Organizational Democracy

As I took photos at Sephora, I watched shoppers.

I was surprised to see so many returns and exchanges. By definition, returns happen because customers get buyers’ regret. After shoppers purchase, Sephora needs to reassure customers that they made the right choice.

There are manipulative and non-manipulative ways to reassure customers.

A manipulative way would be for sales associates to ask customers, “Are you sure that’s the product you want?” or “Are you sure that’s the package you meant to buy?” Shoppers would check what they bought, then defend their choice. Basically, associates would get shoppers to justify to themselves that they made the right choice.

But since shoppers play with and try on so many products while shopping at Sephora *before* they choose their purchase, a natural and helpful way to reassure shoppers will be for sales associates to show shoppers new ways to play with and use their purchase, *after* they make the sale.

Here are the blocks of the shopping process, step-by-step, so you can quickly identify your store’s trouble-spots and what to do.

Knowledge.
Based on what shoppers know before they decide to enter your store, provide an action they do which is “a way in” to get started shopping. Classify shoppers into groups: who do you want to shop in your store and what do they need to know to get started?

Restaurants display menus in the windows. Even before you come inside, you know what they sell and how much it costs. Some clubs do the opposite with exclusive guest lists so you have to be “in” before you can get inside.

Purpose.
In any store, shoppers are usually there for one of three reasons:
- If they’re starting out, provide them with a starter kit to introduce them to your full range of products.
- If they’re buying for an event or a special outfit, provide them with memorable products.
- If they’re buying for their ongoing collection, provide them with products they need to add or replenish over time.

Attract.
The shopper’s eye can only be attracted to one thing at a time. At Sephora, you can tell when a shopper will browse a display by whether or not her eye is instantly attracted to a single sign or package.

Display your products so they visually stand out.

Touch.
Make it easy for the shopper to physically reach and touch the attractive product.

Sephora keeps all makeup, perfume and other products within arms’ length.

If your goal is to display products out of reach or behind glass cases, provide *something* shoppers can subconsciously reach to and touch to make a closer physical connection to your product before they start to browse. Uniqlo has shirts and mannequins many stories above the ground and behind glass cases, but always provides clothes on lower shelves which you can reach instead.

Browse.
Browsing is like playing. You can:
- try the product on,
- look at yourself in a mirror,
- show the product to a friend or sales associate for their advice.

Characterize.
Instead of shoppers being overwhelmed by too many choices or confused about what to do, you want them to decide which product they want to buy.

To decide, shoppers need to compare between the product choices, characterize differences between the products, and choose “the right one.”

Within any one display, provide no more than eight choices at a time. Highlighting the most popular product per category often helps shoppers decide which to buy.

Check.
Once the shopper has chosen her product, she usually checks that the price is right, the size is right, the color is right.

Make sure your product is easy for the shopper to take to the checkout line.

Checkout.
The checkout line should be a different experience from shopping. It should be an oasis, where you can reflect on your shoppping experience and come to accept that you want to buy this product.  My favorite kind of checkout experience is when I get into a great, seemingly spontaneous conversation with someone while I’m waiting in line — it’s relaxing and it’s fun.  Some store managers and associates are great at “moving the line along” by talking with customers while they wait.

Pay.
Paying feels right when the shopper knows price corresponds to value. When customers say your products are too expensive, you need to provide more value to their life throughout the shopping experience.

Wine tastings bring knowledge about the world of wine into the world of the wine taster, so you’re willing to pay more.

Receive purchase.
After you pay, you receive a gift — your purchase, the sales receipt, the bag with your product inside.
Shoestores let you wear your shoes out of the store. During Christmas, many stores wrap your gift. Mail-order stores need to pay special attention as to how shoppers receive their purchases in the mail.

Evaluate.
After you receive your purchase, shoppers will get buyer’s regret unless they are assured they made the right choice.

Sales associates can quickly educate shoppers with discoveries on how to use their product in new ways.

Use.
Instruction manuals, unwrapping the product, warranties, and especially using the product is usually the longest-lasting stage in the sales process.

How satisfied a customer is by using their product is key in getting them to return to your store.

The best way to fix a step in the shopping process.
Generally we overcompensate what we’re bad at or skip by overdoing the next step — so Sephora offers a 60-day try-and-return-for-any-reason policy. Fix Sephora’s Evaluate step. Stop buyer’s regret by reassuring shoppers, and Sephora won’t need as many product returns.

Be sure each step contains the best of every other step in miniature. Because Sephora shoppers spend so much time browsing, Sephora should let customers browse while they Evaluate whether they made the right purchase. To do this, sales associates can show shoppers new ways to use products *after* they buy.

This post contains a long quote which shows why slavery hurt owners.  Let me write that again.  Slavery hurt the men and women who owned men, women and children as slaves, and hurt the society overall which kept the slaves.

I’m confident this — slavery hurt the owners — is important to understand — slavery hurt the owners financially, worse than not having slaves – and to really feel in your body as you walk around in your life.  “…in this respect interest and morality are in harmony…” has influenced me deeply over the years, so that I often say what I see when I help people work together in companies, “deep down, everyone wants the same thing.“  The enslaved and the owners are hurt by slavery.  This excerpt is from Alexis de Toqueville’s classic Democracy in America, in the breath-taking translation by George Lawrence, edited by J. P. Meyer:

“Why is it that the Americans have abolished slavery in the North of the Union, and why have they kept it in the South and aggravated its rigors?

The answer is easy.  In the United States people abolish slavery for the sake not of the Negroes but of the white men.

The first Negroes were imported into Virginia about the year 1621.  In America, as everywhere else in the world, slavery originated in the South.  Thence it spread from one place to the next; but the numbers of the slaves grew less the farther one went north, there have always been very few Negroes in New England.

When a century had passed since the foundation of the colonies, an extraordinary fact began to strike the attention of everybody.  The population of those provinces that had practically no slaves increased in numbers, wealth, and well-being more rapidly than those that had slaves.

The inhabitants of the former had to cultivate the ground themselves or hire another’s services; in the latter they had laborers whom they did not need to pay.  With labor and expense on the one side and leisure and economy on the other, nonetheless the advantage lay with the former.

This result seemed all the harder to explain since the immigrants all belonged to the same European stock, with the same habits, civilization, and laws, and there were only hardly perceptible nuances of difference between them.

As time went on, the Anglo-Americans left the Atlantic coast and plunged daily farther into the solitudes of the West; there they encountered soils and climates that were new; they had obstacles of various sorts to overcome; their races mingled, southerners going north, and northerners south.  But in all these circumstances the same fact stood out time and again: in general, the colony that had no slaves was more populous and prosperous than the one where slavery was in force.

The farther they went, the clearer it became that slavery, so cruel to the slave, was fatal to the master.

But the banks of the Ohio provided the final demonstration of this truth.

The stream that the Indians had named the Ohio, or Beautiful River par excellence, waters one of the most magnificent valleys in which man has ever lived.  On both banks of the Ohio stretched undulating ground with soil continually offering the cultivator inexhaustible treasures; on both banks the air is equally healthy and the climate temperate; they both form the frontier of a vast state: that which follows the innumerable windings of the Ohio on the left bank is called Kentucky; the other takes its name from the river itself.  There is only one difference between the two states:  Kentucky allows slaves, but Ohio refuses to have them.

So the traveler who lets the current carry him down the Ohio till it joins the Mississippi sails, so to say, between freedom and slavery; and he has only to glance around him to see instantly which is best for mankind.

On the left bank of the river the population is sparse; from time to time one sees a troop of slaves loitering through half-deserted fields; the primeval forest is constantly reappearing; one might say that society has gone to sleep; it is nature that seems active and alive, whereas man is idle.

But on the right bank a confused hum proclaims from afar that men are busily at work; fine crops cover the fields; elegant dwellings testify to the taste and industry of the workers; on all sides there is evidence of comfort; man appears rich and contented; he works.

The state of Kentucky was founded in 1775 and that of Ohio as much as twelve years later; twelve years in America counts for as much as half a century in Europe.  Now the population of Ohio is more than 250,000 greater than that of Kentucky.

These contrasting effects of slavery and of freedom are easy to understand; they are enough to explain the differences between ancient civilization and modern.

On the left bank of the Ohio work is connected with the idea of slavery, but on the right with well-being and progress; on the one side it is degrading, but on the other honorable; on the left bank no white laborers are to be found, for they would be afraid of being like the slaves; for work people must rely on the Negroes; but one will never see a man of leisure on the right bank: the white man’s intelligent activity is used for work of every sort.

Hence those whose task it is in Kentucky to exploit the natural wealth of the soil are neither eager nor instructed, for anyone who might possess those qualities either does nothing or crosses over into Ohio so that he can profit by his industry, and do so without shame.

In Kentucky, of course, the masters make the slaves work without any obligation to pay them, but they get little return from their work, whereas money paid to free workers comes back with interest from the sale of what they produce.

The free laborer is paid, but he works faster than the slave, and the speed with which work is done is a matter of great economic importance.  The white man sells his assistance, but it is bought only when needed; the black can claim no money for his services, but he must be fed the whole time; he must be supported in old age as well as in the vigor of his years, in his useless childhood as well as in his productive youth, and in sickness as well as in health.  So in both cases it is only by paying that one can get service; the free worker receives wages, the slave receives an upbringing, food, medicine and clothes; the master spends his money little by little in small sums to support the slave; he scarcely notices it.  The workman’s wages are paid all at once and seem only to enrich the man who receives them; but in fact the slave has cost more than the free man, and his labor is less productive.

The influence of slavery extends even further, pentrating the master’s soul and giving a particular turn to his ideas and tastes.

On both banks of the Ohio live people with characters by nature enterprising and energetic, but these common characteristics are turned to different use on one side and the other.

The white man on the right bank, forced to live by his own endeavors, has made material well-being the main object of his existence; as he lives in a country offering inexhaustible resources to his industry and continual inducements to activity, his eagerness to possess things goes beyond the ordinary limits of human cupidity; tormented by a longing for wealth, he boldy follows every path to fortune that is open to him; he is equally prepared to turn into a sailor, pioneer, artisan, or cultivator, facing the labors or dangers of these various ways of life with even constancy; there is something wonderful in his resourcefulness and a sort of heroism in his greed for gain.

The American on the left bank scorns not only work itself but also enterprises in which work is necessary to success; living in idle ease, he has the tastes of idle men; money has lost some of its value in his eyes; he is less interested in wealth than in excitement and pleasure and expends in that direction the energy which his neighbor puts to other use; he is passionately fond of hunting and war; he enjoys all the most strenuous forms of bodily exercise; he is accustomed to the ues of weapons and from childhood has been ready to risk his life in single combat.  Slavery therefore not only prevents the white men from making their fortunes but even diverts them from wishing to do so.

The constant operation of these opposite influences throughout two centuries in the English North American colonies has in the end brought about a vast difference in the commerical capabilities of southerners and northerners.  Today the North alone has ships, manufactures, railways, and canals.

Such differences can be noticed not only between South and North but also between different people living in the South.  Almost all those in the most southern states who have gone in for commerical undertakings and try to make a profit out of slavery have come from the North; northerners are daily spreading over that part of the country, where they have less competition to fear; there they discover resources which the inhabitants have not noticed, and complying with a system of which they disapprove, they turn it to better advantage than those who founded and maintain it still.

Were I inclined to continue the parallel, I could easily demonstrate that almost all the marked differences in character between northerners and southerners have their roots in slavery, but at the moment I am not concerned with all the effects of slavery, but only with those that affect the material prosperity of those adopting that system.

Antiquity could only have a very imperfect understanding of this effect of slavery on the production of wealth.  Then slavery existed throughout the whole civilized world, only some barbarian peoples being without it.

Christianity destroyed slavery by insisting on the slave’s rights; nowadays it can be attacked from the master’s point of view; in this respect interest and morality are in harmony.

As these truths become clear in the United States, one finds slavery retreating in the face of education and experience.”

- quoted from Alexis de Toqueville’s Democracy in America, written in 1835 and translated by George Lawrence and edited by J. P. Meyer.

Here’s a tip for companies:  give every official position term limits.  Just like people can only be President of the U.S. for four years, renewable for another four years maximum, or Governor or Mayor of many states or towns for a limited amount of time, give the CEO, the President, and the department directors, executives or managers of your company, term limits.

Here are some of the benefits:

Every person brings different skills, strengths, vision, weaknesses and needs to the position.  Different skills, strengths and vision will bring new life to official leadership of the company or department, as needed from time to time.

It’s hard for most officials to keep growing in the same position over many years, or to admit when they want to move on.

Passing along the job means officials need to train others about what they do, and pass along specific skills, relationships and knowledge needed to do their job well.

The group of people who choose the new official — ideally this is the people whom the official will be the official for — the people who work in that department or company, will choose the new person.  This means:

 - coworkers learn about what you do in your job — you become more appreciated.

 - coworkers choose the new person — they feel responsible for who they work with.

[Other keywords: corporate term limits, corporation term limits]

“Declare the past, diagnose the present, foretell the future; practice these acts. As to diseases, make a habit of two things — to help, or at least to do no harm.”

-Hippocrates

[As so many of the quotes on this blog, this from Michael Neill, a tip called "The Helper's Dilemma."]

If I’m home, You’re always welcome.

If you’re hungry, help yourself to anything.

If you break something, it’s alright.

If you need anything, I’ll buy it for you.

If you make a mess, help me clean it up.

When you leave, give lots of hugs & kisses.

* * *

“Grandma’s Rules” is a sign on the wall in Mom’s Country Deli in Houston.  It’s my new favorite restaurant because of the atmosphere, signs like these, the food, and the people who work there.  Mom’s son and daughter chose the signs, and Mom really works there.

I’ve started applying these rules to my business.  I’ve also started to expect others to live these rules.  Some are harder for me to live than others. 

And to anyone reading this who thinks they can take advantage of someone who lives by these rules, please, use common sense.  One easy way to corrupt these rules is to ask people to be enablers of bad habits or dependency.  Just as you shouldn’t buy an alcoholic the drinks they ask for but you should provide an intervention, if you know someone who keeps getting what they ask for and using it to block their bigger goals in life, get them not what they say they want, but what they seem to be indicating they need.

Perhaps another sign, this one above the cornbread in Mom’s Country Deli, sums it up:

PLATE LUNCH CUSTOMERS

HELP YOURSELF TO HOME MADE BREAD

PLEASE TAKE ONLY WHAT YOU CAN EAT

LET’S NOT WASTE

     Love, Mom

* NO TO GOES PLEASE *

* * * 

Also, I think this whether coworkers live up to this sign is a good measure of how well people work together over time:

  Don’t Fuss

  Call Us