February 26, 2014 by Ken Goldstein - 4 Comments

Public Service Made Customer Service

Earlier this year on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart asked Nancy Pelosi a rather awkward question: In effect, can our government still do big things? She never really answered the question, which was also kind of awkward. I don’t think she saw it coming. He was really probing into the nature of government competence and our ability to trust elected, appointed, and civil service employees to be great at their jobs and exceed our expectations. It was not meant to be a partisan question, but somehow that’s where it went, which sort of ducked the broader concern, which sort of reinforced his critique.

Like I said, it was awkward, and it got me thinking, why should the output of government services–or public service–not be subject to the same expectations of for-profit customer service? I have been chewing on this for weeks, and I can’t come up with a decent response. I serve in a volunteer role in local government, so I guess that makes me part of the problem, but it also drives me to be part of the solution.

The obvious retort will be that absent the free market and competition, any single point option will more than likely descend into mediocrity as a result of monopoly and entrenchment. I don’t think it’s that simple, because for-profit and non-profit enterprises are both constantly under attack by creative destruction, which when ignored is an equally powerful remedy to mediocrity. Improved methods will obviate the obsolete; it is only a matter of time and catalyst.

This past month I experienced a pleasantly opposite case, where public service did exceed my expectations–with expedience, practicality, and cordial handling. I applied for Global Entry, the Trusted Traveler Network administered by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency. I went to their website, filled out the form in less than half an hour, was promptly notified online of conditional approval, and asked to sign up for an in-person interview at LAX. I quickly discovered there was a three-month wait for an interview, but the site suggested I check back frequently online for a cancellation. I got one within 48 hours for an appointment the same month, went to the interview, was promptly welcomed upon arrival (I was early and they took me when I got there), and ten minutes later I was fingerprinted and done. I was approved online that afternoon. Perfect.

This was exemplary customer service in action. It was almost as if Border Patrol had set out to prove that customer service was still possible within our government where there is an expressed commitment to make it so. They have my applause. I don’t know if I can award them my future business or ongoing loyalty given their scope of offerings, but just like writing a positive restaurant review on Yelp, I am giving them the loudest shout-out I can in as public a forum as I can, which is how the customer service game pays back winners with referrals.

I couldn’t help but compare and contrast that with several other recent observations of public service that simply haven’t embraced that ethos:

HealthCare.Gov – I usually focus on the broader issues of healthcare, which matter more to me than a broken website, but like Jon Stewart in the Nancy Pelosi interview, let’s focus for a moment on the website fiasco. Not only didn’t it work, not only was it impossible to navigate even when it did work, those in charge of deploying it allowed themselves to get fleeced by private-sector contractors. When you run a business with customer service in mind, you are compelled to keep your costs low and be a subject-matter expert before you offer service paid for by your customers. We are the customers of HealthCare.gov. We overpaid and we got a poor experience. Not good customer service.

Jury Duty – It makes us shiver, but it should make us proud. Anyone who gets the notice in the mail immediately starts to hedge, not because they don’t want to perform public service, but because our historic experience of this form of public service is that it is wildly inefficient. How long ago was this antiquated system designed, where you sit in a room all day doing nothing, waiting to be called or released? Yes, it has improved modestly with online registration and log-in, but when I recently spent a full day in a room of 125 people doing nothing of value, and fewer than two dozen of us were used at all, I wondered how it was possible to justify the lost productivity of 100 people times 8 hours, or 800 person-hours gone up in smoke in just the room I sat. It’s so wrong that no sustainable business could ever tolerate it, nor pay for it. If you want me to provide public service, start by seeing me as your customer and commit to process engineering so that my participation is truly of value.

Governor Christie’s Off-the Ranch-Staff – There’s a reason the obscene obstruction of a New Jersey bridge continues to ride the headlines, and it’s not just politics as usual. I use the word obscene purposefully, because using any position of public authority to harm rather than help a constituency goes against everything our democracy represents. When a public servant forgets that his or her salary is paid by the people and not the political party, all bets are off. Maybe there should be a slightly tweaked Hippocratic Oath in government: “First do no malfeasance.” If you go to work with full acknowledgment that you are in public service and your job is to provide customer service to those forking over the dollars for your gig, you couldn’t pull the trigger on anything like this, look yourself in the mirror, and say. “I did what I was supposed to do today.” When you do harm for personal gain, you add no value. You make a mockery of the privilege of serving those who trusted you.

When I was kicking around some of the themes for this post on my Facebook page as I often do before writing a new article, someone posted on my news-feed that it was a silly use of my time to write about stuff like this, because it never changes. Private-sector contractors will fleece the government, no one in the court system cares if they waste our time, and politicians will always use their power to reinforce their authority. I don’t think that’s true, and my experience with Global Entry is proof that we can do better if we make it a goal.

If we refocus the orientation of public service to be around customer service, it de facto has to improve. Perhaps more importantly, if we don’t keep tabs on the kinds of small to medium items called out here, how can we possibly have faith in the really big stuff entrusted to government: national security, fiscal solvency, social justice, and the like. There has to be a service model underlying all these tasks, subject to scrutiny, objective benchmarking, and listening to the customer. No, we’re not going to vote on what constitutes a valid TSA safety post or police DUI checkpoint, but we should always expect to be treated with courtesy when authority is surrendered for the greater good. Authority should be enacted with reason, humility, and respect so that it wins our buy-in and loyalty. Our aim should be to inspire all contributors to do their finest work all the time, to demand it of themselves as an absolute, to seek constant improvement of systems, teams, and individuals.

Think about it: virtually every customer-facing business now asks you to rate every experience you have with them, and the smart ones deploy this feedback almost in real-time to win competitive advantage. Start rating your experiences with public-service agencies, whether they request it or not, and not just at election time. Demand better and we will get it, maybe not in real-time, but sooner or later creative destruction does its job and washes away the ancient with one flavor or another of much celebrated reform.

And don’t forget to say Thank You when you catch someone doing something right. Everyone likes to get a thumbs up when it’s earned!

December 30, 2013 by Ken Goldstein - 3 Comments

Fully Unfinished Business

The original title of this post was Nasty, Messy, Murky, and Looming. Maybe I should have stuck with that! As we turn the corner on 2013, a number of problematic, complex issues stand out for me as squirmy uncomfortable and lazily unresolved. The four I note below all make headlines regularly, but I am not seeing nearly enough being done to address the core causes. Perhaps there is not enough worry about the impact. There should be. Have a look at the list and see how closely this lines up with your own deep concerns:

Inequality: I believe completely in our capitalist economy. For the long haul. For the benefit of everyone, not a detached few. Late this year, President Obama made his case for the necessity of economic mobility as the backbone of democracy. The key to addressing further bifurcation into 1% and a 99% has to be rooted in education — brilliant, inspired teachers opening the minds of young citizens, encouraged by their families to thrive, with sound reason to believe in the American dream. Our middle class has to be strong for our economy to be strong, which means we need to have new enterprises with promising jobs, and trained minds ready to tackle those jobs and over time build careers. In a recent Los Angeles Times Op-Ed, Richard Riordan and Eli Broad made the point that “It Isn’t a Sin to be Rich,” yet at the same time they called for compassion among the wealthy to reinvest their resources in helping others. I think we’d be wise not to further politicize the notion of polarization — if we want to build a lasting marketplace of goods and services, we all need to share in its creation as well as its consumption.

Privacy: This is an awful, hypocritical mess. For most of this year our federal government declared that the NSA was not out of line parsing metadata. Late in the year a consortium of Silicon Valley titans sent a letter to the President and Congress highlighting “the urgent need to reform government surveillance practices worldwide.” Many of these are the same companies perfecting advertising products that digital marketers use to better target consumers, which of course relies on the collection of personal information. Edward Snowden — whose tactics and methodology are indeed questionable and not without dire consequence — has been branded a criminal, but how front and center was our dialogue around privacy before he ignited the firestorm? Last week an individual on the other end of a customer service call with my telecom provider actually asked me verbally for my PIN “to protect my security” in verifying my account — was this something he had been allowed to see in my file or was he phishing? As someone who has spent three decades in media, I can tell you the technology around profiling is advancing way faster than our ability to digest its implications, and I urge you to continue asking a lot of questions and not take simple solutions at face value. These are civil rights we are dancing around here. You bet I want a good deal on a new HDTV and I want to be safe at the airport, but I don’t want my personal information readily available to any number of individuals who may have access today and then will be pissed off when they are fired tomorrow.

Healthcare: Something tells me that we are going to be arguing about this one for the rest of our lives, and the next generation or two will still be trying to wrestle it from abstraction to effectiveness. I believe we have taken a small step forward, but like many, I am conflicted in the immediate results I am observing. There is a very long road from dreaming to doing, and while change begings with a powerful vision, it is equally necessary to pound through the details until efficacy is more than a triumphant slogan. Insurance companies are quite good at finding their way around the delicacies of mandates, and any number of conversations you can have right now will serve up individuals who are winners and losers. Until we are all winners — until we all have truly affordable, truly high quality healthcare — our work is not done. Some of us will pay more than we did before, but no one should pay more for less service, and no one who needs care should slip through the cracks because of affordability, deductibles, out-of-pocket expenses, or co-pays. There are miles to go before we sleep, and much reform ahead before we celebrate our accomplishment.

Government Gridlock: Despite the recent federal budget agreement, we are nowhere close to healing. With midterm elections on the horizon, there is reason for concern. The entire idea of “reaching across the aisle” seems to me an anachronism that has to be replaced with “do your jobs and govern responsibly.” Should those who opposed the Affordable Care Act achieve a majority in Congress, will they continue to prove obstructionist and seek to repeal the new programs, or will they do what is wise and amend the law to be more effective and constructive? Will each debt ceiling debate continue to threaten to destabilize our currency and trading floors with the outlandish notion that government default could somehow be warranted as a strategy? Does anyone even want to discuss reasonable solutions around assault weapons in hands beyond the military, and is the refocused energy on mental health relief going to be funded or a talking point? We share our democracy, we share the capital markets, we share a love of freedom, and we share a right to sensible resolution of real-time concerns through debate and consensus, not grandstanding and entrenchment. We have the right to demand better, so let’s start asking for it on a regular basis, not just when the #^%$* hits the fan.

I do think as long as we keep highlighting the ambiguities in ideology brought to bear through tangible initiatives, we have reason to be optimistic. Rigorous, heartfelt discussion is our path from here to there, and as long as we don’t sweep our messes under the rug with a label of “mission accomplished,” we should have continued reason to be optimistic. What could be more revitalizing than committing to making our world a better place? Yes, we have so much more work ahead of us. Let’s get to it, shall we? The new year begins, let’s do our best to be proud that we did something aligned stepping forward in 2014.

February 12, 2013 by Ken Goldstein - 4 Comments

Reading to Kids

Last weekend my wife and I had the inspiring opportunity to spend the morning with five energetic first graders through a Los Angeles non-profit program called Reading to Kids. As it is said about so many volunteer opportunities, I am sure we got way more out of it than the children. It was an eye-opener on any number of levels.

Reading to Kids follows a simple but profound philosophy, that “the single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children,” cited in the 1985 report of the Commission on Reading. On the second Saturday of each month, volunteer recruits gather at one of seven underserved elementary schools near downtown Los Angeles, and are assigned in pairs to read an age appropriate book to small groups of kids beginning in Kindergarten and advancing to Grade 5. The books are selected by the regular curriculum teachers at each of the seven schools, and are all award winners by well-known authors for children.

Training is provided on arrival, and new volunteers are paired with experienced participants, some of whom have shown up more than 50 times for the three-hour block! After training and a chance to review the book, readers meet their groups on the playground, where parents are waiting with their eager kids to line up and walk the volunteer pairs to an assigned classroom. Everyone is there because they want to be, even the school principal who walks around to make sure everything is going well. The children are happy, exceptionally well-behaved, curious, excited, thankful, warm, all of that, well beyond expectations, even the shy ones.

We started as instructed with a thematic overview and picture tour of our assigned book — A Sick Day for Amos McGee — then read the book and acted out the characters, many of whom were animals from the zoo (I won’t spoil the ending). We asked tons of questions of the children before turning each page, which they more than answered. After we finished the book and discussion, we did an arts and crafts project about the book’s theme of friendship, making Valentine cards which the kids took home (some gave their artwork to the volunteer adult readers to say thank you). At the end of the morning, every child is awarded a prize book to take home with them after a brief farewell ceremony. A copy of each read-aloud book is then donated to the school’s library.

It’s that simple. It’s beautifully organized, and we even went to lunch afterward with many of the other readers at a nearby restaurant that offered free snack trays.

Why in the world am I writing about this on my business blog?

It’s no secret that I have spent a reasonable amount of my career around children’s media, and that I have some deep convictions about the necessary link in learning between education and entertainment. This experience was different. What I saw before me at this Los Angeles Unified School District facility — surely in need of financial investment — were five young people as motivated about learning as any I have encountered in all my travels and focus tests. There was one minor difference, English was their second language, even though they were growing up here in Southern California. For my thinking, that actually put them at the head of the class — how many six-year olds do you know already equally fluent in two languages? These children knew most of the words on the pages of our book, they had opinions about all the characters, they were willing to go out on a limb and predict how the story would twist and turn, and they were clearly able to interpret the moral of the story, that when we are at our weakest, we most depend on our friends.

These kids were amazing. They have all the potential in the world. They are ready to dream and learn and help each other and work hard. As we drove home and I looked around at parts of Los Angeles where many of us don’t spend enough time, I wondered, where will these kids be in five years when they hit middle school? In ten years when they are in high school? Will they go to college? Will they have the kinds of opportunities that will let their dreams come true? I couldn’t know, but that’s what I wanted to happen.

We allow the subject of education to be politicized, but it’s not really a political topic in my mind. Year after year, I fill out the surveys sent to me by government leaders, local and national, whichever party is in power, always asking for my priorities. My priority for tax dollars never changes, I believe the priority has to be education. If we want these kids to have good lives, they need education. If we want our economy to thrive, we need an educated population. If we want a new generation of businesses to be born and staffed, education is the proven route to success. The thing is, at six years old on a Saturday morning, the kids are showing up, their parents are bringing them, so what they need they already want. How can we not see that of every possible investment we could make with a taxpayer dollar, this is the one that will pay off?

Is there inefficiency in school districts and administration? Of course. Will these bright young kids soon enough become less exuberant adolescents? History would seem to confirm that. Do we have competing priorities for underserved community needs? Without a doubt. All of those are realities, which simply makes them challenges. What I want to see are those first graders I met last weekend on a path to realize the same kinds of dreams we all share. I think in a nation as great as ours we have a moral responsibility to make that happen, broadly for the greater good.

What can we all do to think globally and act locally? First off, try a little volunteering. Reading to Kids is one fine program among many, find one that makes a difference in your home town and sign up. You will do good, and it will do your soul good. Second, as the national debate on budget control escalates to hyperbole, think hard about where money should be saved and invested, with an emphasis on the notion of capital that can provide a return on investment, where human capital is the most precious resource we can nurture. Third, if you are investing in your own future, consider investing in the future of our communities with whatever dollars you can afford, in the form of a donation, directed to a program you find of value.

Reading will always be one of the most magical experiences we enjoy as human beings. A love of reading brings a love of learning, and that is a gift of boundless reward. Spend three hours reading a children’s storybook to some kids you’ve never met and you might just learn more than they do. I did.

November 14, 2012 by Ken Goldstein - 6 Comments

Our Real Work Begins

It has been over a week now since our Presidential Election, a good time to reflect. A broad consensus would seem to exist that it is good the election is over — on this we can all agree, and hey, that’s a start.

If the numbers tell the tale correctly, slightly more than half of us are pleased with the outcome and slightly less than half not so much. Some might argue this is how the Founding Fathers would have it, the decision is meant to be hard, to test our minds around this important choice, to continually rebalance power and draw it back from wide deviations away from center. The election is also meant to test our system, the backbone of this magnificent, ongoing experiment known as democracy, with the orderly assignment and peaceful transition of authority. No one in any lifetime favors all the victors in office, but we know to lawfully accept them until it is time to choose again. We can be proud that the process of choice remains a shared value, whether we got whom we wanted or not.

As mentioned previously, I try hard in this blog to be nonpartisan, because I believe careers are best approached from a nonpartisan context and that business is something we share, something that can bring us together more than separate us if we want that. I like that a broad coalition of CEOs is putting immense pressure on our elected leaders in Washington to make a deal that avoids the Fiscal Cliff, and I am assured that when that deal is made it will include varied input and smart compromise from any number of clever contributors.

Elections probably shouldn’t be emotional, but they are. If ever logic needed to prevail over sentiment, one would think that would have to be the case in choosing our government officials by the prized process of casting a vote. Unfortunately our human leanings get in the way of that, and rather than carefully analyzing the particulars of a candidate’s expressed ideas, we get drawn into the contest. We begin to root. It becomes too much like a sporting event, the candidate is coached and the marketing team fuels the public rivalry. There we are, cheering and booing for one side or the other. The problem with that is that unlike sports, even if my team loses, I still live in my city and you live in yours. I don’t have to get onboard with your team because they won, and next season I can go back to rooting for my team, hoping at last justice is done and yours loses. I am happy to allow my emotions to be manipulated because it’s all part of the entertainment experience. It sort of doesn’t work if I don’t feel that way — why buy tickets and t-shirts and stay glued to the TV unless my honorable team can defeat your hack team?

Those kinds of emotions may carry over to the voting booth, but it is obvious the metaphor implodes there. Your team will never be my team, but the President has to be our President. That’s not just Constitutional law, it’s pragmatic. It’s meant to make sense, to bring order and assurance. In the workshop I teach on executive leadership, I spend a lot of time talking about how business is well advised to be pragmatic. There is a role for emotion in business, but that is in brand building, bringing a customer into a relationship with goods and services where Like Is Not Enough. Decision making among business leaders has to be sensible, reasonable, credible. When you work for a company, you may agree or disagree with the executive team, but you don’t undermine them. You discuss, push back, respectfully argue and create reason to be heard, but to defy the leadership is not only to put the business at risk but also yourself at risk.

Both major party candidates in this federal election had strengths and weaknesses. Both raised vast financial resources. Both purchased gobs of advertising in key battleground states, and both tirelessly traveled the country to connect with their prospective constituents. Much has been and will be written about the strategy and tactics utilized by each, but on Election Day the competition ended. When a President is elected, he is not the party’s President, he is the nation’s President. To think anything other than we all have a stake in the President’s success is folly — dangerous folly.

Where are our passions now best applied? To ensuring the pragmatic. To demanding consensus. To lending our shared voices to the phones, email, and social networks that reach our Congressional Representatives — letting them feel the heat and urgency of our need to get on with it. Democracy works when vast numbers participate and fails when apathy rules. Be passionate about insisting on reason, be passionate about reminding our elected leaders they have chosen a path of service, be passionate about our shared need for innovation and ingenuity that takes us somewhere better and doesn’t leave us running in place. Let all emotion — especially anger — be tabled for pragmatism, at least until the highly paid political consultants whip us into a frenzy again two or four years from now. If you have to be mad, be mad that our elected leaders just might have the chutzpah not to work together on your behalf. That is something you really can do something about. I can be accused at times of idealism, but I promise you we do have that power. We really can begin the real work that only gets done when shared.

A unique aspect of our humanity is the ability to experience emotion, to feel passion, and when appropriate, act on that to drive an outcome grounded in substance and belief. I have seen it happen more than a few times in my career, and when I have, it has been almost impossible to replicate or counter. It has to be well placed. Right now it has to be placed not on who won or lost the election, or whose team got a trophy or some time off, but on how the important work ahead gets done in a pragmatic way we can together acknowledge as progress.

New York Governor Mario Cuomo famously articulated, “We campaign in poetry, but govern in prose.” That’s a much more applicable conceit for elected leaders than winning the World Series or the Super Bowl. Let’s not wait another two or four years to do democracy. Let’s do it daily. Together.