Odd Sightings
Recently some of my ideas have been published in a variety of locales. One being Australia and the other was in the newsletter of Scott Insurance. Check them out here:
Catfights and firewalks: the risk-taker’s guide to success
Recently some of my ideas have been published in a variety of locales. One being Australia and the other was in the newsletter of Scott Insurance. Check them out here:
Catfights and firewalks: the risk-taker’s guide to success
I don’t really know when the “Dog Days” of summer officially start but here in TN it feels like they are upon us. I really want to clean my garage but don’t relish the feeling of working inside an oven that is set on 325°.
The fact is there is always an excuse not to do things. Such as:
Even if it seems like there isn’t as much going on this time of year (I know that’s not true for a lot of us) these “down” times can be used to get otherwise postponed projects done. Use this time for:
Take action now. The habit of avoidance will not go away when things get busy. The excuses just change.
After visiting some companies with cool culture I decided to write an article on the subject. Cashing in on Culture is an article about why companies should make culture a priority and how to improve it. Here is a list of companies with great (cool) company culture:
What company do you know of that has great culture? Does yours? What needs to change?
This morning I left the house early to get fuel for a road trip. Within a few yards of the mail box I noticed a turtle and a rabbit on the road (really, I did). The cotton tailed bunny quickly hopped out of the way while the little snapping turtle pictured above inched towards the side of the road. I had to swerve to miss him. But what if I hadn’t?
I know the hare gets a bad rap for not pacing himself while the wise ol’ tortoise plods along to win in the end. But here’s the thing, when a 5000 pound SUV is bearing down on you who do you want to be? I’m voting to be a bunny.
Change, competition, economic chaos, regulations and more are bearing down on businesses every day. These are all 5000 pounds of threat to be responded to. How do businesses choose the way of the wabbit (sorry, I couldn’t resist)? Through agility. But how do these attributes manifest themselves? Here are a few indicators of an agile business.
Process oriented
Customer focused
Externally aware
Culturally progressive
Organizationaly flexible
None of these come for free or are easy to foster but when change is looming you’ll be glad you invested the time and effort to become agile.
I’ve been riding in airplanes a good bit lately and have noticed a big difference in flight attendant attitudes. When we flew to CA the attendants smiled, laughed and even joked with us. One of them went so far as to call my son Justin Bieber over the intercom. The way the attendants acted made the trip a lot more fun. Guess which airline that was? Yep, Southwest.
Today I flew with another airline. I made a funny (trust me, I’m funny) comment about the heat to the flight attendant. Her response was about as enthusiastic as one of those stone heads on Easter island. The rest of the flight was the same way. She was boring, the flight was boring. We all sweated through the boredom. Guess what airline? Yep, Delta.
Two questions came to mind.
1. How hard is it to smile?
2. What are these two companies doing with their employees to get them to act so differently?
Do you have a job where you work face to face with customers? If you do, try to smile at them and act like a human. Maybe even laugh at their jokes.
Do you run an outfit that has people that interact with customers? If so, figure out how to treat your employees so they like serving your customers.
I’ve never seen a company that had grumpy workers AND happy customers. Need an example? Go to the post office Friday at lunch time and count the smiles.