Episode #259: THINKING WE DID WHAT WE NEVER DID

#3bti5m #3biztips 
How many well-intentioned thoughts never convert into actions? Better yet, how many times do we convince ourselves that we actually executed these actions?

After 35 years of closely observing various business situations, it appears the divide between thoughts and actions is growing wider. Who really knows the reasons why, but the trend is crystallizing right before my eyes. Many times, we think we said hello, but we didn’t. Or, we think we volleyed a reciprocating question, but it never came out of our mouth. Or, we think we
sent that email, when in fact we did not! This trend seems to be affecting our professional and personal lives. As the Experience Economy puts more, and more weight on impressions from the transactional micro-journeys, the necessity to parlay thoughts into actions grows stronger for each professional operator. Join us for an “out of the box” episode that will stimulate some thinking, and actions.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

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Alright , Mr . Simple Biz Sky , let's guide to show.

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Hello everybody, and thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Simple Biz 360 Podcast. My name is Jeff Mason, and I'm your host for episode 2 59. We've got one more to go after this, and we just want to take this time to say thank you to all of you who have stayed with the show, who have , uh, those of you who have popped in and out, listened to us on occasion for all the different downloads on all the different platforms. I think we haven't knocked it out of the park over five years, but we've amassed around 85,000 downloads. I think somewhere 85 to 90,000 if you count all the , the different platforms. So we're very, very appreciative of all that. And, you know, everything we've tried to do has been grounded in, and our intentions are to just pass information to you, pay it forward, leave it on your doorstep, and you do what you want with it. We're not saying we're the greatest things since sliced bread. We're not saying we have all the answers. In fact, we don't say we have many answers. We just say we are taking information we've learned from third party , uh, people and then combining it with situational observation. Being in the workforce for 35 years, having a keen eye open to observation along the way, knowing we were gonna write a book 30 years later. So, you know, it's been able to help me amass the material and the perspectives that I've been able to bottle up. So we started with the book, and you can still book, you can get on our podcast or our website, simple Biz three sixty.com . Uh, it's on Amazon in Kindle audiobook format and paperback. Uh, you can order right through our website. I'll take you right to the Amazon site. It's got 255 timeless tools and it , and it's our contribution to saying, Hey, we've been looking at this thing for, for 30 years and we've been looking at what we really want to call the experience side of the fence. So we started by looking at bad experiences and we've tried to learn along the way what makes a good customer experiences. So today's kind of a funny episode. You know, I'm trying to pass on some stuff as I, as I finished the last , uh, couple shows and today, you know, I've really bumped into this in the last few years and it really just hit, I should say, it hit me in the last few years. And what I've noticed over the decades, and I haven't been able to put a finger on it, but now I was able to put a finger on it, is that we are such a busy business community, right? We are so occupied with all kinds of life and work intersections. Um, we've got so much going on. The kid's gotta be everywhere. You've got meetings, you've got deadlines, you've got all these different social media platforms and all this juggling of all that stuff. It ends up interfering with what eventually comes out of our mouth. And this is what I mean, I have come to realize that myself included, we tend to think we've said something and we've only thought about it. We've never said it yet. We live in this world where we actually think and we tell ourselves, yeah, I I told the person that I said that and , and what I mean by that, and it's really profound. But you know what I mean by that is, and , and I've, I've, I've really watched this in the last couple years and it's amazing. We think about saying something, but we don't actually say it, right? We think about sending an email, but we don't actually send an email. We think about passing on , uh, a customer compliment , uh, but it's in our head. It never comes out of our mouths. And we think we told the person the compliment . We , in fact, we're convinced of it. In many cases, we think about updating the customer, but we don't actually update the customer, right? So, I mean, I've watched this and it's like, and when you think about just simple things like greetings, right? I've watched greetings. I love watching this because it's one of , uh, it's really become , um, more or less a , uh, sore spot in especially the American lexicon. We are not saying, hello, Jeff. Hello Matt. Hello Aiden . Uh, like we used to, we're saying, Hey, we're the world of, hey , 50% of the hellos are, hey . And you know what? 25% of those intended Hayes never come out. And so you've got this interaction happening, and no one's ever said hello to everybody each other. And it's , it's crazy. I've actually watched, I've said to myself, you know what? I've said hello to this person in the office every day for six years. Now, I'm not gonna say anything just to see if that person ever says hello to me. And they don't. And a year later, I feel bad and I'm like, okay, I watched that for a year, so now I'm gonna start again. They never come to me and said, Hey, how come for a year you didn't say hello to me, but now all of a sudden you're starting. Well, I was actually doing an experiment to see how, if you would say hello, but you didn't. So, but it's crazy. I mean, you , when you start doing these things, you realize people , uh, we , we do fail at greetings. Now, in some of those cases, what I have come to realize is the people who are thinking the greeting actually think that they said it. And so now think of the overflow. Think of the spillover to our spouses, to our partners, to our kids, to our neighbors, to our customers, right? So why is this? 'cause I mean, we're just so consumed with the busyness of life and business that I, you know, we just miss it. So think about it, guys. Think about it. Make sure that if you're thinking hello, you say hello. If you're thinking thank you, you say thank you. If you're thinking, how are you as a question? Open-ended question to start conversation. Ask it. I mean, don't think you asked it. The store looks great. You know, if it looks great and you're thinking it , tell 'em, open up your mouth and say it. You know, the service was awesome. Tell the waiter or waitress that your service was awesome. Let 'em know. Don't just, you think about it in your own mind and certainly, and certainly say hello Jim. Hello Nancy. Instead of treating them like a big, you know , pile of hay, right? They're not hay. So the now take this and then inject it into this experience economy, what we've been talking about for five years now, what we've recently talked about is these little micro journeys that exist within a transaction. Again, I go back to the restaurant, the sit down restaurant. We identified 39 micro journeys . Why do I keep bringing a restaurant up? Because it's a common denominator for most of us, if not all of us, most of us listening to this, if not all have been to restaurants, been to restaurants many times, I can say I speak from authority. 'cause in my lifetime as a 66-year-old man, I've been, I've sat down for, because of business travels, well, well over 2000 times. So I've been able to watch this process , um, take place. So, you know , uh, think about the , the fact that each one of these little steps, we are getting measured in the form of like a mini review from the customer , uh, with that micro journey . So when we miss something, we're thinking in our head and we don't articulate it. We're in some cases creating a bad experience, a bad perception, a bad feeling in the customer. 'cause they're like, wow, Jeff never said hello. On my mind, I thought about it, but it never came out. No, it doesn't. It just, I'm telling you, I I've watched family members say, hey to me for years and never ask me How are you doing? I watched one take place for about three and a half , almost four years. And finally I heard, how are you doing? I've been listening. Trust me, I've been listening. It doesn't come out. Now, I'm sure that person, if you ask them to , oh , are you kidding me? I thought that every time I saw 'em , I always thought, how are you doing? Well, it never came out. Are you sure about that? I know I said it. No, you didn't. So again, this is a little zone that we've got ourselves caught in, and it happens all over. So we need to be intentional about saying the simple things instead of just thinking those simple things, right? It's executing on these simple things, right? What , what's the podcast called? What's the book called? Simple Biz 360. We make things harder than they need to be. I, I believed that when I named my book. I believed that when I named my company. I believed that when I put this podcast together, we overcomplicate things and the , the true golden threads lie in the simple, it's the simplistic where you find the gold. And if we're thinking these simple things, hello. Hi, how are you doing? Way the store looks great, and we're not saying them. We are missing on the simple and the simplicity of the business process. And whether we know it or not, we are scoring lower points in the mind's eye of the customer. That's the , the how the rhythm of this experience economy works, right? So, so again, emotions get kind of this, this whole thing evolves into customer emotions and feelings and thoughts and then experiences. And oh my gosh, I had all these expectations in my mind at least I thought the person would be saying hello to me every time we got together. And they're not even saying hello. I mean, oh my gosh, I just don't like the way they handle me. And they did a nice job. I mean, I liked the final product, but you know, I just, I didn't enjoy working with these guys. They weren't polite. So again, you know, it's just something that I've really , uh, noticed , uh, very, very , um, very, very evidently in the last couple years. But it was leading up to it and I finally was able to put my finger on it. So I, I just say guys, anybody listening out there, anybody viewing out there? What about your spouses? What about your kids? What about your grandkids? What about your neighbors? What about your coworkers , teammates, associates and customers? Think about 'em. Think about how you have stuff in your head and it's good stuff you wanna say. Don't just say it in your head. Say it outta your mouth and to the customer. So we're gonna end today and , uh, we're gonna come back next week with our last final show. But today we're gonna end with a lost in the shuffle tune, which we do every week since about week seven. We're gonna end today with Dave Mason wrote this tune. It's with the band traffic in 1968. We've done the Joe Cocker version of it. Um, we did it , um, certainly a live version that Joe Cocker did of this, but this is Traffic Doing it . My second favorite band here. They are doing Feeling All right, 1968, written by Dave Mason, no relative of mine, trust me. But , uh, certainly love his music and actually lost five teeth , uh, believe in one of his concerts in a car accident one night. That's another podcast. Any rate , guys, thank you so much. We will see you in 168 hours .