O Tell Me The Truth About Love, a poem by W H Auden.

Post 343 - Wystan Hugh Auden, who signed his works W. H. Auden, was born in York, England, in 1907 and graduated with a degree in English literature from Christ Church, Oxford in 1928. A prolific writer, Auden was a noted poet, playwright, librettist, editor, and essayist. Generally considered the greatest English poet of the twentieth century, his work was a major influence on succeeding generations of poets on both sides of the Atlantic. As a young man, he visited Germany, Iceland, and China, served in the Spanish Civil war, and in 1939 moved to the United States where he became an American citizen. He divided most of the second half of his life between residences in New York City and Austria. He died in 1973 at age of 66 in Vienna.

Auden was a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets from 1954 to 1973. He was honored with the Pulitzer prize, the National Book Award, and the Bollingen, Alexander Droutsky, and Guinness prizes. He joined ASCAP in 1958, and collaborated musically with Igor Stravinsky. His musical works include On This Island (poems set to music), and the opera The Rakes Progress.

He once observed, "Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh."

O Tell Me The Truth About Love by W H Auden

Some say love's a little boy,
And some say it's a bird,
Some say it makes the world go around,
Some say that's absurd,
And when I asked the man next-door,
Who looked as if he knew,
His wife got very cross indeed,
And said it wouldn't do.

Does it look like a pair of pyjamas,
Or the ham in a temperance hotel?
Does its odour remind one of llamas,
Or has it a comforting smell?
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,
Or soft as eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.

Our history books refer to it
In cryptic little notes,
It's quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic boats;
I've found the subject mentioned in
Accounts of suicides,
And even seen it scribbled on
The backs of railway guides.

Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,
Or boom like a military band?
Could one give a first-rate imitation
On a saw or a Steinway Grand?
Is its singing at parties a riot?
Does it only like Classical stuff?
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?
O tell me the truth about love.

I looked inside the summer-house;
It wasn't over there;
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,
And Brighton's bracing air.
I don't know what the blackbird sang,
Or what the tulip said;
But it wasn't in the chicken-run,
Or underneath the bed.

Can it pull extraordinary faces?
Is it usually sick on a swing?
Does it spend all its time at the races,
or fiddling with pieces of string?
Has it views of its own about money?
Does it think Patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.

When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I'm picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.

How much is your product or service really worth?

Post 342 - I read that there's a taxi driver in Essex, Vermont who'll take fares anywhere they want to go in and around Essex - for whatever they want to pay! Since his payment policy is so flexible, Hagen (that's the taxi driver's name) has taken some strange trades: one customer gave him a $10 grocery card, and a local musician gave him his group’s CD. But since he started doing this, Hagen says he hasn’t been short-changed once. “I believed from the start that this would work,” he said. “I believed that people are going to be generous enough to make it worth my while, and I’m going to be generous enough to let them decide.” So it seems that when you match pay-what-you-will with a face-to-face, conscience-inducing contact, it’s not a very risky proposition. How would this work in larger settings?

Well, there's a law firm in Chicago called Valorem Law Group that uses “Value Line Adjustments” in its pricing. The company says:
On each bill, you have the right to make any adjustment to our proposed fee that you feel is needed. We provide value or you adjust the bill, it’s that simple. We do this to give you the ultimate check on our unwavering commitment to client service, and to eliminate the concern that our level of service will wane once the work we’ve performed exceeds a given flat rate or capped fee allotment. Some have said that the Value Adjustment Line is extremely risky. We agree. If we aren’t willing to risk our own fees on our service, do you really want us advocating for you?

Valorem's alternative fee arrangements, with flat rates, hold-back buckets, contingency or even premiums on achieving certain milestones, give the firm an economic interest in achieving the results that clients desire, so its lawyers have every incentive to collaborate on every matter.

Patrick Lamb, one of the firm's founders, believes there are two over-arching truths about customer service that are worth thinking about every day you're in business:

1. You need to know what your client thinks about you. In detail. Not asking, assuming you know, drawing inferences - those approaches are for losers. Ask. Ask aggressively, that means framing your questions in ways that are designed to elicit criticism. Never lose sight of the truth that no one is perfect. Because that's so, every client should have criticisms which you should view as suggestions on how you can improve performance or the delivery of value.

2. The second truth is that if you hear the word "fine" (as in, "everything is fine"), understand that you've just been sentenced to death. If you doubt this, remember it the next time you're out at a restaurant having a mediocre or worse meal, and your waiter asks how everything is, and you answer with "everything is fine." You need clients who are more than satisfied, more than pleased. You need clients who are advocates, who think you're so great that they want to have legal problems just so they can deal with you.

What would your customers pay for your product or service if you asked them to pay only what they thought it was worth? I know AT&T would get very little money from me until they come through with the $50 refund they promised me when I signed up for their internet service back in March. It seems their every effort since then has been to make it as difficult as possible to contact them and to otherwise styme my efforts to get a satisfactory resolution of this issue.

Also ask yourself how loyal are your customers? How much do you know about what they really think about you? Ron Baker of the Verasage Institute notes that loyalty isn't dead in the business world. What's dead is a reason to be loyal. He notes that to earn customer loyalty, you have to invest in the relationship with your customers, not just satisfy their existing needs. You must move your firm from the Passive (satisfaction-based) to the Interactive (commitment-based) side of the Customer Relationship Scale and develop a long-term partnership with your customers. That's how Disney creates "Moments of Magic" and superior financial results.

How to develop exceptional customer service.

Post 341 - Joel Spolsky and Michael Pryor are co-founders of Fog Creek Software, a New York company that proves that you can treat programmers well and still be highly profitable! Programmers get private offices, free lunch, and work 40 hours a week. Customers only pay for software if they’re delighted. The company also makes FogBugz, a project management system designed to help great teams develop brilliant software, and Fog Creek Copilot, which makes remote desktop access easy. As a startup software company in 2000, Fog Creek couldn’t afford to hire customer service people for the first couple of years, so the founders did it themselves. The time they spent helping customers took away from improving their software, but they learned a lot and now have a much better customer service operation as a result. They believe that when customers have a problem and you fix it, they’re actually going to be even more satisfied than if they never had a problem in the first place.

Spolsky says, "It has to do with expectations. Most people’s experience with tech support and customer service comes from airlines, telephone companies, cable companies, and ISPs, all of whom provide generally awful customer service. It’s so bad you don’t even bother calling any more, do you? So when someone calls Fog Creek, and immediately gets through to a human, with no voice mail or phone menus, and that person turns out to be nice and friendly and actually solves their problem, they’re apt to think even more highly of us than someone who never had the opportunity to interact with us and just assumes that we’re average ... So whenever someone calls to complain about a problem, we look on that as a great opportunity to create a fanatically devoted customer, one who will prattle on and on about what a great job we did."

He goes on to say, "The no-questions-asked 90-day money back guarantee was one of the best decisions we ever made at Fog Creek. For example, use Fog Creek Copilot (a job listing service) for a full 24 hours, call up three months later and say, 'hey guys, I need $5 for a cup of coffee. Give me back my money from that Copilot day pass,' and we’ll give it back to you. Try calling on the 91st or 92nd or 203rd day. You’ll still get it back. We really don’t want your money if you’re not satisfied. I’m pretty sure we’re running the only job listing service around that will refund your money just because your ad didn’t work. This is unheard of, but it means we get a lot more ad listings, because there’s nothing to lose ... Customers know that they have the power in the relationship so they don’t get abusive. Over the last six years or so, letting people return software has cost us just 2%."

Many qualified people get bored with front line customer service. So to compensate for this, Fog Creek doesn’t hire technical people into those positions without first making it part of an explicit career path. As a result, customer support is just the first year of a three-year management training program that includes a master’s degree in technology management from Columbia University. This allows Fog Creek to hire smart, ambitious people who then start out on a terrific career path by talking with customers and solving their problems. The company ends up paying quite a bit more than average for these positions (which includes $25,000 a year in tuition), but it gets far more value out of them too.

So the moral is - listen to customer-facing employees - they're your ear to the pavement. Value them, ask them what they're hearing from customers, and train them how to listen for the right information. As I've noted here before, Customer focus, Collaboration, Coordination and Communication are the four Cs for organizing your business successfully in the 21st century.

How to build customer loyalty.

Post 340 - "Customer" is derived from the Latin word custom, meaning a relationship built on faith over a long period of time. One of the things that Saturn did really well was to develop and retain customer loyalty. The company knew how to serve its customers the way they wanted to be served — simply. Policies and practices were based on a belief that trust, honesty, and respect were the ingredients for success in any relationship, including a relationship with its customers.

To truly understand its customers’ motivations and ultimately why they would or wouldn't buy its products, Saturn asked potential customers about their purchase experiences. With the purchase as the "end goal," they studied the steps the customers took to achieve that goal. They asked about their thought process as they took each step and the obstacles that got in their way. Understanding these answers helped to create products and services that real customers — not their demographic category — truly wanted. As a result, it inaugurated a no-dickering price negotiations policy.

People that bought Saturns made “pilgrimages” to its Smyrna factory, enjoying picnics and rallies with other owners. Saturn was creating brand-loyalty where “the experience” was more important to its buyers than getting a great deal off the sticker price of a car (in fact the marketing-of-loyalty was cheaper for Saturn than discounts and rebates). In an industry where the average customer loyalty rate hovered around 40% in the mid 90s, Saturn excelled at more than 60%.

I've found the payoff for customer focus holds true in every industry. For example, once, when Elvis Presley was a guest at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, he wanted a pool table in his room. He and his buddies wanted to be able to play any time they felt like it. The problem was it was Sunday evening and all the stores were closed. Jim Connelly was tired and ready to go home after a long weekend at work. But Elvis was a faithful client of the hotel and Connelly wanted to make sure he continued to be. At that time, as the hotel's general manager, he'd developed many friends and contacts in Beverly Hills. Through some connections he got the private telephone number of a pool table store-owner and told him he needed to rent a pool table for a week. He agreed and had the table delivered that night.

Elvis’ room was on the 10th floor and that was a big problem. Connolly gathered all the strong guys who were just leaving to go home, and lucky for him, they were very flexible that night as well. Through amazing feats of strength, slick maneuvers and much blood, sweat and tears, they delivered the pool table through a cramped service elevator to Presley's room that night. Elvis was very grateful and actually humbled by their efforts. Connolly could easily have told him that pool tables weren’t allowed in guest rooms or that all the stores were closed and he'd have to wait until tomorrow. But he knew that through this one big moment of being “flexible,” there would be great dividends to follow. The result was that not only did Elvis keep returning to the hotel, he referred countless others there as well.

Check what your Customer Promises and Commitments are (all stated in terms of outcomes):
* We’ll be friendly.
* We’ll be professional.
* W’ill be helpful.
* We’ll be proactive.
• Etc etc

Where are these written down? Are they visible? Does everyone know them? Can they repeat them if asked? Do you track how well they’re being followed? Are people held accountable for following them?

As Jim Rohn once observed: "If you make a sale, you can make a living. If you make an investment of time and good service in a customer, you can make a fortune

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."

Hay for the Horses, a poem by Gary Snyder.

Post 338 - Gary Snyder was born in San Francisco in 1930 and has worked as a poet, essayist, travel writer, translator, and educator since then. He received his BA in anthropology at Reed College, Portland, and subsequently studied oriental languages at UC Berkley, and Linguistics at Indiana University. He's been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 1968, the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1974; the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1997; the John Hay Award for Nature Writing in 1997; and most recently the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2008. He lived in Japan for 12-years and on his return, served for many years as a faculty member at the University of California, Davis, where he's now Professor Emeritus of English. A prominent environmental activist, Snyder's philosophy of life is, "Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there."

Hay for the Horses by Gary Snyder.

He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous Mountain roads,
And pulled in at eight a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
behind the barn.
With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch of haydust in the
sweaty shirt and shoes.
At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
---The old mare nosing lunchpails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds---
"I'm sixty-eight" he said,
"I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that's just what
I've gone and done."

Learning from the past.

Post 337 – I’ve been watching the 1974 BBC series, Fall of Eagles, the past few weeks (highly recommended) which dramatizes the events leading up to the first World War. Since the same nations went to war again 25-years later, it seems they didn’t learn a lot from their previous experiences. This inability to learn from the mistakes of past seems to be part of the human condition - and hence this post.

You can never successfully plan the future by the past, believing that the past is like the present, only in fancy dress. “History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days,” to quote the ever-eloquent Winston Churchill.

Proust says of our past, “It's a labor in vain to try to recapture it; all the efforts of our intellect are useless. The past is hidden somewhere outside its own domain in some material object which we never suspected. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon it before we die.”

In James Joyce’s Ulysses, Stephen Daedalus sits in the National Library in Dublin on June 16, 1904 and says, “In the future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now, but by reflection from that which I shall be.” The whole thrust of Ulysses is its recognition that seemingly “inevitable” events are “lodged in the room of the infinite possibilities they have ousted.”

We should question the notion of a singular grand narrative, of a verifiable and recoverable past. There’s no single history, only a collection of self-interested histories, usually written by the winners, each composed at the mercy of its own moment of creation and of the way it was captured.

All this is not to say that we shouldn’t confront our own past but rather we should do so in ways that are buoyant, open and focused on the future. A study of history shows the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by defeat. Their philosophy was one of hope, even when their track record was previously one of despair. They made the most progress when they incorporated a perspective that audaciously reimagined their problems and opportunities.

As an exercise over the coming weekend, I suggest you make a list of your every accomplishment and so document your history of success. List the awards you’ve won, all the training you’ve completed, and include examples where you’ve gone above and beyond what would normally have been expected in every area of your life. Reviewing this list will boost your self-confidence, thus allowing you to use your past to reimagine your future in a more confident and positive way.