Mitch’s Blog

First, the latest issue of the T. T. Mitchell Consulting newsletter, Dealing With Know-It-Alls, is available.

Next, the heading is an interesting question. Truthfully, I don’t watch Fox News. The only time I did was on September 11, 2001, when I kept switching around to different news channels looking for more information on what was going on. I turned myself off Fox News pretty much after that because, well, if there’s any news channel that actually leans one way politically, without fairness, it’s Fox News.

Sure, I’ve read where most people believe the media in general is biased towards the left, or is fairly liberal, but I’ve never bought that. All the other outlets seem to have commentators come on a show that counter each other’s points of views, and the moderators are tough on both sides. I can’t say that I’ve seen Fox do the opposite because, as I said before, I don’t watch the channel.

However, I came across this little video on another blog, Electronic Village, that I just wanted to share with everyone. The commentators here say some pretty negative and incorrect things about Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, and this video shows those comments, then shows the truth. I’d normally have just posted a link and have you go there, but his site loads pretty slowly for some reason, and I didn’t want you to leave without seeing it. So, here goes; you make up your own mind:

I’ve always believed that two of the most important qualities one wants to have in themselves and see in others is loyalty and trustworthiness; honesty is a close third. If you have these things in your friends, and they see them in you, then life will be great because you know there’s always someone who has your back, and it’s also known that the other party will never put you in a position intentionally where you have to test those qualities.

Sports messes that up drastically. I used to love sports; now I only like them a lot. Actually, that’s not even true. I love my teams, and sometimes players on other teams for whatever reason, but in general I don’t get myself geared up unless my teams are in the playoffs. The exception to that is the Syracuse University basketball team; I always watch those games from beginning to end, and if I could get better seats I’d probably go to every home game.

The thing about sports is that they “supposedly” stress teamwork and trust. They “supposedly” stress loyalty to the team and to the teammates. And they want honesty when it comes to how they’re feeling and doing, and want to express honesty back towards those players.

Yet, professional and college sports are businesses just like all other businesses, and overall, in business, the bottom line is what’s most important, not loyalty, trustworthiness, or honesty. Today’s hero is tomorrow’s trash, and sometimes popular players are treated like chattel and property, used to boost the team and its profile at the expense of the fans and without any regard to whether that player helped the team win championships or not. True, sometimes we don’t know everything that goes on behind the scenes, but when this happens, just like in business, we’re all left to ponder what went wrong and what those at the top are thinking, and we make up our own minds on what we think occurred.

I started thinking about this the other day as I noticed that a blog entry I wrote last year on Barry Bonds got pinged around the same time that Manny Ramirez of the Boston Red Sox got traded to the LA Dodgers for a player I’d never heard of, but someone who many later on told me was pretty good. All Manny did was help the Red Sox to two World Series championships by getting a hit in every single game they played. All Barry did was lead the Giants into their first World Series in over a decade and pass Hank Aaron as the home run king while wearing their uniform.

I heard that sometimes Manny wasn’t the best teammate in the world; I heard that when he was younger, the same could be said of Barry, but his current teammates, at least last year (since the Giants decided not to re-sign him and the rest of major league baseball colluded against him this year), loved playing with the guy. Manny was popular with the fans, but I guess his time was up. Barry was popular with the home fans, and I still think the Giants should have shown more loyalty. And major league baseball has violated its trustworthiness or honesty because Barry Bonds at 43 is still better than half the players in baseball today.

Still, it makes me think about business today. Companies ask employees for loyalty while looking for ways to cut benefits. They reward long term employees by looking for ways to reduce retirement packages. Some reward a loyal workforce, one that often has generational family relationships, by shipping jobs out of the country. Frankly, business has done a lousy job of encouraging workers to remain loyal, and it’s hard to believe that, in so many magazines, they’re lamenting a very transient workforce that won’t stay put long enough to learn their jobs well. Sorry guys, but the employees didn’t start this; you did.

If you’re a manager, or business leader with employees, you need to step up to the plate and decide what it is you’re really hoping to accomplish in business. Do you want loyal employees who’d do anything for you, or do you want mindless drones whom you can replace at a moment’s notice because you don’t want to take the time to invest in something more long term? Because, when all is said and done, loyalty, trustworthiness, and honesty are long term investments; what are you willing to commit to?

There was an interesting article that popped up on the Medseek blog called Transparency At What Price.

Pricing transparency is the latest buzz word that basically means hospitals putting all their prices somewhere so people can see what they’re charging for services. It’s controversial for more than one reason. On one hand, back in the day hospitals weren’t allowed to share their prices so openly because of possible charges of collusion, which means that they could be accused of working with each other to control the markets by negotiating with each other how they were going to charge for items. On the other, healthcare is one of the few businesses where people find out after they’ve had services performed how much they’re on the hook for.

Anyway, many hospitals and physicians have decided to address this issue by putting their list of charges, known as a charge master, out on the internet, basically trying to show that they have nothing to hide. However, what’s happening, which was indicated in the story I linked to above, is that the overwhelming majority aren’t taking advantage of the information anyway. In the first year of Doylesberg Hospital in Pennsylvania setting up a process where patients could call to find out the price of services, they’ve averaged less than a call a day.

Does this mean that pricing transparency doesn’t work? Well, in a nutshell, yes. Does it mean that hospitals should continue the status quo? Not necessarily. The thing with hospital services is that there are many where it works out well in telling people how much it’s going to cost for their services. Most ancillary services such as lab and radiology services work very well.

Surgical and inpatient services are a different animal entirely. Surgical rates, as far as those performed in hospitals, are often billed on time, and though a hospital can estimate the time to some degree, it always depends on the surgeon and if any complications arise. Some surgeons are faster or slower than others, so prices can vary. Also, all supplies on implanted items aren’t the same. Pacemakers, for instance, can run from $2,000 to $30,000, and it depends not only on the condition of the patient but a physician’s favorite items to use. And one can only guess just how many supply items a physician is going to use during a procedure.

The same type of thing goes for inpatient stays. A hospital can tell people how much their normal room rate is a day, as well as how much for a private room, but there are different rates for different rooms, and if you get moved to ICU, a room with a ventilator, a radiation room, etc, the prices all differ. The lucky thing for most inpatient stays is that almost no one these days pays actual charges; the unlucky thing is that the amounts can still be pretty high.

Anyway, price transparency isn’t going away any time soon. Politicians are starting to get into it, and of course they’re getting it wrong, and things are going to get messed up. Truthfully, the best thing most people can do for themselves is to go see their physicians while they’re feeling pretty good and get routine check ups. Healthcare costs stay low when you know what’s going on with your body, and if diseases and other problems can be addressed earlier, life will be pretty good.

Talk about timing. Last week CNN runs the special Black In America, and this week the House of Representatives apologizes to black people for slavery and Jim Crow laws, even though Jim Crow laws were created by each state, rather than the federal government.

Frankly, I’m not sure what I think about this. It’s the first time any branch of the federal government has apologized to black people in America for slavery (though President Clinton did sort of apologize to Africans for slavery and did apologize to the victims of the Tuskegee syphilis study), acknowledging, in their own words:

“African-Americans continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow — long after both systems were formally abolished — through enormous damage and loss, both tangible and intangible, including the loss of human dignity and liberty, the frustration of careers and professional lives, and the long-term loss of income and opportunity.”

Of course, the vote was non-binding, which means the government isn’t saying that they’re so guilty that they have to pay anyone reparations, as if anyone is asking, nor are they confirming so much that someone who might decide they want to get paid can sue them, saying the government confessed to anything. Still, it’s an interesting step forward, in the year of the Obama candidacy, and I’m wondering what the fallout will be from this.

Guess I’ll wait and see like everyone else.

On Wednesday and Thursday night, I watched the two-part show on CNN called Black In America. Wednesday night was supposed to be more about women, and Thursday night’s show was supposed to be more about men. There was some mixing, but overall, the statistics for each were on the correct night, though some of the stats were shocking, and the stories that were told were right on, if tough to watch at times.

First, let’s get this out of the way; this wasn’t a program for black people. That was evident from the beginning, and later on, almost every black person I talked to said the same thing: “I knew all of this already.” For black people, there was little new ground that was covered; for me in particular, though, I still thought it was an important program to show, and though it’s also easy to say “they should have shown this” or “they should have shown that”, overall it was a credible enough representation, if people were paying attention.

I say it that way because of a conversation I was having with someone who didn’t see the show. I was talking about a statistic that came up during the show when it was posted that the number one killer of black women between the age of 25 and 34 was HIV, and he said that it must indicate that a lot of single black women are being promiscuous; ouch! That’s not what it was saying at all, but it points out how some statistics are be interpreted in different ways, and one meant to highlight a problem could be interpreted as “people are getting what they deserve based on their behavior.”

Half of the black people I talked to said the show should have said more about what could be done about some of the inequities; I said that’s not what the show was supposed to be about. In my mind, this was a snapshot of the different things black people in America go through because they’re black, not because they’re poor or uneducated or any other reason.

There were some good things also, such as showing the one little boy who gets great grades while getting paid to learn and gives half of his money to his dad to help with bills. I even liked the first story on the first half of the family where the patriarch of the family had a white wife and a black mistress, had many children by each woman, and now they get together in a large family reunion after many years of not acknowledging each other. After all, life isn’t all bad for black people; thank goodness for that.

I could talk about it some more, but the truth is if you saw the show then you know all the stories, and if you didn’t then you’re probably not going back to watch it. I wonder overall how white people took this story, and how they cared, if they cared. Was there anything surprising in this story for you? Was there anything that made you think that you wanted to help people? Was most of it alien to you? Did you think the people in the story were mostly responsible for themselves and should get off the couch and get to work (though, I hope you were paying attention to the second part, where many black men were trying to get jobs)?

This was an important show, even if it couldn’t be a complete show. Will it start a conversation, or will it disappear from people’s minds within a couple of weeks? Let’s see how things play out; I’m betting on the latter, though.

First, the latest newsletter, Management Is Responsible For Customer Service, is now available.

So, the article is obviously about customer service, and in that article I take the position that management is often the most responsible for making sure that good customer service is happening with their businesses.

Last week, I conducted a meeting at the site I’m consulting at where I talked to one of the supervisors about monitoring the customer service of the department, important because this particular department is on the front line of the business when people come into the facility.

The point I made was that sometimes, to get good customer service, management needs to get the employees enthusiastic about the work they do because it all boomerangs after that. When employees feel good they work good, and if they interact with the customers they impart good feelings upon the customers, and when customers feel good, they not only come back but they tell their friends about their experience and everything works out well in the end.

Why is it that people don’t put out exactly what it is they want in life anyway? We all want good customer service when we go places; why can’t we remember that when it’s our turn to serve?

It’s hard to overcome perception by the masses. However, Microsoft is about to try to do that very thing by beginning a marketing campaign to counter Apple’s commercials about the viability of its Apple products against Microsoft’s operating system.

Speaking at the software monopolist’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference, Brad Brooks, Microsoft’s VP of Vista consumer marketing, publicly confessed, “We broke a lot of things. We know that, and we know it caused you a lot of pain. It got customers thinking, hey, is Windows Vista a generation we want to get invested in? We’ve faced these challenges before, and we’re going to solve them again,” Brooks said. “There’s a conversation going on in the marketplace today and it’s just plain awful. We’ve got to get back on the front foot.”

The company claims that 77,000 devices work under Vista today, twice as many as at launch, and that 99 per cent of the major business applications are compatible with Vista. For some people, they’re saying it’s about time; for others, they still don’t care.

Customer service is a dicey proposition at any time, and the perception Microsoft gave when it released Vista is that it didn’t care for its customers as much as its bottom line. It started out with their basic system needing way more power to work properly than most people already had on their computers. Sure, there was information out that told people they might need to beef up their computers, but not only did the general public not get that message, but apparently many computer makers didn’t get the message either, as they installed Vista on new machines that weren’t powerful enough to run it properly.

The next problem was their creation of four different versions of the same product, each one more expensive than the other (the initial version costs $300), but the initial version, the one they were marketing to the general user, didn’t have any of the things that Vista was touting as the reason it was so special in the first place. That was disingenuous and condescending to its main customer base.

The only reason a company like Microsoft gets a free pass into getting another shot as often as it does is because it’s still the big dog in the computer world when it comes to operating systems. Imagine most of us treating our customers with such disregard and being able to woo those customers back our way time after time as if we were the only ones who offered those products. It reminds me of Seinfeld and the Soup Guy; would any of us be ready to accept abuse time after time just to get a particular product?

We’re not infallable, but we always need to make sure we try to put our best foot forward at all times when interacting with the customer, even when the customer isn’t right. And who knows, maybe one day we’ll all grow to be big enough to get away with customer abuse; if I do, I still won’t do it.

One of the things I often talk about is how staff needs to be trained well enough so that they know how to do their jobs well. However, there are times when I wonder if it’s not the training we’re doing as much as the people we’re trying to train.

How many people have seen the Tonight Show with Jay Leno? He often goes out on the street and asks Americans questions to every day things that we all hope most people know, but it turns out they don’t know. Most people are either really not that bright or aren’t paying any attention to current events. These are the people who vote in elections based on personality and charisma instead of who just might be the best and brightest person to lead the country. Sometimes the smart people do it to themselves because, if you remember your school days, people who are really smart alienate those who aren’t; I’ve never really been sure why, but it probably explains why the smartest kids either keep to themselves a lot or run the school newspaper.

In any case, I’ve always thought that some of what we see on the Tonight Show was scripted; I just find it hard to believe that people have no idea what’s going on in the world, or where anything is in the world, including the United States. Well, the video below, not from that show but from a British television show, proves that we need to boost up the educational standards of today, and do some teaching on the news also. This is sad,…

I’m lucky that I get to travel most of the time by car. Yeah, there’s a lot of people who might not enjoy driving upwards of 3-6 hours, but for me, I like some of the conveniences that come with being able to do that, though I will admit that, when it’s time to come home, I’d rather be home now.

When I travel by car, I take a lot of stuff, mainly because I can. I like the convenience of having my own stuff, whether it’s food, drink, or other things. Otherwise, I might as well just fly in and out.

To make sure I remember everything I need, years ago I created a checklist of things I want to make sure I have with me. Some of those things are necessities; who else has gone on a trip and realized they didn’t pack underwear or socks? Some of these things are just because; do I really need a bag of snacks, or soda and water?

These days the most important things I need to remember to bring with me are my pills and, unfortunately, my insulin. The pills are actually easy; with the insulin, since I’m on a pen, I have to always check to make sure I have enough, and if not, then I not only have to remember to transport another pen, but I have to pack it and keep it cool in some fashion so that it not only stays cold, but it can’t be allowed to freeze either, so I can’t just pack it in ice by itself; I have to wrap a towel around it and then pack it in ice. Kind of an inconvenience, but it has to be done.

In business situations, instead of checklists, we talk in terms of procedure manuals. In essence, procedure manuals are step-by-step checklists of how people should perform specific types of jobs or checklists of rules. However, what I see most often when I go into a consulting gig is that there are no manuals around, and I’m left to help educating people on how to do their jobs, while not really having enough time to work on procedure manuals myself because I know I’m not going to be there for the long term.

Still, even without always having the time to create procedure manuals, I do create checklists, because one has to have a plan of attack when working on getting things done, and helping to keep remembering everything that has to be taken care of. Checklists are positive ways of highlighting everything that needs to get done.

So, what’s on your checklist?

Do you watch Clean House? Basically, it’s a show about people who accumulate so much clutter in their lives, for a variety of reasons, that they have no idea where to start to get out of trouble. So, instead of even trying, they just continue doing the same thing over and over until the Clean House crew gets there and helps them out in some fashion. Sometimes it’s a major challenge getting people to let go of the past, but eventually, with the help, people own up to their responsibilities and get things done, and the transformations that are achieved are amazing.

Sometimes, this same type of thing happens in a work environment. You find one problem, decide to investigate it a little bit more, and suddenly, before you know it, you have a “clutter” of an issue that’s going to take many steps and many people to fix. I have known a lot of people who, when they see the first few things will shut their eyes, act like the problem doesn’t exist, and go in a different direction, leaving the problem to someone else.

It’s never fine to do that, but it’s worse when you’re going to be around for a long time and may have to deal with this issue later on. Not only that, but what many miss is that they can look like a hero by identifying the problem, and then having some kind of idea on how to resolve it. True, many times the people at the very top hate having problems brought to them, which is a shame, but they love it when the person bringing the problem also has a fix.

Every single time, things can only get better, even if there’s a step, or multiple steps, backwards for a short period of time. But one can’t legitimately avoid issues and problems forever. And it’s best to take your best shot at the time you find them rather than waiting for them to possibly escalate. When it’s all been taken care of, you’ll be amazed at what you’ll see. And you’ll probably be happy also.