Fascinating things happen when you step away from the business.  I was recently forced to step away from The Table this week to care for an ill parent, and in doing so, I learned three important lessons as a leader:

1. The company functions quite well without me. Nice job team!

2. Removing me from the picture gave some division directors freedom to step up in greater ways, and also forced clients to get their answers from other team members, which strengthens their relationships with those team members.

3. Being away helped the business to highlight aspects that were not functioning smoothly and needed attention.

Number 3 is what I am going to discuss here. As the leader, one thing I often do is work magic to cover up a mess.  Meaning that I step in and solve immediate problems, as opposed to the system creating new solutions that will work with or without me in the picture.  This week the issue has been our online store.  We are new in the shopping cart arena.   Our clients spend a good amount of money with us and at the end of the day, we need to be able to sell their books.  Our online store has a 95% positive user experience rating.  But 5% of the time, people are having problems processing their orders, either due to a compatibility issue with our cart, or them entering incorrect information.  Either way, we need to address errors on our part and also help to educate our book buyers on how to best input their information to arrive at the desired outcome.

You would think this would be a rather easy solution, but carts can be incredibly complex in how they interact with customers. Seeing this issue come to a head while I was gone is forcing us to make some decisions. What we are going to be doing is hiring a consultant (if anyone knows a good shopping cart consultant, please have them contact me asap at corey@writersoftheroundtable.com), and we will also be cross testing the applications on multiple browsers and versions whenever we make changes.  Is this costly?  Absolutely.  We’ll probably invest a small fortune.  Will it be worth it?  Absolutely.  As we add titles to our list, that 5%, over time, will be incredibly valuable revenue.

More importantly, our clients will see from our actions that we respect that they are working hard for every sale opportunity.  There is nothing like busting your butt to make the sale only to find that the system cannot process it.  We often only have one chance to make the sale. Some might say that 95% is good enough.  I say, anything less than 98% is unacceptable.

There will always be issues that make a system imperfect, but it is that attention to detail that makes all the difference.  Sometimes, only in stepping away can you come back to a clearer picture.