Loved that Ritz-Carlton example of giving employees agency. It feels good for the employee, and it ends up serving the customer and the bottom line too. Michel Falcon writes about a restaurant using a similar strategy in his book People-First Culture. I'm always surprised when leaders resist this, worried employees will make the "wrong" call. They'll make a different call, sure. But that's the point. Those choices come out of the employee's own read of the customer in that moment, which makes the solution more personal, not less. Here, variation is a feature, not a bug.
I still remember a director who used to say "we need to be paranoid" at every business review. I can still hear it, it became one of the background voices of anxiety at work :) Not exactly the state that helps you come up with new ideas, grow the business, or build something meaningful for customers.
Toxic companies are all about slogans. And their slogans are creatively bankrupt. It's like a shitty high school pep rally.
Loved that Ritz-Carlton example of giving employees agency. It feels good for the employee, and it ends up serving the customer and the bottom line too. Michel Falcon writes about a restaurant using a similar strategy in his book People-First Culture. I'm always surprised when leaders resist this, worried employees will make the "wrong" call. They'll make a different call, sure. But that's the point. Those choices come out of the employee's own read of the customer in that moment, which makes the solution more personal, not less. Here, variation is a feature, not a bug.
I still remember a director who used to say "we need to be paranoid" at every business review. I can still hear it, it became one of the background voices of anxiety at work :) Not exactly the state that helps you come up with new ideas, grow the business, or build something meaningful for customers.