Tuning the brain: piano tuning causes structural changes to the brain

New research undertaken at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London and Newcastle University suggests that working as a piano tuner may lead to structural changes in the memory and navigation areas of the brain and that the degree of change correlates with the number of years the tuner has of doing the job.

The researchers found that changes occur in the nerve cells where information processing happens and in the connections between brain cells and that the changes weren't related to age of musical expertise but were related to the amount of time doing tuning.

Previous research has also illustrated structural changes related to musical training and also to the navigational expertise of taxi drivers.

I guess the research confirms what we already knew.  When we were young our mothers told us that 'practice makes perfect' i.e. the more we do it the better we become at it.  I never imagined though that part of the process may actually be structural changes to the brain?

It does perhaps point towards an explanation about why it's so hard for some leaders / managers to 'get' customer and employee engagement - lack of practice (and focus) means they don't improve.

And it also explains why my golf is so poor!

LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/timhadfield
Twitter: @accordengage
Telephone: (0044) 07906650019 

When even good intentions backfire...

So LOCOG (the organisers of the Paralympic Games) have been accused of discriminating against disabled fans by making them use a premium rate 'helpline' to order tickets.  On the LOCOG website, disabled people are told: "If you require a wheelchair space, you will be able to purchase one, subject to availability, by calling 0844 847 2012."  Able bodied customers don't need to contact the helpline and can instead buy tickets online from the website.

Disabled customers are understandably upset at being forced to pay 41p per minute to make these calls and a Facebook protest group has already attracted many supporters.

So have LOCOG discriminated against disabled customers by preventing them from using the same process and by focing them to pay the additional telephone charges?  On the face of it they have - although I suspect it's unintentional and accidental rather than by design.  In truth my guess is that they decided it would be a good idea to do something to provide them with additional facilities, to do something specifically to help them.  It would seem that the problem is twofold:

1. The implementation of the idea has been poor and;
2. The quality checking of implementation failed to identify the issue.

Could it have been prevented?  Undoubtedly.

And what's the lesson to be learned?  Involve customers.  Had part of the process been to involve some disabled customers in the design and implementation of the idea I don't think we would have been reading criticism of LOCOG in newspapers over the weekend.

LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/timhadfield
Twitter: @accordengage
Telephone: (0044) 07906650019

The legacy of London 2012? What the games showed us about how businesses can reconnect with their people and customers.

So the Olympics are over for another four years and apparently people in Britain, having been enthralled and absorbed during the event, are now eagerly anticipating the Paralympics.  That’s perhaps surprising because there was huge debate beforehand about whether the £9.3bn cost was a worthwhile investment.  Post the games the consensus seems to be that it generated a sense of pride and confidence that made it all worthwhile.  So why the change of view?

Undoubtedly the success of Team GB athletes contributed.  Each medal won added to the celebration and went some way towards changing a national belief that we’re not very good at sport (fuelled no doubt by regular failures at our national sport – football).  But it was more than that.

There was great enthusiasm for superb performances by athletes of any nationality.  The public recognise the sacrifices they make to be able to compete at all at this level.  And there was an appreciation that the vast majority (excepting the disqualified Badminton players and a few drugs cheats) competed hard but fairly, within the rules of the game.  Winners and losers were gracious and complimentary of the efforts of others.  And they all recognised and valued the support they received from the public that came to watch them and support their efforts.

I believe these were the real reasons the games were so successful.  The behaviour of the athletes themselves was what made the difference and resonated so deeply with the British public who responded in kind.  All of this was very different to what we’ve come to expect in recent times.  These behaviours have been noticeable by their absence, replaced instead by a willingness to bend and break the rules in pursuit of self-interest.  In sport, following the last Rugby World Cup, Graham Henry, coach of New Zealand who won the tournament labelled England as “world champions of wasting talent” as their campaign faltered amidst accusations of a culture of self interest and a group of players more motivated by money than focused on performing at their best.  The same accusation is often levelled at multi-millionaire Premier League footballers.  They’ve been variously described as arrogant, aloof and detached from the real world.  Paulo Di-Canio, famous ex-player and now manager of Swindon Town recently talked about “fantastically talented players whose desire goes down when they get a big car and a gold and diamond watch”.  And it’s not just the footballers – for the owners of many clubs it all seems to be about money.  The leading clubs have it and do all they can to prevent poorer clubs getting a bigger share, and smaller clubs chase it – sometimes putting their entire existence at risk.   

But perhaps sport simply reflects the society in which it exists.  The last few years seems to have been characterised by scandals resulting from dubious behaviours by those involved.  Most recently it’s been Barclays Bank and the fixing of LIBOR but there are numerous others: MP’s expenses (and prior to that cash for questions), NoTW ‘phone hacking, Financial Services mis-selling of PPI and other products.  Examples aren’t difficult to find. 

Moral standards have been declining for some time.  As a Society we’ve slowly allowed our expectations (of ourselves and others) to fall and the result is that we’ve lost the clarity that previous generations had about what’s acceptable and unacceptable.  We’ve created an environment in which self-interest thrives without appropriate checks to prevent excesses.  And so some push the boundary beyond what many feel is acceptable.   

Returning to the Olympics, my view is that the games were so popular specifically because the athletes behaviour was a reminder of how society used to be, and how we’d like it to be again.  And this surely provides a huge opportunity for companies in the UK to adopt these values and behaviours and make them part of their culture and their brand.  The window of opportunity may be limited, but companies who are able to do just that may be the success stories of the next decade.....

 LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/timhadfield
Twitter: @accordengage
Telephone: 0044 07906650019

10 Questions to identify how important customers are in your company

Apple, Amazon, USAA, Virgin Atlantic, Zappos, Southwest Airlines, John Lewis,  – great companies whose success is built on how they have established enduring, mutually beneficial relationships with customers.

How close is your company to their standards?  Answering a few simple questions might provide some clues:

1.       What gets talked about most in your company?  Is it customers?  Or is it sales, profit, costs or something else?

2.        Is your company primarily focused on selling to new customers or deepening and extend the relationship with existing ones?

3.       Does the governance process include impact on customers as one of its key assessment criteria?  When decisions are communicated internally is it explained how impact on customers was taken into consideration?

4.       Ignoring the reasons why policies and procedures have evolved as they have, if you were starting afresh and wanted to make it easy for customers to do business with you, would you design them differently?

5.       Are your policies and procedures designed to block / prevent the activity of the small number of dishonest customers or the majority who don’t?

6.       Are customers involved in the design of policies and / or procedures before they are launched?

7.       Does your company constantly seek customer feedback?  And then does it receive it graciously and use it to change the way things get done?

8.       If a customer complains, how are they viewed?  What is the primary aim of the complaints process?

9.       If a business area is a reflection of its leader(s), do leaders in your company think they ‘know better’ than customers?

10.   If you were a customer or your company (and if you’re not, why not?), would you trust and want to do business with it?

How does your company stack up?

LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/timhadfield
Twitter: @accordengage
Telephone: 0044 07906650019

5 ways employees unconsciously communicate shortcomings in customer focus

What do your employees unwittingly communicate to to customers about how important they are to the company?
Despite the focus on customer service, customer experience and more recently customer engagement, the following examples of employee behaviours are still common - and of course impact how customers feel about the company.

It's Too Much Trouble

I was out shopping for chocolate at the weekend. Needing gifts for 27 people I went into an extremely well known chocolate retailer and explained what I wanted. I expected to be treated as a valuable customer - instead what she assistant said was "I don't know whether I can let you have that many. I'll have to go and look in the stockroom to check we have enough." And then she disappeared behind the scenes, returning a few minutes later with all that I'd asked for. We completed the transaction, valued at £150, but not once did she thank me for my business.
Reading between the lines, what I heard in her words was: "Oh no, now I've got to go and look in the stockroom. How inconvenient, why couldn't you just have a box or two like every other customer."

I suspect that's not what Head Office would have wanted her to communicate.

The Task I'm Doing is More Important Than You

In the village where I live there are two reasonably sized convenience stores. In one, whenever the queue at the tills goes down the assistants emerge from behind the counter to restock shelves, tidy, sweep and keep the store well presented. But when the queue grows again they're much slower to jump back on the tills and often the remaining assistant has to ask for help two or three times before it happens - whilst customers look on.

When they do it what it says to me is: "Tasks around the shop are more important than you - so wait until we're ready to serve you."

Excuse Me, I'm Talking!

The folks who work in the other store in my village seem to really get on well. They never stop talking. No really, they just don't stop! What they watched on TV last night, where they're going tonight, what they think about the weather. Anything goes really, just as long as customers don't interrupt their conversation. I'm regularly served around their conversation without a word being said to me, and sometimes even with no eye contact.

What I imagine them saying behind the scenes about customers: "We enjoy working here. It'd be even better if we weren't always being interrupted by customers."

It's Not My Job


I rang my mortgage provider last week. I was expecting to get straight through to the Contact Centre but evidently got an incorrect extension and spoke to someone in some sort of support area. After he'd asked me what number I rang he said that I'd come through to an incorrect number and that he couldn't help. He then asked me to call a different number. When I asked him to get someone to ring me instead he reluctantly took my number and said he'd pass it on.

What he really meant was: "My job's not to serve customers. Don't you realise I have more important things to do?"

Can You Call Back?

I recently called a company to check on the progress of an order I'd placed for some printing. The guy I'd spoken to when making the order was great, and so I asked specifically for him again. His colleague asked me to call back later as he was out at lunch. Instead I asked if he could take a message and get him to call me back. Given his initial silence, followed by a further long wait whilst he got a pen and paper he said he'd try to get him to call me that afternoon. It didn't fill me with confidence!

What I understood from his reaction was: "We don't take messages and promise to call customers back. It's better not to promise it because it probably won't happen."

Leaders in every business would I'm sure say that these are isolated incidents, and down to just one or two rogue employees. But do they really know whether that's the case? Are they measuring the experience customers get? And whether they are or not, what does it say about the emphasis on customers in the company when these things are allowed to go unchecked?

LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/timhadfield
Twitter: @accordengage
Telephone: 0044 07906650019