Touch. Tod Maffin
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a partner to me. I can’t imagine life without her.
Just as Andrea has been a positive and practical supporter, our daughters, Lucy and Bayla, have been (and continue to be) amazingly patient with me. I always have a million things on the go. If it’s not work, it’s the book. If it’s not the book, it’s a research project. And so on. I’m grateful for them.
My aunt Myrna has been encouraging me to write a book for years. She’s been one of my life cheerleaders for as long as I can remember, including during this project.
My team at FullDuplex — Émilie, Victoria, and Heather — have all helped research aspects of this book. They’ve also brought levity to the office when I’ve needed it most.
My FH alumni network of Michael von Herff, Eric Lamoureux, Paul Monlezun, David Kaiser, Anne Lachance, John Sparks, and the Honourable Monte Solberg have all directly or indirectly had an impact on this book. It’s a privilege to work with them.
Thank you also to all of the media professionals and research collaborators who constantly test my knowledge and ideas with interesting questions.
I dedicate this book to my uncle and mentor, Ken Ain. Thank you for everything. I miss you.
Chapter 1
A Letter to You from Us
Dear Leader:
First, the good news. The digital world has fundamentally changed how organizations hire staff, market their services, and connect with stakeholders and the public. It’s provided cost savings and greater efficiency. And it’s helped start-ups bootstrap themselves into NASDAQ-listed companies in a heartbeat.
Not without a cost.
The same technology that helped organizations overcome geographically dispersed workforces that crossed the International Date Line also drove a wedge in localized workforces. By trying to make life easier for young families and reduce facilities-costs through telecommuting, organizations instead discovered that team members being distant in the same city created a new series of complications.
Many organizations have embraced digital business tools at the expense of retaining humanity in all of their dealings. In an effort to use high tech to connect with people more effectively, we are losing the human “touch” — that critical person-to-person connection — which is still the engine of commerce.
Hiring is done by automated keyword searches.
Offices have regressed to sterile, highly controlled environments.
Communications staff increasingly rely on scripted responses.
Websites are designed for search engines, not people.
Leaders focus on arbitrary “best practices” metrics.
This erosion of humanity in business isn’t a story that’s often picked up by the business media. After all, it’s not sexy and it doesn’t fit the narrative of advanced technology solving all business problems. It’s become clear that in a world filled with complicated web forms and digital marketing services, we have lost the human element in how we run our organizations.
Here is what we offer in terms of restoring the human touch:
Leadership: defining your organization’s human values, speaking the business language of humanity, becoming a “Chief Humanizing Officer”;
Customer service: combatting the death of loyalty, fostering a new ethic in your call centres, defining the role of the “brandividual”;
Web/social: understanding the new human digital metrics, creating a people-based online experience, doing web workflow the right way;
Marketing: identifying influencers and leading brand advocates, exploiting personal data pools, exploring next-generation human marketing;
Crisis communications: responding to those with “digital personality disorder,” implementing the SWARM methodology, managing your brand reputation the human way; and
Legal: approaching necessary legal communications more humanely.
We believe the same telecommuting technology that had its origins in time- and place-shifting our interactions has evolved into “telecommuniting” technology that allows us to have meaningful real-time, and even time-shifted, interactions within an organization as well as with stakeholders, the media, and the public.
Our book will help you discover why and how.
Thank you for picking up a copy and reading this far. Your journey is just beginning.
Sincerely,
Tod and Mark
@todmaffin
@markblevis
Chapter 2
The Five Factors
Infusing your organization with more humanity isn’t as simple as following a recipe. There’s no easy step-by-step solution that you can implement. Rather, increasing what we call the TOUCH factor in all areas of your operations is an evolving process, measured with softer metrics than some leaders are comfortable with. After all, KPI (key performance indicators) dashboards don’t often measure the soft stuff.
Based on our own experiences and conversations with countless business and community leaders, we’ve identified five overall factors which are key to growing and leading a human-based organization. As you’ll see, they’re not tactical steps to check off a list. Rather, they’re an overall ethos that must become a part of your organizational commitment to human values.
We’ll spend just a bit of time on these five factors, then spend the rest of the book discussing how you can instill these values in all aspects of your organization.
Technology
It might seem counterintuitive to put technology at the top of the list of factors necessary to humanize your organization. The fact is, technology can be your strongest ally. There are thousands of web services, software as a service (SaaS) products, and digital tools which can help you inflect more humanity into the mix.
Let’s start with some important guideposts.
Hire Your Technology
Stop thinking about your technology as nothing more than a computer. You should treat your business technology as you would an actual human employee. Have a job description for which a technological solution may apply. Then, conduct regular performance reviews (luckily, your technology won’t ask for a pension).
Does the technology that serves your organization still do as good a job now as when you first brought it on board?
Is it taking too many sick days (downtime)?
Do you have a growth and succession plan in place for when you exceed its capabilities?
In far too many cases, the answer to these questions is either “No” or “I have no idea.”
We’re not talking about a general sense of these items either. Schedule annual performance reviews of your CRM (customer relationship management) system. Invite the people who work closest with it. Ask them to submit reviews of the system’s job performance over the past year. Ask these colleagues of the technology to advise on when it needs to be promoted (more money invested in it) or fired.
This regular performance review (call it a “tech audit” if you’re uncomfortable with the human language) is critical because your business grows, your stakeholders change over time, and your objectives shift. Your business technology should evolve with these changes.
Work Backwards
The first technology decisions that contribute to the dehumanizing of organizations often come from forcing your people or customers to adapt to your technology and not the other way around.
You’ve