#2 Defying the universe; (no one said being in business

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In his new book Enlightenment Now cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker writes: “The … ultimate purpose of life, mind, and human striving: to deploy energy and information to fight back the tide of entropy and carve out refuges of beneficial order.”

With the passage of time the natural order is for things to get worse.

This issue of entropy is not a business issue, or an industry, or a country, or a regional, or a global issue - it’s a universal reality.

Physicist Brian Cox explains: The Arrow of Time dictates that as each moment passes, things change, and once these changes have happened, they are never undone. Permanent change is a fundamental part of what it means to be human […] in the life of the universe, just as in our lives, everything is irreversibly changing.

Change - and inevitable deterioration.

Professor Pinker writes about this universal change as it influences us: ‘... so when things change without a human agent directing the change, they are likely to change for the worse.’

The Law of Entropy is widely acknowledged in everyday life in our language such as ‘Things fall apart’, ’Rust never sleeps,’, ‘Sh*t happens’, and ‘Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.

We occasionally probe generally accepted wisdom, and outrageously hyped futures, and trendy memes, in search of challenging and game changing insights.

#2 Defying the universe; (no one said being in business would be easy).



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'Oh no.

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2

Perhaps entropy may seem irrelevant for your business, or to you, but it has a very interesting connection to the concept of continuous improvement.

Things deteriorate in businesses.

We can reasonably assume that typically in business this tendency to change often leads to deterioration:

- staff turnover diminishes the potency of ideas that were once game changing;

- self-confidence leads to short-cuts and consequential risk of reduced quality;

- authoritative documents get rewritten and their original crucial messages are diluted;

- changes in corporate practices result in a dilution of their original edge;

- recollections are often less vivid and accurate over time; - individual egos override corporate intent; - executional excellence became executional indifference;- corporate memory deteriorates.

You will have your own examples; but you will have examples of decay in your business, no matter how dedicated to excellence you are.

Our individual performance deteriorates.

We:- become demotivated and disengaged; - forget;- misunderstand;- get interrupted;- get confused;- lose focus;- lose track.

PERHAPS ENTROPY MAY SEEM IRRELEVANT FOR YOUR

BUSINESS, OR TO YOU, BUT IT HAS A VERY INTERESTING

CONNECTION TO THE CONCEPT OF CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT.



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Integr

ityand

trust


'Oh no.

It's getting

lonely here in

zombieland.'

Competenc

y

Passion

YOUR mm


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3

For any number of reasons businesses and individual performances deteriorate; because all are subject to the laws of entropy.

Entropy at work.

We’ve never had a client that didn’t claim they wanted continuous improvement.

Most businesses want to get better. Most customers want to have relationships with businesses where every experience is better than the last. Most businesses have to continually improve if they are to survive - and thrive.

Entropy means that continuous improvement means just that - it has to be continuous; otherwise deterioration is inevitable. It’s possible that continuous improvement actually only holds the line - nothing gets worse but nothing gets better.

Let’s think about the solutions a BPO provides and how entropy impacts on individual components - and outcomes of that solution.

Recruitment. The ratio between responses and interviews, and the ratio between interviews and hires can easily tumble.

Training. Consider ‘speed to competency’; much store is placed in this measure even though competency is not a fixed benchmark - competency inevitably deteriorates every day.

Interactions with customers. Familiarity with a process or routine can soon breed contempt for the job and the customer.

Customer satisfaction. Today’s NPS triumph could be tomorrow’s disaster.

FOR ANY NUMBER OF REASONS BUSINESSES AND INDIVIDUAL

PERFORMANCES DETERIORATE; BECAUSE ALL ARE SUBJECT TO

THE LAWS OF ENTROPY.

Take a moment to consider the business for which you work - what has deteriorated, and why?Challenge



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ityand

trust


'Oh no.

It's getting

lonely here in

zombieland.'

Competenc

y

Passion

YOUR mm


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Relationship Management. Over time working relationships become stale, or too comfortable, or sympathetic rather than empathetic.

Delivered Performance. When performance disappoints client demands for improvement often cause the balance of the three BPO business drivers to be changed - unsustainably - and thus commercial harmony is disrupted and disintegrates.

Entropy is inevitable - - unless we act to slow or stop it.

So what to do? The answer is to make your purpose to ‘do it better’.

Doing it Better.

The PROBE promise is that we will ‘do it better’; better than our competitors; better than our clients specify; better than our clients customers could reasonably expect; better than yesterday.

In the process of ‘doing it better’ as Pinker writes, we “carve out refuges of beneficial order”. We delay or eliminate the inevitable outcome that results from unchecked entropy.

Perhaps the first thing to be said is that to ‘do it better’ is no guarantee that the outcome will be continuously better - because as quickly as businesses improve entropy busily diminishes the benefits of improvement and innovation.

But to not attempt to ‘do it better’ will lead to an inevitable deterioration of performance, outcomes, and ultimately customer satisfaction.

There can be no change for the better without ideas.

To improve you must have an improvement mindset.

And thus the lifeblood of our business is ideas.

ENTROPY IS INEVITABLE- - UNLESS WE ACT

TO SLOW OR STOP IT.

BUT TO NOT ATTEMPT TO ‘DO IT BETTER’ WILL LEAD TO AN INEVITABLE DETERIORATION

OF PERFORMANCE, OUTCOMES, AND ULTIMATELY CUSTOMER

SATISFACTION.



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WE ENGAGE

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ityand

trust


'Oh no.

It's getting

lonely here in

zombieland.'

Competenc

y

Passion

YOUR mm


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5

But ideas rarely come from demotivated or disengaged people and so an essential enabler of improvement is a culture that nurtures engaged people.

We believe people must work in a culture that embraces a passion for their jobs, for their professionalism, and a passion for their clients and, in the BPO industry, a passion for their clients’ customers.

That’s why PROBE has a passion culture.

Passion.

Today research into workplace cultures and the human condition make it clear; and this research is far too voluminous for exhaustive summary here so we offer the following insights from the New York Times best selling Doshi & McGregor book entitled Primed to Perform; their particular means by which to deliver the benefits of a high-performing culture is their ToMo (Total Motivation) system.

They wrote:We wrote Primed to Perform to reveal the science behind the magic. Over the last two decades, we built upon a century of academic study with our own original research. We analyzed tens of thousands of workers, from programmers, consultants, teachers, and investment bankers to frontline employees in legendary cultures like Southwest Airlines, the Apple Store, and Starbucks. We found that the magic behind great cultures is actually an elegantly simple science. Since then, we’ve tested this science around the world, from the Americas to the Middle East to Asia. In each case we found that what it takes to create the highest performing cultures is actually predictable.

And:For decades, researchers have proven that culture drives performance. Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr. focused on iconic cultures in their classic book In Search of Excellence. If you had bought stock in the companies they profiled when the book was first published in 1982 and held them for twenty years, your portfolio would have returned 1,300 percent (compared to the Dow’s 800 percent and the S& P 500’ s 600 percent). You can take culture to the bank.



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'Oh no.

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y

Passion

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In an unrelated study by, the Harvard Business School gurus John Kotter and James Heskett compared the stock market performance of firms with great cultures and leadership to those with middling cultures over an eleven-year period. Share values increased by 901 percent for the first group compared to 74 percent for the second; revenues increased by 682 percent and net incomes by 756 percent (versus 166 percent and 1 percent, respectively). Even the most talented people will have only half the impact they should if they work in mediocre cultures.

And:Many of the most admired organizations already use components of total motivation intuitively. They understand that the best way to motivate people is not through rewards or threats, but by inspiring people to find play, purpose, and potential in their work.

Our purpose with this series of lengthy excerpts is to underscore the critical importance of understanding worker motivation; as you have read, they acknowledge that some businesses apply ToMo principles intuitively. PROBE is an enthusiastic believer in these principles.

In one further insight, sourced from business authority Daniel Pink’s book: ‘Drive. The surprising truth about what motivates us.’

In short Pink explains: When it comes to motivation, there’s a gap between what science knows and what business does. Our current business operating system — which is built around external, carrot-and-stick motivators—doesn’t work and often does harm. We need an upgrade. And the science shows the way. This new approach has three essential elements: (1) Autonomy—the desire to direct our own lives; (2) Mastery—the urge to get better and better at something that matters; and (3) Purpose—the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

Culture is critical in resisting entropy.

To resist entropy we must first have stimulated and motivated people who are willing to search for ways to ‘do it better’ - - people who are able to withstand, ride, and pull the strings of the swirling ups and downs of business.



REPORTING WILL BE

COMPREHENSIVE,

ACCURATE AND TIMELY


CIRCLES

ENTWINED

CULTURESSYNERGY

i PASS ON

SHORTEN LINES OF


WE ENGAGE

SHARED MINDSET

ENTWINED

CULTURES


Teamwork

Integr

ityand

trust


'Oh no.

It's getting

lonely here in

zombieland.'

Competenc

y

Passion

YOUR mm


NEXTGENERATIONTHE


7

We found some inspiration for dealing with entropy in an unlikely place - the world of yo-yo masters.

Japanese yo-yo master Black says “What I learned from the yo-yo is, if I make enough effort with huge passion, there is no impossible.”

That’s the spirit that denies entropy control over businesses and people.

Back to work!

Perhaps you remember all those yo-yo tricks: ‘Walking the dog’, and ‘over the falls’, or the ‘breakaway’, the ‘pinwheel’, or how about the ‘brain-scrambler’, or ‘man on the flying trapeze’, and so many more.

But to watch this performance by Black is not to watch tricks, but rather to watch mastery, and passion, and focus, and authority; in short to observe a master and masterful techniques in action.

Black remarks of his first attempts at yo-yo mastery, which he demonstrates, the yo-yo hangs at the end of the string slowing - it’s rotations declining: “I couldn’t even do the simplest trick […] but after one week of practicing, my throws became more like this: A bit better.”

INTRODUCING THE PROBE TAKE A BREAK MOMENT.

https://www.ted.com/talks/black_my_journey_to_yo_yo_mastery?referrer=playlist-how_passion_becomes_purpose

Here’s an awesome seven minutes on - - umm - - well, the yo-yo; it’s essential viewing - about purpose, passion, mindset, determination, mastery, and influencing change in the pursuit of DOING IT BETTER.

https://www.ted.com/talks/black_my_journey_to_yo_yo_mastery?referrer=playlist-how_passion_becomes_pu

https://www.ted.com/talks/black_my_journey_to_yo_yo_mastery?referrer=playlist-how_passion_becomes_pu



REPORTING WILL BE

COMPREHENSIVE,

ACCURATE AND TIMELY


CIRCLES

ENTWINED

CULTURESSYNERGY

i PASS ON

SHORTEN LINES OF


WE ENGAGE

SHARED MINDSET

ENTWINED

CULTURES


Teamwork

Integr

ityand

trust


'Oh no.

It's getting

lonely here in

zombieland.'

Competenc

y

Passion

YOUR mm


NEXTGENERATIONTHE


8

Better. We love that word.

In his performance the yo-yo is flung out, and up, and down, and across; the yo-yo is allowed to dangle; and cartwheel; and spin; and fly; ultimately only the correct technique by a master denies gravity and entropy their otherwise inevitable victory in which the yo-yo would uncontrollably drop - and stop.

Similarly, there are many techniques for disrupting entropy.

Here’s some we use - and they all begin with passionate people.

1. Ideas. Constantly question the status quo. Ask for ideas. Consider ideas. Implement relevant ideas. We say that ideas are the lifeblood of our business.

2. Sharing ideas. Make sure experiences are shared from person to person; and from circle (team) to circle; and from contact centre to contact centre; floor to floor; building to building and city to city. We have the ’i Pass On’ ethos which pervades our entire business.



REPORTING WILL BE

COMPREHENSIVE,

ACCURATE AND TIMELY


CIRCLES

ENTWINED

CULTURESSYNERGY

i PASS ON

SHORTEN LINES OF


WE ENGAGE

SHARED MINDSET

ENTWINED

CULTURES


Teamwork

Integr

ityand

trust


'Oh no.

It's getting

lonely here in

zombieland.'

Competenc

y

Passion

YOUR mm


NEXTGENERATIONTHE


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3. Making a job an integral part of life. A job shouldn’t be something we do outside of our life.

With this in mind we take what Daniel Pink writes very seriously in the pursuit of creating jobs that offer reasons why someone would want to go to work - why they would be happy to see it as part of their life’s journey:

(1) Autonomy—the desire to direct our own lives; (2) Mastery—the urge to get better and better at something that

matters; and (3) Purpose—the yearning to do what we do in the service of

something larger than ourselves.

Autonomy. We encourage our clients to agree to role descriptions that are less prescriptive; this has the advantage of offering employees a more rewarding and more demanding role. To have autonomy we have a very flexible conversation model.

Mastery. We offer our staff an environment where job mastery is encouraged and possible. To master their job is to have a coveted gold ID lanyard.

Purpose. What more purpose can one need than to make a unique contribution to making a difference? To help build a business, satisfy other human beings, and to be fulfilled. Personal growth is encouraged and rewarded. Professional growth is recognised. Life has purpose beyond the ordinary. Our Passion Matrix puts them in the career pilot’s seat so they can climb - to the extraordinary.



REPORTING WILL BE

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ityand

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'Oh no.

It's getting

lonely here in

zombieland.'

Competenc

y

Passion

YOUR mm


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Andrew Hume, our CEO, makes it clear that we hope we can create an environment in which every member of the PROBE family feels that work doesn’t disrupt their life - it enriches their life.

4. Belonging. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs identifies ‘belonging’ as an essential need. Our passion cultures encourages belonging - both in work time and out of work. We encourage our agents to become groups of like-minded people; groups where their job has values that add purpose and satisfaction to their lives.



REPORTING WILL BE

COMPREHENSIVE,

ACCURATE AND TIMELY


CIRCLES

ENTWINED

CULTURESSYNERGY

i PASS ON

SHORTEN LINES OF


WE ENGAGE

SHARED MINDSET

ENTWINED

CULTURES


Teamwork

Integr

ityand

trust


'Oh no.

It's getting

lonely here in

zombieland.'

Competenc

y

Passion

YOUR mm


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5. Live synergy. We have a unique entwinement process that allows PROBE and each client to build relationships that have the power of synergy - where two organisations interact to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their seperate parts.

6. Bring promises to life. PROBE promises to ‘do it better’ and to bring this to life we have four unshakable rules that are represented by the acronym NEXT. We will be NIMBLE in thinking, doing and reporting. We will ENGAGE - this is synergy at work. We will deliver X-TRA - for our clients x-tra is what converts a one-sided commercial arrangement into a two-sided business partnership. And we will be TRANSPARENT - we will have nowhere to hide.

7. Eliminate zombieland. Zombieland is a place in most businesses where demotivated and demoralised employees lurk; employees who do just as much as it takes to stay below the radar; they participate only as much as is necessary; they keep silent when they should speak out; they take shortcuts with their job; they learn only the bare minimum about their job to get by; they are takers rather than sharers; it is like they are sleep-walking; it is like they are zombies.

Every business has a zombieland; it’s a place where disaffected, disgruntled and dissatisfied employees gather; research suggests that up to 30% of a typical workforce visits zombieland periodically and as many as 10% are there full time.

What to do? Each of us can behave in ways that will keep PROBE zombieland-free. Behaving with passion is the secret.



REPORTING WILL BE

COMPREHENSIVE,

ACCURATE AND TIMELY


CIRCLES

ENTWINED

CULTURESSYNERGY

i PASS ON

SHORTEN LINES OF


WE ENGAGE

SHARED MINDSET

ENTWINED

CULTURES


Teamwork

Integr

ityand

trust


'Oh no.

It's getting

lonely here in

zombieland.'

Competenc

y

Passion

YOUR mm


NEXTGENERATIONTHE


12

So do we think entropy will cause inevitable deterioration in our business and yours?

Yes we do - unless we act to disturb entropy.

As with Black and his yo-yo’s it’s not tricks that makes champions - but mastery, and passion, and focus, and authority.

We’ve shared some of the ways that we counter entropy.

We’ve shared some of our underlying beliefs.

And we believe we can turn back the tide of entropy - even though the universe marches to the beat of its drum.

We believe we have ways to deliver continuous improvement.

We agree with yo-yo master Black when he says; “Nothing is impossible”.

If you’d like to challenge our point of view we’re always ready to learn - or if you’d like to know whether PROBE could help your business do better then let’s chat.

And if you think a yo-yo would help you contemplate the ups and downs of business I’d be delighted to send you one. You have only to ask.

PROCESSINGCOLLECTIONS FIELD SERVICES

CONVERSATIONS

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Chief Customer Officer

Derrick Clayton

Chief Passion Culture [email protected]

214 Balaclava Road Caulfield North, VIC 3161

+61 418 555 417

www.probegroup.com.au

PROCESSING

COLLECTIONSFIELD SERVICES

CONVERSATIONS

NEXTGENERATIONTHE

Chief Customer OfficerDerrick Clayton

Chief Passion Culture Guardian.

[email protected]

214 Balaclava Road Caulfield North, VIC 3161

+61 418 555 417

www.probegroup.com.au

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#2 Defying the universe; (no one said being in business