We are not an airline with great customer service. We are a great customer service organization that happens to be in the airline business.
Southwest Airlines former President Colleen Barrett
The personal Blog of Howard Mann. Author, Speaker & Entrepreneur. - January 7th, 2009
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An excerpt from a great post over at the 37 Signals blog:
“We get it. But our clients would never understand.”
It’s a frequent rebuttal to our Getting Real philosophy.
Read between the lines and there’s a disturbing undercurrent to that message. It’s really saying, “I get it but these other people could never understand. They don’t have the wisdom and the understanding that I do.” It’s like the way some LA or NYC people sound when they talk down about the masses in the flyover states. It’s insulting."
Everyone loves to complain about clients but it reminds me of the story of the guy who has dated 100 women and tells everyone he can't find "Mrs. right" because everyone he dates is crazy. Funny part is, the only thing those 100 women have in common is that 1 guy.
Related Brickyard concept: Lose Your Story.
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Quick Posts
Run, don't walk, and read The First Time CEO's Recession Survival Guide written by Redfin online Real Estate CEO Glenn Kelman. My favorite is #1 "Compete With Your Successor - I often think about what my replacement will do after I’m fired. She won’t have emotional commitments to decisions that I already regret."
Rajesh Setty is giving away his great book "Life Beyond Code. Learn to Distinguish Yourself in 9 Simple Steps!" A very nice and useful Thanksgiving gift to yourself. Download it here.
It seems the commenting feature on the blog posts has not been working properly. I apologize. It is now fixed. Please do comment and join the discussion.
Great Harvard Business post on lessons that can be learned by the Obama campaign. Loved this part on the importance on purpose: "Bigness of purpose is what separates 20th century and 21st century organizations: yesterday, we built huge corporations to do tiny, incremental things - tomorrow, we must build small organizations that can do tremendously massive things."
Tom Peters: 100 Ways to Succeed #146: "Obsess On The Basics! Now, More Than Ever!" "....Keep on each other over those basics—and be liberal with the kudos for those who go an extra millimeter to do a "trivial" job especially well."
The VC's are yelling from the roof tops for startups to batten down the hatches. Like I said in my post from the other day, you have to double down AND batten down. What all of this really means is, of course, you need to get back to the business basics that have always worked and always will.
The smart folks over at Behance have launched an online project collaboration tool that follows their Action Method paper system. Watch the online video tour to get an idea of how it works. Looks like a simple and effective ways to track the individual action items for projects and goals.
Tom Peters and Seth Godin on one stage taking questions from Inc. 500 business owners. Priceless wisdom on a wide variety of topics. Click here to watch then sit back and enjoy!
"It’s easy to say that entrepreneurs will create jobs and big companies
will create unemployment, but this is simplistic. The real question is
who will innovate. A 50-year-old company can innovate as well as two guys/gals in a garage." From an interview with Guy Kawasaki discussing the ideas in his new book Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition
"If you want to make your website better at turning visitors into customers (or subscribers), you need to understand why most of your visitors are leaving!" a helpful article to drive home the point that launching your web site is the easy part. If you want your web site to deliver real results for your business then you need to work at with persistence.
Howard Mann is a speaker, author and entrepreneur. He is on a mission to get businesses to thrive in every way, in good times and bad, by relentlessly sticking to their basics. Learn more.
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