My daughter and I just returned from lunch at Rose’s Café. As always, the service was fast and extremely friendly, and the food was delicious. I’ve never had a bad experience at Rose’s.

But Rose’s is not where we planned to eat lunch today. We walked in and right back out of Campo at about 11:08 today.

My daughter’s 18^th birthday is fast approaching, and she wants to celebrate by hosting a special dinner with her friends. She asked me for recommendations, and I suggested Campo. I’ve never eaten at Campo, but I’ve heard great things about it from one of my Facebook connections. We decided last night to have lunch at Campo today so she could check it out before planning her birthday event.

I checked the Campo website, and it clearly said they open at 11 am. I went to the gym early this morning and told my daughter to get up and ready earlier than usual so we could head downtown by 10:45 am. We parked in the parking garage and walked the two blocks to Campo. The doors were open when we arrived about 11:08, but when we got inside, we were told that lunch did not start until 11:30. I told the hostess the website says they open at 11, and she politely replied “sorry.” She invited us to have a seat and wait, but I felt the wrong information at the website had already wasted my time and I was not willing to let them waste another 20 minutes. As we left, we walked past the owner standing outside the restaurant. We don’t know each other, but I recognized his picture from his website. I once again said “your website says you open at 11” and he politely replied “sorry, we need to change that; we open at 11:30.”

At 11:30, we had already walked the two blocks back to the parking garage, driven to Roses, ordered, and were taking the first bites of our exceptional sandwiches.

A company website frames expectations and makes the initial promise of satisfaction to customers. Campo failed the cycle of service with me when their operations did not deliver as their website promised. It was reasonable for me to expect them to be open at 11 am because their website said they would be, and it was reasonable for me to be very unhappy when I was on time but they were not.

They made a mistake, but they could have easily recovered from that failure – if they had seen it as a service failure, which they clearly did not. To compensate for their mistake and our inconvenience, they could have simply offered us some complementary coffee while we waited or a complementary drink or dessert with our lunch. A large gesture was not necessary, but some gesture was. I’m sure they thought their polite apologies were enough, but I interpreted those to mean “we really don’t care.”

If you can avoid it, never let a customer leave your business unhappy, and never let someone that walks through your doors with the intention of making a purchase leave without spending money. Campo lost a good lunch ticket today, but they also lost a much larger dinner party sale and my free word-of-mouth marketing. They did not give me the opportunity to do for them what they cannot do for themselves – recommend them to my friends.

Check your company website right now and fix any inaccurate information.  Review your entire cycle of service and make sure you have procedures in place to meet or exceed your customers’ reasonable expectations and to recover impressively when you don’t. If you leave impressive customer service to chance, chances are it might not happen. Never forget that the cycle of service often starts long before the customer ever walks through your front doors.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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Thoughts, feelings, and motivations comprise an individual’s inner work life. Inner work life manifests in behaviors that matter at work – performance, citizenship, and withdrawal. Inner work life is driven by events at work – events that signify progress, events that support the work itself, and events that support the person doing the work.

Events that support the work itself are second only to the progress principle in their ability to affect the inner work life of folks in your organization. Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer use the term catalyst to describe things that facilitate the completion of work and the term inhibitor to describe the absence or negative form of a catalyst.  It’s very important to keep in mind that “catalysts and inhibitors can have an immediate impact on inner work life, even before they could possibly affect the work itself.” (p. 102).

Catalysts and inhibitors are a direct product of an organization’s culture, which “is created largely by the words and actions of leaders, beginning with the organization’s founders.” (p. 108). The three main aspects of culture that shape specific catalyst and inhibitor events at work are (p. 109):

• Consideration for people and their ideas. Do managers at all levels honor the dignity of employees, value their ideas, and serve as examples of civil discourse?
• Coordination. Are systems and procedures (e.g. performance evaluation) designed to facilitate coordination or competition between individuals and groups?
• Communication. Open, honest, and respectful communication is perhaps the most powerful force for sustaining progress, coordinating work, establishing trust, and helping people understand that what they think and do matters.

One of my favorite sayings from Bob Sutton is “the law of crappy systems trumps the law of crappy people.” The most effective way to change the culture of any organization is to change its systems, the way it works. The first and most important change must occur between your ears – a discontinuous change in thinking about your role as a leader and your relationships with your constituents.

Change the way you think, and you will change the way you behave. Change the way you behave, and you will change the way others think and feel about you and ultimately how they behave toward you. Change the way you and your people relate with each other, and you can partner with each other to fix the crappy systems. Continually fix the crappy systems, and you can begin to affect positive change in the culture of your organization.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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I’ve never lived in a world, or worked in an organization, that was void of rules. Rules can be a drag, but they can also serve as a very functional guide to productive behavior. Rules should always be purposeful, behavioral, very specific, and kept to an absolute minimum.

Rules should always represent minimum, reasonable standards of expected behavior, not stretch effort. For people with an internal locus of control that focus on group goals and hold themselves accountable to high standards of performance and conduct, rules are irrelevant. Good rules are only an issue for those that make bad choices.

Always stand behind, but never hide behind, your rules. Rules should be continually evaluated for their value and ability to serve the purpose. Eliminate or change a rule the moment it ceases to enable your people to work together more effectively. Rules are only as stupid as the people that use them as excuses to avoid improving systems.

Whatever you do, never bend the rules. If you make an exception to the rules for one person, you will send a discouraging message to the rest of your folks. If you bend a rule for one person, your standards and expectations will become ambiguous to everyone else. Bending a rule will teach people that you are willing to play favorites, unwilling to take the heat when the pressure is on, and unable to see the ethical gaps of your own behavior. If a rule no longer works for the group, change it.

Your behavior as a leader should teach people that “rule” is an innocuous four letter word. What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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Growth through excellence should be the top priority of most businesses. Money that does not hit the top line never has an opportunity to hit the bottom line; consequently, if your business is not growing, it’s probably dying.

What’s the single most important thing you can do on a daily basis as a leader if you want to grow your business?  Invest in and impress your employees. Your people can be an inimitable engine of competitiveness, but only if you make their development a priority. Wishful thinking won’t grow your business.

Loyal customers delighted with your products and service drive sales. Impressive operations are never a matter of chance. Impressive operations occur through punctilious design and consistent execution.

Your employees are the key to both the execution and the continual improvement of the system. If your employees are not impressing your customers, then your customers aren’t being impressed – except maybe by your competitor’s employees. In addition to knowing your systems better than you, your employees are also increasingly socially networked boundary spanners, which makes them a rich source of learning and suggestions. Partner with them to improve the work you do and you will also strengthen their satisfaction and commitment.

The single most important thing you can do if you want to grow your employees is to grow yourself. Your own personal learning and development constrains the growth of your employees, which means it also constrains the growth of your business. Growth scales.

Taking care of yourself and your employees is taking care of business.

After you watch my short video, please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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What’s the most urgent priority of your business? Many of you would say making a profit is your top priority. It’s hard to argue the fact that your business can’t survive if it can’t sustain a healthy bottom line.

OK, so you want to make a profit; then what’s the single most important thing your business needs to grow the bottom line? Revenue. Money that does not hit the top line never has an opportunity to hit the bottom line. Growth, more than anything else, constrains profit.Too many leaders focus their people on line item costs instead of focusing them on the single line that matters the most – the top line. This is not a law of the universe, but if your business is not growing, it’s probably dying.

If growth is the most urgent priority of your business, have you made it everyone’s responsibility? Everyone needs to understand how their daily performance and behavior either helps or hurts the growth of the business.

Please take a few minutes to watch this brief video, then please share your thoughts in the comment section below.  Stay tuned, because my next post will cover the single most important thing you need to focus on daily if you want to grow your business.

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If I owned my own business, or managed one for someone else, I would work very hard to only hire conscientious employees with an internal locus of control. I would also check their online profiles to see if they were good digital citizens. I’d be looking for employees with a specific personality profile and a track record of operating professionally personal accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. If they also had a current blog with good content and conversation around that content, it would be a home run.

I would then work very hard on a daily basis to impress the socks off of my conscientious and connected employees. After I had trained them to be good at their current jobs, I’d make sure they understood that I expected them to make decisions and take actions in an attempt to impress every one of our customers, every single time. I would expect them to partner with me and their peers to develop solutions on how to fix any broken systems and continually improve our ability to deliver products and service so good that our competitors will struggle to keep their current customers from becoming our loyal customers.

I’d provide my employees with social media guidelines that would help them make better decisions about how to represent our business in their online social networks. I would hold myself accountable for earning their good faith and positive word-of-mouth marketing away from work by the way I had treated them while they spent time with me at work. I’d ask them to keep their eyes and ears open for content and conversations online that might be opportunities (e.g. personal recommendation for our products and services) or threats (e.g. customer complaints) to our business. I’d recognize and reward good social business behavior, and quickly address with training and clarified expectations poor social business behavior.  I LOVE this excerpt from the TNT Social Media Guidelines:

I think it’s safe to assume that the majority of my competitors will continue to sleep through these times of tremendous change in the way we communicate. They will continue with their systems of haphazard hiring, inadequate training, and ridiculous expectations for their disengaged employees to impress their customers. They will be oblivious to the effects their turnover mill of disgusted yet hyper connected employees has on their ability to grow their business.

My competitors will probably continue to compare themselves to each other, thereby ensuring that they are all very comfortable in their mediocrity.  The bar is very low for social business awareness and savvy. No one cares more about your business than you and your employees. Why would you outsource the passion and experience of those voices to an agency? I would not.

This a time of tremendous strategic opportunity for any business with the leadership foresight to see the radical new potential of the empowered, enabled, and responsible social employee. Good social business is more than a marketing issue – it is a leadership imperative.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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I rarely make a major purchasing decision anymore without first sourcing it in my social networks. Even minor decisions like where to eat sushi for lunch are made better when I first check with friends on Facebook. Social business sourcing helps me make better decisions, which saves me time and money.

What role did traditional marketing play in my decision to follow my friends’ advice and eat lunch at Hiroba Sushi last week? I think very little. The only reason people in my network recommended this place in response to my direct inquiry was they had eaten there themselves and knew the business was a winner. It was operational excellence, not saavy marketing, which led me to spend $48 for lunch that day.

When asked, my friends volunteered to publically put their brand on Hiroba’s brand and trusted that Hiroba would not disappoint. My social network connections did not put their faith in Hiroba, because faith is a belief in something you have not seen. Trust, on the other hand, is a prediction based on experience, and they all knew from personal experience that I too would probably enjoy Hiroba as much as they did.

They were right, and I was glad I asked.

People talk about your business, which is nothing new. What is new is the way they talk about you and your business, and the speed with which what they say about you can reach many more people than ever before and impact your revenue stream. For years I taught the marketing principle that a dissatisfied customer would likely tell around 20 people about the bad experience. Now, a pissed off customer can quickly and easily share their bad experience with thousands via their connected web of social networks.

The new realities of social business make the basics of business excellence more important than ever before. If you have not designed a system to consistently impress your employees and enable them to in turn consistently impress your customers, you are making a serious strategic mistake.

The most important social business metrics are not things like fans, followers, reach, likes or leads. The most important metrics for businesses that want to fully leverage the strategic potential of social business are employee and customer satisfaction. What they say about you in their increasingly connected social networks is shareable and trusted, and that makes it more important than anything you will ever say about yourself. If you’ve made their satisfaction merely an act of faith, you better be prepared for social business hell.

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My daughter needed a new pair of running shoes, so we went to Eclipse Running earlier this week to try on a few pairs. National Running Center, an online store, was having a great sale, so my intent was to find the shoes she liked at Eclipse and then go home and order them online from the other retailer.

The owner’s son was working the floor that day, and he did a great job helping my daughter find the proper running shoe for her He was very knowledgeable and sincerely friendly. She found the shoes she liked, and I figured Eclipse Running earned the sale because of their great service. I also bought her three pairs of socks and a pair of socks for myself. At checkout, the guy gave me another pair of socks free – something they have done for me before.

While he was helping my daughter with her shoes, I noticed the new Nike GPS watch the owner’s son was wearing. He enthusiastically told me all the details about the watch and how much he loved it. I hate my Garmin, so I went home and did some research on the Nike watch and decided I had to have one. I priced them online, but decided I’d give Eclipse Running a shot at the sale before I ordered.

When I returned to Eclipse to buy the watch, I learned that their price was competitive, but they were out of stock. I talked to the owner, Chuck, and told me he expected a shipment soon. He took my name and number, and promised me a 10% discount on the watch when it arrived. The watch arrived the next day, and Chuck had “10% discount” written on the box when I came in to pick it up.

That’s how it’s done, folks. Let me summarize: I visited Eclipse on Monday with no intent to buy anything from them, and by Wednesday I had purchased about $300 worth of merchandise.

Impressive service can provide a reliable stream of revenue from delighted customers and the friends in their social networks, which is especially important when your product is essentially a commodity. I will continue to give Chuck and Eclipse Running the first shot at every running related purchase I need to make because they earned it. As long as they continue to provide good service and competitive prices, I’ll be a loyal customer.

Does your business have to provide impressive service to every customer every time? No, but keep in mind that a simply satisfied customer is an indifferent customer. Why would I visit your business if I expected you to piss me off? Delighted, impressed customers are loyal because they have a reason to behave toward you and your business differently than they do other businesses. If you don’t make sure I have a compelling reason to return, you have no reason to expect that I will.

Impressive service has to be a business priority supported by real systems (e.g. staffing, training, resources), not rhetoric. If you leave impressive service to chance, then chances are you will never know how many customers leave your business unimpressed, never to return again.

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I had a bad experience at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe when I stayed there in October 2010; however, as I reported then, they recovered quickly from their service failure by calling to try to understand my concerns then offering me a free room stay. I took them up on that offer a few days ago.

My return stay was excellent. The room they gave me for free was large, clean, quiet, comfortable, and had a great view of Lake Tahoe. Check-in and check-out were both fast and efficient. If you ever make a trip to South Lake Tahoe – and you should – Harrah’s is a great place to stay.

I found it interesting that I was once again advised at check-in that if I even touched something in the mini-bar it could result in a charge to my room. Since this is the second time that has happened to me, I think it’s safe to assume the front desk staff are formally trained to say that. Until they fix that design flaw in the rooms by removing those pesky mini-bars, the warning at check-in is unfortunately probably the right thing to do.

This is a great example of how a business turned a service failure into a good recovery and success story. Because of the way Harrah’s recovered from their failure, I’ll be back as a paying customer in the future and will not hesitate to recommend the property to others. If they had not been paying attention and responded to their service failure, it would be an entirely different story.

Overall a great stay. Well done, Harrah’s!

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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You just returned from a day of training on how to improve the performance of your team. You were told that to improve the performance of your team, you need to focus on these four things:

• Management processes (e.g. hiring, training, performance evaluation, rewards)
• Collaborative leadership
• Relationships with team members
• Your personal development

All of these are critical to your success, but which one is the most important? Which one of these four is your indispensible, core performance technology?

Your personal development is your core performance technology.

You can learn how to improve processes, be more collaborative, and build relationships with your team members; however, your ability to continually grow in these areas will always be constrained by your capacity to learn. There is no single skill more critical to your personal and organizational success than your ability to learn how to learn.

Peter Senge defines a mess as “a complicated problem where there is no leverage to be found because the leverage lies in interactions that cannot be seen from looking only at the piece you are holding”. (The Fifth Discipline, p. 67).  You and your team cannot be delivered from your mess by leadership, management, or relationships alone. Only through continual learning can you master your mess.

Now more than ever, the land of excellence belongs to those that learn faster than their competitors, continue to learn how to learn, and can model the way for others to do the same.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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