“Before I would go into a room and make sure it was clean. Now I look for an opportunity to WOW my guest.”
That was a statement from a housekeeper in Hong Kong from the Four Seasons Hotel. Let’s imagine for a minute if they could get all of their housekeepers on the same wave length. That would be the ultimate competitive advantage. In other words, you would be leveraging your own employees in the push for new opportunities for growth and profitability.
Your employees are the most important source of innovative ideas because they know more about the nuts and bolts of your company than most senior leaders. These maids are closer to the customer experience than you will ever be. But this is not just about housekeepers. This is about everyone within your organization.
The Four Seasons Hotels created BLUEWATER to give its 35,000 employees the tools and opportunity to originate ideas, pilot, and refine the guest experience. This program gets everyone involved from the general manager to the people who park the cars. The quote above came from one of the housekeepers who had gone through the program. They have basically unleashed an unstoppable force that can truly motivate an entire organization.
This program is guided by 3 essentials. Its mission is to give every employee a real sense of ownership:
Starbucks is another prime example of this practice. I was working in New York a few months back and one of the attendees at my workshop told the story of how the employees embraced everyone who walked in. She said she counted 7 times that they greeted customers by name. Starbucks also created a branded program called “My Starbucks Idea” to encourage ideas for services. They not only deputized their employees but also included their customers as well. Who knows as much about their products as their employees but their loyal customers?
I have often used the Green House concept as an analogy — our work environment should mirror the concept of a greenhouse. Ideas tested, employees on-boarded, developed and the entire life cycle adjusted to the controlled environment we call work.
Organizations that master this will have no burning need to be innovative, reach strategic goals or whatever challenges they may face. The reason is they will not depend on a C-suite with a few executives, because they will have empowered their entire workforce to innovate and solve problems. By deputizing their ambassadors, they will become unstoppable. Whether it is innovation, new product or processes, having turned loose their most important asset will in the end be declared a victory
The days of the organization being the know all, end all are over. Customer experience as well as employee experience is a valuable resource waiting to be tapped and deputized in the pursuit of “how do we get better at what we do?”
Involving employees — and customers — in this innovation process increases the likelihood of success because employees can identify the organizational issues that need to be addressed. Remember that for the most part they know more about your business than you do. And when employees feel management is interested in their opinions, they’ll be more likely to take a personal stake in the business. They’ll go from feeling like just a cog in the chain to feeling like they’re a part of the team.
In the old days, soliciting feedback from employees meant putting a box marked “suggestions” next to the water cooler. I was always amazed by this concept because every time I would ask someone about the contents, for the most part no one put anything into it. So basically no one had any suggestions. When I inquired as to why, I was told that employees felt nothing would be done with them anyway so why bother.
What Four Seasons and Starbucks, among others, have done is to create “Suggestion Box 2.0,” but better than merely placing a box in a physical location. Both these programs put their workforce through a development process thus bringing them all into their company’s mission. These newly crowned brand ambassadors will unleash an unstoppable force that will conquer and allow for the ultimate competitive advantage.
“None of us is as smart as all of us” Kenneth H. Blanchard