My Happiness Coach

OK, turns out I happen to know a Happiness Coach. You can check out their website at http://www.powerconsultingusa.com/, they specialize in helping photography studios but a lot of what they say and do relates to just about any profession. Jerry has started a blog and has said he would like to talk to me about some technical questions and I am happy to help him in any way I can.

I met Jerry and Sondra on a cruise last year. Congress has known them for a few years now, but I have only been their friend since last April. In many ways it feels like we have known each other for much longer. They simply have a way of making you feel comfortable and at the same time get you to face and overcome the challenges that you face. Turns out many photographers are running one person shops and need a lot of help with their self-confidence on top of business skills. That is where Jerry and Sondra can, and often do, step in to help.

So, why would you care to listen to this? Good question. Any more questions?

While at WPPI conference this year I decided to sit in on a seminar they were presenting titled “There’s More To Success Than Marketing & Advertising”. I did this because I knew going into the seminar what some of the subject material was, plus I wanted to listen to the two of them present, something I had not been able to do previously. The material I was interested in hearing about had to do with organization, motivation, efficiency, and providing quality service. All of those things pertain to my current position, so I found myself taking notes. In a sense, you could have taken Jerry and Sondra and put them at PASS and asked them to present for the Professional Development track.

What I wanted to do hear was to break down some of the key points they made that happen to cross over into my world as a production support DBA. My team provides a service (like a photographer), we are always judged by our last interaction with a client (like a photographer), and we look to build successful working relationships with our customers (like a photographer). With so many similarities between two essentially service based professions that also produce a product (or tangible result), it seemed natural to take away a lot of the material and see if I could mold it into items for our team to use as well.

Since we are not doing any marketing and advertising, I stripped out those references. Instead I focused on two areas. The first area deals with the items you need to make sure are in good order before you do anything else. I call these my foundation, others might call it a baseline, and they are:

Learn How to Answer the Phone

No question, nothing else matters if you cannot answer the phone properly, and this goes for email, or if someone walks up to your cube. And it takes time to get good at this “soft skill”. Lots of time, lots of practice. How can you improve these skills, especially when you are practicing and trying to get better at the same time people can be downright confrontational? I don’t know. But I have thought about how we could do better, perhaps follow a script of sorts. Identify certain areas of focus, perhaps respond with…

“…okay, let me ask you some questions so I can make certain we solve this as quickly as possible. When did you first notice the issue and how frequently does this happen?”

So, your customer has already come to you, and we assume it is a production issue in this example, and you acknowledge that you heard them, you explain to them that you need to ask some questions (and why you need to ask) and then ask two quick follow-up questions in order to get some of the necessary information that you need in order to do your job efficiently. I have lost count of the number of time we simply get cryptic emails about things that are not even real issues and the end line says “please fix” or something similar. We try our best to get additional information, but are often met with more bits and pieces of the story along with “this is important and needs to be fixed right away”.

And that is when we need to be at our best and engage the person in a conversation, try to make them understand that you are trying to help, and keep them engaged.

Set Goals

You need to know your numbers, but what does that mean? Well, it will mean different things to different people. For us, it should mean how many calls do we get for password resets? How quickly are you resolving them? Can we reduce that by one-third over the next twelve months? Setting goals helps you understand more about where you are, where you want to be, and all the steps in between.

Plan For the Long Run

Make certain you have an idea of where you want to be in three, six, nine, and twelve months from now. It will help you get there faster rather than just focusing on day-to-day stuff. Let people know that you are going somewhere, that the steps you take today are part of a long journey to somewhere else. You do not have to be specific, but can be general and say “we are doing it this way in the hopes that we can become more involved at an earlier stage of development in the future”. People should have a sense that you are going to be around, and that you have a plan, you have some goals, and you know how to respond to their needs.

Now that we have our foundation, what are some of the line items we can focus on that will help our team to be successful? That is the second area of focus, do the things that will help you to be successful, and they are:

Know Your Customers

Know your most valuable asset inside and out. Find out their concerns, their pain points, and their happy points. Learn what it will take for you to deliver what they need, on time, and with value (sometimes called WOW). If you do not know your customers, they will surely sense that you are disconnected from them, and that gap will only continue to widen with time.

Build and Invest in Meaningful Relationships

Once you get to know your customer, continue to invest in them and your relationship with them. Get you arse up and out of your cube and say hello to them at least once a week, if not more. Make an effort to make eye contact with them frequently. Make a list of the people you have said hello to and cross of the names as you go throughout the day and week. Believe me, it will go a long way to building a working and professional relationship over time, If nothing else, it will make most people feel uncomfortable treating you poorly either in person, through email, or on the phone if they have been looking you in the eye. For some of our team members this type of contact is not possible, as they reside in India. So, what do they do? I don’t know, but we need to figure something out.

Establish Policies and Be Able to Explain Them

If you have the need to put a policy in place, and if someone asks why such a policy exists, you had better be able to explain yourself in a clear and concise manner. For example, many years ago we wanted to put a policy in place that developers should not be members of the sysadmin fixed server role. There were many reasons for this, but none of them were ever communicated effectively to the developers who simply perceived that the DBA’s were sitting in an ivory tower and had no idea what it was like to be on the “front lines”. Of course, they knew little of our backgrounds and just assumed we had no idea what we were doing other than being Draconian. If I could turn back the clock I would make a concerted effort to explain to the developers by looking them in the eye why they would not be allowed to have sysadmin access going forward.

Build Controls and Document Them

Now, if policies exist, it is most likely the result of a control, such as the example listed in the previous section. Removal of the BUILTIN\ADMIN local group and any other means of access for developers is a control, and should be documented accordingly and those documents must be made available. Of course, none of that matters without effective communication. But I have seen numerous occasions where such policies and controls are communicated but after two or three months go by everyone forgets that communication and a round of WTF starts up with people wanting to know why things are always being changed without notice. I have no idea how to around that one, other than to go back to the whole “look people in the eye” thing and make sure they understand what you are saying. That should be more effective than an email that points you to a link on Sharepoint.

Efficient Operational Systems

No matter what the size of your shop, you need to be efficient in whatever you do. Server builds come to mind, as well as instance configurations, monitoring your environment, and responding to inquiries. You need to build processes that reduce the number of reworks, loopbacks, and wasted time. Efficiency here leads to better…

Time Management

This is a no-brainer. More time you have, the more you can get done for your customers. No one wants to wait around for you to perform a ten minute task in ninety minutes.

Always Tell Customers What You Need Them To Do

Be clear when you are expecting them to do something. If the ball is in their court, they had better know that the next move is theirs. I have seen many cases where we have failed to effectively communicate to someone that they need to do something. As a result, time is lost, which leads to anger and frustration.

Never Ignore the Reasons Why Customers Get Frustrated

I have seen the following five items as the biggest reasons for why our customers get frustrated with our service. First is inattentiveness, which is also our responsiveness. Our customers are used to some very quick turnaround times. If we are getting a restore done in roughly ten minutes, you had better believe we get sniped at the one time it takes twenty minutes, even though the SLA is the next business day. The next reason is ignorance, which is when we do not know what is happening, or what to do next. Next is incompetence, which is when we may not know how to perform tasks, or we know how but for some reason we can’t. The next reason I have seen is simply a poor attitude. No matter what the situation we need to channel our inner Dalton and just “be nice”. The last reason would be one of the easiest to correct, and that is lack of a decent follow-up communication.

If your team has a strong foundation, and are able to tackle the items that will help lead to you being perceived as a success, then that opens the door for you. At some point you can turn the corner and start to be seen as the subject matter experts that you are, an artist of sorts. And you should find yourself being invited to meetings at earlier stages of development, rather than at the tail end after everything has gone horribly wrong.