Dear Team Member,

Dear Team Member,

Today we got a letter from a customer complaining about us.  It was a little about what we did for them, and a lot about lack of communication and how we handled it.

I am always disappointed when we get these kinds of letters because I know we are better than that.  I don’t want to talk about the specifics of this customer, I want to talk about us.  

What kind of people are we?  What kind of company do we want to have?

At some companies, employees are there to have easy days, take less responsibility and initiative than they should, and pass things off to the next department or next employee or next day or week.  This kind of thinking causes our customers to have bad experiences, and that is not good for our future – for both you and I – and everyone else here.  

Here’s what we need.  We need each of us to be 100% responsible for customer happiness.  We need to be extra helpful, extra polite, patient, listen, and follow through and follow up.  If the customer needs to be helped by another department, we do a warm handoff to that other department, making sure our fellow team members know about the customer, their issue, and ensuring they are taken care of.

If a customer is starting to get annoyed with something, or if they are picky or hard to please – we do not resist and make excuses.  Instead we double down on the attentiveness and responsiveness to make them happy. 

And making them happy today is far better then making them happy tomorrow.  Making them happy on THIS phone call, is far better than calling back later to make them happy.  Speed is important.  We don’t want the dinner conversation in their home to be “I called them but they said they’d call back tomorrow.”  We want them to tell their spouse, “I called them, and they took care of it”.  That is very different.  We need to respond well now so they do not go to the internet and make a complaint about us.  

We need team members who LOVE to serve customers.  We have to get our jollies by making people smile.  We have to do what it takes to create happiness and harmony and to impress people with how much we care.  If we can do that, and if YOU can do that, we will have more fun, can take pride in what we do, we will get compliments, and we will win.

So let’s be the good guys.  Every day, one customer phone call or interaction at a time.  Let’s be human – friendly, helpful, capable humans to our customers. 

Fixing something and keeping it fixed are different

Fixing something and keeping it fixed are different.

If you are a business leader, you know what I am talking about.

Fixing something is reactionary.  Keeping it fixed is a project.

Fixing something takes a little time.  Keeping it fixed takes more time in the short term, less time in the long term.

Fixing something is spending your time.  Keeping it fixed is investing it.

Fixing something is telling people what to do now.  Keeping it fixed is training them how to think.

Fixing something is to wait for it to happen again.  Keeping it fixed is to know it won’t.

Fixing is transactional.  Keeping it fixed is engineering.

The more stuff you can keep fixed, the more time you will have to do higher-value work tomorrow.

Threat Audit

What could seriously wound your business?

What could kill it?

How do you protect yourself from that?

If I get my team really good at what they do, I am less likely to lose business to a (new) competitor.

If I have low cost, I am less vulnerable.

If I have great relationships with my customers, I am less likely to lose them.

If my employees like working here, they are less likely to leave.

If I have two suppliers of a key product, I am less vulnerable to supply interruptions.

And then there is good insurance and enough of it.

What could kill you, and how do you protect yourself?

The Leadership Lane.

“Don’t do anything that someone else can do.” – James Dyson

If you are looking to grow a business beyond 15 people or so, this is good advice.  

The longer you keep doing a job that you can have someone else do, the longer you delay doing your real job, which includes team building, hiring the best people, and innovation.

Do high-value work – scale through other engaged people.

Happy New Year!

It’s 2026!  What will you do this year?

I always make a card and have it facing me on my desk, showing my goals for the year.  I highlight them as I achieve them.

I’m doing some simplification, and looking at execution and finishing rather than starting new things.

What’s on your goal card?

Do you think this is true?

The common denominator of all high achievers is focus.

Do you think that is true?

I think that is undoubtedly one of them, along with desire, clarity, grit and energy.

What other qualities do you think we should name?

Does your business make you happy?

What if your business could make you money and make you happy?

A happy life is a string of happy days.

Expectations are a paradox.

You won’t rise to low expectations, and neither will your people.

But missing unreasonable expectations can make you miserable.  And misery is not what you want.

Happiness has a lot to do with performance relative to expectations.

But it also has to do with HOW you DO your business.

Optimize for happiness, because money is not worth misery.

The bonus is that what you will find is that misery repels people and money anyway.

Happiness attracts.

Peace, harmony and success.

I don’t know about you, but I want to achieve success in as peaceful and harmonious a way as possible.

I don’t want drama.  

I want to feel good about it.

And I want others around to feel peace and harmony, too.

How’s that sound?

Let’s find a way to do that, decision by decision.

Books are made of books

What if you could be good enough to write a book about your thing (business, industry, interests)?

How would you get to be so good?  Experience is a factor, but your own experiences uninformed by other experts are probably not going to cut it.

Answer – Books.  Audiobooks, videos, and courses too.  Today, it’s easier than ever.  There are millions of books and videos available on your phone.  Wow.

Your book will be made of insights and parts of these books.  And these books are made of books themselves.  Just look at the bibliographies.

If you are in business and in charge of so much of what happens with and for people, including yourself and your own family, I think it’s a responsibility for you to be an expert learner.  

Books and audiobooks – one after the other. 

And who knows, maybe one day one of those books out there will be yours.

Dematerialization?

Some years ago I heard a comparison of how many devices have been collapsed into a smartphone.  Instead of having a camera, a computer, a calculator, a flashlight, a video recorder, a weather station, a GPS, an audio recorder, a dictionary, a calendar, a photo album, a CD player and tons of CD’s, etc, etc, – all you need is a smartphone.  All those other things go away.  

It’s called dematerialization, and it’s been proudly talked about by some techies proud of the impact they have made on the world.  Sounds true and good.

But wait!  There is more to the story.  When you zoom out and look at the big picture, you can see how the infrastructure to make all this work is “materialization” on another scale.

Here is an article that my son Tanner wrote to explain.  It’s fascinating and illustrative of how our world is changing.

Click here for the Article!