That’s right. Be a WOW yourself. Wow people with what you accomplish. That’s leading by example. You can be the most junior employee on your first day and you can do this. Just WOW those around you with your focus, your effort, your commitment to being the best. Be the best. Be a Wow. Give your colleagues, neighbors, family and friends something impressive, inspiring to talk about.
Step Two: Help Others Be a WOW
Taking step one earns you this right. You set the example, see? Being a Wow yourself is the first step to help others be a wow. You show them what is possible. Then help them start their journey. First off, don’t quit being a wow. Then find tools and resources to help them be a wow.
Be supportive, be helpful. Be encouraging.
If you are a leader or manager, then gather the tools and resources to help those in your organization be a wow.
Be a bulldozer, smashing obstacles that interfere.
Find the budgets. Tell the stories of your WOWs so that those budgets are directed towards helping develop more WOWs or helping your current WOWs wow more people.
No budget? No problem. Ever heard of the internet, google? Go out there and find the free resources that wait for you. They are everywhere and surrounded by people who want to help.
I searched for ‘Wow Customer Service Stories’ stories. Guess how many results came back in .90 seconds? 20.5 million. I bet a mere 1% of these stories - 330,000 - describe ways and steps, strategies and plans, you can share to help inspire others in customer service to Be a WOW. Wait. AND...they will require no budget meetings, no powerpoint presentations or turf battles. You share it, you ask if they want to do it, you ask how can we do it. You do it. You help each of them Be a WOW in the process.
Then you WOW your customers.
Now you have proof of concept. Your proof are all the stories from you, your colleagues and your customers.
Step Three: Let Your Customers Share Your WOW.
This is easy. You have earned their respect, their trust. Your WOWs have inspired them. They will tell your story for you, in their words, in the right context and setting.
That’s Word-of-Mouth. Well, it’s word-of-mouth that matters. It is the words from the mouths that matter: your customers, internal and external, employees and customers.
Step Four: Join Their Conversations. Join means as equal participant. That means you listen, you recognize, you thank, you learn.
I opened a box of DiGiorno's pizza this past weekend. ( No, it wasn't delivered; it was frozen. )
I turned on the oven. And while it heated up I slit the plastic wrapper around the pizza: Chicken Supreme, Supremo, something.
Anyway, as I picked out the onions (I see onions as flavorings, spices and not an entrelevel vegetable) I wondered about the quality-control. Then I thought about the decline in the numbers and authority of government inspectors and the success (NOT) of self-regulation, self-inspection in the food industry.
Then I began to imagine DiGiorno's hired their own inspectors, invested in real food-safety as the basis of food quality. (Crazy, I know.)
Then I thought....
What if DiGiorno's hired enough food inspectors to make a difference. I don't know the number. I bet they do.
Those food inspectors could be former government food inspectors.
And they gave their own food inspectors the mandate to make their kitchens, their food, their preparation....everything the cleanest of clean in the business.
And these inspectors reported directly to the CEO, CFO, COO. And their reports were made part of their regular review sessions.
And those reports, those results, were published throughout the empire of DiGiorno's. Every plant, every cafeteria, meeting room, conference room...hallways.
You know those factories that report 234 DAYS SINCE OUR LAST ACCIDENT? Well, what if they did the same for food quality, safety?
234 DAYS SINCE THE LAST RAT DROPPING...
Ok, that's unfair to DiGiorno's. And I'm just being illustrative. They don't have any as far as inspectors report and they self-report. (But, who knows? Right?)
And then, they gave a face to these inspectors.
A site was created for these inspectors to talk about their day, their procedures, their results.
Create a video or two.
Show the stats...publicly.
Create one of those QR codes and clicks to it would take you to this site showing these stats as well as the calories and vitamins of Chicken Supreme, Supremo...whatever. Anyway.
What if those C-Suite guys/ladies would mandate their inspectors to be leaders and speak out on the need for food safety and share their state of the art procedures and, and, the ROI from this investment. Lower COGS, higher cash-flows, lower rates of return, spoilage, more testimonials from customers....
And what if when the CFO asked how will they pay for this, then the CMO says:
Take it out of our budget. Ads just aren't productive. And those silly viral videos we created are just that: silly. What would really help us grow our customer base, generate repeat sales and referral business would be to create a level of such trust with our customers...and make it easy for them to share why they trust us...and make it easy for others to talk about our investment in trust with our customers and employees...that we are seen not as leaders in the food industry but in the areas of innovative marketing, brand loyalty, word-of-mouth, employee engagement, transparent leadership....our customers would love to tell our story and their role in it.
A friend of mine shared this video on Facebook. It’s his daughter singing singing her song You Lift Me Up. It’s about her dad. Her song was selected as the top entry for the intermediate division of the original music category for the National PTA sponsored Reflections Program.
Their story was posted on YouTube. Their story was shared by her dad on Facebook. Her dad’s my friend. We share a lot of friends together. Now, we’re connected with this story. We’re sharing it.
I’m sharing it with you.
With social media, these stories can be shared today to build and strengthen our connections today. We can share the moment, these personal moments, together. Today.
This is what social media’s about. This is what life's about.
She opened their packaging and found the pants she’d ordered were already on hangars. What did she say?
Wow. They’re on hangars.
Great first impression. First impressions remain important. She said Wow. They’re on hangars before she even looked at the pants.
How much did those hangars and this first WOW impression cost? A nickel? A dime?
What’s the ROI of this WOW moment?
1. Word-of-mouth. Wow’s said by hundreds, thousands, of their customers. X percent will mention that to their friends and family. In my wife’s case, the pants didn’t fit. (They looked great, she looked great. Whatever. Don’t get me going. ) She’s returning them. This time she'll say I love how they hang their pants on hangars.
2. Customer Loyalty. I guarantee if these pants had not arrived packaged and hung with care that she would A. return them for another pair; B. shop again. Instead, she would have returned them for a refund. Trust me, she would get a refund, not a credit.
3. More word-of-mouth. I’m telling you this story.
Competition in women’s apparel has to be tough. The pants my wife bought could have been bought anywhere. And she ended up returning them.
But she’ll send them back and try another pair. And she'll remember this pleasant experience the next time she considers Cabela's.
Is it JUST the hangar? Not by itself, no. A hangar can’t hide bad clothing, poor delivery, missing service.
But, it does make their customer smile a little bit as they first admire that the pants came on a hangar. First impressions remain important.
And that’s what you want. You want some thing, some way, to make your product shine a little bit more in your crowded market, make the customer smile a little bit more and say...wow, look what they did! to everyone around them.
And a hangar only costs...a nickel.
Generating word-of-mouth isn’t about great big campaigns. It’s the little things that add up to a ‘wow’. We can’t keep our mouths shut when we’re wowed.
* Disclaimer: I said Wow. They’re on hangars, too!
If creating world peace starts with each of us*, then surely creating a culture of innovation starts...with each of us.
There is nothing more unique than each of us. We each have the most unique combination of talents, skills, strengths and motivations. That makes each of us, a walking one-man, one-woman, one-person, innovation that offer an unique window on the world and solves an unique challenge.
We also have our own unique combination of resources, mental or emotional or physical or spiritual, to create and sustain our own unique culture of innovation.
It makes each of us a walking niche-market that with no real competitors possible.
See, this is maybe the coolest part. Having no real competitors...then there's no need to fear others. Their talents, etc, are just as unique. And their one-person niche market is just as unique as ours.
Niche markets can rarely compete against each other (despite what we're taught in school and business). That means...wait for it....niche markets and their owners can...collaborate with each other and create an even bigger, better, b-b-b-badder niche market than they could create on their own.
But before we go there, we need to continue on our own personal journey.
That's the journey to create our culture of innovation includes both its greatest challenge and greatest solutions. It's these questions and their answers:
What do we want?
What are our dreams?
What would we like to create? (Mike Wagner, CEO of White Rabbit Group offered that as question for your interviewees. Before I met Mike, I offered a candidate the opportunity to create his...world, at the company. What can you create? Give me a budget and what you can create. He giggled nervously. Never answered. Guess he wanted a cubicle. )
What are our strengths? What makes us stand out? When do we feel invincible? What are we doing?
Dave Rendall of the Freak Factor blog encourages his readers to be freaks.
By freak he means find and pursue the strengths that make you stand out from our peers, our colleagues, our family.
By freak he means what is our unique combination of talents/skills/strengths/motivations and community...that showcases each of us as the most unique solution for our universe. Find those features and showcase them so the whole world, our future collaborators, can see what a truly awesome combination of talents, motivations, passions and strengths we offer.
Otherwise, we're like everybody else. We disrespect our abilities and our solutions become just drab copies of the person in the next cubicle. Here's Dave talking about the difference between making copies and making originals:
Be a freak.
Ok. But, strengths in seclusion create an odd little personality. It's only in community where we start to see the synergies (sorry for the buzzword) from collaborating with other freaks.
What to do?
Network, network, network.
Let’s find our community. Talk with them.
Our unique combinations find their fulfillment with our community. That’s the best people we attract when we honor our strengths. They are the people waving their own freak flag.
Work may not be the place you find your community.
Start your own social media campaign.
Listen, first. Read blogs, read twitter, watch YouTube videos tagged with relevant words for you and your strengths.
Search for our blogs. Use blogsearch.google.com or technorati. Comment on each other’s blogs. Promote each others blogs.
Blog. Blogs are the foundation of your social media campaign. Start one. Write in it regularly. Each of us. Write what incites, inspires, outrages, gives us hope, makes us despair, makes us laugh.
Twitter. You're not on Twitter? Why. Open an account today. Search Twitter in the same way you searched YouTube. Use terms relevant to your interest. Share your interests in tweets. Tweet a lot...of content meaningful to you, to your followers, to their interests.
Follow each other on Twitter. Search for our names. Use Group Tweet to
set up private groups. Then group together. (This is something new I
found from Drew McLellan, Top Dog of McLellan Marketing Group.)
Find a mastermind group. Join a peer advisory board. Attend a conference about your interests.
Pam Slim is the author of Escape from Cubicle Nation. Nothing kills unique like assembly lines, whether on a factory floor or an office floor filled with look alike cubicles. She helps people escape...and thrive, wave their freak flag, by finding what is their passion and strengths and then connecting to others who want that combination. It’s called being an entrepreneur by some.
Her workshops generate rave reviews from all her participants. I asked her why. She said...It’s the people. The people who come is what makes them great. I have no idea what magic fairy dust attracts the right people to the live events. The quality of interaction and amount of support and different kinds of creative business ideas is really special.
Unique begets unique. These are our fellow freaks. Let's find them. Bind with them. Let our freak flags fly in full glory.
Keep a notebook. Jack did. His progress is chronicled in the book Jack’s Notebook, by Gregg Fraley. A notebook brings a little order, organization, to any idea generating project. Jack’s Notebook offers a systematic means to innovate solutions for our challenges. It’s also a great story. Get it. Read it. Start your notebook.
Be Strategic. My friend and author, Erika Andersen, wrote Being Strategic. I love this book. I’ve said it many times. It’s a business fable, like Jack’s Notebook.
She coins a term I use in my interviews with guests on my radio show. The term is reasonable aspiration or hoped-for goal. Change for change sake is ...interesting. Change in the direction of reaching a reasonable aspiration or hoped-for goal is...very interesting. Meaningful. Useful. Read her book.
Be our own remarkable leader. We, each of us, are remarkable.
Kevin Eikenberry helps his clients, his blog readers, his followers on Twitter become the remarkable leader they already are.
People say we’re remarkable when we can answer clearly those first questions in this post. Kevin offers a systematic plan and resources that brings out those answers from each of us, for each of us. Then to our community. Fly freak flag, fly. We’re remarkable.
Find resources to help us grow.
We are our own CEOs, unique, remarkable. We need more than wonder bread to help our strengths grow 12 ways. We need to surround ourselves, feed ourselves, with resources and wisdom that helps us continue to grow.
Mike Myatt offers a place, resources and wisdom, where CEOs come to grow.Read him. His blog is N2Growth. Follow his advice. Grow. As our own CEO, grow.
Help someone be greater than ourselves
It’s not my idea. It’s Steve Farber’s. Steve’s an expert on extreme leadership. Yes. I used the word expert. Steve is that. He’s an expert on helping each of us be...well, extreme leaders. Leaders are those who stand out, above, at the front of...crowds. Steve helps us not only be leaders but be extreme leaders. Be WAY out in front.
That’s cool. It is.
And it becomes very meaningful, when we reach back and help someone else be...an extreme leader, even greater than our self. Steve offers resources and plans for each of us to reach back and help someone be greater than our self. It is his Greater Than Yourself project.
And leading by example, he shares his journey mentoring his project, Tommy Spaulding who is CEO of Up with People. He calls it Steve's GTY. Very inspiring.
I realized this as I edited some typos yesterday. This is just one approach, from one person: me.
There are many other options, resources, tools and fellow flag-wavers with unique, one-of-a-kind, all-world, one-person niche markets. Put together, we make a near infinite assortment of possible collaborations, each that creates its own unique, one-of-a-kind unbeatable solution. Or not. Maybe it would create an unique learning lesson with fruits borne later.
Bottomline. What's yours. Find yours. Share them with others.
Final thoughts
Innovation starts with us. It starts as we begin to first answer those questions for ourselves. But as we do, there are many resources to help us in our journey. A few are listed in this post. But the most important resource is you, me, each of us. And...and...how we support, encourage, even hold each other's freak flags when their strength waivers. We'll need their help sometime.
I’ve heard the world is as we are. We are our own filters. Develop our walking, talking, one-person innovation/innovation process, our one in the universe niche-product we offer to our community, that frees us from our cubicle in the office or in our mind...grab our freak flag and wave it for all to see and gather ‘round and we can be remarkable, grow remarkable and helps others grow...and we’ll have the culture of innovation we desire and have earned.
I rushed to write this over the past few days. It was my own internal innnovation process, one where a challenge presented itself: How does one begin to create a culture of innovation. This is my first run through with ideas and resources. I can see some edits would help. But, in the meantime, I’ve shared it with you. I hope it helps.
But the journey starts with each of us as answer those questions.
My links with these resources Here are links to my conversations with each of these experts. Mr. Myatt, we need to talk.
These long, crazy-looking clouds can grow to be 600 miles long and
can move at up to 35 miles per hour, causing problems for aircraft even
on windless days.
Known as Morning Glory clouds, they appear every fall over Burketown, Queensland, Australia,...WIRED.
Wha’? Word-of-mouth marketing has a secret? And it’s...dirty?
Maybe that’s harsh. Ok. Word-of-mouth marketing has an Uncle Ernie. Uncle Ernie’s not as big as a gorilla. But, he’s in the living room. And, everyone else is either ignoring him there or sitting at the table where Thanksgiving Dinner's being served.
Uncle Ernie here is the word-of-mouth that’s happening right now with your business. That’s right. Your business generates word-of-mouth marketing. Right now. In fact, your business has generated word-of-mouth advertising and marketing since before it even opened the doors for business.
Word-of-mouth was how you recruited your employees during your startup phase.
Word-of-mouth was how you convinced investors.
Word-of-mouth was how you sold your first product.
Three things about your Uncle Ernie, your organic inspired authentic Word-of-mouth, are too often forgotten:
1. You built your company from the ground up on a foundation of word-of-mouth. It’s how you gathered your core group of original stakeholders. They’re the ones who believed you. Believed your words. These core stakeholders are your first employees, your first investors, your first partners, your first customers 2. Only with word-of-mouth did you create your period of fastest growth. 3. You. Made. It. Happen. You brought Uncle Ernie, word-of-mouth for your organization to life. You gave it purpose, focus, meaning. That You includes your stakeholders: customers and employees, partners and vendors.
So, what happened? You forgot about what Uncle Ernie could do, had done for you. You forgot what you needed to do to keep that relationship strong with your original stakeholders.
You went off on your own. Understood. Part of growing up.
You got new friends. You wanted to run with the cool crowd. You turned your company into a poseur with pretty colors, a funny cartoon. You let your new friends take you off-reservation with a community site staffed with their interns pretending to be your customers.
Cool. We all make these mistakes.
Now that you have, and maybe costs are getting out of hand or revenues have stopped growing, go find Uncle Ernie. Give him a call or DM or email.
Call up your original stakeholders. Ask them how you wow them now. If you wow them now. Ask them how you wowed them, then. Ask them how they want to be wowed now. Reacquaint yourself with those first customers. Ask them how are they doing? What do they need now? What are their big challenges? Do they still recommend you? Why? Why are they still loyal to you? Do that with your employees. Have a heart-to-heart conversation. Revisit those glory days. Ask them how you/your brand got off track. Ask them to tell you how to get back on track, first with them, then with everyone else. They know. Do the same for your partners and vendors.
Then ask your new friends, and their interns: What HAVE you done for me and my stakeholder and in particular, Uncle Ernie?
And save a piece of pie for your uncle. He’s earned it. So have you.
Jackie Huba: Monster Loyalty: How Lady Gaga Turns Followers into Fanatics a bigger challenge than I predicted. It’s not what to say that challenged me. It’s what NOT to say. I start reading and within 3-4 paragraphs, I’m nodding my head and saying Yes, yes, exactly. Bam. Bam, baby. Yeah, come on. Can I get a witness. Then I want to share verbatim Jackie’s translation of Gaga’s strategy. Here’s why. It’s a strategy with 7 steps that any, ANY, business can execute under its own terms and under its own budget no matter how small or large. Granted, I enjoy reading this strategy as it’s applied to Gaga. And Jackie's a good writer. But, what's really inspiring is understanding how even a car wash could apply this strategy with these 7 steps and find success. You could build a global empire selling gardening mulch if you followed these 7 steps. And you could lower your advertising and marketing budgets, to boot.
Kevin Allen: The Case of the Missing Cutlery: A Leadership Course for the Rising Star Yes! Finally a leadership book and author who bring empathy, caring and listening to the front of the leadership room instead of insisting it sit in the back, laughed at or ignored with no champion and certainly no budget to help spotlight its role in creating engaged leaders.
He had me as a reader and fan on the first page of his introduction. Here’s what he wrote:
Years later, when I was made Executive Vice President at McCann Erickson Worldwide ... I came to realize that the gift of human empathy, which had guided me through those early days at Marriott, would allow me to steer literally thousands of people to row in the direction of McCann Erickson’s future.
I’ve learned things the hard way, through trial and error, mostly error. Through it all, I came to realize people follow you because of who you are; because you have come to understand the deep desires and hopes of your people; and because, by connecting with them, you have created a culture and a common cause they believe in.
Chuck Blakeman: Why Employees Are Always a Bad Idea I love this book. It's true that I say this about every book I review here. And why shouldn't I? Why waste time reviewing a book I don't love.
That being said...Why Employees Are Always a Bad Idea: (and other business diseases of the industrial age) is one of my favorite business books for a long time.
It starts with the title. It's eye-catching, provocative, right? Mentally, it's a head-slap, positing a theorem inside your head then pounding it home with AlwayandBad to let you know you're not getting away; you're going to have your mind changed. Right now.
As I kept looking at the title, tilting my head like a dog - one side to the other - I began to smile. I read a kindred spirit. Here's a rebel, a true disruptor, someone who's willing speak up, take a stand; I like that. I might not agree with what I'm about to read, but his title made me smile without being cloying or clever so I knew I was in for a good ride.
Stephen Lynch: Business Execution for RESULTS: A practical guide for leaders of small to mid-sized firms I'm an avid reader, always have been. I've read a lot of business books and I’ve led a small business. I recommend you read Business Execution for Results: A Practical Guide for Leaders of Small to Mid-Sized Firms. It is a very, very good book, among the best, most usable business books I’ve read.
As a writer, he does things that make the reading very pleasant, very inspiring, very engaging. Very good.
He offers personal stories, anecdotes, little clips. They’re genuine, sincere, well-organized to capture your attention, engage you in the story that illustrates the next lesson. I found myself thinking...I can relate...I am relating....I see, feel, remember this personally. And Stephen’s writing is very crisp, very concise in taking you from these stories to the principle with each chapter...and as important to the steps you’re going to take to generate the results you want to see. No hitch in the reading flow. VERY nice.
Kerry Patterson: Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High I came with low expectations. I was severely disappointed. It's a great book. This is a well-written, timely, book with tips and reminders and steps to take with each page you read. Real-world examples, real-world steps, to create real, meaningful conversations when the stakes are high. (*****)
Gregg Fraley: Jack's Notebook: A business novel about creative problem solving I read this book completel, too. That should say enough. Even more, I plan to read it again this month. It's a great story whose purpose is to share useful, practical, tips and steps you can take to more effectively and more creatively solve challenges. (*****)
