Tag Archives: Consulting

August 11, 2008 · 10:52 am

Clarity

In the process of an all-day planning session with some clients on Friday, we visited one of their web sites and found, in the main box, a promotion for an event that had taken place a week earlier.  All of us, including the president of the company, were a little surprised that it was still up, particularly since it was in a prominent place.  The person who has been overseeing the sites (they have a bunch) said that he had asked that it be changed a few days back but apparently his request had gone unfulfilled.

As we discussed the situation, it was pretty obvious that there were multiple failures.  The first one was by the person who is in charge of the site in failing to keep the site up to date and relevant.  That shows a huge disrespect for your audience and yourself, in my opinion.  Most content management systems have some sort of start and end date for every piece of content – it’s not all that difficult to be sure that time-sensitive materials change at an appropriate time.  More importantly, why would you make yourself and the company you represent look stupid, insensitive, out of touch – you can pick any of a hundred words.

The second failure was by the person overseeing all of the sites.  He neglected to set standards and see that they were met.  He also neglected to step in to correct the situation as best he could (more about that in a second) by explaining to the site manager that out of date materials turn off readers and might cause them to go elsewhere for more timely information.  He also didn’t go to her direct management for help (she reports locally, he is a divisional person).  Lastly, he didn’t turn to his management and alert them to a problem.

The third failure was by the top management.  They never empowered the fellow overseeing the sites properly.  The gave him responsibility without authority, which I believe is a recipe for failure.  They also didn’t make his mission 100% clear to him either – he thought his role was more advisory than supervisory (hey – what are you – a consultant?!?!).

It’s good this happened before we make a major upgrade in their sites and do quite a bit to grow their traffic.  The lines of authority (and responsibility – equally as important) are clear now.  Materials will change on time and people understand the standards.  And we all had good weekends!

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July 9, 2008 · 10:48 pm

Asking the right question

Interesting article out of Purdue U on golfers’ perceptions of hole size while putting.

46 golfers were asked to estimate the size of the hole after they played a round of golf. The diameter of a golf hole is 10.8 centimeters. The golfers selected from a poster one of nine black holes that ranged in size from 9-13 centimeters. Those who selected larger holes were the same players who had better scores on the course that day.

They did some further testing in a lab and found participants who putted closer drew the circle to be bigger than those who putted farther away.

This goes to one of my favorite points – asking the right question is more important than getting the right answer since you’ll NEVER get the latter without the former.  In this case, maybe someone should have asked the good putters (who may or may NOT be the better golfers) what they were looking at while putting.  I can tell you from a lot (way too much, probably) of time spent putting that one really doesn’t look at the hole while putting.  Great putters know that all putts are straight if they’re hit properly- it’s the green that makes them move.  Because of that, one judges the line and speed and picks a spot to which you putt – it’s usually NOT the hole.  Pelz Golf Institute research shows that less than five per cent of all putts are perfectly straight (the green moves them!) so you’re not aiming at the hole 95% of the time.

Another, smaller point is that of COURSE the hole looks bigger when you’re closer to it!  (As an aside, as the parent of a Michigan grad, I’m really holding back on the Boilermaker comments right now…).  Chances are the the better golfers were the ones putting closer to the hole as well.

Ask the right questions and if you’re in unfamiliar territory as these researchers seemd to be, ask a native for directions.

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June 17, 2008 · 10:24 pm

Listen Up

Someone told me today that the only difference between the Chinese words for “book” and “stupid” is one of tone. Many of the languages of Southeast Asia and Africa are tone languages. These languages use pitch to signal a difference in meaning between words, so it’s critically important that one listen carefully to anyone who is speaking so as not to misconstrue what they are saying.

Interestingly, one of the first, best lessons I got in sales was to listen carefully and speak a lot less than I listened for exactly the same reason.

How often have you started to think of the reply before you’ve fully heard the question? How often do we think about what we’re going to say next and ignore what’s being said to us? I’m not sure if it’s the ADD induced by the pace of information being thrown at us or just plain self-centeredness, but we all need to listen a lot more carefully. There is meaning in tone and information in complete sentences.

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