Zappos Offer Employees A Bonus ‘To Quit’!

Just finished reading Seth Godin’s latest book ‘Lynchpin’  (well, well worth a read as ever!). He highlighted a great example of a business that works extremely hard to get  (and retain) the right people that have bought in to their vision and their ‘way of doing things’ (culture).

Zappos, the incredibly successful e-tailer which has a recognized ‘obsession’ with customer service offers it’s ‘new starts’ $2,000 to quit! After an intensive four week ‘induction process’ which introduces the new employees to the company’s ‘vision’, culture and processes, each employee is made ‘The Offer’. They are told “If you quit now, we’ll pay you your wages for the past four weeks plus a $2,000 ‘bonus’”. Apparently, less than 3% typically take up the offer!

Being a ‘Dramatically and Demonstrably Different’ business is often centred very much around all the people who work in it. They have to ‘own” what your trying to do and recognise how they can contribute to it. 3D businesses do all they can to get that ‘ownership’. The Zappos ‘Offer’ is a very powerful way of getting ‘buy in’ to what you’re trying to achieve.

It means the ones that stay WANT to be there!

Free ebook – (Re)Thinking in 3D…..

I’ve written a new book! It’s all about Thinking in 3D – That means creating a business that’s 

‘Dramatically and Demonstrably Different‘! 

Basically, it’s a short set of ’rants’, raves and ideas aimed at engaging, stimulating and challenging you. 

If you enjoy the blog, I’d like to think that you’ll enjoy this too. The main reason being that there will be a few bits and bobs you’ve read before here on the site – see it as ‘going back to the gym’ – you still need to work those muscles!

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(re)thinking in ‘3D‘….. and the best bit is it’s FREE!

 

If you like it please send it on to others….. and let me know what you think about it too please!

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Hope You Have a ’Delightful’ Christmas!

Recruiting ‘Customer Delight’ ers

Came across this today. It’s a design business in Lynwood, Washington looking for a graphic designer. Part of the application process involves submitting, as well as your cv and examples of work, an example of when you’ve ‘delighted’ a customer, how you did it and what the reaction was from that customer.

It’s simple stuff, but I think it does a number of significant things in the recruitment process:

1) It gets beyond just the ‘technical’ stuff about design and ‘doing the job’

2) It shows the prospective employee what’s important around here – you’re ‘culture’

and

3) It reinforces that to existing clients and existing employees.

What do you look for in your prospective employees? Crucially, how do you let them know that’s what you’re looking for?

Putting On The Ritz!

Ritz-Carlton Hotels have a worldwide reputation for amazing customer service. I also quote the fact that any member of staff is allowed to spend up to $2000 to solve a guest’s problem without having to get ‘permission’ from a manager. I was wrong!

Staff are allowed to spend up to $2000 without having to get permission to create an outstanding experience! And they are encoraged to do that! Now THAT is impressive!

Here’s a nice interview with Ritz-Carlton President Simon F Cooper on how they run the business and get their people to create such outstanding experiences.

There’s some nice practical stuff there that we all could use in form or another. It’s about encouraging and ‘empowering’ staff to go the extra mile for customers.

What’s the reward for those in your business who go the ‘extra mile’ for customers? In far too many organisations, the ‘reward’ is more work!

Motivational Methods

Motivating people, particularly in these ‘trickier times’, appears to be a key factor for success in improving ‘competitiveness’, but how do you do it? Unfortunately, there’s no simple answer, but here are two insights I like, both very different.

Firstly, a great twenty minute presentation from Dan Pink, the ‘motivational thinker’. He was speaking at TED and suggests that for many, the ‘traditional carrot and stick’ incentives no longer work.

Secondly, a nice ’simple’ article on ‘Creating a Culture of Thank You’ from Reid Carr on Fast Company. It’s all common sense – we know we should be doing it, but maybe we don’t do it quite enough!

Incidentally, if you ever find yourself with a spare twenty minutes, a visit to the TED site is a great move. Videos of speakers from all over the world lasting a maximum of 18 minutes are a great way to get a burst of innovation, stimulation or motivation (and often all three!). To save for later on the bus or train home, there’s an opportunity to download them onto your ipod too!

Twitter – The Whitehall Way!

Apparently Whitehall has produced guidelines for civil servants on using Twitter – you know, the communication tool known for its brevity – only 140 characters per message. Guess what? The guide was 20 pages long! I  love that – it was 5,382 words!

I think the best way to describe the ‘culture’ of an organisation is ‘the way we do things around here’ – is this a great example? Maybe David Cameron was right about Twittering t”*ts!!!

Anyway, if you want something a bit more constructive on Twitter, click here to ‘follow me’ and get my ‘tweets’ – all real value adding stuff, I promise!

Richard Reed, An Innovative Leader? Guilty As Charged!

Saw Richard Reed, one of the founders of the very successful Innocent Drinks, speak last night. Absolutely wonderful, and very insightful. I could write for ages about all the stuff he talked about, so I’ll try and summarise some of the key points:

1. Keep the main thing, the main thing – this is about having a clear and simple sense of purpose, ensuring that everyone in the business understands this and how they contribute to it.

2. Make money….and make a difference – 10% of all Innocent’s profits are donated to charity. He emphasised very much that it’s all about profit and he made no bones about ensuring that Innocent look for, encourage and reward commercially focussed people.

3. It’s about people – every one of their employees gets something, those that contribute the most, get the most. Richard talked about getting people ‘on the bus’ and to help this happen, Innocent have an incredible number of initiatives and rewards that promote and reinforce the values of the business – here are some details on their website. He also talked about getting people ‘off the bus’ too – that means dealing with people who haven’t ‘bought in’ to what they are trying to achieve.

4. Take care of the details – it’s about the little things, getting ideas from ‘anywhere and everywhere’. A simple example is on the top of Innocent bottles rather than saying  ’use by….’ it says ‘enjoy by……’.

5. Open Up, Listen Up – that means being ‘porous’ to your customers, encouraging and listening to customers to feedback and tell you what they really think. The ‘Banana phone’ , advertised on the bottles, is the direct line to Innocent that anyone can ring. If the ‘customer service’ guys don’t answer it in 3 rings, EVERY phone in the office rings!!!

It was all great stuff, and to demonstrate his openness, he invited us all to drop in and visit them all at Innocent Towers at any time!

A fantastic example of developing and leading a successful business? Richard Reed of Innocent Drinks – Guilty as charged!

Making A Sale or Making A Relationship?

Can you sell without telling lies? I’ve been invited down to London to explore the possibility of taking part in

You’ve had your chips!

Fresh from some great customer experiences in Las Vegas, I popped into a local pub to watch the Champions League Final last week. Settling down for the match, a couple of us decided to

Organisational Stupidities

I

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