When I was still working in IT engineering and began implementing better analytics within our ITSM department (and, later, our IT operations department at large), one of the best payoffs was the ability to ask and answer our own questions from the data no matter how complex. In fact, I’ve written about this in a previous HDI article. But this was only one part of the story. Yes, we were able to find areas of improvement, gain better insight into our processes, stabilize our WIP, etc. But outside of delivering a better product to the business, these were improvements for us.

As we all know IT is constantly being asked to do more with less, justify budgets, and there’s always the question of, ”What have you done for me lately?” You can improve your processes and delivery all you want, but unless you can show the business that payoff, in real data, and use that to establish better relationships, it will always be a most recent zero-sum game. To that end, if you are using analytics to improve your processes and ITSM departments, but not being both transparent and effectively communicating that data out (there is a difference), you’re losing half the battle.

Let me give you an example from personal experience. Hiring new employees is a huge investment for companies. Some studies say 6–9 months of the starting salary of the position being replaced is the cost to find, hire, and train new talent. Having an effective onboarding process and giving new hires the proper training, assets, and culture exposure early on is really important.

At a previous employer, we had a process whereby a questionnaire went out to hiring managers to get information about things we couldn’t know about from our HRIS system (things like laptop request, where they’re sitting, special application requests, etc.). Many times, and this is not to point a finger — it’s just what the data showed — managers were filling this out later than our process required, or not at all. As a result, numerous cases came in about new hires not having the right access, hardware, etc. Luckily, all of these steps were tracked in various tables (new hire start date, new hire ticket submission, new hire request form filled out, what was requested, etc.), so after implementing our custom analytics solutions, we were able to figure out where the bottlenecks were (I’m looking at you sales manager that hires someone on a Friday afternoon at 4:50 PM for a Monday start date…in a remote office).

But, so what? Even though we had good data, and our managers knew that it was not “our fault,” were we being as effective with this data as we really could be? No, we could do better, and so we did.

After we were able to certify that the data was correct, we started sending reports to managers and, where appropriate, their managers, of their answer trends. Did this change things overnight? Of course not. Effective data communication is as much a skill as developing the infrastructure to glean those insights to begin with. The point of this communication was not to point fingers; it was to establish trust in the data and the process. Once that was secured, a better business relationship between ITSM and other departments could be built; they knew our data was good, they trusted we were in it together, and everybody benefitted.

So what are some of the ways you can effectively use the insights you’re (hopefully) getting from your data to communicate out? Here are a few ways of communicating data that I’ve found effective:

• Create a portal page where by users can log in to see their own ticketing trends (# of tickets, time to resolve, by type, priority, etc.). Since your ticketing system already has user info in there, use that information to filter for your portal. Using row-level security in the resulting database tables, when a user accesses this portal, they will only be able to see information about their tickets.
• Break critical business processes down into steps that can be tracked in tables. If your new hire process includes several steps or hand-offs, instead of tracking the process en masse in a single service request, break major stages down into lower individual tasks that can be tracked in their own right in tables. This will better show where your bottlenecks are.
• Certify your data sources. This can be a technical process, a governance process, or both. If you have separate environments, create a governance process (perhaps a monthly review meeting) to move potentially new data-sources over from dev to prod. Questions you may ask are, “What’s the business function?” / “Who will be the owner?” / “Does this already exist elsewhere?” Once data-sources are certified, it will become much easier to have conversations about the data contained within (and, drawn out and expressed in visualizations) because there will be trust in the data.
• Enable self-service analytics. If you certify your data sources and agree upon general terms (What does “resolved” really mean?), then enable your users to ask and answer their own questions. This will alleviate constant requests for new reporting on your departments and perhaps leads to insights you didn’t think of.
• Figure out what works best in your business to communicate in your own environment. Does a portal page work? A burst email? Monthly review meetings? A very visual TV monitor where everyone can see status? So far, these are methods of transparency (i.e., transmission of the data). But in order to be effective communication (i.e., understanding of the data), you need to do some due diligence to see what people in your business respond to (method, cadence, etc.).

Full Post at https://www.thinkhdi.com/library/supportworld/2018/using-data-enable-business-relationships

and more from Adam Rauh

Yes, it is difficult, and anyone who doesn’t think so should sit in a meeting of service managers, or work for a few hours on the service desk, or go onsite with a desktop support technician. The jobs in our chosen field require knowledge, skill, adaptability, emotional intelligence, empathy, and patience. We’re called upon to make difficult decisions, continually improve performance, deal with crises, trim our budgets, coach teams and individuals, report everything, monitor everything, and keep our heads while we do it.

Even so, 5 percent of level 1 support staff have been in that position for more than 10 years, and more than 40 percent have been in the job for 2 to 3 years. About one-fifth of team leads have been in the job for more than 10 years. (HDI 2017 Technical Support Practices & Salary Report)

Over half the tickets (cases) that arrive in the support center are for incidents — unplanned interruptions of work. Imagine an airport where over half the arrivals were unscheduled and unannounced, and the air traffic and tower controllers just had to respond to each one and get them safely on the ground.

Skeptics: Bad comparison, you say? Support isn’t that critical, you say? What about a clinician, nurse or physician who has equipment down when it is needed — right now — for patient diagnosis or treatment? What about a chain of stores that is unable to process any transactions because of an unplanned interruption of service? The more our organizations depend on technology, the more critical service and support become.

So why do we do this work? Why do we come to work every day to be yelled at by unhappy users and customers, second-guessed by management, and turned down for upgrades, improvements, and staff?

Read the full article by Roy Atkinson on ThinkHDI.com

What Is the Strategic Framework?

I described the strategic framework in my article, The Power of the Strategic Framework. A strategic framework is a structured method used to define how a project or initiative supports the key objectives of stakeholders. There are four components to a strategic framework:

• Business Objective. What will the project or initiative achieve?
• Approach. How will that achievement be realized?
• Measurement. How will achievement be measured and reported?
• Target. What is the forecasted improvement that will define success?

When using a strategic framework for career guidance, it’s all about you! You are the stakeholder, and your business objective is to successfully manage your career.

How to Use the Strategic Framework to Provide Career Guidance

Recall that developing a strategic framework is based on the mission-vision-goals (MVG) statement. Look at your company’s MVG, along with objectives, for some ”food for thought” that provides useful inputs for developing your career plan, such as:

• What does the company value? The mission statement describes why the company exists; the vision statement describes what the company wants to be in the future. These two statements help form what the company values and influences hiring and staffing decisions within the organization.
• What new projects or opportunities are emerging? Goals statements articulate what the company wants to achieve within what timeframes. Goals define the milestones for the company’s journey toward its “to be” state described in the vision statement.

Now that you have those inputs, step back and analyze your current status. Consider:

• How do your contributions help the organization achieve MVG? Do you know how what you do helps the organization achieve the MVG? Can you measure what you do and describe it in terms of MVG?
• Where are your areas for growth for helping the organization achieve MVG? What skills and knowledge are needed from the company’s workforce so that it can realize its MVG?

Use the answers to the above questions to provide you with valuable input into your career “project.”

Think of Your Career as a Project

When it comes to looking at yourself and your career, it may not be so easy to be objective. But using the strategic framework helps you look at things from a business, not personal, perspective first.

First, you have to establish your mission. What defines you and makes you who you are? That is your “mission.”

Next, what does the “future you” look like? From a career perspective, what do you want to be? That is your “vision.”

Now the hard part…defining the goals and objectives that enable you to realize your vision.

What Can Your Company Offer?

Review the company’s goals and objectives to help you identify opportunities to further your contributions. Explore joining an active or upcoming project that may provide opportunities to leverage your strengths as well as provide personal challenges and new learnings.

Look at the company’s vision statement for insight into where the company is going. Do you have the needed knowledge and skills to contribute to the company of the future? Does the vision resonate with you? What do you need to do to be where the company is going to be? Do you lack the skills needed in the future-state company? Identify and invest in training and self-study to gain the needed knowledge. Look for opportunities to apply that knowledge to build up your skills. Consider finding and engaging a mentor to provide you with coaching, advice, and a “sounding board” as you invest in yourself.

Do Your Career Goals Align with Your Company’s Direction?

Perhaps the one of the more difficult questions to answer regarding your career is whether your career goals align with your company’s direction. It’s difficult to think about leaving a company, especially if you like the people with whom you’re working. But you must look at your career as objectively as possible. Keep in mind that you are in charge of your career — not your boss, not your significant other, and not your teammates. Only you can manage your career.

See the full article and more from Doug Tedder

Sure, they hear a complaint from a user every now and then. But guess what? It mostly isn’t their “fault!” Some level 2 group or another help desk is mostly responsible for the root cause. So, they’re good! Everyone should be pleased with how the support center is performing. Or…should they?

The complaints don’t stop. The stats continue to show undeniable success. Associate experience survey results show associates are not satisfied with the services delivered and prompt executive leadership to action. This needs to be fixed. Quickly.

A mini grief cycle is triggered with support center management.

• Betrayal. This isn’t right. A recent benchmark showed we outperform many comparable support centers. KPIs clearly show we meet and succeed targets. CSAT scores are through the roof! Someone must have it in for us….
• Denial. Well, it isn’t us anyway. Once they realize we’re doing everything right, they’ll sing a different tune. We’ll just show them the data, and they’ll understand.
• Anger. Why are they not listening to reason? They don’t know how good they have it. If they’d just give us a bigger budget and more people…
• Acceptance. From the perspective of our associates, getting help can be very frustrating.
• Commitment. We need to change this; we are going to change this.

Does this sound somewhat familiar? What mistake did the support center management team make? They failed to look beyond their “street,” which is only a small piece of the entire customer journey, even smaller when regarding the entire customer experience ecosystem.

Once they swiftly passed through the change acceptance stages, they expanded their focus to the entire customer journey. Fixing one piece of the journey is not going to improve the entire experience. When the team was committed to improving the associate experience, they acknowledged the need to collaborate with all groups that play a part in the journey. They realized that an associate looking for help only sees “help desk” and that is fine. There should be no need for an associate to figure out who is responsible for which piece of the journey. The cogs should quietly spin and turn in the background to ensure each experience with support is a great one, the need for help is reduced to a minimum, and self-service capabilities are optimized.

You do not need to go through a change acceptance cycle to come to this realization though.

[Read the full article by Miranda Reshaw for tips to get you started.]

KCS® is a registered trademark of the Consortium for Service Innovation

The empowerment framework in this article provides a vocabulary for situational role clarity. This role clarity is further enhanced by a progressive hierarchy of leadership activities and a proven technique for gaining rock-solid alignment while promoting empowerment.

Can autonomy produce aligned results, or are leaders forced to use command and control?

When I worked for Whole Foods Market as an IT director, the company was experiencing significant growth while maintaining a regional and store autonomy principle that was fairly unique in the retail industry. This was a commitment so deep the company’s corporate offices were referred to as the “Central Region,” as opposed to “headquarters,” to evoke our equality with each region.

At the time, autonomy within the retail industry was more often viewed as something to ruthlessly eliminate. As an example, numerous published reports spoke of the internal cost controls employed by retail giant Walmart, citing examples of the thermostats in every Walmart store being controlled from their headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.

In spite of the prevailing so-called “retail industry best practices” that emphasized rigorous centralized control, Whole Foods Market achieved profitable growth by combining empowered team members with reduced ambiguity about measuring results. Throughout the rest my career, empowerment and reducing ambiguity about results have been two key leadership capabilities that produced great results.

The empowerment framework in this article was frequently used by Mike Clifford, Vice President and CIO of Whole Foods Market and those of us on his senior leadership team. He recalls that he first saw the framework “in a Harvard Business Review article from a long time ago.” I’ve searched for, but have been unable to find, the original article. I also presented this framework in an HDI Conference and & Expo session several years ago.

How to Use a Framework for Empowerment

The framework for empowerment we used contains a series of activities performed by one of two roles: Leader and Performer. The Leader’s activities progress along a vertical axis that indicates the Leader’s capabilities growing with leadership experience. The Performer’s activities progress along a horizontal axis that indicates capabilities growing with the ability to execute. Each activity for the respective roles forms a pair of corresponding activities that describe the relationship, or work-style, employed in a given situation. For easy reference, these relationships or work-styles are designated as “empowerment zones.”

Once the Leader and Performer understand this framework, it can be used as a common vocabulary to establish situational role clarity. For example:

• “This project has many dependencies on other departments. I need you to manage it from Zone 3 while I provide air cover.”
• “This is our first major infrastructure upgrade project, and there is a lot of visibility to it. I need to lead this from Zone 2 at least until we get some milestones behind us.”

In both of these examples, the Leader is communicating to the Performer the project-specific roles each of them will take on, and what kinds of activities they will each be responsible for. In Zone 3 (Decide-Manage), the Leader is making decisions, and the Performer is managing actions to implement those decisions. In Zone 2 (Manage-Act), the Performer is acting in a more task-oriented mode.

Part of the conversation about empowerment is the concept of accountability. Some of the components of accountability like autonomy, discretion, and decision-making are directly related to the level of engagement or internal commitment that employees have towards their company. Therefore, successfully leveraging this framework can lead to more engagement and higher performance and job satisfaction for employees.

[Read the complete article] by Bill Payne @ITSMConsultant

Once an on-the-ball leader who directed his service desk clearly and got them all working toward a goal, David’s actions seemed erratic lately. His directions to team members were unclear, and some of the tasks he assigned overlapped two members’ responsibilities in the workplace.

For example, in a recent meeting with Felicia, David gave her two action items regarding recently released service desk software. Just as he gave her the basic information, David’s phone rang and he took the call, motioning to Felicia to leave.

As Felicia walked out she was not completely clear on what she needed to do. This was not unusual for her, or anyone else on the team. David had been giving assignments and then quickly moving on to other tasks. He had not been keeping the team in the loop on what others were doing. When team members talked, they noticed there was moderate overlap in what they were doing, and that was having a negative effect on their overall teamwork.

With this overlap, team members began jockeying for position over the different ways to do things. This was causing tension within the team, and it was getting noticed by David’s senior leaders. Even the CIO had gotten word about what was taking place on David’s team.

The thing is, David had been in his management position for more than five years. His team, once performing well, now seemed to be crumbling right in front of him. What happened?

About three months earlier, the company went through a reorganization, and David took on one full team and part of another in addition to his current team. He went from a team of seven to more than 15 direct reports. While some of the challenges could be attributed to the reorganization and his increased workload, the biggest challenge was now the lack of trust among the team, especially the newer members.

Melding a New Team

Any time there is a significant change in team members, it is critical to recognize that the team moves back to forming, the first stage of building teamwork. This requires the team to develop ground rules and expectations as well as build vulnerability-based trust.

David had high levels of trust with his original team. Many of the newer members felt that they were not really included, thus causing the friction and distrust of each other as well as of David as the team leader.

How many times have you heard of a well-run service desk team being thrown into workplace chaos after an organizational change? It’s a story as old as corporate America: A group of employees and their manager have become a well-oiled, well-performing machine, and suddenly this team receives an influx of new members as other groups are broken up and reassigned to new projects. Stress levels rise for everyone: the new members are trying to figure out their places on the team, while the existing members take on a self-protective attitude, jockeying for a favorable position. Meantime, the manager is suddenly juggling increased responsibilities, trying to get familiar with new people, and managing everyone’s expectations. It doesn’t have to be that way.

While managers can’t always predict how their teams will change over time, especially when companies make organizational changes, they can flex with the changes and use the tools and strategies they already innately have to regroup and strengthen their team.

In David’s case, a chat with his manager made him aware that problems were brewing among his team. The senior manager pointed out the issue and gave him four can’t-miss strategies to rebuild the sense of trust and teamwork in his section.

1. Partner New Team Members with Existing Ones
Pair up members with someone they do not know as well. A couple of times a year, rotate partners. This isn’t just a method to help new members learn the ins and outs of the team process. It makes both new members and older members accountable to one another, and the team as a whole.

2. Schedule an Outside Team Activity
Organize an activity outside the office like a night out for pizza and bowling, an afternoon of paintball, or a similar fun, relaxed activity. It may sound counterintuitive to making a team more productive. In reality, the more team members can connect with each other outside of the workplace, the more engaged they will become as a team at work. That builds overall trust and subsequently a stronger team.

3. Share Personal History
From sharing a photo of their new baby to discussing their lifelong devotion to a professional sports team, team members can build a great deal of trust in each other by sharing personal histories. This kind of conversation opens up team members’ vulnerability, and when everyone becomes vulnerable, trust strengthens.

4. Laugh at Yourself
Don’t be afraid to use self-deprecating humor and laugh at yourself once in a while. Many great comedians have made a career out of directing the laughter at themselves, pointing out their own foibles and flaws. When a leader shows some of their own weaknesses to the team members, reveals some of their misgivings or imperfections, they won’t be laughed at. Rather, their trust factor is bolstered.

See how trust was rebuilt in the full post by Gregg Gregory, CSP

To date, automation has led to a decrease in headcount in just over 8 percent of organizations, while there has been an increase in headcount in about 12 percent. In 45 percent of organizations in our study, people have been “reassigned to other tasks.” In some ways, this reassignment has been going on for years.

Take password resets for example. The old model (still happening in many organizations) was that people would call in or visit the support center, and their passwords would be manually reset. Password resets were, industry-wide, about 30 percent of total contact volume. When automated password and identity management systems gained traction, the work shifted.

In many cases, the contact volume for password resets went up after automated systems were installed, but those days are — mostly — behind us as people have grown much more familiar with the whole process. Security questions and password requirements are commonplace in daily life, and people have learned how to deal with them. Improvements have also been made on the IT side of the equation, where the need for users to remember multiple passwords has been reduced.

The bottom line here is that 30 percent of the support workforce didn’t disappear as the result of automated password reset; instead, they moved on to more complex tasks. Year after year, case volume goes up in support, with the number of customers, applications, and devices cited among the reasons.

Work hasn’t gone away; its complexity has increased.

by Roy Atkinson [Read the Full Story on ThinkHDI.com]

If you are an otherwise sincere person, your close relationships can probably survive a handful of insincere apologies. Saying “Sorry, Not Sorry” a few times won’t make your mom or your spouse write you off. But when you work in customer support, an insincere apology can really backfire. It can make an angry customer angrier. A “nonpology” can squander the rapport you have worked so hard to build with your customers.

Sometimes, when things go wrong, when you are to blame for a problem, or when a customer is rightfully aggrieved, all you can offer is an apology, so you really must learn to do it right. Here are three tips for writing a heartfelt apology to a customer.

Tip 1: Stop Writing, “We regret any inconvenience this may have caused…”

Let’s say you work in customer support for a cable service provider we’ll call ComFinity. A customer, Susan, uses live chat (at her office) to let you know that her cable at home hasn’t been working since the thunderstorm two days ago, and she’s upset because she missed the season finale of her favorite show, The Voice.

A typical response from the support analyst, David, might go like this:

Hello Susan. Thank you for contacting ComFinity Live Chat Support. My name is David. Please give me one moment to review your information. I regret any inconvenience this outage may have caused you, but I’ll be more than happy to resolve it for you…

Stop right there! Don’t write an apology like, “We regret any inconvenience this may have caused…” First, “may have” sounds antagonistic. Clearly, this event did cause inconvenience; there’s no “may have” about it. Second, “any” is generic. ComFinity knows what kind of inconvenience is involved when a customer misses a favorite show. Third, we would never say this to a customer in person. If you would never say something to a customer face-to-face, don’t write it. If Susan were complaining about slow response to an outage to a ComFinity employee in the store, that employee would never look Susan in the eye and say, “We regret any inconvenience this may have caused…” so ComFinity should avoid this wording in its chats and emails.

What should you write instead of, “We regret any inconvenience this may have caused…”? One reliable strategy is to name the inconvenience and admit that it happened. Here’s a revised version of the ComFinity response to Susan:

Thank you for contacting us about the outage. We’re really sorry about the inconvenience of missing the season finale of The Voice. We would like to do some troubleshooting to solve the problem. Do you have time to do that now or would later this evening work better?

[Read the full story for more tips] by Leslie O’Flahavan

I hope this gives you the motivation to strive for excellence and to recover quickly from mishaps, accepting that they are a part and parcel of the road to success. There are some rules that can be broken. There are distinguishing factors that separate those who lag versus those who lead. My university degree back in 1997 was the soil bed and seeds. Everything else, I learned in the real world. I hope you can apply some of my advice to your own career.

Tip #1: Be Yourself

Sometimes a bad apple or two can spoil the barrel. The image of consultants being rough people who come with their “wonder” methodology and try forcing it on the masses and being paid far more than their value is unfortunately common.

By contrast, the majority of the consultants I know are quite down to earth people with a family life and care about the well-being of their clients. When you see how much personal time they need to invest in their jobs, the marginal increase in salaries is in most cases justifiable.

So my tip here is that when you are out as a consultant, be yourself. Keep a pleasant smile on your face. Prove to your stakeholders that you care about them, professionally and generally as people. Some years ago, I’d left my car lights on in the car park of a high security client site. I was surprised to have a senior manager from another department drive up and offer to help start my engine up.

Be attuned to the environment you work in — stay on the pulse of things — but don’t sacrifice your values. Your process documentation might be updated or replaced one day, but your smile and good rapport with your colleagues will always be remembered.

One of my mistakes has been trying to be perfect at what I do. Traveling and seeing people across the world helped broaden my perspective. I found that, in reality, everybody is like me. So be kind to others and to yourself as well!

Tip #2: Be Flexible

Once upon a time, I was placed on a large-scale and high-profile project. The client was one of the largest governmental ministries in the country and was undergoing some major technology transformation. This was quite early in my consulting career, so I was very much focused on the intellectual capital of my company and engrossed in how to tweak and develop it for the need of my customer.

The client had been left with an extensive assessment report extending beyond 150 pages of recommendations. My scope was going to be around enhancing maturity only of a couple of the ITIL processes. It was clear to me that the scope of work was not clear to any of the stakeholders. We had constraints and had to deliver tangible value.

One of the first things I did was to persuade the client manager that we would use the ISO 20000 standard as our reference, and he agreed. This was very helpful as our timelines were stringent and quantifying maturity increases using numerical methods was going to be artificial and not beneficial to our customer at that point of time. I also explained how we should focus on only a few key recommendations of the assessment report. This again was finally accepted. The project moved forward in a constructive manner, and the client agreed to increase budget spend for additional resources to help us cover the limited scope in a focused and effective manner.

What I learned here was that so many of our clients understand the problem very well. They are extremely intelligent people who know their environments. What they don’t always have though is clarity on what the best solution is at that time. What alternatives exist for them? How could they combine elements of the solution from different areas into something holistic and complete? We must be the sincere and trusted advisors they need. We should put together a solution that may not necessarily be exactly what we put in the proposal. But based upon our analysis of the real situation, we may need to adjust aspects of our solution and then explain and clarify why this is what is best for our customer at that time. This will sometimes include discussions on the project scoping and how to deliver that which is most beneficial.

As consultants, we are a package deal. We do need to be constantly skill building. If, for example, you don’t know Microsoft Excel very well, ask your company for some training or self-learn according to the setup provided by your company. Success isn’t always about results; it is about you and being a shortcut. I am ready to do just about anything my customers require, of course keeping in mind my experience and background. If the requirement is below my level and I can get a junior person to help, it doesn’t make sense for me to use important project time when I could be on higher value responsibilities.

Keep your expectations aligned. Things will go wrong. It is our reaction to them that is important. Always be a problem solver. Learn to forgive and move on. Don’t forget there are many kind and great people who helped bring you to where you are today; many of them, you will never even know their names. If you feel it hard to forgive people who have erred against you, remember that even without your realizing, you have also hurt many people in the daily flow of life. All or most of them have probably forgiven you, without any apology from your side. So stay optimistic, forgive your fellow human beings, and treat people as you would like to be treated.

As consultants, we have to always be ready to go. Surprise is the norm in our industry. I have been asked to travel abroad to new projects with two-days’ notice! If the business demand is there; be flexible and move fast. Don’t feel bad about it; you are not alone. Stay positive. One tip for new projects though is always to ask for a few days before an on-site engagement to go through project documentation. You want to understand things as best as you can before moving on site. Prepare your full list of questions beforehand. Remember that many things will be unwritten; you will have to learn them on the ground.

I am often asked about working within a consulting firm versus going independent. I have certainly considered the latter option in the past. For myself as a family person, being part of a bigger organization is important. I can create a work and personal life balance that I know would be not possible for me otherwise. It also makes things simpler in our relationship with the client since is the business details are taken care of by various people in my company. My focus is then only on the delivery side, on improving myself and on what my customer needs from my side.

by Musab Qureshi [Read the full article]

Gene and Josh have both worked for Wackie TEK Medical Services for several years and are good friends. They are part of a team working on a new system to assist the help desk better serve and support their customers.

During a team meeting, Gene said, “Let’s make the whole thing interactive. That’s where the world is headed, so let’s do it.”

“Well, maybe,” mused Josh. “But I think we’ll hit some real problems down the line.”

“Like what?” Gene asked.

“First of all, our customers are not going to grasp it. They are not that tech savvy and certainly have not mastered interactive yet,” Josh stated firmly.

“Who says they can’t? We should just go ahead and do it?” Gene spouted back.

This situation is not uncommon today as many organizations are constantly looking to upgrade and get the edge on the competition. There is a lot of focus on personalities and a desire for everyone to get along (or, as my wife says, “getting everyone to play nicely in the sandbox”). Understanding everyone’s personality and behavior style is vital to the foundation of every team. by Gregg Gregory [Read More]