Edmonton Business Consultant | Progress without Friction is Fiction

Holding people accountable to task. Whenever you hold someone accountable to a task, their natural reaction is going to be resist that task and fight against that task. That is the natural, um, response to it. And you should change your Edmonton Business Consultant standards every time one employee, you know, uh, resist against being held accountable for that.

Yeah, I can see the whole why with the two. I can add [inaudible] cause it’s not died.

Hi, thanks for joining us for another episode of ask Sperl CPA today is the eminent business coach. We’re talking about how progress without friction is fiction. Again, as the evident business goes from talking about how progress without friction is fiction. I have Michael here with me today. So Michael, have you ever seen a company or worked in a company where 100% of the customers were satisfied all of the time? No. Have you ever seen a business? Have you worked in a business where 100% of the employees were 100% happy all the time? Maybe in their dreams, in their chance? Yeah. So the, the quote that we had, Jim Collins quote, author of six business books, uh, including good degree at one of my favorites. And he says, consensus decisions are often at odds with intelligent decisions. And the statistic that we have here are 50% of all Canadian business will go out of business in five years.

And business owners, they don’t realize that having people upset with you from time to time, it’s, it’s not just a potential risk. It’s actually part of being a business owner. You know, having people upset with you from time to time is part of running a business and it’s not, you know, if that’s going to happen, it’s just when that’s going to happen. And, you know, Michael, what are the questions you think these business owners should be asking? Do McDonald’s employees want to ask if you want fries with that or we’re in over, uh, I don’t think that when McDonald’s employees sit on that drive through mechanism and say, you know, if someone comes in and they ask the Burger, would you, would you like to make it a meal or would you like fries with that? I don’t think they like asking that question over and over and over hundreds of times a day, you know, thousands of times a year.

I don’t think they actually enjoy asking that question. Would you like to make that a meal? Would you like to upsize it? Would you like fries with that? I don’t think they like asking that question. Do new employees likely enjoy being held accountable for this task? I think even less than asking the question they, they did it even less. They, they’re more likely to dislike being held accountable for it when they don’t do it. You know, when they don’t ask for it and the manager comes up to them to say, hey, you didn’t have to ask him, you know, to make that a next time, you have to ask them that. Should you upsize that next time you have to ask them, you know, do you want to apple pie with that next time? Um, I think even with it’s even less enjoyable to be held accountable for that task then even doing that task.

I don’t, I don’t think it’s the best, the best thing. What would likely happen if they didn’t ask? I think McDonald’s has tested at time and time again that if they didn’t ask, uh, you know, the upsell at the register there, their revenues would be dramatically different than your Edmonton Business Consultant percentage points on billions of dollars would be, you know, lost. Uh, because if the, you know, didn’t want to ask employees to do something that felt unnatural, uh, repetitive, um, beneath them maybe, and they didn’t want to held them accountable for doing that, I think they would likely lose billions of dollars on it. Sure. You change your Edmonton Business Consultant standards just because it’s an unpopular Rick employees. No holding people accountable. It’s a task. Whenever you hold someone accountable to a task, their natural reaction is going to be resist that task and fighting against that task. That is the natural response to it.

And you should change your Edmonton Business Consultant standards every time. One employee, you know, uh, resist against being held accountable for that, you know, initiative because you’ll never execute any initiative. There’ll always be resistance on holding people accountable for initiatives. You know, in the name of providing a consistent service or a better service. Will you have to fire people. As a business owner, you are definitely going to have to fire people. As a business owner, if you want to stay in business, you are going to have people and they’re going to come along and you’re gonna think they’re great and you’re gonna have to realize that you made a bad decision by bringing this person on and it’s no one’s fault but your Edmonton Business Consultant own because you brought them on, um, and you’re going to invariably have to fire them. Uh, it’s part of being a business owner and I would suggest that if you think that you can avoid it, um, you probably can avoid it, but the only way you’re going to avoid it is driving your Edmonton Business Consultant company into bankruptcy by sticking with these unworkable people willing to people you fire.

Like, yeah, the people that you fire are generally not going to like you afterwards. Um, that’s one of it. Sometimes actually when you fire them, they’re going to be happy because you put them out of their misery and they hated the job. But they’re excited to look forward to something else too. And sometimes that happens as well. But in a lot of times, you know, this is going to be one of the things where you want to make progress and you’re going to have to make it a little bit of friction and you’re going to have to fire someone and that person isn’t going to like you when you’re done. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to get done. You know, if you want to protect the, the organization and protect the other people who are working you, uh, by making sure your organization operates at a high standard so everyone else can continue to, uh, so the company continued to make money and everyone else, we continue to get paid, you’re going to have to fire someone, but that one person that you’re going to have to fire, they’re not going to like you.

That’s part of the friction that you’re going to have to create. Does it possible to create a mistake in delivering a product or service? Uh, I, it’s certainly possible. In fact, I think it’s impossible to never make a mistake in any product or service. So I think no matter what you ever do, whether you’re building a product or you’re doing a service, if you execute that at, you know, the best you could ever do, and you build, you know, processes and templates and checks and balances in there, uh, it’s impossible to deliver any product or service at 100% success rate. You are going to just flat out make some mistakes. That’s just going to happen. So whether that failure rate is, you know, you know, one in 10 or even one in a hundred, you’re always going to have some sort of failure rates. And I was suggesting if you’ve got something that you’re executing at a 95% success rate in most businesses, that’s phenomenal.

That’s, you know, uh, uh, super ordinary, better than anybody who’s, who has no, uh, checklists or templates. There’s going to be able to do a, but you have to realize that you are going to make some mistake. Sometimes we’ll this often create unhappy customers and will. So you’re going to send that person your Edmonton Business Consultant deficient product. And you know, even though you build the other 99, well, you’re going to send that person your Edmonton Business Consultant deficient product and they’re not going to be all that happy with it. Or You have a service based business and you’ve done everything you can to train the people, you know, to make sure the, the, the work is, is checked over and you’re following up with customers. Um, but your Goonie, you’re gonna make some mistakes and that’s going to create some unhappy customers. Um, you know, and, and that’s, that’s something that should be, is it expected?

If you grow a business to any size, there’s gonna be that bit of friction. And it’s not because you’ve done anything wrong. It’s just because you’re not a robot. You’re not a machine. And neither the people that you’re hiring and they’re not a robot, they’re not a machine. You’re gonna create that little bit of friction and you just have to ask yourself, is this because the product or service is deficient and we don’t have enough quality or control on it or this just because nothing is ever going to be perfect and we’re going to make some mistakes and this, you know, mistake was in a, you know, a acceptable margin of error, so to speak. Is there a certain person, percentage pop up into population who are difficult to deal with? Yeah. And so then, you know, there’s, when we talked last some of the vote mistakes, you’re going to make mistakes on perfectly reasonable customers and how they deal with it might not be reasonable after that.

But you know, ultimately you made the mistake and then there’s going to be some people where you might not even make a mistake and they’re just completely unreasonable, you know, um, they sign up for one thing and promise to pay you and then they, they try not to pay you. Uh, they’re the, that I’ve heard them referred by other authors as, as you know, uh, terrorists, customers. Um, they just enjoy the conflict. They enjoy the drama that goes there, that goes around with it and they, they go looking for it, whether subconsciously or consciously, uh, there’s a certain percentage of the population who just actually takes pride in making things difficult for other people. Um, then believe it or not, that actually happens. And if you start delivering any business at any sort of scale, you’re going to encounter some of those people, whether it’s one in a hundred or one in a thousand, and they’re just going to be a absolutely irate and they’re going to have every problem in the world and it’s all going to be your Edmonton Business Consultant fault.

Um, you know, you had a landscaping project and you cut their grass the wrong way and their grass died and, and you know, they have, uh, uh, lost their job because you, you cut the grass the wrong way. Like it’s just going to be outrageously a offsite, but you’re going to encounter these people. Is it inevitable that you will encounter these people? It’s inevitable if you build a business at any sort of scale, you’re going to encounter these people. And there’s some things that you can do in your Edmonton Business Consultant client intake, uh, procedures to try to limit the number of people who filter through your system. You know, whether that’s booking appointments or doing credit checks on people before you extend them credit. Um, you know, you know, meeting them, you know, asking them certain questions of what it is there’s going to be. The price points can, can filter.

A lot of those people don’t, they tend to gravitate towards the lower price, uh, you know, options. Uh, but it’s inevitable that you’re going to encounter these people even if you try to filter them out. Uh, so you should be prepared to deal with it. Is it always wise to change your standards for isolated customer events? Yeah, so that’s the thing. When you get these isolated customer minutes, whether you made a mistake on a very reasonable customer or you know, you, uh, just encountered one of these kind of really difficult terrorist type customers, you have to ask yourself and you have to have an honest discussion with yourself and just say, hey, look, is there something that I can do better here on a consistent basis? You know, is this error going to happen? I’m making, I’m doing 10 jobs and every 10 jobs I’m doing, I’m messing up two of them.

Um, yeah, I can put a, a policy in place or procedure in place and it doesn’t cost that much more. Um, and it’s going to reduce that error rate significantly. Um, you know, we’re going to look at your service options and try to figure out, you know, how do we deal with this person with this person just flat out unreasonable or did we do something to make them unreasonable to make them Matt, uh, and, but then sometimes you just got to fall back and say, hey, look, is this an acceptable margin of error? Am I dealing with a completely unreasonable person or did I make a mistake? And you have to ask that to yourself. And, and that’s important because if you think that, hey, no, this is actually an acceptable margin of error or that person’s difficult, don’t change what you’re doing. Because if you continually just change things, you’re never going to, you know, figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Um, so you, you should look at it critically but don’t necessarily hit the change button just because one customer complains or you know, even for that matter, one employee wants to do so. Things different. You gotta stick with something for a period of time before you actually figure out if it works. You have an acceptable margin of error or not. But I think that’s what we have here today. Thanks so much for joining us. As always, please at the likened subscribe button so we can continue to deliver your tips on how to beat the odds at business. And as always, please leave us some comments so we can respond back and use your input for future videos. Thanks very much.