8 Ways to Prevent Customer Service Dying At Your Company

I can't be the only CEO in the world who would look for daily, weekly, and/or monthly "flash reports" showing exactly what was happening to our customers that we thrust off on another vendor before they could begin paying us for our services?! Is it even possible that there are significant businesses out there who are not watching critical measures of their own success and delivery? I guess no matter how unbelievable it is, it must be happening every day. Is it happening in your business without your knowledge?

Sure these things can happen occasionally, and at good companies, the customer gets an apology, a free month, and/or a bowl of fruit for their trouble. However, the very fact that these things are happening on most transactions with companies tells me management is losing touch with some basic principles.

I challenge any manager to make sure they use their own service anonymously on a regular basis (secret shopper) to...

From the moment a new company is founded to its appearance on the Fortune 500 list, executives must be able to transform the way they manage a company — shifting gears, often dramatically to a different management style — to ensure the company’s optimum development. I am not referring to individual executive style here. What I am talking about is the total adjustment and evolution of the context in which major management decisions are made. I call this the “Mode of Management”, which is very dependent on the company’s current developmental stage.

Would you make the same product development decisions in an identical way with one hundred dollars in the bank and no customers as you would with $50 million in the bank and 1,000 customers? Of course not! So why do many managers often run an organization in the same way despite the many gradual and often sudden changes that happen between these two extremes? It is human nature to continue to do what we...

How to Manage Employees At Varied Levels of Experience 

There are far too many texts and systems on management, and I do not want to create another.  However, there is a simple and effective system I use that leverages many of these wonderful systems that can be anywhere from fantastic to disastrous in a particular situation.  In every case, some thought must be given as to which technique is appropriate for each special circumstance and individual. 

A simple, yet very effective, model for people management uses the following combination of well known management styles by selecting the appropriate method for each individual.  This is an easy model to understand and implement, and adjusts the management style to each individual's specific abilities and limitations.  In general, you are going to work very closely (micromanage) with anyone when they are first hired to help determine where they are on this scale and then move down the scale until you reach...

A tough question that can only be answered well by looking at the big picture. “Tips” implies simple little things, but none of these are tips really. They “must do” things if you want to have good chances of success.
Prepare for years in advance, building your skills in management, domain expertise and marketing/sales.
The CEO & Entrepreneur Boot Camp - CEO Bootcamp US
Get a mentor who has experience as an entrepreneur growing a company successfully
Read at least 2 to 3 books per month
Bootstrap taking your time to build out your plan doing market research, competitive intelligence and talking to prospects and iterating your business model. Be sure it is 100% differentiated and unique, and you can create some sustainable competitive advantage. Without both of these, raising capital will be near impossible.
Set up financially to need no income for 6 to 12 months minimum after you quit your job. Moonlight until you are very clear on the plan and vision, and get...

So many to choose from that deceive people and can even cause the failure of a company. Here are just a sample:

1. Your “idea is worth millions”. There is no such thing. As by definition, anyone can steal an “idea” and do it better, with more capital and/or a better team. Anyone with just an idea will not raise any capital. You need a team, plan, traction. Even a patent (exclusive on the implementation of an idea, not an idea) only gets 5% royalty. The other 95% goes to the people who invest and execute. How many people had the idea of the electric car before Elon Musk started growing Tesla? There were hundreds of competitors to Facebook, and almost any other company you can name. But only the few that do everything right will survive the Darwinian world of the marketplace. 

2. Anyone can start a company - We have a new company failure rate of over 85%, and a new product failure rate of over 90%, because people greatly underestimate the...

I would not say they are “In vogue” at all. They have always been a fundamental building block of good management. Recently the term OKRs has become more common because it has been used and promoted by some VCs, Google, Intel and other successful companies. However, OKR is almost identical to Management By Objective (MBO) that was created in the 1960s by Peter Drucker, The Father of Management.

This is a classic management principle that any professional manager should understand, which most business schools fail to teach well. It is the “Blocking and tackling” of management that cannot be ignored. Sometimes it is called SMART Goals, a slightly different take with 90% overlap too, that is an acronym for Specific, Measurable (metrics), Attainable, Realistic and Time bounded. All-important attributes to set non-ambiguous goals.

Decades of research has shown a 56% improvement in value creation at companies that use good goal setting systems, specifically...

MBO and OKR is a proven way for companies to improve performance dramatically. But it is not a panacea either. It is just a structure and cadence for good management to insure great communications and cooperation between people and areas of the business. And one very good manager should use - no exceptions. 

To be fair OKR is just a repackaged (plagiarized) version of Management By Objective (MBO) created by The Father of Management (Science) Peter Drucker in the 1960s. All his books are timeless, and I highly recommend any serious manager read them all over time. Start with The Daily Drucker.

That said in research (and development), which I did full-time for 8 years in my earlier career, there are more unknowns, and it is harder to set clear timelines for things, mainly because the next steps depend on the result of earlier steps and also iteration.  However, you can still have release dates and other things agreed to -- you just may not have exact expectations on what a...

Simply put, generally, no, but there are various scenarios and circumstances.  So, this is really not a yes or no question and requires more information to answer.

Legally, any Officer of the company (a legal status according to the Secretary of State filings in the state in which your company is incorporated) has the right to commit their company legally to any contract, and hence to hire someone.  This status comes with a large “Fiduciary responsibility” to act in the best interest of the company and its stockholders.  It also means you have liability in certain circumstances.  You have a responsibility to all shareholders and cannot make any decisions for personal reasons, only in the best interest of the company.

When on a "Board of Directors" there is a very high standard for that in law called "Utmost good faith". And you can and should be sued and removed for any violation of that responsibility.  But that's another article for another...

Training like this is best done with an ongoing Management Development (MD) program. This is also often called Learning and Development (LD), or Management Development (MD). Management is an art, not a skill. Hence, only actual practice and experience increases someone’s abilities. Of course, a foundation of knowledge of best practices, styles and some structure is very helpful and that can be learned.  Models, rules of thumb and reading will help a lot. It will just not be enough. 

Any company over about 10 employees should have ongoing monthly or quarterly education goals for managers, or ideally all employees. This allows people to grow with the company, creates loyalty and is a big win-win. This does not have to be expensive. I generally recommend about 2% to 3% of management salaries for an MD program.  This can pay an RPI that is 10 to 100X. 

Some MD can be just reading assignments. The key is knowing the best books for a given employee at that...

The short answer is you never should. You should slightly adjust your business model or target market to be differentiated. Read this article to learn how. 

A startup should never really have a direct competitor. Its target market, where it can do something that others cannot, must be unique at the start to establish a beachhead in a niche. You need to target another niche market (often an intersection and application and industry sector) where you have a Sustainable Competitive Advantage (SCA).

Sometimes geography can be this difference if a service is delivered locally, or you are going after a country where a new service does not yet exist (i.e. Starbucks). However, this is less powerful than proprietary product and service capabilities that others do not have long-term. You could be attacked locally at any time, even by ex-employees you trained who leave. It is also possible and better to layer in other SCAs over time. First to market can give you advantages like...