Connecting with your audience

Last Saturday night my wife and I attended a concert by Jimmy Buffett, which was opened by Jackson Browne, a headliner in his in own right.  We had a great time, just as my friend Kyle said we would.  Alpine Valley Music Theater, southwest of Milwaukee, is a great open air venue

Regular readers will know that customer service, reasons for success, and numbers are all hot buttons for me.  I rarely am anywhere for very long without thinking about at least one of the three and Saturday was no exception.

On the way back to our motel we talked about several things, including the fact that Jimmy seemed to be having fun all the time. He was interacting with the audience in a way that they (we) felt and shared in his fun.  He was connected with his audience (and his band)!  Jackson Browne was similarly connected.

Think about it.  If you want to succeed in most things you are doing that involve an "audience" you HAVE to connect with your audience.  This is true whether you are teaching, preaching, parenting, selling widgets, healing, serving food, or many other things.  

Read doctor reviews by patients sometime.  Are the ratings based on medicine or customer service and connection to patients?  Most ratings seem based on such things as "did I have to wait long?   was the staff "nice"    was the doctor "nice"  etc.       "medicine" is rarely mentioned.  I want both -----  good medicine and "nice"  (nice = connected).

Take a look at the top pro athletes.  Usually the ones with the most endorsement money work hard to connect with the fans.  I have read that NASCAR management insists that drivers work at connecting with fans because they know this is an important part of creating a large customer base.

We had some of the best seats in the house! (8 rows back, 2 seats off center).  My wife was the top bidder for a Jimmy Buffett package at a Skin Cancer charity auction held as part of a surfing tournament in Cocoa Beach last November.  Kelly Slater is an 11 time world surfing champion, a native of Cocoa Beach, and the sponsor (with his two brothers ) of a big invitational surf tournament in Cocoa Beach.  And he is a friend of Jimmy Buffett's.  BTW-----  the Slater family does not just put their names out there!  They connect!   As an example, Kelly's sister in law, April really directly runs the charity auction.  We went to her house to pick up the Buffet Package and couple of other items my wife "won".

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What is -30- ????

Back in the day  -30-  was used by a reporter typing a story to indicate the end of a news story.  It is generally considered that the use of  -30-  largely ended with the advent of the computer or at least the end of the typewriter.  I was never a reporter and never really used -30-.  I was the editor of The Iowa Transit, the student engineering magazine for two years.  I don't recall that I ever received an article or story with -30- at the end. 

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Delta IV rocket launch Augsut 7, 2013

Below are two photos of a Delta IV rocket launch from Cape Canaveral (Kennedy Space Center).  These were taken by my niece, Emi Larson, Weds evening August 7.  The package was a WGS-6 communications satellite for the US Air Force.  You can see how it lit up the water near shore. 

 

Click here to read story about launch from NASAspaceflight.com 

Thanks Emi!

 My wife was present for the final night-time shuttle launch a few years ago.  She reported at the time that it lit up the whole beach and sent tingles up her spine.

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Are we fulfilling your expectations???

In my post of last Friday (August 2), I noted that I would often (usually) ask newer employees "Are we fulfilling your expectations here at Richway?"  To me, that was a perfectly normal question, but, apparently it is sort of radical to some.  After all, according to "the radical bunch" isn't the new employee's job to meet our expectations, not our job to meet his expectations.

Everybody starts a new job with a set of expectations, which almost certainly include an expectation that it will be "better" than their previous job.  The better job we do in meeting those expectations, including our demonstration of awareness and concern, the more likely we will have a satisfied and productive staff member for a long term.

BTW    I would usually ask at least a couple of times a few weeks apart and would sometimes get feedback I could act upon.

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MBWA or MBAQ???

In 1982 Tom Peters and Robert Waterman wrote of "management by walking around" [MBWA] in their book In Search of Excellence.  This was how HP founders Bill Hewlett and David Packard ran their company, long before it was a computer company.  This was a management style which I used a lot even before reading of it.  I tried to get out most days and circulate through the plant to talk to people.  I also tried to spend a least a couple minutes in everybody's office.  Sometimes it was just a simple "Good morning"  but often I would ask a question.   One of our staff members, who had read about "management by walking around" told me one day that my style might better be called "management by asking questions"   MBAQ was born!

One question I often asked during the first few weeks or months of somebody joining Richway was "are we fulfilling your expectations here at Richway?"  As I noted in the post of a while ago   ----"Thanks for asking"  ------    people appreciate your concern.  It must be genuine and you must act on their answer when appropriate.


Of course you find out useful information.  Importantly, you build an atmosphere where even without you asking questions, people volunteer or raise issues.

Not all my questions were work related.  I asked some about them and their families, their hobbies, and their children because I wanted to know them.  Sometimes I even heard about health problems for them or family.  You have to be prepared to take time to listen if the answer is long or it starts a dialog.

Whether it is MBWA or MBAQ or whatever term you wish to call it, you are interacting with all your staff members, getting to know them (and letting them get to know you)  establishing a dialog and communication and learning about what is going on in your organization.  "Priceless" to quote the tagline of a TV commercial.


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