Chart a different course to success

By Maurice Ramirez

{NfHILE many jobs for American V Y MSn graduates are going overseas. those who have MFA's will be in great demand. According to Gartner Inc, by 2008,407o of IT jobs for MBA's will be outsourced to workers overseas. The reason? A person can fill in a spreadsheet from India as easily as from Silicone Valley for one-tenth the cost.

However, corporations cannot outsource creative jobs as easily. The ability to go quickly from problem to problem, problem to solution, or from initial idea to unique product does not cross cultures well. The employee needs to be a parl of the culture he or she is marketing to. As a result, American employees with Masters of Fine Arts degrees (MFA's) are more in demand and earning more than those with MBA's.

Why does someone who is trained in artistic abilities do well in business? It's not the particular artistic talent, but the thought process that creates it. Fine artists have the ability to apply non-linear thought to problems, which is a valuable business skill. Companies are looking for employees who can apply a non-linear thought process to business problems.

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Here is a simple exercise that will demonstrate the difference between a linear and non-linear thought process. Take out a sheet of paper. In the top left corner, write a letter "A." In the center of the page, write a "B." Halfway down the page on the right hand side, parallel to the "B," write a "C." In the bottom right corner, write a "D," and in the bottom left corner write an "8." Now draw a line from A to B to C to D to E. That is linear thought-arriving at the final answer by following a step-by-step process.

Now take your right thumb and forefinger and grab the left top corner of the page next to the A. With your other thumb and forefinger, grasp the lower left corner next to the "E." Touch the A to the E. That's non-linear thought-finding the solution without having to go from point to point to point.

Non-linear thinking is an inherent skill

From the moment you are born, you are an input device constantly making connections. In the first five years of life, your brain grows very rapidly and sets down patterns of recognition. For example, as a survival skill, infants smile at everyone. Next they learn to recognize mommy and daddy, then they develop a fear of strangers, and then they learn to reserve affinity for family and other trusted people. Finally, they choose their own friends.

Over time, people begin to lay down patterns of normal and non-normal. That's why you can look at a situation and know something isn't right. If you see someone in an airport who has recently had a stroke, you may not realize the individual had one, but you do know that something isn't right. That is called non-linear thinking-moving quickly from an observation to an end-point. Depending on your experience, that endpoint might have an accuracy as low as 50-50. However, for people trained in creativity, the accuracy is about 99.7Vo. These quick, non-linear solutions-called snap judgments or instinct-are valuable in life and in business. Too often, though, these instincts are not used in the business world. That's about to change.

Creative, non-linear people benefit business

Creative people get in touch with the emotion of what they're creating in themselves and use that as a guide to produce the same emotion in another person from the same society. Businesses see the value of that skill-an employee making decisions based on the mindset of a person of the general society, not as an employee tied to a business. Your non-linear, or heuristic, thought processes are when you observe from the inside out, seeing how your own emotions mirror the ones you observe in others.

Can people only achieve this non-linear thinking ability by earning an MFA? Of course not. Not everyone is willing to go back to school for another two to three years to get their MFA. Fortunately, you can encourage the same type ofnon-linear thinking in yourselfand your employees.

Eliminate your framing bias

How you ask questions determines the answers you get. If you manufacture candy bars and you're ranked second in sales behind brand A, you may ask yourself, "How can we take market share away from brand A?" The obvious linear answer: make your product taste like Brand A. You have labs, testers, and linear thought people who can make Brand B taste like Brand A, or even better. Due to framing bias, they ask the focus group, "Which one tastes like Brand A? Which one do you like better?" Brand B wins, because now it tastes just a little better than Brand A.

But the problem with this scenario is that nobody ever went back and asked the basic question: Will our existing customers accept this change? The executives assume brand loyalty will drag customers along. But if they have a core group of fans who love the original taste of the product, in changing the flavor, they alienate them.

Quantitate non-linear thought

Learn to apply non-linear or heuristic research methods by taking a written inventory of your own feelings, prejudices, and thoughts on the subject at hand. Now you have the ability to walk into a situation and start observing how the situation itself affects you. That's called "going with your gut." If you are a representative of your culture, your environment, and your area of expertise, as well as in touch with your customers and what you experience and feel, then you have unframed your bias. If you are honest, you will be feeling the same reaction as your customers, and you have just gone from point A to point E without all the letters in between.

A business person needs to walk through the mental door to unframe his or her biases. For example, with the chocolate bar example, a good businessperson would go to the store, or go to the factory, or call his or her best distributors. The businessperson would evaluate whether the new product was flying off the shelf. If so, that's good. But he or she would not let that framing bias affect the next time he or she goes through the door, as the opposite may be true then. Such an instantaneous response leads you to continue doing what you're doing or more of it, depending on

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VOU may think that you're listenI ine to what vour customers have to sayiut, if you're like many business owners and managers, what you aren't hearing is hurting your ability to provide first-rate customer care.

The term I use for effectively listening to customers in a business environment is institutional listening. It is a specific set of skills that, properly executed, provides your company with the information it needs to consistently deliver exceptional customer care. There are six components of institutional listening:

Puruoselul listening

Remember the detective show Columbo? The killer would often betray his guilt with an inadvertent admission that would go unnoticed by everyone except Lt. Columbo. He would instantly hone in on the mistake because he was listening with a purpose. He knew why he was listen-

Author, Killer Customer Care

ing and, as a result, would immediately recognize an important clue.

That's the basic approach you need to take when listening to your customers. Valuable nuggets of information are often delivered as offhand remarks that would almost certainly go unnoticed if you were not listening purposefully.

lGtiue Listenin0

If purposeful listening is like being able to recognize a piece of treasure when you see it lying on the ground, then active listening is like a willingness to dig even deeper when only a small sliver of treasure is visible and the rest is buried under a pile of trash. Customers often believe their input is unwelcome, especially when they're unhappy about something. As a result, they are reluctant to be forthcoming. What you're likely to hear is an offhand comment or a cryptic remark. When you actively listen, you not only recognize something significant when you hear it, but you also know to dig deeper into a situation so you're sure to understand what's realIy going on.

Ganuringl{hats llead

Even if you do a terrific job at both purposeful listening and active listening, that's not enough. You still have to systematically deliver the information you accumulate into the hands of managers who can use it effectively.

The trick is to make the transmittal process systematic. After all, every company passes information around casually. Management interactions with employees-ranging from performance reviews to water cooler conversations-are important but often inadequate. You need to deliberately create regular and reliable systems for exchanging information.

Finally, employees must not perceive that there's a penalty for delivering bad news. When someone tells you that customers are complaining about some aspect of the products and services your company offers, don't argue about the merits of the customers' complaints. When an employee is telling you something you don't want to hear, she is doing you a favor.

Aggrogating Whats Gailwed

After information about what's on the minds of your customers is captured, it next must be aggregated in a useful format. As a practical matter, this means getting the information entered into a software program. For your employees who work in front of a keyboard, provide an easy way for them to enter information immediately. For employees who don't use computers regularly, get the information on paper and establish a procedure for data entry as soon as possible. Often, you can assign the job to fntl)l()\ e.\ \\ lto at'c ltlfcll(l\ (l()iltl, e lclical l olk.

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