Social Networking: How’s It Supposed to Work?

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You Have a Message Waiting From . . .

What was I thinking? When someone I don’t know from my Social Network sends me a message, saying “Hi! What are you doing?” that’s email small talk. Isn’t it?

Read the whole feature in today’s Blog Herald by clicking the logo.

The Blog Herald

It’s about blogging and real life.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Liz Strauss at The Blog Herald, The Blogging Times, and Who’s One in a Million?

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Change the World: Personal Service Counts

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Hey, Scot, How Can We Change the World?

Scot Herrick has been a friend of so many in so many ways for so long. He has a natural sense of people and how they work together. Scot also pairs this sensibility with a business view that brings a well-rounded, real-world focus.

When Scot sent a post for adding his voice to this series, I knew that I would use it — even before I read it. I knew that Scot would offer a work of substance and value, a practical, personal way that we might change the world. I wasn’t wrong about that.

Change the World: Personal Service Counts

Guest Writer: Scot Herrick

Change the World!

Have you noticed the large increase in self-service options available to you? Sometimes the only option?

There’s a reason for that, you know. Self-service is the least cost option available for companies to provide you service. That’s because it is your time spent searching for answers and a small group of people pumping possible answers into a database to present to you when you check things out online.

Now, I like doing business online. Usually, the process around purchasing or servicing or finding out about stuff is pretty straight-forward and now almost standard between sites. For example, I’d much rather order online than go to a retail store and buy something or call someone up and order something.

Most of the time.

I’d contend that we live in a self-service planet – but we need to live in a service-rich world, one where self-service is merely an option to all different kinds of service levels.

After researching products on self service sites, for example, I walked into a retail PC store to buy a high-end laptop PC and spent an hour trying to get an answer or two from a salesperson, who was one in name only. I wanted to spend the money. I couldn’t because I couldn’t get a tiny bit of professional knowledge and service about what I was asking.

I contrast that with the same self-service information, moving up the service chain by calling a professional salesperson 1800 miles away the next day who supplemented an online ordering site, having a good 15-minute conversation about my computer needs and mutually determining what fit the best for those needs with the products they offered. I then confidently ordered a laptop that met them – for about $300 more than the one I was trying to buy in the retail store.

The entire service chain – from self-service, to personal service, to fulfillment of an order, to servicing the order – counts as part of your service experience. Have anything fail in the service chain and you are left with that bitter feeling of not getting what you needed.

It’s not hard to be of service to others: simply listen to the other person and think through the fit of your products and services based upon the other person’s point of view. Not having a service that meets the specific needs of a person is a legitimate answer. Referring another who can provide the service means your person will remember you — who referred well and received no gain. The person you referred to will remember you as well.

This is true whether you work for a large corporation, are a self-employed home worker, or helping your friends.

People looking for help remember professional, expert people who helped them – not systems, not databases, not knowledgebases, not tools, and not the Internet. People remember great people.

Self service can be the lowest cost service option. But lowest cost doesn’t figure in the price paid for not offering great, professional service.

Help others by providing personal service. We can change the world if we do.

Scot Herrick writes at Cube Rules: Career Management for Cubicle Warriors

Thank you, Scot, for showing us how.
We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

______________
If you’re ready to change the world, send me your thoughts in a guest post. Feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there that Sandy designed back to your blog. Or help yourself to this one.

Change the World!.

Email me about what you’re doing or what we might do. Let’s change the world one bit at a time together. Together it can’t take forever.

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Dragonslaying Isn’t Good Leadership

Filed Under Business Life, Successful Blog | 4 Comments

Off I Go to Solve the Problem

kitten

I rememer it clearly. It was my calling as a young manager. A youthful team member would come to me with a problem. Someone in another department was behaving in a manner that wasn’t right or just. I would set off on a quest. I’d be mentally dressed full armor as in a royal fairy tale.

I would be off to slay the dragon. And slay that dragon I often did.

Unfortunately, after I slayed the dragon I would listen to the other side of the story . . .

That’s when I’d see that the dragon I’d just slain was really a kitten.

Over time I learned two things well.

  1. Leadership listens, considers, and seeks out all of the information before taking action.
  2. People are not grateful when you slay their dragons for them.

Now, my response to a similar story is, “Oh, I’m so sorry that happened. Shall we discuss some thing you might do to get the situation back on track again or do you already have an action plan?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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About People, Black Holes, and Stars

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The Universal Human, Hmmmm

We need a black hole with a gravitational pull so powerful to counteract our all too human ability to over-value our uniqueness. The minute we think we’re stars, we’re not.

Read the whole feature in today’s Blog Herald by clicking the logo.

The Blog Herald

It’s about blogging and real life.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Liz Strauss at The Blog Herald, The Blogging Times, and Who’s One in a Million?

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Change the World: A Small Generous Act that I Didn’t Expect

Filed Under Community, Successful Blog | 24 Comments

Thank You Is a Better Response

Change the World!

It was coffee at Starbucks with friend that I don’t get to see often enough. How cool is that? I was adding milk to my coffee, pretending it was real cream. She reached over to get me a napkin and a stirrer. For a split second, I stiffened. I wanted to say, “i can do that!”

Then I caught myself. At least, I think I did.

This was a friend who was doing a kind thing for me. She wasn’t trying to make me feel “less.” She was showing I was “more” to her. I hope I said, “Thank you.”

“Thank you” is a better response than “I can do that!”

I almost ran over her small generous act by not seeing it, by being tied up in my independence and my history with two big brothers. That would have taken something from both of us.

That “I can do that!” feeling is easy to watch for. It usually comes in response to a small, generous act that I didn’t expect.

Be on the look out for the small, generous acts of others. People are doing them all around us every day.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

______________
If you’re ready to change the world, send me your thoughts in a guest post. Feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there that Sandy designed back to your blog. Or help yourself to this one.

Change the World!.

Email me about what you’re doing or what we might do. Let’s change the world one bit at a time together. Together it can’t take forever.

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