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Matthew Hudson | September 6, 2009

Excerpt from the book Culturrific!

One of the exercises we do with companies is to have management complete a quick “Value Survey.” We give each manager a piece of paper with 10-12 blocks on it. Within each block is a statement that relates to their business and its service. We give each of the managers a role of pennies and ask them to stack the pennies on the paper across each statement. They are to read each statement and then stack a pile of pennies on top of it. The number of pennies in the stack represents how important they think that particular statement is to the overall scheme of things. The rules are simple. You must use all of the pennies in your roll and you can distribute them any way you want. You can even leave some blocks blank. When they are done, we have them discuss their reasons behind why they stacked their pennies the way they did. The metaphor is simple. The pennies represent value. The more pennies in a stack, the more value that manager placed on that particular aspect.

The important part of the exercise is not which block wins or looses. It’s that every manager’s paper is different! How can we be a Culturrific! service team if the players on that team have differing values?

This is the basis for Everything Speaks. Everything Speaks is much more than sweating the little stuff or paying attention to detail. Attention to detail is very important and it’s not being brushed aside here. We are trying to help you see service from a different angle. When it comes to service and your culture, everything speaks to the customer.

Category: 3rd Degree Shower Burn, Corporate Culture | Comments Off
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Matthew Hudson | September 2, 2009

So the question is, is the service I received at the Michael’s store at 3215 Vicksburg Lane Plymouth, MN (yes, bad service will haunt you -especially if the guy has a blog) just an example of that store or is it indicative of a larger cultural problem?

The answer is Yes. The service culture of a store is always a product of the service culture of the company - when it comes to policy and how they handle the policy.

For example, every company, no matter how service-oriented they are, has employees who just suck at times. And the service they deliver misses the mark. But the story we told involved multiple stores and a store manager who was not empowered, encouraged, trained or evaluate on customer care. Its just that simple. The supervisor gave the same answer as the cashier. The store manager gave me the same answer as the supervisor (who I believe was the AM, but since she never introduced herself, I have no idea.)And so on.

This is not representative of a one store issue. These people were too well trained to not provide service for it to be localized to one spot.

Now, we do See quite often in organizations where the further from corporate you get, the less culturally relevant you are. But, to this we say - IT IS CORPORATE’S FAULT!

The leaders of any organization have the sacred responsibility to communicate, nurture and protect their culture. the fact that this incident happened to me is the result of poor corporate culture.

Look, we know it is tough out there in the economy. But this one story has made multiple entries in my blog and is now one of the featured stories in my speaking engagements. I do not think this was Michael’s hope.

I do believe that the heart of the people at this company is good and right. (I start every engagement with a company with this thought.) I am not suggesting that the executives are weak, poor or do not know what they are doing. I am simply saying that if you read any of Jim Collins work, he will tell you what this blog has been saying forever - Preserve the culture and you will Preserve the company. Companies that fail are ones that fail to preserve what made them great in the first place.

I wish I could tell you this story was unique, but thankfully for me and my career, it is not. I am sure the people at corporate are reading this now and cringing. this is not the company they worked so hard to build.

But while they are focused on store design and warehouses and inventory control and loss prevention and shareholder meetings - who is minding the culture store?

Everything Speaks - ah, but that is another topic for another day..

Category: 3rd Degree Shower Burn, Corporate Culture | Comments Off
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