The Lean CEO: Leading the Way to World-Class Excellence by Jacob Stoller

Author:Jacob Stoller
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 2015-03-30T14:00:00+00:00

I walked down the hall to have my first meeting with the customer service team, and I walked in and introduced myself as the owner of the company. And then I did something I’d never done before—I don’t even know where this came from. I said, “We’re going to play a game. Whoever sells the most spare parts wins, and if the team makes the team goal, then the team wins.”

Immediately there were objections—people had 10 different reasons why this couldn’t work in this company. But they began playing this game, and we saw dramatic improvement in performance and behavior—it was like the March Madness spirit I had seen in the cafeteria. People really wanted to win, and they were having fun doing it.

I went back 13 weeks later, and their sales were up dramatically. So I asked, “What happened? I don’t understand.” And they said, “Mr. Chapman, you’ve got to understand what it’s like in customer service. When the phone rings, it’s often about a problem, so you hope somebody else picks it up. Now, because of the game, we’re down there asking the switchboard operator, ‘How do you decide who gets what call?’ because we want to answer the phone.”

I had no idea that this would affect results—I just wanted people to have fun. But I started hearing more and more stories like this. Normally companies would say, “We have a problem in customer service. We need to bring in a training specialist to teach people how to do a better job.” But I didn’t need to tell them anything, I let them have fun, and their creative abilities, their natural abilities came forth. It was amazing.

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