What's your Priority?

It’s been a crazy travel kind of week.  Started with a delay due to tornadoes in Nashville.  Then ran into some freezing rain in Indianapolis.  There was fog in Charlotte and heavy rain in New York.   I handle those travel challenges pretty well.  You can’t blame the airlines for the weather.

So, I guess I wasn’t that surprised when I got to my final destination for the day and my luggage was missing.  I knew better than to check a bag, but sometimes it’s necessary.  I really wanted my black boots and my brown boots and winter clothes take so much more room than summer clothes.  The fact that I was flying USAir meant that my expectations were already so low that it was going to be extremely hard for me to be disappointed.  USAir managed to surprise even me.

You know the drill, you stand in baggage claim and your hope diminishes with every turn of the carousel.  Then you go to the baggage office and file a report. When Joe, the agent, realized my mileage account was almost as big as the national deficit, he smiled like a hyena.  “Ms. Swann – you’re a PRIORITY.”  I beamed, too.  I like being someone’s priority.   We had both won the lottery. 

USAir was ready to blow my socks off with their new lost baggage reporting system-totally green and high tech.  They scanned my receipt, instantly gave me a claim file and took down the address where my bag would be delivered.  Agent Joe was so proud of the investment his employer had made in this new lost baggage system that he couldn’t wait to share it with me.  I was almost impressed, but he forgot one thing.  He forgot to be sorry.

I wanted him to feel my pain.  I didn’t have my vitamins or my probiotics so I was most likely going to catch a cold from all the plane germs.  I didn’t have a change of clothes, so I was going to have to see an important new client in dirty, wrinkled travel clothes.  I didn’t have makeup or hair products, and that didn’t really matter because I’m blessed with complete natural beauty, but a little mascara is always nice.  I didn’t have deodorant; “TMI”, right?  Joe almost acted excited that they had lost my bag so I could experience their new system.

Here’s the other thing that was wrong.  With all their technology, they couldn’t communicate with me where my bag actually was or when I would get it.  And as much as I loved his sexy system, that was all I really wanted to know.  Besides, I was a PRIORITY.  He told me so!

The airlines are first of mind when we think about bad customer service.  But let’s face it; we all have some of this mentality in our organizations, right?  Like a Y that doesn’t have the money to invest in online registration, so they require members to come stand in long lines to sign up for programs.  The Y knows that’s going to upset people, so they serve refreshments, hire some clowns to make balloon animals and try to make the “fail” feel better.  The refreshments are nice, but what the member really wants is to know that very soon you’re going to move into the new century and let them sign up for day camp from the comfort of their own home.  They’ll be glad to forego your cookies and balloon animals for that convenience. 

Once when I was upset at the lack of quality in my youngest son’s swim lessons and went to converse with the aquatics director, she smiled and said, “No, problem!  We have a money back guarantee and I am empowered to refund all your money on the spot today.”  Fail.  I didn’t want my $45 dollars.  I wanted my child to learn to swim. 

Today I saw a young mother of two come to visit the Y for the first time since joining two weeks ago.  She had bundled the baby, wrestled the toddler, and summoned the courage to put on her exercise clothes and take the first step toward getting healthier.   Yay!  She is our priority.  But when she got to the Y, child watch was full and she was turned away with a chart that shows the best days to actually get your child in and a list of other activities she could do while she was here anyway.  Things like take them swimming (ever swam with a 3 month old and a 2 year old?); go to the playground (great fun, but probably not a great option in January in the Midwest); run around the open gym (because we all know pickup basketball game guys love it when your toddler crashes their court time).   What was unspoken by the staff but loudly heard by the member and me was:  “Are you crazy?  It’s Monday at 9 a.m.  Did you honestly think you were going to waltz in here and get to work out and get your kids in child watch?  That’s not how it works.  Yes, I realize we are failing you right now, but come on!  It’s Monday at 9 a.m. in January.  Work with us here!”

It’s high season at the Y right now.  Thousands are flocking to you because they want to be healthier.  They want to feel better.  They want to look better.  They know they are supposed to eat right and exercise, but they know they can’t do it alone.  They need you.  They are your priority.  You told them so in your marketing.

It’s great to have a plan for when you fail them when the class is full, the pool is down, the instructor doesn’t show and the parking lot overflows, but be sure you spend the majority of your time, energy and resources strategizing how not to fail. What USAir is really saying with their high-tech-lost-baggage-system is: we know we aren’t capable of doing our job so we are going to invest in making the experience of us screwing up as painless as possible for you.  Not cool.

My lost baggage story had what I’m sure the USAIR baggage tracking system categorizes as a happy ending.  26 hours later, right before I left the East Coast to fly to the West Coast, my bag was delivered to the hotel.  What the record won’t show is the horror I felt at standing in front of a client with flat gel-less hair; wrinkled black pants, mascara-free lashes and a belly growing bad bacteria by the minute without my probiotics to fight back.  Never mind the opportunity lost to rock my black boots!

Empower your staff to find solutions to the issues not excuses.  And when you do lose that occasional proverbial bag, teach your staff to say, “I’m sorry,” and to really feel it. That’s the best recovery of all.  That’s how you treat a priority.

A Little Ink on My Heart

            Yes, it’s true that some of the T2 tribe got tattoos.  It’s just a tiny little thing that would give us no cred in the real tat world, but it’s real.  People have mixed reactions.  Some are impressed; some are appalled.  More than once I’ve heard it referred to as “ridiculous.”

 

The T2 tat is getting a lot of attention, but did you know it’s not my only one?  Yep, I have other tats, too.  I have a chicken pox scar on my left temple from scratching a scab after my mom told me not to.  It’s a souvenir from my rebellious preschool days.  I have a permanent knot in the vein on my left hand from getting frost bitten at Girl Scout camp.  It’s a survival badge that can’t be removed.  I have stretch marks on my stomach from being pregnant four times.  They are precious tats that remind me how much I loved having each child in my belly, and how much I love being their mom.  My right big toe nail has an indention from where one of my boys cleated me.  I always smile when the pedicurist works diligently to try and smooth it out, but it won’t budge.  It’s a tat that represents how dangerous, but rewarding it is to mother boys, and why you should never wear sandles around boys in metal cleats.

            Those are the ones you can see, but there are a lot of tattoos on my heart that you can’t see, left there by special people and days that made their mark on me permanently.  I’m so glad for each one, even though sometimes ink on your heart hurts even more than ink on your ankle.

            I’m so thankful for the path my career has taken, even though it’s been tough at times.  I’ve spent more hours in planes and hotels than I want to ever count.  I’ve gotten rewarded, and I’ve gotten looked over.  I’ve been a front-runner, and I’ve come in so far back that it’s humiliating.  In the beginning, more often than not I was making it up as I went along. Ok, there are still days when I’m making it up.   Most importantly, I’ve gotten to know a lot of wonderful people through my 25 years out in the real world.  I’ve gotten to know a lot of jerks, too, and they have also taught me some great lessons.

            Eleven years ago I was invited to go on a journey with a group of people that I hardly knew at the time, but we grew to be what tribe member Rod Grozier calls our Mission Tribe.  We birthed a company together.  In the beginning it was a sweet baby that had to be fed and changed a lot, but was relatively easy to handle.  It went through its terrible twos when we all wondered what in the world we had created.  There were the easy years when we credited its success to our smarts and hard work.  There were the tough teenage years when it back-talked us and slammed doors in our face.  What a ride!

            When it was time to say goodbye to this (ad)venture, I did so with mixed feelings.  It made perfect sense on every level to sell, and I still get to do what I love to do with the people I love to do it with.  But saying goodbye to something you’ve invested so much of yourself in is never easy, even if it was a pain in the ass and it’s only moving next door. 

            Our tribe wanted to memorialize that time in our lives and what better way than with a little t2 tattoo.  I usually only remember it when I’m putting my socks on to go work out, but it gives me a smile every time.   That little tat represents the outrageous journey our tribe took together with little more than an idea and a credit card and a cool logo.  Some of the tribe have moved on to new adventures; some of us are still plugging along, but I know what we built will always exist.  Maybe with a different name and different team members, but it will live on.  And for as long as I live, that cool little logo will be tattooed on my ankle. 

Ridiculous?  You tell me.

The “C” Bombs-- I Hate Them So Much I Can’t Even Type Them

Recently I was working with a staff team that wanted to take their marketing to the next level.  We had some great thinkers in the room.  We had some big ideas brewing.  When it came time to start to take those ideas from the white board to the project plan the meeting started to heat up.  People started to squirm.  One side of the room was clearly in one camp.  Another group was just as committed to their big idea.  A couple of stragglers were hanging on to the way it used to be – “more billboards, please.”

As the facilitator, I knew this was the moment of truth.  We were on the verge of a breakthrough, but I could already feel the tension in the room.  I could read their minds: “On No!  We are about to disagree!  This is going to be uncomfortable.  Somebody’s going to be get their feelings hurt. There are gong to be losers and winners. That’s not good.”  What I was thinking: “Please, please, please be brave.  It’s fun to hear the passion in each other’s ideas.  It’s fun to disagree.  We can do this, I can help you and I promise no one will lose an eye or need therapy when it’s over.”

So I called a time out and said:  “Let’s go back to why you flew me here and paid me relatively big bucks to lead this session.  You wanted to do something more, something different, something that would get you somewhere beyond where you are. Is that still your objective? “  This was met with a few hesitant nods, but mostly just a lot of doubt.  “Remember?”  More uncomfortable silence.  “Ok, then what is your goal now?”  And then he said it.  The unofficial leader of the group said something so inappropriate and vulgar, I gasped.  I fell back in my chair.  A little vomit came into my mouth and I started to scream, “NOoooooo, to the top of my lungs.”  He dropped not one, but both of the evil “C” bombs right there in front of everyone and didn’t even blush.  He said: “Well, of course we like all these ideas and I think we made some great progress today.  But you know we have to have compromise and we have to have consensus.”

And everyone relaxed.  Even me, in a just-got-punched-in-the-gut kind of way. There’s no turning back after a statement like that.  Get me to the airport as fast as I can get there (without getting a ticket, of course).

But you know how later you think about what you wish you had said?  Well I’m going to say it now.  Not because it can help those bozos, but because it’s something that might help you in the future. And I’ll feel better just getting it off my chest.

When I was a Y director, the big controversy was over the temperature of the pool water.  It never gets too cold for lap swimmers, and it’s never too warm for seniors.  So you have one pool and you are the leader that wants to make everyone happy.  What do you do?  You compromise.  You boil a few thousand gallons of water and fill the pool half way.  Then take some ice water and pour it in on top.  Then everyone will be happy!  You’re so wise, kind of a Solomon moment for you.  Except no one is happy.  If you only have one pool, then you have to pick one market to make happy and then communicate to the other side why you’re going this way.  Then you do it and move on and ignore the noise.

Consensus and compromise are not goals.  If you’re going in to meetings with that as a goal then you are an awful leader.  If you’re going in to a meeting as a participant hoping that’s your leader’s goal, then you are worthless.  Fire yourself.  Go be a massage therapist or something where you always get to make people feel better.  But get yourself out of a leadership role for anything:  your church, your school, your family, your community,  your work. 

A really hot idea and a really cold idea mixed together just make a really tepid solution to any problem.  You already have enough lukewarm in your organization. What you need now are some scalding hot and wake-you-up ice cold, bold new directions.  And you need people that have the, um, you know, to go in those bold new directions. Who's in?

That’s what I wish I had said.

Thank You, Mr. Trooper

Yes, I get a lot of speeding tickets.  I deserve most of them.

If you get a lot of tickets, you get pretty relaxed about it.  It’s more of a game to see how long you can go between stops than a real issue, though it is expensive recreation.  I should probably take up golf or something.

In December I met a nice State Trooper in Kansas City, Missouri.  That losing round of catch-me-if-you-can was only $83.  I guess that’s why I was off my game again this week, when I met a nice State Trooper in Kansas City, Kansas.  Actually, this one wasn’t as nice and his game was almost twice as expensive.  Most of you won’t understand why I was so excited to find I was in a different state than when I lost the round last month, but basically if you get a ticket in the same state in less than 30 days it’s not good.  I counted this round as a draw.  Yes, he got me, but I was across the river.  Score!

When you get a ticket, people always ask you the same question, “How fast were you going?”  This week I happened to be in the same city as my rule-following-speed-limit-following boss, Tom Massey.  (Those of you who have ridden with Tom will understand when I say, “slower is not always better”) Anyway, Tom looked at me with that mix of disgust and curiosity that all you rule-followers have when you look down your noses at us loud-life-livers, and asked the question, “How fast were you going?”

Since he is a good friend, I decided to let him in on a little secret – I’m always going the same speed.  I’m not the problem here.  I’m always going 82 mph.  The problem is the speed limit changes. 

It wasn’t until later when Tom made a joke about it on Facebook® that I thought more about it.  I’m always going 82 mph and that’s only ok when the speed limit is 75 (everyone knows you get 7 over).  I live life at 82 mph.  If the speed limit of life changes, I just keep going and hope I don’t run over anyone or get caught.  But the problem is I do run over people.  Not in my car, but with my life.  I pass you in the slow lane when you’re processing the question I just asked and go right on to the next one.  I’m going so fast when we pass in the hallway that I don’t even notice that you’re sad, or overwhelmed or stressed.  I interrupt you when you don’t go fast enough and tune you out when you go on too long.  I almost wish life had State Troopers that would pull you over and say, “Hey, don’t do that!  Here’s your warning; do it again and you’re going to get in big trouble.”

I honestly don’t know if I can slow down, but I’ve decided to make it a goal to at least know what the speed limit is.  In the meantime, feel free to “turn on your blue lights” and pull me over if you see me speeding by.  Of course, you have to catch me first!

Check Please

Last week I gave myself an A+ for productivity.  I was clicking things off my mile-long-to-do list with amazing speed.  And of course, when I completed something that wasn’t on my list, I put it on there so I could mark through it.  Does anyone else do that?  Pretty silly, I guess, but it gives me a real sense of accomplishment.

I didn’t read much last week.  If I did read something, like the great HBR article on why fair managers don’t move up the ladder as fast as ruthless ones, I didn’t take time to reflect on it.  Just checked it off my professional development to-do list and moved right along.  I didn’t wander around the office looking for colleagues to give me feedback.  What if they suggested a better way?  That would really slow me down.  Didn’t daydream about new ideas or about new ways to accomplish some of my other ideas.  At one point I had a really great idea on how to improve the membership quality audit process, but then I decided to just file that for later – otherwise I was going to miss my deadline to finish them by Friday.

All my expense reports got submitted, copied and filed.  All my calls and emails returned.  I was by most supervisory standards a real star.

There are times when we need this kind of focus, both internally and externally.  Internally because all the big picture stuff is hard to quantify a percentage complete so we are never sure if we are making progress. Sometimes it feels like we are running fast, but just on a treadmill.  Externally we need get-er-done days, because, our organizations demand it to keep the train moving.

But let’s face it, creativity, innovation, relationships, and leadership tasks are hard to check off a list.  They require us to have the insight to know what they are and the flexibility to work on them when the right moment presents itself.  (Yeah, sounds like a commercial for you know what, but you know what I mean.)

Now that I think of it, I’m not nearly as proud of my work last week.  I think I’ll pull those quality standards out for another look, and give my friend a call back to really listen to her ideas for the hospital collaboration.

 But first things first, got to check this blog off my list.  Check!

Everybody Should Go Camping

Of all my work assignments, nothing gives me more joy than a visit to a YMCA Camp.  Maybe it's all the good memories I have of camp when I was a kid, but a camp visit leaves me smiling for days.
This week I was lucky enough to attend the board meeting at the YMCA of Greater Charlotte's Camp Harrison.

The venue was breathtaking, the food was fine, and the finances are impressive.  But when you have the opportunity to see the kids -- the ones we pay (staff) and the ones that pay us (campers) it almost brings a tear to the eye.  Of all the good, life-changing work the Y is a part of, nothing is easier to understand than our camp work.

I'm not saying it's more important than the rest of our work, but it's easy and fun.  I mean, who else gets to table dance at lunch?  At least in a context you can talk about at church on Sunday? 

A Roller Coaster Kind of Week

Some weeks fly by, others not so much.  This week I visited YMCA's in Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina and Kentucky.  I participated in a camp board meeting at Camp Harrison and started a new hospital partnership project for the Louisville YMCA.  All my work meetings were great, but the Louisville meeting was the best.  Not only a great group of volunteers, but they also had homemade strawberry cake, coffee and cookies for the occasion.  Reminded me of my first "real" job at Nashville Memorial Hospital when our cooks would bake special treats for our special meetings. 

In Charlotte I was a part of a planning meeting to work on how to take our membership development efforts to the next level.  Exciting stuff -- and part of the meeting took place while floating in a colleagues pool.  

This week has me thinking a lot about what we can really do to make strides in the member engagement arena.  I mean, how do we really move forward?  We are all talking, reading, working to better engage our members, but are we making any progress?  I visited a Y where I watched one front desk person try deal with 20 current or potential members while five management staff were holed up in a back room meeting.  Huh?  Leadership moment.

But even better than the strawberry cake was having my 15-year-old-permit-holding son Andrew chauffeur me around.  I could get used to that!  We managed to spend a few hours at Carowinds and braved The Intimidator ride.  Scary, fun stuff.  I screamed, closed my eyes, grabbed onto a friend for support. No different than most days at work, except I was buckled in.