Your Management Style: Hopefully It’s None Of These

Your Management Style: Hopefully It’s None Of These
John Pepper of Boloco: Acting On The Customer’s Voice
The Higher-Ups Want To See You
Judge to Apple: Redo Samsung Apology

Posted: 02 Nov 2012 11:00 AM PDT

There are four kinds of managers that I have seen and heard much about. They find their way into one small business or another and just help things unravel. Sometimes the owner brings them right through the front door, tucked behind their own personality.

harsh management

Mr. Or Ms. “Over-Does-It” Says Too Much, Too Harshly

The team can barely breathe around them. They’re the kind of manager that wants their employees to generate great ideas and innovative solutions. But they oppress the atmosphere and then wonder why nobody comes up with anything interesting.

Most of the time Mr. or Ms. “Over-Does-It” is not coming from a bad place. They just want to keep a handle on things and the business moving forward. Mostly, they don’t want a team of employees who are wasting time and money and who neglect the core business.

They know how to keep the doors open, but struggle with making room for creativity.

Mr. Or Ms. “Head-In-The-Sand,” The Manager Who Never Addresses Anything

They’re everybody's friend and nobody's leader. The team enjoys their company. They can think around them. They can laugh and be silly. They can be themselves, good—bad—or indifferent. They may be their favorite person, until there's a problem.

Because Mr. or Mrs. “Head-In-The-Sand” never addresses a single issues, their team can often be undisciplined and disrespectful to one other — and them. With a leaderless leader as the head of the team there is no true voice of reason. Small issues tend to fester because they're never addressed.

This can impact your company's ability to innovate as the more creative team members may not feel safe enough to develop or promote their ideas.

Mr. or Ms. Depressed and Mr. or Ms. Overly-Ambitious

One is clearly in the wrong career path and barely hiding their sadness and disconnection from the work it takes to lead an effective team. The other is operating from the wrong motives, looking for countless opportunities to relentlessly promote themselves instead of the business, the customers or the team.

Remember, successful teams don't manage themselves. The manager/the owner has to set the atmosphere for creativity, innovation, a little laughter, timeliness and respect. The goal is to have room for all those great ideas and a system for actually getting something done after the ideas come.

No business can dream all day. Somebody has to oversee the business of turning those dreams into reality.

Management Photo via Shutterstock

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John Pepper of Boloco: Acting On The Customer’s Voice

Posted: 02 Nov 2012 08:00 AM PDT

Are you listening to your customer? Do you hear what they say and then take the appropriate action based on what you’ve just heard? Or do you hear it and turn a blind eye? Listening combined with action can have a powerful impact. Tune in as John Pepper of Boloco shares with Brent Leary his personal experiences of how giving his customers a voice and following up with immediate action has positively impacted his business.

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John Pepper of Boloco Small Business Trends: Can you tell us a little bit about Boloco, and a little bit of your personal background?

John Pepper: Boloco is a 20 unit restaurant chain based in Boston. We specialize in what we call globally inspired burritos. What that means is that while we serve burritos very familiar to people, we actually look for culinary traditions from all over the world. We take the best of those that are most popular to our customers and put them into tortillas.

We have been around for about 15 years. We built ourselves on two tenants. One is using burritos to improve the quality of life of the average person who works in fast food, which is most of our employees. The second is how to give customers a different kind of voice with the company. Allowing their voice to help steer how our company develops.

We serve about 60,000 people a week. That's a lot of transactions and a lot of opportunities to interact with customers.

Small Business Trends: How important was it to build the business on the voice of the customer?

John Pepper: There have been many businesses that don't do that. And there have been, unfortunately for all of us, successful ones that haven't always given the customer a voice.

One of the things we thought we could do, just because we could, because we are so small, was say:

“Let’s see what happens if we always respond to the guest, if we always value what they say, even if we don't like it.”

It has really become a part of our culture.

Small Business Trends: There was a study that said the vast majority of employees feel they would be able to increase the experience that customers had if they were given the opportunity. How do you think that plays into the overall customer experience, giving employees what they need to create those better experiences?

John Pepper: First of all, there is the orientation that comes along with hiring new employees and saying to them:

“You are allowed to do this, don't worry about the rules, don't worry about getting into trouble, your job is to take care of the customer, your job is to make that person leave happy. And you have all kinds of leeway to do that.”

When it really comes time to deliver that, it's amazing how people will go back to what they knew from a more restrictive company, because people don't want to get into trouble. But what we found is that over time, if we continue to say it over and over again, it really frees them to do things that even customers aren't expecting.

You can't just say it from the top down, the CEO. It has to be every single employee throughout the company free to deliver a great service.

Small Business Trends: So you set the tone, you're not just selling it – you are living it?

John Pepper: Right. One requirement you can't fabricate interest in is listening to customers. So it turns out I am either paranoid, obsessed, one or the other, or any other combination. Beyond that, you know I do listen to social media. I'll glance at Twitter when I have a free moment, mostly just looking at what people are saying about Boloco, so that if we have an opportunity to respond, we can do it quickly.

When we were first installing a software called Desk.com, we did a free burrito day sponsored by those guys. People were coming in and a few people were parking illegally. One person who came in to get their free burrito tweeted later, that free burrito cost me a $55 parking ticket.

That is the easiest layup example there is. Should we really cover that customer's parking ticket? Our response is without even thinking about it, just do it. Trust. And somehow, what comes around goes around.

We have been doing those kind of things since day one. It really does come around. In a few of these cases, including this one that can be retweeted, the case that may cost you $55 has a very high rate of return in terms of just people really believing in the brand.

Small Business Trends: You mentioned the story where somebody was in one of your stores and tweeted that the music was a little too loud?

John Pepper: That was early on in social media and someone said ‘I wish Boloco would turn the music down.’

I saw it and I called the restaurant. I was at least two hundred miles away. I called the restaurant and said would you guys mind turning the music down? Then we delivered her a cookie and let her know that we have turned the music down.

That was a great example of being able to deliver a better experience through social media then putting a customer in a sometimes uncomfortable position of asking a manager to turn it down. It made it more fun and effective.

Small Business Trends: With this approach, what has it meant to the business?

John Pepper: People look at you and say ‘What are the things that allow you to feel comfortable doing that? What are the metrics? What are the measures?’ I guess it's still pretty rare in this world to give the benefit of the doubt to customers, to human beings in general. But we have been growing very significantly. Not just with new restaurants, but with sales increases, and more loyal customers.

Small Business Trends: I think it’s really cool you are using social media not to avoid customer interaction, but to enhance face to face customer interactions.

John Pepper: Some customers, and rightfully so, are going to look for these kind of things to be resolved at the restaurant level, and often times they are. The reality is that sometimes customers are not comfortable right at that moment, sharing their experience or what they need or what they want with a human being at that moment. Later on, they think about it and they get to share it on their terms.

This interview is part of our One on One series of conversations with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click the right arrow on the gray player below. You can also see more interviews in our interview series.

Whether you’re growing your business or starting a new venture, BlackBerry solutions provide you with the freedom you want and the control you need. [Series sponsor]

John Pepper – Boloco by smallbiztrends

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The Higher-Ups Want To See You

Posted: 02 Nov 2012 05:00 AM PDT

business cartoon

“Higher-ups” was always a term I disliked. If a boss wants to see you, that’s one thing. Management wants to see you? Getting worse. But the higher-ups? Oh boy, you’re in for it, pal.

So with this cartoon, I played with the idea that higher-ups weren’t necessarily something to be concerned about, they were just literally higher up. Maybe they’re really tall? Or possibly up on some sort of raised platform? In any case, a ladder is probably a good idea, and it’s easier to draw than a trampoline.

As a side note, while I was writing this, I came up with an idea for someone in management being summoned by the “lower-downs.” I don’t think it’s going to go well for anybody.

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Judge to Apple: Redo Samsung Apology

Posted: 02 Nov 2012 02:30 AM PDT

The news that a U.K. court will force Apple to apologize again to rival Samsung for claims that the company copied Apple’s tablet device when creating the Samsung Galaxy raises the question of intellectual property rights again in small business. While it’s true that few small businesses worry much about patent issues, stealing ideas ranging from the content in your blog posts to the contents of information products, etc. can be a concern. On one hand, as we’ll see, attempts to control concepts or ideas unreasonably can stifle business development. On the other, if your intellectual property is your main product or service, you must do what you can to protect it. We look now at the balance every entrepreneur must strike.

Original Sin

The case of the petulant apology. The court drama following Apple’s claims against rival Samsung’s Galaxy tablet have become a kind of ongoing soap opera in the tech business field. For businesses of all kinds, the lesson is clear. Claiming a competitor stole your idea is an expensive and sometimes unsuccessful strategy when trying to come out ahead in the marketplace. You may want to focus your efforts on continuing to innovate instead. TechDirt

The marketplace of ideas. The marketplace of ideas is changing once more as controversial online figure Kim Dotcom announces the launch of his latest file sharing site. Dotcom and others like him are making the copying of content from popular music to any other form you can name easier than ever. If your business depends upon the safety of your unique content, it’s time to get a new plan. The Next Web

True Crime

Do your best. No matter which side of the intellectual property debate you come down on, the most compelling argument against being over-protective of your ideas is that you may focus on this to the exclusion of creating great products and getting them into the hands of your customers. Ultimately this leads to bad business, Jeff Yablon says. It means you aren’t really doing the best work you can. The Answer Guy

To catch a thief. On the other side of the fence are businesses that play it far too fast and loose when copying from competitors’ Websites and other materials. In case there are any doubts in your mind about the difference between referring to someone else’s content and swiping it, Web design art director Chris London has this overview. Pixel Blog

Line in the sand. The rules of the information economy have become even more complicated, with the increase in content sharing and the trend toward “content curation.” However, the line between sharing content as part of the normal conversation between businesses and customers and stealing someone else’s ideas without giving credit is still pretty clear. Blogger Daniel Sharkov has this simple primer. Reviewz ‘n’ Tips

Security Alert

Protect your product. This post from blogger Cendrine Marrouat looks at a very specific concern among online entrepreneurs, the “scraping” of original content created especially for your site and copied (sometimes endlessly) on other fly-by-night Websites as cheap filler. This is often done without so much as a link back to your site or a reference giving you credit. “Scraping” can hurt online businesses in a variety of ways. Here are resources offering at least some protection. Creative Ramblings

Head into stealth mode. Startup expert Mike Abasov generally tells startups he advises not to get so uptight about the possibility of someone stealing their idea. Of course, as we’ve discussed, there are times when the phrase “keep it secret, keep it safe” might apply. There is a set of specific criteria which Anasov says justifies the “deep and dark” approach. Here are some thoughts about when going into stealth mode is advisable. Marketing Before Funding

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