Andrea Hill Business Posts

You're Selling to Feelings, Not Reason

Mon, 16 Nov 2020 16:42:16 GMT

We like to think of ourselves as rational beings, but when it comes to buying, we're just not (oh - and wait until I address reason versus emotions in business decision-making, though that's another article entirely).

Consumers - female and male - buy based on emotion. No matter how many statistics and facts they line up on the way to making a buying decision, that data collection effort tends to be done in the service of making the decision they want to make.

But you already know that trust and connection are essential to closing sales. Now make sure that you are also speaking to emotions from the beginning of the process - including the merchandise you choose to offer and the messages you convey to browsers and shoppers - long before the customer lands in the store or the products land in the cart.

In this month's article for InStore Magazine, I wrote about how the anxiety and disruption of 2020 will influence the shopping emotions of 2021. Read the article to see how the themes of comfort, tradition, and responsibility are the themes to merchandise and market to in the year to come.

Leadership. Think More Swarm, Less Sparkle.

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 14:57:36 GMT

Brilliance and charisma are exciting when we encounter them. Even more than beauty, they are the indelible elements that propel some people beyond ordinariness and into the public imagination. Brilliance and charisma are so compelling that we tend to assume that those with power and position have them, even though neither one of those are actually necessary to achieve power or position. But the lure of brilliance and charisma is so strong that we equate them with success.

I could have a blast writing about all the times that brilliance and charisma lead us astray (bad boy attraction, anyone?), but what I really want to write about in this moment is leadership, and how often we confuse good leadership with bad leadership, or no leadership at all.

It’s tempting, when we talk about leadership, to go straight for the leaders with brilliance and charisma as our examples. But what we miss in those discussions is the beating heart and soul of leadership, and the less sexy but profoundly good leaders among us who may not sparkle, but they show up every day and do the good work of leading.

Leaders aren’t just found in governments (large or small) or businesses. It takes leadership to run community organizations, non-profits, clubs and special interest groups, trade groups, choirs, community theater troupes, sports teams, and online discussion communities. It takes leadership to run schools, and organizations and clubs within those schools. It takes leadership to run families. Observe any 13-year-old with self-discipline who is propelling herself toward her future vision, and you are watching leadership-in-the-making.

The first requirement of a good leader is character; responsibility, respect for others, honesty and trustworthiness, fairness, caring and empathy, and concern for community. These attributes are essential for good leadership.

The reason character matters so much is that when someone assumes a leadership role, they are entrusted with power, while simultaneously becoming the target of other people’s agendas. A weak person in that position may put their self-interest above the group, or find it difficult to navigate the pressures of everyone else’s demands, or be unable to maintain clarity about the goals and progress of the group. Good character provides the essential internal framework for a leader to balance ego and altruism, to weigh individual interests and greater good.

After character, a good leader requires the ability to develop a vision. The vision may be as simple as helping a group of friends read and discuss one good book each month, or as complex as leading a country, but all leaders are tasked with getting a group of people from Point A to Point B. Figuring out what Point B is, and then creating a plan to get there, is the work of leadership. A leader without a point, a plan, an agenda, is just a person with power and perhaps a bigger paycheck.

Developing a vision is not the same as having a vision. Entrepreneurs are a great example of this disconnect. Entrepreneurs tend to be people with a vision, and they often end up leading a group of people when achieving the vision alone isn’t a possibility. Steve Jobs was a great visionary, but he wasn’t a particularly good leader. Elon Musk is a great visionary, but a terrible leader. Brilliance. Charisma. Sparkle.

Developing a vision involves surrounding oneself with smart people, capable people, experienced people, and enlisting their ideas and knowledge to gain clarity and create a roadmap. The way to spot a great leader is to look for great teams. In the midst of those teams will be someone who is motivating, teaching, listening, keeping the team aligned, and helping the swarm stay on the path to the vision they have defined together. Leaders use their great character as the bedrock upon which great teams can be formed, they use their teams to develop a vision, and they empower those teams to pursue that vision.

Leadership is about accomplishing something. It’s not about permanence. It can last for a week, or months, or years. But during that time, a leader makes sure something gets done, that the group is better off when they leave, that goals were set, and achieved, and everybody involved grew along the way.

America has just lived through an era where a man who claimed to be powerful and rich benefitted from the assumption that if one can become powerful and rich, he must be about something. He must be a leader. We tend to take attributes like being tall, or beautiful, or muscular, or born into wealth, or born into an influential social network, and confer upon them the mantle of leader.

We need to stop being so fascinated with the individual sparklers. To have a functioning family, club, organization, business, community, nation, or world, we must have a proper understanding of what to expect from our leaders, and from ourselves when we are leading. We must always look for substance, for the people with character, for the people who invested in their own knowledge and capabilities with rigor and humility, and built upon their experience brick by brick. Because when good leaders are in place, they harness the best of everyone around them, and everyone begins to sparkle. And when that happens, we can light up the clubhouse. We can light up the world.

Why Are We Still Fighting About Lab Grown Diamonds?

Thu, 18 Jun 2020 14:00:45 GMT

When Will We Start Treating Lab-Grown Diamonds Like a Product Instead of Like an Intruder?

The jewelry industry continues to take polarized positions on lab-grown. It seems like every time we've grown past this debate, another social media group comes to virtual blows over the topic. I'm not surprised - it was the same conversation when Chatham first started offering lab-grown emeralds and rubies. But it's not useful. Not to us, not to our customers.

You don't see grocery stories saying, "we won't carry organic/gluten-free/paleo/pick-a-theme" groceries because they interfere with our other grocery sales. They evaluate consumer interest and potential demand, and offer choices. Fashion has done this with alternative fabrics. Car companies had a harder time doing it with alternative fuels, but that's largely because of the expense of tooling up to produce new equipment coupled with wanting government assistance to do so.

When it comes to lab-grown diamonds, we get all tied up in our shoestrings with our own preferences, fears, and perceptions, and in the process lose sight of the customers.

In the most recent social media post and following thread, I saw all the same black-or-white arguments. Diamond mining concerns are doing great! So much change! Mined diamonds are terrible, so much abuse. Lab-grown diamonds are not ecologically friendly - so much electricity! Lab-grown diamond producers are abusive, they're all in (pick a country). None of these tropes serve the industry, our businesses, or our customers. But if we're going to have honest conversations and learn from each other, we need to get comfortable with shades of gray - because that's all there are right now.

Shades of Gray Shadow Both Mined and Lab-Grown
The social and ecological issues are very challenging to sort. Tens of millions of artisanal miners around the world rely on mining to feed their families. Anything we do in the mining sector must be done not only with regard for their health and safety while mining — but also with regard to their health if they cannot mine. In that regard, the pandemic is causing horrific food insecurity around the world.

Want to help support artisanal miners suffering from food security caused by the pandemic?

On the other hand, diamonds do not "do good" yet. Not by a long shot. They are "doing better," and better is a good direction to go in. So we must keep applying pressure on the mined diamond front.

But let's never demean progress. The natural diamond sector was pretty bad for a long time, they've made progress, and if we treat progress as an all-or-nothing proposition, it tends to stop. We don't want that.

So, are lab-grown diamonds a more or less ethical solution? Like natural diamonds, it all depends. If you're talking about factories abusing their labor, then no. But just because a factory is in China doesn't mean it's abusive. I spend a lot of time in manufacturing facilities around the world, and I've seen rotten treatment of employees everywhere — including in the United States — and excellent treatment of employees everywhere — including in China.

Are lab-grown diamonds more or less ecologically sound? Again, it depends. I know of growers working to use the most responsible power generation possible, and some that don't care about that at all. Until lab-grown producers start disclosing some of those details, it's just impossible to know.

But, if you have a customer who has a really hard time with the concept of digging and blowing holes in the earth, then lab-grown may be the flavor of "responsible" she's looking for. I don't agree with making green statements that can't be validated, but I'm uncomfortable with blanket statements that lab-grown producers are all disruptable too.

Which Holds Its Value Better (Hint: It's a Red Herring)

Do lab-grown diamonds hold their value for the future? That's a laugh — a discussion we shouldn't even be having. Not because lab-grown will or won't hold their value for the future — nobody knows that yet! It's a laugh, because mined diamonds don't hold their value. We should never treat diamonds of any sort as if they are a financial instrument. A very small number of collectors in the ultra-rare mined color diamond sector do use diamonds as a financial investment, but that's it. We should never make any promises or inferences to customers about the future value of a diamond.

Should you Sell Lab-Grown Diamonds?

So - should you or should you not sell lab-grown? Well, you could base that on your own preferences, fears, and biases, but I'll suggest that's a terrible business approach. You should make every business decision based on your businesses core values (which are different than biases), and on the desires and interests of your customers. It won't be the same answer for everyone, nor should it be. If analyze this question with intellectual rigor, self-awareness, and deep interest in your customers, you'll have the right answer - and nobody else can tell you otherwise.

Radical Inclusiveness - the Competitive Edge

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 17:22:31 GMT

Build the Ultimate Competitive Edge

I have been a student of creativity for most of life. My original career goal was to be an opera singer - I'm a mezzo soprano. So I trained all through adolescence and studied drama and music at university. But what I saw there quickly turned me off forever to a career in opera. In that world, everyone was fixated on having a competitive edge. The intense focus on standing out individually ultimately isolated everyone from the collaboration that would make us exponentially better together. I found my solace in jazz — quite the opposite of opera.

Jazz performance depends on one's ability to intensely listen to and feel one's fellow musicians; to complement them rather than compete with them. I learned that the very best musician experience — at least for me — was the art of completely blending in and becoming part of a "body" of creativity that was bigger than myself. It is this experience that informed my business ideas about how to create a competitive edge.

Some people think that radical inclusiveness hides mediocrity. And it can. But what I learned as a jazz musician is that each instrument and voice has to be the absolute best for the ensemble to be the best. It's not that we sacrifice excellence — it's that excellence is each of our individual gift to the whole, so the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts.

I've worked with many jazz ensembles (and choirs - a magnificent choir has the same allure) over the years. Some were merely a diversion. Others, I got such a thrill out of working with I wanted to sing with them every night. The difference? Part of it was individual excellence for sure. It's magical to work with extremely talented people. But mostly the difference was in the bond, trust, and respect within the group. When a group is extremely tight-knit, it is strong enough to welcome new-comers and still maintain its cultural/artistic core. When a group is extremely tight-knit, it can bring in a student, an apprentice, and help them achieve virtuosity quickly. When a group is extremely tight-knit, it experiences explosive creativity.

And when you're experiencing explosive creativity, the concept of competitive edge becomes mundane. Why settle for being better than the next guy, when you can be better than your own imagination?

These things I learned as a musician quickly carried over into my business life. First, I noticed that some teams were more effective than others. Then, I realized it was more cultural — not just a team issue, but a company issue. Some companies experience almost virtuosic, sustained, creativity and innovation. But most do not. And the difference isn't determined by the individual talents and skills of the employees. The difference is determined by the quality of shared vision and trust. Trust in one another, and trust in leadership.

There are many things leaders must do to create trust: clarity of vision, consistent behavior, accountability for failures. But the one thing I want to address today is equality.

If a company wants to experience sustained excellence, it must invest in a culture of equality. This doesn't mean everyone is the same. Strong companies are built on teams of subject matter experts (SMEs), individuals with unique strengths and talents that can be applied in different ways. Each individual also has weaknesses, but if you build the right team, no one weakness will stand out, because it will be offset by the strengths of those around them. So everyone is not "the same," nor do we want them to be. When it comes to taking on certain projects, entrusting people with certain objectives, then we lean on expertise, talent, and capability. We recognize that some people have more talent and skill for some things than others.

But outside of the creative or skilled output — when it comes to the humans in the workshop, troupe, or company — then everyone must be equal. One set of rules for everyone. One set of expected behaviors for everyone. Rewards equally available to everyone. I'm not saying everyone gets paid the same. But everyone must know that their pay is based on objective factors related to their responsibility and tasks — not based on subjective, opaque criteria.

Equality means choosing inclusiveness over exclusiveness every chance you get. If you are the leader, equality means challenging your own preferences constantly. What do I mean by that? Well, as humans we gravitate to some people more than others — it's natural. As a leader, you must constantly check yourself, to make sure that your own behavior doesn't create a sense of inequality where one is not intended. This is really hard — in my opinion as someone who has led many companies, it is the hardest thing to do, and one of the things I have most consistently failed at.

Without equality, the dynamics of the group suffer, which damages the results of the group. Since the only reason that group is assembled is for their shared goals, why would you risk damaging the group in any way?

It can be difficult to teach the importance of equality to business leaders — particularly those fueled with a sense of competitiveness. There is a tendency to think that equality is a kindergarten platitude. But it's not. It's a business imperative. If we want to be the best, we have to hire the best, yes. And then, we have to treat them the best.

Because ultimately, each one of us is not the sum of our parts. We don't bring just our relevant skills to work each day. We bring our whole selves. And we expect to be honored. At some level, each of us knows that we are a reflection of godliness, and therefore . . . equal. Fail to honor that, and you fail the one element that will make your company (or your family, or your team, or your club, or your musical troupe) exquisitely successful. The human.

To Win at Marketing You Need a Long Game

Sat, 02 Nov 2019 05:00:00 GMT

To Succeed in Business, You Need to Play the Long Game

In this six-minute video, Andrea Hill talks about the importance of using your marketing strategy to build a long game of exponential value.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKiUx9ITD2M

Transcript

I’m thinking a lot the past few days about how hard it is to play the long game in business. It requires several things most people lack: trust in the future, confidence about their choices, and patience. The requirement for a long-game is true in many areas of your business, but nowhere is it more stark than in the area of creating a meaningful online marketing presence.

When social media first hit the scene in 2007-2008, we were all struck by the instant-ness of it all. I think of an idea, I write it, I publish it. I come up with an idea for a visual, I turn it into a graphic, I post it. Fast, fast fast, right? The problem, is that the ability to produce and post things quickly has nothing to do with creating customer awareness or becoming a fixture of their consciousness. That is slow work, tedious work, and it takes a long time to see results. Because in today’s marketing environment, success isn’t measured by how many messages you can blast out to the public, but by how many meaningful links you can create that will bring a searching public back to you. Let me say that again, because what I just described to you is the most basic understanding of Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Success isn’t measured by how many messages you can blast out to the public, but by how many meaningful links you can create that will bring a searching public back to you. When we talk about telling stories online, when we talk about creating rich content, what we’re talking about is all the words and phrases you bake into your website that will help a searching person find a product or a service you offer. And that takes time.

Time isn’t the only thing – it also requires a strong CMS website. It requires the creation of lots of good content across articles and products and promotions on your website, and it requires patience as you build out that content over time, and that content gets turned into links by search engines. But time . . . time is the thing that most small business owners underestimate. After all, in the past, you could run a radio ad, and a few people would come in off the street as a result of it. You could run a TV ad or a newspaper ad, and you could see pretty quickly if there was a response. You can run those same ads today, and you might even have a few people respond. The problem is that today’s consumers are completely distracted by whatever is happening on their smart phone, they are inundated with marketing messages everywhere they look and listen, and they aren’t “shopping around” for products like they did in the past. They do their shopping online, and then – if they like what they see – they come into the store to buy (and yes, 90% of all purchases are still happening in a store).

In a recent report on retail, the NRF, or National Retail Federation, reminded its membership that it’s not about “online versus retail.” It’s about “retail dependance on online.” Today’s consumers see online marketing as a seamless part of their retail experience, as they search online for products, knowledge, and references, and then seek products out in stores and in-person. And, how do those consumers FIND your business so you can be the store they walk into? Using search. They search for what they seek, they drill into the links that show the most promise, they check out the ratings and reviews of the seller and the products, and then they decide where to go to buy. The creation of that website content, leading to meaningful links, takes time. The creation of a strong system of references and reviews – which we call Social Proof – takes time. And patience. And more time.

But here’s the interesting thing. In the first two or three months, it feels like you are doing a lot of work for absolutely no results. Then, in the four to six month range, you start to see tiny benefits, but it’s hard to trust them. Then, if you’ve been super disciplined and continued to develop content despite the fear and frustration, at around one year you really start to see results. They begin to build slowly and steadily.

When I first started my blog in 2006, I had a grand total of three readers, and I was related to all three of them. Now, 13 years later, my blog drives thousands of visitors per day to my websites. All those blog posts over all those years serve as links to my online presence. I don’t pay for any advertising beyond my blog, because the rich content I have put on the internet is all the marketing I need. Of course, 13 years is a long time. You won’t have to wait that long to see results – and if you are selling jewelry or other luxury goods, you will need other marketing tools besides a blog. I just use that as an example of the exponential power of rich content.

What you need to remember is that a year or two is not very much time at all. You also need to remember that this IS the way marketing and selling work now. So if you haven’t already, you need to commit to a long game of content creation, so that a year from now, you have already made significant progress. After all – the time is going to go by either way. What do you want to have to show for your business’s marketing presence when next year rolls around?

Outstanding Customer Service is a Culture Thing

Sun, 06 Jan 2019 06:00:00 GMT

I am fixated lately on the topic of outstanding customer service. As a road-warrior and constant consumer of restaurant, hotel, car rental, coffee shop, salon, apparel, and convenience store services domestically and abroad, in community sizes ranging from tiny Iowa towns to London, I suspect I encounter a reasonable approximation of what customer service means today. What I have encountered is a strange dichotomy.

Customer Service Out, Customer Service Culture In

On the one hand, excellent customer service is no longer treated as a differentiator by consumers. Twenty years ago, a business could set itself apart by touting its fantastic service. Advertising one’s customer service prowess or awards for customer service meant something to consumers, and it was often excellent service that businesses chose to feature in taglines. Today, excellent service is a minimum standard necessary to compete. Boasting about or branding with excellent customer service is like advertising an automobile and saying, "It runs! It goes up to 75 mph!"

On the other hand, excellent customer service can be very difficult to find, even in the luxury sector. At a time when consumer expectations regarding service are higher than ever, why aren’t businesses stepping up and delivering?

Because excellent – no, outstanding – customer service is one of the hardest things to do. You can’t automate it. You can’t script it or cookie-cutter it. You can’t ensure it with policy or rules. Excellent customer service is about people, and people run on motivation.

When I refer to customer service, I’m not just talking about direct personal interactions. Think of all the people in non-customer facing roles that have significant influence over how the customer feels about the company:

The web developer that cares about customer experience creates shopping interfaces that are simple, fast, and efficient and filter or search functions that quickly provide the right answers.
The systems person that creates strong data warehouse tools helps customer-facing team-members quickly find and deliver information to interested customers.
The purchasing staffer who does such thoughtful forecasting and planning that the right products are in the right places at the right times – so customers can find them.
The CFO who supports the creation of simple, easy return policies to ensure customer satisfaction.
The marketing team member who thoughtfully manages customer lists to ensure that the most relevant email campaigns go to each list subscriber.
The production worker who looks for the tiniest errors to ensure a customer never finds one.
The shipping clerk who packs every box as if the contents are fragile and going to his own mother.

To deliver outstanding customer service, a company must motivate every single employee in every single role to think about how his or her work will affect the customer.

Outstanding Customer Service Starts with the Right Ingredients

I do not believe in the adage you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. But I do believe that our essential ingredients – personality, character, and self-discipline – are fairly set by the time we reach adulthood. The truth is, some people are wired to deliver an outstanding customer experience because they are empathetic, interested in others, and motivated to serve. If the people you hire don’t start with those essential characteristics, no amount of training, cajoling, or threatening will induce them to become passionate service people.

But it’s more complicated than that, isn’t it? Because those aren’t the only ingredients you need. When you hire a sales person who must deliver outstanding customer service, they must combine empathy and service-orientation with self-confidence and the ability to influence someone to part with their cash. On the other hand, if you are hiring a nurse, you need a person who combines empathy and service orientation with the ability to handle tremendous pressure, mete out pain, and deliver difficult news with pragmatic calm, all while keeping the patients from becoming frightened. An airline attendant must combine empathy and service orientation with vigilance. These are three very different recipes.

The Human Resource function has evolved to do a much better job of finding the best ingredients and matching them with roles and teams, and many new business tools and practices are available to support best practices in hiring, onboarding, and training. But are most businesses using these tools? Unscientific research (i.e., observation) would suggest that they are not. If you invest in one area of improvement for your service-dependent business this year, do a better job of matching the right people with the right teams and jobs.

Pre-Employment Assessments that Help You Build a Customer Service Culture

First You Solve the Processes . . .

The full saying goes, first you solve the process, then you solve the people. The source of most people-problems at work is process problems. If your processes are unnecessarily complex, cumbersome, inconsistent or – worse! – nonexistent, your people cannot give consistent – let alone outstanding – service. Make sure that your business processes are simple, effective, complete (which means no opportunities to drop the ball), documented, and trained. In that order. Let’s do that again:

Simple
Effective
Complete (this means that each process design is complete, from beginning to completion and monitoring)
Documented
Trained

Walk into any company that delivers consistently outstanding customer service, and you’ll find excellent process management. Why? Because the end result – outstanding customer service – is dependent on each company defining what service means according to its own brand and standards, defining the services that deliver the required level of care, and being able to train all employees involved in each service area to deliver the same services in the same ways.

Outstanding Service Comes from Effective Management

Good management is essential to business success. Too many businesses approach management as a personality trait, or the thing we do when we’re creating schedules, granting time off, or creating reports. In fact, great management comes from two terms that are not terribly in vogue these days, concepts that seem related to old, hierarchical models of business: command and control. But when you break these concepts down and examine the details, you see how important they are.

Command

I use the term command because it’s still the term that is taught in business schools and recognized as one of the pillars of management. Other effective terms would be influence, motivate, and inspire. In fact, “lead” is the concept we’re going after, but in management theory terms, leadership is more than just this element. So, what is a manager supposed to be doing in this regard? Command is about having a clear vision, communicating it to the team, and ensuring that the team achieves its objectives. Communication skill is critical, because constant, effective communication helps a group of people embrace and share a common set of goals. A manager with a grasp on command creates an environment where people understand what is expected, have enough information to buy into the goals and objectives, are excited about the pursuit of excellence, and are clear that failure to deliver on the team’s goals will result in consequences.

Control

Control is not about controlling people – it’s about controlling the way in which the work is done and whether or not the work is done correctly. Processes, procedures, efficiency, and structure are the domain of control. Good managers not only communicate expectations and motivate people to do as required (command), they also create project plans, delegate activities, evaluate, monitor, measure, and share progress with their teams.

If you’re not being successful in the management areas of command and control, then it is unlikely that your team is capable of delivering outstanding customer service.

Culture is the Binding Agent

A company’s culture is the glue that binds all the important elements of the company together. A strong, positive business culture reinforces the brand, and in the best examples, defines it. The culture of a workplace determines and reflects employee commitment. To create a company culture that will nurture and serve customers, you must have a culture that nurtures and serves employees. Please don’t confuse nurturing with coddling – they are not the same. Employees want to be treated as professionals, with dignity and respect. Study after study demonstrates that employees who are trusted and expected to perform admirably will rise to the occasion.

A strong, positive business culture is created by thoughtful leadership, the right people in the right roles, good processes, strong management, and positive, goal-oriented behavior.

Every business culture is different, but all should include these ingredients. Without a strong culture, you cannot achieve outstanding customer service.

I’ve heard people blame today’s lack of customer service on the continued automation of service, reduced congeniality in society, or on an angrier, more demanding workforce. There may be particles of truth in all that, but I don't think those are the core reasons. Rather, what I observe in both the businesses I patronize and those I consult, is that the frantic pace of business combined with frequent economic and social uncertainty causes business owners and executives to work in a very tactical manner. This leaves little time for thinking about and managing the basics, and does not lend itself to long-term thinking and planning. Which, among other problems, erodes the company’s ability to deliver outstanding customer service.

Delivering outstanding customer service is one of the most critical things a business must do, particularly at a time when consumers expect nothing less. The good news is that dedication to known management fundamentals is half the battle. What will be harder for many companies is the creation of a strong, positive business culture. In fact, strong, positive business culture may be the differentiator of the future. A worthy, rewarding goal to shoot for.

Ready to hire outstanding customer service people? Use Andrea Hill's highly informative, immediately useful handbook, "The How-to-Hire-Handbook for Small Business Owners," and make better hiring decisions today!

Gold Conference Panel on Gender Bias

Sun, 15 Apr 2018 05:00:00 GMT

This week, at Initiatives in Art and Culture’s Gold Conference, the opening evening event – normally reserved for an outing at an atelier or exhibit – was instead devoted to a panel on issues facing women in the jewelry industry.

The topic of gender bias is hardly unique to our industry. But as a small industry, it is perhaps more important to our overall success and more difficult to discuss than for other industries.I won’t try to recap the conversation in a linear way. I don’t think I could. Hedda Schupak kicked things off by asking the panel how the jewelry industry was managing gender bias relative to other industries, and within three or four minutes, the entire audience was involved in the conversation.

Immediately, women began telling their stories. One woman’s career was ruined by a male colleague's idea of a “joke.” He liked to tell their co-workers that she had slept her way to her current position. After being passed over for promotions for which she was more than qualified, she approached Human Resources. The HR representative told her that the belief she had been sleeping with higher-ups had led to her being passed over. An investigation discredited the male colleague and his “joke,” but it didn’t matter. Her career there could not recover. She transferred to a different company, and the male colleague suffered no consequences.

Another woman, a senior marketing executive, spoke of advocating to be included in a major advertising agency meeting as part of a powerful diamond industry group. She was the only trained marketing executive in the group, and the only woman — in a market that sells almost exclusively to women. And yet, when the meetings commenced, they made her leave the room. It was humiliating for her (and genuinely stupid of the men).

Participants spoke of women in our industry being belittled, ignored, talked over, humiliated, passed by for promotions. Groped. Raped. Trapped in jobs they could not afford to leave. Of women contemplating suicide.

At one point during this free-wheeling discussion, a women in the audience expressed how upset she was with the panel. She said she had expected this to be a positive experience, claiming, “All I'm hearing is negativity! Stop with all the man vs. woman stuff! ” I could see that several women agreed — and many more empathized — with her.

Then I looked at the faces of some of the men I know well — some alone, and some with their wives. Men who would gladly make gender discrimination disappear. It occurred to me how difficult this conversation must be for them. Yet, I could see that these men were fully present, along with us for the pain and discomfort, willing to listen, learn, and participate. And I could see that none of their wives felt the need to shield them, nor make excuses for them. These wives trusted – and expected – their husbands to handle it.

Painful Things are Hard to Discuss

Ask anyone who has ever been on the brink of divorce, only to turn the corner and go on to have a stronger marriage, what changed. You will almost certainly hear that they finally learned to discuss the hard things in a productive manner. Not necessarily a positive manner — it’s practically impossible to have a hard conversation without saying difficult things, and difficult can be scary and painful. But productive conversations lead to positive outcomes.

This isn't just a painful topic. It's a confusing topic. So much of what we know about being men and women, and communicating with one another, is indoctrinated, inculturated social behavior. Much of what we enjoy about hanging out with members of the opposite sex is the dynamic tension and and perspective that comes from being different from one another. But we aren't really equal, are we? When two groups come together to share experiences and work, and one group has inherently more power than the other, even seemingly innocuous statements and behaviors can be fraught with hidden meanings and interpretations. So there are sandtraps and land mines everywhere we turn.

It's also very difficult to understand privilege from the perspective of privilege.

One of the things it is hard for men to recognize is how insidious gender bias is. Most men would agree that groping and rape are wrong. But what about all the other behaviors that undermine women? Studies demonstrate that women are expected to answer phones, set up meetings, fill out paperwork, take meeting notes, fetch beverages, bring or order food for office events, and head thankless committees at more than twice the rate of their male peers working the same jobs. Women are still treated as a servant class within business.

Men are more likely to take calls from other men, more likely to return voice mails left by other men, and take chances on men when making decisions about investments. In other words, men have more access to power and money than women have. They are also the often unconscious beneficiaries of presumed excellence. According to Forbes magazine, “when symphony orchestras started using blind auditions by placing candidates behind screens and drapes, the number of women in the five leading orchestras in the US increased five-fold.”

Women Still Lack Representation in Jewelry Business

In the jewelry industry, it is difficult to identify the percentage of women in leadership, as so much of the industry is very private and family-owned. However, of nine major jewelry industry associations, women make up only 20.5% of overall board seats. This is a far cry from the 50.8% of US population represented by women, or the fact that – other than engagement rings (which, even if men buy them, women still heavily influence) – women make a whopping 78% of women’s jewelry purchases (and wear over 90% of all jewelry sold).

When women cannot penetrate places of power, and cannot benefit from the same presumed excellence that men experience, it damages our ability to improve our lives.

The solution to these problems isn’t A) try harder and B) be patient. We’ve been trying damn hard, and we’ve been more than patient. The solution is for men to make a point of bringing women into their circles of power. If every enlightened man would do that for just two women, how fast could things change? Educated, qualified, hard-working women are extremely easy to find. If you’re reading this and you don't (realize you) know some of these women, give me a call. I’ll be happy to make the introductions.

In addition to issues of access, presumed excellence, and equal treatment, many women on the panel and in the audience agreed that sexual harassment continues to be an issue in our industry. Jenny Luker and Brandee Dallow talked about the sexual harassment training initiative the Women's Jewelry Association (WJA) has put together with the Jeweler's Vigilance Committee (JVC) to educate jewelry businesses. We need this training at all levels. If people won't stop harassing one another because it's the right thing to do, then at least let them be aware of the legal consequences. If you have never been through a sexual harassment training before, please avail yourself of it immediately. Apparently, character and ethics are not sufficient to solve this problem. So let's all get educated. The more of us who understand what sexual harassment is, the more likely we are to take the proper legal action when it occurs.

But what about all the behavior that is discriminating, yet doesn't meet the threshold of illegal?

The Difference Between Sexual Harassment and Hostile Work Environment

I am a big fan of public shaming. It doesn't happen often enough, because women are trained to politely laugh off inappropriate comments and behavior, and men are trained not to notice it (or to not go against other men). But imagine this: What if, every time one of us – male or female – heard someone else (male or female) make a gender discriminating comment, we said, “That’s not cool. Don’t say things like that.” Publicly, calmly, in-the-moment. If we consistently shamed the behavior, the intentional discriminators would become intimidated, and the obtuse would (hopefully) become educated.

It’s unrealistic to expect people to stand up for themselves in this way. If you’ve ever been at the receiving end of a personal attack, even a joking one, then you know it can take your breath away and leave you feeling unable to respond until after the moment has passed. We must step up and denounce discriminatory behavior for others.

Where's My Prize?

Later that evening and again the next day, several people asked why some are women so averse to discussing the topic of gender bias. I suspect that some have simply drunk the social Kool Aid. Issues of gender bias are currently all caught up in our divisive political discourse - though frankly, they shouldn't be identified with any political position at all. Some people don’t like to think deeply and resent being required to do so.

But some women are carrying around the pain and shame of their own victimization, and self-preservation demands that they keep it buried. My heart goes out to them. It takes a lot of resilience to discuss terrible things that have happened in the past. And now, I have another insight, which came from a woman in her 30s who was in attendance. As we left the building that evening, she asked me – her eyes filled with tears – “Where’s my prize for sucking it up all these years? Because that’s what I’ve had to do."

That, perhaps, is one of the hardest things to explain to gender-discrimination-deniers and the chauvinism-blind. How we suck it up. How we laugh it off. Not because we want to. Not because we think it’s funny. Not because we aren’t humiliated and angry and sick of it. Tired of it. All of it.

As Barbara Palumbo said, we suck it up because this may be the only jewelry company in town, and we can’t afford to spend 15 years in a different industry learning new skills and getting back to what we are earning now. We suck it up because we don’t want to move away from family and friends to do work we love, work that supports our families. We suck it up because the next place could be just as bad, so why make the sacrifice in the first place?

One of my male colleagues asked me the next day, “Is it any better? Is it getting better?” And I told him, yes, it is. If I compare now to the late 1970s, the statistics support (and I’ve seen) a steady, incremental, improvement. But better isn’t the same as fixed, and gender discrimination is still a real problem that holds us back and leaves women more vulnerable to violence and poverty than men will ever experience.

I do feel bad for some men right now. Men who would never use the phrase “like a girl,” or discount a woman. Men who are conscious that, even though they don’t discriminate, they bear the burden of being part of the solution. These men must take accountability for their gender to make things right. These men suffer the skepticism and distrust of this moment; distrust they haven’t done anything personally to earn.

I even have some compassion for the tin-eared men who say inflammatory things about women because they think they are being funny. Men who may be good husbands and fathers, but who struggle to understand their own bias in order to overcome it. This can be a painful, confusing process. I hope they are tough enough to stick with it and get through it.

But I could never, ever feel bad for men the way I feel bad for women. From the mouthy to the meek, young to old, optimistic to jaded — women have put up with men’s insistence on our second-class personhood while expecting us to keep their homes, extended families, and communities functioning for over a millennium. We’re so conditioned to this bullshit that we don’t recognize it when we do it to each other.

So we must have these hard conversations. We must vent, and listen, and strengthen one another. We may have to re-hash the topic many more times, because we’ve been holding it in for so long, and real change requires a lot of attention. These conversations will help us confess our pain, find our support networks, put on our armor, then get out there and change our world. One chaotic, painful, and exhilarating panel at a time.

Thank you to Lisa Koenigsberg, PhD, founder of Initiatives in Art and Culture, for making this panel happen at the 8^th Annual Gold Conference. Thanks also to Hedda Schupak, panel moderator, and panelists Wendy Brandes, Brandee Dallow, Jenny Luker, and Barbara Palumbo.

Data published in Tim Smedley’s "The Inclusive Workplace" found that teams that are representative of their target client are up to 158 percent more likely to understand their client. No wonder the diamond industry is in such a mess right now.

Gender Makeup of Jewelry Industry Boards

Organization	Male	Female	% of Women
MJSA	11	4	26.7%
Jewelers of America	15	9	37.5%
American Gem Trade Association	13	3	18.8%
American Gem Society	12	6	33.3%
Jeweler's Vigilance Committee	30	11	26.8%
Diamond Manufacturers and Importers of America	26	2	7.1%
Diamond Dealers Club of New York	21	0	0.0%
Natural Color Diamond Association	13	3	18.8%
International Diamond Manufacturer's Association	6	0	0.0%
Total gender balance	147	38	20.5%

The only jewelry association with a strong female board makeup is the Women's Jewelry Association
Women's Jewelry Association	2	29	93.5%

References

Bergstein, R. (2017, August 9). Female Self-Purchasing Isn't Just a Jewelry Industry Pipedream. Forbes.

Catalyst. (2018). Women's Representation on Fortune 500 Boards Inches Upwards. New York: Catalyst.

Joan C. Williams, R. D. (2014). What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Working Women Need to Know. New York and London: New York University Press.

M. E. Heiulman, J. J. (2005). Same Behavior, Different Consequences: Reactions to Men's and Women's Altruistic Citizenship Behavior. APA PsycNET, 10.

Pham, T. (2016, December 20). Think You're Not Biased Against Women at Work? Read This. Forbes.

Sheryl Sandberg, A. G. (2015, February 6). Madam CEO, Get Me a Coffee. New York Times.

Smedley, T. (2014, May 15). The Evidence is Growing - There Really is a Business Case for Diversity. Financial Times.

Tristan L. Botelho, M. A. (2017). Research: Objective Performance Metrics Are Not Enough to Overcome Gender Bias. Harvard Business Review.

Williams, J. C. (2014, April 16). Sticking Women with the Office Housework. Wall Street Journal, p. 1.

Everything I Need to Know About Sexual Harassment I Learned in Kindergarten

Thu, 08 Mar 2018 06:00:00 GMT

A slightly different version of this article originally ran in InStore Magazine in March, 2017. You can read the original here.

Sexual harassment isn’t about sex. It’s about power.

Where sexual harassment begins and where it ends isn’t always clear. Is a dirty joke sexual harassment? Is a lewd look sexual harassment? If your co-workers are constantly dropping f-bombs in the next cubicle, is that sexual harassment or just garden-variety rudeness? And what about paying a man with the same experience 30% more than what you pay a woman in the same job with the same experience? Is that sexual harassment? Is it gender inequality? And what is the difference? Some people use the lack of clarity around sexual harassment as a reason to dismiss it. So let’s break it down.

Some situations are very clear. If an employer tells an employee “have sex with me or I’ll fire you,” that’s sexual harassment.

The word “or” in that sentence (have sex with me OR . . . ) is the most important word. Consider these threats for a moment:

Have sex with me or . . .
Put up with me rubbing your back or . . .
Let me put my hand on your thigh or . . .
Don’t complain about my lecherous comments to you or . . .
Allow me to look down your blouse or . . .

If the person saying or doing those things is your boss or a person with greater power than you in an organization, then what follows the or – even if it is only implied – can be pretty scary. Or you’ll get fired. Or you won’t get a raise. Or you won’t get a bonus. Or you won’t get a promotion. The powerful person in this scenario is in a position to demand a quid pro quo: you do something for me, and I’ll do something for you. If you don't, you'll suffer a consequence.

If the person doing or saying those things is your peer or subordinate, then what follows the “or?” Or I’ll stop trying? Or I’ll go bother someone else? Or I’ll try to steal your sale? The person in this scenario is not capable of demanding a quid pro quo. He (or she) is, however, creating a hostile work environment.

But quid pro quo sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment are also something else. They are a terrible abuse of power. That power may be the power of the paycheck, or it may be the power of being larger, stronger, influential among your peer group, or simply capable of making you miserable every day. Either way, the result is the same – a human being who is afraid and angry and doesn’t want to be at work.

Claims of quid pro quo sexual harassment, hostile work environment, and gender inequality have all been leveled at Signet, and Signet has vigorously and consistently refuted them for over 10 years. When discussing this issue among my peers, I was told repeatedly, “But they’re innocent until proven guilty!”

Read About What Happened During the Gold Conference Panel on Gender Bias

But riddle me this Batman: How does a company get to the point where 69,000 of its current and former employees are participating in class action suits against it? Two employee class actions and a new shareholder class action, all stemming from accusations of rampant sexual harassment and pay disparity claims over several decades.

In general, companies find themselves facing sexual harassment lawsuits when they cultivate a culture in which abuse of power is a norm. This type of culture doesn’t just happen in large corporations. It may be happening in yours, even if there is no sex or groping involved. Because sexual harassment isn’t ultimately about sex. It’s about power.

Anyone in an organization with the ability to influence hiring, firing, pay, and promotions has power. This is typically an owner, an executive, or a manager, but it could also be an influential spouse, child, sibling, or adviser. Such power must be wielded with great care.

The manager who automatically pays men a higher wage than women for doing the same work is abusing power.
The boss who screams at and demeans employees is abusing power. After all, if he didn’t have the power to terminate their employment, why would his employees even put up with such behavior?
The manager who insists that employees tell her how they voted is abusing power. After all, if she were just some random stranger on the street, her employees would tell her, “that’s none of your business!”
The executive who tells his assistant, “I’d like you to start wearing more dresses, and keep the lengths above the knee,” is abusing power. After all, if he were a co-worker or some guy at the coffee shop, the woman would likely say, “why would I let you tell me how to dress?”
The business owner who butts in on his employees’ lives outside of work, demanding that they answer phones when not working, lecturing them about their personal lives, or expecting them to listen to his opinions about their boyfriends, parenting skills, and vacation plans is abusing power. Unless that employee is also the business owner’s son or daughter, he has no right to an opinion about their lives outside of work.

What is not an abuse of power? Anything that is relevant to the achievement of the business goals, portrayal of the business brand, and critical to business success that is also applied to everyone in a given role in exactly the same way.

Why is sexual harassment such a hot-button issue? Because the abuse of power in a work environment so often expresses itself in the form of sexual overtones. Psychologists and sociologists have written extensively about why this is, but it all boils down to this: A person who is not inclined to use power to dominate others is unlikely to sexually harass others. But for people who like using their power to take what they want, sexual dominance is often one of the things they want.

If you look at an organization where sexual harassment appears to be rampant, you will see other problems as well. You will see an organization with different sets of rules for different sets of people. You will see favoritism, unequal pay, and unequal access to perks and opportunities. You will see a general atmosphere of fear and insecurity. You will see an organization where those not in power try to survive by staying under the radar. You will likely see as many unhappy men as unhappy women, but they will be unhappy about different things. And eventually, you will see an organization whose internal dysfunction seeps outside to its customers, in the form of poor service, unethical behavior, and erratic performance.

It takes tremendous character not to be corrupted by power. Yet anyone in a position of authority has power, and that power can be used wisely or for selfish reasons. If an organization is permissive of the abuse of power in any form, it’s just a few short steps to someone in the organization using his power to touch a woman inappropriately, comment on her appearance or sexual appeal, or suggest that she give him sexual favors.

Of course, no organization is immune from someone in its ranks abusing a subordinate or fellow employee, but there’s a big difference in the response. In an organization that is not permissive of abusive behavior, such actions will be reprimanded in the strongest terms. In an organization that is permissive of power abuse, a complaint about sexual harassment will be met with denial, shaming, blaming, or framing the accuser. People who are victimized in the future will be silent, for fear of reprisals.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that a culture permissive of power abuse is bad for business. Sure, the business may do well for a period of time, as long as market conditions are favorable. But eventually, the negative aspects of the culture will have a damaging effect on brand equity, performance, profitability, and shareholder confidence. In contrast, organizations with strong, positive cultures inspire a feeling of ownership, shared commitment, and motivation in their employees – the attributes that are most useful when facing challenging market conditions.

And what of the other types of sexual predation? The person who presumes to grope you with his eyes; the acquaintance who keeps making lewd jokes, even though you don’t laugh along; the guy who insists on continuing to objectify women with the excuse that it's the natural inclination of men to notice what is beautiful about women (blech); the interviewer who won’t give you the time of day because you’re not physically attractive enough (to him); the person who comments on your weight (too skinny, too fat) as if weight is a measure of your worth – what about them? Is that discrimination? Is that sexual harassment?

In the legal sense, only if the behavior violates a person’s rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But come on. Do we really need legal frameworks to tell us it's wrong to treat people unequally or to make unwanted sexual advances? Here’s a guideline for the confused: You have no business making a sexual advance, sexual comment, or implying sexual interest in anyone, other than the person with whom you are already in a sexual relationship or unless you are on a date – specifically a date which has become hot and steamy due to mutual and enthusiastic interest in one another.

Here's another: You have no business valuing a person's job responsibilities or job performance based on looks, gender, or anything other than the actual responsibilities and performance.

These guidelines should be easy for everyone to follow.

What about the more subtle encroachments? For instance, is it OK to comment on a woman’s appearance? Well, start with the directive, “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” This applies to wives and girlfriends by the way. But what if you want to pay a compliment?

Start by asking yourself, “if this person were a man, would I compliment his appearance?” If the answer is “no,” then just stop already. Women are not here for your visual enjoyment, even though you may visually enjoy them. Keep it to yourself. But if you’re the kind of guy who is likely to say, “great necktie!” “Love the haircut!” or “I like your new shoes, where did you buy them?” Then it’s probably fine to say, “I like your jacket,” “great haircut,” or “purple is a terrific color for you.” Of course, only women who already know you would be aware that you make similar comments to men. Women who don’t know you may still be put off by your presumption to comment on their appearance.

Ultimately, our purpose with one another at the office, at trade shows, and at industry functions is to do business. Anything that causes another human to feel uncomfortable, unsafe, disrespected, confused, or ashamed interferes with the work, and anything that interferes with the work is a waste of time and resources and potentially damaging to our industry. That’s the business reason to speak out against both abuses of power and inappropriate behavior.

Of course, there shouldn’t have to be a business reason, should there? Because it’s never OK to make someone else feel uncomfortable, disrespected, unsafe, confused, or ashamed. It’s never OK to violate someone emotionally or physically. It’s never OK to be a jerk.

So why should we care about what is happening at Signet? Why should we care that women in our industry are regularly sharing personal stories of harassment that occurred at their offices and when attending trade events? It should matter to us because, as I said earlier, organizations that turn a blind eye to terrible behavior eventually suffer economically, and this is true for industries as well.

But mostly, it should matter to each of us on a personal level. It should matter what happens to other human beings. Kindness, integrity, character, and respect should matter. Shouldn’t they?

Turn Your Ideas Into Profits

Mon, 19 Feb 2018 06:00:00 GMT

Ideas are a lot like zucchini. They tend to be prolific in production, but after a while you realize that a giant pile of zucchini isn’t all that useful (or appetizing). To get the full value out of a garden full of zucchini, you must use a recipe and transform them into something else — like zucchini bread, zucchini casserole, and my favorite - zucchini sushi.

To turn your giant pile of ideas into profits, you need project planning. Why? Because a project plan is the recipe that helps you define, manage, and complete the transformation of an idea into a new reality.

Thankfully, project planning isn’t that complicated. Oh, it can be – particularly given how people like to over-complicate things! But with an affordable project management software and some project management basics, you can become a project management guru. Read on to find out how.

Elements of a Project Plan

Purpose and Scope

Begin every project plan by defining its purpose and scope. This is important. Without purpose and scope, every person who hears about the project may have different expectations. Let’s use an example. If we created a project to select a project planning software, the purpose and scope would be essential to choosing the right tool.

For instance, some project planning tools are good for small projects, but not for large, detailed projects with many due dates and participants. Some project planning tools are good for only 5-10 people, and others are useful for large organizations.

Project Scope and Purpose A:

We need a project planning tool for our 7-person marketing team. We manage short-term projects, and the projects rarely exceed 1 level of task detail. We need this project plan to help us reduce our planning cycles and do a better job of hitting deadlines.

Project Scope and Purpose B:

We need a project planning tool for the 70 people in our head office. We manage large and small projects, and our most complicate projects can go to 2 or 3 levels of detail per task. We need to be able to include outside participants. We need this project plan to achieve strategic objectives, improve corporate communications, and create global transparency regarding our projects.

As you can probably see from those two descriptions, the project plans and software selections would be quite different from one another.

Create an Outline

The best way to start a project plan is to create an outline. This doesn’t have to be done in your project planning software. Sometimes, it is easiest to create the outline on a piece of paper, with lots of room to move things around, scratch things out, and develop good descriptions. For example, let’s use “Project Scope and Purpose B” from above.

We begin by asking, “what are the broad tasks that must be done to achieve the objectives of this project?” Your list may look like this:

Review current project planning processes and tools
Identify needs and wants related to project planning
Create short list of project planning software to consider
Assess each software against our software requirements
Shortlist and Test
Select project software
Implement project software

Are you done? No, but that is a good start. The next step is to create more detail in your project outline. It looks like this:

Review current project planning processes and tools
1. Operations Team project planning processes and tools
2. Marketing Team project planning processes and tools
3. Merchandising Team project planning processes and tools
4. Sales Team project planning processes and tools
Identify needs and wants related to project planning
1. Senior Executive/C-suite needs and wants
2. Department Head needs and wants
3. Team member needs and wants
Create short list of project planning software to consider
1. Develop list of known project planning software
2. Request references and recommendations from business partners who use project planning software
Assess each software against our software requirements
1. Using online information, develop preliminary description of each software
2. Narrow list to 5 software packages to consider
Test Shortlist
1. Contact vendors for product demonstrations or do online product demonstrations
2. Document advantages and shortcomings of each software
3. Review findings with representatives from each functional area
Select project software
Implement project software
1. Create implementation plan and schedule (this is a mini-project — which would be created exactly the way we created the overall project plan).
2. Follow the implementation plan

Assign Resources and Dates

The next step is to assign a point person for each aspect of the project plan. This doesn’t necessarily have to be the person who will do all the tasks themselves — they will likely be delegating many of the tasks, and keeping other tasks for themselves. But this person will be responsible to ensure that whomever is assigned the task is doing the task on time and correctly.

The date part is trickier. The way we set dates on a project plan depends a lot on the type of project plan; long-term or short-term. But let’s start with the way they’re both the same. Every project, large or small, must be assigned a completion date. This is the date at which we expect the entire project to be completed. Every other date assigned within the project must meet that overall due date. So, you can’t have an overall project due on October 15, 2019, but have a task within that project due on December 1, 2019.

Now let’s look at the way long-term projects and short-term projects are different.

For a short-term project, you will likely assign all the due dates at once. Many short term projects are repeated year after year (Valentine’s Day promotion, summer sale, Black Friday or Cyber Monday, Trade Show Plan). In those cases, the participants know the steps that need to be done and they launch and complete projects like this every single month. So assign due dates for each task at the same time you assign responsibilities.

For long-term projects, you set milestone dates at the outset, but save individual task dates until you are closer to working on those tasks. What is a milestone? Milestones are the significant stages or segments of a plan. The numbered items in the above list are the major segments of the project. The completion date for each group of tasks is a milestone.

For example, you would set the due date for the entire project. You may also set dates by when you want to accomplish the first level (milestone) tasks in your outline. But for the individual tasks within the outline, you may not set due dates or delegate responsibilities until you turn your attention to that task group. This is part of managing the project.

Once you have your project scope, outline, resources, and dates identified, it’s time to plug all that information into your project software.

Managing a Project

The best projects are inclusive, cross-functional, and heavy on communications.

With today’s Project Management tools, we pretty much have it made when it comes to project management, because this software category is well-defined and robust. Whether you use programs like Basecamp, Asana, or Trello for loosely structured projects and communication, or programs like Plutio, Zoho, Wrike, or Microsoft Project for highly structured projects and communication, all modern project management tools have a few common elements:

The ability to create a list of tasks and assign due dates and people to them.
The ability to create conversational “threads” on each task and on the overall project, which helps eliminate phone calls and email and creates better overall information sharing.
The ability to track progress on the project plan, maintaining accountability and transparency.

Now back to due dates for a minute. In the long-term project plan, you may start out with due dates for the total project, and for the major groups of project tasks or significant time intervals, but few dates or assignments at the detailed task level of the project. That’s not only OK – that’s good.

In the not-so-distant past, project management software forced us to set dates for the entire project at the outset. But we all know that it can be hard to envision all the necessary detail for long-term projects. And once all those dates and details are set, we have to manage a lot of detail that may or may not be accurate or relevant – particularly as the project goes on.

The best way to set and manage accurate dates and responsibilities in a major project is one chunk at a time. The project team should meet weekly or bi-weekly. At those meetings, they should decide as a group which elements of the project to elevate next. Once decided, the project plan should be updated to reflect those dates. This method makes the project plan more accurate and meaningful, and it ensures that all project team members are focused on the right things at the right times.

The project team should also hold one-another accountable for due dates and results. If there’s no pressure within a project team to meet their responsibilities, the project will languish. A manager can certainly help to apply pressure, but case-study after case-study demonstrates that the best-executed projects benefit from peer group commitment and motivation.

Why Planning?

It may be difficult to imagine, but not everyone loves project planning equally (a bit of sarcasm here). Yet, there’s a huge benefit to project planning that turns all motivated professionals into raving fans.

As this graphic demonstrates, the cost of planning is lower than the cost of execution. So by spending more time in the planning phase, you can shorten the time you spend in execution phase and reduce your overall cost.

Because planning helps mitigate time-consuming execution errors, spending more time in planning also tends to speed up the entire project.

You can also improve the quality of the project with better planning. Well-planned projects experience better overall results than projects with little planning effort.

The message is clear. Professional project planning is more economical and effective, and ultimately of higher quality, than seat-of-the-pants project management. And considering the fabulous software tools available today, project planning is easier than ever.

So that’s your recipe! Now it’s time to sift through that giant pile of ideas you have, and start turning those ideas into profits, using a project management approach that is easy to implement and makes managing the project (the real work) more effective than winging it. You’ve be so excited at how much more you will accomplish this way.

Poka Yoke: The Art of Preventing Errors

Sun, 24 Sep 2017 05:00:00 GMT

Using Poka Yoke, you can eliminate most of those head-smacking, why-did-we-make-that-mistake process problems.

Let’s face it. Work is often full of busy-work, sometimes it’s monotonous, and there are occasionally days when you head for home and you realize that you just went through the motions all day long (hopefully, you don’t have a lot of those days). Many of the errors in the workplace occur when people are, well, spacing off a little! How can we account for the occasional human lack-of-attention? With a Lean method called Poka Yoke.

Poka Yoke means designing systems to prevent human error, and it can be implemented at any step in any process where errors are likely to be made. A few good examples of Poka Yoke everyone understands include:

Automobile Gas Caps

There are two Poka Yoke applications in most modern gas caps. First, there is a plastic cord that connects the gas cover to the automobile. This prevents those little caps from getting lost. Second, the hole for the gas tank (filling pipe insert) is sized to fit the filling handle of the proper type of fuel (diesel, leaded, unleaded).

Saving Electricity

Most people remember to turn off lights, turn down the A/C, and otherwise save energy in their own homes. After all, electricity is expensive! But hotels have long known that people do not bring the same conservations to their travel accommodations. So, they poka-yoked a solution.

In many hotels around the world, the hotel room is equipped with a room key holder. If you put your room key in the holder, the lights go on! When you take your room key out and leave the room, the electricity is turned off. Simple solution that prevents the error of wasted energy!

Poka Yoke at Work

At its best, Poka Yoke is the elegant work of process ninjas, anticipating the most peripheral of problems and solving them in simple, elegant ways. But we all have to start somewhere, and we don’t need to be ninjas right away. So here are the three basic approaches of Poka Yoke, as defined by Shigeo Shingo of Lean fame.

The Contact Method. This is the simplest approach. It is about taking a good look at a product or process and identifying its defects or faults.

The Fixed Value Method. Also known as the “Constant Number” method, this method is used when there are a known number of steps that must be done to complete a process. If the person doing the process does not complete the full number of steps, they are alerted that they have missed a step. You encounter examples of the Fixed Value Method when you complete online forms. If you miss a required field, the system refuses to take your submission and highlights the fields that still require information.

The Motion Step Method. Also known as the “Sequence Method,” this method is simply about making sure that the process was done correctly. When you document a process, and then use a checklist to ensure that each step of the process is completed, you are using the Motion Step Method.

How to Start Using Poka Yoke

You can break all Poka Yoke solutions down into two categories: prevention and detection. Prevention devices keep a non-conformance from happening, and detection devices alert an operator that a non-conformance has occurred.

A good Poka Yoke device is always simple, and cheap. If they are too complicated, they are not cost-effective and they introduce the possibility of additional non-conformance. Poka Yoke devices should also be completely integrated into the process, and close to where the process occurs. Think about that online form again for a moment. When you complete an online form, you see indications of what fields are required. There may be an asterisk in the box, or the box may be outlined in a different color. This is what we mean by engineering the expectations into the process – the “prevention” form of Poka Yoke. Then, if someone skips a required field, the form may refuse to submit until the field is completed. This is the “detection” form of Poka Yoke. And each of these steps are completely integrated in the process, as well as simple, and cheap.

The 5 Stages of Poka Yoke

Step 1: Remember that everyone makes mistakes. So our job as managers is to create systems where those mistakes can’t be made.

Any time I hear a senior executive complaining about how people should “just remember” not to make mistakes, I assume a certain lack of self-awareness. We all make mistakes. So the goal isn’t to stop being human, nor is it to only hire people with eidetic memories. People who accept this first concept become the most effective practitioners of Poka Yoke.

Step 2: Find the Root Cause. If we don’t find the root cause, we’ll end up focusing all our energy on symptoms, and implementing several – possibly competing - solutions where only one would do. If you want to learn more about Root Cause Analysis (RCA), check out this article on Root Cause Analysis.

Step 3: Think in terms of Standard Operating Procedures. Every procedure should have a standard operation, it should be documented, and the operators should be trained to it. As long as there is variance in a process, you can’t control for errors.

Step 4: Brainstorm “What Could Go Wrong” for Every Process. This is where the real work of Poka Yoke occurs. When you start thinking about what could go wrong, you start to anticipate – and prevent – the errors.

Step 5: Keep it Simple! When you come up with a way to error proof a process, challenge its complexity. The goal is to use extremely simple, dummy-proof solutions. If you introduce complex ideas, then you are also introducing more opportunities for human error!

Some of the most common Poka Yoke tools and techniques include:

Checklists
Form/Field Validations
Vision Systems (visuals that reinforce the proper result or technique)
Blocks, Barrier, and other Safety Features
Counters
Sensors
Alarms
Changes in Fixture Designs
Changes in Die Designs

First You Solve the Process . . .

People problems are often process problems. What does that mean? It means that we humans are not endowed with perfect memories or perfect consistency. That’s why we must create processes that offset those human characteristics.

There is also a tremendous upside to this. We may not be perfectly consistent or have perfect memories, but we humans are wildly creative, and creativity is the ingredient that brings real value to a company. So, instead of spending our time solving problems and re-doing work, let’s make more time for being creative and bringing value! By using Poka Yoke, we introduce the possibility of more time for more innovation. And that’s exciting, because when we are innovating, the work is never dull, and we never feel the need to go on autopilot.

Root Cause Analysis

Sun, 17 Sep 2017 05:00:00 GMT

or . . . The Shin Bone's Connected to the Thigh Bone

Getting to the root cause of problems can speed up the solutions. Even better - it can keep those problems from spring up somewhere else!

It’s Monday. You’ve poured your first cup of office coffee, you’re sitting at your desk with the steaming mug in your hands, ready to face the week. You open your email and . . .

The email bomb. Your boss, demanding to know why production has stalled on your main product line. AGAIN. You sit there and sweat as your coffee goes cold and your week begins to look bleak.

Nothing is more upsetting – to bosses or managers – than problems that repeat themselves. The first time a problem occurs, reasonable people are accepting about it. After all, sh*t happens. But when problems reoccur, patience runs out. And it should, because errors are costly and keep us from focusing on creating new value for the company.

Typically, when the same problem occurs over and over again, it’s for one of these reasons:

The root cause was never identified, so each time we solve the problem we are actually only solving a symptom of the problem.
The root cause was identified, but we failed to do the 2^nd step of problem solving, which is error-proofing the process from that time forward.

Lean Manufacturing offers two excellent tools to avoid that Monday-morning, coffee-cooling, temper-raising situation. Root Cause Analysis, and Poka Yoke.

Root Cause Analysis

Root Cause Analysis (often called RCA in Lean) is one of the pillars of a quality system. A commitment to RCA can help a company quickly reduce errors and introduce more quality throughout its supply chain. There are four basic steps in RCA:

Collecting all the information about the problem (which we will refer to as a non-conformance). Every little detail – even the details that seem inconsequential!
Creating a visual map of the causal factors – the steps, missed steps, and errors that led to the non-conformance.
Accurately identifying the root cause or causes (sometimes there is more than one factor at the root – but rarely more than three).
Creating a solution that solves the root cause, and developing a corrective action plan.

Collecting the Information

5 Whys

The simplest way to collect information about the causes of a problem is to ask questions. But these questions should be structured as a true interrogative technique – and not just a random set of questions. In fact, when you ask questions in this way, it can be diagrammed.

To do a 5-Whys approach (and the result may be achieved in 3 Whys, or 10 Whys – the approach is named 5 Whys because the theory is that most root causes can be uncovered in 5 or less), start with the most obvious problem.

We are scrapping a lot of engravings due to poor quality. Why?
The patterns are too deep in some areas and too shallow in other areas. Why?
The mirrors are not in perfect alignment. Why?
We did not do proactive maintenance when we moved the engraver to a new workspace. Why?
Nobody thought of it, because there is no process in place to ensure machines are maintained after being moved.

Solution: Any time an engraving machine is moved, there must be a process in place to ensure that maintenance is done. Further discussion of the topic would probably led the group to decide that the machine merited regular preventive maintenance – perhaps quarterly.

How do you diagram this?

Why Do You Need Visual Maps?

Before we go on to the next RCA tool, let’s talk about visual maps. Visual maps are an important element of problem solving. When we represent information in a visual manner, we engage more of our brains in understanding the issue. Visual maps require us to structure information, which helps us to better comprehend, synthesize, and remember the information, which leads to generating more and better new ideas. In other words, making mental information visual helps our brains do a better job!

Fishbone Diagram

Another very useful RCA tool is called the Fishbone Diagram (trivia: This was originally called an Ishikawa Diagram). This is sometimes referred to as a Cause-and-Effect Diagram. The Fishbone is more useful than 5 Whys when you are dealing with more complex problems. As you will see, it can take into consideration many more variables than the 5 Whys approach.

When you first look at a Fishbone Diagram, it may seem complicated. But it’s actually very simple!

As with the 5 Whys, you begin by asking, “what is the problem?” Then, you diagram it like this:

The next step is to categorize the causes. For example, missing customer deadlines can involve a lot of different areas, including:

Sales Process
Production Process
Purchasing Process
Warehouse (pick/pack/ship) Process

Place these different cause categories on the Fishbone Diagram like this:

Obviously, we don’t have enough detail yet to solve the problem. So the next step is to brainstorm the contributors to the problem. This part of the Fishbone will likely look like this:

The team should continue to brainstorm the problems, until all the possible causes have been identified. Very complex problems may go to several levels of hierarchy. You can use different shapes and colors for the different levels to make the diagram easier to read.

Once the diagram is complete, it will be much easier for the group to identify all root causes and brainstorm solutions for them.

Conclusion

Getting to the root of problems is the only way to cure them. Consider the ramifications for your health. If you suddenly experience pain on the left side of your chest and numbness in your left arm, you don’t try to stretch it out or lay down and take a nap! You already know that these are signs of a heart attack, and you go straight to addressing the core issue (call 911!). You don’t spend time worrying about your sore arm. But what about medical emergencies you don’t already know about? The difference between a good medical outcome and a sad outcome is often based on getting to the right doctor who can quickly diagnose the core issue and treat it.

This is also important in business. Use these Lean tools to get to the root causes of problems. You’ll be solving another medical problem as well . . . the anxiety attacks that occur when you hear a dreaded problem has occurred again.

In next week’s Lean article we’ll discuss Poka Yoke, or how to make problems stay away.

Collaboration in Action - Part 2

Thu, 31 Aug 2017 05:00:00 GMT

This is the second of a two-part post. To read the first installation, click here.

I'm not suggesting collaboration is new - I'm suggesting we need more of it. Here are some examples of collaboration from which we can draw inspiration and fuel new ideas.

Ethical Metalsmiths

This group has existed for a long time, quietly gathering a membership in the hundreds. Like many small non-profits, it has suffered from diffusion of its mission. Recently, with a dynamic new board in place, the group has focused on its role in the larger universe of social justice, social responsibility, and environmental protection groups as one of collaboration. Rather than trying to be and do all the things that much larger (and better funded) organizations have tackled, the Ethical Metalsmiths group has decided on a collaborative approach.

Working as an advocate for its own membership, Ethical Metalsmiths will provide a framework to support its members on a journey of better practices. EM will reach out to organizations like Association for Responsible Mining and the Responsible Jewellery Council, and bring back practices and knowledge from them for the EM community. EM members sit on committees for the Jewelry Industry Summit, creating cross-pollination with other groups concerned about the same issues.

This approach will facilitate the growth of EM, and also helps promote the overall goal of sustainability and responsibility by spreading the love around through collaboration.

MJSA Collaborations

The MJSA (Manufacturing Jewelers and Suppliers of America) is always looking for ways to build collaborations among its members to better all the members. Their BEaJEWELER program* is a great example of this. BEaJEWELER seeks to entice new people to the profession of jewelry. It provides a website with extensive resources to direct interested visitors to schools, training programs, and information to help them make a good decision and set out on their path. BEaJEWELER also invites its jeweler members to share their own stories and insights, because it’s that human element that makes a career choice come alive. Of course, this benefits all of the participants, because we all know the struggle of finding qualified help in the jewelry production studio!

Now, MJSA is introducing a new initiative – the Studio Jeweler outreach program. Again, collaborating with members, MJSA will reach out directly to consumers to connect them with the satisfying experience of buying jewelry made locally and traditionally. Both MJSA initiatives are funded in part by a JCK Industry Grant – itself another form of collaboration.

ANZA Gems

Monica Stephenson, known by many in the jewelry industry for the long-running iDazzle blog, offers another example of powerful collaboration. After traveling to Africa as part of the team that participated in the making of the gem documentary Sharing the Rough, Monica became very committed to helping making a difference on the ground in artisanal mining communities. She started ANZA Gem. ANZA Gem takes gem rough from artisanal miners, collaborates with designers and consumers to make and sell finished jewelry, and returns a significant portion of that value back to the original mining community. This effort recognizes in practice what Sharing the Rough demonstrated in film: that the materials we take from the ground form a chain from the person who digs in the dirt for it to the person who ultimately wears it. Monica’s goal is to make sure every piece of that chain also benefits from it, and she chose collaboration as the way to do her part.

Endorsements and Influence

Before the term influencer came to mean a previously anonymous person with 50,000 social media followers, influencer marketing was also a form of collaboration (OK, in truth, it still is). When people with a following endorse specific products, theoretically the sales go up. This works best when it is apparent that the endorser clearly believes in the product and the exchange is not purely financial. So, athletes endorsing shoes they’ve been wearing all along (prior to the endorsement) have more influence than Cindy Lauper being paid to endorse a pharmaceutical.

Are there ways to create stronger collaboration of the influence sort? Sure there are – that’s exactly what social proof is. If you’re not using product reviews and testimonials from customers to persuade prospects, you’re not taking advantage of this potent source of marketing collaboration. And the collaboration isn’t just about you and your customers – it’s also peer collaboration, as consumers rely on friends, acquaintances, or just people who seem like them to give them advice regarding the products they are considering.

Co-Branding

Many retail jewelers have dabbled in collaborations with other local businesses. Most of the time, it doesn’t go beyond basic co-branding for a promotion or event. But what if it did? What if several businesses banded together to create an omnichannel experience for customers that went way beyond one store?

Big corporations can achieve the benefits of collaboration (more minds to tackle tricky problems) just by virtue of their employment pool. And even then, smart corporate leaders often look to collaborate with other corporations to gain competitive advantage. We are all self-limiting to some extent (if not inherently, at least practically), and the way to combat that is by inviting in the wisdom and experience of others. Small business owners need collaborations to compete.

The future of retail hasn’t been invented yet – it’s still being conceived of. The questions are: are you part of that conceptualization, or are you waiting for others to do it? Are you going it alone, or are you looking for the advantages that come from smart people putting their heads together? My money is on the outcomes of strong collaborations, and the smart people who decide to engage in them.