Civil Civil Servant

Liar, Liar

June 22, 2011 by Ann Wilberton

What do you do when the customer is clearly lying? We recently had a book returned with dog chew marks all over the spine. The book was withdrawn from the collection. The customer insisted that she had borrowed the book in that condition. A lot of times when we have empowered staff on the front desk, we are asking them to use their judgement. And a good portion of that judgement is based on whether we believe the customer or not.

Several times a week we have customers that insist on things: they returned the movie/book on time, they paid that fine already, the item was in that condition when they borrowed it.

I could write a book on the number of times the insistent customer was proven to be wrong. In general we have already given in to these customers. This is especially true if they don’t have a track record of losing/damaging items or having fines written off.

It’s a balancing act. Customer tells us something. We have to determine if we believe the story or not and then we determine whether to write off the fines/damaged item. I’m always a little fascinated by the liars because they are assuming that extreme denial will get them off the hook for paying when chances are if the item is relatively inexpensive and we have other copies and the person has come to us and just honestly told us what happened, we’re going to write it off. But lying puts us off. Most times we might have a sense of lying but we can’t know for sure if they returned something or borrowed it in damaged condition. But, there are times when there is NO doubt a person is lying.

In the case of the dog chewed book, what the customer didn’t know is that she was the only person to borrow that book. We had about 25 brand new copies in my office being used to fill book club requests. The copy she borrowed was from that pile on my office floor. She was trying to create doubt by raising the idea that another customer had damaged the book and she just happened to borrow it in that condition. But, there was no other customer before her. She was lying.

This bothers me. It removes the opportunity to give the person the benefit of doubt. In the end, we wrote off the damaged book because we had so many copies; but, it really bothered me that she lied so freely to us. It is hard not to knee jerk punish her by leaving the fines on her record. I don’t really want to be that person and I don’t want us to run our department that way. If we had left the fines on her record it would have been to punish her for lying because in the bigger picture it was an item that was easy to write off and one we would routinely write off in different circumstances.

Each instance where a customer perspective differs with ours brings the opportunity to negotiate; but, when faced with undeniable proof, for some reason, we automatically lean towards feeling that there is no need for negotiation. I beg to differ. At our library we reached 1 million circulation last year. Even if we remove renewals from the equation and had a check-in error rate of just 1% (which seems impossibly low to me), we would have 6,000 human errors. And customers make mistakes too, they damage things; they think they returned things when in all actuality the item is in their kid’s backpack or under a car seat or stuffed behind a couch cushion.

I consider all of this part of doing business and honestly the more errors on our part and lost items on the customer’s part means that we are doing a lot business. Any business factors loss into the budget. At another public library, where I worked as the Fiction Librarian, we would purchase the full collection of Donald Goines paperbacks twice a year because they were stolen so frequently. A lot of libraries would stop purchasing them; but, we felt that the cost associated with this practice was low enough and the demand for the books high enough that it was worth the loss.

We are going to encounter customers who lie; but, I believe it is in the best interest of the institution to resist automatically punishing this person and to make your decisions based on all the factors that you would ordinarily use to negotiate the outcome.

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The Used Car Lot

May 19, 2011 by Ann Wilberton

via Flickr Commons

I can already hear the groans. I know very few people who enjoy going to a dealership or a used car lot to buy a car. It seems so much more civilized to purchase from a private party. But, if you need financing or want to test drive multiple cars at once or just appreciate how a car sales place will guide you through the insurance and registration part, you will have to deal with one of the most notoriously tainted negotiation processes you are likely to encounter in your life. Even buying a house is more civilized than the gauntlet many car salespeople will put you through.

My car was past its prime. I didn’t have the time or patience to drive all over the place looking at cars being sold by people; so, off to the dealerships I went.

I contacted them in two different ways: either I stopped by after viewing inventory online or I used a virtual method (chat/email/form) after viewing online inventory. Let me preface this by giving you some background: I used my librarian skills to do research on the various vehicles that fit my needs and narrowed it to looking at small, used, economical hatchbacks and then narrowed it further by excluding some manufacturers based on reliability reports. Also, I’m a car person raised in a car loving family. I spent my childhood in garages handing my father wrenches and getting lectures on the proper way to adjust a carburetor. I’m familiar with the lingo, the sales tactics and generally feel at home in any kind of vehicle related place.

I went in wondering if I could learn anything about customer service that could be applied to the library world and wondering if anything had changed since I last bought a car from a dealership.

This is what I found:

Even after being very open and specific about my needs and exactly what I was looking for in my next vehicle, every single person except for the salesmen I eventually bought from tried to steer me to a sedan because even if they had a hatchback it didn’t satisfy other requirements like price or mileage. I spent 5 minutes explaining to one salesman why I was unwilling to purchase a higher mile car. He still didn’t get it and just continued to argue my reasoning. I found myself actually arguing with salespeople over the reasons I wanted a hatch. What I learned: Listen, listen, listen. What we offer our customers is free so we naturally tend to offer them alternatives to what they asked for but perhaps we should preface this with a statement like the following: I understand you are looking for a specific book on subject X which we don’t have ;but, perhaps while you are waiting for your ILL to arrive you’d be interested in these other books which might include coverage of your topic.

They lie. I’m sure they wouldn’t call it that; but, they really do lie. They tell you one thing knowing another thing is true. Or they tell you a song and dance about their manager which is really just part of the dance. Learned: We like to think we don’t lie to our customers; but, I can think of some specific times we evade the truth about policies or procedures. There is a discomfort with telling a customer we discard books or we do something for our own convenience rather than theirs (a whole other post!). Question: If we have policies or procedures that embarrass staff or otherwise put them in the position of feeling like they have to evade answering, are we providing good customer service with these policies and procedures and are we setting our staff up to fail?

They tend to treat you like you don’t know anything. Learned: ask the right questions so you don’t have to assume what the customer knows or doesn’t know.

I was surprised that little had changed. I got the run around. I was made to wait. Two places held my car keys hostage under the guise they were going to assess it for its trade in value. I told the one guy, “Please don’t assume I haven’t noticed you still have my keys.” His face turned red and he replied, “Let me go get them for you.” At which time, the manager came out to talk to me. I had to ask for my keys. This sort of behavior is infuriating. Are we infuriating our customers? At my current library, we tend to avoid this result of a customer interaction. I have worked at libraries that had fury inducing policies.

Finally, I landed in the hands of Al who answered my questions and was generally a pleasant guy to spend a couple of hours with while we test drove cars and filled out paperwork. He returned my keys as soon as the mechanic was done assessing it. He listened to me and worked within my constraints (I too can be a pain in the butt.). I was honest with him and I felt that he was honest with me. The only car salesmany thing he did was to open the windows of the first car which had a distinct mold smell.

So, lets recap. Lessons learned on the used car lot.

Listen. Listen. Listen. Let the customer know they have been heard. This not only helps the customer get the resources they need; but, it’s also effective in defusing the angry customer.
Avoid policies and procedures that put your staff in the position of feeling they can’t be honest.
Ask the right questions before assuming what your customer does or doesn’t know whether its about resources, library policies and practices or anything else.
Do you have policies that you know are irritating when they don’t have to be? Do you have policies that could be changed but are in place for staff convenience at the detriment of customer service? Change them.

Posted in customer service | Leave a Comment »

Have You Read?

April 15, 2011 by Ann Wilberton

I’m about to go on vacation and I thought, “geez, I haven’t posted to CCS in awhile. I better write a post before I go.”

Well, I’m not going to write a full post! I’m going to share something! I frequently get asked what I read on a regular basis to be inspired or to learn more about the topics I talk about on Civil Civil Servant.

One of the blogs I read on a regular basis is Chief Happiness Officer.

This is the blog of a company that is all about having a happy workforce.

Some of my favorite posts:

How to Handle Chronic Complainers

Get Lucky At Work: Be Positive

Top 5 Reasons to Celebrate Mistakes at Work

How to Deal with Anger at Work

I think it’s important to read about these issues on a weekly basis. Otherwise, weeks, sometimes months can go by and slowly your attitude can erode. By keeping these ideas fresh in your mind and experimenting at work and home, you can find the strategies that work for you to reduce anger, stress and miscommunication and increase satisfaction and happiness.

It requires practice. I tend to read about 3-5 articles a week about customer service, workplace relationships, or conduct of life type articles. They help me keep on track and thinking about the issues that are important to me.

Are you interested in establishing a regular reading habit? Start with Chief Happiness Officer, check out the blogs he reads and go from there. I try to keep it diverse: I read a couple of blogs on work issues, a couple on customer service and a couple of Buddhist blogs and a general kind of spirituality blog. I frequently find new reading sources through my main stable of blogs. They are great at finding articles and pointing me toward them.

By using a feed reader like Google’s Reader (the one I use), you can subscribe to your favorite blogs and they come to you instead of you trying to remember to go to them.

Well, I’m off on vacation: a road trip to Memphis!

Posted in Happiness | 1 Comment »

Sleep Your Way to Good Performance

March 14, 2011 by Ann Wilberton

Are you wondering how you can improve your performance at work or at some other practice or task in you life?

Harvard Business Review has an article, Sleep is More Important than Food (which I found via Lifehacker), that is an excellent summary of research and scientific opinion on the impact sleep has on performance.

Whether it’s professional violinists or CEOs, study after study find that sleep deprivation, even the shaving of an hour here and an hour there, results in reduced reaction time, harder time concentrating, poor memory and processing speed.

I go through periods where I am very diligent about sleep and other periods where I shave an hour here and there which I really don’t have the luxury of doing without impacting my ability to function with ease.

I know I need more sleep when I feel myself having less patience with customers. There is a direct correlation between my sleep habits and my usually unending patience developing limits. I am currently in a phase where I’m trying to get 9 hours of sleep every night except Thursdays which are impossible because I work the late shift at the library and then turn around and work the day shift on Fridays. I feel better: more patient, more energetic, more cheerful, happier.

In the HBR article, the author asks why we think it’s okay to shave sleep, to essentially deprive our bodies of an essential need, when we wouldn’t deny it food and water. I think this is an interesting question. Why are we willing to sacrifice health and happiness? For sure, there is a perceived notion that the time spent not sleeping is “getting things done;” but, I bet that is not true. It is especially not true if it’s the third night of not getting enough sleep…because then you are spending your awake hours not performing your best anyway. And it’s probably weighing in on your relationships too.

Depriving yourself of good sleep is affecting your ability to function in all parts of your life. It affects your personal relationships. It effects your business relationships. It effects your ability to remember important things and work efficiently. It effects your mood and your ability to appreciate your life.

If you do one thing differently today, go to bed early. It will benefit you, your family and your workplace. If you have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, seek out help from your doctor.

In fact, I challenge you to get at least 8.5 hours of sleep for the next 7 nights. Keep track. I’ve been writing down the number of hours I sleep on a calendar. It keeps me motivated and honest. Plus, I can look back and feel that I’m accomplishing something and doing the things I need to do to remain healthy. Last night I went to bed at 9:15 and got up at 8am. I was in Brooklyn Saturday night and the noise disrupted my sleep and I suspect my body was catching up.

Do it. For the next 7 days, sleep 8.5 hours a night, document it. See how you feel on the 8th day. I predict you’ll feel rejuvenated.

Posted in Happiness, Health | Leave a Comment »

Unplugged: Thoughts

March 7, 2011 by Ann Wilberton

I enjoyed this experiment. It was suggested that we unplug from sundown on Friday to Sundown on Saturday. I refrained from texting, checking email and internet surfing. I did check my email Saturday night; but, continued the “non surfing” into Sunday afternoon.

I discovered a few things.

On Saturday night when I checked my email there were about 40 emails waiting for me. 2 were of a personal nature, 1 was an online bill notification and the rest were newsletters, store coupons and other marketing notices. It took me about 5 minutes to delete everything I was not interested in, read my personal mail and star the bill to be dealt with later. On Sunday night, I spent about 10 minutes responding to the two emails and setting a date for the bill to be paid automatically. This 10 minutes also included deleting new marketing emails.
Not texting forced my girlfriend to call me!
The most interesting discovery came from the lack of internet surfing. Anya’s 40th birthday is next weekend and I’ve been told not to purchase a gift because we are going on a trip in April. I decided to make her a painting and put it off until this past weekend because I knew I’d have the whole weekend to work on it since she had to go out of town. When I realized how much I actually got done and how I managed to persevere through the spots when I ordinarily would take a break and surf the net or watch tv, I pushed back the no surfing to late Sunday afternoon. It told me volumes about my creative process and how I actually could power through the slow or blocked spots where I felt like I didn’t know what to do next. (color, composition, content, etc)

What is the overall things learned? Email is not my problem. I have done a good job of keeping what comes in to my inbox at least somewhat relevant to me. I maintain, not an inbox zero, but about an inbox 10, meaning there are rarely more than 10 items lingering in my inbox. So, email is not a problem. Texting is not my problem. I only have about 4 people who I text with, Anya being the most prolific but even then it’s not much and if my noise alert is enabled, I don’t keep checking my phone.

Internet surfing is the area where I’d like to steal back some of my time. I’m going to try and go surfing free from Friday eves to Sunday eves and see how that impacts the quality of my life. I did notice that I was pretty damn happy last night as I snapped a picture of the finished painting!

We can’t unplug at work; but, unplugging more at home could improve the quality of our lives and in turn boost our productivity and happiness at work. I’m usually a lot happier heading to work on Mondays if I feel like I didn’t waste my weekend watching TV or on the internet or playing video games. On my last post, I mentioned that I didn’t have any friends in Asbury Park. Sunday, early evening I called my neighbor to chat about a summer garden project we are contemplating and she invited me down to her place to see her kitchen renovation. Ordinarily, I would have said no, thinking that I’d rather relax on my last evening before starting up work; but, I said, yes and had a pleasant couple of hours chatting with my neighbor. I enjoyed her company and was glad I had agreed to go.

One more thought: I had the need to look up a phone number; but, I really didn’t want to turn my laptop on for fear I’d get sucked in; so, I actually used the good old yellow pages. We are shifting more ordinary things, like looking up a phone number, checking the weather, listening to music to our computers. I even use my computer for phone calling. What are the ramifications of this? A few weeks ago, Anya and I were waiting for a subway and she whipped out her cell phone and started playing Tetris. I was slightly annoyed; but, mostly fascinated by this. She is not a techie. She doesn’t own a TV. I don’t think she has ever owned a gaming system. She has an iphone; but, mostly uses it as a phone with the occasional weather lookup, directions, looking for a business using GPS. She texts. She doesn’t Tweet or check in at locations. I don’t even think she checks Facebook on it. Yet, here she was playing a game on it while she was waiting. My parents own smartphones now, Droid X. Are they going to play games while they wait at the Doctor’s office? Is there even a significance to this cultural shift? My mother asked me if I was going to get a Kindle and the reaction in my head was immediate and forceful. I thought: NO MORE GADGETS. All these gadgets require energy and work. You can’t just pick up the book and read it. It has to be downloaded and transferred to your device. You have to make sure your device is charged. There is a management involved. Management that usually involves you connecting to a computer.

I had a friend who received an ipod as a gift and asked me to help her get her music on it. I’m not a fan of iTunes; but, I spent time wrangling with her iTunes and burning CDs and showing her how it worked. She set up to playlists: one for the gym and one for bus riding. She has never changed or added anything and this was about 5 years ago. When I asked her about it, she said: I can’t be bothered. Her iPod battery finally died and she never replaced it, though she admits that she sometimes misses having it at the gym.

Are we going to reach a saturation point? A point where we won’t be able to stand being engaged with an electronic thing for one more task?

I consider myself a techie person; but, I know that I’m happier the less time, outside of work, I spend engaged with technology.

Posted in Happiness | 2 Comments »

National Day of Unplugging

March 2, 2011 by Ann Wilberton

Sundown March 4th, 2011 begins the start of the National Day of Unplugging, sponsored by Reboot. It’s odd that a group supporting the idea of unplugging is promoting their app and connecting to them via social networking; but, once you get past that oddity, you will come to see the idea that they are promoting. Reboot is a Jewish organization though their ideas are universal. They see the National Day of Unplugging as an opportunity for people to reclaim time, slow down their lives and reconnect with friends, family, the community and themselves.

Ultimately they hope that we’ll do this once a week, which is where the app comes in…a way to remind us to turn off. They are not anti-technology; they are just pro disconnecting from technology on a regular basis and reconnecting with loved ones, our community and ourselves.

I am going to take their challenge and refrain from e-mail, internet surfing and watching videos/tv (which I do on my laptop).

Currently my routine, and I actually find this sort of …not embarrassing…but disappointing maybe…is:

Wake up and check email and overnight txts on my Android Phone.
Drink too much coffee while reading email, The New York Times and sometimes Facebook. All on my laptop.
Work.
Back home. Cook while sometimes listening to the radio or watching tv on my laptop.
Watch streaming movies or TV on my laptop.

In 2004, I stopped watching TV. In 2005, while recovering from my accident, I started watching TV shows on DVD. In 2006, I again stopped watching TV. In 2008, I moved to NJ for my current job and probably by mid 2009, I started watching TV on my laptop. By last summer, I was watching TV on my laptop at least 4 times a week. I’m disappointed that I’ve let TV inch back into my daily life.

For the Day of Unplugging, I plan on getting home and cooking, maybe read or make art until bedtime. Saturday, I’ll wake up, drink too much coffee and eat breakfast. It is a rare weekend when my girlfriend and I don’t see each other; but, this weekend is one of those. I had already planned on working around the house and I’m sticking to that plan. I’m guessing it will be hard to go all day Saturday without checking email or reading the news.

What about you? Can you disconnect from your gadgets? How many times, on the weekend, do you check email? Do you text, use Facebook, surf the net? How many times do you watch TV, txt, surf the net instead of engaging with a human being?

I’m going to confess something that is hard to confess. I don’t have any friends in Asbury Park. I moved here over a year ago and I have a couple of acquaintances; but, no real friends. I have plenty of excuses: too tired after work to volunteer, spend many weekends in Brooklyn with Anya, haven’t found my people. I understand that when you move alone to a new place, it is hard to make new friends. But, sitting at home watching Law and Order reruns on my laptop is not helping matters.

Take the challenge with me. I’ll be back in a few days to let you know how it went.

For further reading on this subject, check out one of my favorite Buddhist teachers, Sharon Salzberg.

Posted in Happiness, Health | Leave a Comment »

Zen and the Art of Criticism

January 5, 2011 by Ann Wilberton

by Jon Jordan via Flickr CC

Delivering and receiving criticism with grace is one of life’s biggest challenges. Mastering this challenge has an enormous effect on your overall happiness and quality of life, both at home and at work. And it can help you foster and maintain relationships and sustain healthy communications.

I was recently asked how I handled rejection of my ideas or direct criticism and it got me thinking about the role criticism plays in our lives. I came up with the following list of three elements one needs to master.

Deliver criticism gently and in a way that gives it the highest chance of being heard.
Accept constructive criticism in a way that allows you to learn and grow from it and not just see it as a personal attack.
When criticized in way that is not constructive and could possibly be a personal attack, calmly view the criticism from any angle to see if there is any useful information in it; take what is useful and learn from it; and, most importantly, let the rest go completely.

I wish I could take credit for setting this as a goal and accomplishing it; but, I have to admit, that I was unknowingly trained in the ins and outs of criticism. After 2 years of art school and 2 years of studying for a Masters in creative writing, which were both criticism boot camps, I became more adept at delivering criticism and thoroughly trained to hear criticism and take what I needed from it.

I’m going to leave the first one for another post and tackle the second two because learning how to receive criticism with skill can have a dramatic improvement on your work life. It can help change your experience from negative to positive and help you succeed in a work world where developing emotional intelligence is more and more becoming a pathway to success. It also gives you control over how painful an experience it is.

Accept constructive criticism in a way that allows you to learn and grow from it and not just see it as a personal attack.

I think it might be human nature, when faced with criticism, to immediately begin thinking defensive thoughts and many folks don’t just think them; they verbalize these thoughts thereby starting a cycle that is hard to break and usually results in no one being heard. The first rule of receiving criticism is: Say nothing. Just listen.

When you refrain from responding immediately and focus on hearing what is being said, a funny thing happens. Your initial defensive thoughts that were clouding up your brain begin to dissipate and it becomes easier to hear what is being said. Then the constructive part starts because you can start zeroing in on the parts of the criticism that are helpful.

The second rule of receiving criticism is to back away from the personal. You’ll want to take it personally, after all, someone is expressing disappointment with something you did. Even if it requires a Herculean effort on your part to wrangle your brain past the personal, do it. Nothing will be accomplished if you are taking criticism personally. Ask yourself this: if this was not about my performance, what would I think about this criticism. If this is not a personal attack, what is this person trying to say?

The third rule is to filter out what you need. I’d have to say that most people are not the greatest at delivering criticism. So, when you receive criticism, you frequently have to weed through extraneous details, nervous chatter, and commentary that is just irrelevant. If you imagine a sky filled with stars, there are always a few that twinkle and shine a bit brighter than the others. I think of it like that. Let the useful information shine brighter than the filler.

When criticized in way that is not constructive and could possibly be a personal attack, calmly view the criticism from any angle to see if there is any useful information in it; take what is useful and learn from it; and, most importantly, let the rest go completely.

There are people who are motivated by personal reasons to criticize. They even sometimes take pleasure in it. I think these people are rare. Most people feel uncomfortable delivering criticism and would rather avoid it. It is still your job to listen, pull out any bit of information that is useful and just let the rest go. You need to follow the first rule above and say nothing. When a person is motivated to personally attack you, there is no point in engaging in a discussion with them; but, there is also no point in not learning something from it. It might be that the thing you learn is how to deal with a toxic coworker. Or you might learn how a boss handles stress, failure or pressure from their own boss. You are the master of you. A coworker may push every one of your buttons; but, you get to choose how you react.

A few years ago, a friend made me make a list of the qualities I was looking for in a romantic partner and near the very top of my list was the following: someone who receives criticism maturely and delivers it gently. I think the same could be said about any of the people who pass through my life in a significant way including bosses and coworkers. It is an essential life skill that when mastered will change the quality of your work and personal life quite dramatically.

Posted in communication, Happiness | Leave a Comment »

December 17, 2010 by Ann Wilberton

I broke my wrist again. The doctor looked at the x-ray and said, “Wow. It’s really a mess in there.” This, of course made me laugh because…really it’s inevitable that my right wrist is just going to completely fall apart at some point and his surprise just seemed funny to me. He casted my wrist and forearm and sent me on my way.

It was later, sitting on my couch watching Law and Order reruns on my laptop that I started feeling sorry for myself. I try not to think too much about what the future brings for my dominant hand. I don’t like to think of myself as handicapped even though the accident in some ways, has left me with a nifty bag of tricks (coping skills) I have to use to succeed in my life.

So, sitting there on my couch, feeling sorry for myself, I began to turn my attention to the positive spin. I like to find the one or two positive things that come out of seemingly negative experiences. I started shifting from doom and gloom thoughts about the steady decline of ability and tried to think of ways I could use this time, not being able to use my right hand, in a positive way. Here’s what I came up with:

Since I’m off the hook (with myself) for crafty projects that were on my To Do list, like knitting myself and my girlfriend winter caps, perhaps I could practice my left handed drawings.
To avoid more feeling sorry for myself, I could set up some plans in the evening with neighbors and friends.
I could start working on improving my balance, which is something I’ve been meaning to do.
I could use this 6 weeks as a giant immersion class in problem solving by keeping track of the obstacles and how I overcome them.
I could use this experience to practice asking for help when I need it, which is not something I’m good at in my home life. But now I do need help. I need help getting a 30 pound bag of dog food out of my trunk!
Practice writing left handed which is another thing I had been planning to do in a weird sort of planning for the day when writing normally will become problematic.
Figure out ways to maintain healthy eating patterns and yet reduce all the chopping and dish cleaning I normally do.

I think I like best the idea of using this experience as an intense immersion class in problem solving. There’s nothing better for exercising the part of the brain used for figuring stuff out than to take away the regular path of practice (using my right hand for writing, brushing my teeth, scrubbing a dish while I held it with my left). The neuropsychologist I saw after the accident told me everyone should be occasionally brushing their teeth with the opposite hand. It is a simple, yet, effective way of exercising your brain.

Looking at my list, I realize that most of the items are just using the broken wrist for motivation, especially for things like improving balance. Improving balance has been on my To Do list for about 6 months. Falling on a hike in the Berkshires and breaking my wrist is a great motivator for undertaking that challenge.

This injury is temporary; but, my wrist is problematic. It is falling apart and eventually I’ll go from limited range of motion to NO range of motion. Anything I learn now, about navigating life left handed and/or one handed is probably going to come in useful later.

That’s how I try to turn a negative into a positive. How do you do it?

In the workplace, as in your personal life, focusing on the negative is only going to leave you in a negative place. When something negative happens at work, how do you react? How can you change a negative into a positive? Learning something is usually a good way to go and sometimes leads to even greater success.

I have a friend who, several years ago, was fired from her job. She was definitely freaked out and worried. But, do you know what she did? She started her own business and has found great success. She has won awards for her design work and has ridden out the recession without too much worry. Getting fired, seemingly a negative occurrence, turned out to have the single largest positive impact on her career outside of her schooling.

When negative stuff happens, turn it upside down and all around and I can almost guarantee you’ll find a few shiny spots.

Posted in Health, Leadership | Leave a Comment »

Reality Checking Failure

December 10, 2010 by Ann Wilberton

If you’ve been reading CCS for awhile, you know I’m not big on blame. I’m big on the seeing there is a problem and coming up with solutions part of assessing failure.

I am part of a listserv for my town. Mostly I skulk, keeping up on local news and happenings from a homeowner’s perspective. Recently there was an interesting discussion that was born out of a comment from a regular poster who informed the group that a local, boardwalk coffee/bakery shop had closed up. He made an offhanded comment about commercial rents going up on the boardwalk and mostly talked about the importance of supporting small local business in our fledgling little seaside community.

After reading his post, I quickly had the following thought: Dude, rent had nothing to do with the failure of that business and everything to do with the horrible customer service and pissy attitude of the owner. I decided to reply to his post with a couple of anecdotes of my own experience as a customer at this shop, which sparked a fascinating discussion and saw a flood of very civil posts about customer service and just how much people were willing to take in order to keep small business flourishing and when it became just not worth it.

This bakery by far had some of the best baked goods in NJ and probably one of the most divine macaroons I have ever eaten. His coffee was mediocre; but, there is no great coffee in Asbury Park; so, that was not surprising. But, this man, who owned the shop and worked behind the counter was just unpleasant, abrupt and on occasion, rude. The last time I had been in there was early this summer when I had a guest visiting from Oregon and she said, “ooh a bakery.” So, we went in. There were two people ahead of us in line and one of them asked for iced coffee which he began to retrieve from a refrigerator. As he held the door open he turned and said: Does anyone else want an iced coffee while i’m over here? He asked this question as if he was totally being put out. When the shop fell silent, he said: I guess that’s what they mean when they call me the coffee nazi; but, it just makes sense if i’m over here anyway. My friend looked at me and I shrugged. We got our treats, which were delivered brusquely with no thank you and walked out. My friend said, That was weird. I replied: I know. He’s always like that. I almost never go in there.

Further down the boardwalk is a seasonal business called the Sandwitch. The owner is funny, warm and kind and this is all delivered while under pressure because her business is thriving and there were always lines and 2 or 3 more workers crammed into her little hut making sandwiches and smoothies and coffee drinks. I probably went there almost a dozen times until she closed for the season in October.

I want to support small business in my community. I’d rather give my $$ to a person taking a risk on my town, contributing to it’s renaissance and what we in Asbury Park call, Buying In. But, you gotta give me something. Even a robotic thank you would have helped me support this guy.

And now I’m back to the concept of blame. Apparently this owner believes that his business didn’t survive the economy, or at least that was what he said on the listserv. But, that is just not true. Here in Asbury Park we broke beach attendance records by something like 40% and my neighbor said she hadn’t seen the boardwalk as packed as it was on July 4th since the 6os, before AP’s decline. And to top it off, his product was excellent. New Jersey has a small but loyal foodie base that will get in their cars and travel for good food and their word on chowhound.com alone has probably saved more than one small business that didn’t get enough traffic the old fashioned way. This is a case where blame really does lie at the feet of the proprietor and if he can’t see where he went wrong I suggest he not try any more entrepreneurial pursuits.

It is important when there is failure to swallow pride and really SEE the failure. Maybe it was just a bad idea. Maybe the key people were just not in roles they can succeed in. (The owner of the bakeshop put himself in the number one customer service role: counterman; but, he couldn’t meet the challenge. He should have hired someone with better skills.) Maybe you assumed too much about your customers. Failure is the time when tough questions should be asked; but, it is also when the slate gets cleaned in a way that really innovative ideas can come out of the rubble.

If you roll out a new service in your library and it doesn’t get used or fails to meet projections, do you chalk it up as something the public just didn’t want or do you really assess the failure to find out exactly where you missed the target? Just maybe, you learned something in that failure that will help you better serve your community. Don’t assume, just because it’s a great service that they will come. In my library, we are talking about ways to promote the Playaway collection (self contained audio books) because we just aren’t getting the circulation statistics we want. We could just shut it down and reduce or eliminate the budget for them; but, maybe the failure is in our marketing or education of the public. Clearly we need to try a few things before giving up. Shine the light on your process before blaming the public. Bakery man might feel better about his failure if he blames the public: they just didn’t come regularly enough to sustain this business; but, he might have learned more if he listened to his customers and read the online reviews of his business, which were almost all praising his product and slamming his service.

Get feedback from staff, from your customers, from anyone with an opinion and open your mind to it. It’s okay to fail; but, get something out of it or it truly is just failure.

Posted in customer service | 1 Comment »

Fakin’ It

November 17, 2010 by Ann Wilberton

photo: mmlolek via flickr cc

I recently had an awesome experience.

At our library, we are starting up a wellness team to think up and plan health and wellness programs for staff. Our township does not provide any health and wellness activities so we thought it would be a good idea to start some in-house.

At our Annual Staff Day, I got to introduce the idea of having a wellness team, some of the initial ideas we had, conduct a survey to see what staff actually want and I taught a class on 2 different meditation techniques. It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed sharing some of the things I’ve learned over the years about meditation. The theme of the day was “Civility” and I took that idea and applied it to my meditation class by choosing to teach them Loving kindness Meditation. I was a bit nervous at first because I understand that people sometimes don’t like activities which they perceive as touchy–feely. I asked them to open their hearts to the technique and give it a try and I asked them to give me the space to talk about love and kindness openly.

The class went well and there was a lively discussion. One of the things that kept coming up for people is that it is hard to do loving kindness meditation for someone who is their “less than favorable” person. One person asked me point blank how I do it for someone who has angered or hurt me. That it is impossible to be sincere. What do I do?

Fake it. That was my answer and I think it was a pretty good one. Repetition breeds habit. I also said that I sometimes need to try it on, to think about WHAT it would really feel like to have these wishes and love and compassion for this person. I think faking it is also part of that process. But what about the insincerity of it? If the intention is sincere, the motivation behind the practice is sincere, then I think faking it is just practice. Practice that eventually leads to meaning and sincere feelings. Even if you are thinking of the worst, violently abusive person, you can wish them health and happiness. Why? Why would you? Because if their suffering is lessened what would their impact on the world be?

Plus, I think faking it, practicing it, leads to a softening of your heart and that benefits you and lessens your suffering.

I think this technique is particularly useful in the workplace. If you do loving kindness meditation for a toxic coworker and your heart softens towards them, you are helping to heal the workplace and that is always good. I guarantee that there are NO negative side effects to loving kindness meditation!

Yesterday, one of my coworkers called me on the phone to tell me that she was thinking about the empty boat story and that it was hard but she was going to help me carry the torch. This is win/win all the way around. She will have less suffering. She will provide better customer service. She will spread joy to other people. I feel inspired by her.

Posted in compassion, Happiness, Health, kindness | Leave a Comment »

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