After the sale is over.

Post 576 - "One of the surest signs of a bad or declining relationship is the absence of complaints by customers. Nobody is ever THAT satisfied over an extended period of time," according to Theodore Levitt, who was the editor of the Harvard Business Review and was considered one of the world's greatest marketing experts.

While many of us cringe at the thought of our customers and clients complaining about our products and services, those complaints are, in reality, the lifeblood of our business relationships. Consider these findings from McKinsey, the global consulting firm:

* Customers who have major problems but don't complain about them have a re-purchase intention rate of about nine percent.

* Those who do complain, regardless of the outcome, have a repurchase intention rate of approximately 19 percent.

* Customers who have a complaint resolved have a repurchase intention rate of 54 percent.

* Customers who have their complaints resolved quickly have a repurchase intention of 82 percent.

Note that simply feeling comfortable enough to complain more than doubles repurchase rates - and further note what a tremendous opportunity results when customers can quickly resolve issues that bother them. Levitt points out that customers are either not being candid or haven't been contacted when they don't complain - probably both. An absence of candor reflects the decline of trust and the deterioration of relationships. Impaired communication is both a symptom and cause of trouble. Bad things accumulate. Things fester and get worse. When they finally erupt, it's usually too late or too costly to correct the situation.

Handling complaints properly allows you to turn lemons into lemonade. Here's how:

* When you have irate clients or customers, address the complainants face-to-face and LISTEN! Avoid being defensive and THANK the customers for bringing these matters to your attention.

* Be proactive in seeking feedback. Tell the customers how anxious you are to improve service, and that their feedback would be very helpful. AT&T once had a slogan: "If it's an emergency to you, it's an emergency to us." This meant that even if customers didn't think the complaint was that important, it was probably very important. Otherwise, why would they bring it up?

* A more significant problem or opportunity than complaining customers are the "irate customers." An irate customer is frustrated because previous complaints haven't been successfully resolved. Yet, these customers are still giving you the chance to resolve their problems.

Similar to seeking out and resolving complaints with existing customers is the process of seeking out and resolving objections in the sales process. Objections here are important buying signals. Like the complaining customers, the objecting prospects are inviting you to show them why they should buy from you. If the prospects have no interest in your product or service, they'd terminate the sales call. By raising objections, the customers are looking to get further information to justify a buying decision. By encouraging these objections, you gain valuable insight into the customers' needs.

So don't ever feel smug when customers don’t complain. Because when they stop complaining, that's when you're most likely to get in trouble!

Wage and hour checklist.

Post 476 - Based on the current French Gourmet case here in San Diego, the hiring of illegal immigrants is becoming a "hot" issue in employment practices (the federal government is asking to take over the restaurant and bakery business involved if the owner is found guilty). However, another more common but less publicized practice of interest involves whether a company's compensation practices are in line with both state and federal law. In the past, employees knew even less about the standards in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) than supervisors and managers. The internet has changed this giving employees today almost instant access to updated information. Labor relations expert Hunter Lott suggests that the following questions are worth asking (and answering) in this regard:

- Are you sure that exempt salaried employees qualify for the exemption? Exempt and non-exempt classifications are determined by people's job duties, not by how they're paid. Check out dol.gov for more input on FLSA.

- Are non-exempt employees being paid overtime at one-and-a-half times their regular hourly wage? This is a federal requirement and some states may require even more.

- Are all non-exempt employees recording all hours actually worked? Signing a timecard is certifying that it's an accurate reflection of the hours worked.

- Are employees taking lunch at their desk or in their work area? If they work during lunch, the law says they have to be paid.

- Are exempt employees docked for hours not worked within a workday? It's a mistake to treat exempt like non-exempt, and in most cases, this type of docking will jeopardize the exemption.

- Is "comp time' granted in lieu of overtime? In the private sector, this may be a problem so check with legal counsel to be safe.

Make sure company practices are consistent with FLSA and state regulations when classifying and paying employees. The monetary damages can go back up to three years, in some cases, and double the damages for all current and former employees.

For more information, look up www.HunterLott.com

How to create a strong culture.

Post 475 - Here are some central concepts about culture:

- Culture = Behavior.
We use the word culture to describe behaviors that represent the general operating norms in a given environment. In business, some aspects of culture will support a company’s progress and success while others will impede that progress.

- Culture is Learned.
People learn certain behaviors because of the rewards or negative consequences that follow that behavior. What’s rewarded is repeated and the association eventually becomes part of the culture. For example, a thank you from an executive for work performed in a particular way helps to shape a culture of appreciation.

- Culture is Learned Through Interaction.
Employees learn a company’s culture by interacting together. Job applicants form an initial opinion of a culture as early as their first phone call with the HR department. They also get a sense of the culture and their fit with it during the interview process.

- Sub-cultures Form Through Rewards.
Sometimes employees value rewards that aren’t associated with the behaviors that management wishes for the good of the overall company. That's how subcultures are formed, as people get social rewards from coworkers or have their most important needs met in their project teams or departments.

One way to create a strong culture — let's say one that emphasizes fun, sharing, collaboration and connection — is by following these four simple steps:

Step 1: Understand.
Effective leaders understand what’s important to their fellow employees. So developing a strong company culture starts by taking steps to find out what motivates the people who work with you. They talk with employees to find out what they expect from the company and to learn what's important to them. This understanding will help them develop a culture that’s appropriate for the business, rather than one that’s just based on their own ideas of what people might enjoy. It also sends a message that collaboration and communication are an important part of the culture.

Step 2: Take action and Involve.
Next, follow-through is important because it shows that you’ve taken the employees' interests and concerns to heart. Try this simple exercise: Divide a blank piece of paper into four quadrants labeled fun, sharing, collaboration and connection. For each heading, involve a group of employees in brainstorming a list of actions that will improve the company’s culture in this area. For example, under "fun," you could have a weekly drawing for free passes to a movie. Rather than trying to do everything at once, start by implementing a selection of ideas that you know you can do well. Highlight a few of the items from the brainstorming list that can be implemented immediately and save the rest to do later.

Step 3: Collaborate
Give employees the freedom they need to follow through with their own ideas. This doesn't mean letting them to go off in all kinds of different directions. Instead, create a small multi-level leadership group to oversee and guide their creative efforts along the right path. This group is responsible for encouraging employees to come up with ideas, discussing concrete ways of putting their ideas into action, and holding them accountable for meeting their objectives and delivering on their commitments.

Step 4: Demand accountability
Changing a company culture isn't something you start and then ignore. Like a well-tended garden, a strong culture is the result of continuous creativity and care. It’s important to make accountability a continuing part of the culture through strong communication and follow-up.

Is your company's culture out of alignment?

Post 474 - Culture is a body of learned behavior that goes on over time. A company's culture determines how it responds to everything and anything. Many years ago, Aetna bought a "vanilla" group benefits company. It only had 3,000 employees and Aetna at that time had about 50,000. Aetna's CEO didn’t think it important to assimilate the new company into the its culture. After all, there were only 3,000 of them - what impact could they have?

The Aetna culture was pretty loose back then. But the "vanilla" company's culture was incredibly tight and disciplined so everyone was on the same page. They wound up taking over the Aetna culture and destroying what had been in place for more than a hundred years. Today, Aetna has one line of business - group benefits - instead of the five or six they had before the acquisition. About 18-months after the acquisition, the CEO was quoted as saying that had they understood the importance of culture, they would have approached the acquisition very differently. Of course, by then it was too late and he'd lost his job ... to one of the vanilla guys.

The following are some signs that your company's culture is out of alignment:

- Management is stretched to the limit. All real decisions are made at the top. Employees "upward-delegate" and thus avoid accountability for their actions.

- Gossip is widespread, attributing sinister motives actions taken by senior management. Employees show little interest or awareness in market conditions or in the state of the business.

- There are many different "custom" processes in place and no reliable outcome measures. Turf wars and conflicts between departments and functions are common.

- There's a pervasive atmosphere of complaining, blaming, and accusations of favoritism. Petty grievances and HR issues are common.

- People complain about overwork, that there's no time to "do my job," and "too many meetings." Employees are frequently absent without notice.

- Employees show disdain for change efforts and keep doing things the "old way."

- Employees are uninterested in events outside of their immediate work areas and are reluctant to take on new responsibilities.

- Passive-aggressive behavior is quite common, with employees generally unresponsive and reluctant to talk with management.

- People continually need reassurance about job security and the future of the business.

Any of these signs are troublesome. A company with four or more has a culture that's out of alignment with the requirements of the marketplace and this represents a significant threat to its future success. Companies with an adaptive culture that's aligned to their business goals routinely outperform their competitors by 200% or more. To achieve results like this, you have to figure out what your culture is, decide what it should be, and then move everyone in the desired direction. Tomorrow, we'll explore ways to change culture.

Meeting pitfalls and how to avoid them.

Post 464 - Recent studies have found that 16 of the 45 hours that US workers toil every week are “unproductive,” and that the average executive manages to complete only three hours and fifty minutes of constructive work a day. Two different research studies calculate that wasted time loses the US economy $650 billion a year. Office distractions are a serious problem and in my experience, one of the biggest time-wasters is most companies is badly run meetings. Here are a few of the most common problems and some ideas about how to avoid them:

- Lack of clarity about the meeting's purpose.
If you ask many executives why they go to the Monday morning meeting, they'll say "Because it's Monday, and we always have a meeting first thing on Monday." Or they say, "We're going to talk about sales." Both of these answers focus on activities. People who like to believe they're results-focused are often activity-focused instead. The regular get together becomes more important than its original purpose. One way to deal with this is to spend the opening minutes of every meeting clarifying its purpose and what the meeting is supposed to accomplish.

- Is the meeting really necessary?
A meeting is a transaction where something matters. If it doesn't matter, it shouldn't be held. Meetings convened to share FYIs and project updates can be avoided and information shared by email instead. Unless people are going to have some say in what goes on, you're better off sending them a memo telling them what you want them to do.

- Inadequate preparation.
The following should be decided ahead of time: What's the purpose, who's coming, what's going to be decided, who's expected to present, how long will the meeting run, who will chair it, who will take notes and where will it be held. Use a conference room without a phone to avoid disruption. Distribute an agenda to all participants in advance. Label the agenda as "tentative" and ask for changes and additions at the start of the meeting. The two biggest problems in America today are making ends meet and making meetings end.

- Unclear decision-making process.
Often, participants come to the meeting with only a seat-of-the-pants idea of how they're going to reach agreement. Too often, people mistake politeness for consensus. Fearful of being viewed as dissenters and not good team players, they avoid open disagreement. I remember working with technical staff at National Semiconductor in Greenock, Scotland some years ago and being struck by how effective their meetings were. They refused to go forward with any meeting unless the purpose was clear and the process of making decision was agreed to at the very beginning. While this was often trickier than it first appeared, I found it saved an enormous amount of time and frustration later on.

- Jumping to conclusions.
In reaching a decision, groups rarely establish criteria to use in evaluating solutions. Meeting participants are often impatient and don't want to slow down to think though the issues under discussion. Ignoring a systemic analysis, they lobby instead for a favorite preordained outcome. This usually involves a lot of talking and not much listening which produces flawed meeting results.

- Too many egos.
Very often, meetings consist of dramas where conflicts with little to do with the goal of the meeting are played out in public. Issues get decided not on their merits, but on the competing interests of people at the table. Thus, for political reasons, people sometimes end up opposing ideas they otherwise support. If personal conflict is likely to high-jack a meeting, it's best to use informal consultation or one-on-one sessions instead. Then convene a meeting to talk about what they agree on, what they disagree on, and where there are different views about how to proceed. The first and the second just need to be acknowledged, and productive discussion can then focus on reaching agreement about next steps. Areas of clear disagreement between individuals are best resolved outside the meeting room.

Not enough followup.
Meetings don't end until someone is assigned to take action. So always keep a diary of assignments and check on them regularly to be sure they're being carried out. Otherwise, you don't know how effective your meetings actually are.

Here’s a wonderful recipe for wasting time and money, recounted recently by a VP in a high-technology company:
“The new CEO made a big deal out of fast decisions. His staff all had pagers, cell phones, and wireless e-mail, so they could be reached quickly. He really thought just going faster helped. Do you know how we made faster decisions? We excluded the people who knew our customers and our technologies best. People joked about going to marching-order meetings, because they knew there would be no discussion, only instructions. Our big improvement was getting to market faster with products that only sold if we discounted them so much we couldn’t make our profit targets … We made fast decisions, but we didn’t always make smart decisions.”

How to have more productive meetings.

Post 391 - "Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything," according to John Kenneth Galbraith.

Business people often do a lot of work in meetings. And unfortunately, they can take a lot of time without accomplishing much if they're not managed carefully. The most effective meetings are short and to the point. Good planning helps to make a meeting successful, and an important first step is deciding who to invite. As a general rule, the most productive meetings are those with the fewest number of people attending. Therefore only invite those who will be directly involved in decisions to be made at the meeting, those significantly affected by the decisions, or those who have some specific knowledge to contribute. If the meeting is to cover a variety of issues, ask people to drop in and out when their part of the agenda comes up.

Here are five major strategies for increasing the productivity of meetings:

- Use an agenda:
Give everyone plenty of notice regarding the time and place of the meeting, and stipulate the start and finish times. The best time to schedule a meeting is just before lunch or toward the end of the day as this motivates attendees to focus on the agenda and keeps the meeting from running long. Circulate a draft agenda outlining the topics to be discussed, the time limits assigned to each topic, and the person responsible for each item. Other information you should provide prior to the meeting includes:
- directions to the venue, if the participants haven’t been there before;
- information on who else is attending (particularly helpful if you’re going to include people from outside your company).
- background information and documents relevant to the purpose of the meeting.
- your contact details.

- Select a facilitator:
The person who called the meeting can act as the facilitator, or for regular meetings with standing agendas, the participants can take turns rotating this responsibility. The facilitator is responsible for making sure the meeting remains focused and moves forward at an appropriate pace. He should also regulate whose turn it is to speak, and intervene if the discussion breaks down or goes off track. The facilitator's role is to make sure that there's only one discussion at a time. Participants sometimes start their own “private” meetings; this can be a few whispered asides, or even a full-blown separate discussion. These diversions need to be stopped by addressing those involved directly, asking them politely and assertively if there’s some issue they’d like to raise that's relevant to the topic under discussion.

- Take minutes:
One person should take notes on the main themes and the key points discussed during the meeting. Be sure to include who committed to do what tasks by when. Clarify with the person taking the minutes that they need to write them up and distribute them to all the attendees promptly. They should also be very clear and concise. The key things to note are:
- agreed-upon actions dealing with the issues raised.
- the people responsible for implementing them.
- the deadline or timing for reporting back.
- the date of the next meeting if you've agreed to schedule another one.

- Evaluate the meeting:
Always review and evaluate each meeting and discuss how the next meeting could be improved.

"A thousand cups of wine do not suffice when true friends meet, but half a sentence is too much when there's no meeting of minds" according to a Chinese proverb.

A sad farewell to Saturn.

Post 339 - I was quite depressed last week to learn that GM will finally close down the Saturn brand. Another great idea that ends, not with a bang, but a whimper. I worked with the original design team that started up Saturn in the early 1980s and was proud of the new organizational model they developed. The stated plan at the time according to GM Chairman, Roger B. Smith, was to create a new company using a new model that could inform the changes that GM management knew it had to make. However, this was a fatally flawed strategy for generating change and innovation as GM's corporate culture that has kept it from making the changes it’s been needing to make for the past 30-years. I see Saturn’s demise as another symptom of a fatally flawed corporate culture that has yet to change.

GM's stated hope was to learn, via Saturn, how to create a different, more profitable kind of car company. The Saturn factory was located in Spring Hill, Tenn., a small town 45 miles south of Nashville and hundreds of miles from the hidebound headquarters of GM and the UAW in Detroit. In a Memorandum of Understanding between GM and the UAW, Saturn stated: "We believe that all people want to be involved in decisions that affect them, care about their jobs . . . and want to share in the success of their efforts." The union contract eliminated most of the work rules that strictly limit the tasks UAW members could perform. Workers were called "technicians" and got 80% of standard UAW wages but could share in Saturn's profits, allowing them to earn more if Saturn succeeded. Most Saturn executives and managers were assigned a UAW counterpart, with the two sharing in key decisions.

Saturn's chief apostle at the UAW was Don Ephlin, at the time the visionary head of the union's GM department. Ephlin strongly believed that Detroit's auto makers and its unions had to change from confrontation to collaboration. However, Saturn was eventually killed off by its creators. The company starved Saturn for new products, and the UAW waged war against Saturn's labor reforms to keep them from spreading to other GM factories. The late Steve Yokich, who replaced Ephlin in charge of the UAW´s GM unit when he retired in 1989, was an implacable enemy of the new ideas being introduced at Saturn. Yokich subsequently became president of the union in 1995. The replacement of Michael Bennett as the local union leader at Spring Hill in 1999, signaled the end of an important experiment in cooperative performance based on union-management collaboration.

One of the things that Saturn also aimed to do was to redefine the customer experience - with no haggle pricing and other innovative ideas. In 1994, when the Saturn spirit was in full bloom, 44,000 owners and families attended a ‘homecoming’ at the plant. GM was clearly onto something with this brand in that regard. Unfortunately those methods were born into the wrong system. The segments of the idea which drove brand appeal were systematically killed off over the years by internal forces.

In 2003 the Spring Hill technicians voted to scrap Saturn's special agreement and return to the UAW's standard contract with GM. Spring Hill became a regular GM factory after the last Saturn was built there two years ago. If Saturn had been treated as a long-term investment, been allowed to broaden the product line keeping the original tenets intact, and allowed to continue to exist beyond the traditional stifling GM culture, the rest of GM might have been able to learn something before the US taxpayers had to bail it out. As it is, we can only look back on what might have been. Meanwhile, the Saturn workers' sense of loss is expressed poignantly by Mike Bennett, their former union leader, who says, "I wake up at night sick, thinking about all the things that might have been."

More examples of flexible vacation policies.

Post 326 - Estalea, the Santa Barbara company I mentioned yesterday, has no formally scheduled days off. It believes that its flexible 40-day vacation policy is necessary to balance out the high expectations and efforts put in by its employees. Since the company is very project based, it demands frequent bursts of high output and believes that people need time to recover in between assignments (just like being in school, work hard for a quarter, then take a break, then work hard for a quarter, take a break....etc). Estalea has also found that this vacation policy helps attract and retain top talent.

Depending on your perspective, Steve Swasey is either an oppressed worker or the luckiest guy in the world. As a salaried employee at Netflix, Swasey has no set number of vacation days. He can spend as much time out of his California office as he wants, provided that he gets all his work done. And there's the hitch: Like many of today's competitive professionals, Swasey always has more work to do that he can get to. "We're always on, 24/7," says Swasey, who admits to checking his BlackBerry throughout a trip to Chile with his family. Still, he insists that he and his colleagues are "not being workaholics. It's being engaged with your job because you love what you do." Thanks to Netflix's unlimited vacation policy, Swasey leaves the office a lot. But the office usually goes with him.

We’ve nearly obliterated the line between work and personal life in America. Many of us tend to “live to work” instead of the other way around. We're defined by what we do and achieve, rather than by what we experience and share. But the cultural attitude is entirely different elsewhere. In Europe and Australia for example, you’re not expected to be reachable during nonworking hours or during vacation. So, people there don’t have the same “guilt” pangs we might experience when we aren’t working.

Because of technology's reach, some activists worry that employees without a specified vacation allotment will feel pressure to work constantly, damaging their relationships and their health. Bonnie Michaels, a board member at Take Back Your Time, a nonprofit organization focused on work/life balance, has no problem with informal vacation policies, so long as managers create a culture where employees really can take breaks. "People are always afraid of taking time off if everybody else isn't doing it," says Michaels. A recession can compound that problem. When people feel insecure about their jobs and their wallets, "they probably won't take the time," she says.

Michaels's organization wants the government to require a minimum number of paid vacation days for everyone. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the United States is the only advanced economy without such a mandate. France leads the pack with 30 required vacation days; Japan sets the lowest bar, with 10. About a quarter of private-sector American workers have no paid vacations at all, and the lower your salary, the more likely it is you'll fall into that unlucky group.

38% of workers say that the summer benefit they would most like to have is a flexible schedule, making it the most coveted benefit, according to a survey by the staffing firm OfficeTeam. Best Buy has introduced a program called Results Oriented Work Environment which gives its 4,000 corporate employees the freedom to do their jobs without regard to the hours they put in daily – thus opening up the ability to take personal time off without a lot of prior approvals and scheduling rules. Motley Fool, the online investment adviser, lets employees take as many paid vacation or sick days as they need; the company's director of HR, Lee Burbage, says that most of its 180 workers take three to four weeks a year.

At IBM, each of its 355,000 workers is entitled to three or more weeks of vacation yearly. The company doesn’t keep track of who takes how much time or when, doesn’t give choice vacation times by seniority and doesn’t let people carry days off from year to year. IBM's vacations-without-boundaries system started in the early 1990s, when managers in the HR, finance and technology departments complained that tracking days off was an administrative burden. So the company stopped counting days in a few departments, then gradually expanded the new policy. Since 2003, it‘s covered everyone in the company, from the CEO to workers at IBM's chip and server factories in East Fishkill and Poughkeepsie, New York.

Are you taking enough vacation?

Post 325 - In thinking about learning, I believe one of the things we haven't learned much about recently is leisure and balance in life. Work is such a predominant obsession in American society, especially with the present state of the economy, that those who have jobs often don't have energy or appetite for much else at the end of the day. As for vacation, that's a luxury that's often forgone as well.

American’s failed to take 438-million vacation days in 2007 according to Harris Interactive research group. That's more than any other industrialized nation. As a result, America ranks #1 in depression and mental health problems. Americans are experiencing burnout, reduced productivity, diminished creativity, failed relationships, stress or stress-related ailments such as depression, heart disease or stomach ulcers today in record numbers.

"What we measure affects what we do," says Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. "If we have the wrong measures, we will strive for the wrong things." Happiness, long holidays and a sense of well-being may not be everyone’s yardstick for economic performance, but Nicolas Sarkozy believes they should be embraced by the world in a national accounting overhaul. Sarkozy, the president of France, has suggested gauges of economic health that include personal well-being in addition to GDP. Measures could include:
* Employment levels
* Health care
* Vacation
* Household assets and income
* Consumption
* Education
Mr. Sarkozy said he would urge other world leaders, many of whom are gathering at the Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh toward the end of the month, to adopt new indicators as well.

I remember being shocked when I first came to America in the 1960s and had to give up the six-weeks vacation I was used to in Europe for a one-week first year policy here. However, much has changed since then. Netflix’s awesome vacation policy (basically, the policy is to take the time you think you need), is based on a belief in freedom and responsibility, not rules. At Netflix, there's no limit on vacation because all the company cares about is what people accomplish - not how. Similarly, its travel expense policy is "travel as you would on your own nickel." That's it. No soul-sapping policy manuals. In its first five years as public company, as the business has grown from $100m to over $1 billion in revenue, this commitment to freedom and responsibility has continued to grow. Netflix states, "We've found that by avoiding rules we can better attract the creative mavericks that drive innovation, and our business is all about innovation. We're mitigating the big risk technology companies face (obsolescence), by taking on small risks (running without rules)."

For more information, look up http://www.netflix.com/Jobs (see presentation).

Another company with a progressive vacation policy is Estalea, an innovative entrepreneurial company based in Santa Barbara that's creating a network of new internet businesses. Estalea, maybe because the founders are originally from Norway and have a European perspective on these things, provides a total of 40-days paid time off each year, together with a variety of other benefits.

I believe Francis Quarles, a 17th century English poet, reflected some of my own philosophy when he said, “Put off thy cares with thy clothes; so shall thy rest strengthen thy labor, and so thy labor sweeten thy rest.”

How to manage your boss.

“A man should live with his superiors as he does with his fire, not too near, lest he burn, nor too far off, lest he freeze.” – Diogenes

The rewards of managing your boss more effectively include:
* An easier working relationship.
* Reduced stress.
* An improved image.
* Increased receptiveness to your concerns and needs.
* More support for your career development.

• If your boss loves to talk,
- have a set agenda when you meet that specifies the outcome of the meeting.
- keep him focused on the agenda.
- start the meeting on time and end it (or leave it) on time.

• If you work for an entrepreneur, you’ll probably have very little time to get his attention. It helps:
- to initially present the issue in summary form (less that one page).
- to respect his personal style.
- if you’re dealing with visual person, use pictures and graphs.
- if your boss isn’t detail oriented, quickly present the facts - no big stories.
Realize you won’t change the boss’s behavior but you can change your mode of influence.

• If you work for an analytical boss, let her hear it, see it, think about it, and have time to process it before you get into a discussion to influence the outcome. It’s not very productive to present the answer first and then argue about it later.

• If your boss is unfocused and all over the place, define the priorities that you want covered first before attending meetings with her. Give direct, respectful feedback pointing out where time is being wasted and where the meetings are getting off-track.

• If you need your boss’s approval, work on your presentation until you’re convinced that you’re convincing. Respect the value of your boss’s time when you ask for some of it. When you propose a plan or make a request, package it in terms of the outcomes your boss cares about. Your suggestions are more likely to be approved if they lead to something she wants, or does away with something she doesn’t want.

• Build some goodwill with your boss at the start of a potentially contentious meeting by giving him some positive feedback at the very beginning. Start off by affirming,
- You know I’m on your team.
- I’m here to help, to make life easier for you anyway I can.
- Once we’ve talked this through, I’ll do whatever you decide, irrespective of my own personal feelings.
- This will allow you to express your opinions more freely during the meeting. If your comments are constructive, made in a professional manner with the best interests of the business in mind, and are fact-based, clearly showing that your opinions are well thought out, you should be able to speak out without fear of negative repercussions.

• Often, it’s easier to get the boss’s attention and cooperation early in the morning, before something has gone wrong and spoiled his day.

• Position yourself as a coachable employee. Give your boss feedback in this regard such as, “I heard you say that I was ....... I wouldn’t have thought about that on my own and I’m thankful to you for pointing it out to me. What else should I know?”

• Don’t go over the boss’s head or behind her back as this can permanently ruin
your relationship. Discuss the issue with her first. If it’s something very serious and she does nothing about it, then you may have to go over her head. In some cases, she may be the problem and you don’t feel you can confront her about it.

• But if you do decide to go over her head, this should be a last resort, engaged in only if,
- a very important project is on the line, and there’s an urgent problem your boss continues to ignore.
- your boss is doing something illegal.
- you’ve reason to believe your boss has a serious physical illness, mental illness, or substance abuse problem..
- your boss is doing something (sexual harassment or contracting irregularities) that could lead to a lawsuit.

• In cases like this, be careful to keep your information confidential and discuss it with another only on a need-to-know basis. Document your conversation in an e-mail or a memo for the record, and save a copy for yourself. And always proceed cautiously. You just could be mistaken.

Try using the ideas outlined above to bring understanding and cooperation to a relationship between two people who often have quite different perspectives on the same situation.

How to manage job stress.

Working can be very stressful these days. Living with constant stress can disturb your emotional and physical health. It can narrow your ability to think clearly, function effectively and enjoy your life. To bring your mind and body back into balance, you need to change the way you deal with stress in order to reduce its hold on your life.
Some causes of stress are obvious - job loss, a divorce, the death of a loved one. But small, daily hassles and demands such as a long commute or trouble finding childcare also contribute to your stress level. Over time, small, persistent stressors can wreak more havoc than sudden, devastating events. The ultimate goal is to have a more balanced life, with time for work, relationships, relaxation and fun - and the resilience to hold up under pressure and meet life’s challenges head on.

Here are some helpful suggestions:

- Be more assertive.
Take charge of your thoughts, your emotions, your schedule, and the way you deal with problems. If the evening news makes you anxious, turn the TV off. If traffic makes you tense, take a different, less-traveled route. Cross subjects that upset you off your conversation list. Tackle your problems head on and do your best to anticipate and prevent them. If you’ve got an interview to prepare for and your chatty friend calls, tell him that you’ve only got five minutes to talk.

- Learn how to say “no.”
Know your limits and stick to them. Whether in your personal or professional life, refuse to accept added responsibilities when you’re close to reaching your limit. If you take on more than you can handle, it’s a surefire recipe for increased stress.

- Pare down your to-do list.
Analyze your schedule, and examine your daily tasks. If you have too much on your plate, separate the “musts” from the “shoulds.” Eliminate any tasks that aren’t really necessary.

- Connect with others.
Express your feelings instead of bottling them up. Talk with family, friends, clergy or other trusted advisers about your concerns and stresses and ask for their support. Spend time with positive people who enhance your life. Talking to a trusted friend about what you’re going through can be very helpful, even if there’s nothing they can do to alter your situation.

- Focus on the things you can control.
Many things in life are beyond our control - particularly the behavior of other people. Rather than stressing out over them, focus on how you choose to react to the problems they created. We live in an imperfect world where people make mistakes. Let go of anger and resentments. Free yourself from negative energy - forgive and move on.

- Avoid people who stress you out.
If someone consistently causes stress in your life and you can’t turn the relationship around, limit the amount of time you spend with that person or end the relationship entirely.

- Manage your time better.
When you’re stretched too thin and running behind, it’s hard to stay calm and focused. But if you plan ahead, you can avoid these stress-inducing pitfalls.

- That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Look at major challenges as opportunities for personal growth. If your own poor choices have contributed to your stressful situation, think about them and learn from your mistakes. Focus on the positive and look for the good in situations instead of the bad. When stress is getting you down, take a moment to reflect on all the things you appreciate in your life, including your own positive qualities and gifts.

- Include rest and relaxation in your daily schedule.
Take 15-minutes each day to sit quietly, breathe deeply and think of a peaceful scene. Make time for leisure activities that bring you joy, whether it be stargazing, playing the guitar, or working on your bike and don’t let other obligations interfere. This is your time to take a break from all responsibilities and recharge your batteries.

- Keep your sense of humor.
Especially the ability to laugh at yourself. Laughing enhances your intake of oxygen-rich air, stimulates your heart, lungs and muscles, and increases the endorphins that are released by your brain. Laughing also releases neuropeptides that help fight stress and increase a particular cell activity that's beneficial in fighting diseases such as HIV and cancer. So, find some photos or comic strips that give you a chuckle and hang them at home, in your office, or even on the visor of your car.

- Exercise regularly.
Virtually any form of exercise can decrease the production of stress hormones and counteract your body's natural stress response. The same regular exercise routines that help prevent disease and build muscle can also help you better manage stress. Do something you enjoy every day, like swimming, jogging, golfing, walking, or cycling. Check with your doctor to determine what activity level is right for you.

Finally, don't use smoking, drinking, overeating, drugs or caffeine to cope with stress. They’ll only make things worse. Talk to a mental health professional or counselor if you can't cope on your own. Ask your doctor, family or friends for recommendations. If they can't help, ask a hospital social worker for some names.

How to get a pay raise.

Supposing your fellow workers think you’re terrific. They always come to you first for advice, you’re constantly busy, the CEO knows who you are (at least, you’ve been introduced to her at the Christmas party!). That, however, is seldom enough to get you a raise. Here are some ideas to help you craft a pitch asking for an increase in your pay packet:

What does the boss think?
First, be clear why you think you’re worth more than you’re currently getting. Then ask yourself why you’re worth that much to your boss? Addressing the issue from the boss’s perspective will help you put together a more persuasive case.

Have you done your homework?
Find out what the salary norms are for your job and the industry you’re working in. Compare roles and activities, not job titles, within the company. Ask your HR department to explain how your role is currently benchmarked.

Don’t mind what others earn.
What other people earn isn’t relevant in this situation. Measuring yourself against others is just a prescription for unhappiness. Your value is all about your individual performance, your competencies, and your experience on the job.

Focus on achievement.
Our lives improve only when we take chances - and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves. Don’t confuse effort with achievement - the two are quite different. You may be working your socks off, but if you still haven’t achieved the objectives you agreed to at the beginning of the year, you won’t be viewed as a success. A large consideration in any discussion about a pay raise will be your current and past performance.

Think ahead.
Consider how you’ll respond if your manager says yes, no or maybe. Play the conversation over in your mind. Crying, screaming or slamming the door on your way out shouldn’t be part of that script.

Timing is everything.
Be sensitive to how much stress your manager is under and the severity of his workload. If he’s overloaded already, your demands are likely to be viewed as an unwelcome distraction. If your company uses an appraisal system, that’s the right time to negotiate pay and benefits.

Be cool.
Don’t plead or be too aggressive when you argue your case. And don’t issue any pay-up-or-I-quit style ultimatums. Any manager worth his salt won’t give in to that kind of blackmail.

Be prepared.
Most managers like to deal with employees who’ve done their homework beforehand and who get to the point quickly. Under those circumstances, they’re much more likely to engage in an open and honest conversation with you.

Consider other alternatives.
Since pay is the issue, put that on the table first and foremost, but be open to considering other alternatives as well. Think about proposing additional rewards that the firm might find easier to provide, such as additional time off and/or more flexible working hours.

Ask for a new challenge.
If the answer to all of the above is no, ask for a target that will stretch you or ask for new responsibilities to justify the pay increase you want. Most good managers I know say they’d love it if employees asked for that more often than they do. Nine times out of ten, it’s left up to the manager to suggest it, and since the petitioner didn’t take the initiative, they seldom do so.

Finally, if you get a no, that doesn't mean it's no forever, it means not right now. The path to yes is littered with no's. According to the writer, W. Somerset Maugham, "It’s a very funny thing about life - if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it."

Ten ways to get promoted.

The following suggestions are in no particular order and work best when combined:

1. Work very hard.
Always think two jobs ahead. If the second job will get you what you want, take the first job. Then do the work you were hired to do. Do it without being asked a second time and work harder than anyone else. Don't tell people how hard you work. Show them how much you get done. Under-promise and over-deliver. As the film maker Arthur Freed advises, “Don't try to be different. Just be good. To be good is different enough.”

2. Understand what’s expected of you.
If you don’t know, ask. It’s not weak to ask for help. Studies show people with strong support networks not only move higher in their companies, but live longer and are healthier than their self-sufficient counterparts.

3. Build an internal support network.
If no one knows how great you are, you’re unlikely get ahead. The more people who know who you are, your strengths and abilities, your value to the company and your ambitions, the more likely your name will surface when opportunities come up. Find a mentor - an older, more experienced person a level or two higher in the company, someone you can talk to freely about career and workplace issues. Look for someone with similar values that you can have a good rapport with. Use your mentor to assess your strengths and weaknesses, develop a long-range career plan, and to get the skills you need for success. Your mentor can also give you insight into the company’s culture and warn you about the hot buttons of the key political players.

4. Be unfailingly positive.
Look for ways to get things done rather than complaining they can’t be done. Don't whine or blame others if things don't go your way. Don’t bad mouth other people. Learn how to be right without making others wrong. And don’t spread company gossip. Remember Dale Carnegie’s advice; “If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive.”

5. Volunteer for extra duties.
Ask for more responsibility. Seek out those tasks that have a significant impact on the company’s success. Asking for more work shows your interest and desire to help your department and company prosper. If you see an area that’s been neglected and you have key talents in that area, submit a proposal for a new position. That way, even if your proposal is turned down, you’ll get noticed in a good way.

6. Make your boss’s job easier.
Consistency of action and depth of talent are two key elements of a promoteable employee. Be a reliable go-to person for your boss. If you bring problems, offer solutions as well. And never let your boss be blindsided by bad news. If you think you’re going to miss a commitment, let it be known as soon as you find out. When communicating with higher-ups, be concise and get to the point quickly. Follow the army maxim - BLUF - “bottom line up front.”

7. Take every opportunity you can to keep learning.
Expand your knowledge and skill sets in areas that are critical to the business. If you’re not in a supportive environment in this regard, leave.

8. Be a leader.
Aspire to be a leader at whatever level you operate. Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers. They don't lead by pointing and telling people where to go. They lead by taking a risk and going to that place and making a case for it. They also look over their shoulder every now and then to make sure they’re being followed.

9. Build a reputation for being a team player.
Be cooperative. Check out what others think before you act. Keep other people informed about what’s going on, both the good and the bad. Keep your commitments. Be someone that other people know they can count on. Be honest and truthful, and don't betray confidences. Share the credit for success with everyone involved.

10. Be open to correction.
The first rule of getting ahead is that everything is your fault. It’s through our mistakes that we learn. As Confucius said, "A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it is committing another mistake."

Learning to listen to our intuition.

“ ... it is by logic we prove, but it is by intuition that we discover." - Henri Poincare, 19th Century French Mathematician

When Leonardo da Vinci was painting The Last Supper, he'd work very intensively for days, but then he'd disappear. The prior of the church of Saint Maria Della Grazie didn't understand that Leonardo was a genius. As far as he was concerned, Leonardo was just another painter. The prior said something to the effect that, “I have a contract here. Where's this Leonardo guy? Get him back up on the scaffolding to finish this by the deadline.” Leonardo wouldn't hear of it, so the prior complained to the Duke of Milan who had originally arranged the contract.

The Duke called on Leonardo to explain himself. Leonardo said, “Men of genius sometimes work best when they work least.” He went on to explain to the Duke that he needed time to integrate his thoughts and that sometimes he did his most productive work when he wasn't up on the scaffold, but rather just walking through the streets of Milan. That's where he explored new thoughts; that's where he brought together ideas that hadn't been brought together before.

Most people intuitively understand this, yet they often ignore it. In the past 30-years I’ve asked many people all over the world, “Where were you actually physically located when you got your best ideas?” People have almost invariably responded, “I was lying in bed," "I was out for a walk," "I was driving my car," "I was taking a bath.” They almost never said, “I was in a meeting.”

Great ideas come through using the incubatory power of the mind. One of the refinements of learning how to think is finding a rhythm between intense focus and study — and then letting go completely so that incubation and imagination can take over. This means making time to listen to that very quiet voice that the intuition sometimes speaks in before engaging in another intensive period of what we call “working hard.”

If you're working hard all the time, you can often override the subtle messages of the intuition. But if you just hope to lie around all day and be intuitive, it'll never work because you won't have anything to incubate. It's a matter of finding a rhythm between intense focus and analysis and then shifting modes to be in a more receptive state. We must trust that prior experience has given us intricate inventories and combinations of clues that can signal new ways to take action. As Michael Polanyi says, “We know a lot more than we can tell.”

Business success today demands innovation. There’s a constant need to feel around the fringes and to test the edges. However, business schools teach mostly about what's worked in the past. This not only perpetuates conventional thinking but it stifles innovation as well. If Thomas Edison had gone to business school, we’d all be reading with larger candles today.

Boss or leader?

Are you a boss or a leader? Use this list by Warren Bennis and Robert Townsend to query those who report to you. It makes a nice little written survey. (If you have no one reporting to you, fill it in about the person that you report to instead).

• Do you work with your boss or for your boss?

• Do you have specific goals to meet?

• Do you have enough power and resources to meet your goals?

• Does your boss protect you from useless work, irrelevant interruptions, ridiculous committee meetings and pointless paperwork?

• Do you come to work excited, full of energy, feeling free to make mistakes and fail?

• Do you feel “zap-proof,” safe from punishment for mistakes?

• Do you feel significant at work?

• Do you think you do anything important or meaningful?

• Do you feel you’re at the center of things rather than at the periphery of things?

• Are you learning anything?

• Is your environment educational, a place where people claim they learn more than they did at college?

• Do you feel you're part of a community, group or team?

• Do you feel you belong?

• Are the rewards you receive based on your performance?

• Are you proud of your organization?

Organizations today no longer require loyalty as much as they need commitment. They won’t get that unless individuals can relate to the organization they work for in a very personal way. According to Olympic gold-medal gymnasts, if you’re technically perfect in your routine, you’ll probably score about a 9.4. To get a 10, you have to have the passion to take risks and be unique, in addition to being the best you can be.

Michael Schrage, author of The Relationship Revolution, urges all who want to succeed in this new environment to stop thinking of networks and digital technologies as media for managing information and start thinking about them as media to manage relationships.

Change your point of view.

Looking at the news about the AIG bonus scandal this morning, I'm reminded that managers of large companies must make their peace with the idea that these institutions exist by consent of customers, investors, employees and society at large. All of them must be well served and their judgment on whether they're being well served or not is becoming more and more discriminating.

Increasingly, executive success pivots not on data and information but on interpretation - the ability to quickly make meaning out of still-emerging patterns. In a changing world, the name of the game is improvisation and innovation, not repeating standard responses. As former San Francisco 49er coach, Bill Walsh, once noted, “More than creating, innovation involves anticipating. It’s having a broad base of knowledge on your subject and the ability to see where the game is headed.”

Many senior managers appear to assume that layoffs and downsizing are inevitable in today's economy. But they're only inevitable if senior management hasn’t done its job. That job isn’t to run the business but to grow the business and to create new businesses. That’s supposedly is what the big money's for, creating a healthy top line as well as a healthy bottom line. When that doesn’t happen, people lower down in the company are forced to pay for the incompetence of those higher up. Downsizing is often a way to hide mistakes rather a necessary business strategy.

As Morris Massey reminds us, don’t let a past you can’t change write your future script. Many people still make decisions based on gut-level values formed when they were 20-years old. They should be making decisions with an eye to the future instead. That way, they won’t let their past overtake their future.

If you haven't seen them before, consider viewing Morris Massey’s videos which are available at www.enterprisemedia.com:
- What you are is where you were when....
- What you are is not what you have to be ....
- What you are is where you can see ....

Redefine, redesign and recreate your future by shifting your point of view. “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but in seeing with new eyes” - Marcel Proust

Questioning the 'new.'

“He is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong” according to Thomas Jefferson. The problem is not so much that we learn nothing from history, but that what we learn is too often untrue. In the days when several generations lived together, the patterns of history were much more evident in daily life.

Focusing too much on today replaces the long-term with the short-term, the permanent with the transient, memory with sensation, insight with impulse. There’s no time to look back and little time to think ahead. What we do and what we think is defined by those commercial forces who stand to benefit from a society that moves faster and faster, and by those who stand to profit from our addiction to speed.

Everyday we’re told, “We must learn to live with uncertainty.” When has that ever not been a part of the human condition? Do we assume in previous times of ignorance, superstition and belief in magic that people were living in certainty? A pervasive fault of modern management theory seems to me to be a lack of any appreciation of human history. It's a paradox that, in the midst of pervasive and rapid technical and social change, human personality hasn’t altered throughout recorded history. We've all inherited preferred habits of thought that influence how we make decisions and interact with others. However, we're not always conscious of what these are.

Stephen Bertman in Hyperculture: The Human Cost of Speed reminds us that one of the defining elements of any society is that we don’t realize how the culture we’re in defines our perceptions and determines our values. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with fast per se - but there’s everything wrong with too fast. Once we commit ourselves exclusively to what’s fast, we miss out on other things that are important, such as perspective, personal and spiritual growth. If we go too fast without questioning its impact on us as human beings, we suffer something like the effects of oxygen deprivation at high altitudes. So we shouldn’t just accept that electronic speed-of-light technology is self-justifying, but rather question its impact on that part of us that requires a real human interface. There are certain valuable aspects of life that can only come with time, slowness and duration.

Every time you find something ‘new,’ try to figure out what it’s an imitation of. Don’t be fooled by speed or by the mystique of the future. Because if you look closely enough at the present and the past, there’s usually a way of understanding everything that seems so new.

The persistance of history.

I often wonder why more progress hasn't been made in adopting the ideas championed by Cemex, Ford and the many other companies I've described here. I was thinking about this general topic again this morning and here's where I ended up:.

Edward Gibbon, writing in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, claims that human nature never changes and that history is determined by mankind's predilection for faction, self-seeking and contention, augmented by environmental and cultural differences. Gibbon teaches that, despite technological advances, the tragedy for so much of the world is how societies are still ancient in a political sense. People in poor nations, he writes, exhibit "a carelessness of futurity." And even amid the "progress" of the developed world, many of our institutions remain corrupt and decadent because of money (this is in the news every day now). Economist Kenneth Boulding's summary of world history is that "Wealth creates power and power destroys wealth." I don’t look for all this to change anytime soon. As Joseph Campbell observed in the forward to The Masks of God, "I can see no reason why anyone should suppose that in the future the same motifs already heard will not be sounding still ... put to use by reasonable men to reasonable ends, or by madmen to nonsense and disaster."

Specialists who see organizations through the lens of their particular profession often fail to understand the reality of political life. In politics, we're commonly faced with choices among necessary evils. Many human problems can never be finally solved because the ultimate values involved are at odds with one another. Values like economic progress and settled communities can't always be made compatible. Sometimes we must choose between them. In this sense, the search for the perfect organization or the perfect society is the pursuit of an illusion. And organizations aren't laboratories in which scientific theories can be tested by observation and experiment. Outcomes often depend on political judgment and good political judgment requires courage and luck, an artist's sense for place and time, and an instinct for what is and what isn't workable. The qualities that make a great politician are as elusive as those that make an artistic genius.

History however provides patterns which give us alternative contexts for thought and action. It's a shame that examples of learning from experience are as rare as diamonds on the beach. "If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us," commented Samuel Coleridge. "But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern which shines only on the waves behind us."

Rather than learning from history, most of us follow instead the siren song of the poet, Christina Rossetti:

The downhill path is easy, come with me and it please ye,
We shall escape the uphill by never turning back ....

Learnings from Cemex.

IT can lock in business-as-usual by simply using new technology in the service of old principles. However, at Cemex, automation is not the essential point; the philosophy isn't to try to control everything. As Darwin once said, it’s not the strongest species that survive nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change.

The conflicting choices that are the essence of paradox make most people uncomfortable because of the perceived need to choose between seemingly bipolar opposites. It’s human nature to prefer, to seek out, and even to expect certainty. Paradoxes threaten that traditional world order. A common way to handle this is to “fix” on one polarity and to see the world as “either / or,” rather than attempting to reconcile the two polarities with “both / and” thinking.

Nowhere is this more prevalent than in management's choice of order over disorder. While this option had worked well for Cemex in the past, it was clear to management that it no longer worked and would become even more dysfunctional in the future. According to CEO, Lorenzo Zambrano, "We spent so much time teaching our organization to be systematized and orderly that it could no longer respond quickly enough in a fast-changing environment."

William A. Orme Jr., a longtime American writer on Mexico, refers to the "cult of the licenciado." Literally, the word means someone who has a college degree, someone who can make things happen, usually from behind a desk. Traditionally, all information goes to the licenciado and all decisions come from him (or don't, which is where the classic bureaucratic swamp begins). What Cemex is doing - giving employees the knowledge that they need and the authority to use it, to make and keep their commitments - turns that old tradition upside down. Cemex people like to use the English word "empowerment." North of the border, this term may have lost some of its freshness, but in Mexico it still has the ring of a call to arms.

Finally, a quote from The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff

The masters of life know the Way,
for they listen to the voice within them.

The voice of wisdom and simplicity,
the voice that reasons beyond Cleverness
and knows beyond Knowledge.

That voice is not just the power
and property of a few,
but has been given to everyone.

Those who pay attention to it
are too often treated as exceptions to a rule,
rather than as examples of the rule in operation,
a rule that can apply to anyone who makes use of it.

Why Cemex works.

For all the money Cemex has spent on information technology - an estimated 1% of its annual revenue - the first thing its executives say is that none of this was really about computer monitors or digitized truck schedules. The Guadalajara ops center's machines might as well be a pile of rusted-out filing cabinets for all the importance that Cemex's philosopher-engineers attach to them when they are deep into what they call "the conversation."

The conversation is an ongoing process of top-to bottom self-examination. Conversations are where things are invented. People talk about what they do and what they can do better, that's how they find out where they need to focus their efforts. After six to eight months of conversations, Cemex realized that it had to reinterpret what it was doing. Conversations started by asking, “What is it we want?" searching for anomalies and examining the conventional wisdom - which was, 'We have to schedule deliveries one day ahead of time. Why? Because that's the way we’ve always done it.'

The foundation for what Cemex calls its Sincronización Dinámica de Operaciones is a set of business-process software and expert programs painstakingly gleaned by a team of Cemex specialists during nearly a year of meetings - 40 in all - in which the Guadalajara crew were grilled on the realities of their jobs: Thursdays and Fridays are busier because builders like to let concrete set over a weekend. The summertime's afternoon rains mean more morning deliveries. In this kind of world, you can throw linear programming out the window. The time it takes to go from point A to point B is a function of experience. What you're putting together is a world of judgments, not a world of facts. Fed with streams of day-to-day data - customer orders, production, traffic problems, roadwork in progress, even changing weather conditions - the result is what software designers call an adaptive system, one that actually gets smarter the longer it runs.

Operating over a PC-based LAN are the book-sized onboard computers and GPS relays that sit by each driver. The machines have a screen for ops center messages and customized buttons: "Leaving plant," or "Arrived at site," or "Customer not ready." The data meshes seamlessly with the rest of the system. "If a route normally takes 15-minutes, and after 15-minutes the driver isn't there, we'll get an alarm," says Suárez. The result is three integrated systems: one for taking orders, another for checking a customer's financial profile, and the last for tracking software the ops room dispatchers use. And the whole thing is accessible through Cemex's global WAN by any staffer in the world armed with the right passwords.

But the technology only works effectively if the rest of the organization - governance, structure, people and decisions are designed to fit in a complimentary way.