On the one hand, we all like to think of ourselves as special. We have unique talents to offer. We are all above average. Everyone wants to be treated better than …[MORE]]]> I’ve just return from a two-day conference where much of the discussion revolved around leadership. It got me thinking about a curious human characteristic that I’ll call the Leadership Paradox.

On the one hand, we all like to think of ourselves as special. We have unique talents to offer. We are all above average. Everyone wants to be treated better than the rest. There is just something in our nature that makes us rankle at being labeled “normal”.

On the other hand, watch how we behave when there is a call for leadership. That’s when we cringe, when we scrunch down in our chairs and attempt to hide behind the person in front of us. We want to blend in, to disappear in the crowd. As a species, we seem to be reluctant to put ourselves forward as leaders. In this situation, everyone wants to be just an Average Guy.

I’m certainly no different. I’ve often considered myself the best #2 in town. I don’t mind doing the work. I don’t mind passing on the orders. I don’t mind taking the back seat. Just don’t ask me to be #1.

What’s that about?

Leadership certainly has its drawbacks. There’s responsibility. There’s obligation. There’s prominence. There’s accountability. Perhaps scariest of all, there’s the chance that no one will follow. We’re not wrong when we view leadership with apprehension. But when we refuse to rise to the challenge of leadership and take refuge in our anonymity, the dangers are even greater.

When people of character refuse to undertake positions of leadership, they leave a power vacuum that the unscrupulous will rush to fill. Practically any leadership role offers opportunities for corruption, abuse and cronyism, and we are never at a loss for scoundrels seeking a chance to further their own agenda. If we want our leaders to be honest, responsive and productive, to have integrity and to lead us with purpose, then people who possess those qualities will have to step up. No one develops those traits on the job. You have to bring them with you when you apply.

There are many opportunities for leadership in life—in our churches, our schools, our government, our workplaces—and sooner or later most of us get the chance to lead. The choice is simple: you can step up, or you can step aside. But if you step aside, you have no room for complaint when the person who does step up uses the opportunity to increase their own personal wealth or power base. You had your chance and you blew it.

Are you going to settle for following a scoundrel, or will you rise to the challenge of leadership?

Times are tough all around, and many companies have responded to difficult times by tripling their efforts to recruit new customers—by force, if necessary.

I’ve been getting countless robo‑calls, despite being on the no‑call list. I immediately hang up on any recording, but by that time I’ve already …[MORE]]]> Q. How do you avoid unwanted marketing?
A. You can’t. No matter what you do.

Times are tough all around, and many companies have responded to difficult times by tripling their efforts to recruit new customers—by force, if necessary.

I’ve been getting countless robo‑calls, despite being on the no‑call list. I immediately hang up on any recording, but by that time I’ve already put down whatever I was doing, muted the music or television, and answered the phone. The sound of the recorded voice makes me thoroughly annoyed, but I’m only left with the impotent act of slamming down the receiver.

Sigh.

It’s almost a given: the more important the robo‑voice says a call is, the less important it really is. Can you imagine a really important call being delivered in such a fashion? “I’m sorry to report that your biopsy was positive for melanoma. For surgery, press 1. For chemotherapy, press 2. For hospice, press 3.” Absurd.

And it’s not just the robo‑calls. The spam machines are working overtime. The fundraising phone banks hum with activity. I’m getting calls from companies I’ve never done business with, companies I’ve never heard of. I’ve even begun to get door-to-door salespeople. How many decades has it been since anyone rang your doorbell and tried to sell you something other than youth fundraising merchandise?

One of the few blogs I read on a regular basis is Seth Godin’s. His articles are of general interest, but his focus is on marketing. The good kind of marketing. The smart kind of marketing. He recently had an interesting item on this mad frenzy of pointless marketing. Read it here. Unfortunately, his ideas are too reasonable to appeal to the masses, and that’s a shame. If more people like Godin were running the marketing machines of the world, life would be a lot less aggravating. And I would be able to get through my dinner without yet another rude and pointless call from someone (or something) I wouldn’t do business with in a thousand years.

On the first day of class he laid out his plan. We would have regular homework assignments that would be discussed in class; he would give …[MORE]]]> It was an “obstacle” course—one that either earned you your diploma or forced you to change majors. It was offered once each year and taught by only one professor. I signed up.

On the first day of class he laid out his plan. We would have regular homework assignments that would be discussed in class; he would give weekly quizzes; there would be a mid-term exam and a final. Then he delivered the bad news: only the grade on the final exam would count. One test, one shot, one grade. Take it or leave it.

A lot of students left it. The second class meeting was only two-thirds the size of the first, but I was still there. I was determined.

The first homework assignment was daunting. The text was difficult and the assigned problems were quite advanced. The second assignment tripled in difficulty. The text became so inscrutable it may as well have been written in Mandarin. I performed dismally on the first quiz. I began to panic.

The class sessions were no help. Whenever the professor attempted to “help” with a homework problem, he would get bogged down in the minutia of the mathematics, backtracking, erasing, drifting hopelessly from thought to thought. Finally, he would just scratch his head and wander on to another problem, leaving the first unresolved and the class in utter confusion. Was he a moron or were we the idiots? Was he an Einstein who just couldn’t communicate? Why was he even allowed to teach this class?

I knew I was smart. My GPA was high. I was making a sincere effort. Why was I having so much difficulty? I consulted two acquaintances in the class, men I knew to be exceedingly intelligent, whose study habits I knew to be excellent. They were both floundering, too. We made a pact. We would form a study group, just the three of us, and we would master this material. We began to meet weekly.

The rest of the semester continued in much the same way. We struggled with the text. We agonized over the homework. The classes left us frustrated and confused. Our quiz scores remained shameful. Class size dwindled noticeably with every session.

The mid-term exam was terrifying: six pages filled with dozens of long, detailed problems. On at least half of them I didn’t even understand the question, much less know how to begin solving the problem. Despair set in. I began to consider a change of majors.

In the study group, we redoubled our efforts. We lengthened our sessions, tackled even more unassigned problems, quizzed each other constantly, created outlines and flash cards. We stayed up late and got up early. We trembled at the thought of the final exam.

The dreaded day arrived. By that time, I was so numb with effort and anxiety that I had finally achieved a kind of Zen state. I was completely calm. I was resigned to a career in fast food service. It was too late to run. I decided that if I had to crash and burn, at least I would do it with a little grace.

The exams were passed out. The first thing I noticed was that the test consisted of a single page. There were only ten questions, and each one was stated briefly. There were no convoluted word problems, no litany of given conditions, no complex equations or confounding issues. None of the questions bore any resemblance to our homework problems, our quizzes or the mid‑term exam.

The first question was fundamental theory. I answered swiftly and moved on. The second question: again, fundamental theory. And so on, through all ten questions. I completed the final in twenty minutes, feeling fairly certain I’d answered each question correctly.

It was at that point I concluded that I’d gone insane. I’d simply cracked and failed to grasp anything about the test. I began to reread the questions. I reworked every problem. I came up with every answer again, answers that matched my first effort on every question. I was done. Slowly I stood up, vaguely aware that I was the first to do so. I dropped my exam paper on the front desk and left the room, not quite certain whether I’d just made 100% or a zero. At that point, I didn’t even really care. It was over, and that’s all that mattered.

Well I aced that exam and graduated. And I did so in spite of having such a poor teacher.

But was he really so bad?

His hands-off style forced me to work much harder than I would otherwise have worked. He put me in a position of relying only on my own intelligence, persistence and whatever support system I could create for myself. He provided no assistance at all, but in doing so he motivated me so thoroughly that I completely mastered a most difficult subject. Could that have been his plan all along? To this day, I’m not sure. But in the end, what I learned from him has been much more useful than any classroom subject.

He may not have been my best teacher, but he was certainly one of the most effective.

When I ordered the cancellation, the customer …[MORE]]]> As I said previously, I recently switched from a satellite dish to digital television. Once the transition was complete, I called the satellite service to cancel my two-year-old subscription. During that time I’ve paid every bill on time and in full, so I would consider myself a good customer.

When I ordered the cancellation, the customer service rep asked why I was discontinuing my service. I told him of the new service and that it offered me a better package at a lower price. He replied that the satellite company could offer me a lower price, too.

My response was, “But you didn’t, did you?”

If a company really values the loyalty of its customers, a discount is a great way to show it. When a service I’m paying a premium for is offered to new customers at a rock-bottom price, the company is saying to me that they consider me not a good customer, but a sucker. When I can get a better deal just by threatening to leave, then I’m not being served, I’m being played.

This is just one of the many examples in life where people are rewarded for undesirable behavior and punished for doing what they should. It happens a lot. Sometimes a boss promises you a raise only after you’ve been offered a better job, or a parent ignores the quiet, compliant child while giving all their attention to the errant one.

It’s a simple fact of psychology that behavior which gets rewarded gets repeated, while behavior which gets punished gets discouraged.

Life offers unending opportunities to reward and punish; your time, your money, your energy, your talents are all currency by which you do so. It’s important to realize that that’s what is happening.

Who are you rewarding with your currency? Is theirs the behavior you want to perpetuate? Who are you punishing, or at least ignoring? Is theirs the behavior you want to discourage? Take stock, and make sure you are giving credit where it is due. You don’t want to reward the company that gives you mediocre service and charges you a premium. You don’t want to ignore the worker who shows up on time every day and does a thorough job.

Use your capital wisely. Reward those you value, and tell the others to take a hike. All the right people will profit in the long run.

In recent months, I’ve had a few highly disturbing encounters with corporate customer service representatives. Now I’m not generally a complaining customer. I don’t send …[MORE]]]> This is likely become a tirade. I’ll do my best to avoid it, to keep the discourse meaningful, but I suspect that it will inevitably erode into nothing but sound and fury.

In recent months, I’ve had a few highly disturbing encounters with corporate customer service representatives. Now I’m not generally a complaining customer. I don’t send food back in restaurants; I don’t loudly demand to speak to a store manager; I don’t picket or post web pages to make my protests public. But I do have this quaint, childish notion that if a business is failing to satisfy its customers’ needs in some elemental way, the business might be interested in knowing that and might conceivably wish to take some remedial action.

I’m a fool.

A few months ago, I went to some considerable trouble to find an e‑mail contact for a mammoth food producer (not an easy task in itself). This crafty company had recently revamped the packaging of one of its products, and the new design had one major flaw—it was impossible to open! It seemed to me that this was something worth pointing out. I composed an e‑mail worthy of publication (though I won’t publish it here—I can’t afford legal representation). It was informative and amusing, and expressed the nature of the problem in what I hoped would be a helpful and supportive manner. After all, I liked the product, and wanted to continue to enjoy it…if I could just get the blinking package open!

A day later, I received a “response” to my complaint. The form letter thanked me for my communication and urged me to continue to enjoy their fine product.

Complaintus interruptus.

Add to that a more recent experience. After a series of poor customer service experiences with a different company, I canceled my account with them and wrote them an e‑mail outlining my dissatisfaction. The gist of my message was “Don’t ever darken my door—I hate you guys.” The very next day, I received a response informing me of all the great value packages they had to offer and surely I would be interested in one of them. It was the corporate equivalent of jamming their fingers in their ears and loudly singing “la‑la‑la‑la‑la.”

I realize that a non-hermit living in the modern world could never completely avoid gargantuan corporations, and I’m not suggesting that we try. I know that the loss of my $4.99 a month will not affect Behemoth Amalgamated in the least. Even if I got all my friends and everyone they know to boycott the business, not even a blip would register on its sales charts.

So what is a consumer to do? Unfortunately, the corporations have already provided their response:

Screw you, and please come again.

I needed prescription cat food for an ailing cat, so I could only get it at the vet’s office. And it was Sunday. I knew my vet kept office hours on Sunday, but only for a very short window of time. My mind kept coming up with “two” and “four”, but …[MORE]]]> I just needed cat food.

I needed prescription cat food for an ailing cat, so I could only get it at the vet’s office. And it was Sunday. I knew my vet kept office hours on Sunday, but only for a very short window of time. My mind kept coming up with “two” and “four”, but I wasn’t really sure so I went to look up the clinic’s office hours online.

Now I’d looked them up online before. I’d found a basic web page, limited in function but complete with all the information a customer would likely need: address, phone number, office hours, attending vets’ names, etc. That’s what I expected to find that Sunday morning.

I Googled the clinic chain’s name, located my neighborhood office and clicked. The web page that loaded next was an online storefront eager to satisfy all my flea and heartworm needs. I backed out, checked the Google results, clicked on my clinic location again. Again, storefront. So I clicked around on the new storefront website, looking for some sort of location listing or anything in the way of meaningful information about the clinic right down the road from me.

Nothing.

I gave up in frustration, deciding to rely on my fuzzy memory and just go to the clinic between 2:00 and 4:00.

Saying the magic words “Go for a ride?” got my dog all geared up for the trip. We drove to the clinic. The place was locked up tight. It turns out that their Sunday hours are 10:00-2:00, four hours ending at two. We parked anyway, got out and took a little rest stop on their grassy lawn. The dog was very confused when we didn’t go inside, and I had to persuade her to get back in the car. She didn’t know what to make of that unprecedented effort to pee in a strange yard.

On Monday morning, the cats went hungry.

A website, like an automated phone tree, can be a very useful business communication tool. It can serve your customers’ needs simply and inexpensively if it readily provides answers to their most frequently asked questions. But when such a tool frustrates your customers, you risk losing them and may never even know why.

Do you have a business website? Take a hard look at it from a customer’s—or potential customer’s—perspective. Invite user evaluations from your family and friends. Does it include the basic information needed to contact you or locate your place of business? Does it contain a mailing address, a phone number, a list of business hours? Does your website bring your customers closer to you, or is it an obstacle they must overcome in order to do business with you?

Communication is everything.