Last week’s post on Complacency and arrogance struck a chord with quite a few readers; some commented on on the post and/or LinkedIn while more chose instead to email me directly.

One question was raised by several of you; how does one guard against complacency and arrogance?

a few thoughts…

1. survey your staff
   there’s an excellent piece in this morning’s Harvard Business Review on employee surveys. Key takeaways include:
   1. tell your staff you need and want their feedback/input/recommendations
   2. confirm that by a) let your staff know you value their input and appreciate their willingness to be honest; b) letting all know what you heard and what you plan to do about it; and c) show some self-awareness by letting them know you recognize one or more of your habits/tendencies that may be a challenge for them and want their perspective on how you can better work with them
   3. change what you do and how you do it based on staff feedback
2. survey your customers
   1. ask what you can do better
   2. identify one thing they’d like you to do differently
   3. ask how you can make their interactions with your company easier/faster/more useful
3. be self aware
   1. seek to better understand why you react/respond the way you do to criticism or disagreement. Are you defensive, aggressive, placid, dismissive, apologetic? Why? is it because you aren’t as self-confident as you’d like to be? Perhaps a bit over-confident and egotistic?
      The way you react speaks volumes about you – and will determine if your outreach is a success or another nail in your coffin.
4. Don’t talk – listen.
   No one cares about you, your company, your story, your successes – and the more you blather on, the less they care.
   Until you’ve convinced the audience you understand their need/wants/problems/fears and can help solve them. Ask questions, and follow-up questions, and more questions. Listen hard. Repeat what they’ve told you “If I heard you correctly, you said XXX is limiting your ability to do YYY…Did I get this right? Ok…what have you tried to do to address that? What’s worked, what hasn’t, and why?
   for more on this – here’s a post from 11 (gulp) years ago…

OR, hey, just ignore doubters and staff and customers…

What does this mean for you?

If that little inside voice is bugging you, you’d best listen…and listen. hard. 

Reading your own press clippings.

Belittling competitors.

Overweening self-confidence.

All are all too common when companies are succeeding, growing and taking marketshare. Everything is going well and senior leadership is blissfully confident that it always will. Any hint of a shadow on the horizon is rapidly dismissed as insignificant, unimportant, and nothing to be concerned about. After all, everything we do is well thought-out, smart, and insightful, if not outright brilliant.

Internal dissent, contrasting opinions and concerns about troubling indicators are quickly dismissed. After all, things are going so well, those can’t be right. Nah…that negativity is just the product of jealousy…feeble efforts by detractors unable to compete in the marketplace or staff unable to grasp how smart the C-Suite is.

You gotta see the new product/service we developed…it’s a game-changer, a big leap forward, way better than our erstwhile competitors! How do we know? Well because we built it…and everything we touch turns to gold.

But wait, what about continuing to improve our core product, enhance our service, incrementally get better? That’s where most of our revenue comes from, what made us successful and built our stellar reputation…

Sure of course yeah let’s do that…but look at this shiny object!
this webinar! This industry award! This way-better-than-anyone-else-has product! This brochure that features a big picture of…me! This interview in (insert media outlet)!

This is all too common in the world of work comp services. As in sports, business, entertainment and politics, leaders that focus on themselves, their successes, their brilliance – and fail to focus on continuing to do what made them successful in the first place – will inevitably fail.

Success is not about you, your social media followers, your past successes, resume, or brilliant ideas.  It certainly isn’t about how much better you are than your competitors…or rather how much better YOU think you are.

Success is about nurturing customers, listening hard to them, seeking to understand what they want, why they want it, and how they want it. It’s about making damn sure the people who pay your bills – your customers – know you are 100% focused on them.

what does this mean for you?

1. if you are darn sure you’re really good and all is well…it isn’t.

2. It’s not about you  it’s about your customers.

After 2 1/2 days of nonstop meetings, change encounters, and talks, it is a relief to be heading out.

What was notable

Loved the way the conference planners set up the sessions in “rooms” surrounding the exhibit hall. Exhibitor attendance has been…declining for some time, with exhibitors rightly bemoaning the lack of traffic.

This generated more traffic – as did locating lunches and beverage consumption opportunities.

Newbies – lots of tech-focused entities on the floor this year. I’m not sure they all entirely understood their value proposition, what drives workers’ comp buyers, and exactly how they fit it. But hey, great to have them and their cool stuff on the floor.

Coolest premium – myMatrixx’ charger. Now, I didn’t spend a lot of time trolling for freebies – but this was far and away the best I saw. (disclosure – mM is a consulting client)

Biggest disappointment

Attendance at the session on impact of climate change on workers’ comp.

Aren’t you paying attention?

Every day there is more news about floods, fires, droughts, blazing heat and devastating storms – all of which have direct and major import for work comp.

And more regulations about heat exposure, polluted air, and employee safety.

And more discussion of unforeseen impacts of climate-change driven weather – from flesh-eating bacteria in the swampy waters inundating Florida communities to new regulations addressing exposure to smoke-filled air in western states.

Two claims professionals all-too familiar with hurricanes, floods, and wind (Jill Leonard of LWCC) and fires, heat, and drought (Jeff Rush of California Joint Powers) spent a ton of time preparing to help you handle what is coming. They know all about preparation, planning, the impact on injured workers (where’s my check!!?), dealing with new “employers” that flood an area after a hurricane, and all the things you can only learn from decades of experience.

As Jeff noted, Mother Nature doesn’t care about your opinions on human-caused climate change.

But your boss sure will when the stuff hits the fan and you aren’t ready.

The annual gathering of the work comp tribes begins tomorrow – here’s a few thoughts from a post a few years back.

1.  Realize you can’t be everywhere and do everything. Prioritize.

2.  Leave time for last-minute meetings and the inevitable chance encounters with old friends and colleagues.

3.  Unless you have a photographic memory, use your smartphone to take voice notes from each meeting – right after you’re done – or write down key points immediately.  Otherwise they’ll all run together and you’ll never remember what you committed to.

4.  Get the app for your Droid or iPhone –  you got an email with the info…It has the schedule, exhibit hall layout, local map, and a bunch of other handy information and tools.

5.  Introduce yourself to a dozen people you’ve never met.  This business is all about relationships and networking, and no better place to do that than this conference.

6.  Wear comfortable shoes, get your exercise in, and be professional and polished.  It’s a long three days, and you’re always ‘on’.

7. Remember what your mom told you in high school…nothing good ever happens after 10 o’clock. 

This year I’ll be (mostly moderating) two sessions – one on fraud with my good friend Bill Barbato of Change Healthcare and SA Jefferson Grace of the FBI’s Las Vegas office, and

another on the impact of climate change on workers’ comp with Jill Leonard of LWCC and Jeff Rush of California Joint Powers. Hope to see you there.

Stop by the AppliedVR booth – it’s 769 right across from the networking zone – I’ll be there a good bit.

Finally, in these day of YouTube, phone cameras, Twitter, Instachat and SnapGram, what you do is public knowledge.  That slick dance move or intense conversation with a private equity exec just might re-appear – to your dismay.

And beware white man’s overbite…