“You’re a magician,” Bob said.
I have to admit, it did look like magic.
Bob was a new client, an SVP in a global tech corporation, completely frustrated with the 7 VPs reporting to him. Bob was big and boisterous, and his complaining was big and boisterous too.
“They don’t get it. I keep telling them and telling them and telling them! And they just don’t get it. They nod their heads and tell me they agree and then nothing happens. Nothing!
I find myself driving home talking to myself and I think I’m driving myself crazy!”
“What is it that you want them to do?”, I asked.
“I keep telling them: Customer satisfaction drives all elements of our business. Yet, they take shortcuts, don’t make investments they should be making, don’t innovate the way our customers need us to. They are completely stuck in their ways!”
“Customer satisfaction drives all elements of our business… Is that it?”, I asked?
“Yes!,” he exploded! “It’s not complicated!”
I said, “Let’s all get in the same room for a morning and we’ll straighten it out.”
Bob looked at me and said, “This is really a leap of faith. I’ve been trying for 2 years and you think you can do it in a morning? But you come highly recommended and I’ve run out of solutions.”
Bob was shocked when I showed up that morning and told him, “I’ll need a hand getting these to the conference room.” I brought 9 large dictionaries, one for each of us including me.
We all sat around a large conference table. I introduced them to a new process that creates conceptual alignment. I briefly explained the theory of what I was going to do to eight skeptical faces. And then I started checking their understanding of the words Bob had been using: Customer satisfaction drives all elements of our business.
They got the word “customer” right. They got the word “satisfaction” right too.
It fell apart when we got to the word “drives”. It meant something different to every single person in the room.
One person thought it meant “motivates”, meaning “it inspires us”.
Another thought it meant “influences”, meaning “it’s one of several factors we consider”.
Another thought it meant “long-term objective” meaning “over time we want customer satisfaction to shape the business”.
Another thought it meant “a dashboard item” not “a decision filter”.
Another thought it was “a general philosophy or value”.
Another thought it was “something that follows success, not causes it”.
Another thought it was “a messaging statement, this is how we talk about the business externally”.
You see the mishmash of meaning? Bob put his head in his hands. He said, “That’s not at all what I mean!”
Bob was the only one in the room who actually knew what the word “drives” means.
I had them pair up. Using their dictionaries, they went through each definition of “drive,” studied it, built sentences around it. Not just customer examples. All kinds.
You could hear it happen.
“Oh! DRIVES! Wow. Customer satisfaction DRIVES all elements of our business. It DRIVES it!”
It was new to them.
One of them said, “I get it! Everything else is a passenger in the car. Customer satisfaction is the DRIVER!”
Bob pulled me into the hall. “Don’t tell me seven of my VPs, the smartest guys in the division, don’t know what the word ‘drives’ means.”
“Well,” I said, “it doesn’t look like they do.”
He stood there stunned. “How could high level, intelligent, educated people not know what a word means?”
“You’d be amazed,” I said.
When we finished “drives,” we did the same with “all.”
“All? That means everything. ALL elements. Wow. I never looked at it like that.”
Then “elements.”
Bob just watched in amazement.
Then I had them read the sentence again.
They turned to Bob. “Oh. Is that what you want? You want customer satisfaction to drive all elements of our business?”
Bob just nodded. “Yes.”
That was Friday.
Wednesday he called me.
He said, “I can’t believe it! They came in on Monday on fire! Organized the troops and started making changes and implementing it right away in each of their areas. I’ve never seen so much change overnight! It’s incredible! And the BEST part is, I don’t have to say anything! They’re DOING IT!”
And that’s when he said, “You’re a magician!”
I'm not a magician. And what I did was no trick. What I used was only one of the tools from a very select set designed to help you remove any obstacle standing between you and what you want to achieve.
This is not persuasion. Notice Bob didn’t persuade anyone. I didn’t either. Persuasion has its place, but it’s rarely appropriate in the face of complicated situations. What I did was something more powerful. Something beyond persuasion. Something that allows you to identify the root cause of any obstacle you face, especially the complicated and “impossible” ones.
No amount of pushing or prodding would have produced this result with the 7 VPs. That’s addressing a root cause that doesn’t exist.
I not only spotted that conceptual mis-alignment was the actual cause of the problem in this case, I instantly knew the true cause of the conceptual mis-alignment. And I had the skills to address it. It took me a split second to make the diagnosis and figure out how to create conceptual alignment between all of them. And a very short time to implement. I didn’t deal with “personalities” or “issues”. I went straight to the root cause and handled it.
That’s what precision looks like.
Once the root cause is addressed, everything transforms. This is how you can align an entire room full of VPs in one morning when other attempts have failed to do it for two full years.
This is a skill you can learn. As I mentioned earlier, I’m illustrating just one of the many tools and skills you can gain.
Your next opportunity begins on May 1 when we take a new group through our course, Beyond Persuasion: The New Route to Extraordinary Outcomes. (It’s self-paced so you can set your own schedule.)
This does take work. And it does take time. So this path is truly reserved for those who want to achieve extraordinary abilities – and look like a magician.
The “magic” Bob witnessed is something you can learn. It is something you can use to open any door you find standing in your way. It works in your personal life and at the highest levels of any organization.
Is this for you? Review the details here. If you want to make your dreams come true in all areas of your life, this is a very good way to do it.
Be the cause!
Ingrid