At an Open Forum panel for ZingTrain’s Art of Giving Great Service seminar, one of the questions that came up was, “The whole Zingerman’s culture. When you go home after work, how do you turn it off?”

Turn it… off? The panelists all blinked at each other. Is that even possible?

Great service, honest communication, servant leadership — these are things we wholeheartedly believe in as employees and as individuals. There isn’t anything we do or teach that is bad. By having work values that coincide with our personal values, we are able to live in integrity.

Expectations are high in this organization. By taking a job here, you make a commitment to provide great service to customers and coworkers, to forecast key numbers for the department, to learn finance, to develop a professional palate, to participate in decision-making for the business, to train other staff members, to devote time for personal growth, and a whole slew of other responsibilities in addition to, say, making a cup of coffee. This isn’t the right fit for everyone - and that’s alright. But for some people, this is exactly the kind of place they want to be.

It’s not perfect, no sirree. Sometimes we fall short of expectations or we don’t get along with everyone(!). We’re human. But at the end of the day, we respect each other, we have fun, and coming to work never feels like a chore.

Business leaders often say the most valuable resource a company has is its people. So hire people for the company you want. Build the culture and they will come.

Joel on Software lays out his company’s recipe for customer service that parallels our own Zing approach. How very uplifting to read about other IT groups focusing on the user!

#2 is hilarious yet practical, giving customers a graceful exit out of a user-error problem.

Of all his steps, this one really caught my eye:
#8 Give customer service people a career path

Here at Fog Creek, customer support is just the first year of a three-year management training program that includes a master’s degree in technology management at Columbia University.

Now that’s commitment to customer service!

The world of IT is different when it comes to giving great service. And not just because IT appears to be a strange cult of mumbo jumbo from the outside. Though the Zingerman’s way of service is world renowned and very, very useful, it does not exactly translate. And this is fine - that’s part of the challenge of great systems is applying them.

When we receive a cry for help from one of our customers (the staff of Zingerman’s) should we take that as an opportunity to provide great customer service or as an opportunity to handle a customer complaint? Should we acknowledge their complaint, apologize, make it right, thank them for letting us know of the problem, and then document the complaint? Or should we figure out what the customer wants, get it for them (accurately, politely, and enthusiastically), and then go the extra mile?

(more…)

I was having a conversation with some partners yesterday about how, as an organization, we don’t have well developed skills in delegation - that it often becomes ‘dumping’. I then ran across a pretty good list of responsibilities for both parties in a project delegation scenario. From MIT’s department of IS&T…

When you take on a ‘project’…

• clarify with the sponsor (or delegator) the scope and expectations for its completion.
• Determine where the importance of this task fits in the “big picture.”
• Make sure the criteria for success have been spelled out in sufficient detail.
• Agree on the differing roles and responsibilities of each person involved.
• Get the authority to obtain the necessary resources.
• Settle on a date for an early progress review.

Whenever delegating a ‘project’…

explain the scope of the task as well as:
• expectations
• importance
• criteria for success
• roles
• responsibilities
• resources
• review process

Long overdue report on mini games from the Great Game of Business conference.

Why have Mini Games?

• To foster teamwork and communication
• To teach and reinforce business skills
• To instill the desire and habit of winning, not of competing with each other
• To let “cave dwellers” know they can’t bring the group down

Mini Game Design:

1. Choose the game.
2. Set the targets.
   It is also important to teach the impact of winning to the bottom lines.
3. Identify who is involved.
   Anyone who is able to influence the score should be in the loop. It would be upsetting to have another department ruin the players’ chance of winning because they didn’t know what was going on.
4. Determine the time frame.
   Long enough to be able to change behavior but short enough to see results. A longer-term game could have some milestones celebrated to keep people involved. Create frequent wins.
5. Decide on prizes.
   Consider creative incentives that will be motivating for different kinds of people. Having t-shirts as prizes gets old, especially for staffers that have been here longer.
   Do a cost analysis of prizes and potential savings as a result of the mini game.
6. Design a scoreboard.
   Everyone should know how to calculate the score.
   Review the score regularly so everyone knows if we’re winning.
7. Play the game.
   A kickoff meeting to launch the mini game will create enthusiasm.
8. Evaluate the results.

Mini games must have qualifiers or things that should not be allowed to slip. For example, if the mini game is focused on going the extra mile for every trouble ticket, one qualifier could be that average resolution time should not drop below 1.6 days.

This summer I participated in the U of Z Leadership Workshop by Ari Weinzweig. It was held over two months, consisting of five sessions and a project.

My classmates were all intelligent, motivated, inspiring, and enthusiastic people. We had different experiences to share, having come from different areas of the ZCoB. Together we read stimulating material on leadership, effecting change, then discussed how it applies to our organization and us personally as leaders.

In addition to the readings, we each picked a project to effect a change in any level of the organization. I chose to do the Zingtranet Forum! The Zing Forum is a new feature on our intranet where staff members can post thoughts, ideas, questions online about various kinds of Zing business. It’s a great way to tap into the collective knowledge of the ZCoB in a structured form.

Following the BLC process, I wrote a vision, compelling reasons and interviewed a microcosm of people across the organization on how to tell everyone about it. Almost half of them suggested running a game. It seemed a perfect fit! A forum follows the Network Effect which means that a service becomes more valuable to a customer as more people use it. A game that incented people to post would increase its value as well as expose it to more users. The game ran for exactly a month. At the end of the game, we had 437 posts, 91 topics in 22 categories, and a bunch of happy prizewinners!

If anyone wants to learn more about what the Leadership Workshop was like, or if you’re interested in the Forum Game, feel free to contact me!