+

Culture as a barrier to innovation and economic performance

Notes to Cultural faux pas is social marketingApril 2012

+Adding Value is always difficult.

Innovation and leveraging all skills in organization is a strategy, not an accident;

Requires Continuous Improvement;

Success = Implementation of successful ideas, no matter how threatening to the status quo;

Effectiveness Equation:

Innovation = f [Creativity; Implementation]

“Today more than ever adding value involves leveraging organization, as most competitive strategies “Porter” and essentially identical”.

Hence the mantra of CEO’s, “execution, execution, execution”.

+Fundamental Organizational Norms: Each is an aggregation of multiple related items

Innovative

Risk taking

Being Careful (-)

Predictable/Reliable (-)

Being willing to experiment

Being innovative

Fast moving

Being quick to take advantage of opportunities

Taking initiative

Making your numbers (-)

Avoiding conflict (-)

Collaborative

Working in Collaboration with others

Being team oriented

Being aggressive (-)

High Levels of conflict (-)

Cooperative

Learning from mistakes (-)

Being supportive

Being competitive (-)

Transparent

Putting org’s goals above unit’s goals

Transparent individual goals

Sharing Information

freely

Customer Oriented

Being customer oriented

Listening to customers

Being market driven

Results Oriented

Being results oriented

Having higher expectations for

performance

Being easy going (-)

Achievement-oriented

Being calm (-)

Action oriented

People Oriented

Being people oriented

Respect for individuals

Being fair

Emphasis on professional

growth

Detail Oriented

Paying attention to

detail

Being precise

Emphasis on quality

Being analytical

Integrity

Have integrity

High Ethics

Being Honest

Note: Negative signs (-) indicate the item is negatively correlated with culture.

+CUSTOMER SERVICE DISASTERS

SPRINT: TELEPHONE SERVICE:

I have been with Sprint since the day their digital cellular service opened doors. I have 5 lines. I have stuck with it, notoriously hideous customer service notwithstanding. And now this. Let me also add that I am a busy physician and very tech savvy.

I purchased the Sprint Connect with much anticipation and excitement online. After  I received it and started using it, from Day 1 I had problems with static, sounding  like in a tunnel both ways, voicemail glitches, the lights on the device barely being bright enough to notice and on and on. I tried every troubleshooting trick online and finally took the device to the store. They said they don't deal with this AT ALL and told me to call Sprint. So I did, when I got around to it in a couple of weeks.... and after the usual multiple routing through various departments and clueless reps, ended up with Tech Support who I played phone tag with for a couple of weeks, and finally they said they want to record some of my calls to send to their engineers to analyze the data. All this took a lot longer than it sounds. Finally they said it is not a network issue and must be the device, which is what I had been saying all along to these rocket scientists.

So now what, I say? Michele from Tech Support was so courteous to say that it is not their problem and I have to deal with it on my own with the manufacturer of the device. That didn't make any sense to me. I said that I got the device from Sprint and so I am going to hold Sprint accountable for getting a faulty device from the get-go. BTW, all during this time I had stopped using the device altogether and was still being charged monthly fees. Michele went on to say that this is a correct policy and gave some silly analogies about buying stuff at Wal-mart or something...huh? I argued with some 'supervisor' for another 20 minutes on this. He checked my phone records to see if I really had not used the device. Umm...since I know you can do that, why would I lie to you, O rocket scientist? He said I would get some credit, gave me the phone number for the device manufacturer, and that's all they can do.

Experienced Sprint customers will know that of course the credit didn't show on my account and now I have to make ANOTHER call to find out what happened. And as far as calling the device manufacturer? Yep, you guessed it, The Great Runaround. Before I let my sheer anger, disgust at the humiliating service I have received after all these years get the better of my choice of words, I will just stop now and check out the offers on the Verizon website...

Just fix it and stop delaying.

“Sprint’s highest priority is

“customer satisfaction”

+Better Customer Service Better Economic Performance:UNITED BREAKS GUITARS:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

03/03/2012 Merger of United with Continental, leads to reservation and baggage fiasco.

+And the OSCAR for the run-aroundgoes to…………………

+Social Networks Punishment of Corporate Arrogance

BPDell

Quiznos Subs

+How not to… win friends and influence people.

BP spills millions of gallons of crude from the Macondo well in the Gulf, has its “Facebook” page clogged with environmentalists protests, and their logo is “twittered” around the world, a gross oil whale;

Dell awoke with a start when it had Gizmondo post a U Tube video of one of its computer bursting into flames, causing 4 million laptop batteries to be recalled;

Quiznos’ porn spoof of two “girls and a cup”, eating a subway sandwich backfired

+Concluding

Careful analysis of “culture” operate in the chosen market, is critical to avoid cultural “catastrophes” in social marketing.

Thank you for your attention:

Philip Corsano

Gnostam LLC

5731 Kirkwood Place N

Seattle, WA 98103

Tel: 206 384 0069