The Squawk Point: Service Improvement
Service improvement for pragmatic people. Ideas, tools and techniques to improve your service operation.
What do you think of the team you manage? Are they the crème de la crème or a shower of … Is that a rather harsh question? Perhaps, but the answer may well have a lot more to do with you than with them. Why do some people do better than others? In 1968 Rosenthal and [...]
We have all heard that “money doesn’t motivate”. I’m not sure I totally agree. If you can’t afford your weekly food bill then I suspect that making money comes high on your list, but I guess we pass that point fairly quickly. What I do believe is true though is that money can de-motivate. As Professor Noriaki Kano [...]
I travel to London on the train more regularly than is pleasant At the end of each journey a steward passes through the carriages with a big plastic bag, collecting the rubbish. They never look too enamored with their job. This morning the steward entered the carriage and announced with a flourish: Any rubbish Laptops iPads Mobile [...]
My daughter is learning to play the flute. As far as musical instruments go the flute is without a shadow of a doubt the best your child can learn. I am still emotionally scared by my sister’s attempts to play the violin 30 years ago and a friend of mine was foolish enough to buy [...]
Maz Iqbal told me a great story this week…. Imagine you were an employee of a large business. You worked in a factory, or a shop, or a warehouse or maybe you were an agent in a call centre. A big call centre where they measured your every move: how long your calls were how long [...]
This is a guest post by Stan Phelps After studying 1,001 examples of companies that give little unexpected extras to employees, here are 5 easy ways to increase engagement from the new book, “What’s Your Green Goldfish – Beyond Dollars: 15 Ways to Drive Employee Engagement and Reinforce Culture” 1. Onboarding You never get a [...]
Successful organisations revolve around trust. The more you trust your colleagues the less you worry about them: You spend less effort checking up You spend less time looking for alternatives You spend less money on lawyers and contracts As trust rises, business becomes faster, smoother and cheaper. Frictional costs disappear. As Steven Covey would say, [...]
Slogans are big business. You can buy all sorts of motivational and inspirational posters on-line. A quick trawl of the internet will net you: Cute slogans: Important slogans: Retro slogans: Innovative slogans: Slogans on stickers: Even slogans on door mats: You can buy more slogans than you can shake a stick at. A simple easy [...]
When we are faced with a problem, maybe a new competitor, a cost challenge, a product launch or simply a new job, we marshal our forces to deal with it. We reform our departments Shuffle our management teams Hire the right talent Politely ask those who aren’t performing to the standard we expect to leave. [...]
A charming question asked me by my 4-year-old daughter this weekend. I didn’t know the answer so I had a search in line for some statistics. In Ancient Rome life expectancy at birth was 28 years old. If you made it through your first 15 years (avoiding all the horrific causes of child mortality) you [...]
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