Thoughts For The Coming Year

As I was pondering what to write as we close 2016, I visited my post from the close of 2015 and discovered, sadly, that the December 2015 blog could have been written today.

With that in mind, I am reposting the same guest blog from my friend and fellow Vistage Chair, Larry Cassidy. For me, Larry’s commentary continues to express the challenge we face as a nation and as leaders.

With that in mind, I am making it visible here once again, offering you some food for thought as you begin the holiday season.

Wishing you peace and opportunity in the New Year.

Larry’s Post from December 2015

My first newsletter was sent on June 27, 2011, some 230 newsletters ago. And for those 4½ years I have stepped carefully around politics. Today I will take edge up to that tricky topic, not so much traditional politics, but rather on who we are, and what price we 322-million folks are willing to pay to be that.

We have undergone many serious gut-shots in the past several years, Paris and San Bernardino being the latest. As I ponder these tragedies, and before releasing this newsletter into the wild, my thoughts go to three big ideas:

  • becoming the best version of ourselves,
  • the hard price we are (or are not) willing to pay to get and stay there,
  • our leadership as a part of all that.

There are many pieces to that, and we each have our own ideas. I will share mine below. You may disagree. But I do so because it is a conversation we cannot avoid, and all voices are required.

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“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

The Statue of Liberty, dedicated 10/28/1886

Terrorism is a stark and frightening example of what others can do to us. Paris. San Bernardino. Too much, too often. And leadership is what we choose to do about it, and how we go about doing it.

Once again, we confront events with which we have not contended (remember: Pearl Harbor, the Cuban Missile Crisis9/11), and while such moments spawn anger and paranoia, they also summon our better angels. Which is one more good reason we would rather live here than anywhere else in the world, our flaws notwithstanding.

As I now savor almost-eight decades, I wonder if our fears might extinguish the Statue of Liberty’s torch, our shining beacon of freedom. And I question whether my opportunity to be born here, to live here, and to experience this thing called America, could have happened had such fear and paranoia won the early days of our history.

A bit dramatic? Go back a century-or-more, and we Irish were potato-heads, lazy scum. Italians were looked on as not much better. Jews? Forget it. African Americans, which was hardly what they were called? Slaves at best. Nor does that count Japanese-Americans or German-Americans in WWII. Pretty lucky for we shoddy Irish (and me) that we got past much of that.

Yes, we each have a right to feel, to fear, to embrace and to be safe. But before we pounce, look around. Soak it in. The ethnic, religious and nationalistic mess we behold is what has combined to make us great. It is our grand experiment, a palate on which each color and belief and ancestry is a part. It is us. So, what will it be ten, or fifty, or a hundred years from now?

Once again, we are in the process of deciding. In every business, classroom, sanctuary, gathering and discussion. And we are the leaders: the parents, coaches, elders, teachers, business executives. Make no mistake, we are deciding, we are leading and we are teaching.

  • So what will we do, and how will we go about doing it?
  • Which parts of what made this country great will we keep, and which will we discard?
  • Will we mirror or will we reject what those who threaten us espouse?
  • And once we decide, once we move on, will we have found our way to safety while continuing to lift our lamp beside the golden door?

This is a big deal.  And we are all right in the middle of it.

 Larry Cassidy

P.S. This is the last post this year, see you back here in January.

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain

In Your Effort To Please, Are You Giving Away The Store?

Much has been written about The Ritz Carlton Way. The takeaway I always hear is “empower your front line employees to deliver WOW experiences”. Today many other organizations follow this Ritz Carlton Way.

The intent of this approach is to allow employees to resolve a customer situation and have the customer walk away so pleased that they return and tell others about the experience. As with anything else, the best intentions can sometimes go awry. Here are some examples I have observed recently:

  • A customer at Whole Foods asks for product A and they don’t have it, so the employee offers a Try Me (aka free) for Product B. All fine and good; I believe this is the intent of Whole Foods management. But what about the employee that offers a Try Me, simply because they have only 1/2 a pound of the product and the customer wants 1 pound? Should the 1/2 pound be offered as a Try Me?
  • A salesman makes an error in writing up an order for a construction job. The salesman works with the office to ensure the errors are corrected at no charge to the customer. Again, all good. But then that same customer asks for additional changes and the salesman, feeling bad about the earlier mistakes, gives away those additional items at no charge. Is this the Ritz Carlton Way, or is it giving away the store?

It’s a fine line, and of course, judgement is required. I also wonder how many companies that have adopted the Ritz Carlton Way have also adopted the extensive training and monitoring for which Ritz Carlton has become famous. In fact, there is a Ritz Carlton leadership center that offers public courses in delivering what they call memorable customer service.

Even when the design includes training, as with all initiatives, the DIME Method comes into play. We often leave off with Design and Implement and forget to Monitor and Evaluate. With this in mind, I leave you with the question I asked at the beginning,

In their effort to please, are your front line employees giving away the store?

 

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain

Are You Green & Growing?

The further along we get in our careers, the more we know and the more we are challenged to stay curious.

Every now and then I meet a leader that knows it all. They have “the way” they do things that worked for them in the past and as leaders, they are certain it will work today.

They share “the way” with their team, expecting them to accept “the way” and to become successful because of it. They do this with the best of intentions, and yet, the results don’t come. Frustrated, they try again. If only folks would simply execute “the way”, they will be successful and so will our company.

Alas, they discover, it doesn’t work the way it once did. This leader has two choices, s/he can continue to lead as s/he has always done, or… s/he can become curious.

What I have noticed is businesses, like ourselves, are living beings. And, like a plant, if I am not willing, and able, to be green and growing, the result is, I, and my company, become ripe and eventually rotting.

Why Vistage Works

Elisa K. Spain