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Customer service Marketing Training & Development

“Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic” That We Can All Learn

Every service provider is challenged with engaging employees and creating systems to deliver a positive customer experience, but none more so than those who work in healthcare. So what can be learned from the Mayo Clinic? This excerpt, from the book Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic by Leonard Berry and Kent Seltman, explains it best:

“Imagine what can be learned from an organization that serves customers who:

  1. arrive with some combination of illness or injury, pain uncertainty, and fear
  2. give up most of their freedoms if hospitalized
  3. need the service but dread it
  4. typically relinquish their privacy (and modesty) to clinicians they may be meeting for the first time.

“Mayo Clinic and other well-run healthcare organizations serve just these kinds of special customers who are called patients and still earn high praise and fierce loyalty from them. Yes, indeed, a successful healthcare organization offers important lessons for most business organizations.”

Inside Mayo Clinic

There’s quite a story behind the powerful and enduring brand that is the Mayo Clinic with its emphasis on patient-first care, medical research and education, an integrated approach to healthcare, and a strong partnership between physicians and administrators (an adversarial relationship in many hospitals). Co-authors Leonard Berry, Distinguished Professor of Marketing at Texas A&M (one of my mentors), and Kent Seltman, former Marketing Director at the Mayo Clinic, studied Mayo Clinic’s service culture through in-depth interviews and observing patient-clinician interactions.

Their book paints a fascinating picture of the history and culture of Mayo Clinic, including how it engineers its internal systems to support its patient-first mission. Best of all, the book contains great lessons on creating and managing a brand that has achieved incredible growth in a difficult and challenging industry while staying true to its core values. The story is even more amazing given ongoing medical technological advances and the financial and political pressures placed on the healthcare profession.

Listening to the Voice of the Customer

Berry and Seltman share numerous quotes and testimonials from patients, their families, doctors, nurses, administrators, and their families, to illustrate the Mayo Clinic story. (Some of the anecdotes brought me to tears.) Even with Mayo Clinic’s unique position in healthcare, the authors do a great job discussing lessons applicable to other service firms in the “Lessons for Managers” section throughout the book.

One of my favorite chapters describes how Mayo Clinic manages the different types of clues that positively impact the customer experience:

  • demonstrating competence to instill customer confidence – e.g., with a collaborative team approach to patient care and integrated & timely access to medical records.
  • influencing first impressions and expectations – such as the design of physical space to convey a sense of healing and calm to reduce the stress of patients and staff.
  • exceeding customer expectations – including extraordinary sensitivity to patients and their families.

I recommend Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic to all service management, marketing and branding professionals … and everyone who works in healthcare.

Caution: the only downside after reading this book is the possible dissatisfaction with most healthcare institutions. If my family or I need critical care, my first choice would be Mayo Clinic!

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Engagement

Workplace Gathering a Meaningful Ritual

One of my former clients, a small department of a large organization, engages in a morning coffee klatch – staff arrive on or before 8 AM, turn on their computers, and then gather around the table in a small lunch room for coffee, tea, cereal, and/or a variety of goodies available on the table. (There’s always a generous assortment of baked goods for nibbling and emotional nourishment.)

So what did you do last night?

Conversation varies: about family & pets, current events, movies and reality TV, as well as updates on meetings, customer successes and concerns, and current work issues. (A phone sits on the table so any incoming calls can be taken during this time.) The morning session continues until around 8:30-8:40 AM, and then staff return to their desks.

As a consultant/extended team member, I was welcome to take a place at the table whenever I visited. While this informal socialization seemed to give staff a late work start, the work always got done on time and no customers (external and internal) were ignored. Even in stressful times (and trust me, there were several based on the nature of the work), the team pulled together … . primarily due to the departmental culture created by Peg, the group manager, who’s a regular participant in the morning coffee klatch.

NOT a waste of time!

There is real value to this type of ritual beyond just a social gathering. According to Arizona State’s W.P. Carey business school management Professor Blake Ashforth, such activities should be encouraged because they can strengthen connections among employees who work together and create organizational goodwill. In his article, Water Cooler Talk Keeps Organizational Culture Real, Ashforth writes: “People are social animals and want to feel a sense of belonging with other people. How they feel about their employer is largely dependent on how they feel about their tribe – their boss and immediate co-workers – rather than the organization’s larger culture and objectives as dictated by upper management.”

Especially today, when “work and home increasingly blend together in an always-on business climate … there is still organizational pressure to keep one’s home life from interfering with one’s work life. Yet, knowing coworkers’ hobbies and passions, what sports their kids play and if they’re caring for a sick parent is precisely what Ashforth says builds bonds that strengthen corporate groups.”

Ashforth advocates that organizations recognize the importance of their smallest local groups (“tribes”) and find ways to: 1) make those groups meaningful to their members and 2) connect those groups to the larger organization.

Peg intuitively practices what Ashforth talks about. She knows it takes more than just a singular coffee klatch activity. She’s successful because she truly cares about her staff the whole day, every day.

Categories
Musings

Family in Business: A Unique Perspective

I know a lot of companies who pride themselves on creating a “family” atmosphere in their workplace. A family-oriented corporate culture can mean a lot of things, such as a collective group of people who share something in common … who feel a special sense of belonging … who take pride in their company’s heritage …

So I was surprised recently when talking with the owner of a family-owned business who was adamantly opposed to having a family-oriented company culture. This type of culture idealizes the concept of family, he explained, while the reality is not all families are fully functional; e.g., sibling rivalry, overly demanding parents, recalcitrant children, etc. Instead, he prefers to describe his company as a “community of co-workers and collaborators.”

The reality is families, as well as corporate entities, can be dysfunctional. It’s all relative.

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Engagement Marketing

Bad Bosses – Good Teachers

This isn’t an April Fool’s joke – bad bosses have a lot to teach us (especially by example). And you don’t have to go very far to learn from them.

Bad bosses are a hot topic these days. Witness the best selling book, The No Asshole Rule, Zane Safrit’s “Worst bosses of the Year … so many choices” and Management-Issues’sThe Search for World’s Worst Boss.”

I’ve had my share of bad bosses. Fortunately, none would have been contenders for the World’s Worst list. In retrospect, I learned some valuable lessons from them – mostly about how not to treat employees.

Here are my top three lessons learned:

  1. Do not treat employees as minions whose sole function is to bolster your ego.
  2. Do not give employees assignments without all the proper information they need (either because you’re into power trips or because you really don’t know what you want, but you’ll figure it out as soon as they finish the assignment – at which point you’ll change your mind and direct them to do it differently.
  3. Do not assume your employees have no life outside the office and are available to help you 24/7. (I had one boss in particular whose mantra could have been: lack of planning on my part will constitute a constant emergency on your part.)

If you’ve worked for a bad boss, please share what you learned as a result.

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Wharton Study: Employee Satisfaction Contributes to Bottom Line

Concern for employees’ satisfaction is more than just a “feel good” aspect of management. Wharton professor Alex Edmans’ recent study confirms that happy workers positively impact financial success.

His study examined the stock returns of companies from Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work for in America” between 1998 and 2005 and found they had higher financial returns – more than double those of the overall market.

According to Edmans, “One might think this is an obvious relationship – that you don’t need to do a study showing that if workers are happy, the company performs better. But actually, it’s not that obvious. Traditional management theory [still] treats workers like any other input – get as much out of them as possible and pay them as little as you can get away with.”

Part of the problem is rooted in managers’ short-term thinking as they are measured and rewarded on short-term results. Investing in employees, however, is considered to be a long term proposition … despite the fact that it can pay off.

Edmans’ research is the latest of numerous studies citing the financial impact of employee satisfaction. One of my favorites is the 1997 classic The Service Profit Chain, by Harvard B-school professors James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser, and Leonard A. Schlesinger, that documented the self-reinforcing relationship between employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and the bottom line. While a lot has changed in the 10+ years since the book was published, the need to pay attention to employees is as important as ever.

Categories
Engagement

Employee Engagement: “Untapped Potential”

My last post was about “Straight A Management” as a way to attract and retain young professionals. Here’s why it’s more important than ever for all employees.

Towers Perrin’s latest Global Workforce Study reported dismal findings on employee engagement levels. They define engagement as employees “willing to go the extra mile to help their companies succeed.”

The study found only 21% of employees surveyed are engaged in their work. (Here’s a scary thought: if only one out of five employees are fully engaged, what are the others up to?) And 38% of employees surveyed admitted they were partly to fully disengaged.

The research also confirmed the self-reinforcing relationship between strong employee engagement and the bottom line. It found companies with the highest levels of employee engagement had better results in increased operating income and earnings per share.

According to Towers Perrin Managing Director, Julie Gebauer, “ … at a time when companies are looking for every source of potential advantage, the workforce itself represents the largest reservoir of untapped potential.”

Hard to believe so many companies continue to overlook the obvious.

Categories
Customer service Engagement

A True Story of Another Happy Employee

In my last post, a friend who’s spent most of her career in the nonprofit world shared her positive experience as a seasonal associate at the Village Square (Baltimore MD) Williams-Sonoma store. She’s not the only one surprised and delighted by the Williams-Sonoma retail culture there.

Here are excerpts from a letter that one of her co-workers, also a seasonal (part-time) associate, sent to the chain’s top management.

“For the last 21 years I have served in the Submarine Force and as a Naval Officer in the Cryptology community of the United States Navy. I pride myself on hard work, dedication to the mission, teamwork and integrity.  This December, however, I was shown the true meaning of the qualities above, when I took a Seasonal Job at one of your stores in Baltimore; specifically the store located at Village Square. I thought it might be fun to work in an environment that wasn’t classified, and since I have a passion for cooking I applied for a seasonal position. I wasn’t sure what to expect in the world of retail – renowned for high turnover, mediocre dedication and a demanding public – but I was eager to find out.

My experience was truly eye opening. Your store Manager Claudia and her team of full-time employees are nothing short of OUTSTANDING. I have a staff of over 130 people, and I attempted to evaluate this store from a manager’s perspective as I went about my daily tasks. Over and over and over — I was amazed at the teamwork, dedication and hard, hard, hard work these employees demonstrated. WOW!

This group is truly unique in that they understand and provide customer service – no matter what the circumstance.  Claudia’s attitude is that nothing is too big to handle or too small to pay attention to, and every single employee exemplifies this motto.

I was amazed that I could ask any full-time employee a question in any situation (store packed full of customers, a waiting line five deep) and I was ALWAYS greeted with a “No problem – how can I help?”

These employees ensure that the store is fully stocked, dishes washed, cash counted, floor swept, EVERYTHING in its correct place before they walk out the door every – single -night. I thought that maybe we could cheat a little after the mad rush of customers during the holidays – but it never happened.

Submarines, as you can imagine, are like fine tuned watches. Everything is routine and we can’t afford a mistake because it could mean the death of hundreds of men. I never thought I would work in an environment that had the same structure and system. I have to tell you — Claudia and her team exemplify the same characteristics.

I want to thank you for giving me such a great experience. I truly enjoyed myself – in fact – I looked forward to work and would always call to see if there were extra hours – it was that much fun!”

My reaction (to quote the author of this letter) is also “WOW!”

Categories
Customer service Engagement

A True Story of a Happy Employee

I wanted to share this e-mail from a friend who raved about her work as a “seasonal associate” for the Williams Sonoma store in Cross Keys/Village Square, Baltimore MD. My friend is a professional who has worked in the nonprofit field for many years; she is currently in-between jobs as a result of burn-out.

She wrote: “I’ve not worked so hard or so happily in a long, long time. Despite the [hectic] holiday season … the culture is relaxed and positive and always human. Store managers are able and caring coaches; they listen to employees, meet employees’ scheduling needs wherever possible, and — get this — they THANK US for our day’s work as we leave the store each evening!  And, it’s not proforma, it’s sincere. Internal and external — these folks get it and they LIVE it!”

So I asked my friend if the culture was a reflection of local store management or the organization’s corporate culture? She told me it’s both: “The customer service philosophy is a company-wide one with frequent visits by secret shoppers who issue detailed reports. The approach to staff is more individual and Claudia, the manager of Cross Keys, and her staff are extraordinarily dedicated to creating a warm and motivating culture.”

I’ll have more to share in my next post from another seasonal associate with a truly unique perspective. So stay tuned …

Categories
Engagement Marketing

A Must Read: “Firms of Endearment”

I predict a business best seller for a book that’s being released this month: Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose. It’s about how successful companies focus on ALL their stakeholders, not just shareholders. [2014 Update: This book is now in its second edition.]

Given my internal marketing bias, I’m thrilled with any book that encourages companies to pay more attention to their employees. But Firms of Endearment goes even further as it advocates appropriate attention to all of a firm’s stakeholders: its customers, employees, partners/suppliers, investors, and the community-at-large/society. I also love the examples of how these companies do this profitably in spite of Wall Street’s short-term focus.

The research process used to identify “Firms of Endearment” (FoE) was opposite of the Good to Great approach. Instead of starting with financial performance and working backwards to find common corporate practices as with “Good to Great” companies, FoE authors began by identifying companies that people love. These companies were then screened for their performance in serving each stakeholder constituency, followed by an investor analysis on the publicly-traded companies.

The book explores the answer to the question:

“How is it that these companies can be so generous to everyone who costs them money (customers, employees, suppliers, communities) and still deliver superior (some would say spectacular) returns to investors?”

I’m adding the book to my “recommended reading” list that I handout in my training workshops and, of course, my “Good Reads” blog roll.

Happy reading!

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Shhh! Check out the “Quiet Manager”

It’s good to be reminded that not all great leaders are of celebrity-caliber.

That’s one of the key messages in Managing Quietly by thought leader and academic Henry Mintzberg, who is critical of the hero worship stimulated by the media for turnaround executives. According to Mintzberg:

“To ‘turn around’ is to end up facing the same way … Might not the white knight of management be the black hole of organizations?  What good is the great leader if everything collapses when he or she leaves?”

Instead, he favors the “quiet managers” who:

  • Inspire rather than empower their people by creating a culture with “conditions that foster openness and release energy” so that “empowerment is taken for granted.”
  • Care for their organizations by spending more time “preventing problems than fixing them, because they know enough to know when and how to intervene.”
  • Infuse change so that it “seeps in slowly, steadily, profoundly” instead of dramatically so “everyone takes responsibility for making sure that serious changes take hold.”

The power of listening

What I found particularly refreshing is the quiet manager’s appreciation & respect for an organization’s institutional and collective memory. Mintzberg writes:

“Show me a chief executive who ignores yesterday, who favors the new outsider over the experienced insider, the quick fix over steady progress, and I’ll show you a chief executive who is destroying an organization.”

His description calls up one of my favorite quotes from entrepreneur Andrew Filipowski:

“The insiders of an organization understand the stupidity of its traditions better than the outsiders.”

Quiet leaders are in touch with what’s going in their organizations and do not treat their people as “detachable ‘human resources.'”  A manager who respects and listens to employees?  That’s the understated mark of a true leader.