Back to blogging

I have been a very bad blogger, breaking the most basic rule of blogging - regular updates. If you do read this, then thanks for checking-in even though this well has been dry for the last two weeks. I will try to make amends with an action packed blog...

Lets start with a sunrise photo, taken from our balcony, beautiful colours - reminded me a little of sunrise in Perth. As I sit at the window now and look out on the same spot all I see is white - it has been raining constantly all day - a halloween gift from San Francisco? Anyway back to the blog.

It has been a really interesting couple of weeks.  I have met with the Jim Pouliot the clubs CEO, had dinner with Paula Downey, the clubs President, spent a couple of days out in the district office network, talked at length with the people team (recognised as industry leaders in many sectors) and to top it off drove up to Yosemite with my family last weekend just gone.

It was really great to meet Jim, as I personally found it so invaluable to get the deep strategic insight which helped me better understand the AAA NCNU. We talked about organisation structure and culture, including the role that the current head office (a 28 floor tower) played - and how that would evolve with a move to the east bay Walnut Creek district in about 18months time (about 30 miles east of the current head office). Like the move RAC made three years ago, there is no doubt this will be a key milestone in the history of the club, leading to new changes at all levels. We also talked extensively about the holdings structure Jim helped to pioneer with partner clubs, which has paved the way for much greater collaboration between the many of the AAA Federation clubs.

I was then lucky enough to have a Saturday evening out several other guests, hosted by Paula Downey and her husband Michael. We met at her house for a pre-dinner get together at Paula's family home in San Raefel, it was an amazing shingled house - that is all of the cladding on the external walls was shingles and it was high in the hill bordering on forest. While we sat outside, with me trying to explain how you play cricket - and trying to justify why it can be a 5 day game, there were wild deer walking past and scores of hummingbirds whizzing through the garden - just incredible. Dinner was down the road at a brewery restaurant - they know how to keep an Australian happy! We didn't stray on to work talk too much, with the one exception were we talked about AAA NCNU moving to include products per household in the core metrics of the organisation. Like RAC they recognised the long term future of the club will only be secured by deepening the relationships they already have.

The on the Monday I was invited to spend a couple of days with Kent Evans, the Area Business Manager for San Francisco. Here he is showing me around the original San Francisco district office - which AAA sold and moved out of early this year. It at one stage had 90 staff! They have now all been relocated to one of 6 new district offices spread around San Francisco city. The original head office district office is a beautiful architectural design, which was built 80+ years ago for AAA, but the building owner at the time had it designed like a hotel lobby in the case the upstart AAA club failed and they could easily repurpose it!!! I only hope the new owners seek to restore some of it's former glory, rather than just reclaim the land for new development.

The new offices all followed a slick design, which aimed to optimise the many customer interactions they have every day. You can see in this photo that the Membership Centre is at the back of the site - this is the area where the most transactions occur, including vehicle licencing dues being paid (which AAA does for its members). The greeters and membership service consultants then take the opportunity to encourage members to talk with an insurance agent or travel consultant on their way out of the office. Each office is now much smaller than the original office, but are still much larger than we are used to at RAC. There was much more to share on this visit including some really great self-service setups for maps and a very different approach to managing the insurance portfolio, by using individual agents (who manage their own portfolios).

From here I spent a bit of time with several of the people team, including those responsible for employee volunteering program, diversity, the employment brand, talent management, business unit support and change management. But in the interest of keeping this a little bit punchy I am going to keep that for the next blog update - this one already has plenty enough work stuff. Just a point to note - there is a lot of inspiration from the people team, so it will be worth the wait (I hope).

So on to Yosemite, we did the drive over a weekend (it is about 5 hours drive from San Francisco). First we drove over the Sierra Nevadas (the mountain range that is home to both Yosemite and Lake Tahoe) along a road called the Senora Pass (highway 108), which is only open for about 5 months of the year, as it is snowed in the remainder of the time. The pass is over 9,500 feet above sea level, so it gets quite sold, so much so that even though this is the end of summer there was snow on the mountain.

Once we came over the mountain we came down to Lake Mono, which is where this photo was taken. It is a salt lake that has dropped over 50 vertical feet in the last 50 years due to the redirecting of it's tributaries. The Californian state government has now corrected this, but it will be a long time before it is back to it's former glory. These strange formations, shown in the photo, are called Tufa and they are dried mud that were underwater and were caused by the constant bubbling of the mineral springs. 

We stayed overnight at Murpheys Motel in a really nice 3 street town called Lee Vining. In the morning we got up early to head back over the Sierra Nevadas into Yosemite by the Tioga Pass, which at just short of 10,000 feet is the highest pass in California - like Senora it is only open for a few select months every year. This photo is taken from Olmstead Point and is looking back into Yosemite Valley. 

It is very difficult to truly demonstrate the awesome scale of Yosemite in a photo, so all I can say is that if you are any where near then you must take the time to visit.

We really had wonderful weekend, and even saw a person who saw a bear.... oh well next time.

thanks for reading.

Retention, Retention, Retention (and Tow Trucks)

Not a large blog this week. Most of my work energy continues to go into the consolidation of retention strategies at AAA. The trick here is to change the perspective to understand the levers of retention in the eyes of the member. Another way of putting it is: what is it that a member sees that makes them choose to renew or not, and then what can you control for - then finally have you put in place the right initiatives to cover all of the points of decision making for the member. It is within this broad framework that I am trying to categorise the challenges and opportunities for AAA.

For those that were wondering, here is my desk at AAA - and I am managing to keep it a little tidier than is normal for me. I have my own printer at the desk, which is a real luxury, but I have needed to get used to being a little more downsized than my desk back at RAC.

I was lucky enough to get out onto the trucks yesterday. I spent the day with one of AAA top performing contractors, Mountain View Towing. This business started working for AAA 30 years ago and today is run by two sons, Michael and Danny, of the original founder. They were the 2005 and 2006 winners of the top contractor for AAA NCNU (based largely on member satisfaction). This is photo of one of their new truck, which I got to spend 3 hours in cruising with Carl (shown in the photo).

Mountain View uses AAA dispatch, contractors run their own territories and can choose to run their own dispatch or to use AAA. The dispatch for AAA is based in Arizona with their IT, however what I saw of it worked flawlessly (excluding the screen locking up at one point) it was hard to believe the dispatchers were so far away. The trucks all had screens in them called Rangers, which were also controlled from Arizona - they contained key call details and also GPS systems for the drivers to use. Carl had two tows while I was with him, but in general it was a really slow day - normally they would do at least 10 jobs a day.

After a lunch with Michael and Danny, I went out on a battery truck for three hours with Reggie. Reggie was a gun, he regularly sells 40 batteries a month, but from my personal experience can assure he only sells them when it is appropriate. It was great to watch these guys in action (there was not a lot of value I could add!).

Outside of work, I went across to Alcatraz on the weekend with my parents (who left us on Monday - everyone in my family was sad to see them go). It was a great experience, even though the self guided tour was a little slow (but maybe that was just the guide....). Over the weekend it was Fleet Week, which is when the military puts on a show for the public, including the Blue Angels - a troupe of F/A 18s that do airshows, primarily to support military recruitment. So we got to see a pretty cool show while waiting for the ferry. Here is one last photo - which I took late on Sunday night (walking home from dinner with my parents) - it is of the Bay Bridge, which connects San Francisco to the East Bay (Oakland, Berkeley and others). It is about 1 km from our condo.

Don't be shy - please keep in touch.

Business as usual in a new way

My family and I am really starting to settle into a routine way of life in San Francisco. I have developed all of the appropriate work habits, time to catch the train, number one choice of coffee place (with a backup option if I am running short of time), my news services to keep in touch with Australia (including watching with horror the collapse of global financial systems and the subsequent slide of the Australian dollar), where I get lunch, etc. My family have their own routine with school (home school with Mrs Hirte...) in the morning, and various activities in the afternoon from art classes at Fort Mason on Mondays, exploratorium on Tuesdays, Library on Thursday etc. On the weekend we are trying to get out and see as much of this wonderful city (and surrounding areas) as we can. 

Unlike Australia, I don't drive to work, I catch the San Francisco Municiple Railway (MUNI), on the outbound N line, which takes about 20 minutes. This has been great, as it is normally not too crowded and I get a seat, which in turn is giving me 40 minutes a day to catch up on reading. I have almost read two "work" books in the last couple of weeks (and one "hobbit" type fantasy book this week). 

The two work books were about understanding the psychology of customer service and customer engagement. The first "The Paradox of Choice" by Barry Schwartz was recommended to me by the CEO of British Columbia Automobile Association who incorporated some of the thinking in their latest roadside pricing strategy. It argues that American society has too much choice and that choice is potentially a contributing factor to an inability to make decisions leading to depression, as many people try to maximise decisions to make the best possible choice (and yet that is increasingly difficult due to the variety of options). It argues that solution lies in becoming more disciplined about making acceptable decisions, not perfect ones (or satisficing - a satisfactory sacrifice, ie not the best choice, but still an ok decision). I would not say I adopt all of the ideas, but I certainly enjoyed the read and I have also gained some new perspectives. The second book which I am only two chapters from finishing is called the Human Sigma, which is written by John Flemming of the Gallop research organisation - it has been used by AAA Arizona as a foundation for some work on a Member and Staff Engagement index. This book is all about the importance of customer service in the engagement of the customer to the brand, and endeavours to suggest approaches to how to objectively and proactively measure it. It has been a facinating, fact based read demonstrating the role that emotion plays in engagement. The only disappointment is there is clearly a commercial objective hanging from this book - buy the measure from gallop. I have already started talking to AAA Arizona on how they are using the thinking.

Most of my days involve meeting with new people and discussing similarities and differences of the RAC and AAA NCNU. Over the last week I have started to hone in on a deep dive review of retention. My first impressions are that there is really good coverage at AAA, but there is still some opportunities for greater collaboration - in that some of the initiatives appear (on the surface at least) to acting independent of each other. Next week I go out on some branch visits and also get a day in the trucks, I am pretty excited about this!

At night I have been watching presidential debates, financial crisis commentary and fantastic skits on Saturday Night Live of all of the key events and characters. Make sure you check out Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin.

On Saturday I was lucky enough to go to a College Football game between the Cal Bears and Arizona State Sun Devils at Berkeley University with my Dad (who was in the US for a mining conference), Paul Airoldi (from AAA) and Randy Lamont (an ex-AAA employee). The day and game was a stimulation overload. From start to finish something was always happening. There was 60,000 people at the game in a stadium that was built in 1920 and largely remains unchanged to today (including the bench seats). Cal Bears won 24 to 14, starting strong early but nearly fading to a loss towards the end. We saw the whole marching band thing, cheer leaders and an awesomely engaged crowd. It is a really fun show, with the crowd getting right into the tactics of the game, including screaming at the top of your lungs to make it hard for the opposition to hear the play - this is called the 12th man. The 12 man comes from the on field team only being 11, but amazingly there are typically 55 players in each team for the game!!! It is still amazing that a game that technically only goes for 1 hour takes over three hours to play - but I really didn't notice that three hours had passed until the end (kind of like a great movie - time doesn't matter).

On that note - time for me to go to bed ready for a new day. Please don't be afraid to leave your comments or ask any questions! On my final note - it is about 12:15am here and I am too tired to proof this, so please feel free to find my mistakes for me (there will be many!) - just leave comments so I know what to fix tomorrow!!!!