How to Use Soft Skills in Business

[Applause]
[Music]
one of my favorite books of yours I well
it's hard to choose thank you
lynchpin so you're sort of alluding to
becoming Lynch but you talked in that
book about you know we're all geniuses
and we're also all not going to be the
best
whether it's Michael Jordan at
basketball or whatever but that we can
be the best at what we do in our spot
can you can you elaborate on that a
little bit because I think it's a very
important topic it's still relevant
right now the scientific management a
book written around the time of Henry
Ford created this huge mythology of
engineered industrial world where things
everything is like sports there's a
winner there's a loser there's a scorer
there's efficiency there's RBIs it's all
a status thing and so we have seduced
ourselves into thinking that the doctor
who's the best is the one who did the
best on the test that the restaurant
that's the best it's the one that has
the most Michelin stars and on and on
and on and that's a convenient narrative
for industrialists and bosses because if
if you're measuring something and your
employees believe that that thing is the
most important thing it's gonna go up
right but in fact almost everybody whose
works in the privileged world isn't just
a cheap human machine right that as soon
as it could be done by a machine we
bought a machine to do it that what's
left is all this soft stuff that's the
core stuff so soft skills aren't an
afterthought soft skills and what we pay
for soft skills are the only difference
between a nine dollar restaurant and a
$90 restaurant the only difference
between a two thousand dollar surgery
and a 20,000 dollar surgery and soft
skills get short shrift because we say
well ha doesn't really matter it's all
that matters so let's let's list off
some of these soft skills that you're
talking about that are become you know I
think this model is completely flipped
on its ear right flipped on its head
so what used to be important or value
before as a college degree and now it's
become my skills let's list a few
that you think are critical at the top
maybe top five top ten well so let me do
a short riff from my late friend Zig
Ziglar before the internet he said what
if there was this magical computer that
knew everything about everyone and their
work like LinkedIn and what if you could
say to that person that computer
everything that you're looking for in a
boss or an employee or spouse or best
friend what would you want and the list
he used to do it in front of thousands
of people I've watched him do it several
times the list is always the same I'd
want someone who's honest and loyal and
hardworking I'd want someone who's
perceptive and has a sense of humor and
has emotional intelligence and is
flexible and cares I mean all of us can
come up with a list that's the person we
want to be married to that's the person
we want to hire that's the person we
want to work for right and it turns out
those aren't gifts we're not born with
them right we're born unable to really
see talk lying in a pool of our own poop
that's the way we're born so somewhere
along the way we learned them and they
are attitudes but the cool thing about
attitudes is their skills we can learn
to be more honest we can learn to have a
better sense of humor we can learn to be
more flexible their skills their skills
as important as using a slide rule or a
calculator as skills as important as
being able to draft if you're an
architect so why don't we learn those
skills and if we can learn them on
purpose we'll get better and so when
people ask about the author MBA the
project that I'm spending the most time
on what do you teach like give me the
checklist show me the syllabus and my
answer is if content was your problem
you would have solved it already because
just go to library just search on
youtube the answer is there and that's
why I reject all of those videos that
say three simple tips to do blank
because that's the linkbait thing to go
around my industry is there's some
shortcut that if you just knew this one
simple trick not only will you have a
flat belly you'll be rich right yeah and
no it's this is the long difficult
never-ending path to slow
but surely to work their matters that's
what we're talking about well who would
have it any other way how do you teach
integrity how do you teach other than
just practice how do you teach that well
number one other than just practice
that's like what's fish and chips other
than fish and potatoes other than just
practice is an important thing okay
right that's fair but it's not a value
until it cost you something that the
definition of values are things that are
hard to do in the breach the only way
you develop them is by being in the
breach the only way you know that you
actually care about these things
is that when you're in a situation when
it's hard to do them you do them anyway
yeah or maybe you experience them on the
other side and then you have empathy
right you want to change that cycle yeah
right
let's shift gears a little bit see if
he'll go with me down this path you're
pretty private guy and and yet you're
very public so I would say maybe you're
purposely public and you know purposely
guarded but can you share with us or
just me and you something about yourself
that is not commonly known
well it should be commonly known that I
wrestle with fear as often as anybody
but it probably isn't commonly known
that we would like to believe that
people who are over there our fearless
right that the person who did that and
built this and but I got to tell you I
don't know never met Tim Cook
but I'm guessing he's as afraid as you
and me all the time that that can be
used as fuel and you can learn to dance
with it
or it can paralyze us and I think I
could figure out how to have a day or a
week with not a lot of fear in it and I
would hate that because I wouldn't be
productive and I wouldn't be doing this
work that I care about but as long as
I'm doing my work
I am wrestling
every day with a narrative that I don't
want to have show up that will not go
away and the big breakthrough for me was
acknowledging I can't make it go away
and as soon as you say welcome good to
have you here
you're my compass the edges get a lot
softer it becomes easier to work with so
it's your indicator light
it's your signal right when you're
feeling like this is terrible you know
it's a great idea I know it has a shot
at being a great idea
it also has a shot at being a disaster
well let's talk about that to talk about
you told me once to the person who fails
the most wins we don't need to repeat
that lesson as great as it was but talk
to us about talk to me about failing
fast and and maybe let's put it in the
context of if I manage people right
right because usually there's an
intolerance for this like you know how
could you you just wasted all this money
in my world it's a video so we usually
get a creative brief and you know it's
very detailed and the client tells us
what they want and it's a mixture of
Arts and Science where you know we're
kind of commissioned to paint a piece
and there's some latitude but like what
if you're that manager how can you
instill a culture of friendly failure
and then how to how to fix that how to
make it most efficient
so Brian can I give you some feedback
yeah the word feedbacks horrible the
word advice is a lot better okay then if
we can go to somebody and say I'm
wrestling with this you have any advice
for me we actually want them to say
something whereas if we go to someone
and say I made this video you have any
feedback what we really want them to say
is it's great right
so this lien management thing this lien
entrepreneurship thing has shown up and
everyone's all excited about it because
it seems like such a great shortcut
fewer meetings faster moving lean is
just a four-letter euphemism for a five
letter word and the word is wrong that
what it means to be lean is to be wrong
wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong and
wrong way faster than everybody else is
polishing and if you can be wrong faster
and faster and faster you will get write
faster than the competition so what it
means to be lean is to lower the water
in the stream so you can see the rocks
and what it means to be a bureaucracy is
to raise the water in the stream so it
doesn't matter if there's rocks and the
problem with raising the water is you
waste a lot of water and sooner or later
rocks gonna hit the boat whereas if you
can lower it have a just one piece in
the just-in-time system and now it
doesn't fit and you know where the
problem is suddenly your whole system
gets better because you exposed things
that were wrong we only can get there
with enrollment we can only get there if
we agree to talk to each other honestly
and respectfully and give each other
advice on what's wrong and what's right
if you don't have that enrollment it's
an attack because we were taught to be
perfect so no one wants to go to work
and hear that they're not perfect but if
you look at you know an institution like
Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality
Group Union Square cafe Shake Shack on
and on the entire institution was built
by Danny over 25 years on the idea of
hospitality and learning from being
wrong figuring out yet another way not
to open a bottle of wine yet another way
not to serve scallops if you don't do
that then you're frozen and the people
who are frozen are stressed all the time
because they know they're not perfect
but they're pretending they're perfect
and I like the studio lifestyle a lot
better that's a great segue into
customer service and Dany is a great
example of that
I love Shake Shack myself what what does
good customer service look like or sound
like and maybe let's put it in the
context of the company that is heavily
reliant on this you know phone feedback
you know you've been on hold probably
for 64 hours at a time right um if
you're in a business where you have
phone customer service or some sort of
interaction give us some classic do's
and don'ts how would you improve the
system okay so first let's divide
customer service into three categories
category number one the best customer
service in many situations is customer
service you do not need to do because
you designed a product that doesn't
break
you put shower handles in that make
sense you have a promise kept yeah that
should be seen as a worthwhile thing to
invest in second sort of customer
service involves proactively engaging
with people before trouble hits actually
serving customers because if the
customer wants to give you the benefit
of the doubt things will go much better
and we see this for example in
malpractice suits for doctors that the
doctors who get sued aren't the doctors
who make the most mistakes there's a
doctors who are jerks and so they forgot
to do proactive customer service and
care as a human and then there's the
third kind of customer service which is
how quickly can we get this interaction
either over with because it's costing
both of us or
how beautifully can we recover it so
they will trust us so I gave a talk at
IBM two months ago to there
watson AI group and talked about how a
AI is going to completely transform that
other form of how do we make it cheaper
customer service and I don't want to
repeat the whole talk here but the short
version is first we outsource to other
countries but really soon the computer
is going to do customer service not
after you call in but in the moment it
will no wait this guy keeps pressing
button number seven but he should be
pressing button number nine I'll just
tell him press button number nine that's
way better than me being frustrated for
45 minutes than calling on the phone and
bla bla bla bla bla that our phone is
now smart enough and this happened to me
eight weeks ago there are three airports
near where I live my flight got canceled
the airline texted me at 3 o'clock in
the morning saying your 6 a.m. flight is
canceled and that doesn't help me one
bit
and my computer and thus the airline
know that I have a speech and they know
what time is speeches and they know
where it's being held and they know when
all the other flights are but what I had
to do when I woke up was scramble figure
out there was another flight from a
different Airport that left four minutes
after my flight switched to that flight
do all these that a computer should do
it should have just sent me a note at
5:55 saying we know you thought you were
leaving from Newark but you're actually
now leaving from LaGuardia because we
knew all the things that are going on in
your life and with your permission in
advance we fixed it don't worry
right that's customer service so that's
going to happen and so if your business
is in the business of faster and cheaper
you're in trouble because once Watson or
someone figures it out they're just
going to do it so what Tony Shea did it
Zappos it's the opposite direction he
paid people extra to stay on the phone
the record I believe is 7 hours and 45
minutes for one call one person one call
happily talking for 7 hours and 45
minutes
probably not about shoes but if you are
rewarding people to stay on the phone
you're gonna create the other kind of
customer service which is I like these
people that's expensive and a bargain
and the reason it's a bargain is that
the brand value that come
from fixing a broken relationship is
priceless it lasts way longer than the
value of actually doing it right door