Chaos

Very recently I had an in-person meeting at a client's premises. I try to avoid such meetings these days, for my sanity, but we'd scheduled it some time ago and I had no credible excuse for backing out so I showed up.

What happened next was eye-opening. The receptionist was new so she didn't know who I was. No biggy, but also she didn't know that the meeting was scheduled. She asked me to wait while she called my client's secretary, which I did.

Reception areas are what I call interface planes. They're the skin of the organization. In them you see the behind-the-scenes workings come in contact with the external world.

There were three more people waiting besides myself. One was on his phone talking to Head Office, from what I gathered. One was on her tablet and the third had zoned out completely and was admiring the artwork gracing the reception area.

While I waited I saw a couple of people I knew rush in, speak to the receptionist, nod to me and go wherever they had to go to. The driver of one of the execs also rushed in, saw me, said "hi" because we'd spoken in the past, then went to sign in and rush off somewhere.

The receptionist was having trouble reaching the secretary (I could see her trying) and was beginning to feel frustrated. While all this was happening the person sitting closest to me who'd been on his phone to Head Office stood up to inquire whether the opening for his meeting had finally happened (so, I guess, things were running late).

While the receptionist was dealing with him, trying to reach whoever he was supposed to meet, the lines on her desk kept ringing and those calls were going unanswered. And in the meantime she kept casting the odd glance my way and giving me a brief apologetic smile (my meeting had been scheduled months in advance and it was with the CEO).

She dealt with the guy in front of her (kinda, because he just came back and sat down near me) and, because she couldn't reach the CEO's secretary (who should have been at her desk) she had to ask one of the two security people to see if they could track her down (and he was snippy to her, though he complied).

It would be another twenty minutes before the CEO's secretary came down to me in person, apologizing about the delay and explaining she'd been away from her desk on an errand and she would take me in to see the CEO.

The point of all this is that when things spin out of control it is rarely a one-off or the fault of a single person. Chaos within the internal machinery of an organization, however well-hidden it may appear to be, will surface in its external facets: Customer service problems, delivery delays, quality control issues, unforced errors and inexcusable inefficiencies.

This is friction that's caused by miscommunication between departments and interrelationship issues among employees. Lack of trust and a lack of common goals are often to blame.

When this happens companies find themselves struggling. They lose marketshare. They have to fight harder (and spend more) to acquire new customers. They fail to keep some of the customers they already have. And, as I often find, they disagree, deeply among themselves on what's to blame and how to fix it.

Alignment between the inside of a company and what happens at its interfaces with the external world takes values, conviction, focus, vision, consistency and persistence. Company heads would much rather talk about marketing strategies, brand initiatives, expansion campaigns and customer acquisition plans. For sure, these sound grander and more exciting. But really none of them would be needed if the problems I've already mentioned had been solved.

It's that simple really.