I accompanied my husband when he gave a speech to a large group recently.

It was one of many speeches he gives each year, a natural part of his work as a writer whose column for Bay Area commuters appears in the front section of the San Jose Mercury News.

As people greeted us afterwards, several people said to Gary, enthusiastically, “Thank you! REALLY – THANK YOU!”

I smiled in admiration for the quality of the work my husband does, and how well he understands his customers, his readers.

He gets appreciative comments a lot.

A few days earlier we were waiting in the ticket line at a movie theater.

As the line moved slowly along, we started chatting with the people in line behind us.

Before long, the man said to his wife, excitedly, “Do you know who we’re talking to?!”

We weren’t sure what he was talking about until we realized he diligently reads Gary’s newspaper column. He looked right at my husband and said, emphatically, “THANK YOU, really!”

My husband and I laughed in happy appreciation that, once again, his readers are, as a group, very engaged in and enthusiastic about the work he does for them.

As a result, another important set of customers, the newspaper management and editors are happy with the work Gary does for them, too.

These two circumstances were a reminder to me, too, to pause and think about what my customers care most about in the work that I do for them.

It’s sometimes surprising, but always gratifying.

What about you?

What do your customers care most about in the work that you do for them?

If you don’t know, it can be a little nerve-wracking the first time you do this, but take the risk, and ask them.

Find out what they value most in the work you do for them.

It may not be what you expected.

When I worked at Apple Computer just after grad school, I was part of a finance group that supported sales and marketing.

The finance – sales and marketing partnership was not always an easy one.

Finance wanted us, as financial analysts, to oversee and influence our internal customer organizations’ budgets.

Marketing always wanted to throw a few more tricks into the mix, though, which always cost more than they planned on.

And we in finance were often the ones who got in trouble if they “got one by us.”

As a result, we learned to monitor and try to “oversee” even more closely.

Trying to help our customer groups reach their sales goals, yet stay within their budgets AND provide the necessary accounting information more easily, we created a “lunch and learn” program we took to customer departments a month before each fiscal quarter ended.

We thought that program might be a little helpful, but that it would be no big deal, really.

We had NO IDEA how valuable it would turn out to be for them.

Silly us.

We THOUGHT the biggest service we provided them was timely and accurate accounting and financial advice.

Instead, what they valued most was getting the information they needed to get beyond the mystery of the company‘s financial processes, and the mixed messages they sometimes received about whether they’d get in trouble if they ran over budget, or not.

They wanted to be more self-managing, more self-reliant.

They loved that lunch and learn program we provided.

We, as financial analysts, loved the positive effects when experienced when we started to teach, advise, guide, and improve the financial processes they used.

We began to be able to work with them in a much more powerful and preventative way.

It was far more satisfying than the financial cop roles we had been filling – trying to inspect, catch and correct various accounting and financial management errors before they caused havoc somewhere else, down the line.

Think about your own work, and about who values it:

1. Who are your customers, exactly?

These may be people inside your company, or outside of it.

2. What do they thank you for?

What, specifically, do they comment on,unsolicited?

And what do they thank you most consistently and enthusiastically for?

Do you know why these things are so valuable to them?

If not, ask.

3. Does what they care most about match what you expected when you started working with them?

The reason this may be important to know is that your assumptions about what’s valuable to customers guides how you plan and manage attention, energy, decision and work flows in order to produce customer-valued results.

If customers really care about something far different than you expected, this may mean you need to rethink and redesign your business processes to give customers more of what they need and want, and to do so more easily.

In the process, you’ll probably find that you can get rid of or reduce the time you invest in things that customers value far less than you expected.

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Imagine you’re working hard, and making steady progress toward a major goal.

The many amazing events of the Winter Olympics provide great examples of this.

Now imagine that you’re finding this path is turning out to be a much bigger challenge than you expected.

And then, imagine that something throws you off-course.

Perhaps in the example of the Olympics, a competitor does much better than you expected.

Or your own qualifying time for an event put you in first place – and you typically perform better farther back in the pack, when you’re chasing the leader.

And in the process of the surprise you’ve experienced, your confidence and the rock-solid assurance you felt that you’d be successful…suddenly…drains away or even dissolves.

Confidence has its own ebbs and flows as you make your way over, around, and through the barriers that crop up sometimes on the way to reaching a major goal.

Confidence is partly the result of believing in oneself, partly a matter of preparation and persistence, but largely, it’s earned as a result of one’s interim successes on the way to that big goal.

Here are a few things you can do to increase the chances of success, and to create the steady flow of confidence you need to reach your ultimate goal.

1. “Pre-experience” success

Imagine it in detail. What do you think success will be like when you reach it?

And what will it be like, all along the way to your goal?

For example, what do you think you’ll see?

What will you hear?

What do you imagine you’ll feel?

2. Activate and energize

Pay close attention to what happens, as compared to what you think will.

Update your vision, as you go.

Repeat your process of “pre-experiencing” success, and do so regularly.

3. Learn from others who have gone before you

Talk to others who have traveled this path, achieved this goal, or made this change, too.

Their experiences may be far different from your own, but your research can help you anticipate and be prepared for what might happen, both the highs and the lows of the experience.

4. Take action

Get started.

Keep moving.

Actively monitor, manage and adjust your progress, priorities, enthusiasm, energy and reserves as you go.

5. Evaluate

Be an active learner.

When things are going well, notice why that’s happening.

And when circumstances need to improve in order to make your way through a challenging time, notice that, too. And notice why it’s happening.

6. Keep a journal

Keep a learning journal that helps you understand and manage the experience.

It also becomes a great resource when you want to pursue your next major goal.

For example, record your goals, assumptions and plans when you started.

Note, also, what actions you took, what adjustments you made, and the results you achieved, all along the way.

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In contrast to the Saints’ great 2010 Super Bowl story, how did Toyota get it so wrong?

Here are five key ways they’ve created their current situation:

1. They believed their own press.

Observant, in-control Toyota.

Invincible, untouchable, always high-quality Toyota.

Or so we were led to believe.

Their cars have been, in so many ways, customer-pleasing (they have been for our family, too – we own two Toyotas).

As a result, Toyota and Lexus owners thought their cars were as safe as the company wanted us to believe.

Until we heard the terrified 911 call from the off-duty California Highway Patrol officer who died with three other members of his family in a Lexus he couldn’t stop.

2. They ignored the facts.

Perhaps Toyota saw what was going on with various product quality problems.

And perhaps they didn’t even look, or they couldn’t see.

Whatever the case, seeing the facts and responding appropriately to those facts could have helped them prevent the mess they’re in now. And to do that means they’d have to be able to see facts – whatever they are – as a good thing, ultimately.

3. They counted on past performance as an indicator of current performance.

Toyota has learned, hopefully, that you can’t just rest on your laurels, and your past performance.

A reputation for quality based on past performance does not guarantee quality in current performance.

You still have to check what the quality is on the production line, and coming off the line and going out to customers.

And you have to correct errors, whenever they are found, whatever is causing them.

4. No news was better than bad news inside the company.

The more we learn about the culture and dynamics at Toyota, the more it appears that when the waters were troubled, they didn’t go below the surface to see what they could see.

Bad news wasn’t wanted, or allowed.

Customer frustration and safety were, it seems, lower priorities than keeping internal peace, and supporting decisions that had been made by consensus.

Cage rattlers were not encouraged, even if customers’ safety was at risk.

5. They didn’t create a system that could support their growth goals.

The more we learn, the more it is apparent that Toyota’s success in the past had a lot to do with their system of careful apprenticeship, with new employees’ learning from others who had prior experience.

In recent years, the growth they sought did not allow them to maintain that careful system of learning, appropriate and attentive oversight and skill mastery.

They’re paying the price for trying to grow beyond their readiness to perform consistently and safely at desired volumes.

There are other problems in play in the mess that Toyota has made.

Hopefully, they’ll be able to resurrect their once-legendary quality, and rise above the now low expectations they’ve created.

The steps ahead for Toyota will surely focus on creating a system and processes to once again ensure that product design, testing, production, quality control and customer-responsive service and support are worthy of the customer loyalty that they took so much  for granted.

They will have to work very hard to earn customers’ business and referrals again.

It’s an important lesson, and a cautionary tale, for many companies and industries.

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While you can affect the future, and there’s much you can do to try to direct the future, you can’t control or guarantee it.

Look at the New Orleans’ Saints victory in the Super Bowl and you know that sometimes things work out far better than you even guessed they could (that is, unless you’re an Indianapolis Colts fan).

Or, as Toyota’s woes show, and as those woes grow, you see that the future may turn out far worse than you expect.

The bottom line lesson from both of these events?

The future’s not a sure thing, until it’s actually in the books.

Until then?

Everything’s up for grabs.

I’ll discuss Toyota’s difficulties in the next post.

For now, let’s look at five key things the Saints did right to create their victory:

1. They didn’t believe their press.

They were not – to put it mildly – expected to win.

They decided to believe they could be victorious anyway.

The Saints had worked hard all season and earned the right to be in the NFL’s annual ultimate game.

And they wanted more than the memories of playing hard but falling short, which many people expected is all they’d have to show for their effort in Super Bowl XLIV.

2. Their fans believed in them, and they didn’t take that loyalty lightly.

Saints fans – the “Who Dat Nation” – believed their beloved team could win.

And fan loyalty, like customer loyalty, is a very precious thing. The Saints did not take their fans’ loyalty for granted.

They’d shared the horrible bonding experience of Katrina and its long, and continuing aftermath.

And they felt that life which dealt them such a difficult 2005 fate at the hands of Nature, could send good things their way at the hands of the Saints.

Their belief was rewarded.

“We played for more than ourselves. We played for our city,” Drew Brees said following the victory.

“It’s a fairy tale! It came at the right time!” said one celebratory and thankful fan.

“They mirror us in terms of resiliency, and not giving in to what they’re not supposed to be able to do,” said another.

3. They worked as a team.

Each person played his part, to the hilt.

And each played, full tilt, until the clock ran out its final seconds.

They could have collected their second place finish with pride, crowded off the victory stand.

But they showed up for, and chose to play a different game.

4. They took measured risks.

The Saint’s second half-opening onside kick was risky, history-making and game-changing.

They may have surprised themselves with the success of that move.

“I wasn’t worried,” said the kicker, Thomas Morstead. “I was terrified.”

He’d never tried an onside kick before, yet was trying it in front of the largest TV audience ever.

The kick and its outcome certainly surprised their competition, as well. It gave the Saints their first lead of the game.

5. They played the game, the whole game and nothing but the game they had to play on that day.

They didn’t play down to others’ expectations.

They played up to their dreams.

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Are you staring down a problem that you just can’t solve?

And no matter what you’ve tried, you can’t figure out, much less move on to correct this most mysterious circumstance?

The downstream impact of one “small” problem is much greater than you might expect. It includes the loss of much time, energy, attention and profits, to say nothing of the customer goodwill and future sales you may lose, too.

When you’re facing a problem you can’t solve, a mystery that confounds you, go back to the basics as quickly and completely as you can.

And then design your way out of the problem.

Redesign the processes you use to deliver your products and services so that you can consistently deliver the quality your customers expect.

You may also have to redesign some support processes, such as training, supervision, and other processes you didn’t plan you’d need to assess or repair.

Start with a very basic analysis as you try to resolve the mystery (it’s likely to take your best Sherlock Holmes detective skills):

1. What do you have too much of?

2. What do you have too little of?

Maybe you have too small an inventory of some key parts and someone tried to substitute a part that didn’t work.

Or perhaps there’s high inconsistency in the way a particular product or service is produced, or too much variation in how standards are taught, monitored and reinforced.

3. Who are your customers?

Remember why you’re in business and whose needs you’re in business to serve, right now.

Your customers’ dissatisfaction with the products or services they’ve bought from you, and how you respond to that dissatisfaction is what you need to concentrate on most, for the moment.

How you respond affects more of your future opportunities than you might guess.

Manage your response thoughtfully,and well.

And as unpleasant as customer dissatisfaction may seem, it’s the heart of the storm you need to head into (seriously) and understand.

4. What do your customers care about most?

You need to know what’s most important to your customers, and what their highest priorities are from among several things they may want from you.

If you don’t know what’s most important, ask them.

You’ll get fairly consistent feedback – and probably quite rapidly – that will be invaluable in helping you figure out what’s going on.

5. Go back to the drawing board.

Design or redesign the features and production processes involved so that you can consistently produce the results your customers seek – and are paying you for.

And yes, the problem-solving process – no matter rigorous or far-reaching it must be in order to get the problem fully solved – is far easier said than done.

Handling the problem proactively is a far cry better than ignoring the mystery, hoping it takes care of itself, as it quickly continues to grow, and get far, far worse.

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