What a Leader Looks Like

Having spent most of my career as a technology service and support provider, I’ve grown to appreciate others in the industry. Even if someone is your ‘competition’ you inevitably acknowledge and give them credit when they are doing things right.

At some point along the way, as a consultant you find yourself with an abundance of work to do, or you’re on vacation, or there’s someone outside of your service area, and you need to recommend a business you can trust. One such business is Erb’s Technology Solutions in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. They’ve been in business since 1961 and have many satisfied customers.

One day I had to deliver a printer for one of my clients to their facility for some in-warranty repairs. As I recall, back then, the equipment service entrance was on a lower level at the side of the building. I thought I’d take the opportunity to visit a bit with the employee working at the service desk.

The service reception desk is generally not the most glamorous job. The pay isn’t great. Usually a less experienced technician would work at the receiving and pickup area. It’s sometimes an unpleasant job if customers are upset about failed systems, crashed computers, delays in repairs, and/or unexpected repair costs.

I had a good talk with the technician that day. I let him know that I’m an area tech consultant and have been impressed with their business. He was very friendly.

When I asked his name, he told me he was Larry. Then I realized, I’d been talking to the owner of the business, Larry Erb.

At that point I just had to ask… why was he working at the service desk? Usually the owner of a successful business that size has managers who manage the managers who manage the employees.

What I learned is that he likes to have some hands on emersion in the various departments in his business. It gives him an opportunity to evaluate continuous improvement opportunities for better procedures and practices. It also lets him have direct contact with his customers and hear first hand about their experiences with his business.

Leaders are sometimes portrayed as people who are removed from the ‘commoners’ and  inaccessible. It’s assumed that one of the perks of being the boss is that you don’t have to do the dirty work and heavy lifting. You’re able to escape from listening to customer complaints. Yet, these portrayals of leadership aren’t the ideal.

A true business leader isn’t trying to avoid their employees or the customers they serve. A true leader spends some time with their sleeves rolled up, working side by side with their employees and serving customers. This builds relationships and trust. It also helps an innovative leader explore opportunities for improvement — since ultimately that’s what their highest calling is.


Related Media – Audio

The audio below is from 7 April 2003. It’s the story of how this kind of management style became the foundation for Honda’s success — success in job satisfaction, customer satisfaction, product quality, and customer service excellence.

Related Media – Video

The video below is about a Japanese airline industry CEO who decided to give himself a pay cut as a way of sharing the burden when a depressed economy adversely impacted the company’s revenue. This CEO frequently works along side with employees and listens to their ideas, praises, and suggestions for improvement.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjeTTQKRfWU]


 

About This Article

“In 1987, at 23 years old, I had my first experience with leadership and business management as a manager of a Radio Shack store in California. Going from a recently hired sales person, to managing my own store in 6 months was a kind of a record. In the 28 years since then, my interest in leadership and management has grown. I’m intrigued by innovative approaches to facilitating progress for organizations and businesses. Much of what I’ve learned over the years, I’ve applied to my work as President of the Small House Society (2002 to present). I describe myself as a “facilitator” in my work with the organization. I like the term facilitator because for me, that’s what a leader does — empower, equip, inspire, and help people grow in their areas of passion and expertise. So, the above article is inspired by these experiences.” ~ Greg Johnson, 12 March 2015


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Centralized and Distributed Support Models in Service Industries

Introduction

In service industries, centralized or distributed support models both have benefits and drawbacks. This document explores what these benefits and drawbacks are. Although there are people with strong opinions about which model is better, as you’ll read here, there are different benefits to both systems, and when implemented properly, those benefits can be achieved. When either system is implemented poorly, outcomes suffer. As explained below, a hybrid model is also possible that can achieve many of the benefits of both approaches.

Centralized Support Overview

Service industries generally operate from a centralized model, especially within larger organizations and companies. The Best Buy Geek Squad would be an example of this. For many businesses, instead of having an in-house specialist to provide support, they call to get help or have something fixed, and a person comes to fix it. For those working in these kinds of service industries, the center of community, friendship, and camaraderie is within the community of support providers at their central office. When the Best Buy Geek Squad comes out to setup your new television, they don’t stay for dinner.

In-House Support Overview

The alternative to centralization is to have a full-time on-site in-house support person. When small businesses grow to a certain size, they reach the point where hiring a person full time can be less expensive than paying higher hourly rates to have a consultant to come in occasionally or part-time. Larger organizations and businesses may have many support people on staff who are spread around in the areas where they are needed for easier access. In this business model, the support people may feel a greater sense of belonging, community, and camaraderie with the people they are serving. Knowing more about those we serve, helps us serve them better, this combined with greater accessibility, creates opportunities for preventative and proactive approaches.

Benefits of Centralization

There are a number of benefits to having a centralized service model:

  • Scalable. With a centralized team of support people, it’s possible to respond to just about any need with just the right amount of support.
  • Specialized. Specialists in the team, with much more experience than a generalist, can deliver higher quality support as needed — shared across multiple units.
  • Better Tools. When specialized repair tools and resources are shared, they can be of higher quality and more variety.
  • Collaborative. A central team of support specialists are more likely to build collaborative and supportive relationships.
  • Standardized. When people are working together as a team, it’s easier to arrive at and implement standard practices.
  • Load Balanced. Having cross training and redundancy of support personnel ensures users get support even if someone is on vacation or sick. It’s also less stressful for an employee who knows that they can take time off without it impacting their work negatively.

Overall, the outcome of a centralized service model should be a higher quality of support and a greater quantity of support. In the long-term, it should be better for all people involved. A win-win situation.

Benefits of Distributed Support

Here are some of the benefits of distributed support:

  • Integrative. There’s a significant team-building and unifying benefit from having all employees working together having an opportunity to collectively experience shared successes. When support staff have a home among those they support, and have a sense of belonging, they can work more smoothly as a team.
  • Immediate. Being more easily accessible, support people who are close to those they are serving will be utilized more. Even the simplest elevator conversation can lead to a breakthrough in efficiency.
  • Trust Building. Being part of the community they serve, support specialists are more trusted. Trust includes believing that you can rely on someone, and that you believe in their level of competency.
  • Engaging. When service and support employees are daily working side-by-side with the people they are supporting, they can make sure people are aware of and utilizing best practices and following established standards and policies.

An Analogy to Cluster Storage and Computing

Anyone who has had their files stored on different hard drives knows that each drive will inevitably have free space left on it, sometimes a lot of unused free space.

A RAID file system allows you to combine many different hard drives into what the computer perceives is a single large drive. Previously unused space on many different drives is combined and available for use rather than scattered around.

Cluster Computing and Network File Storage systems provide this same efficiency. Technology is centrally located, and utilized by a large group of people, significantly reducing the otherwise unused drive space and underutilized computing power that might have been scattered around throughout an organization.

Well, the same principles of efficiency are present with human capital management strategies for service industries. Centralized service delivery models create a cluster of people in one location who can be called out on demand as needed, rather than being spread around an organization.

Fluctuations in Support Needs

When support people are distributed, they will likely experience the inevitable fluctuation of workload and support needs from one day to the next.

In service industries, it’s unlikely that workers will each individually have precisely 40 hours of work to accomplish in a given week if they are supporting a specific group of users.

From week to week, the support needs change. Usually what happens is that support people put in more hours to keep up, and sometimes quality suffers.

A Lesson From Urban Planning

For several decades, municipalities have struggled with a planning model that was largely dependent upon automobile ownership and use.

Rather than having walkable communities with mixed use urban spaces, cities have been designed to have shopping malls on one side of town, an industrial park on the opposite side of the city, a business park might be on the outskirts of town, with suburbs and sprawl were situated elsewhere. The downtown would be mostly office buildings. In none of these places were there opportunities or venues where community could be built.

New urbanism and walkable communities are designed so that people might live, work, shop, eat, and socialize all within the same neighborhood or downtown area.

With this in mind, we can think about service delivery models. A centralized service delivery model has all employees checking in at a central office and going out to deliver services as needed. Not as many opportunities exist for building collaborative relationships with those being served.

A distributed service delivery model is like new urbanism and walkable communities. From day-to-day, service people share the same office space and facilities as those they serve. Relationships are more easily established. The working conditions are such that collaboration is fostered and less of an effort.

In some office environments, people serving different roles work in the same proximity: graphic designers, sales staff, marketing, office managers, receptionists, secretaries, and tech support staff. This helps build relationships and provides easy access between different team members.

Imagine separating out one group of employees based on their role, and not allowing them to interact socially with the rest of those in the organization or company. Rather than feeling like they are part of the bigger team of employees they serve, they’d likely feel removed and possibly less valued.

A Lesson From Permaculture

In the midwest agricultural states, it’s common to have thousands of acres dedicated individual crops like corn or soybeans.  In a permaculture model, food and other vegetation is grown strategically together to create a self-maintained habitat.

Huge cubicle farms of employees grouped together by specialty reflect a monoculture model rather than a permaculture model. Rather than building small diversified workplace community centers, cubicle farms are focused on workplace efficiency.

The Intersection of Arts and Sciences

There’s been a lot of talk about interdisciplinary collaborative efforts. A liberal arts and sciences environment is based on the idea that a diversity of academic disciplines, when interwoven, can create an environment that fosters creativity and innovation. A blended workplace community of employees creates an opportunity for interdisciplinary partnerships.

A Lesson from Healthcare

In the traditional approach to healthcare, you visit your doctor once a year, and get an annual physical. The doctor visit may last 10 to 15 minutes — just long enough to get vitals, check ears, check throat, and listen to the heart and lungs. No exploratory lab work is done unless some symptoms have manifested that suggest further exploration is needed.

Only when there’s acute pain or an injury do we visit the hospital outside of our regular annual physical / checkup. As a result, many life threatening conditions and illnesses fester underneath the surface. By the time they are identifiable as symptoms, it’s too late to prevent them.

In the new model of healthcare, visits to the doctor are more regular and may last 60 to 90 minutes. The healthcare provider learns about your home life, work life, diet, exercise routine, sleep, and other factors that impact health. Extensive lab work is done to identify indicators of potential health problems on the horizon. This approach to healthcare seems to take more effort, yet in the long run can help prevent very costly surgery and life threatening illnesses that are all preventable. Because of the relationship established between doctor and patient, it’s more likely that the doctor can encourage, equip, and inspire the patient to make life changing life choices and changes in diet and exercise.

If we we take this approach to service industries, we will find that problems are less severe, less frequent, and cost less to fix in the long run.

Hybrid Solution

A hybrid model of service delivery would call for centralized administration and oversight of support staff, but support staff would have their offices mixed in with those they are supporting. An effort would be made to maximize ‘time in the field’ and reduce time in meetings and conferences. This support model provides benefits of both centralized and distributed support. Employees would report to the administrative members within the group they support, and also report to their central office management.

UPDATE: 5 May 2023

I’ve written an update and addendum to the above article. To learn more, read, “Tech Support: Small Scale — At Scale.” [View]

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Page Visitors

Thanks for taking an interest in this article and sharing it with others. The maps below show recent page visitors from around the world. It’s nice to see there’s ongoing interest in this article more than eight years years after it was published.

Below are recent visits as of 5 May 2023

Below are recent visits as of 2 Sep 2017

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Document History

  • 5 May 2023 at 4:20 PM — Added addendum note at the bottom of the document to an additional related article. Updated page formatting for the WordPress block editor. Added updated recent visitor map.
  • 8 Feb 2015 at 9:36 PM — Document initially posted.
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Road and Traffic Planning to Reduce Road Rage

Every morning, rush hour traffic heading east into Iowa City on Melrose Avenue is abruptly forced into one lane just past Emerald Street as the right lane ends.

Most drivers know this and stay in the left lane which backs up and creates a long line of traffic in the left lane.

Inevitably, every morning, there are drivers who see this as an opportunity to cut ahead in line. So, they drive over the speed limit to race ahead in the right lane hoping to cut in at the last moment.

With a feigned look of ignorance and pity, they look back at the drivers next to them hoping someone will let them in. The more brazen drivers try to force their way in, as if it’s their birth right. They will drive up on the curb to show their determination. Some get forced off the road by angry people who have been patiently waiting their turn.

Those who stand waiting for the bus every day see this drama unfold like clockwork. Today, unfortunately, an ambulance with lights and siren on, was unable to get through as unrelenting drivers refused to give up their precious spot in line. So the ambulance just sat there. Eventually the flow of traffic picked up and one driver let the ambulance go ahead.

If a traffic signal were put in on the eastbound side of Melrose Avenue, this could solve the above problem. A left turn only light could designate the left lane for only those cars going into the Finkbine commuter lot. All other traffic could stay in the right lane. This would also help regulate the merging of traffic.

For streets near a hospital, such traffic jams should really be prevented.

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CBS News: Shopping Mall Security and Safety Concerns

On Monday, 23 February 2015, CBS News produced a story about shopping mall security and safety concerns. I had an opportunity to be briefly interviewed for that news segment. The video is below and the story is also available on our local CBS website.

[vimeo=https://vimeo.com/120499177]

In visiting with the news team, I pointed out that our local shopping malls are mostly single-level and spread out over a large area, so they are not densely populated which makes them less likely targets for terrorist attacks. With a trend toward supporting small locally owned businesses, people are doing less shopping at malls, and seeking out small local businesses to support.

In other countries I’ve traveled to, the shopping malls may have three or four levels and are more densely populated making them a higher risk security concern. Heightened security measures are in place, with security guards checking under cars with mirrors and mall visitors are required to go through metal detectors.

In the United States, with some exceptions, many malls simply aren’t the hub of activity and community that they are in other countries.

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The Ineffectiveness of Procrastination

Procrastination is partly a desire to reduce our work and effort, at least in the moment. Yet, by postponing inevitable work until later, we’re usually doing a disservice to our future self.

There are many areas of life where the “put it off until later” attitude results in less effective outcomes. Here are some examples…

  • Waiting until the dishes absolutely need to be done, and then cramming them all into the dishwasher piled one on top of the other reduces the efficiency of the dishwasher. At that point, dried on food is difficult to remove.
  • Paying credit cards later results in higher fees.
  • Waiting until the car doesn’t run and then taking it to a mechanic, when’s so much damage has been done that major repairs are needed.
  • Only studying the night before an exam without studying throughout the year won’t produce the best results.
  • Rushing through a project shortly before a deadline and not giving it the time and breathing space needed to create something innovative and high quality.

Preventative approaches to every area of life have a huge impact cumulatively and result in a better quality of life with less stress.

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Zero-Effort Content Creation

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People sometimes ask me how I’m able to write so many articles. The secret to posting a lot of content online is to have it be part of your workflow.

I call this zero-effort content creation because it’s writing that’s already being developed as part of a person’s daily work and communications.

Here are some examples of what I mean.

  • Email. Quite often, when I receive an email from someone, it’s a request to research something, solve a problem, or provide instructions for a certain task. The web is actually a better platform to answer questions since it’s easier to link to other websites, include images, and embed videos. It’s easy to update a web page with corrections or more up-to-date information as needed. A simple email just does’t offer these benefits.
  • Notebook / Journal. I regularly keep a journal of the work I do. Sometimes, I document a process, workflow, or solution. Most of the time, these can be written as articles and posted online. It helps me to have these readily available for future reference. A benefit of documenting and following a workflow is that one is always mindful of improvements. With any process, there may be additional steps, or revisions in the order, that make a difference.
  • Problem Solving. Whenever I stumble on technical quandaries that involve significant research, I like to document those. Often, if it’s a problem that nobody else has solved yet, such articles become quite popular. A world-wide search on Google may yield that article as the number one search result if nobody else has published on the topic.
  • Product Reviews. I often take a significant amount of time to research product purchases for myself or others. When doing so, I like to document my findings before, during, and after a purchase to let others know about product performance. With an article online, it’s easy to provide links to produce manuals and other helpful resources.
  • Photography. Smartphone cameras have increased in quality and also in capabilities. As a result, photography has become part of our daily experience. When we see something that’s photo-worthy, we take a picture. With features like HDR (high dynamic range) and panoramic features built-in, it’s possible to take some really interesting photos with a smartphone. As a result, if one takes a bit of time to sort through their daily photos (perhaps reviewing them weekly), it’s possible to end up with a good number of quality photos. These can be shared as is, or used as an artistic background to a page header. For example, the IOWA photo included in the header image for this page was taken in a few seconds and composed while walking to the bus in a few minutes. A simple click and drag created the header image.

Benefits of Open Source Living

One of the benefits of living an open source and transparent live that’s documented online is that others can provide us feedback if they see areas we could improve in.

Benefits of Authentic Content Creation

Creating articles based on real-life needs and experiences works best. A reader can tell if a story was written under pressure to meet a quota or deadline. When you write from the heart, based on personal experiences, without doing so under pressure, the quality of content is much better and much more genuine.

Open Source Living: Turning your daily life-flow into content.

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People often ask me how I’m able to create so much content and keep many websites updated with new articles.

I use an open source living approach that involves turning daily life-flow into content.

What this means is that when I receive an email from someone asking for technology support or advice, I post the answer online in the form of an article about that topic.

When I scan owners manuals, users guides, and other documentation, I post that online with Scribd.

By putting as much information online as possible, it’s available to me from anywhere, and it’s also available for others to benefit from.

The articles I write aren’t created for the sole purpose of creating more content. They are created for a purpose. This makes them more relevant and useful. By placing them on topic-centric websites, they are more easily found.

SuperShrinkMe.com Wellness and Weight Loss Website

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I recently remodeled my SuperShrinkMe.com Wellness and Weight Loss website.

I’ve not been as active with the weight loss challenge in recent months, but am returning to the program this month.

To follow along, you can subscribe on the website or Like the Super Shrink Me Facebook page.

I’ll be sharing my approach to wellness and weight loss along with articles about cooking, food preparation, exercise, and new health tracking technologies. It’s everything I’ve learned about wellness and weight loss over about 30 years.

~ Greg

What’s Going on Today…

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Summary

Starting today, I’m going to try having a brief daily update and announcements area on my website. The current title is “Today” and it’s a block of text in the upper right of the page (or just below the home page for people on mobile phones). So, anyone from anywhere can check my website to see what my availability is to get an idea of when I might be available.

Further Reading

In the past, I would update my outgoing phone message daily with news about my availability on any given day.

Many people found this helpful because it would give them some idea of when I might be returning their phone call.  People could know if I was going to be in a workshop all day or in meetings, and unable to return calls until later in the day.

The ability to set an automated “Out of Office” email reply is a similar idea. People writing by email will know if you’re away from the office. This could be used as a vacation message, or just as an immediate “Thanks for writing” reply that might offer links and information the person may have been inquiring about.

Today, with so many methods of communication being used, such as text SMS, Facebook, LinkedIn, phone messages, and emails to multiple accounts, there’s no easy centralized way to let people know your availability.

So, posting a message on my website seems like a simple centralized way to accomplish this.

The Culture of Instant Photography

In the past, when the culture of photography nurtured a slower process, I would tag photos and organize them by album before posting them online. These days, most of my photography is instantaneously captured and shared in a live stream through FacebookFlickr, and Instagram.

Photography is one of the more difficult creative works to wrangle. Unlike pottery or painting, it’s possible with photography to create thousands of photos. In just one of my photo libraries, I have over 37,000 photos taken from 2004 to 2013.

High quality cameras in smart phones combined with social media integration has made it possible to deliver photography instantaneously. At such a fast pace, there is less time to consider how we might organize and make photography accessible in a meaningful way. This makes photo-centric websites underutilized. Software, such as ApertureiPhoto, or Lightroom can automatically organize photos by date, location, and even identify people with facial recognition, but automated tagging isn’t available yet.

When I’m using my Canon EOS Rebel T2i DSLR camera, I have several lenses to choose from, and the process of photography slows down. Like eating a meal slowly, there’s more mindfulness of the process and I’m more engaged in the experience.