I care and I care a lot! Does it show? Am I too passive? Do people around me see my passion?
Often it’s the CEO or the manager who sets a standard of caring about the details. Even better is a culture where everyone cares, and where each person reinforces that horizontally throughout the team.
You’ve probably been to the hotel that serves refrigerated tomatoes in January at their $20 breakfast, that doesn’t answer the phone when you call the front desk, that has a shower curtain that is falling off the rack and a slightly rude concierge. This is in sharp contrast to that hotel down the street, the one that costs just the same, but gets the details right.
It’s obviously not about money! It’s about caring enough to make an effort.
If we define good enough sufficiently low, we’ll probably meet our standards. Caring involves raising that bar to the point where the team has to stretch.
Of course, the manager who’s reading this or the staff member who just got forwarded this note–they have a great excuse. Times are tough, money is tight, the team wasn’t hired by me, nobody else cares, I’m only going to be doing this gig for a year, our customers are jerks… who cares?
Caring, it turns out, is a competitive advantage, and one that takes effort, not money.
Like most things that are worth doing, it’s not easy at first and the one who cares isn’t going to get a standing ovation from those that are merely phoning it in. I think it’s this lack of early positive feedback that makes caring in service businesses so rare. I want to do a better job of recognizing those who care so much that Yoder’s clearly has a competitive advantage!
Which is precisely what makes caring so valuable!
Unless someone does, things start to fray around the edges.
I am going to leave you with 4 thoughts:
At 10,000 feet, most challenges are simple. But actually making something work is quite complicated.
The mistake is when you put more effort into the promises and less into what you deliver. Promise a lot but deliver even more.
Either you believe in what you sell, or you don’t.
I am absolutely pumped about 2012! Are you?
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