The survival of solid waste managers in the 2000s will not depend on their adoption of the newest online technologies, e-commerce, or achieving technological superiority. Solid waste management is a people-oriented business, and success will continue to depend upon satisfying your customer; finding and keeping a high-quality, innovative staff; and creating and maintaining public and political support for your operation.

By John H. Skinner

Encouraging Creativity and Innovation
Ensuring Quality Customer Service
Building Public Support

Whether you are in the public or private sectors, the soft sciences of human resource management, public education, and customer relations will be as important to your success as staying abreast of the most recent developments in engineering hardware and equipment. Here are some tips from SWANA’s Training Course on Principles of Managing Integrated Solid Waste Management Systems that will help you survive and thrive in the new millennium.

Encouraging Creativity and Innovation

Creativity is the generation of new ideas. The rapidly changing MSW management field demands new and innovative approaches to provide higher levels of service at lower costs. The public is demanding a wide range of services, including recycling, household hazardous waste services, and special waste management. Tightening environmental and health-related regulations are increasing operating expenditures in the face of ratepayer and investor pressures to reduce costs. This puts MSW managers in a difficult position. They must respond to public demands and are expected to provide leadership in developing new and improved ways of managing MSW. On the other hand, managers have a fiduciary responsibility with respect to management of financial resources. Only through personal creativity and innovation and fostering an atmosphere conducive to innovation can these goals be met.

Creatively inspired employees tend to be more successful, have a sense of job empowerment, and have greater job satisfaction. They also work harder and smarter, and everyone benefits. Many studies have shown that creativity can be encouraged and developed in the work force, and it is a manager’s job to do so. There are several strategies that can help in that regard.

• Encourage by Example. Do it yourself, think outside of the box, take some chances, and show it is OK to make mistakes. Innovations by staff should be encouraged and rewarded by managers. Creativity requires taking risks. By celebrating and giving recognition to even small ideas, managers can encourage employees to develop new ideas with significant, positive impacts on an organization.
• Be Willing to Accept Failure. Hundreds of failed attempts proceed most great inventions and discoveries. Even a .300 batting average means you miss the ball 70% of the time. But if you don’t go to the plate and risk striking out, you will never hit a home run. Believe in the possible and be persistent and patient.
• Don’t Let Bureaucratic Barriers Get in the Way. Procedures can be changed and should be if they become obsolete, outlive their usefulness, and impede creativity. The standard way of doing things should be constantly questioned. An important role of the modern manager is to serve as a basher of bureaucratic barriers, to make sure that the organizational climate supports creativity and innovation. By the way, this is not just a public-sector problem.
• Don’t Limit Your Options. A genius is often the person who came up with one more alternative than anyone else, and it happened to be the one that worked. Encourage your staff to address problems from many directions, looking at many solutions, and come up with one more alternative. Brainstorming sessions can help to develop new and fresh alternatives while fostering an atmosphere supportive of innovation. The key to successful brainstorming is to suspend criticism. There are no wrong ideas in a brainstorming session. Following the axiom "If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it" is the kiss of death. There is always a better way.
• Take a Break. Encourage your staff to take care of themselves, exercise, eat right, stop smoking, have fun, and make time for their friends and family. Casual days, flex time, compressed days, paid days off, and health-club memberships are more than just perks to stay competitive in the current job market. They create a healthier, happier, and less stressful work environment and nurture creativity and innovation - crucial in the process of ensuring quality customer service.

Ensuring Quality Customer Service

Managers of MSW systems must continually focus on improving the quality of the service delivered to the customer. Customer-perceived quality depends on a series of intangible factors in addition to the more tangible cost and frequency of service. These include waiting times, ease of service, hours of operation, location, response to complaints, employee attitude, appearance, cleanliness, odors, and mud and dust conditions. These intangible factors combine to establish the total customer experience. Every contact point with a customer contributes to his or her perception of the quality of service. Each customer contact is a moment of truth. Superior customer service is reached by looking at the business from the perspective of the customer, determining what the customer needs, and working to meet those needs. Satisfied customers can be a powerful political constituency in support of a solid waste operation’s mission. Their support is essential for your survival. Customers can be enthusiastic supporters when service exceeds expectations. The challenge for MSW managers is to design and manage their systems so that customers’ needs are paramount.

Employee Attitude. It is the attitude of the employees that has the biggest impact on the customer. Regardless of the investment in equipment, capital, and other tangible items, it is things like rudeness, insensitivity, or inattention that can adversely affect the customer’s experience. Unfortunately, many organizations exhibit what Tom Peters, author of The New Reinventing Work Series, calls "TDC": thinly disguised contempt for the customer. Peters describes four symptoms of TDC: (1) casting aspersions on customers, (2) having contempt for customer contact personnel, (3) writing off such things as telephone courtesy as "obvious" and not requiring or deserving serious training, and (4) technical hubris - a belief that technical superiority is all that really counts.

Customer-service orientation should permeate all areas of human resource management. Staff selection should consider customer skills and attitudes as well as technical skills. Training should concentrate on providing service to the customer. Institutionalizing quality customer service into the organization can help perpetuate a positive attitude toward the customer. It should be a performance standard for every employee with public contact. Customer service is not an ancillary job duty, it is an essential element of everyone’s job, and the success of the entire organization depends on it.

Management’s Role in Ensuring Quality Customer Service. The MSW manager plays two key roles in providing quality customer service. First, he sets the standard and serves as a visible example of the accepted attitude toward the customer. Second, he must examine and develop policies and set strategies that support the goal of exceptional customer service. Top managers must walk the talk and be true believers in customer service. Leaders of companies that produce outstanding service incessantly back up their words with actions - often dramatic ones - that become corporate legends. Their goal is to nurture a service culture that will shape employee behavior more effectively than rules and regulations ever can. They make service everybody’s business and empower workers to make on-the-spot decisions in the customers’ interests.

Management must adopt policies and tactics to reach the specified goal of superior customer service. Specifically, managers must put in place systems that:

• determine customer needs and expectation levels,
• identify the sources of customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction,
• set service-level standards,
• design jobs and train employees to meet those standards,
• provide clear escalation procedures for resolving customer-service concerns,
• monitor the results.

Customer Feedback. Companies known for their high customer satisfaction have one thing in common: They track and monitor customer feedback. Customer feedback can be comments made to staff, complaints received, suggestions, or ideas mentioned in the press. By formalizing a tracking system of customer feedback, managers can identify trends and correct system elements that interfere with customer satisfaction.

Every complaint is an opportunity for improvement. A complaint is merely a suggestion for improvement in disguise. Each complaint can be the tip of an iceberg representing a large number of unhappy customers who never complain. Every complaint should be taken seriously. Each employee should be trained in handling customers and effectively dealing with complaints. How an organization handles a dissatisfied customer can have major impacts on the public’s image of the organization.

Building Public Support

MSW managers must operate in a public fishbowl. A skilled manager must not only be responsive to public demands but must also work with the public to develop support for their operations. Carrying out projects in the public arena is often very difficult because virtually every project will run counter to some interests, and virtually every interest has the power to derail the project. Therefore it is very important to aggressively and systematically involve the public in the decision-making process. The public, particularly those potentially affected by a project, must not just observe the process, but must be integral players. Decision-makers in regional, state, and local government are more likely to support proposed actions when they know they have widespread public participation. Public involvement must be seen as much more than just satisfying legal requirements. Public involvement should be about contributing to moving a project forward as well as developing public support.

The Public Participation Process. The goal of a public participation is to develop informed consent. It is not necessary to develop agreement or consensus but, rather, acceptance of the recommended alternative. If those affected by a project believe that they have had meaningful involvement in the decision-making process, they are more likely to not oppose the final decision.

In any public decision, the process is key to success. The decision-making process must be transparent, and people must be able to provide input. Be prepared to adjust your ideas to meet the needs of the community. Public involvement is simply an extension of the democratic process. Its premise is that individuals will be more likely to support decisions if they have been properly informed about them and have a role in developing the solutions.

Working With the Media. Every successful manager must cultivate a working relationship with the media. Working relationships with the media are developed, they just don’t happen by chance. A good manager releases information to the press on a regular basis, not just during a crisis. A successful working relationship with the media involves mutual respect between both parties as well as openness and credibility. One of the best ways to sustain a working relationship with the media is to regularly supply them with information. Newsletters, fact sheets, or educational brochures should be sent regularly to all media contacts. The purpose of supplying reporters with information is to make media contacts solid waste - literate.

While some solid waste managers find press interviews intimidating and approach them with apprehension, such major opportunities offer managers a forum for telling their stories and getting the word out on their successes via press coverage. Tips for press interviews include:

• Be prepared. Review all pertinent information before the interview. Think about all the questions the interviewer is likely to ask you.
• Be newsworthy. Provide information that an interviewer can use.
• Plan your sound bites. Distill your points into quotable single sentences.
• Use language everyone understands. Avoid jargon or specialized technical terms.
• Always assume the interview is on the record.
• Never say "no comment." It looks like you’re hiding something.
• Don’t repeat hostile questions or inflammatory words in your answer. Rephrase the question.
• Don’t argue or lose your composure. Some interviewers deliberately try to provoke angry responses.
• Don’t answer hypothetical or "what if" questions.
• Tell the truth. "I don’t know" is a perfectly acceptable answer.
• Don’t assign blame or take potshots at the competition or opposition. Don’t be demeaning and nonprofessional.
• Be available for follow-up questions after the interview.

The media and the press need information from MSW managers. By working together in a professional working relationship, both can achieve their goals, ultimately resulting in an informed public.

The successful solid waste managers of the 2000s will be those individuals who can simultaneously inspire their staffs to higher levels of creativity and innovation, provide superior service to their customers, and maintain public confidence and trust.

John H. Skinner, Ph.D., is executive director and CEO of the Solid Waste Association of North America.

MSW
Elements 2001