Better Than Perfect by Dale A. Dauten

Author:Dale A. Dauten
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781601638977
Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser

Questions Are the Answer

“One of their executives, Mike Roemer, the COO, had much impressed me. For one thing, he wanted to improve the stores, and he was smart enough to know he needed to find out what he didn't know. He knew he wanted store personnel to use their time wisely, but wondered, just how did they use their time? So he hired people to go into stores and watch. Just watch. The result was a list of 969 observations. Many of them amounted to the fact that ‘customer service’ folks spent very little time serving customers—36 percent of their time, to be exact.

“So Roemer recruited a number of bright store personnel to help analyze where their time was being diverted from customers. Notice that he created a big brain. And the upshot was to find dozens of ways to save time. They found they were able to reduce total hours worked, while increasing the time spent helping customers from 36 percent to 50 percent and climbing. Employees got to spend more time doing what they love doing—talking about movies—and so customers got more help, and overall costs dropped. That's the power of knowing what you don't know and embracing it. That's huge—like being the crow that counts past six.

“But all of that is just to say that Roemer was an impressive guy. And so he was on my list to ask about better-than-perfect colleagues. And he had a zinger for me, a rising corporate star named Shane Evangelist—a great name for someone skilled at bringing others along. However, he doesn't win people over by converting them, but by letting them convert him. That's a sexy brain.”

(I stopped Max there because I was getting confused, and maybe you are too. Mike Roemer is the COO and Shane Evangelist is a rising star who reports to Roemer.)

Back to Max's description:

“When I talked with Mike Roemer, he immediately began telling me about Shane, who recently turned 30, but is already being put in charge of significant projects for Blockbuster.

“‘Why?’ I asked Mike, and he told me this: ‘He reeks of leadership. He energizes a room. He used to be a gymnast, and in one meeting, in his business suit, he jumped up and did a 360 degree flip, just to shake people up. And then he's great one on one, too. One time he was flying with an employee, and Shane got upgraded to first class, being a frequent flyer. But after take-off, he went to an empty seat in the coach section, next to the young employee, and spent the entire two hour flight talking about that employee's future.”

Max gave us the inquiring eye and Angelina obliged by saying, “There's the idea of leaping beyond the expected—literally, in the first case.”

“If you want people to sing your praises, you have to give them some lyrics.” Max stopped and grinned. “Oh, that one was good. Hold on, I've got to write that down.

He did, and then continued. “I was curious about energizing a room in two minutes, so I followed up on how Shane does it when he isn't doing flips.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.