John Jantsch offers some good suggestions for how to develop the case study as testimonial. In Involve Your Clients In Their Story, he recommends these four questions as the basis of a one page case study:

1. What solution were you seeking when you hired us?
2. What did/do we provide that you value the most?
3. What has been the result of working with us?
4. What would you tell others who are considering hiring us?

If your association is looking to harness the power of the member testimonial, John’s questions might be slightly tweaked like so:

1. What challenge or problem were you seeking a solution for?
2. What did/do we provide that you value the most?
3. What has been the result of your membership with us?
4. What would you tell others who are considering joining us?

Why do your members continue to renew? What’s the lasting value? If your members are like most, they want their association to help them solve a problem.

Now capture that data in a powerful testimonial. Gather ten or twenty more. Let the member tell their story and give them the tools to share their story with other potential members. It’s word of mouth marketing like this that builds ever-increasing and long-lasting connections. As John points out, it creates relationships where association and member are now responsible for each other’s success:

I believe fully that doing business long term means
creating relationships – in any healthy relationship both parties have
a responsibility to help each other get what they want. If you are not
training your clients to expect to help you build your business, as you
help them get what they want, you are setting yourself up for a short
term relationship.

If you’ll peek over to the right column, you’ll notice a spiffy new blog listed. Today, I’m launching Like Bears To Honey The Custo/Member Experience, a blog focused on helping both for-profit companies and non-profit associations connect with their customers and members in more imaginative and meaningful ways. If you are a professional whose role is in marketing, customer service, membership development, or any other position where you need to build lasting relationships, I think you’ll find it to be a compelling blog destination.

UPDATE (7/10/05): After letting the title run around a little in my head, I decided that I didn’t really care for the whole bears and honey thing. So, I’ve changed the title (and the URL) to what the blog is really focused on: how associations and businesses can create better passion-provoking experiences for their members and customers. Enjoy!

I’ve been sitting on the sidelines for a few months observing how companies and associations connect with one of their most vital assets: their customers and members (since these two groups share so much in common, I’ve coined the term custo/member). What I’ve noticed is this: the best businesses are embracing the natural attraction that occurs when marketing, service, and design are aligned with the desires of their custo/members. They’re creating passionate custo/members by energetically creating the conditions for loyalty and return business.

Now I’m back as an active participant; I’m the Director of Membership for a non-profit professional society. While non-profits have been pulling ideas for the corporate world for a while, I think the for-profits could learn a bit from how associations relate with their members. My hope is that this blog will be of value to both types of businesses and those who work for them.

This is the time to do something different, something that’s never been done before. Our custo/members are waiting, but not for long. It’s up to us to connect to them in deeper, more meaningful ways. Now, let’s have some fun.

I’ve been dismayed to find so few web resources of real value when it comes to preparing for the first week of a new job. Many articles have been full of no-brainers like be on time, dress appropriately, and learn the workplace rules. These are probably appropriate for those recent college grads entering the work world for the first time.

I also found the same article in more than one source titled 11 Things NOT To Do The First Week Of Your New Job. Written from an emotional intelligence perspective, it is full of "advice" like Don’t Move In Too Fast and Don’t Talk Or Reveal Too Much. The real gist of the article is: don’t stand out, try to fit in. While I would agree that there are certain cultural norms to be observed in any workplace, I would argue equally that you shouldn’t stifle who you are just to blend into the pack (well, within reason). If you’re a manager and in a position of leadership, it’s vital to be assertive (not aggressive) in terms of personality. Your folks want to know who they are working for, what the expectations are, and how the new changes affect their work.

Here are some of the ways I plan to spend the first week of the job.

• Take my staff to lunch. It will be an informal way to get to know them outside the office walls.
• Schedule a 30 meeting with the other staff members. It’s a small office so it should be reasonable to accomplish this in a week or two. Listen and learn about their roles, their ideas, themselves.
• Familiarize myself with the basics. Budget, quantitative data, management reports…
• Take it easy on myself. In the process of getting myself up to speed, it will be ever so easy to push myself too hard in the beginning. I need to remind myself that I’m working toward the marathon, not trying to go for a sprint.

These are just a few off the top of my head. I’ll be thinking of others throughout this week. Now here’s where you come in: I’d love to get additional ideas and feedback on what you’ve found helpful in making that first week successful. Let’s all share the learning.

Yipes! I’m surprised I have any readers after not posting in nearly a week. You might be asking where I’ve been keeping myself. Happily, I’ve been immersed in making a decision on job opportunities. Yes, that’s opportunities in the plural. After many months of no offers, I found myself with an embarrassment of riches. But with any decision, it was difficult to make a choice that balanced data and emotions.

Now, I can proudly say that I have accepted an offer as the Membership Director for the Association for Conflict Resolution. It’s a job that marries so many of my passions: soulful work, leadership, and developing the member/customer experience. I’ve come to admire the dedication of the organization’s CEO to making a better world and the desire among the staff to seek challenges and ask big questions.

Never fear, this will not be the end of Alchemy. As you might expect, it will actually add greater depth to the concepts of Soulful Work. (And it might be a relief from the overly introspective writings that have found their way into this blog recently.)

As a bonus, I’m finalizing a new additional blog that will explore how non-profit associations and for-profit companies can create a passion-provoking experience. It will be a blend of marketing and customer service with a sprinkle of design. My intention is to focus it toward my association peers and companies of all sizes who are struggling to develop repeat business. More on this next week.

Now, I’m going to break out the bubbly and celebrate. So if you’re out there looking for soulful work, keep at it. It can be a hard road but there is hope. Perhaps you’ll discover a quaint roadside diner where you can kick up your feet, have a piece of delicious pie and coffee, and feel the pleasure of finding a little of what you were always looking for.

Be well.

I seem to be in confessional mode lately so please bear with me…

I know if someone else’s post really sticks in my consciousness, there is some powerful stuff there. Curt Rosengren offered just this kind of post yesterday when he talked about one of his success criterion: Time Abundance.

Here’s the part that I keep turning over in my mind. Curt writes:

Over the last few years I’ve grappled with a fear of success. In a
recent conversation with a friend, I realized that fear has its roots
in an outdated, unconscious belief of what success means and what it
has to look like.

That belief says that if I got really successful, I would have to live this unbalanced, over-committed life again. And that’s something I absolutely DO NOT want to go back to.

Honestly, I never thought that I had a fear of success. And yet, with a couple of paragraphs I’m being forced to reckon with my current notions of personal achievement. Consider my workaholic quiz results which suggested that I may connect my identity too tightly with my work. Also consider that I hold my non-work time as very important to my overall well-being. There’s that tension that so many of us grapple with where we want to succeed at work as well as all the other portions of our life. It harks back to the topic of trying not to divide myself into ever smaller chunks only to give my family and friends the remainder.

Okay, so perhaps I share Curt’s same outdated, unconscious belief of what success means and looks like. Let’s be frank here: it’s not as if our culture hasn’t thoroughly programmed us to believe professional success is accomplished through sacrifice to the organization (you know, the one that doesn’t exactly sacrifice itself in return). However, this is but one concept of success. Curt’s outlined his and now I am inspired to develop my own set of success criteria. Let’s see where this goes…

We had a pretty nasty storm here in Northern Virginia last evening: hail, high wind, blinding rain, thunder, and  plenty of lightning. While my daughters are not big fans of noisy storms, I love them. I’m one of those dopey people who gets close to the window to watch nature’s light show. This morning, I visited Doug Thompson’s Blue Ridge Muse blog (I guarantee that five minutes at Doug’s blog will make you want to visit this area of the United States) and he had a fantastic picture of the storm as it hit the southern part of Virginia.

It got me wondering about a very elementary question: why does lightning travel in a jagged line rather than a direct line to the ground? I had an idea, but wanted to check it out. A google search took me to a webpage produced by WV Lightning. Using a simple experiment that would work great for teaching children, the explanation is that the bolt takes the path of least resistance to its destination.

The lightning knows where it needs to go. It doesn’t struggle through the small stuff in its way. It doesn’t complain about the twists and turns it needs to take as it moves. It understands its environment completely and works with it. The path to the ground may be irregular and uneven and yet it finds a way to its goal.

That title’s a mouthful for sure. It comes from an experience my wife had last night as a restaurant server. Before she could even get into her chef’s jacket, her manager asked to see her in his office. This is so rarely a good sign. It turns out he received an email from a patron who wrote that the food was wonderful, the service was lousy. Without going to deep into it, I can honestly say that she is very good at her work. This isn’t just a proud husband’s partial opinion, but has been confirmed by customers, co-workers, and even her manager. So, here’s a very good server who made a mistake and had a bad night. The greater misfortune was that the manager compounded a small problem (as well as ignored a coaching opportunity) and made things worse.

In my first really professional job, I arrived at the office before my boss one morning. Took off my coat, sat down to my desk, and was just about ready to dig into the day’s work when she came in the door and made a beeline straight for my office. One look at her coming and I knew something was wrong. Another look and I realized what was wrong was ME. What ensued was a 10 minute tirade that I’m sure was meticulously planned overnight. I had failed to do something that I promised to do before leaving the day before. I’ll admit it was partly by accident, but I also figured that it wasn’t that big of a deal if I did it first thing the next morning. Okay, that was incorrect and there was a lesson there for me. Unfortunately, the ambush that occurred did very little for my learning. And you can imagine my productivity level for the remainder of the day.

While Carrie didn’t have to endure the ambush, she was presented with a negative comment on her performance at the beginning of her shift. The point of the conversation was for her to explain what happened. Once Carrie told her manager about the table, his response was for her to come directly to him when problems arose.  Interestingly enough, she had no idea at the time that these patrons were having a poor experience. Visibly upset, he told her that they were finished and for her to go on and prepare for her shift (In order to be fair and balanced, Carrie’s manager is not an ogre; despite some of his leadership faults, he is good and decent at what he does; running a restaurant is probably one of the most challenging management roles around).

Is there a good time to conduct a learning dialogue? When I had to hold these types of meetings with employees, I always waited until it was around the end of the day and never on a Monday or Friday. If you do choose to have a morning meeting with an employee to coach or counsel on performance issues, consider whether you are setting them up for a tough workday. For instance, after Carrie’s meeting, she discovered that she had to work the toughest part of the restaurant – the bar. Her confidence was already low, this practically set her up to fail. And by her own admission, throughout the night she made silly mistakes that she hadn’t made in months.

…And a final word to customers. Through my wife, I’ve developed an even greater sense of empathy for service workers, particularly those who make their living in restaurants. Be a good customer. If you are experiencing poor service, SAY IT WHILE YOU ARE THERE. Give the restaurant (or whatever company) the chance to try to make things right. Help them learn.

I ask the question because I’m curious about what constitutes a healthy work attitude compared to it’s darker side. I would never define myself as a workaholic and try to be vigilant for any signs that it is encroaching upon my life. Hmmm…after taking a quick test, I’m not so sure.

Via Sarah Eaton at BeTuitive Marketing (via Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants), comes a very unscientific, yet very insightful quiz from CareerJournal.com called Are You Obsessed with Work?. Since I’m not currently working, I put myself back into my last job as much as possible. In less than 10 minutes, I received this feedback:

You scored 92 out of a possible 147.

Your score in this range means
your career is of major importance to you and you derive most of your
personal identity from it. Such a high involvement may mean that you
base too much of your well-being on your career, excluding other
important areas of your life.

Beware: Exceedingly high commitment
may make you susceptible to unacceptable self-imposed stress and
eventual burnout. Successful individuals who sustain their career
motivation maintain other interests besides work. These allow them to
develop a more balanced life, which results in fewer illnesses,
healthier relationships and steadier career achievement.

It’s pretty vague, but here’s the learning for me: Such a high involvement may mean that you
base too much of your well-being on your career, excluding other
important areas of your life. While I don’t believe I become obsessive about my work, I do admit that I tend to base a major portion of my identity on what I do as a professional. Perhaps most of us do. That may be one of the more challenging aspects of being unemployed.

What I’ve come to find is that there is a fine balance between being dedicated to your work and being a workaholic. Take the quiz. While the results are about what you would expect from a 30 question multiple choice, you might just come away with some new personal insight.

Or more accurately, like one of those toy cars that you pull back and release to watch it zoom across the floor. Except, I feel like I’ve been pulled back and am just waiting to be released. What to do with all that pent-up kinetic energy? When you’re unemployed, you can get depressed about not working and bringing in a paycheck. Or you can experience a sort of manic tension where you want to unleash some really brilliant ideas because you have plenty of time (often too much) to read and reflect.

Yes, part of the "work" of being in the job hunt is looking for work: submitting resumes, networking, conducting info interviews, going on actual interviews, etc. The problem is that this involves a lot of waiting and I don’t like to wait. For me, having patience and waiting are two different concepts. Waiting is like handing power over to someone else. However, you can have patience and still be proactive in looking for opportunities to do something big.

I have something big in mind that’s just too important to keep tucked away. How do I implement it? I’m not sure. How does it integrate with my job hunting? Again, not sure but I think it can co-exist with whatever I find myself doing. What is it you ask? I hope to share it very soon.