“NO…NO…HOT!” I said, as my toddler reached for the stove. “HOT!” Fair and effective employee discipline has the same characteristics as a “Red Hot Stove:” forewarning, immediate, consistent and impartial. According to leadership expert Douglas McGregor, all four should be applied to employee discipline. Forewarning: The closer you get to the red coils, the hotter …
Succeeding in Today’s Experience Economy
In their collaborative book, The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre and Every Business a Stage, authors Pine and Gilmore illustrate how the Industrial Economy supplanted Agrarian Economy—which in turn supplanted the Service Economy. Today, the economic offerings bar is once again, being raised. In this shift into Experience Economy, we find goods and services pose …
Change is Great…. if Leaders GO First!
As leaders, we hold the key to successful change in the palm of our hand… especially if we happen to be holding a mirror. LEADING CHANGE: Over 150 years apart, two stories remind us of leadership’s unique role in making changes. CHANGE 2013 Center for Disease Control (CDC) article noted in the United States,
Complaints are GIFTS!
When someone gives you a beautifully wrapped package, you say “thank you.” Likewise, thank customers who complain; their complaint is truly a “gift.” What gift has the complaining customer given you? It’s easier to see complaints as gifts by considering what could have happened: • The customer doesn’t complain but takes their business to your …
80/20 Rule of the Vital Few
Imagine your overall effectiveness if you reduced your tasks to 20% of your normal work load. Choose the right 20%, your productivity and effectiveness could actually increase! Vilfredo Pareto, 1843-1923 It’s called the 80/20 Rule. In 1906, Italian economist and sociologist, composed mathematical formula describing Switzerland’s dis-proportioned income distribution. Pareto observed 20 of the population …
Bridging the Service Gap
How to bridge the “service gap” when customers and employees live on opposite sides. Service Circa 1968’s In my childhood memories, my mother pulls up to the gas station. A man dressed in a crisp uniform jogs to the driver’s window. “Fill ‘er up?” he asks politely. “Regular or Ethel?” That same uniformed service professional …
Bowling Alone
Democracy in America 1830 When the author of Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville, visited the United States in the 1830s, he was most impressed by America’s many, active civic organizations. The fact that Americans were joiners, Tocqueville said, was the key to the new nation’s unprecedented ability to make democracy work: “Americans of all
Purple Cows
Purple Cows of Business When I was in college, there were only four “P’s” in marketing: Product, Place, Price and Promotion. As our economy moved from a manufacturing and extraction to a service-based economy, a fifth “P” was added to the list: People. Contemporary marketing’s ever-expanding checklist of “P’s” also include; positioning, publicity, pass along, …
Listening with Heart
We hear with our ears. We listen with our hearts. In Chinese, four characters create the active verb “to listen,” ears, eyes, undivided attention, and heart. If one essential element is missing—you aren’t really listening. Some people are hard of hearing. Hearing involves perceiving physical vibration of sound waves on an eardrum. Hearing happens unconsciously,
On My Mind: Leading Change
By Jeri Mae Rowley As leaders, we hold the key to successful change in the palm of our hand…especially if we happen to be holding a mirror. Change While researching the subject of “change” I came across two related stories. The most recent story is about a scientific breakthrough takes place in 2010. But the …