I got an email today from a friend who wrote:

“In the middle of reading Fierce Leadership, I got a phone call from a good friend who was one of my colleagues at IBM in Boulder, Colorado. He shared that they are CHARGING EMPLOYEES for the use of napkins and cutlery in the site cafeteria. I am reading your words about making a deeper connection with people, and I get this information in stark contrast. At one time I was so proud of IBM, and to be part of IBM. What a long wicked way things have come.”

This is hard to imagine, so I spent some time googling to see if it’s true and all I came up with was the fact that IBM has a worldwide goal of recycling 50% of all its non-hazardous waste, which is a good thing. I’d like to think that charging for napkins and cutlery has something to do with recycling, but I can’t quite put it together. Would IBM prefer that employees bring their own napkins and cutlery from home each day and take them home each evening and if they don’t, they are penalized?

However it went down, someone who currently works at IBM, thinks it is a seriously bad idea.

Since I can’t verify that what my friend’s friend said is true or the thinking behind it, I hope that someone from IBM reads this and enlightens us, cause you gotta wonder how a decision like this went down.

In busting six of the worst “best” practices in business today in my book, Fierce Leadership, I defend those who originally championed the practices because they WERE thinking. They were good, smart, well-intentioned people, whose actions were based on strongly-held beliefs such as: People won’t tell the truth unless feedback is anonymous, which led to 360 anonymous feedback and a culture in which people withhold their real thoughts and feelings, not just about others’ performance, but on topics under discussion in meetings, on conference calls, throughout the organization. I hope Chapter One busts that practice and the thinking behind it to bits. Or that holding people accountable builds execution muscle. Hah! Look around and tell me how that’s going!

Back to IBM, not every company has the cash flow to provide the kind of freebies that a company like Google makes available to its employees, but surely, those who decide such things, must consider whether a move will enrich, flat-line or erode the company’s relationship with the people central to its success.

If IBM’s goal is to ensure that their relationship with their employees is merely an exchange of time and talent for a paycheck – a decidedly dicey proposition - they struck gold with this move. Employee engagement? Who needs it! If the thinking behind their decision is sound (I’m hoping for this), then there’s a badly needed internal PR campaign with their name on it.

Please, say it isn’t so!

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I offer the following true story as an opportunity to practice squid eye. If you’ve read Fierce Leadership, you know all about squid eye – the ability to spot the “tells” that indicate something is wrong, something isn’t working. If you’re good at squid eye, you are able to see what doesn’t want to be seen, what is hiding, often right under our noses. It’s like having sight in the presence of the blind.

“Tells” are all around us and come in many forms. So-called “best” practices that, when we consider the results they produce, are in fact, worst practices. Strongly held beliefs that make everyone weep, winning us nothing to write home about. Organizations that declare war on the wrong things.
I will picture you shouting Eureka! or Found the squid! or some such celebratory exclamation when you recognize the “tell” in this story that indicates something is very, very wrong.

True Story:  After four visits from cable company personnel over the course of 30 days, I still did not have the service I signed up for in my new condo in Pike Place Market: internet, phone, cable television, all of which the cable company was to provide, for which they charged a pretty penny, and which they had provided to the previous tenants. How hard could it be, right?  And yet…

• My internet connection failed approximately once an hour
• Only one phone jack was operational
• I had no picture at all on one of two televisions
• The screen on the second television frequently reverted to a scramble of code, which I had to “clear”
• I received neither HBO or SHO, which I had requested
• TiVo informed me that “Program information is running low… The DVR must connect successfully to the TiVo service.”

None of the technicians from the cable company had been able to resolve the problems. Each shrugged his shoulders and said he didn’t know why things weren’t working. Finally, I reached a supervisor who assured me that an “executive” would be monitoring my case and that I would hear from someone within 24 hours. No one called.

And then I received a bill. I wanted to lock their technicians and their supervisors in a room with me and practice my drop kick. Who says emotions don’t come into play with customers! Eventually, after leaving yet another message, I got a call from a Customer Loyalty Specialist who told me that he reported to the General Manager. He said his name was Leon.

“What is your last name?”
“We aren’t allowed to share that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s for the security of our personnel”.

Have you started shouting? If not, go back and re-read the dialogue above.

Any organization (barring the CIA and other cloak and dagger organizations, perhaps) that has a policy of withholding the identities of personnel from its customers is handing its customers a major TELL on a silver plate with a huge shiny banner declaring WE DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU, DEAR OUTRAGED CUSTOMER.  WE CARE ABOUT OUR PERSONAL SAFETY.

I expect you would hope, as I do, that if a company’s services or products have become so problematic, they fear their customers might seek retribution in the form of bodily harm, the company would declare “war” on doing whatever it takes to improve their services or products. But this company’s strategy, a failed strategy, is to hide.

I wrote a letter to the CEO because I sometimes wonder if the CEO is aware of his or her customers’ experience. That was a month ago. I haven’t heard from him.

There are many companies, whole industries, who have a policy about not giving their real names to their customers. I hope you don’t work for one, but if you do, I urge you to bring this up for major discussion.

Gather your colleagues together and ask, “What have we declared war on?” And practice squid eye together by asking, “Have we declared war on the right thing?”

Perhaps the word “war” seems out of place when applied to things like improving and deepening relationships with co-workers or with customers, or coming up with a truly innovative approach to whatever it is you do, or raising the performance bar and holding it there – bold and high. But sometimes war is what it takes.

One definition of war is: a sustained effort to deal with or end a particular unpleasant or undesirable situation or condition, as in - the authorities are waging war against all forms of smuggling | a war on drugs. And sometimes, nothing short of war will do.

My hope for myself and for all of you is that we will occasionally declare war, if that’s what it takes, because we are committed to doing the hard things that also happen to be the right things.

P.S. Leon sent me his business card, with his full name on it. A step in the right direction, though the problem has still not been resolved and he has gone “dark”, doesn’t answer his phone or respond to emails. On the business card are the words:  “We’re on a mission.” Exactly what that mission is, is decidedly unclear, though it’s a pretty good bet, it’s not in the customers’ favor.

Thank you everyone for maintaining the momentum and making Fierce Leadership: A Bold Alternative to the Worst “Best” Practices of Business Today #8 on the latest BusinessWeek’s bestseller list! We couldn’t have done it without you. If you would like to view the list, click here.

We would love to hear about which practices your organizations are currently using that are no longer a “best” practice? Please post your comments here!