Subject:
|
Reply 5: Miscellaneous
|
Newsgroups:
|
lugnet.color, lugnet.lego
|
Date:
|
Mon, 14 Mar 2005 13:56:45 GMT
|
Viewed:
|
5323 times
|
| |
|
|
Jake McKee wrote:
> > Jake, how many more examples would you like? I closely follow the
> > small and big things happening in and around TLC for years now, and
> > - as I said - most problems stem either from "nobody listens to us"
> > or from "nobody told us" _within your company_.
> Then as someone who studies business, and specifically the LEGO
> business, I'm sure you can understand that both of those answers are
> common responses in the face of upset/anger/confusion/problems/etc.
Indeed. But they are usually linked to communicationwise
upset/anger/confusion/problems. Some kind of reaction or non-reaction
must have provoked this "nobody listens", "nobody told" impression,
don't you think?
> > Some stem from inexplicable instances of "I'm not at liberty to
> > talk about this" - and I can understand that there are a lot of
> > things that a company representative can not talk about, I'm just
> > talking about inexplicable items here. I don't know how you would
> > classify these instances, but I see them clearly as communication
> > problems.
> Not sure that I'd agree with you that they're "problems". There are
> times when, for whatever reason, I'm not going to share something.
> Trust, as you mention, is certainly a factor here.
And I fully accept that you are not at liberty to talk about everything.
But sometimes one gets the impression that your company has more
lawyers than designers, and that the hardest part of your job is to
communicate without getting flogged by the legal department afterwards.
And sometimes it is more interesting to read what you are _not_ writing
about or replying to...
The case I was referring to was the question of clarifying/identifying
some of the colours on the universal colour list you posted. Although
you posted this list and you referred in your post to the general list
of colours from Lego that was given to us, Jan told me, that he was not
allowed to clarify wether the "beige" you mentioned was our "tan"/Lego's
"Brick Yellow, Colour No. 5". This non-disclosure ruling is the most
stupid communication obstacle I heard of recently, and thus, a
communication problem. Maybe it is just an issue of clueing the
responsible people in the legal department, though.
> I'm not sure I'll ever be able to change your mind on these issues,
> so I'll not try. Again, I'm not sure that I agree that me not being
> able to share things sometimes is as much a "problem" as it is
> reality. We have competitors at the walls all the time, and sometimes
> it's just bad business to be 100% open with everything we're doing.
As I said before, I am fully aware of and I fully accept that you are
not at liberty to talk to us about certain things. And this is not the
problem we are talking about (except maybe in the case with the
universal colour list). I am only trying to point out that I (and
others) got the impression, that problems of internal and sometimes
external communication are really an issue in your company. I can't give
you a solution for the internal communication problems, I can only do
what I can to make you and your company aware of it.
> As far as "heavy compartmentialisation"... well, sure we have some
> compartmentalization. What company doesn't? In the past it's been
> much worse than it is today, and we still have improvements to be
> made. That said, from what I've read/seen at other companies, we're
> actually doing quite well in this sense. I have friends who work at
> medium sized companies who can't talk to other departments without
> first going to through their boss. And as far as internal
> competition, I just don't see this at all (at least in the way I
> think you mean it).
It is one point if a company is structured, and either only one of these
structures interfaces to the customer, or several structure interface to
the customer under different labels. The case with TLC, though, is that
several companies try to interface to the customer without giving a
clear distinction. For me as an AFOL, "educated" on the ways things
work, I know that the PaB wall in Cologne is something totally different
than the PaB wall in Billund. One is Lego-Direct-To-Customer (or however
it is called today), and the other is a totally different company called
something like Legoland. To the average customer, they are both somehow
"Lego". The problem here is that the uniform customer interface is just
a mask, sometimes leaving the customer befuddled by unexpected problems.
> > Of course communication problems occur more offen in bigger groups.
> > That is perfectly normal. So the goal must be to do something about
> > this. Kate once talked about a project of straightening up the
> > whole front-to-the-customer, i.e. tighter integration of all people
> > and groups that have any kind of customer relation. Is this still
> > on the list of things to do?
> This concept touches many many things we are doing and working on.
> (Including this very message I'm typing! :))
s.a.
An additional effect informationwise of a customer front consolidation
would be that internally you only have to differenciate wether an
information might be relevant to the customer front or not without
having to think about where it would belong in the front.
Yours, Christian
|
|
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: CEO-Letter // The answer
|
| In lugnet.color, Christian Treczoks wrote: Christian, thanks for your indepth response. We can have discussions much better when the posts are calm and logical like this. Just to make sure it's clear, I'd like to point out that you're absolutely (...) (19 years ago, 10-Mar-05, to lugnet.color, lugnet.lego, FTX) !
|
79 Messages in This Thread:
- Entire Thread on One Page:
- Nested:
All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:
All | Brief | Compact
|
|
|
|
