Taking Service to a New Level

According to this article in today's New York Times, Kaiser Permanente has done some pretty amazing things with customer service, especially as it relates to re-design of patient areas and facilities. Looks like this service effort and patient-first mentality is taking over the culture there. The goal is to ensure the theme of "Thrive" is not merely a marketing slogan. Pretty interesting stuff and worth checking out.

Holding Leaders Accountable? Don't Forget Forgiveness!

Holding Leaders Accountable? Don't Forget Forgiveness!

Preparing for a trip to New York today, and I was going through some old magazines in my office and came across this one -- the June 2000 issue of Fast Company -- thick (418 pages) with the provocative cover "Enough Talk! It's Time for Results -- Are You Getting It Done?"

This was some fun reading. While the cover could be published today (it's still all about results, or should be), a few of the articles held up and a few of them reflected the mindsets we all had nearly 10 years ago. Check out page 88 -- a record company exec argues that CDs are here to stay, not those pesky MP3 players!

The article that holds up most is one by Alan Webber (no surprise - he's brilliant) on how to get things done. My favorite part is the section about accountability. Here it is:

Doing means learning. Learning means mistakes.

If companies genuinely want to move from knowing to doing, they need to build a forgiveness framework -- a tolerance for error and failure -- into their culture. A company that wants you to come up with a smart idea, implement that idea quickly, and learn in the process has to be willing to cut you some slack. You need to be able to try things, even if you think that you might fail.

The absolute opposite mind-set is one that appears to be enjoying a lot of favor at the moment: the notion that we have to hold people accountable for their performance. Companies today are holding their employees accountable -- not only for trying and learning new things, but also for the results of their actions. If you want to see how that mind-set affects performance, compare the ways that American Airlines and Southwest Airlines approach accountability -- and then compare those two airlines' performances.

American Airlines has decided to emphasize accountability, right down to the departmental -- and even the individual -- level. If a plane is late, American wants to know whose fault it is. So if a plane is late, what do American employees do? They spend all of their time making sure that they don't get blamed for it. And while everyone is busy covering up, no one is thinking about the customer.

Southwest Airlines has a system for covering late arrivals: It's called "team delay." Southwest doesn't worry too much about accountability; it isn't interested in pinning blame. The company is interested only in getting the plane in the air and in learning how to prevent delays from happening in the future.

Now ask yourself this: If you're going to be held accountable for every mistake that you make, how many chances are you going to take? How eager are you going to be to convert your ideas into actions?

Over-Communicate

Nothing lengthy today, just a reminder to double-up on your communications. We call this "over-communicating." One would think that this would not be much of an issue in this tough economy. I mean, isn't it more important than ever that we repeat key messages to staff? Yes, but that doesn't mean we are doing it.

I read in the Financial Times that "Weber Shandwick, the PR agency, reported research showing that 54 per cent of American workers have not heard from their leaders how their company will be impacted by the recession, but 74 per cent had heard co-workers discuss the matter. The rumor mill cannot be shut down and canny leaders will feed the grapevine with facts to help counter the rumours.

"Leaders must also show that they are listening and that they welcome employee feedback. In his new book, 'How the Mighty Fall,' Jim Collins notes that for companies on a declining trajectory, 'those in power start to blame external factors for setbacks rather than accept responsibility. The vigorous, fact-based dialogue that characterizes high-performance teams dwindles or disappears altogether.'"

One point we make in our book "Ordinary Greatness" is that if you make people guess, they will almost always guess wrong. Are you making people guess or are you over-communicating?