Has the Age of Mediocrity arrived?
One of my information sources (recommended by reader Lauren) is Harvard Business Publishing’s Management Tip of the Day. (Go here, then look for the Management Tip of the Day in the right “Subscribe Options” area.)
A couple days ago the title of the article was Do Something Remarkable for Customers. It’s actually a cool little article that focuses on Best Buy’s Geek Squad. In the six years since starting in 2002, the Geek Squad has grown from 60 employees to more than 15,000 currently and is contributing more than $1 billion (yes that’s illion with a B) to the bottom line.
The secret sauce for the Geek Squad is fanatical adherance to customer service. Here’s the 6 point pledge every fledgling Geek signs on to uphold:
- Never violate the trust of my clients or disrespect their property.
- Never say, “I don’t know.” Instead, say, “I’ll find out.”
- Always understand that my clients’ time is more valuable than my own.
- Assume every problem is my fault, unless proven otherwise.
- Consider my job done only when my client is completely overwhelmed with joy. And instead of assuming they’re happy, I’ll ask them.
- Keep every promise I make. Including this one.
It’s a cool program and I give Best Buy credit for reinvigorating customer service just when I was convinced it was dead. And as a geek at heart, it’s kind of fun to be cool again!
Reading the full article though, I had two thoughts.
Thought 1: When did good service become remarkable?
Kudos to Best Buy and all, but look at that 6 point pledge. Never violate someone’s trust? Respect client’s property? Ask customers if they are happy with your work? Keep your promises? Didn’t those used to be qualities we were taught as kids that were essentials? I know I’m being overly negative here, but it’s a sad state of affairs when doing a good job and respecting your customers and clients is considered remarkable.
Thought 2: What a great platform to build upon
You can do this with the 6 point pledge or just the title of “Do Something Remarkable for your Customers”. Anywhere you see the word “customer” or “client”, try replacing it with “boss” or “spouse” or “friends” or some other relationship you have maybe neglected.
The fact is we have lots of relationships in our lives. Our relationship with our clients may pay the bills for most of us, but that doesn’t mean that all our other relationships don’t deserve something “remarkable” once in a while.
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Stories from the field: Passion and Commitment
While being exposed to creative business ideas day in and day out is a fun part of my job, probably the best part is getting to meet the entrepreneurs behind those ideas. In talking to one recently, it really reminded me of a couple of the core entrepreneurial qualities: Passion and Commitment.
The Story
This woman (let’s call her Jill) has a good job, as does her husband, and a couple kids. They would do quite well for themselves in their current jobs and be able to provide anything their children might need.
The problem is, Jill came up with a good idea. Then she got passionate about it. Then she committed to it.
Like many first time entrepreneurs, Jill had the idea but didn’t know how to get started. She was smart enough to do some research and had started a business plan, but needed help honing in on what was most important during this phase and what really needed to be in her plan. A friend of hers I had met with before referred her to me.
In the course of our conversation, Jill told me that her and her husband had decided to “downsize” their life by selling their house and buying something smaller, in order to free up a sizable chunk of equity for the venture.
Normally, when we hear something like that, we send up the red flags immediately to the entrepreneur. With a “fail early, fail cheap” point of view, we get very nervous when we hear entrepreneurs talk about spending their life savings or taking a second mortgage on their house to finance their ideas, especially when they don’t even know if they have something anyone wants to buy.
But in this case, Jill’s decision didn’t send up any red flags. She wasn’t planning on going into debt, merely freeing up some capital to get started. She and her husband obviously had the business experience to do this correctly and more important, Jill had the passion and commitment to take advantage of this short-term personal sacrifice.
I was glad to be able to help Jill get focused on next steps to get her closer to her goal, but I suspect I got more out of the meeting than she did.
The Leadership Lesson
Commitment is making a sacrifice to achieve our vision. Passion is feeling like it’s not a sacrifice.
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Essential qualities of entrepreneurship - ver. 1
Okay, time for you all to speak up and tell me what you think. After taking my own notes as to the qualities I think are essential for entrepreneurship, I posted a question on the topic over at LinkedIn’s Q&A section and got some great additional feedback. So in this post, I will quickly outline three lists:
- The qualities I believe are essential for successful entrepreneurship
- Qualities “on the bubble” that I can’t decide are essential or not
- Some ideas on what might be missing from the first list
I’m looking for your feedback. As I’ve said numerous other places on this blog, I want to develop this topic through not only my own thoughts but a rich dialogue with everyone reading the blog. Please comment early and comment often.
The yardstick I am using for these essential qualities is one of “necessary and sufficient”. That is to say that each of these qualities not only has to be present for successful entrepreneurship (e.g. it is necessary), but possession of all these qualities is all you need(they are sufficient). Therefore in your feedback tell me not only what is missing, but what can left off. If “entrepreneurship” is not a familiar term to you, then evaluate these qualities from a leadership perspective.
The goal of this post is not so much to examine the qualities in detail, as to simply start the process of getting a list we all agree on.