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A couple of months
age, Ralph, my General Manager, announced that he had enrolled himself and
five of our store managers in a one-day management seminar titled "In
Search of Excellence."
"How about a company scavenger
hunt instead?" I asked. "That’s more our style, and I’m sure
it would be far less expensive."
"The seminar is costing only about
$400 total," responded Ralph. "And it will be well worth it if
we manage to find some excellence."
I had gone to similar management
seminars in years past and had found them rather dull and simplistic. But
I was jaded. Ralph looked eager, and he claimed the store managers were
thrilled that we would actually attempt to educate them, so I reluctantly
gave the foray my blessing.
The day after the seminar I arrived at
the office and immediately felt the energy. Not mine, which was stuck in
its usual idle – I sensed the increase energy of Ralph and the other
managers.
"How was the seminar?" I asked.
"Did you track down that elusive excellence?" Ralph looked me
straight in the eye, which he seldom did before, and then shook my hand,
which he never did before. "It was…excellent. Thank you for paying
for it."
"What did you learn?" I
cringed, knowing what was coming.
"We learned what a pathetic job we
do around here managing people, providing customer service, and staying in
touch with what’s going on."
I was afraid of that. Ralph and his
managers had gone in search of excellence and had only found our failings.
"Let me guess," I said, my
jadedness bubbling to the top. "As an example of retail excellence,
they cited Nordstrom department stores."
"As a matter of fact, they
did," replied Ralph. "Did you know the Nordstrom employee
operating manual is one sentence long? It reads: ‘Use your own best
judgment.’"
"Ralph, we are not Nordstrom. If
we reduced our seven-page Standard Operating Procedure to ‘use your own
best judgment,’ I’m afraid we’d be out of business in a week."
"Besides," I added,
"Nordstrom profits were down 48 percent last quarter. What do they
know?"
Ralph wasn’t dismayed. "I wish
you had come with us to the seminar. It was very inspiring."
I shrugged, happy with my failings,
content not to emulate Nordstrom. A tuxedoed piano player in the middle of
one of our stores would probably be splattered with tomatoes within
minutes. Our business would never be like Nordstrom’s. We were in search
of a different kind of excellence – our kind.
I explained all this to Ralph, who
listened patiently. It only took me three or four days after our
conversation to realize I was wrong.
It wasn’t Ralph who convinced me; it
was the other managers who attended the seminar. One by one they came to
me with thoughts, ideas and observations they had gleaned from their
search for excellence.
And their enthusiasm didn’t
immediately dim, as I had predicted. A week later some of the managers
were still sending me well-thought-out memos with stimulating ideas.
All were discussed, and most were
discarded. But a few stuck, including the importance of every level of
management, including me, having customer interaction. And for the first
time in many years, the seminar prompted all of us to look at the way we
handle customer service.
As it turned out, it was well worth the
$400 to search for excellence. The seminar didn’t provide any answers,
but it obviously did an outstanding job making the participants ask the
right questions.
It certainly got me thinking and I didn’t
even attend.
What I realized is that my attitude
needed some adjusting. It’s so simple and easy to become jaded, to think
there is nothing new to learn when it comes to the basics of management.
There’s nothing wrong with doing things your way as long as you’re
aware of and have considered other ways to do it.
That’s why I’m sending Ralph and
all managers and supervisors to another one-day management seminar six
months from now. And assuming they learn something, which they will, they’ll
do it again and again.
But there will be one difference. Next
time, I’m going with them.
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