Why You Need Some “Outside Eyes” & Three Ways to Get Them
(Mark O’Brien, Embrion Consulting – 29 June 2010)

So, I get this phone call the other from a research group doing a little survey on a person I have recently done some business with…  would I mind answering a few questions about the person in question?

Well, the person in question was very helpful to me and I felt they went the extra mile in helping me out, so, no, I didn’t mind answering a few questions about them…  especially if some good feedback would help them out.  No problems.  They work for a big corporation, and every little bit of help up the ladder is useful for them, I think.

So, we started working through some questions, and it was at this point that this thing took a turn for the ridiculous when they asked me questions and I gave a good answer and then they started repeating everything I had just said SLOWLY as they typed in the responses.  After a couple of minutes, it was painful hearing them slowly garble my eloquent (!) responses into their typed efforts, not-so-behind-the-scenes.  It felt a little like I was dictating something to my 10 year old over the phone.  Crazy bad!

I just don’t get it…  even with just a little thought, I figured that a business based around phone interviews would simply record the interview and then transcribe the responses afterwards?  That seems simple, elegant, and far more user-friendly, especially if you’re going to form the interview around open-ended questions which don’t simply require a yes/no or number answer.

This company’s processes were horrible.  Surely they could see that?  Had nobody noticed that this was a terrible way to run phone interviews?  Was it really possible that they had no idea how bad this experience was?!

Sometimes, you just shake your head in amazement… but it occurred to me that most of us running businesses or teams fall into these traps where we stop seeing things, especially things that aren’t good.  It’s a bit like when somebody puts a box down in a spot where it shouldn’t be in the office.  For the first few days, if nobody moves it, you notice it, but then you slowly stop noticing it and it becomes part of the landscape (kind of like some of those piles on your desk/floor).  It’s amazing how long bad things can persist, largely because we get used to them.  The problem is, of course, that anyone engaging in a fresh interaction with our organisation notices these things straight away, but we don’t.  We’ve just stopped noticing things the way a newcomer sees it all.

So, what to do?  Three ideas for you…

1.  As a consultant, I believe that one of the greatest benefits a consultant brings is a pair of “outside eyes”, someone who hasn’t grown used to seeing that bad thing as part of the landscape, someone who asks the obvious (and sometimes even dumb) questions that need to be asked, someone who is not too busy with your day to day busyness to see things the way your clients or customers experience them.  It might be that you should engage someone like that to help you notice some important things again, especially from a strategic point of view.

2.  Perhaps you should pay special attention to what new employees have to say, given that they’re coming in with fresh eyes, seeing it all for the first time.  It’s always amazing to me how much new employees see, and yet they tend to be written off because they’re new, when in fact that’s one of their biggest contributions to your business.  Specifically giving a new employee a mandate to speak the truth about what they see could pour some sharp light on bad practices.  But, beware, their “outside eyes” don’t last for long, and within 6 months they will also stop seeing thing too, so move quickly…  make this a part of your employment culture.

3.  Maybe you should be listening a lot more carefully to your customers or clients, taking the time to really hear what it is that they experience when they do business with you.  Customer surveys (not like the one described above!), or (better still) conversations with customers where we’re not selling but listening are crucial to growth.  But, don’t survey customers if it becomes clear that you don’t do anything with that information.  Customers aren’t stupid, and they won’t bother giving you feedback if they suspect it doesn’t make a difference.  We’ve all experienced that from the other side of the table, where we just haven’t bothered to follow up something because we figured it wouldn’t make any difference anyway.  You have to demonstrate that you take feedback seriously, because your customers are “outside eyes”, especially new customers who haven’t grown used to your dysfunctions and “quirks”.

These are all key ways to get “outside eyes” into your business.  I think you need all of them in some form because they bring slightly different perspectives to the same issues.  The key problem is that all of these three strategies cost us in some form or other, and we’re usually just busy with today’s urgencies, and so we become further entrenched in our own sense of reality.  But, smart  businesses get beyond the urgent stuff and try to get a grip on what matters most, and “outside eyes” are a critical part of that priority.