp cloth or paper towel and wipe while rehydrating the soap.  The problem here is the water and scrubbing action now cause the soap to spread around and to start foaming up.  This solution seems to be going no where good.

Option 2:  Since the soap is semi-dry and this acting like stuborn putty, maybe we can scrape at it.  Sure – scrape away and wind up with big clumps of disgusting soap.  I mean really!  How can soap be disgusting? Let’s forget about the Fight Club references. It’s meant to clean things so it must be clean.

So I ask you, how do you best clean up soap?

Fantastic!  Thanks!

Now let me show you what I wanted to show you.  It’s a relatively moot point now, but I thought it was interesting none the less.  Here’s the section of the advert that I was focusing on that has a different bluetooth headset being advertised than being modeled:

To make sure we can do a decent comparison, I’ve flipped the advertised model around and placed it closer to the model:

It’s a little grainy, but you can definitely tell that the model is wearing more of a boom version and that the colors are in slightly different places. 

So that’s all I was trying to say when I landed in mediocrity mayhem.  Good for Love’s in their speed to recover.  Bad on them for never sending me an email that things were fixed.  And still… check your artwork – please!

If you didn’t see it, thank the loving scotoma wherein you simply don’t see that which you’re not looking for. This ability to “notice” things even applies to that which isn’t there but ought to be as in my cell phone adventure where a seemingly simple solution to something just wasn’t there.

It’s getting worse for me. Today I saw a simple advertisement in a gas station regarding a bluetooth headset. There was a picture of the headset next to a picture of a model wearing the headset. Actually, she wasn’t wearing it at all. She was wearing a completely different model. Out of all the things to notice, that’s what I picked up on.

To clarify my point, I wanted to share a picture of the ad with you. My cell phone took a really crappy picture so I thought I would check the facility’s website. Amazingly there is a page dedicated to store specials and there is a small version of the flyer on that page (at least for now because they change it every month). That version of the circular doesn’t help illustrate the point because it’s too small. But they’ve apparently thought things through enough to allow you to click through and acquire a .pdf version of the ad. Click! Grrrrrrrr. The .pdf version is the circular from LAST MONTH. Come on!

I’m a nice guy, so I decided that I would let them know about the problem by submitting a comment about their page. My first problem there is that “location visited” is a required field. I don’t have a problem about a location, I have a problem with the website. Well… let’s fill it in anyway.

OK… where the hell was I? I was driving from point A (which I know the name of) to point B (which I also know the name of) but I never had the need to remember what city or town I was in when I had take a piss. So why would I want to look at a list of cities? I’d much rather look at a list of states and then cities. But I’m just being harsh I suppose. Eventually I find out that there is only one location in Michigan, so I chose that one! Let’s fill in the comment itself. And you know what, I am feeling so nice, I want to give the technician who’ll be working on this problem the actual url to the page.

So what exactly am I suppose to make of this? Is this the list of characters that I can’t use, or the list of characters that I can use? Because when they tell me “alpha-numeric,” I’m thinking letters and numbers and I know that letters and numbers are fine. So if letters and numbers are fine and the site is telling me something in relation to letters and numbers, then it should hold that everything else in this list should be fine. Not! Too bad for the technician that needs to fix the .pdf problem. I don’t have enough time to turn into a pro-bono consultant for inept thinking so I’ll leave the shitty form feedback for another day.

Now as you’ve been reading this, I know that you’re thinking that I’m just being picky. Admittedly there is a very fine line between being picky and being hyper-aware. Where that line sits has a lot to do with your environment. If you work in an environment that thrives on improvements and yearns for being the best, then expressing your concerns would be welcome and you are being hyper-aware. If you’re not in that environment… get another job.

About a week ago, my phone fell to the ground a couple of times because the belt clip on my case was so worn and old that there was about an inch of play.  It’s fallen off before (once resulting in a 45 minute retracing of steps in the snow) and there hadn’t been any problems.  This time, apparently the phone and case landed clip-side down and that inch of play in the product generated the perfect landing point for the screen to shatter.  Luckily, the screen protector kept everything together and the only real usability lost was the touch sensitivity on the screen.

Today, I decided to take the phone to the repair center.  I put my name on the list and was approached by a representative within about five minutes.  The gentleman then asked me if I had backed up my phone.  Well… no!  I don’t currently use this phone as my main means of organization as my company has given my a Blackberry to stay connected.  I don’t generally have a need these days to connect my phone to a computer.  He went back to speak with the techs and then came back and said “we need you to go backup your phone”.

So here’s where I lose it.  About a year ago I needed a complete replacement and they were able to take care of everything without a problem.  Having a sense that the representatives in the store do not have the power to do much nor the desire to think “outside” of the box, I made a small public tantrum about “improving business over going by the script” and then headed home.  On the way, I dialed *2.

*2 is another way to experience other cultures.  If you think that you have been with too many of the same type of person, just dial *2 and you’re bound to get something different every time.  I’m good with it really.  It’s just kind of random to me.  What I am not fine with is the script wherein ever line begins with “Now Mr. Davis” and ends with “OK Mr. Davis.”  I get off the phone with these people and want to change my name.

The first thing that I said to the kind lady on the line was “Now before I go into this, can you confirm with me that you have a process built in to your organization wherein the feedback of the customer is truly considered and taken into account while trying to improve the business?”

Silence…

“Hello?”

“Now Mr. Davis I understand that to which you may have encounter [sic] some concern to which I can ensure you that we can listen to your experience to which we will make sure that it does not happen again OK Mr. Davis?”

I tell my story and after a while she puts me on hold.  After five minutes of lovely hold music (which hasn’t changed in at least two years) she tells me that maybe the computers at the store aren’t working and that they just didn’t tell me.  She offered to find me a different repair center, but by this point I was committed to backing things up and return to the origination of my fury.  The *2 experience helped me to realize that they are simply a buffer.  They don’t think much, just follow the script, get a consult, and push you away.  The problem is… I didn’t even want a solution, I simply wanted the company to THINK.  We’ll get to “simply” in a moment.

So now I back everything up – head back to the store – and start over.  Another gentleman took care of me.  I showed him the phone and mentioned that I just went home to back everything up and now I’m here “and I think that was ridiculous.“  Mr. Service replied “what do you mean?”

“I think that it is ridiculous that I had to waste an hour of my day to leave here – go home – backup – and come back – when you should be able to take care of everything here.”

“Well we don’t have access to everything.”

“I just think that’s ridiculous.”

“Humph!”

“I don’t really think that this is particularly funny.”

“Well why do you think that we can just back everything up?”

“Because you’re Sprint! You’re the service provider.  You sell these phones. You can probably tap into any technology that you want.”

“Well we just don’t have access to all of the PDA’s information.”

“Well I just don’t get it.”

He then kindly put a service ticket in.  Thirty minutes later I returned to a phone with a new screen with ALL of the information on my phone completely intact.

NOW – Let’s think about this for a minute.   Throw out the box.  There is no box.  Don’t even try to think “outside” of it – because it’s just simply not there.  Wouldn’t someone just want to find a way to “simply” mirror and restore the ROM and RAM?  I don’t know how to do it.  It’s probably not really “simple.” I’m not a technician.  I’m no engineer.  But there has to be something there.  I know that this comes up more often than one person a year because I’ve heard way to many stories about people losing their entire contact list because they had to get a new phone.  There should be a solution for that.  It can’t be complete rocket science.  If you sell a phone, then you should get the intellectual property regarding that phone that will allow you to provide complete service to that phone.

What a company shouldn’t do is rely on the customer to provide their own support.  And you definitely shouldn’t act in a way that would infer that you think the customer is stupid.  This isn’t stupidity – this is a refusal to let the status quo be the only method of operation.  Why aren’t people empowered to make change?  Are organizations that scared of their team members?

It comes down to the fact that “I don’t get it” because it requires me to be completely and utterly ridiculous to “get it.”