Lets go undercover!

The thought came to me, that I have actually participated in a mystery shopping exercise before.

Last semester, I did THE MOST AMAZING course, called Quality Service Management. For our final project, we had to select an organization, carry out mystery shopping exercises and fill out a template given to us by our lecturer.

I found this very exciting as I got a first hand look at how unsuspecting workers in organizations can be and how obviously they expose their flaws when communicating.

My group chose Jamaica National Building Society. I vividly remember the day I walked into the Mortgage Centre in New Kingston, prancing around stating that I would like to acquire a loan to purchase an apartment in the Phase II Country Club Complex in Portmore.

I remember the agent looking at me with confusion, because to some, I do not look a day older than 18 years old (I'm actually 22 this year :D ). She asked what was my income, and of course I had to make it even more difficult for her, so I stated that it was JA$40,000 monthly.

Now, it is impossible for me to acquire a loan for a $9 million apartment with an income of only $40,000. I remember during the interview, she blatantly answered her phone in front of me and prolonged a conversation with no apology.
At that time, it made me wonder if I were a different person, would she be doing that? The attitude I was getting from her for the entire consultation was that I shouldn't waste her time or my time, because I cannot afford it. She was hypocritically helpful however, as she tried to maintain some form of professionalism.

Personally, I think that mystery shopping should be carried out more frequently in Jamaican organizations as there is a tendency for workers to slack off, and stray from accepted behaviour. You will sometimes see workers arguing with customers, and you may also hear 300 different instructions for one query.
Especially in the banks, there are countless times I see tellers on their BlackBerrys sometimes even peeking at it during transactions with customers.

They need to be held accountable, and they need a constant reminder that a customer pays attention to how one communicates with them and spreads their experience to four-folds of people. This can be both beneficial and detrimental to an organization.

By utilizing mystery shopping, it is a first step to correcting the myriad of communication deficiences within our Jamaican organizations.

Gender, Politeness and Respect

This past Wednesday in my Psychology lecture, my female lecturer realized that a male student had been on his laptop in class browsing through Facebook. My lecturer asked the young man to please close the laptop and he asked why?

She stated that it was distracting her, and that she has stated numerous times that she doesn't want any phones, laptops, etc. in use during her lecture, unless it is related to the course.
The young man became offensive and asked "how is it distracting you?" Completely oblivious to what my lecturer just said. She then said "you know if I was a male lecturer, you wouldn't be asking me these questions, you would just close the laptop"

She asked him to leave the room and he refused. So my lecturer decided to pause the class until he left. It was a standoff, she wasn't teaching; he wasn't moving. After a while, she asked someone to go to the faculty office to contact someone who could help. Within minutes, the Deputy Dean (male) showed up.
He went to my lecturer and she explained what had happened, and both of them made their way over to the student.

ALL THE DEPUTY DEAN DID WAS RAISE HIS FINGER AND SIGNAL TO HIM TO "COME HERE" AND SHOUTED "EXCUSE ME SAH, COME HERE A LIKKLE"

That's all! He complied!

My lecturer then stated, "that's exactly what I was saying"

It dawned on me, that it is very true.

I decided to look through my notes for my organisational communication course to see if there was anything in relation to this issue, lo and behold! there is!

This happening proves the article on Politeness and Gender right! My lecturer, without raising her voice, politely asked the young man to close the laptop, and when he did not comply, she again, politely asked him to leave, and he didn't. However, as soon as the Deputy Dean, who is a male, came and did a little finger signal and bellowed to the young man, he complied!
So even though a woman can be in a position of authority, many times, she is not treated with the same respect as that given to males; even when her voice isn't raised. People tend to respond to shouting, especially from a male authority figure, and tend to take them more seriously than females.

I mean, various students asked the young man to leave! and he just sat there. Mind you, many of the students were females of course, but a male in particular spoke out, and he did not budge!
So this can even question the view of the article, because the male in the lecture that asked the young man to leave, was much older than him.

Personally, I think at that point, he would have left, but it was a point where it was evident that his ego was kicking in, he didn't want to seem like a wuss!

The impact of Body Language

In class last week, we played a game of "charades." At first, I thought it would just be a little stress reliever, but as it turned out, it had a deeper meaning. If you really think about body language, it is something we all do unconsciously every single day. However, we often fail to realize that our body language, specifically referring to our gestures, may not have the same meaning worldwide.

A crazy thought popped up in my head, which prompted me to make this entry. I was thinking about a virtual meeting through Skype, with some of my key stakeholders.  There was one in Japan, one in Greece, one in the United States, one from Trinidad, and myself from Jamaica.
We are finally closing an anticipated deal, and we are all excited, so the United States partner signals a "thumbs up", I signal a "thumbs up" as well and the Trinidadian signals an "OK" sign.

Soon the partner from Greece begins to argue and decides to pull out from the deal and immediately signs off Skype and out of the meeting. Everyone wonders what is going on, we just closed an amazing deal!

The following article explains my hypothetical issue:
http://ingenira.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Read-Others-Thoughts-by-Their-Gestures

The "thumbs up" gesture is interpreted as a sign of profanity in countries such as Northern Greece. Yikes! That ruined everything right?

It is very important as someone who deals with business partners worldwide, or even a person interacting with friends/people from various countries, to understand what different body languages mean. It may not be as detrimental as a business deal falling through; it may be a situation where you hurt one of your dear friends from another country, without knowing it.

I have experienced this myself where giving a simple hug to my family members who were born and raised in the United States; you can almost feel the anxiety through their clothes, when you hug them. Its not normal for them to hug when greeting someone, they see it as an invasion of their personal space; while in Jamaica, we hug A LOT!!

We should all ensure that we are knowledgeable of the different meanings body languages have cross cultures, so that we do not send the wrong message or insult someone unintentionally and ruin a very good business deal! lol

You can check out this link as well where Sam Diener goes into more detail about body languages:
http://www.samdiener.com/2009/10/body-language-in-different-cultures/

" Yuh a seh one ting but yet still yuh a do supm diffrent"

Crazy title for a blog right? lol Well that is how I understand "cognitive dissonance."

Cognitive Dissonance, in my words is where someone's behaviour is conflicting with what they have said/believe.


How many times in our daily interactions have we either:

"Cuss off" someone saying the similar title phrase " yuh a seh one ting but yuh a do supm different" somewhere in the argument
                       
                                                        OR

Been the victim of the argument with someone telling you " yuh a seh one ting but yuh a do supm different"

Trust me, it happens everyday. I can think of many situations where I have had to say this. One particular situation, or should I say, ongoing situation is with my dear old daddy :)

Now, growing up, my dad and I usually GO AT IT! with arguing. He always says " Stephanie, you need to listen to me when I am talking to you!"....... now.... I'm sure you can guess what is coming next right?

BUT OF COURSE!

Whenever I am trying to make a point, or even casually talk to him about something, HE NEVER LISTENS!!!!! Often times he "butts in" with something contrary to what I am saying!

How can you tell me to listen to you, when you listen to NO ONE!?!??  He should practice what he preaches right?
Being the person I am, I always bring it up, and call him out on it. The argument however,  always ends with the two of us laughing and of course, with him saying " yuh know yuh fiesty" (we all get that right?.. no? just me? hhmm ok lol)

There are other instances, even with friends, where you can see evidence of cognitive dissonance.

Ladies, I am sure, many of us have experienced that conversation about boys where one girlfriend always bashes a particular type of guy, and they end up dating the very guy they SWORE they would never date.

In Jamaica, to me, the greatest evidence of cognitive dissonance, is the OVERUSED company claim of  " we provide great customer service (cue fake smile)," but when you walk through that door:

1. No Good Morning/Afternoon/Night
2. If you should need directions to a particular department or need to find a particular person, you either get:

•  a finger pointing in no specific direction or 
•  "just go through that door/ just go to that lady/gentleman over there and they will tell you" or 
•  no response!! You have to repeat it twice before they actually notice that a customer has walked in. 

GOOD LORD, Why did you ever disturb them? They act like you are a bother to them. Thats not "great customer service" now is it?


As you can see, cognitive dissonance happens all around us, in various situations, and this is can cause issues when communicating. It can discredit the sender, and cause a spin off of multiple problems e.g. loss of customers/ friends as well as a negative reputation in the public eye.

My simple solution  and advice to this issue, would be to:

"Say what you mean, mean what you say and DO what you say you mean"

#KONY2012 : An Example of the REAL POWER of Social Media

Ok, first I would like you to take time out to watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc&list=LLo_6QAwL4YhZLr5HaRbsBfA&index=1&feature=plpp_video

Pay close attention to the message behind this video, but more importantly I want to focus on some key statements mentioned:

• Facebook has more people on its network than the earth did 200 years ago,
• It has about 750 million people worldwide
• This is Facebook world
• It is an avenue where people from all over the world share ideas

Yes, these statements are all about Facebook, but these statements can be applied to many other social media networks out there, e.g. Twitter, Tumblr etc.

Now, I think this initiative to stop Joseph Kony is FANTASTIC! and it shows the REAL power of social media.
Here is a young man, Jason Russell, who was touched by the stories of a young African boy, Jacob, and made a promise to him that I feel will be fulfilled by the end of this year.

The message is very clear, STOP JOSEPH KONY! But it isn't the message that struck my view so much, it was the means and ways in which this young man is going about stopping him. What a brilliant idea! Using social media, to make this guy famous, so he can be captured.

I love the fact that this movement is primarily driven by young people, after all, they do call us the generation of the "Information Age." ALL WE KNOW AND SPEND MOST OF OUR TIME ON IS FACEBOOK AND TWITTER ANYWAYS! WHY NOT PUT IT TO GOOD USE!

As you can see evidently from the video, the use of social media to get the world's attention has surpassed expectations. You see people from Sydney, Canada, Mexico, and many other places not mentioned in the video, getting involved:

• People posting on YouTube; 
• Dominating the trending topics on Twitter with #StopKONY2012 or #KONY2012 among others;
• People posting vblogs,  
• Flooding Facebook timelines, sharing the video (the link is at the top) 
• And my favourite one of all:  GEOTAGGING THE KONY FLIERS SO THEY CAN FOLLOW HOW THE WORD IS SPREADING WORLDWIDE IN REAL TIME! AMAZING! I mean people are posting these fliers with their geo-tags on Instagram, Twitter, EVERYWHERE!

Jason Russell (mastermind behind this fabulous idea) said it himself, "99% of the world doesn't know who Joseph Kony is, so the aim is to let everyone know just who he is."

They are maximizing the use of social media in a great effort to stop this criminal! and it is working!

Lets take a moment to think:
Do you think that this effort to stop Joseph Kony would have gotten this far with just the sole use of fliers, billboards and the "action kit?"


NO! How would the world know? They would have to manually fly all over the world to hand out fliers. Now we all know that those costs incurred would be ridiculous!!

There had to be a way to spread this worldwide, and what better way to reach the masses than through the "new" emerging primary means of communication,which in my view is social media; it's virtually inexpensive too.

I think this initiative has more advantages than what meets the eye.

I can say for one, that this effort is one to DISPEL the views of the older generation, that social media is just a waste of time, and a rumour mill for gossip and tarnishing your peers. This effort to #STOPKONY2012 shows that social media can be used for serious issues, and it does have the powerful effect of reaching the masses worldwide and uniting us into one global community fighting against a cause that will better humanity.

Now, go forth and check out the website (below) to see how you can join the effort, you know your going to end up on Facebook later on anyways :P       Stop Joseph Kony!

http://www.invisiblechildren.com/

#STOPKONY2012

Information Overload!!!!!!!

This week, my Organizational Communication class took place on Twitter. At first, I thought this was a very cool idea, still think it is actually, but it didn't go how I imagined it.


We were suppose to log on at 11 am, class time and participate in a discussion using the hashtag #orgcomm.
So a class of students ALL AT ONCE, began posting their views on whatever topic we were discussing.


Now, remember the old school "chat room" ?? Picture that on steroids! CHAOS!


Because Twitter is pretty much happening in real time, as someone thought of something, they tweeted it, and of course it got confusing, because at one point I didn't know what we were discussing :S


Yes! the aim of the class, was to use a contemporary method of communication to post thoughts in a discussion, so we could see how quickly information travels, as well as see how many people it reaches.


Very innovative idea, but the downfall of this Twitter experience I believe, was a sense of order. Everyone tweeted like 5 things within the space of 2 seconds; many people in the class weren't on the same page. Trying to follow everyone's tweets, reply to them, and at the same time dig through the masses of your classmates' tweets to make sure you catch what your lecturer was tweeting, was a very tedious task, I prefer sitting in a lecture room to be honest, at least there is some form of order, keyword SOME lol.


Also, what I took from the experience was that, fast paced technology such as Twitter, leaves little room for correction. Meaning, you can get so caught up in the discussion, and tweet things totally unrelated, and WHOOPS! too late! once you post that tweet, you can't take it back. 
It doesn't really give you a chance to think through your thoughts properly to produce a well formulated answer, like for example, in a forum. You are trying to keep up with the discussion, because you don't want to get left behind. It was pretty hard to handle.


I think probably one or two of my classmates probably got fed up and stopped tweeting, because they thought "whats the point?" But maybe that was part of the lesson, maybe not all situations are fit for all the new technology media, like Twitter.


I mean, if you want to have a conversation with one or two people, or just post your thoughts as they come, just for the sake of it, then yeah Twitter is amazing!


However, as far as conducting a class on Twitter? I think that's a no no! 


Personally I think a forum would be more effective.

Sigma!

So I finally picked up myself and did the Sigma run last Sunday, and if I say so myself I did very well for a first timer, 42:31!!


In all of this Sigma excitement, I realized something while looking through some of my lecture notes. Mr lecturer had a saying up on a slide "because encouragement sweetens labour and fattens the pocket" and I thought, Pan Caribbean did just this.


Participants both internally and externally, were pretty much on the same page as to the reason for doing this race as well as the goal they set out to achieve; raise $50 million for the Cardiac Unit at the Bustamante Children's Hospital. It was evident that this triggered a sense of altruism among all participants, so much that Pan Caribbean went WAY! over capacity, about a week and a half before registration closed.


What I'm getting at is this; the run served a far greater purpose than just charity. It provided an opportunity for many corporate entities to get involved in giving back to the society (corporate social responsibility), as well as it provided a MASSIVE avenue for NETWORKING! While I was wheezing for dear life, just trying to finish, I passed so many people talking business along the way, and I thought, yup! there goes a deal, it just doesn't happen on the golf course people! It can even happen during a simple.. well not so simple jog!


"Fattens the pocket" you say? Think about it. Sigma was a win win situation  because it provided a platform for trade. Many of the non-corporate and corporate entrants, saw many businesses participating that they never thought would. This in turn, may resonate with these potential clients in a positive way, which could act as a magnet pulling them to do business with whatever corporate entity they saw, which in the future could result in more shareholders, resulting in possibly more $$$!!!
See for yourself http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120220/lead/lead3.html