My CEO Life

I received the following question from on of the readers.

“Did/Do you have a mentor? What is your opinion on the concept mentoring in the business environment?”

I do have a mentor and it is my father. Now the reason he is my mentor is that he has run large businesses, is very level headed, is able to tell me to pull my head in (and get away with it) and has a passion for customer service. He was a very good Chief Executive Officer who has a great track record of leadership in business.

I think it is important to have a mentor of some sort. I think it gives you an outlet that probably does not exist in the business and allows you to run ideas past a neutral person who, if they are good, will tell you straight what they think.

I think that another source of mentoring type qualities can come internally (in some situations) and that depends on the quality of the team at the top. We are lucky that many of the people on my team i trust implicitly and we have very open relationships between us. That allows key issues to be shared and addressed. This may not always be the case but is great is you can make it happen.

The last comment on mentoring that i would like to make is around the topics a mentor can cover. A type of mentor i have been experimenting with is a life coach. It is all about work life balance. We are not all guru’s in everything so taking the time to talk to someone else who can help balance work and life is great.

In short - you will be much better off with a mentor than without. Just make sure it is a good one.

Actually … another thought. In putting in place a mentor, it is important to structure the relationship to include monthly meetings with key topics of discussion. Use them as a consultant. The structure will bring results.

A week or so ago i wrote about the not so good service i received on a recent Emirates Airlines flight.  Well i thought i would go further than just bleating about it on this site.  I decided to write an email to the customer service people.

Now normally you write these things and nothing happens.  However, imagine my surprise when i received an email back from a customer service manager in Dubai followed by a phone call.  We chatted, he listened (VERY GOOD), and then explained how they have had problems, apologized (EVEN BETTER) and then outlined their improvement approach.  This was fantastic.

However, he then went one step further and offered my a free upgrade to the next class level on my next flight.  He didn’t need to do this but it has certainly created a strong customer and of course, i will make sure my people fly Emirates too.

Amazing what great customer service can do.

A friend of mine sent this to me yesterday. Is it a great story on how the internet is changing the way we do things. It is a true story of how a musician used the internet to her advantage and change her life by thinking differently and embracing the internet.

It was during the cold, short days at the start of 2006 that Sandi Thom had her Eureka! moment. Instead of driving to gigs up and down the country with her band in her clapped-out car, as she had done for years, the singer from Scotland resolved to try a different approach. She bought a webcam, and announced a run of 21 shows to be performed on consecutive nights during February and March in the basement of her flat in Tooting, South London. The audience capacity in the flat itself was limited to just six people. But the half-hour shows were to be broadcast, free of charge, via her website at www.sandithom.com. The first night, 70 people tuned in to watch, the next night it went up to 670. And by the middle of the second week she was performing to a peak audience of 162,000. By then, the suits from every major record label had visited the flat to see the show for themselves. What they heard was a singer with a sensational voice - strong and expressive enough to fill the largest theatres, but also warm and soulful enough to win over hearts and minds in the most intimate of settings. All the record companies put in offers, and a fortnight after finishing her virtual tour Thom signed a recording contract with RCA executive Craig Logan, live in front of her webcam audience.

Even before her debut album, *Smile… It Confuses People* is released on June 5, preceded by a single, *I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker* on May 22, Sandi Thom is a phenomenon. The company is calling it “the first webcast signing in major record label history” and she has become the overnight internet star who won a global audience and a megabucks handshake thanks to her investment in a £60 webcam. Needless to say, the story goes a little deeper than that.

If only i had thought of that first … and could actually play!

I was recently on a flight with my favourite airline (Emirates). I fly them often and have reached one of their highest frequent flyer levels. However they continue to annoy me as they have me down for a special meal when i dont want one. I have tried to cancel the special diet entry on my profile to no avail.

On the flight they said that they would change the profile but given my previous experiences i was not that hopeful.

Imagine my surprise today when i received the following email from the cabin manager from the flight

“As per our discussion on board the other evening, I contacted Frequent Flyer direct to review your special meal request. They advised me that there is no special meal request in your profile (which you can also view on line direct). They suggested it may be a problem with a booking agency or internal company booking profile. I hope I have been of assistance, however, if you are still experiencing problems, please contact me.”

You could have knocked me over with a feather. This is great service and i was certainly not expecting it.

It is amazing how used we are to poor service. How we take the promises of service providers with a grain of salt and how we dont really expect people follow through.

The point is that it is easy to exceed customer expectations, especially when all those around us in competing and complementary industries are doing a great job at setting the standards so low. Ensure that you create a culture of promise delivery in your business - just meeting expectations can go along way to creating engaged and happy customers.

I was recently asked the question “how do you attract and retail excellent employees?” This entry looks at the first part of the equation - attraction.

Almost all businesses have the major issue of attracting new staff unless you are Google! Any which way you cut it, this is extremely hard and, in the early days, took up a lot of my time.

Perhaps the easiest way to think about this is why would some join your business. What are the key things you offer that make you more attractive to employees - it is almost like a sales call - you should treat is as a marketing / sales exercise.

Firstly you need to define the product offering - ie the job. Key elements of a great job are:

1. Being an exciting role - what makes something exiting for one person vs another is a difficult thing but people like to be excited so when you advertise the role, sell the good points.
2. A clear future - it is important as part of the attractiveness of any role is a clear future. We all want a future!
3. Great pay - this is never to be taken lightly. People always want to earn more however exciting roles and career advancement can off set this
4. Fun culture - people like to actually have fun at work rather than slogging it out for 8 hours a day

Secondly, you need to advertise where people are looking. This is really important depending on what type of role and where you are located. There is no use advertising for HR people in a publication - online or offline - that is tailored to techs.

We spend most of our advertising dollars in online recruitment. We also rely heavily on internal referrals. We pay staff $2000 (or local currency equivalent) per person they recommend and who join.

Finally, when you get people into an interview room, you need to do as much selling as you do questioning. Don’t assume everyone wants to work for you - they probably don’t. You need to sell yourself and the business - especially if you have worked out that they are excellent in the first 5 minutes.