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As an executive coach, management consultant and coauthor of The Toyota Way to Service Excellence: Lean Transformation in Service Organizations, I’m often asked by people, “What can I do differently so that I can _______ ?” You can fill in the blank with whatever you’d like: lead more successfully, coach more effectively, be more creative.

For me, it’s always a joy to have these types of discussions as what I love most is helping people learn to become the best that they can be. So, if you (like so many of us!) want 2017 to be THE year that you really make progress towards fulfilling your dreams and becoming the person you want to be, here is the best advice I can give you.

START! 

Yes. Start. Today. Now. Not later or tomorrow. Right now! The Toyota Way to Service Excellence ends with Jeff Liker, my coauthor, and I asking our readers to START, and here’s why:

How many times do you have an amazing idea, whether it’s to improve a process, or solve a work or home problem and then, instead of doing it right away – starting – you think to yourself, “I’ll do it as soon as…as soon as I’ve finished working on this PowerPoint deck…as soon as I’ve finished preparing for this meeting…as soon as I’ve washed the dishes or taken out the trash…the list is endless. Don’t put off starting work on your idea right away. Because, in my experience (and yours as well, I’m sure) ‘as soon as’ NEVER actually comes. And the ideas you have are too precious to lose. So, when you have an idea, START! Now! Before you forget it or get distracted or lose courage or get convinced out of it by well-meaning but misguided people who tell you ‘YOU CAN’T’.

Taichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System tells us that “The wise mend their ways”. That means don’t wait until tomorrow to change what’s not working this morning; change it this afternoon. Think about how many improvement efforts never get off the ground because ‘other things took priority’. Think about how many books never get written, art pieces never created, movements never started because someone waited for later. Your ideas are important and life changing. Don’t wait for later, because if you do, they might never turn into reality. Start now.

Bring your whole self! And your creativity!

How many times do you reject an idea – your very own great idea! – because that little creeping, nagging voice inside your head says, “I can’t possibly do that…I don’t have the training, the skills, the support…and besides, it’s not a very impressive idea or important contribution anyhow…” I bet it’s quite often. I say, “Stop doing that.” Stop focusing on what you can’t do (and all the reasons you’ve made up for why you can’t and why it’s not important) and focus on what you CAN do. Right here, right now, today! If we all do one thing more thing that we CAN (and yes you can…), if we all turned one more idea into a reality, the world would be a much better place.

So, whatever it is that YOU are passionate about, start doing it. The great thing is that we are all passionate about different things. Our world needs that diversity because there are a lot of different things that need improving. If your passion is knitting, knit hats for preemies, or homeless people…if you’re passionate about the environment, grow a garden, make better food choices, turn your thermostat down two degrees…whatever it is, I assure you, you can do it and YOUR EFFORT AND YOUR PASSION COUNTS…We’re all put on earth to fulfill our unique purpose. Every action, and every decision you make counts. We’re all responsible for creating the world we want to live in – and that our children and grandchildren will inherit. Our creativity IS our humanity. So, bring your whole self. Be exactly who you are. The world needs you.

Find a coach to help you be disciplined enough to turn your ideas into reality. It will really help.

A lot of getting something done, especially if you’re learning a new skill, is simply plain old hard work. What I call a ‘slog’. It’s not glamorous and it’s not easy. Like writing and rewriting and then rewriting again because it’s still not what you want to say to readers. It doesn’t matter what it is you’re learning, after the excitement of starting wears off (because it’s going to) you’re going to need someone to help you keep going. To give you encouragement, to keep you honest, to challenge you when you want to give up and remind you that for all things, “What is now easy, was once difficult”, so don’t give up, just keep going. That person is your coach!

As humans, we tend to think if we didn’t get it exactly right the first time, we failed. Let me assure you, you didn’t fail, you just learned something that will help you in your next attempt: whether it’s to stop smoking, write a book or facilitate a training. So when you want to give up, don’t. Keep slogging through. Your coach will help you!

Think your coach needs to be a trained professional? They don’t. Your coach can be a friend, family member of colleague. They just need to be there to share your joy when you are making progress, and make sure you are disciplined enough to keep going through the not so joyful, frustrating, slogging bits, because once you’ve started it’s going to be easy to give us at the first rough patch.

So, my question for you today, then, is what’s stopping your from starting?

Somehow, as human beings we always think we need so much more than we do before we start: need to know more, need to be more, need to have more (money, training, experience). But we don’t. We just need to start – we’ll learn what we need along the way – and gain the confidence that only comes from doing. When I started out, I didn’t go to formal lean training courses, I didn’t have a huge support structure, I simply wanted to make things better for the three hundred customers I was caring for and the other people who I worked with. So I started by reading books and trying things out. And I found some really great coaches along the way too!

So, whatever it is that you want to do, if you want things to be different this year (and I assure you, the world needs – and is waiting for – your particular contribution whatever that may be) the best advice I can give you is to simply START!

It was a cold, rainy, blustery fall day. By the time I got inside I was totally drenched. Wondering what I was going to do with my dripping umbrella, you can imagine my relief when I saw a rack of umbrella bags conveniently placed in the lobby. Taking one, I couldn’t help thinking to myself that it was great that the building provided this convenience for customers, but the wording of the sign above the bags felt a little off-putting to me:

“Please help keep our lobby floors dry. Use our complimentary wet umbrella bags.”

If you’re wondering why I thought the wording was odd, contrast it with the wording on an umbrella bag rack in another building just up the street:

“For your safety and convenience.”

Notice the difference?

• Sign 1 used the word ‘our’: Please help keep our lobby floors dry. Use our complimentary wet umbrella bags.
• Sign 2 used the word ‘your’ instead: For your safety and convenience.

Maybe you’re thinking to yourself, “So what? Who cares? Both buildings are giving out exactly the same umbrella bags. How much difference could one word possibly make?”

In my opinion, that seemingly tiny wording choice makes a huge difference – both for customers and for the people who work for each building company. Here’s why.

• The wording of Sign 1 focuses internally on the company. The sign actually tells the customer what they can do for the company: ‘Help keep our floors dry.’
• The wording of Sign 2 focuses on the customer. It lets customers know what the company is going to do for them! ‘For your safety and convenience.’

As a customer, I can assure you that I’d prefer to know that the focus is on me – on my safety and convenience – and not on how I can improve the efficiency of a company’s internal process such as mopping a wet floor numerous times a day, which is what I immediately thought about after reading Sign 1.

Although Sign 1 may imply that keeping the floor dry will improve customer safety, Sign 2 states it explicitly. And as important as that is for how customers feel, it’s just as important for the building company’s employees. Because service is about caring for other people and putting their needs first. Choosing to use words that make that explicit reinforces that the company expects its team members to have a ‘customer first’ orientation. In a nutshell, how your employees feel about and treat your customers will depend, in a large part, on the words your company chooses to use, in internal and external communications of all sorts, including signs.

As well as choosing internally focused words instead of customer focused words, many service organizations also use what I call “machine words”, instead of “human, organic words” to describe the organization itself. This always surprises me, because what service organizations are all about is people! People creating value with other people during each service interaction.

In The Toyota Way to Service Excellence: Lean Transformation in Service Organizations, coauthor Jeff Liker and I describe the negative consequences of viewing organizations as ‘machines’ instead of as the ‘living human systems’ that they are (see Chapter 3: Principle 1: Philosophy of Long-Term Systems Thinking). Unfortunately, when we use machine words to describe our customers – and the people who serve them – we create the conditions that allow us to ‘forget’ that our customers are human beings, just like we are. And when we forget that they are human beings, it becomes easier to ignore the fact that they have feelings, wants and desires that we need to satisfy through our service.

As organizations, we’re often so used to using machine words to describe our customers that we might not even notice we’re using them. Some examples to look for in your organization are:

• Referring to customers as ‘client or account numbers’
• Referring to customer requests as transaction types such as invoices, tickets, work order number or out of service items (If your organization practices lean, take a look at your huddle boards and see what language they use.)

As well as being ‘machine words’, these are also words that have to do with internal processes. Like the umbrella bag sign example earlier, using these types of words takes the focus away from the customer and puts it squarely on internal processes. Imagine how differently service representatives might care for customers if, instead of referring to them as a number, they were accustomed to referring to them by company or contact name and by the specific service need each one has.

As a company, using non-human machine words to describe the people who serve your customers, or to describe what people do each day is also problematic. Again, it doesn’t encourage a culture of human beings helping human beings – which is what customer service is all about. Some common ‘machine words’ used to describe employees that I hear often are:

• Employee numbers
• Resources
• Human capital
• Talent
• Brand

Why can’t we just use people’s names instead of giving them a number? After all, each one of us is a unique individual with something special to offer. And what if we referred to people as colleagues, co-workers, team-mates or team-members? What a difference that would make in how people view themselves and their roles; instead of separating, dividing and dehumanizing, these words connect people in the shared purpose of caring for customers.

And what about words like ‘leverage’, ‘drive’, and ‘move the needle’? More machine words. What if we substituted words like create, grow, develop, blossom and help instead? We want our team members to treat our customers (and each other!) with caring and compassion, empathy and understanding. if we use machine language to describe our people, how can we expect them to feel and act, not like ‘cogs in the machine’, but like the caring human beings they are, and that our customers need them to be?

Words both create and transmit organizational culture. To both customers and the team members who serve them. So, if you’re in the business of serving customers (and truthfully, what business isn’t?) and you want to make sure that your customers are being treated in a kind, caring, compassionate and human way, take a close look at the words that you are using. Because every single one of them matters.

Practicing Kata for Service Excellence

Recently I had some service experiences where the person who was supposed to be helping me gave what I call the “list of I can’ts.” I can’t help you because …our computer system isn’t set up to do that, …we don’t take credit cards in my department, …our company policy doesn’t allow it. This list can go on, and I’m sure you’ve experienced it too.

For a service customer it’s frustrating, but for a service organization it can be devastating. In today’s marketplace customers can – and do – easily find alternate providers with comparable services and prices (think banks and insurance companies). At least 50 percent of customers switch service providers after one poor experience.* And what’s almost guaranteed to give a customer a poor service experience? Hearing the two words no customer wants to hear: “I can’t…”

As a Lean consultant, coach, and coauthor, with Jeff Liker, of The Toyota Way to Service Excellence, I’ve been working exclusively in the service industry. The best thing I’ve found to help service representatives learn how to go from “I can’t” to “Of course we can” is practicing the scientific thinking routines of Toyota Kata. Here’s why:

• In services, value for the customer is created immediately during each service interaction. Think phone call to a call center or a meal in a restaurant. Because the Improvement Kata pattern is a structured way to develop people’s ability to overcome obstacles and meet challenging goals, representatives who practice it regularly develop a habit of “figuring out how” very quickly. And that’s exactly the habit a customer service representative needs.
• Because service work often seems ‘invisible’ – decisions take place in people’s minds and transactions are completed behind the computer screen – it can be difficult for managers to ‘see’ how their service representatives are thinking. The Coaching Kata makes those thought processes visible, giving the manager a deliberate, structured way to develop their team members critical thinking and scientific problem-solving skills.

I’ve seen the Kata approach work over and over again in many service sectors and organizations. Here’s an example from the insurance industry.

A prospective customer indicated they could give the insurance company a large amount of business if policies could be underwritten within two hours. Since the process normally took at least 48 hours, you can imagine the list of “I can’ts” that followed! Wanting to satisfy the customer – and grow their business with the large number of accounts promised – the underwriting team practiced the Improvement Kata / Coaching Kata approach to work their way through all the obstacles that previously prevented them from being able to produce these types of policies within two hours. Within two weeks, with a lot of experimentation – and great coaching from their supervisor – the policies were being produced within the required time! The customer was happy and the company was too!

Here’s a challenge for you… If you work in a service company, or the service portion of a manufacturing company, take some time to go to gemba – the place where service representatives are creating value with your customers with each interaction – and listen carefully. Do you hear a long list of “I can’ts?” Wonder how practicing Kata can work for your service organization? First, check out The Toyota Way to Service Excellence, where you’ll find case studies and stories of Kata application-practice and success from service organizations as diverse as healthcare, software development and even a taxi company. Then…..

Join Us at KataCon3!

The annual Kata Summit is affectionately called “KataCon” and the next one is February 21-22 in San Diego. You have the opportunity to learn more about how to practice Kata in services during my keynote on Creativity and Kata for Service Excellence, as well as during the interactive Kata in Services session I’m facilitating and by networking with other service Kata geeks. And if you have questions about The Toyota Way to Service Excellence, I’d love to answer them as well.

Your service organization can’t afford not to practice something like the Improvement Kata and Coaching Kata, because the last words your customers want to hear are, “I can’t.”  Learn how to practice the IK & CK so your representatives will be able to say: “Of course we can help you. Let’s figure out how.” That’s what every customer wants!

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This mini-article was originally published in the KataCon3 Newsletter.