Mother’s Day seems appropriate for a very off topic post.  Blogging gives me great joy.  It’s therapeutic, I get to pontificate about all sorts of things.  When I’m on, I get to learn from my readers, whose comments often provide much more insight than my posts.

However recently, unbeknownst to me, I learned that my parents were great fans of my blog, reading it regularly.  I know they knew I blogged, but I had never told them the URL, or anything about how to find it.  Somehow, they navigated Google, found the blog, navigated the complexities of RSS feeds, discovered readers and now subscribe and regularly read the blog.

I first learned this when I got an email from my mom.  She commented on some post, wanting to express her opinion about the topic.  Somehow, she was a little embarrassed about commenting on the blog post itself, she said, “I didn’t think you would want my comment to be seen by everyone.  I also didn’t think it was appropriate for me to end my comment with ‘I’m so proud of my little boy!’”

Mom still won’t comment directly on the blog, but she sends me regular emails with her view on many of the topics I write about.  While I value everyone’s comments, hers I treasure.  Frankly, I kind of like her emailing comments, it’s my private conversation.  It is so rewarding to me to know they read and like the blog.

I’m amazed with my parents.  They struggle with computers and technology, but they are constantly learning.  They are part of the Facebook generation, friends with all the grandkids, and many other people.  They read every imaginable news feed, many blogs and keep current with things.  My mom even texts on her mobile phone.

However, sometimes we have amusing moments—there are some generational gaps.  A few posts ago, I lamented about the problems with my router.  A few days ago, I got home and found a package from my Dad.  It was his neatly boxed, Craftsman Router—the woodworking kind, with his collection of sharpened bits.  He put a note in the box—“Saw you were struggling with your router.  Borrow mine for as long as you need it!”  We had a great laugh—“Dad, it’s not that kind of router.”

We deal with generations everyday—Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y.  Too often, we focus on the differences.  Some generations proudly saying they are the best, others saying the others just don’t get it.  We have so much to learn from each other.  We need to be open, listen, learn, experiment.

My parents experiment, they are learning and adopting the tools of the younger generations.  They are active in social media, leveraging the web.  I am so proud of them and what they teach me.

The one thing they are struggling with is, they think Twittering is for the birds.  Frankly, I don’t know if that is an informed opinion or whether we have another one of those generational light moments.

All too often, we hear nightmares about customer service and how abysmal it is.  No one listens, no one cares, they just want to take our money and screw the customer.  It’s great fodder for cocktail party and bloggers.  Overlay this with the news reports on Toyota and their lack of responsiveness to customer complaints about problems, it’s no wonder no wonder we are terribly cynical about customer service.

However, just when cynicism starts to take over, all of a sudden, we experience these moments of absolute surprise that enable cause us to pause and reflect.  Customer service is not hard, it starts with caring about your customers.  It continues with listening to what your customers have to say, not necessarily agreeing with them, but trying to understand the issue and helping them understand.  That’s great customer service.  Sometimes we experience the awesome, customer service professionals who surprise and delight.

I have just had one of those experiences.  For those of you who follow me, you know I’m an avid road biker.  Yes, I’m one of those annoying people zipping through traffic, clad in lycra and bright colors, hoping I look halfway as cool as Lance Armstrong.  Over the past year, I’ve been having trouble with my bike shorts.  I’ve been wearing a hole in them in exactly the same spot (I’ll stop the description there, describing further gets a little embarrassing).  I carefully inspected the shorts, I bought new shorts and watched carefully what was happening.  Somehow after about 15-20 rides, the mysterious hole would appear in exactly the same spot.  I was really concerned, at $125-150 per pair of shorts, I could be burning through a lot of money.

I knew it wasn’t a manufacturer’s defect, but thought maybe the manufacturer had changed fabrics.  I even admitted the possibility I might be sitting on the bike incorrectly.  Last night, I had some spare time, so I went to the customer service tab at the manufacturer’s web site.  I left a polite, but concerned note, saying it didn’t appear to be a quality problem on there part, but I couldn’t afford to buy their product if it wore out so quickly and wondered if they had any suggestions.

Today, I was surprised—no shocked.  Jeremy from Pearl Izumi called.  He said, “Dave, I read your note, I’m really concerned about what’s happening.  Would you mind talking to me about the problem you are experiencing?”  My first reaction was that I was blown away that someone had paid attention—I guess the poor experience most of us have tends to cause us to have low expectations about responses.  Second, I was surprised about the speed of response, and Jeremy apologized about being slow, but said he had wanted to research some things before calling me.

We talked about the problem.  Jeremy was upset that I was wearing a hole in my shorts so quickly.  He said he hadn’t heard a story like mine, and the shorts should last for years.  He was worried about what was happening and wanted to help me.  We talked for a while, he asked some great questions.  I wanted to make sure that he understood that I really didn’t consider it a Pearl Izumi problem, clearly it was something about the way I rode my bike.  After a few minutes, he said, why don’t you check the saddle, with the amount you ride, there might be something with the saddle that is causing abnormal wear on the short.  He went on to explain checking spots that weren’t obvious, but with my full weight, pedaling like crazy, might cause problems.  His recommendation was a stroke of genius, I told him I’d check.  He asked me to get back to him, he really wanted to make sure we were addressing the right issue. 

Sure enough, it was the saddle, there was an alignment problem of less than a sixteenth of an inch, but it was enough that it caused the excessive wear on the shorts.  I  quickly fixed the problem and know that I can now ride without wearing out these expensive shorts.  I sent Jeremy a note, thanking him for helping me out and expected that to be the end of the story.  To me it was a great customer service experience.

Imagine my surprise, I just got a note from Jeremy:  “Dave, we’re shipping some new shorts out to you tomorrow–we want you to look good out on the road.”  What an incredible response!  Clearly, the problem was not caused by them, it was caused by me and a small problem with the bike saddle.  I was happy with solving the problem, but astounded by Jeremy and Pearl Izumi going way over and above what they needed to do help me out.

Fantastic customer service is not hard.  It starts with caring about your customers.  It continues with listening to them and helping them.  Too many companies think customer service is about proving that it is not their problem, but the customers.  They forget to help the customer solve the problem.  Fortunately, the management team at Pearl Izumi and Jeremy believe customer service is about serving customers.  What a novel and refreshing concept!

Jeremy and Pearl Izumi have created a lifetime customer and a raving fan!  Those of you who are bikers or runners, buy their product–they stand behind it.

I only have one concern.  I’m worried about lettng Jeremy down, it’s the part about making me “look good out on the road.”  I’m not sure new bike shorts can do it–unless they have a burkha model in lycra–at least covering me up completely might help.

Well, it’s 2010, a New Year!  We have put 2009 behind us, and as we are prone to do, forget the lessons we learned or things we discovered.

Before rushing into the New Year, take time this weekend to reflect.  Do a couple of things to inspire yourself:

Read Seth Godin’s eBook:  What Matters Now.  It’s a great collection of short articles on all sorts of different perspectives.  It’s great food for thought as you think about what you want to achieve for the new year.

Then take the time to think about how you can Make A Difference.  My friend, Rebel Brown, has an interesting idea:  Think Small.  Think about how you can make a difference in a person’s life every day this year.  As Rebel puts it, think small.  Sometimes the difference you make is nothing more than a smile, or a thoughtful note.  It may be taking the time to listen.  Imagine what each of us can accomplish–365 small acts of Making A Difference. 

Think what could happen, it can snowball.  Imagine, each person reading this post doing 365 acts of Making a Difference—we’re now into 100′s of thousands.  Then those people that we’ve impacted will start doing the same thing.  Who says change is tough?  All it takes is one small act every day.

Happy 2010!

The New Year is around the corner.  Before we launch into the New Year, forgetting 2009, I want to take a moment to thank my readers.  Sometimes, when I write, I wonder if anyone is reading, and if I am making a difference.  Thanks to your graciousness and generosity, I never have to wonder long.

I get hundreds of comments and emails commenting on my various posts.  At times, it’s disagreement–I actually like those.  It gives me a chance to rethink things and consider different points of view.  There are others, those of you who offer better insight into an issue I may have expressed clumsily.  And there are those who express appreciation for giving them  ideas.

I established the blog to “Make A Difference,” in some small way, for individuals and organizations.  The feedback indicates I am achieving my goal.  Thank you for making this experience valuable to me, and everyone else.

Please continue to read in the coming year.  Please challenge me, continue to expand on the conversation.  Thank you for your support and contributions!  Best wishes to you and your families for 2010!

A soapbox I have been on has been to put the “thoughtfulness” back into our business practice. What I mean by this is not being courteous and polite to people (though we should be), but to be thought-full in how we develop and execute our business, sales and marketing strategies.  To not blindly do what we have done in the past, but to think about what we should be doing, to think about doing things right, and to do the right thing.

Too often, it seems that we go through the motions.  Or because we don’t trust our people to be thoughtful, we encumber them with rules, procedures, and needlessly complicated processes focused on our internal requirements and not serving the customer, and potentially not growing our business.  We add to this, by putting in place incentives to reinforce this.

I don’t normally put other materials in this blog, but, thanks to Deborah Nixon, I found this inspirational TED talk by Barry Schwartz on Our Loss Of Wisdom.  It’s 20 minutes long, but worth your time.  He expresses what I have been struggling with, but have not found a way.  Enjoy it.

I spend most of my time working with high technology companies.  I’ve been involved in technology most of my career and if pressed, have to admit I’m a bit of a geek.  Part of my interest in technology may stem from the fact that by education I’m a physicist and engineer.

One of the challenging things in working with technology companies is that we seem to revel in our complexity.  The more syllables our words have the better.  New acropnyms and buzzwords are things of beauty.  Every presentation has to have dozens of slides that present every feature, function and detail of our products—-all in 10 point Arial.

It’s true, technology companies deal with very complex issues.  I love speaking with the researchers at my semiconductor clients.  It’s inspiring to speak with software architects and product designers at software companies.  There’s a lot of exciting and very complex stuff.

My question is, why do we have to encumber our customers with this complexity?  Just because we have had to overcome tremendous technology challenges to develop our products and bring them to market, do we have to saddle our customers with that complexity?

Many years ago, I was privileged to meet Dr. Richard Feynman — a Nobel Prize winner in Physics.  He’s famous for many things, but his lectures and writing on Physics continue to be inspirational.  He was able to take the most complex theories in physics and describe them in terms that anyone could understand.  He made physics exciting, not only to physicists, but to lay people.  He could describe very difficult theories with great clarity and simple examples.

Somehow, it seems to me that marketers and sellers should take Feynman’s books as style guides in how to take the very complex things we design and build, but explain them in simple and compelling terms.  Feyman made physics exciting to everyone with this method, perhaps we could use his model to capture the hearts and minds of our customers.

This week, I have the privilege of meeting with a number of Ireland’s leading technology executives, thanks to the hard work of Niall Devitt and Donagh Kiernan.  Yesterday, I had the privilege to share the podium with two outstanding CEO’s, Kevin O’Leary of Qumas, and Paddy Holahan of Newbay Software.  Each spoke of building their companies and entering the global markets.  While they are in different businesses and have very different strategies, I was struck by some common themes that served as the foundation to their success.

The first thing that struck me was the absolute clarity of who they, as individuals, are; who/what their companies are; who their customers are and how they serve them; and the types of people they needed to have in place to execute their strategies.  Each had clear visions and goals for what they wanted to achieve.  They articulated them simply and succinctly. They didn’t need lots of charts, with too many words, and lots of contingencies or disclaimers.   There was was no confusion.  There was no “wishy-washiness” or second guessing.  There were no fall back strategies.  They knew where they were going and how they would get there.

Closely related to this was the purposefulness with the way they described what they were doing, how they were executing, and what they needed to do to achieve their goals.  There was no wishful thinking.  Each had carefully analyzed their strategies and what they needed to achieve their goals.  They were very thoughtful about what they were doing, having carefully evaluated alternatives. They carefully analyzed their own strengths and weaknesses, looked at gaps in capability, and took action to fill those gaps.   They clearly knew who their customers were and were not going to be diverted by short term opportunities.  While they didn’t express it this way, they knew the difference between good revenue and bad revenue, focusing their success on pursuing good revenue.  They weren’t random in their choice of strategy.  They focused on process–clearly defined and sharply executed.  They measured everything and had all critical performance metrics at their fingertips.  They ruthlessly protected themselves and their organizations from being diverted from executing their strategies.

Finally, the intensity, passion, and commitment with which they expressed themselves was overwhelming.  Paddy’s description of “staying the course through a ‘nuclear winter.’ “  His confidence in the strategy and his commitment to give the organization the time to execute the strategies to achieve their vision was compelling.  Kevin’s description of his realization that the way he “sold” would not get them to where they needed to be and getting himself out of the way of his sales organization–empowering them to execute a disciplined sales process was fantastic.  No one could listen to their stories without being moved.  I think even a few of the execs were thinking of polishing up their resumes and looking to join.

Last evening I was reflecting on their talks and why I was so impressed.  I think it’s because I seldom see these three elements–clarity, purposefulness, intensity in organizations—all working at the same time—all working for a long time.  Too often, I see companies with a strategy du jour–a different strategy, priority, direction every day.  I see many organizations with processes in place–but they don’t use h process.  I see organizations with poorly defined metrics, low accountability.I see company’s not knowing who their customer is and how they serve them.  They try to be all things to all people.  They are willing to expend resources and chase every opportunity, even if it has nothing to do with the core strategies—but they probably don’t have any core strategies anyway.  Too many organizations don’t have clear goals and metrics, or there are few consequences for not achieving them.  When things are off, they makes excuses or change directions. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I work with great leaders and organizations that accomplish great things.  I see organizatins with outstanding strategies.  However, when you the intensity of clarity and purposefulness expressed by Kevin and Paddy, it’s inspirational!

It’s that time of year again!  In less than 60 days, I will be participating in my 4^th MS 150, Bay to Bay ride.  It’s a fantastic event, on October 10 and 11, about 2500 people will ride from Orange County to San Diego, raising money for MS.  More than 400,000 people in the US and 2.5 people worldwide have MS.  But the impact is far greater than that with millions of additional family members and friends impacted by this disease.

As usual, I will be doing the 150+mile route.  It’s a fantastic route along the coast and into the mountains.

Our team, the Derailleur’s (I’m the classy looking person, second from the right), has been one of the top money raisers in the small team category.  In my past 3 rides, I have been one of the top 150 money raisers, last year, with tremendous help from many of you, I was 44^th.

This year, I’ve set my personal fundraising goal at $5000.  The most I have ever attempted to raise – in one of the most difficult fundraising years in recent history.  I’m committed to do whatever it takes to achieve and exceed that goal, but I need your help.

I know many of you have faced terrible hardships, both in job loss, financially and otherwise.  But I’d still love your help and support.  Anything you can contribute will help move me to my goal, but more importantly provide critical funding to support research and people who have MS.  Even if you can only contribute a few dollars, please send a check to the address below.  If you can contribute a minimum of $10, click on the link below and charge it to your credit cards.

If you can’t contribute financially, there are other ways you can help.  Forward this to your friends, ask them to support me.  Join the team and me for the ride, raise money and have fun with us!  If you are in Southern California, contact me about joining the team—you’ll be hooked in a fantastic movement! 

Finally, volunteer or participate in your local MS Chapters and Events.  You can also help spread the word by publishing this as a “guest post” in your own blog and by tweeting this post or the links.

I’m not letting the economy be an excuse to not set a record in my own contribution and fundraising.  I hope you will join me, support me, and contribute in whatever way you can.

All the details are below.  The easiest way to contribute is on line, Follow This Link.  You can also send a check (make sure you note that you are contributing to my campaign).  The address is below.  Better yet, click on the link and contribute online.

National MS Society
Pacific South Coast Chapter
5950 La Place Ct., #200
Carlsbad, CA 92008

Follow This Link to visit my personal web page and help me in my efforts to support National MS Society, Pacific South Coast Chapter

Thank you for your support!  It will mean a lot to people, families, and friends that are in real need!