My lead foot has caused me to spend a fair amount of time in traffic school over my life.  Most of the information in those classes is for the most part straight forward and valuable; however, one statistic they quoted recently caught my ear.  In an effort to debunk the myth that accidents more frequently occur when people are on vacation or traveling in places they are not familiar with, the instructor shared that over 85% of accidents occur within five miles of the home.  Now I get that he was trying to make a point for us to be vigilant wherever we are, but that stat is just downright shady in its attempt to have a shock factor.  Considering that A) almost 100% of every car ride begins and ends within five miles of the home and B) the majority of basic functions we perform (e.g., grocery shopping, schools) are typically within five miles, the only thing that is actually interesting about that stat is that the number isn’t higher.

Two other similarly shady stats recently heard: 1) the dog breed with the most reported dog bites in the US is the Labrador Retriever, and 2) hernia surgery has one of the highest number of malpractice suits.  These both could give you pause on picking out a dog or picking a doctor for an upcoming surgery; however, the numbers behind these stats give a different story.  For dogs, the Labrador is the most popular breed in the US; the more dogs there are, the more bites will occur.  This doesn’t mean that Labradors are dangerous (I have a soft spot for these beauties) – it just means that with the largest population they are the most likely to produce the largest numbers of anything dog related – including bites.  The same goes for hernia surgeries.  Inguinal hernia surgery is one of the top ten most common surgeries in the US, thus increasing the number of malpractice suits possible.

In the end, statistics can be used for good or evil.  The driving instructor gave a questionable stat for a good purpose.  There are a lot of stats out there, particularly in politics and business, which are used for evil.  Statistics are like any cheese that has been sitting in the refrigerator for a period of time – we always need to give it a sniff before we take a bite.

When our son scheduled the first “meet-the-woman-I-plan-to-marry” dinner we ended up introducing Kirsten to the joys of a calamari appetizer. Over the last six years of extended family dinners the tradition continued– if calamari is on the menu, it is the appetizer of choice. With our squid consumption rising, we discovered that our squid memories were spotty at best.  “Where did we have the graham cracker calamari?”

Enter the 2012 Squid Scorecard. Now the family can move past anecdotes and faulty memories and use a non-biased documentation process.

It took 15 minutes to create the categories and agree to the definitions. This is an important step since scoring has to be non-subjective so all respondents must have a clear view as to the definition of each category.

The category under the most contention was sauce.

• “Sauce is not part of the original squid should not be included”
• “Sauce is integral to the calamari experience, much like escargot and it’s variety of sauce options”
• “Calamari is, at its essence, a platform whose taste is dramatically influenced by the accompanying sauce”
• “Yes, a lemon squeeze is, and should be, considered a sauce”

Once we finally agreed on definitions for the categories, the assessment was completed.  During our next family outing, we scored our dining option and tallied the results. Drum roll please. Our Phil Stefani’s 437 Rush calamari received an inaugural score of 45 out of a possible 80 points.  Definitely room for improvement on the appetizer, but all of us agreed that the results of the scorecard aligned with our taste buds.

So…in the larger scheme of things, what did we learn?

1. If you really want to discover a non-biased answer, you need to set up a non-biased scoring system. And if not, everything else is just an opinion.
2. Creating the assessment takes much less time than you think.
3. Creating the assessment allows you to think about the things that are important and agree on definitions.
4. Obtaining results allows you to make a non-emotional decision on next steps.
5. To ensure consistency and fairness, we will retrace our previous calamari options solely for the purpose of documentation (yeah!!!)

Just imagine – you are in the middle of implementing a new business process, introducing a new product, or starting a new training program. You need to show results to your manager, but where do you start?  This is a great and very common question.  Consider the following seven items:

Consider implementing measurement tools in these four content areas:

1. People – how people respond to the new information; from knowing it to applying it
2. Processes – how effectively the steps of a new process are being implemented correctly (from safety processes to new sales strategies)
3. Culture – how the company culture accepts the changes or creates barriers
4. Business Results – how the business results are changed in both the short and long term

To get at the heart of true change, performance needs to be measured across three phases:

1. Knowledge – Does everyone KNOW the new content?
2. Immediate on-the-job application – How well can individuals perform the new activities within the first 90 days?
3. Sustained change – After all the banners and buttons, one year later, how well are the new behaviors part of the fabric of the business?

A mix and match of the above are required for any given project or product, but the goal is always the same: select the ones that best protect your investment AND show results.

OK…this can be filed under “Things Yuppies Care About,” but that said, as I put my suitcases away and paste selected photos into the travel journal I’m reminded that there were many criteria besides location that made our 2011 holiday apartment perfect.

I wanted to capture the criteria in my Holiday Apartment Scorecard because staying in an apartment, instead of a hotel, brings another level of joy to the vacation experience…and I plan to rinse and repeat the process often. Now as I sit back and review the list, maybe these are actually the elements that make a home perfect as well. Wow. Double-duty metrics!

I love data.  My business partner, Leslie, loves making data useful.  We always debate about what data matters and what is just nice to know.  Whenever we’re discussing a client’s assessment, there is always a moment in the conversation where she asks me, “What can the client do with that result?”  As someone who loves creating beautiful charts full of interesting facts (but not always applicable information), that is often a tough question to answer.  But in the end it is all that matters.

We are surrounded every day with assessments where the results don’t really tell us anything that we can use.  The driver’s test at the DMV is a nice hoop to jump through, but there is no way that it does anything more than delay out exit from the most depressing waiting room on Earth.  The silly quizzes we take on Facebook are good time wasters but their results won’t change the way we go about our daily lives.  Even assessments where we want the answers – like a business strength’s assessment I just took – don’t translate very easily into application (at least not without a heck of a lot more reading and translating).

We have a client who has recently taken the plunge into assessment and is using the results of their assessments to change the way they train their people as well as the way they look at rolling out new programs.  It’s a huge, tough change, but one that began with the end in mind – ask a question so that we can use the results to make a more educated decision.

I’ll keep this late night blog short and say this – don’t ask if you don’t plan to use the results.  Testing for testing’s sake is a waste of resources.  Now testing to be smart about change?  That’s the kind of assessment worth doing.

We just completed a comprehensive study for a team and spent a day discussing the findings. Their task was to digest the information and determine how they would communicate it to other interested parties. Like any big, high-visibility project, lots of folks-around-the-edges, and leadership teams were itching to hear the discoveries. The answer seems simple—total transparency, send the presentation to anyone who asks for it.

Wrong answer, Grasshopper! You can’t send it into the stratosphere, with minimal context “We have been working on XXX, here are the results. Our team is determining next steps…blah blah blah.” Is it any wonder that the phone starts ringing, emails are flying and the coffee pot chatter reaches a fevered pitch?

As recipient of the original data, when you distribute the findings to others, you have to give each requesting group the EXACT data they need, no more, no less…..and trust me, it will never be the entire presentation. Here are four tips to help ensure each presentation tells the right story to its intended audience:

1. Before you DO anything—-PLAN. Write down the action you expect the recipients to take as a result of reviewing the presentation. Yes…totally old school with a touch of Mad Men advertising….but if you can’t put into words how you expect them to use the information then warning bells and whistles should be going off in your head.
2. Are they Information Junkies? If they are not required to take any action but must/want to know, put this in the category of a morning news report. Give a strong headline, good opening lead, nice graphics and keep to the essence of the key points. Keep to the headlines and don’t spend time with issues that need lots of discussion and context.
3. Will they be Recommenders? If yes, then consider the one-two punch. Use the presentation as a pre-read and follow it up with a F2F (virtual or old school) where you discuss the pros and cons of the findings. As Recommenders they need the story with background information and key issues. They must become knowledgeable, but they are not Decision Makers so this is still informative, not the hard-sell-time-to-make-a-decision presentation.
4. Are they Decision Makers? If yes, then they need the whole persuasive enchilada. Restructure the data story for retelling so it clearly defines the pros, cons and decision points. Like the Recommenders, the most effective strategy is to create the Decision Makers presentation, and follow it up with a tailored meeting. Your goal is to present relevant facts and move to a decision.

Bottom line—3 audiences….3 different slants of data… each tailored to the audience.

We’ve all been there…the beginning of a project when you talk specifically about the performance the client expects. You’ve said the meeting will be detailed and a tad grueling…but within minutes your client is flinching, looking for caffeine and reading her smart phone hoping that an urgent meeting demanding her attendance beckons. She’s battling uncertainty and boredom and a bit of anger—she is eager to get results and DOES NOT UNDERSTAND why we are traveling at this snail’s pace to define behaviors.

Beware – she’s about to succumb in the deadly Infrastructure Battle. She has information we need, and honestly it is tediously hard work to detail the nuances of expected performance. It is the ugly back and forth dance: “Do you need them to use the model on a daily basis or just be able to explain how the model operates?”

If you want to avoid watching your client die a horrible death, here are 7 Tips to help you emerge victorious:

1. Make sure the right people are in the room – Days before the meeting, set expectations about the profile of the attendees—“We are going to ask specific questions about the performance your company expects from a modeling specialist. To ensure the time is well spent, the meeting attendees need to be a select group who:
   - Know the roles, responsibilities and tasks of a modeling specialist (this could be a star SME)
   - Be a credible decision-maker regarding the performance to be assessed (this is a management person with credibility and who has skin in the project game)”
2. Control the environment – Take two extra minutes and ensure your meeting spot has windows, available drinks, comfy chairs and a better than average ambiance. Yep– it sounds cheesy but you need to help your client think through some tough stuff. Best if you can make the environment as pleasant as possible.
3. Stop talking and show pictures – Set the tone by creating a non-nerdy visual with all the different ways to describe performance.
4. Infrastructure passes, business results last – Show how clarity of performance is used in assessments, setting training and development objectives, yearly performance reviews, on the job coaching—this is the “we are all singing from the same page” scenario. You are providing clear descriptions of behavior for the individual in the role, and the individual managing the role.
5. Make things easily digestible – Break the role into logical chunks and tackle just one chunk at a time. “First we just want to talk about the leadership skills an individual needs in this role.”
6. Keep ’em comfortable – Give ample small breaks. Essentially you are poking and prodding to get the right information; you must be even more conscious about your client’s comfort during this process.
7. Show the light at the end of the tunnel – Show the project plan, with the ever-present arrow from today’s activity to the real deal project your client wants completed.

Yep…building infrastructure is delayed gratification for the client – so our job is to recognize the battle, minimize the potential damage, keep your eye on the goal of the activity and press forward.

A good friend of mine makes the distinction that some getaways are vacations and others are trips. Well…not as if this isn’t a decadent problem to ponder “gosh…as I sit sipping umbrella-laced drinks, is this a vacation, a trip, or a dream?”

I decided to craft my vacation criteria and in doing so found the life lesson. As always, once I listed my holiday must-haves, I found that I could easily explain to my husband why cave diving in a remote village will never be considered a vacation AND I could do more to make daily life feel like a vacation.

While the results will never tip the scale of important world issues, and with the vacation tan fading, here is the reminder that even the creation of an assessment brings clarity to life.

I just finished Jeff Gitomer’s The Little Red Book of Selling.  Great book with entertaining, blunt advice.  In the book he says to get writing about things you are passionate about.  So I’m following directions…

My son just had his first standardized test.  He is four and a half years old and is in parent-paid preschool (read = optional).  Testing?  Wow.  I’m an assessment consultant and this seems a bit overkill.  But then we got the results – he’s a rock star with the alphabet except for the letter G – something we wouldn’t have known otherwise.  OK, one letter.  Not too shabby. The test seemed extreme but the results have changed the way we read to him now.  We pause at the G words.  We sound them out.  We love the G words.  The whole nine yards.

This got me thinking.  What else do I care about but have no idea about the performance?  What else in my life, work or home, am I just assuming is working correctly but have no data to support this assumption?  Here’s a short list of things I came up with: my car’s engine, my wife’s cholesterol level, my financial planner’s recommendations, and my children’s math ability (math testing is coming up for the four year old).

What about you?  How are your training programs doing?  Is your team competent?  Is your logistics system optimized?  Do your audits tell you what you really need to know?

In the end I think it is a little weird that my son had a sixty-item assessment after only being on the planet for 54 months (ok, so I used months to be dramatic), but now I know what is wrong so I can fix it.  And we are going to go gangbusters to get that golden goose of a letter before the next assessment.

What is it with customer service these days? Is there a slimy consultant offering up advice based on faulty data collection?

I just returned from holiday where we were given numerous “ Tell Us How We Did” surveys along with the check. While I appreciate the request, and am all for capturing customer voice, I was shocked at the construction of the surveys.

Most surveys had the typical five questions (food, ambiance, service—and the ever popular “How did you find us? and “Will you return?”) Boring but predictable BUT it was the choice of responses I was allowed that was SO SHOCKING:

• Poor
• Fair
• Excellent

There are two issues with the scoring scale they offered.  First, having only three options allows people to select the easy route of just picking the middle option.  Second, the wording choices are loaded and do not show an accurate, equal spread of possible reactions to the situation; two of the three options trended toward the negative and the remaining option was so glowing that I would award it only if the food and service floated in with a cloud of pixie dust.  In the end, both of these issues are a direct result of a poorly designed assessment (see Wikipedia’s description of construct validity for more on this).

What is the deal? One would assume that the restaurant wants honest feedback, but with their score sheet offering, most of the remarks they receive will be negative.  Putting on my cynical hat – was this some scam perpetuated by an outside source whose aim was to sell customer service training? Please tell me no… No…NO!

How can we put an end to this travesty?

1. Refuse to answer the three option monster and let the restaurant know they are collecting bad data
2. Provide a bit of value by creating a fourth column and adjusting the language (if needed)
3. Writing a note about the food, service, ambiance and concern that the score sheet trends negative

Do your best to stop bad data collection.  I would have loved to share that the fries were over seasoned, but I just couldn’t participate in the survey the way it was presented.

Support the score sheets that have integrity….rid the world of the ones that try to collect negative data.

Join us and change the world…one assessment at a time.  Let’s toast to the change.