Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

I’m convinced that many of the world’s problems could be quickly fixed or even avoided if people didn’t automatically get defensive when faced with an issue or disagreement.

Recently I was watching a conversation between a supervisor and employee about a relatively minor thing. The entire conversation could have been over in about 15 seconds if the employee had simply said, “Understood. I’ll take care of it.” Instead, the discussion turned into a tedious “butting” session, as she went on the defensive, “But they don’t….” “But I can’t…” “But you don’t understand…”

None of us like to be wrong. None of us like to screw up. But we all do, some time, some place. And it’s far less painless (and time consuming) for everyone involved if we skip the “butting” and move to fixing the issue.

I’ve seen disagreement over a shade in a pantone color escalate into career-damaging, counter-productive screaming matches. Tip: Your customers don’t care if the logo color shade is #0063 or #0064. Really.

Before you get all riled up, stop and think. Just how important is “this???” Aries control freak that I am, I’ve learned that sometimes the wisest thing I can do is simply shut up and move on.

Read More: Explaining Things by Lee Thayer. Here’s a snip:

It seems that people get better and better at excusing themselves, while less and less competent at delivering the expected performance. “Customer service” people do a pretty good job of apologizing for the failures you report, without ever understanding the problem. They want you to, “Have a good day,” by making it almost certain that you can’t.

An explanation isn’t a substitute for results.

Want to browse through all my posts? Go to The Idea Pool. Everything I’ve written since I started blogging.

Tags: productivity, conflict resolution, excuses, customer service