HOW GM USES SOCIAL MEDIA TO IMPROVE CARS AND CUSTOMER SERVICE

In 1933, General Motors President and CEO Alfred Sloan established the automobile industry’s first full-time consumer research department under the direction of Henry “Buck” Weaver, a pioneer in market-based decision making. Weaver’s staff sent three million mailings a year to GM and non-GM customers, achieving a remarkable 25% response rate. People were asked about GM products, upholstery textures, colours, vehicle designs, and technology, and their feedback was incorporated into GM vehicles. The approach was so novel that Time magazine featured Weaver on its cover in November 1938, reporting that his research led to 185 vehicle improvements, ranging from longer bumpers and rubber-padded pedals to air conditioning and the partial elimination of running boards.

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WHAT THE DALAI LAMA TAUGHT DANIEL GOLEMAN ABOUT EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Two decades before Daniel Goleman first wrote about emotional intelligence in the pages of HBR, he met his holiness the 14^th Dalai Lama at Amherst College, who mentioned to the young science journalist for the New York Times that he was interested in meeting with scientists. Thus began a long, rich friendship as Goleman became involved over the years in arranging a series of what he calls “extended dialogues” between the Buddhist spiritual leader and researchers in fields ranging from ecology to neuroscience. Over the next 30 years, as Goleman has pursued his own work as a psychologist and business thinker, he has come to see the Dalai Lama as a highly uncommon leader. And so he was understandably delighted when, on the occasion of his friend’s 80^th birthday, he was asked to write a book describing the Dalai Lama’s compassionate approach to addressing the world’s most intractable problems. Force for Good, which draws both on Goleman’s background in cognitive science and his long relationship with the Dalai Lama, is both an exploration of the science and the power of compassion and a call to action.  Curious about the book and about how the Dalai Lama’s views on compassion informed Goleman’s thinking on emotional intelligence, I caught up with Goleman over the phone. What follows are edited excerpts from our conversation...

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WHY REMOTE WORK THRIVES IN SOME COMPANIES AND FAILS IN OTHERS

Since people began telecommuting decades ago, companies have been excited about the prospects to increase productivity, reduce costs, and gain access to a much larger talent pool.

But has remote work lived up to the hype? In some organizations, yes. Automattic (the creator of WordPress) and the U.S. government are two good — and very different — examples.

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BRING IN OUTSIDE EXPERTS TO MENTOR YOUR TEAM

Organisations depend increasingly on independent, temporary workers, even for mission-critical work. We call this subset of freelancers who do strategic work in companies or nonprofit organisations agile talent. They contribute technical expertise that an organisation does not already have a critical project or initiative. By providing temporary support, they make it possible for organisations to resource their critical activities more cost efficiently.

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3 TIPS TO HELP YOU HAVE A MORE PRODUCTIVE DAY, TODAY

When a major product is about to launch or your team is scheduled to make an important presentation, it’s easy to ride the wave of deadline-induced adrenaline spikes and push yourself to work every waking moment. But of course that’s not sustainable, and we inevitably crash. So how can you make productivity habitual and lasting?

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THE KEY TO GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE

This is the story of how I learned the key to great customer service.

I’d come down to New York for HSM’s World Innovation Forum. The first day of the conference, customer service guru and Zappos chief Tony Hsieh gave his spiel about Zappos being a service company that just happened to sell shoes. In fact, he said, their primary business wasn’t even delivering shoes or clothing. It was delivering happiness. He talked about how they hire — and fire — on their core values, how they’d developed and refined those values over the course of several years, and how their company mission was grounded in the latest science of what makes people happy. There was a music video and a PowerPoint. We got his book, Delivering Happiness, free in our conference bags. It was all compelling, inspiring stuff.

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