228: John Brandt, author of Nincompoopery: Why Your Customers Hate You and How to Fix It

John Brandt, author of Nincompoopery: Why Your Customers Hate You – and How to Fix It

John Brandt and Bill Ringle discuss Nincompoopery: Why Your Customers Hate You–and How to Fix It.

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth.

Top 3 Takeaways from this Interview

Quality through essential to value is not longer a differentiating component of value – customers want more.
One of the biggest gifts you can receive is a customer complaint. This is direct feedback from the customer about something that isn’t working in your organization.
Any time we lead change in an organization we have to manage not only those technical components, but the accompanying social aspects as well.

Interview Insights

Read the Show Notes from this Episode

John Brandt tells his inspiration and how she influenced him to connect to her potential [00:47]Q: Can you remember how exciting how it was as well as scary to take that job?A: I can!…But what was important in that part of my life was to make that change. Not only that I have to be pushed by somebody else and certainly be mentored, I had to make a decision, I just decided, “I’m not really going to be ever, ever work for anyone. [03:34]

The decision I have to make for at that time, “Do I wanna do this?” Then I finally gave myself a gift: “Never again do work that I didn’t want to do. I would never again spend time just wasting time for a paycheck. I would always try to work I love. And that made a huge difference in my life. People will tell you do this, and do that. [4:58]

Once you give yourself that freedom, once you do things you only love…you of course work harder, you of course work better….everything gets better once you do that. [05:30]

We live in a world where you’re advised to get an education for a job, you should do that job, and you have to do that for your entire life. And, this is not true. You can do multiple things and you should do things that will make you happy. [06:15]

Well, exactly, and all those energies go into that. You’re also not spending your energy worrying what other people think. Or why they’re disappointed in you. [7:03]Q: What is your definition of Nincompoopery?A: It is not the person itself, not the nincompoop, it’s the nincompooper…because there’s a larger process that has not been examined by managers there. [8:57]Q: Can you tell me about an example of a company or leaders of the company…A: We also have to train…not just technical skills but also on collaboration, communication…if you’re going to ask employees to make decisions that affect your margins they better understand how you make money. [17:36]

We don’t do a better job in this country of teaching people about economics, and in most companies people who work for them don’t know the difference, and don’t know how to read an income statement. They don’t know the difference between a profit and loss, not because they’re dumb, but because nobody taught them. [18:02]Q: What are the different types of nincompooping?A: Anybody who has tried to change in any of the organizations knows that nobody is up for change….The first group of people is “Woe-is-all-of-us”…”woe-is-you”…”woe-is-change”… [19:24]. My Quest for the Best Lightning Round [31:18]I would say the easiest … is using Bullet Journaling…is a way to bring everything in your personal life and business life into one analog notebook so that nothing gets forgotten, or at least not forgotten for very long. [32:30

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Expert Bio

John R. Brandt is the author of Nincompoopery: Why Your Customers Hate You—and How to Fix It (HarperCollins Leadership; hardcover; July 16, 2019).

He is also CEO and founder of The MPI Group, and has devoted more than two decades to studying leadership in effective, purpose-driven organizations. An expert on how companies can adapt themselves to the realities of new markets, new corporate structures and new customer expectations, Brandt is an accomplished management innovator and an internationally recognized expert on manufacturing, technology and performance measurement.

Before founding MPI in 2003, Brandt followed a unique career path combining two decades of experience in marketing, management and consulting with a passion for journalism that earned him more than twenty awards for reporting, writing, and editing. Formerly publisher and editor-in-chief of IndustryWeek magazine, Brandt also served as president, publisher and editorial director of the Chief Executive Group (publisher of Chief Executive).