Recently our CEO responded to some policy concerns by asking us to tell him what policies we thought were stupid, so they could be fixed, or discontinued completely. He called for a “policy purge” and that very day the first policy was killed. And our CEO is NOT out of touch with employees. He sits 40 feet from me in a cubicle just like I do. With the right arc I can nearly hit him with a Nerf dart. Any employee can stop by and chat with him anytime they see him.

One of the key things I have noticed by watching Undercover Boss (and being in business a long time) is just how much valuable information is being lost between the front line troops and middle and upper management. Often the middle managers get the blame for this, but at the end of the day, the CEO runs the company, and has to set the standard for the culture. Open, or closed? Inclusive, or exclusive? Executive restrooms, or does the CEO piss in the same pot I piss in?

Undercover Boss has covered some very arrogant and extravagant CEO’s – and some very down to earth ones. The down to earth ones almost always know their businesses better.  They may not understand every employee’s personal issues, but they get the business. The arrogant ones are out of touch – probably because they are out of reach.

Being disconnected from employees is just as dangerous as being disconnected from your customers. Listening and learning seem to be lost arts in many companies.

As companies become more global and the Internet makes the world more real-time it is more and more difficult for companies to communicate internally. And at the same time we are adding in the complexity of a nearly real-time external communication channel with customers.

This is a LOT for companies to digest and adjust to. Many won’t. But those that invest  in new communication channels will probably get to know their employees and customers much better than those who do not.

Finding the right tool to talk to a lot of customers and/or employees is hard. You may pick the wrong platform, expect people to show up where they do not show up – but you must not give up.

The new world is about rapid communication – and customers and employees both expect it. How they want it delivered is something we are all still figuring out.

Maybe Ray Ozzie knows? He has been as close to getting it right as anyone. And it appears he is still working on it.

I am always amazed by the people that tell me I am “stupid” for sharing my home phone number on Twitter, FaceBook, etc. My job is customer experience – I NEED customers to find me for me to win. What is crazy about making it easy for them? My home number is 210-370-3861. My cell is 210-845-4440. Anyone could find that by digging into a simple Google search.

I am not afraid of my customers – especially the unhappy ones – those are the ones I can learn the most from, and drive the best change based on their feedback. Of course, I also love talking to customers that think we are amazing. I don’t discriminate between the two though – I need to hear from both sides to see where we really are at – to understand where we need to apply resources.

I love customers – I love working for a company that appreciates how much I care for my relationships with customers. I love that I am allowed to work when my customers expect me to work, and not on a schedule mandated by 9-5ers.

I’ve been a customer of +Rackspace Hosting for more than ten years, in one form or another. And an employee for 3 1/2 years. I prefer being an employee that has been a customer, and can honestly understand things from a customer perspective.

And I trust us to do the right thing by customers. So why would I shy away from them?

I currently run the Social Media team at +Rackspace Hosting and my team is all engineers – people that can actually drive change within the company.

I need customers like Lindsey Lohan appears to need court dates. Like Tom Cruise needs a sofa to jump on.

If you are in customer support, or Social Media, and you are evading and avoiding your customers – I feel sorry for you. I WANT to know my customers. I want them to know how to reach me.

rob@rackspace.com
@kr8tr
rlagesse on Skype
rob@lagesse.org on GTALK

I had two friends next to me. guiding me.  I was riding a Honda 440 Super Sport – a bike I loved.

So why was I riding with a blindfold on?

The easy answer is that I was young and stupid.  The more complex answer is that I did not know where I was going, so I did not care what direction I took. I just felt I needed to head somewhere – so I did.  With the added burden of a blindfold.

I made it the mile.

It made me smile.

In the 25 years since then I realize that was a very easy mile.  I had no fear then.  I had little responsibility then.  I had no voice or audience then. Nobody counted on me.  I was as free as a human could be.  I was free to risk it all – in any fashion I chose.

It was an easy mile back then because I had nothing to lose.  Nobody depended on me.  I did not have two kids in college.  The times, my friend, they have changed.

As I matured, people started to depend on me – so I grew up – a little. Now I have two kids in college, customers that I love, employees that depend on me.  Life is more complex.

I don’t walk 5 feet without having my eyes open the entire time now.  I have grown up. I owe people stuff (more valuable than money).  I need to live a while to pay it back.

I am not risk adverse now – I am just a lot smarter – I see more, listen to more – find ways to help more. Without risking everything. I am looking for ways to invest instead of ways to risk. And I don’t mean investing with money – I mean investing with, “Dude, I have been there an done that – don’t do that”.  Advice.  Mentoring.  Friendship.

Taking risks without risking everything is what people my age should be doing right now – investing where they can – in a business, in family – in crazy perhaps.

Dying with money in the bank seems like total fail to me.

My kids are in college – and will graduate without debt.  Why should I not gamble on other people’s kids at this point?

Why would I not gamble on people at this point?  I am where I am because of people.

So I will be investing in young people – a wide variety of young people. Any class, any space, any race, any IQ, any that even tell me “fuck you”.

Look out kids – I got an agenda.  And you are it.

They have stuff to sell, and they want me to buy.  We all need to make a living.

I’m not focused on making money from Social Media – I am focused on saving money WITH Social media.

Every customer we help in near real time is a customer that that is exposed to Fanatical Support® – often for the first time.

And that support is important.  It is timely.  It is genuine – it is driven by an engineer with a desire to help a customer win.

Near real time support adds a lot of value because it both maintains your brand reputation and reinforces your core commitment to customers – that you are a partner, not just a vendor.  That you win and lose together.  That they are not just a number.

So we focus a lot on how Social Media can help us help customers win. That is our strategy.  Please steal it – emulate it – make all my experiences with brands better by making them more engaged with me.

But put real people behind those accounts and hashtags – people that are empowered to make a difference, and people that really give a damn.

That isn’t Marketing.

That is Social Media as a Service.

I think there is a huge untapped Market that we just are not thinking about.

Because they are not like us.

I know there are millions of posts like this on the Internet. But this is the only one of them that is my post. About the things I have learned that I think are really important.

And just to prove how much of a screw up I was when I was younger – I owned an Alfa Romeo before I owned a house.  I owned a MG MGA convertible before I had money in the bank.

I owned two houses once and could not afford either one of them.

I won custody of my kids when they were 10 and 12 and learned a lot about what is important.

Dying poor is not a bad plan.  Living poor is.

I will leave my kids with college educations, and a lot more advantages than I had when I was their age.  I doubt I leave them much money though.  Today I can afford the stuff I wasted money on 25 years ago.

Looking for another Alfo Romeo.  One I can buy without feeling guilty about it.

And that is the difference between where I should have been spending money 25 years ago, and where I *can* spend it today.

Today is my payoff for getting my shit together ten years ago.

If you are under 50, have credit card debt, don’t have money in the bank and only own toys – you need to reset everything.

But stuff.  Stuff you can pay for.

Seems easy.  Takes a huge comittment.

Rob

I manage Social Media.  But I am just a customer care guy that knows Social Media tools.

That does not make me a “Social Media Maven/Expert/Guru, etc” – it makes me customer guy with more tools than I had a decade ago.  Simple.

• It’s About Transparency. It’s about not lying to your customers, and thinking that a good Twitter apology will suffice when you’re caught. It won’t, and you’ll lose.
• It’s About Relevance. It’s not about tweeting every single time your company offers 10% off on a thingamabob. It’s about finding out where your customers actually are, and going after them there.
• Finally, it’s about knowing your customer, and making sure your customer thinks of you first.

The post I reference – and it is good reading.

I am very pleased to report that Rackspace has no “Social Media Experts”.  We have Rackers that care for customers and know how to use various tools. We are not, and will never become the tools.

I sent the author of that post an email and soon found myself developing a great relationship with the author – Reed Caldwell, the CEO of ServInt. Yes, some could say we compete – we are in the same business – but there is a LOT of business in this space, and there are many ways to differentiate yourself so you serve different segments.  ServInt and Rackspace have some overlap. Not a lot. Not enough that I feel either of us sees the other as “the enemy”. In fact, we’ve become online friends. Eventually we will meet in person, and I believe we will become better friends.

Today I tip my hat to Amazon Web Services – much as Reed tipped his hat to us years ago. We don’t “win more” when our competitors struggle. We “win more” when the entire industry wins more.

I have a great deal of respect for AWS. I have met Werner Vogels several times and think he is an amazingly humble, kind, and brilliant man. The type of man I cannot hope fails and that is working for a company I still do a lot of business with (just not in Cloud computing!).

Amazon will recover from this, and they will do so quickly. And customers everywhere will learn more about geographic redundancy – at least enough to investigate it and discover the cost/complexity and make an informed decision on what is right for their business.

And the Cloud will get stronger. Every failure teaches us more. Every failure makes us stronger and our customers better informed. As an industry.

To my friends at AWS – hang in there.  This too shall pass and tomorrow will be a brighter day – for all of us, and for all of our customers.

And here is the rest of the story…

I sent an email to our Chairman tonight – Graham Weston, who I respect a great deal.

Here is part of what I told him:

What I just really, honestly love about this company – I
feel completely comfortable putting my personal “brand” on the line.
I am completely comfortable telling companies that if we screw up, I
will make it right for them. I do NOT promise what Rackspace will do.
I promise them what *I* will do – and I know Rackspace will have my
back.

I am not sure many companies get how empowering that is – that I trust
my employer enough to give my customers my personal guarantee -
because I know my company has my back.

I’ve spent two + years talking to some of the best customer support
companies on the planet – some of the largest high profile social
media adopters – and none of my peers feel that absolute sense of “my
back is covered”. It is extremely empowering and adds a level of
authenticity to what we do that we could not have planned for – or built a
program around. It is what I know of us as a company (much because I was a customer for so long) – the trust I have earned, and my knowledge of the business. I am not going to give away the farm. I am running a for-profit business. But I know when to give away a few daisies to sell a dozen roses.

This is NOT normal with the other companies I am dealing with. I think we are doing something pretty unique here – and I really appreciate it. Mostly I appreciate not having to get permission to do what is right. I am trusted to do what is right.

And empowered.

And that is very unusual. More unusual than we think, I think.

So I want to dig deeper into that, and find out how what we are doing works, and how we can extend it, and how we can even teach it to others – because we are fundamentally based on giving knowledge back. Be that OpenStack, or what we are learning in Social Media.

Knowledge is more fun when it is shared.

Having Dave McClure on the same video is just golden – anyone that knows us both knows we share a lot of the same fucking quirks.  Like using bad language inappropriately

I tried to explain this to the gentleman when he told me I needed to shut up, so he could make amends and leave this world in peace.

It is really hard to just hang up when you hear something like that.

So, I told him I was Robbie.

Then he started to tell me his story – and explain to me how he wronged me 17 years before I was born.

It seems he, who he said was named Guy, was a bit of a swindler. A bit of a big-time swindler.  He confessed that he had stolen $6500 from me in a bridge building scheme in Colorado, back in 1944.  He says he claimed to be working for the government who needed a new bridge to supply a new top-secret base in New Mexico.

He rambled a great deal, and I could tell he suffered memory loss, because he repeated parts of the story several times.

This was a 45 minute phone call.  Why would I spend 45 minutes listening to him?  Well, it actually just beat anything on television.

At the end, he was sobbing, and asked my forgiveness, which I gave.

At the end, I was compelled to send a Tweet:

I have the most unusual conversations. With the most interesting people. That nobody has ever heard of. #thingsthatmakemesmile

Every week there is a new “topic” – put in quotes because the topic is always the same – “How do those of us that love customers get the voice to speak for them, the credibility to do what is right for them, and the respect to represent them to our respective companies?”

In other words, we often bitch when we don’t feel the love and respect we think our customers deserve from our employers. Note – I did NOT say the love and respect WE expect we deserve.  Completely different things.  Which is what makes us people who truly love customers – we put them before us. We actually can’t help it.  It is just who we are.

And we are a widely disperse group – some of us (me, luckily) have a great deal of voice and leverage for my customers.  Others feel very little empowerment.  We come together to try to change it for everyone.  To try to learn enough, and teach enough – to try to just move the bar a little bit.  Every week.  Move the bar.  Just a little.

Over time, I hope the bar moves a lot.

But I don’t expect a lot today.  I do enjoy the company of like-minded people who care about more than a paycheck and to whom a customer is not a 16 digit number.

I love the fucking humanity of it.

I’ve been lucky to meet many members of this group, to include most of the founders, well before this event. What started as a Tweetup has grown into a community of like-minded people that want to help each other raise the bar – to get better at reaching, serving, and satisfying their customers. And to teach each other how to get better – which is the real key. Vibrant communities are built when people care more about US then they do about “me”.

This is a pure grass-roots organization, with no dues, no real rules, but a lot of shared excitement, and curiosity, and a desire to both learn, and to teach.

I was lucky enough to speak at BMPR two months ago, and I had fun with it. I had the dorkiest slide deck ever because I’m not a fan of slides. I would rather “talk story”, as they say down under.

So for three years, almost, I have been talking about this company I work for, and how amazing it is. And I know some people were probably getting tired of it, because it just sounded like me beating a corporate drum. But last Thursday a lot of my friends got to come and see why I love talking about who I work for.

It is not a perfect place, but it is most often a magical place. Being able to share that with 100+ of my friends, and the friends of my friends was really cool. I was pretty proud to have them see what we did with an old shopping mall – how we turned it into a very comfortable home for Fanatical Support to live – and grow.

Managing over 100 guests at a time, to include a tour through offices with a thousand or more people actually doing their day jobs isn’t something many companies would welcome. My bosses supported the idea from the first email I sent that asked, “What if…?”.

They were so in sync with me on my desire to just show off a little bit of what we are building – we are not done by any means – both our mall (The Castle) and our company are still expanding very quickly. They had no clue who BMPR was – they just knew it was important to me. Important enough that a member of the senior leadership team took some time to welcome people, and stayed around for most of the session.

I’ve been a Rackspace customer for a long time – and approaching being an employee for three years.  The things Rackspace has let me do – the ideas they have let me pursue; the chances they have let me take…  It really is a different kind of company.  Where the Chairman might call me at 12:30 am if that is the only time we can find to talk, or I might have a 1:1 dinner with the CEO.  Where a Social Media team is built off of engineers and not marketing.  Where one over-riding goal of “Be Helpful” permeates everything we try to do.

Where a great idea can get funded if you are passionate enough to pursue it.

That doesn’t happen in a lot of companies our size.  It is a little magic. And I’m glad I can invite in guests that can get a bit of a sense of that magic.

Everything starts with community.  From the way we are building our company to why BMPR matters.

If you want to make your life more full – get involved with your community.  There are some amazing people out there wiling to both learn and teach you.  Find them.  They are looking for you too.

We all need each other.

Thanks so much to my friends in BMPR for letting me show you a bit of my world – and for sharing so much of yours with the rest of us.

Note – edited to link to my dorky slide set, per request.

The truth is every job produces stress at times, and I do feel it on occasion.

As a manager, when I feel stressed out I always try to stress up, and not stress down.

In other words, when I am stressed, I stress out my managers, and not my employees. I figure my manager’s get paid to deal with it, and my employees don’t.

So a very short post.

When stressing out, stress up. Never stress down.

If your bosses don’t react to it well then find new bosses. Or find a new job.

But never stress down – your employees don’t deserve it and probably can’t affect the cause of your stress anyway.

But it had been months and months since I had ridden (was a brutally cold winter).  So I went out today.  For a couple hours. Nothing amazing happened. I did not meet a field of bluebonnets, or a majestic owl.  I just rode a bit.

The thing I like about riding is that I seem to somehow be able to think about things that I am not actively thinking about – much like I sometimes do when I am sleeping.

Problems seem to get solved in the back of my brain while I focus on the road, the smell, the machine and the now.

Very few people that I know like for me to ride.  Most of my friends, almost all of my bosses, and my kids.  None of them really like it.  None of them really get it either.

When I am riding my bike, slicing through the wind, and leaning into the curves – when I am not thinking about kids, or work, or friends, or anything – I come out a better something after.  I come out a better friend, employee, parent, and boss. And a better me.

Riding a bike is something that escapes a lot of people. The freedom.  The sense of release – having to focus enough of your brain on the moment… it lets you forget the stress, the deadlines, the commitments. It lets you find that freedom, for as long as it lasts.

Interestingly enough, a 2 hour recharge can last many months. The promise of the next ride gets me through the times in between.

Not suggesting we all ride motorcycles.  Am suggesting we need something that rejuvenates us this way.

We all need a recharger.  And we all have different ones.

1 – Wear the most comfortable pair of walking shoes you own.  Do NOT go buy a new pair of shoes now – it is too late to break them in and make sure they are comfortable.  Find that ugly old pair of sneakers in the back of your closet if you must.  Comfort is critical.  You will walk miles and be on your feet 18+ hours a day (if you are doing it right!).

2 – Don’t shake hands.  Fist bump if you must, but so many people coming from all over the world bring in flu strains your body won’t be expecting.  Better safe than sorry (and I’ve been sorry more times than safe, I am afraid).  I also don’t recommend using hand sanitizer right after you shake hands with the CEO of that great company you just met – might send the wrong message

3 – Chapstick rocks.

4 – Don’t carry anything that you can’t fit in your pockets.  You will either regret you did and/or lose it. After 18 hours you will hate that “comfortable” backpack.

5 – Be wary of the weather and pack accordingly.  You will be outside a lot.  And sometimes the weather even comes inside (like it did at our party last year when the roof leaked!). If it is hot, a big floppy hat is a lifesaver. Doubles as an umbrella.

6 – The only thing I carry besides my wallet and iPhone (and the charger) is a bottle of water.

7 – Use FourSquare – that’s how you can find the stuff that isn’t in the official program.

8 – Take advantage of the hallway track.  Some of the best friendships and business deals are made informally in the halls of the convention center.

9 – Party well.  By that I mean have fun, but pace yourself.  There are a lot of parties and a lot of people.  And everyone has a camera phone.  If you end up in a viral video on YouTube, make sure it is for the right reasons!

10 – If you are with others always set a few times and places to meet back up each day in case you get separated.  AT&T did much better with cell coverage/reliability last year than the year before, but relying only on your phone may leave you alone.

Bonus!  See my session!

Got some more helpful tips?  Add them in the comments!

While we love to have employees that are in loving and stable relationships, we don’t judge what those relationships are.  We recognize, and provide benefits to both “alternative” (whatever that even means any more) and traditional (you know, 50% plus fail in five years) relationships.

I’m actually quite proud that here, deep in the heart of Texas, where some might expect some lifestyle prejudices (and they certainly do exist) – at our company they are not expected to exist. Like a snake – when we find them, we eradicate them.

The best people I have ever worked with have been in a happy personal relationship.  They have someone to care for. Someone they want to earn the respect of.  Someone they trust to have their backs. That could be a husband or wife. Or even a best non-sexual friend.  Or in my case right now, two young adult children that I still need to inspire, meld, guide (and feed, cloth, and educate, but that is a different topic!)

I work in a company where they don’t care if my lover is a man or a woman – or if I have one at all.

But we do know that happy employees deliver more, stay around longer, and show customers more love. So we encourage happy. We include partners, friends and family in our events (my son has attended many with me).  It is all about how we work together to change the world for customers.  Even if our worlds are vastly different. Customers still need cared for in the same ways.  Code isn’t written “gay or straight” – it is just written, and it is just bad or good.

I’m glad I lived in many places in the world that erased my prejudices and enhanced my world view.  I am glad I am not a close minded ass-hat.  I am glad I can look at people, beyond their religion, sexual orientation, or love of Windows vs Mac and just find a way to work with the human behind the face.

I am a Mac person.  So is my girlfriend.

Would you think less of me if I were Windows, or she were he?

If so, rethink your life instead of judging mine. Or anyone else’s.

And yes – this was driven by the loss of a great friend that never saw the difference between black, or white, gay or straight.  Not even Republican verse Democrat. She was the most open minded, liberal draft dodger, lesbian, Reagan voting, man-loving hypocrite of a human being I have ever loved. And she could sing.

And I miss her.

I wish you could all have learned as much from her as I did.

Thanks,

Rob

But I never tried to force them into following a programming career.  But knowing they know computers is still important.

My son handed me a rock when he was 12.  He asked me to take it to my then boss.  My then boss was a genius.  He invented raster-graphics, has a ton of patents in WiFi and networking, but he was a trained Geologist.

My then boss talked to me for an hour about that rock.  And I came home and told my son, “this is an awesome rock”.  I did not remember the technical, but non-computer related details that my ex-boss shared. They were extensive, and impressive.  Just not memorable (to me).

Now, many years later, my son declared his Major – in Geology.  The guy has always loved rocks. And found fossils, and perhaps even a couple meteorites.

I know he will be a better Geologist because he also knows computers.  But his passion is in rocks, so I applaud him.

Follow the passion.  If you are doing what you love to do, you will probably be happy.