Reality Check!

Aug 7, 2002 12:00 PM, Peter Bernstein

The spate of “reality” shows that started with “Survivor,” “Big Brother,” etc., seems to know no bounds. Just when you thought TV had reached the apex of the genre, as second-generation productions replaced the first wave, the promos for the coming season reveals a tidal wave of more reality programming. Arghhh! The supposedly frozen Walt Disney must be defrosting in a cryogenic state of anger, as he waits for Ted Williams to arrive. What ever happened to fantasy? Life not only began to imitate art, it actually surpassed it. You can’t make this stuff up!

Life’s ability to surprise, enrich, entertain, disrupt, disappoint, irritate, etc., more than art is an issue not only in show biz, but in real biz. In fact, IT industry executives have developed a nasty penchant for becoming the poster children for extraordinary malfeasance by the few, and as case studies of a new phenomenon, “Corporate Narcissism.” Academics have coined this to explain the feeling of entitlement and omnipotence CEOs feel justifies the massive gap created between their perks and those of the average Jane and Joe. An example is the lawyer for Global Crossing CEO Gary Winnick saying we should feel his client’s pain because he kept 70% of his stock options all the way into Chapter 11. He claims focusing on the $750 million Mr. Winnick took out of the company as he was driving it into the ground and destroying the present and future lives of his employees is unfair. How is it possible that Mr. Winnick is not part of Major League Baseball?

The true irony of what is taking place all over the social, religious, political and business landscapes is that we actually could use a bit more reality. Those who have broken our trust should not only do the time, but pay for the crime. They should also feel our pain.

I have refrained from promoting any of my consulting services in the eight years I’ve written this column. However, reality dictates a description of a new service I am offering to a select clientele. I call it Reality Evaluation at All Levels, or REAL.

At the core of REAL is my contention that in the past 20 years there has never been a bigger disconnect between what IT vendors are trying to sell and what their customers say they are willing to buy. Let’s face IT, “what we have here is a failure to communicate!”

How can this failure be addressed? With a simple two-day off-site meeting with any vendor’s chief executive officers, CXOs. What I will do, after a careful examination of a company’s products and business practices, is set up a series of scenarios where the CXOs will experience the way their company operates exactly the same way the company’s customers experience the company’s--sales people, technicians, accounts payable and receivable, call center agents, etc. Some might call this “Shock Therapy” or “Fear Factor.” I call it “Getting REAL!”

We keep being told that U.S. business is poised to burst out of the current doldrums because despite current challenges we are living through an historic increase in productivity that is setting the stage for robust growth. However, much of this “productivity” (defined as fewer people producing more with less) in all likelihood is setting the stage for massive customer disloyalty once the purse strings are loosened.

An irony of the Internet Age is that we have given customers the ability to experience us and our competitors as suppliers more often and more intimately. We even gave them the tools to beat everyone up on price. That is precisely what they did. This is why industry had to become more productive. As we come out of the doldrums, customers now have a tool for beating vendors up on the rest of “The Experience.” The rest of the experience would be “service” and “support,” the things that got “repurposed” first.

This is why getting the REAL experience is important. It enables CXOs to understand first hand the customer experience and be proactive about what it is going to take to build customer loyalty and trust before the rebound rather than closing the door after the horses have escaped.

I am reminded of a visit I and four other analysts had with now discredited former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio when he was head of AT&T Consumer Services. To Joe’s credit, after one of his infamous monologues about “not taking any prisoners” as his market share and margins dwindled, he asked each of us what our top five problems were with AT&T Consumer Services.

I told him I only had one. He was stunned. I told him my problem was that everyone who made decisions about my AT&T service at AT&T got their service for free from the company and never had to interact with the selling, ordering, provisioning, and billing people. They also probably had unlisted numbers so five different call centers handling a promo for the same service did not interrupt their dinner. All the other problems flowed from there. Joe said he’d look into it. Too bad he never did.

The point is, if the communications industry (and IT as a whole) is to rise like a phoenix from the ashes, the executives running the industry better get REAL. It is not enough to parachute in for an executive sales session with a fellow CXO who is equally out of touch. The instances of this being not enough can be seen every night on the news. That type of “relationship management” is table stakes in this brutally competitive world. If you want to know: why analysts think your chartware is nowhere, your numbers don’t add up, your sales people say nobody trusts them, and your customers believe your competitor offers a better capability X than you, even though they have yet to enter the capability X field, then you need to get REAL.

To paraphrase that old saying, you can’t possibly understand why my feet hurt until you’ve walked a mile in my shoes. It is time for a reality check. It is time to get REAL!

Peter Bernstein is President of Infonautics Consulting, Inc. He can be reached at pb111451@optonline.net.