Too little too late? Will Obama’s lack of collaboration kill health care reform?

Net: Obama’s failure to leverage the collaborative efforts of others, consider and include good ideas from his opponents and provide the requisite and timely leadership contributed greatly to congress’ inability to pass heath care reform.  Will the rhetoric and approaches of the last two weeks be enough to revive it or are they too little too late?

I have often wondered if there is a common event that gets people to start blogging.  I imagine for many it’s a topic or an issue they feel so passionate about that they feel compelled to share their thoughts with others.   For a wonderful example of this, see my friend Dr. Mark Pearlmutter’s blog from his two weeks as a volunteer in Haiti.

One thing I know for sure is what stopped me – jumping into the Citizens for Alan Khazei Senate campaign for the last 55 days of the 90 day special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat.  Since the campaign ended, I have had many posts “drafted” in my head, but have been experiencing some kind of weird writer’s block that kept my fingers from typing.   I began to fear that maybe leading 128 pages of policy work in under two months used up all of my words for the year!

As anyone who knows me knows – health care is my biggest issue and has been since my then six month old daughter was sick for the first time.  Fortunately, we were living in Toronto and had access to a wonderful pediatrician who returned our call at 10:00 in the evening and sent us to a world class children’s hospital a few blocks from our home.  I realized at that moment that there were millions of American’s who couldn’t have done what we did and became a dedicated soldier in the war to bring health care to all American’s and to lower the cost and improve quality for those of us lucky enough to have coverage.

I have written before about my frustration with Obama’s ineffective attempt to sell health care reform to the American people in the post What Obama can learn from Ross Perot, Cecil Underwood and Coalition Marketing.  Listening to some of his remarks about health care reform over the past ten days has me sufficiently agitated to start blogging again.  A few more suggestions for the President:

1. Look for others who have already collaborated and use them.

Last summer, I found an incredibly thorough bi-partisan proposal for health care reform called Crossing Our Lines: Working Together to Reform the U.S. Health System.  This report was written by former Senate Leaders Bob Dole, Howard Baker and Tom Daschle.  George Mitchell also was a major contributor to the project, but was not listed as an author on the final report after shifting all of his efforts to his role as special envoy to the Middle East.  The report was the product of a two-year consensus-building process called the The Leaders’ Project on the State of American Health Care.  Their plan is a comprehensive set of policy recommendations that aims to provide quality, affordable health coverage for all Americans and includes recommendations to improve quality and control costs.

Having stumble upon this report, I was surprised that I had not heard of it from traditional news media or blogs, and disappointed that Obama wasn’t using this as a framework for his heath care reform efforts.  We used this as one of the primary sources for developing Alan Khazei’s health care policy during his race for the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat.

Then, last week on either XM Radio’s POTUS or CNN, I heard the President refer to The Leaders report at least twice.  Saying,

“The component parts of this thing are pretty similar to what Howard Baker, Bob Dole and Tom Daschle proposed at the beginning of this debate last year.

“Now, you may not agree with Bob Dole and Howard Baker and Tom — and certainly you don’t agree with Tom Daschle on much … but that’s not a radical bunch. But if you were to listen to the debate, and, frankly, how some of you went after this bill, you’d think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot.”

“And so I’m thinking to myself, ‘Well, how is it that a plan that is pretty centrist… (more)

Why didn’t he use this as an example and – better yet – use Dole and Baker to help him sell health care reform over the past twelve months?

2. Collaboration means working together and using each other’s good ideas, not just giving them lip service.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele spoke at Harvard’s Institute of Politics last week. During his remarks, he mentioned that Republicans had offered over a dozen ideas and proposals for addressing the country’s dysfunctional medical malpractice system, but none of them were given serious consideration by the administration.    If Obama is serious about lowering the cost of health care, he needs to address medical malpractice, considered by many experts to be the major driver of defensive medicine.  The cost of defensive medicine has been estimated to be between $70 billion and $200 billion a year by PriceWaterhouseCoopers Health Research Institute and others.

Again, this idea is not new.  Bill Bradley wrote about the need to form a bi-partisan coalition to pass  health care reform and the opportunity to use medical malpractice reform as an issue that would bring Republicans to the table in his 2007 book, The New American Story. He made this point again in an August 2009 New York Times Op-Ed article, Tax Reform’s Lesson for Health Care Reform.

On the Khazei campaign, we reached out to our network of friends we were introduced to Dr. Alan Woodward, a former President of the Massachusetts Medical Society and a passionate expert on health care cost reduction.  Dr. Woodward turned us onto the successful approaches to medical malpractice reform being successfully implemented by the University of Michigan Health System and recommended on by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations. (I will write more about this in an upcoming post on the collaborate efforts of the Khazei campaign.)

Again, the answers are out there if you truly believe in collaboration and are willing to do the work to find them.

3. Collaboration does not mean abdication of leadership.

Anyone who has engaged in a truly collaborative effort quickly realizes that harnessing the wisdom of crowds takes work.  I recently experienced this when using 99designs.com to run a contest to develop a logo for a new organization among hundreds of graphic designers from around the world.  As John Della Volpe, the Founder of SocialSphere Strategies wrote about in a recent blog post, you need to provide leadership (a clearly written brief) and guidance (continuous feedback to initial and revised designs) to get a quality product when using this or other hugely collaborative processes.

President Obama’s lack of leadership on health care has been a concern to many of us who applauded his courage to take on this most important and possibly most challenging issue.  To me, his almost hand off approach through most of 2009 felt like a “guardrail to guardrail” over-reaction to the mistakes of the Clinton administration’s health care reform efforts.  Whereas the Clinton approach is remembered as one where Hilary Clinton, Ira Magaziner and a few others developed in closed meetings the plan they expected congress to pass, the Obama administration’s approach was almost the polar opposite.  The President’s instructions to congress to “increase coverage without increasing the deficit” and his failure to make a major address about health insurance reform until late summer are two examples of the lack of leadership he provided, with what we now see as disastrous results.

According to Politico Pulse – a great new source of information I recently found on my Kindle - at the closed door session with Democrats last week, Al Frankin and others raised this concern:

Sen. Al Franken ripped into White House senior adviser David Axelrod this week during a tense, closed-door session with Senate Democrats.   Five sources who were in the room tell POLITICO that Franken criticized Axelrod for the administration’s failure to provide clarity or direction on health care and the other big bills it wants Congress to enact.

Obama has scheduled a Health Care Summit meeting with Republicans on February 25^th.  Lets hope he provides both real collaboration and leadership and that it won’t be too little too late.

BMW falls in the gap between consumer expectations and business engagement with Web 2.0

Net: The fact that 50% of all consumers are engaging with social media, but less than 40% of businesses are doing so means that some companies are leaving their customers exposed to competitor’s initiatives. BMW is one of many examples.

Last fall, I leased a new BMW X3 to replace my old one whose lease was expiring. The replacement X3 did not have the built-in navigation of its predecessor, so I decided to go online to search for a portable unit. First stop was BMW.com, where I expected to find an owners’ community where I would be able to ask others for advice.

When Underwood Partners conducts a Web 2.0 audit for clients, one of the outputs is a “heat map” that visually shows competitive and complimentary companies’ use of social media technology tools. The map is color coded: green represents a highly visible and useful application; yellow represents an application that is either buried deep in the site, poorly marketed or has a confusing user interface; red indicates that either the company is not using the application or we can’t find it. And given the amount of time we spend online, if we can’t find it, we don’t believe customers will either. [Note this graphic was first developed by Max Palmer when we worked together at Social Sphere.  Max claims it was called a "Palmer Map." He's a great analyst, but not so good on the marketing front!]

If we were doing a Web 2.0 audit of www.BMWUSA.com, the column Customer Forums would clearly be coded red. Although “My Account” has lots of information about how to make payments, pay off my lease early, order a new vehicle, etc., I couldn’t find any place to connect with other customers. So, I logged onto Edmunds.com, one of the pioneers of providing user reviews, customer forums, and other Web 2.0 applications in the automotive space.

On the Edmunds’ site, it was easy to find a BMW X3 Forum in their “Car Space” section where I was able to start an online discussion asking for help with aftermarket navigation systems. But as I was doing so, I noticed that Cadillac ads began appearing on the page. By not investing in Web 2.0 applications like customer forums, BMW literally drove me to a place where I was being served up competitors’ ads.

Some businesses delay developing a Web 2.0 strategy because they are afraid of “losing control” and fear their customers will post negative comments about their products on their own web sites. As this example shows, if you don’t provide an opportunity for customers to talk to you and each others about your products, someone else will. At best, you will have lost an opportunity for customer engagement, research and communication. At worst, you will be giving a third party the opportunity to monetize your customer through selling ads to a competitor. Which, at the end of the day, could ultimately cost you the customer’s business.

Don’t abuse your best customers Part II: Hertz #1 Club Case Study

My first job out of business school was with Bain & Company consulting.  I spent six years at Bain and during that period and my longest non-travel period was two weeks. One of the first things I did after starting at Bain was to join every frequent flyer program and several hotel rewards programs. Although I do not remember the exact date, I also joined the Hertz #1 Club as soon as it was launched.

One of the greatest benefits of the Hertz #1 Club is you can usually avoid standing in line at the rental counter and proceed directly to the lot where your car is waiting for you.  Although I perceive Hertz to be more expensive than Budget or Alamo, I made the mental value calculation that the ease of reserving (call the 800 # 1 number) and picking up the car is worth whatever premium I may be paying.  I have also been able to rent some great vehicles recently, notably the Ford Edge on my frequent trips to Pittsburgh.

Last weekend, I planned to fly from Boston to Pittsburgh, pick up a Hertz car, drive to Morgantown, WV for two days of board meetings, basketball and football games and then on to Charleston to visit my father for a few hours before flying back to Boston via Charlotte.  I was originally planning to start my journey Thursday by flying from Boston to NYC for the OMMA Advertising Networks conference and then to Pittsburgh Thursday night.  But the LGA-PIT flights were canceled Thursday night, so I flew back to Boston and took the Friday morning 6 AM BOS-PIT flight.

On the way to the airport in Boston, I remembered I had not changed my car reservation, so I called the Hertz #1 line and re-booked. While on the phone, I remembered seeing a recent Hertz ad claiming that you could “reserve the car you wanted” at many Hertz locations, so I asked about this.  The reservations agent read a list of vehicles available and said I could “request one.”  Although the Edge was not on the list, I selected a Pontiac G8.

When I arrived in Pittsburgh later that morning, I was surprised when the #1 agent told me I would be renting a Honda Accord and not a G8.  No problem, I thought, the new Honda’s look like great vehicles as well.

As I approached space D4 underneath the Pittsburgh airport, I realized the Accord was not the new model, but rather at least one model old.  I was even more surprised to find out that the car smelled like smoke and had cigarette burns on the seats and door fabric.  On the seat next to me was a “Pre-Rental Vehicle Inspection Form,” something I had never seen before in any rental car.  The form noted that there were “dents” and “scratches” on the front, driver and passenger side of the car.  To complete the picture, when I started the Accord the odometer read 34,000 miles, another first in my rental car experience.

So, as an ex-smoker extremely sensitive to the smell of cigarettes, I found myself driving to Morgantown with a raging headache in a smelly car that was out of alignment.  For 20 of the past 27 years (the exception being my time in Canada when I was 100% loyal to Tilden/National, our AIR MILES Sponsor) I have only rented Hertz cars. Hertz has the data to know this, yet they give me a vehicle that is worse than I would expect from the lowest cost car rental company, and charged me $100/day for the experience.  Maybe given my last minute change this was the only vehicle available that could be dropped in Charleston, but if that was the case, they could have and should have apologized in advance.

My next steps:

1. Check out Avis, National and or Budget “Number 1″ Programs
2. Wait a few days to see if anyone from Hertz is monitoring their customer’s comments on blogs like this.
3. Try to find Hertz CEO’s email address and see if he/she is interested in responding to this.
4. Do the same thing with the Hertz board.

Here’s the back of the envelope loyalty math.  Assume I rent 20 vehicles a year for another 20 years at an average price of $50 per rental.  That’s $20,000 in lost revenue from breaking the virtuous cycle of relationship marketing and not using the information Hertz has in its database to treat a valuable customer well.  Hertz blew it at step 1, they know I am a loyal customers and instead of rewarding me with an upgrade or other amenity, the insulted me by giving me a brand damaging vehicle. Let’s see how they attempt to recover, if at all.

Questions:

• What data do you have on your best customers that you are taking advantage of today?
• Are there similar examples of “best customer abuse” happening in your company?

Extraordinary customer service mitigates disastrous start to long weekend

Last Friday I left Harvard Square early with plans to get a jump on the traffic to New Hampshire with my 9 year old son Myles and “5 going on 2” yellow lab Ginger. We left Brookline a little behind schedule around 4pm and by the time we reached Storrow Drive, the East Bound lane was backed up.  So, we opted to go West and pick up the Mass Pike in Alston. The ramp was narrowed due to construction and I bumped into the curb, thinking, “thank God that didn’t pop my tire.” Devine intervention was either non-existent or ephemeral as a few minutes later we were entering the ramp to the Mass Pike and it was clear I had a flat.

Fortunately, I was able to pull over in a safe place and started digging in the glove box for the owner’s manual to my beloved X3. As I sat up, I noticed a Massachusetts State Trooper pulling up behind me. ( In all candor, that did cause me to break a bead as a few years ago I collected 3 tickets within 6 months which satisfied the admissions criteria for 8 hours of driving safety school.) But this interaction ended up being a very different and pleasant experience. In hindsight, I assume that someone in the toll both called the Trooper.

Trooper Danny Jefferson was incredibly helpful as he got out of his car and told Myles and I he had already called someone to help. He offered to help me get the “donut” spare tire out of the back of the car, but suggested I wait for the Mass Pike emergency service vehicle who would have a much better/safer/easier jack to lift the car. Within a few minutes, Anthony Pellegrine arrived in his bright yellow truck with the aforementioned superjack and we were back on the road in less than 30 minutes from pulling over.

The “donut” was clearly labeled as a temporary device, with large letters warning not to drive over 50 miles per hour. As the main event for the weekend included traveling over the Sandwich Road from Waterville Valley to the Sandwich, NH Fair – a dirt and gravel road that is so rough it is closed in the winter (but incredibly beautiful; see my photos on smugmug) – I knew we had to make an additional stop to repair or replace the blown tire. Fortunately, we were only one exit away from Direct Tire’s Watertown facility and I called ahead while waiting for Anthony’s arrival.  Susan assured me that they would be ready when I arrived, even if they had to stay after closing time.  Direct Tire is one of my all time favorite businesses and owner Barry Steinberg a leading implementer of all we learned about customer loyalty at Bain; he has been featured in numerous business articles, including Inc Magazines 26 Most Fascinating Entrepreneurs.

By the time Myles and I arrived at Direct Tire, they had a bay open for us and were waiting with a new high performance snow tire to replace the blown one. They welcomed Myles, Ginger and I into their waiting room and we were on our way within 30 minutes. Susan and her colleagues even told us a way to avoid the Mass Pike and most of the 128 North traffic by taking the local’s short cuts.

So here’s what happened:

- Great customer service turned what could have been a disastrous start of a long weekend into an incredibly positive experience; one which I have shared and will continue to share many many times over
- My son got to meet some really nice people who are great at their jobs and deliver extraordinary service
- I found positive content for my first customer service blog; a goal I had from the initial idea of including Customer Service as a major Collaboration Evangelist category.

Total elapsed time for all of this: less than 60 minutes and we were on our way.

Thanks to Trooper Jefferson, Anthony, Barry and the pit crew at Direct Tire and a special shout out to the Mylesman who was hugely patient and kept reading his favorite book Bone throughout the episode.

If extraordinary customer service can turn something as bad as a flat tire into an experience worthy of sharing with others, how many opportunities did your business capture or miss today that could have done the same?

Year Up

Thanks to Vanessa Kirsch and Kelly Fitzsimmons of New Profit, I met Gerald Chertavian and got involved in creating Year up in early 2001.

Year Up is the innovative workforce develop program founded by Gerald Chertavian that recruits and trains low income urban young adults for entry level technology jobs and places successful program participants in internships with America’s leading companies.

Started in July of 2001 with an inaugural class of 22 in Boston, Year Up now serves over 700 students a year in  programs in Boston, Providence, DC/The Nations Capital Region, New York City, San Fransisco and Atlanta.  Over 85% of Year up graduates are working at leading US companies including State Street, Bank of America, Fidelity, Putnam, American Express, Bain & Company, Providence Equity Partners, Digitas, and several State and Federal Government Departments.

Please visit the Year Up web site to learn more and get involved.  All Year Up students work with a mentor and mentoring is a great way to get started.