Nincompoopery

Why Your Customers Hate You--and How to Fix It

John R. Brandt

• Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781400213689
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

CEO and award-winning business writer John R. Brandt offers concrete examples of how any organization can innovate in ways that delight customers and attract top-level talent.

Nincompoopery--terrible customer service, idiotic business processes, and soul-crushing management practices--surrounds all of us. We lose time, patience, and profits as stuck-in-the-past organizations actively prevent us (and our customers) from getting the value we (and they) deserve.

In Nincompoopery, Brandt leverages research across thousands of companies to show leaders how to find and kill the corporate stupidity that drives customers crazy.

It usually starts by asking simple questions, such as:

• Why should our customers have to rekey their data multiple times to make a single purchase?
• Why are there four levels of approval just to order basic supplies?
• Why can’t we get qualified candidates for open positions, or provide new employees with decent training?
• In short: How did we become such nincompoops? And when will we stop?

Brandt has worked with hundreds of companies to help them outwit competitors, and in this book, he shares his unique blueprint for success. Nincompoopery offers leaders the answers they need--and the profits they crave--with a scoop of humor on the side.

CHAPTER 1

Overview:

Are We Really Surrounded by Nincompoops?

At almost every company we encounter (including, sometimes, our own), it can seem that we are surrounded by nincompoops. Things that should be easy are instead hard because, we believe, some nincompoop has forgotten to do his or her job, or didn’t realize that there might be a better way to do the job, or couldn’t care enough to even bother thinking about the job. We grow irritated as:

• Our phone call to our new bank is put on permanent hold because the nincompoop customer service representative (CSR) doesn’t know how to solve an issue with the bank’s website, and has no idea who else might. We’re forced to call back later or visit a local branch.

• Our fancy coffee takes too long and ends up wrong anyway because a nincompoop barista asks questions (Medium or dark roast? Room for cream?) but doesn’t listen to our replies. We’re forced to choose between delay or drinking something we didn’t order in the first place.

• Our car doesn’t get repaired because a nincompoop mechanic forgets to test a key component. We’re forced to come back a second time to fix the problem—or to drive an unsafe vehicle.

In every instance, it seems, a nincompoop has wasted our time and cost their companies:

• labor, time, and materials (to rework the product or service they should have done right the first time);

• goodwill (you and I are cranky, not only at the supposed nincompoop but at a company numbskull-enough to hire him or her in the first place); and

• revenue and profit (disgruntled customers often reduce their spending with knuckleheaded companies, or desert them altogether).

In other words, nincompoops are not just irritating but incredibly expensive too. So why do the companies that seem to hire nincompoops tolerate them?

It’s Not the Nincompoops—It’s the Nincompoopery

Companies tolerate them because it’s not the nincompoops—it’s the Nincompoopery. Production failures, screw-ups, and faulty service aren’t usually the fault of the supposed nincompoops with whom we’re dealing but instead the Nincompoopery—i.e., the meta-foolishness—of the companies and systems in which they’re forced to work. Ill-planned, outdated, or ludicrous organizational structures can turn even the most eager employee into a nincompoop, or at least force him or her to seem like one. Consider from the previous examples:

• If our bank had bothered to interview a sampling of new customers about what mattered most during a financial transition, they might have learned that in a commodity market—let’s face it, most banks look pretty much alike—it’s the simplicity of the transfer that matters most. A focus on making every aspect of the new customer experience easy to adopt and use, including training CSRs in common website issues, would not only save time and money but would also make customers more likely to recommend the new bank to others. The CSR wouldn’t sound and feel like a nincompoop either.

• If the coffee shop had bothered to analyze its in-store traffic and workflow during peak demand periods, managers would know that errors start at the order stage, as overwhelmed clerks struggle to manage lengthy lines of barely awake, caffeine-deprived customers. The shop could then schedule more employees during predictable demand spikes and reconfigure order and brewing processes to speed delivery while slowing down human interactions. Customers would be happier, and baristas wouldn’t feel like harried, defensive nincompoops.

• If the repair shop had bothered to train and trust the mechanic on more than just technical skills—e.g., process improvement methodologies or the revenue and profit implications of his or her work—then he or she might have created an innovative way to review his or her work (a checklist, perhaps?) to prevent sloppy errors and wasted time. Satisfied customers would feel more confident in their repairs, and the mechanic wouldn’t look or feel like a nincompoop.

It’s important to note that in every instance above, there was no nincompoop problem; instead, there was a much larger Nincompoopery problem, in the way that each company failed to understand, design, and deliver customer value in ways that satisfied customers and boosted the bottom line. Even worse, the fix to each of these Nincompoopery problems was not unknowable or impossible but was, in fact, easily discernible and simple to implement. Yet in each case nobody in the company—not the employees, their managers, or senior leaders—seemed capable of overcoming tradition, inertia, and apathy to make simple changes that would save money and improve customer experience (and, ultimately, increase revenues and profits). Instead, like most companies (and most employees and leaders), they continued to do the same irritating things, in the same irritating ways, day after day, despite knowing better.

And while this sort of Nincompoopery is maddening and unfair to us as customers, it’s perhaps even more maddening and unfair to the CSRs, mechanics, baristas, and other employees who are put into positions where they have no choice but to be seen as nincompoops. This isn’t to absolve nincompoop employees completely (they could complain, or suggest improvements, or quit), but it does mean that when Nincompoopery runs rampant, the real blockheads are the leaders and would-be leaders who don’t put a stop to it—and who continue to squander money, time, employee devotion, and customer loyalty.

This book helps leaders put a stop to Nincompoopery, making their lives (and those of their customers and employees) immeasurably more fun and their companies measurably more profitable.

What’s the Catch?

There’s only one catch, but it’s big: as simple as any individual Nincompoopery fixes may seem (survey your customers, hire more baristas, train the mechanic, etc.), fixing an entire organization’s Nincompoopery problem is much harder, in part because being a leader itself (without being a nincompoop) is significantly more difficult today (see the afterword).

That’s the bad news.

The good news is twofold:

1. An Anti-Nincompoopery plan is ready and waiting for you and your company.

2. You already know enough to get started.

This book—which includes examples from more than one hundred leaders and companies—will help with the rest.

How Can You Be So Sure?

A little background: I’ve been fascinated by how companies work—or don’t—for more than thirty years. I’ve studied corporate performance (and, inevitably, corporate Nincompoopery) in three ways:

1. As a practitioner: I’ve been an employee, manager, turnaround leader, president, CEO, consultant, and entrepreneur in industries ranging from health care to media to consulting to greeting cards, among others. I’ve made most of the mistakes that you can make in each of those positions and have learned over thirty years to make fewer of them (i.e., to stop being such a bonehead).

2. As a journalist: I’ve been an award-winning business reporter, columnist, editor, and publisher for more than twenty years at a variety of magazines, including IndustryWeek and Chief Executive. I’ve had the privilege of interviewing an astounding number of really smart leaders, as well as an equally astounding number of nincompoops. Both taught me well.

3. As a management researcher: I’ve spent the last sixteen years as CEO of a global research firm, The MPI Group, which benchmarks the performances and practices of companies across a wide array of industries—from manufacturing to health care, from mining to high-tech, from beauty salons to pest control services. We focus on:

– identifying high-performance companies and managers via hard metrics regarding performances and practices;

– understanding why and how these firms and executives outperform competitors via deep analysis of the data; and then

– sharing insights into the strategies, tactics, and best practices deployed by these high-performance organizations and leaders so that others can enjoy the same excellence and profitability (i.e., stop being or seeming like nincompoops or victims of corporate Nincompoopery).

I’ve learned many things over thirty years, but MPI has learned far more in its sixteen years. We’ve interviewed, studied, or surveyed executives at more than fifty thousand companies and business locations, analyzing more than ten million data points about corporate performance. We can tell you about performance and best pr...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Author’s Note
• Chapter 1: Overview: Are We Really Surrounded by Nincompoops?
• Chapter 2: Innovation: What Is Innovation, Anyway?
• Chapter 3: Talent: Who’s Going to Do All This Stuff?
• Chapter 4: Process: Hey, Let’s Talk Process! Wait . . . Where Are You Going? Come Back!
• Chapter 5: Getting Started: Obstacles and Opportunities
• Afterword: Nincompoopery Macro Trends: Why Is It So Ridiculously Hard to Be a Leader These Days?
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author