CRA Inc

Leadership Lessons from Exotic Animal Trainers

A recent New York Times article (password needed) profiled an interesting book by Amy Sutherland on Life and Lessons at the World’s Premier School for Exotic Animal Trainers. She suggested that the same techniques may work on your spouse and children. I suggest that you try some with your direct reports. Rather than allowing negative behaviors from those around you to produce “occasional sarcasm” and “slow boil resentment” in yourself, she shares some of these common sense leadership lessons from the best exotic animal trainers in the country:

• Reward good behavior and ignore bad—as managers, parents, and spouses know, it’s the simplest and hardest thing to do.
• Use “approximations” by rewarding small steps in learning—you can’t expect a dolphin to flip with one command, just as you can’t expect a subordinate to be concise after one conversation.
• Create incompatible behaviors to substitute for annoying ones—if your direct (or child) is hovering before an important meeting (dinner), give him or her something to do to help prepare.
• And L.R.S. or the “least reinforcing syndrome” which means that any response—positive or negative—fuels a behavior, and if a behavior provokes no response, it will go away.

Internal Service Levels and Framing Expectations

A few weeks ago a client asked that I look at a list of activities they currently perform for internal clients across their company. It was a long list, and included everything from strategic counsel to message design to campaign management to event production. The question was: “From your perspective, in which of these activities should we be involved and which should we avoid?”

It was an opportunity to email them the gist of what I’ve come to call “The Service Level Speech,” and I thought it might be of interest to communication professionals, and really, any person who serves in an internal support or shared services function (save IT, which tends to have very specific service level agreements). Here’s the body of my email:

Thanks for including me in this. For what it’s worth, I think scope will likely vary by role, and that specific roles and their requisite scopes are worth defining across the department.That being said, my reaction to this list is to consider turning the question of scope on its side: Rather than saying “what things do we choose to get involved in,” I’d suggest that the real question is “To whom should we offer our skills, and how?” I look at it this way: Technical writing, web stuff, email protocols, speech writing, planning events, strategic counsel, change management — they’re all things you are able to do as a department, and as a result, are all in scope. But you shouldn’t do them for everyone, or in all conditions. I’d suggest thinking of it in terms of service levels, and I’d offer four of them:

Level 1: “We don’t do that, and you probably shouldn’t either.” This is when somebody calls and says they’d really like a newsletter for their small project, and are interested in you producing it. That’s not a wise investment of your time or expertise, and you shouldn’t get involved. What’s more, the last thing [company] needs is another newsletter, so we should dissuade them of the idea.

Level 2: “You create it, and we’ll review it.” Lots of the [vehicle] messages, [intranet] messages, and some executive comments or events could fall into this category. You won’t do any of the primary work, but you’re happy to look at what they produce for (1) editorial standards, (2) message consistency and fit, and (3) just to generally ensure they’re not making any big mistakes. The ability to provide internal folks with good style guides, message agendas, etc. helps with this service level because you can say “I’ll send you some standards, you put it together, and then check in with me and I’ll look at it for you.”

Level 3: “I’ll consult to you, you create it, and we’ll review it.” The same as Level 2, but you up the service you provide to include giving them counsel and being their consultant. You might have an initial meeting, outline goals, do a creative brief, etc., in addition to reviewing what they produce, etc. Lots of your [technology project] support could fit in here (as well as support of other large projects where you’re not the primary producer of the communication work).

Level 4: “We’re going to do this ourselves from soup to nuts.” This might include the full scope of change management communication work (like you did when working with [name]), or it might including something as simple as writing comments for a lunch with [President] or [VP of HR]. But because of the importance of the issue, project, event, or client, [your department] will take full responsibility and accountability for the communication work. Crisis management and stuff for [CEO] or [President] might be examples of Level 4 work. To this day, I’ll write an email that a client will send to his or her company — very tactical work — if the issue or client is important enough.

If you look at the question of scope through this lens I think the question changes a bit from “What do we do” to “Who do we serve and how.” You might take the list below and re-order it into the four categories. You might also take all the key stakeholders the department has and do the same.

Then it’s easy to go to the stakeholders and say “We’re trying get more effective in how we add value, and we’ve created some service levels to help us do so. Here’s what they are, and here’s how I see the work we do together fitting into them …”

Then you know, and your stakeholders and clients know, how you’ll help, and more important, why.

The bottom line is that the amount of internal work you do and the level of support you provide are much more a function of framing expectations than they are of responding to requests. The requests are made within the context of expectations; change the frame of expectations and changes in the requests will follow. The problem is that most folks — regardless of role — don’t actively frame their expectations with colleagues or clients. As a result they tend to inherit the levels of support they provide over time … which ultimately leads to poorly aligned expectations, frustrated staff, and disappointed internal clients.