Just the facts, Ma'am

One of our Investors, a very smart guy with tons of experience and wisdom, loves to ask questions about the way our business works: How we manage to protect customers from energy price spikes when energy prices are so volatile, how we protect our reputation by making sure that our sales people are honest to customers about the benefits of our products, how we attract the best people to our team and how we promote values of hard work and integrity in our organization. After we talk on the phone he often says just before we hang up: "Good, now I feel like I've accomplished my goal for today, to be smarter than I was yesterday."

The comment is notable for two reasons. First, coming from one of the savviest business people I know it's humble. Here is a guy who has a breadth of understanding and insight into business that I marvel at. Yet he is willing to acknowledge readily the gaps in his knowledge. Sometimes I wonder whether he's really making me feel good, fulfilling the adage that I once heard about management, "The good leaders are the ones who are not eager to show you how smart they are but the ones that show you how smart you are."

But I also think he's often being sincere. He is eager to learn and gets constant satisfaction from doing so. He gets excited the way a kid might when shown a new card game or an adult when they learn of a new short cut to the grocery. "I can't believe I didn't know that," we'll say. "How could we have lived so long ...?"

My friend's observation says something else about people, a point worth making about business in general. We are all hungry to learn and understand how things work. We learn with experience that things are often not as simple as they may at first appear. And given the choice between having a superficial understanding of something and learning the detail about how something works most of us will welcome the detail. (Possible exception: when it comes to taxes I would prefer to hear the bottom line and not understand how the accountant got there!). What makes my friend special is that he acknowledges his ignorance and is not afraid to ask whereas most of us will take pleasure in new knowledge but don't go out to get it.

I was reminded of this recently when I spoke to a group of 300 or so of our sales representatives in Georgia. I was talking about energy markets and why prices are so volatile and why customers are eager to protect themselves from higher prices. One of our agents had brought a friend who works for another company. She told me later that he was reluctant to come because "he had heard it all before." Midway through my talk, she said, her friend turned to her. "You know," he said, "When I went to other sales meetings, all I heard was 'Sell, sell, sell.' Here I'm getting an education."

I don't know if our competitor's sales agent will join us. I hope he does. But he reminded me of my friend's comment. So many American companies talk down to their customers and to their employees as well. They treat people as stupid and naive.

Wouldn't it be nice if companies trusted us to know the truth. If they gave us straight answers to our questions. If they told us the good and the bad about their products instead of ignoring the stuff that we'll learn about anyway as time goes on.

In our business most companies promise customers they will save money. That is like a bank telling homeowners that they will save money on their mortgages if they lock in an interest rate. Hello? How does the energy company know, any more than the banker, that energy prices are going up? Do they have a crystal ball? Do they know that there is a hurricane blowing through the Gulf of Mexico or a war about to break out in the Mideast?

Of course not. These promises are hollow and phony. Imagine if the potato chip bag said something like: Bigger package, no more inside! Or if the corner gasoline station said: $3.91/gallon!

I am grateful for that comment in Atlanta. It made me smarter than I was the day before. A good day.