In Uncategorized on November 19, 2009 by bernardrosauer
Let me set the stage. I had a red eye out of San Francisco and then a connection in Chicago to my final destination. My meetings ended early so I thought to get to the airport and standby for an earlier flight. Good fortune came my way and I was able to grab a flight to Chicago 7 hours earlier than my scheduled flight. Cool.
I get to Chicago and see there’s a flight out to Green Bay, which is near Appleton, WI. Now, my ticket was for Appleton, but GB is only a half hour drive away and my ride had no problem with the extra half hour drive. Unfortunately United Airlines wouldnt let me go on standby! I stopped by two ticket counters and the UA information counter and was told that because it was a different airport and because my original flight was for the next morning/day, those would be two big rules they would be breaking and it would cost me $150 – to take a seat that had not been taken! No standby allowed. Hmph.
I called UA’s 1800# and was told the same thing but made the person on the phone defer to a manager…who behind the scenes said no. I saw that coming. The kind person on the phone then told me that I should visit another UA counter because the decision was ‘an airport decision’.
I went back to the gate and spoke with another person, Delores Espinosa. The plane was boarding. I explained everything, she checked my boarding pass, saw she had 4 seats unfilled, and put me on the plane.
On my flight I thought about creating a website where people can report great front-line employees who are supported by crummy systems. Any one of the prior employees could have handled the problem but it was Delores, the busiest of them all, who was left to make the call. Classic lead time process failure for all you ‘lean’ characters out there. Anyway, thanks Delores!
This is the best video I’ve seen this year. Gary Vaynerchuck owns winelibrary.tv, a 50 million doallar business by turning away from traditional advertising and toward social media. In this video Gary, who’s a no-nonsense down to earth 1st generation Jersey guy whose parents are from Belarus, shares his experiences in a way that will change the way you think about social networking.
If you think competing in social media is easy – watch this. If you think getting in early on the social media train will put you ahead of the game – watch this. If you want to learn more in an hour and a half than you ever have before – WATCH THIS!
In Uncategorized on November 11, 2009 by bernardrosauer
I read a piece in The National Underwriter that made me think: Whats with all the big studies by expensive consulting groups around carrier/agency relationships? They must be up to something! Anyhow, I unloaded a bit with a post to Sam Friedman’s weblog today and thought I would include it here as well. Happy reading.
Jason Fried owns ’37signals’, a successful software company. Don’t draw quick conclusions – this video is less about software than it is about business in general. What’s interesting to me is how the tech business owners have been forced to learn so quickly what other business leaders have taken entire careers to learn. Its the nature of the business – customer requirements and the speed of change in the tech industry require the industries leaders to learn at what most of us would consider breakneck speed. Its not that they’re smarter. They’re forced to learn or die in short order.
In this video, Fried talks about how software is different than ordinary products in that we cant touch or feel them….this makes them difficult to manage. Having worked in the service industry for over 20 years, I automatically drew parallels between what he was saying about software and my experience with ‘knowledge’ workers. We can’t always see knowledge, motivation, emotions, intelligence etc. yet they are either useful or a detriment to business leaders as they attempt to get a business to succeed.
He also spends time (in this video) talking about customer requirements and the importance of listening to them and then judging which ones to act on, when. Love it!
Enjoy the vid. There are a few cuss words but eh, he’s young and I figured you would get over it to hear the bigger message.
I was struck by the fact that Zappos actually offers to pay employees to leave the company after they have been hired. They do this to make sure that the employees work there REALLY want to work there. Zappos understands that it’s those front line employees that own so much of the customer experience. Creating loyalty is what Zappos is all about. Here’s a 9 minute video of their CEO Tony Hseih at the Net Promoter Conference in 2009. Its no wonder that Jeff Bezos and Amazon recently bought Zappos -if you cant beat ‘em…..buy ‘em. That Bezos….smart fella.
As odd as this may sound, the economic correction that is taking place gives me faith that, in the long run, smart businesses that provide real value to customers will be the one’s that prevail. It will take a lot of discipline, but then I suppose all good things do. A lot of people get hurt when business leaders lose discipline.
Speaking of discipline, I was walking down midtown Manhattan the other night and experienced something really interesting. After passing through the lights and the glamour, the high heals, mini (really mini) skirts, jewelery, nightclubs, the Bentley’s and Mercedes’ and yes all those lights, I took to a side street off the modern path and came upon a church where I saw that the doors were open and the lights were on. I like old churches and so I went in to find that a Roman catholic mass was taking place with maybe 150 people sitting in the pews. I decided to stay.
For the most part, it was clear that the people in this church were very sad. Lots of emotionless faces. Lots of people in need. Many had fallen on tough, tough times and some even appeared to be homeless. Still, as the offering basket passed, people gave what they could. The church was extremely depressing to me, but I kept thinking that it was probably the most uplifting place any of those other folks could have been. Two extremes, five blocks apart, one fueled by excess, the other by emptiness.
Business problems are a lot like social problems. I share the belief that business leaders have responsibilities that include, but also go well beyond, the year-end balance sheet. Businesses are made up of people and every product or service ultimately depends on individual consumers – people. If the ’state of the people’ isn’t healthy neither will business be so. It all works together. So running a business the right way takes discipline.
OK. OK. OK. Off the soapbox. If you don’t like people who draw parallels between business and other types of systems – you’re in the wrong place for sure! This blog is about three simple things: customers (those who consume) , employees (those who provide) and all the processes that happen between the two.
After spending 20 years in commercial and personal insurance I can say that I have seen the inner workings of lots of businesses. Some understood risk, others didn’t. Too few knew about their biggest risk: the risk of losing a customer and how they actually fueled or increased that risk by having a focus on customers, employees and processes that lacked discipline.
Do you have an example of a disciplined company or organization to share? Feel free to comment!
![Explode! [Break on through to the other side]](http://static.flickr.com/2510/4154792839_d5fb6f7f70_t.jpg "Explode! [Break on through to the other side]")
