Seth Godin’s post about CEO blogs (all the rage, it seems) got me thinking about a related problem I see in my new workplace. And it isn’t a CEO (necessarily) or a blog. But the five or six characteristics of a good CEO blog can easily be cross-applied.
A few times a week a message hits my inbox promising customer information, titled “Customer Update.” It invariably contains happytalk of a particular flavor:
“I am so glad that your product is in my life; I feel so much better and it is really great, thank you so much for being you…”
You guessed it; these are being broadcast around the firm for morale purposes rather than to inform people’s work in any meaningful way.
Is there candor ? No. The helpline hears directly of complaints and problems all the time, but these never make it to the “customer update” messages.
Is there urgency or timeliness ? No. The customer quotes are not dated, not requiring of action, not specific of problems or issues, not even related to past complaints having been resolved.
Is there pithiness ? In the sense that a pithy comment is precisely meaningful, forceful, and brief, the answer is also no. There is generally very little meaning beyond “you guys are great” or “good job; good product” in the missives. In the sense that a pithy green twig is filled with a fluffy, unsolid material, then sure, but that would be malapropism .
Is there controversy ? No. These messages are squeaky-clean and smell like roses.
And without any of the above five characteristics, is there utility ? Hardly. The work of a single employee is not informed or improved by these content-free morale-oriented messages. In fact, they are largely ignored. Many people I have spoken to have set up rules in their email clients that automatically bin these messages or shunt them to a folder someplace for later (non-)perusal. People are voting with their software not to be bothered by this fluff.
If there is indeed a morale problem, one that a well-meaning individual might misguidedly attempt to tackle by spreading this form of fluffy love via company-wide email, from where might it spring? And how should it be tackled? While I sometimes pretend to, I am aware that I do not have all of the answers. But I have some ideas about this.
Here comes the user experience hammer (I see a user experience nail!): we have insufficient contact with customers (as usual, as is common). And information gleaned from the contacts we do have is not effectively plowed back into the organization where people can see it. Do we need a Google Zeitgeist for customer service calls? Yes! Do we need to know if people are suddenly having trouble with adhesives because the weather is warm? Yes! Do we need to know that we’ve responded to problem X with solution Y and we are now seeing Z fewer calls about the problem per week? Yes! Etc.
Would it improve morale if people knew what the problems were, could act on them, and could see the results of their actions? Yes. It would.
