Blog Readers
Blog readership, social networking and RSS usage continue to increase according to the latest report by Forester Research as reported by the Blog Herald today. What did we used to do? Or, what does the 90% of consumers that don’t read blogs do?
Word of Blog
From Marshall’s Web Tool Blog comes news of a really cool service to give your favorite non-profit cause a little extra word of mouth support…wordofblog.net. Thanks Marshall!
Empathy 101
This morning’s WSJ had an article titled "Teaching Doctor’s To Be Nicer". I’ve linked to it, but since it is a subscription site, for those who can’t get to it, the point was that medical schools are offering students classes on professionalism, empathy, and communication skills. Mostly the article focuses on examples relating to the "callous" behavior by doctors towards patients in hospitals that medical students observe. Educators note this poor modeling as:
"the negative messages medical students get in
front-line, residency training that seem to contradict everything they
had been taught about ethical behavior, compassionate care and
professionalism. Researchers say the most powerful influence on future
physicians is the behavior they observe on a day-to-day basis in the
medical-school environment. And what they often learn is how to be
cold, intimidating, authoritarian, narrow-minded and disrespectful of
subordinates and patients."
I would like to note that I cannot comment from personal experience in hospitals…fortunately. However, I can comment about the bad manners of doctors from personal experience in waiting rooms as my 9AM appointment is "shared" (aka triple booked) with others because our time is valued less that the doctors
….oh, I know we are told that we wait because the doctor had a medical emergency, a problem patient and so on; check their appointment book!
OK, so the point is customer service, customer relationships, customer experience. Yes, I think it applies to doctors, also. I also think most doctors don’t view their patients as customers. However, if medical schools are offering courses in "professionalism, empathy, and communication skills" someone must be thinking in this direction. When business people talk about poor customer service and poor customer experiences we might use the very sentence "cold, intimidating, authoritarian, narrow minded and disrespectful of subordinates and customers {patients}…not patience, what customers are euphemistically thanked for instead of "thank you for putting up with our rude, inconsiderate, and non-empathetic behavior. Lawyers, I will note are another group of professionals who would benefit from a customer service focus.
The article goes on to mention that there is growing criticism that medical students were not adequately prepared for the changing health care environment where patients "are demanding better communications, concerned with slipshod care, medical errors and patient safety are eroding their trust in doctors". I think what we are talking about is that patients, or consumers of health care, have access to not only medical information and current research but also access to information about medical errors making them better informed, more demanding consumers. (We won’t discuss the the ever circling trial lawyers within the context of this post.)
I think what all this really means is that patients are customers and doctors are professional service providers….and that just as the bar has been raised by consumers/customers of products and services who demand positive experiences and service in exchange for their loyalty and trust, patient/customers are demanding more from their doctors. And the corollary is, if markets are conversations among people/customers then a large dose of empathy and empathetic listening will lead to better relationships for businesses and doctors.
So, now here is the real question: Are things really changing? We read and write about customer focus, creating positive customer experiences. We are now even making doctors learn to be nice. We blog our complaints about this bad customer experience and that bad customer service…we even have conferences on Word of Mouth vs. Advertising that debate this.
But, it still seems to me that if I posted all my close encounters in just one week with the wide world of self proclaimed customer centric corporations: Sprint, Charter Communications, Geico I wouldn’t be telling a different tale than I would have before the Age of Customer Centricity was officially declared…except that now before we receive a bad customer experience we are assured by a recorded voice that tells us "for quality purposes this call is being recorded" (WHAT does that mean anyway?) and then after we receive a bad customer experience we are asked to particpate in a customer {dis} satsifaction survey. I mean, all the data is recorded but into what pneumatic tube does it go ????? Maybe if we added a little emphathy into the customer conversation we would be better customers and providers and have better relationships.
As Jennifer Rice says on "What’s Your Brand Mantra?", All companies are people companies. She goes on to say that what is needed is new people practices not new business practices…"If we’re all
really honest with ourselves, what we really need are psychologists and coaches
and relationship experts". Now where is that Empathy 101 signup?
Improving Personal Productivity
I was sitting at my computer multi-tasking….with part of my brain I was going through my Blogline feeds and with the other part of my brain I was pondering once again the issue of, what is best summarized as organizing for improving personal productivity. My list of business ideas (or ideas for business), both the ones that actually make it onto a list and the ones that remain inside my head or are formulated in a conversation and then go straight up to forgotten idea heaven….the part of heaven which is adjacent to balloon heaven where I used to tell my kids their cherished but let go of balloons went so they wouldn’t cry….is far longer than my actual businesses, products, or services. As I scanned my feeds I was thinking about everything from ways to tweak/track my project organization structure to the questions of maybe I should hire a virtual assistant or hire a coach. And then, I got to Matt Homan’s blog post called "Printable Partner" referrencing David Seah’s blog post with the "Printable CEO" template….Matt is correct, it is simply brilliant. So thanks Matt and Dave… I’m going to give it a try!
Passion versus Obsession
A client was recently expressing her concern that her adolescent son may have Aspergers. He is and always has been a computer genius or computer nerd, depending on who is describing him, with a few friends that have similar interests. She and her husband are very social people which makes their son’s personality all the more striking in its contrast to theirs. He has one official diagnosis, ADD, and is medicated for that. Other than ADD, he is an adolescent which probably should be a pathology all of its own to define the narcissistic, angry years that begin around 13 and end around 20. Or so I am told. Over the years, they have consulted with many mental health professionals. Currently, the combination of adolescence, stimulant medication, his temperament and personality are expressing some very unpleasant behaviors. Aspergers keeps rearing its head as they consult with psychiatrists, neurologists, therapists and counselors.
The issues pointing at Aspergers are the lack of basic social skills, the inability to decode social signals, lack of eye contact, and conversations that about narrowly defined, highly technical interests. However, the last doctor that they saw said that he thought "everyone" at the medical school had Aspergers.
And we have all heard others say that "everyone" in Silicone Valley including "you know who" has Aspergers.
In thinking about this, I wondered about the difference between being considered passsionate about say, computers or being considerered obsessed with them. Or medicine, or whatever the narrowly defined highly technical interest might be. If the interest is "highly technical" maybe we say obsession. If the interest is not technical, such as a sport, maybe we say, passionate?
Of course one of my favorite blogs is Creating Passionate Users which is written by some very technical people….who write engaging, passionate posts most recently about the developmental stages of companies. What do you think about passsion versus obsession?
Blogging For Non-Profits and Social Entrepreneurs
I am doing a blogging workshop on Septemeber 27th at 8AM at Provident Counseling , 2650 Olive Street, St. Louis, Missouri for non-profits and social entrepreneurs. If you are interested in attending, email me!
Doris Wild Helmering is Blogging!
I am excited to note that Doris Wild Helmering has a blog. Doris, has a busy private therapy and coaching practice here in St. Louis and is a nationally recognized expert on relationships. She is a prolific author, on-air therapist, and frequent radio and TV guest….yes, Oprah, CNN, Goodmorning America and she has even offered advice to Roseanne about controlling anger. Check out her blog….I am sure she will have a lot to say!
Blame, Responsibility and Attribution Error
Yesterday’s WSJ featured an article about blame that notes among other things that "Americans are beset with blame mongering". Well, all we need to do is read the news to know that finger pointing seems to be the first step we take in coming to terms with a problem.
The WSJ, along with every other news source reported that George Bush was taking responsibility for the failures in dealing with Hurricane Katrina. Blogs weighed in with debits and credits for Bush’s announcement. Many highlighted failures on the part of Nagin and Blanco and Margaret Carlson writes in the LA Times on the whole blame mess an article entitled, "Cashing in on the Blame". In this article, as with others, Bush is blamed for taking blame. Further, this article notes that Bush must have taken a page from JFK’s book who "subverted the blame game by admitting he had blundered at the Bay of
Pigs. He proved you can diminish blame by taking responsibility." I guess this must mean that no one has taken responsibility for much since 1961.
The WSJ article notes that blame is rooted in nature and nurture. The original finger pointers started in the Garden of Eden…so there you have nature; instructions for blaming soon followed and became nurture. So, we learned to blame so that we don’t have to accept responsibility for negative things. But then, after we attribute blame for the negative event or outcome , we are still left with something or somebody that has to change or be rectified. So we have more than one kind of /blame/responsibility really: I take the blame/responsibility for the situation and I take responsibility for fixing it/changing it versus I give you responsibility for this (blame) and you need to take responsibility and fix it/change it versus I take responsibility for the situation and I take responsibility for fixing it/changing it.
All of this seems to lead to attribution theory and the social psychologist Heider who drew a few boxes,
triangles and balls and then explained that external attribution occurs when we cognitively attribute causality to outside factors such as weather; internal attribution occurs when we assign causality to internal factors such as intelligence. We are more apt to excuse our own mistakes by "situations" beyond our control (external attribution) and blame mistakes on others because of their own ineptness (internal attribution). And no I am not making any inferences about a Hurricane and the intelligence of those trying to handle it. It’s just that attribution theory, especially fundamental attribution error theory explain a lot about the current state of blame in New Orleans which are pretty clearly split by party lines. When my ex-husband had a problem with for instance his computer it was the computer’s fault; the computer was broken; when I had a problem with my computer, it was because I had done something wrong; I broke the computer.
Combining Business With Pleasure?
Jack Bog’s Blog: Finally, some good news just about says it all, doesn’t it?
In Case of Emergency
As the finger pointing continues over Hurricane Katrina along with the cries for leadership a thought occured to me while listening to the Head of my youngest son’s school today welcome two families from New Orleans who had moved in with relatives here in St. Louis and had enrolled their children in school. The school had an emergency phone number and a plan developed after September 11th. I wondered how many parents sitting in the room knew what that number was or had it written down….on easily accessible, old fashioned paper. The school had sent it to us numerous times along with "the plan". But like the exit maps on the back of hotel doors and the location of emergency exits on airplanes, in movie theaters, or a fire escape plan from our own homes , it wasn’t top of mind enough to be of much use in case of an emergency. And the finger pointing and calls for leadership should really begin with ourselves.
Back in 1980, some of you may recall there was a fire in the MGM Grand Hotel early one morning. Eighty four people died and 675 people were injured. There were no sprinkler system in the hotel, there was complete chaos as people awoke to discover the inferno around them; they jumped to their deaths, doors locked preventing escape.
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