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Putting Processes to Work for Your Guest Services Team

December 28, 2012 //
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Here’s the bottom line principle when it comes to designing processes for guest services:

An organization needs to think like a customer (or in this case, a Guest)

Put yourselves in the shoes of the typical guest coming to your campus this weekend. Walk through (literally) every touchpoint and interaction that your guest might conceivably encounter. Develop a process or system that will anticipate their need and meet it before it becomes apparent to the guest.

Need help working it out? Try this six-step continuous improvement cycle from Xerox:

  • Identify and select the problem to be worked on
  • Analyze the problem
  • Generate potential solutions
  • Select and plan the best solution
  • Implement the solution
  • Evaluate the solution

Once you have identified a solution and find that it works, continue to use it, evaluating it periodically as needed, replacing it completely when it no longer works.

Here’s a real world situation as an example:

I serve as a Guest Services Team Coordinator for Elevation Church’s Uptown campus in Charlotte, NC. We meet in McGlohan Theater in Spirit Square (the former First Baptist Charlotte campus, turned into an entertainment venue in the 1970′s when the church relocated).

Problem: Almost everyone attending the Uptown Campus drives from somewhere else in Charlotte – which means lots of cars.

Analysis: The theatre only has about 40 parking spaces associated with it. Wanting to reserve those for VIPs (first time guests) and families with small children, we had to locate other parking.

Potential Solutions: Everybody for themselves (no way!); utilize street parking (not enough, and used by businesses or not available many Sundays); negotiate favorable rates with surface parking lots (not so favorable rates, it turns out); negotiate the use of a parking deck 1 1/2 blocks away (good rate, but a little far)

Select the Best Solution: Utilize the parking deck because it puts the majority of cars in one place, allowing maximum efficiency of guest services teams; helps with security; gives a sense of “place” to everyone coming Uptown

Implement the Solution: Determine the traffic patterns of cars coming Uptown and design appropriate signs and locations to maximize impact; develop a checklist of the different types of signs and their locations; negotiate with parking company to insure staff is on site or nearby in case of mechanical problems; promote the “how” of the parking deck through website videos, print materials, and live announcements as needed; plan for inclement weather; coordinate Parking Team, VIP Team, and Greeters to insure smooth transition from parking deck to theater

Evaluate the Solution: Every week the parking team notes hits and misses, and adjusts the process to eliminate them

That’s how we do it at Uptown!

Now, take the principle and apply it in your context.

Efficient processes can transform your Guest Services Team

My favorite post from August, 2012

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Categories Guest Services

Translating Customer Experience for ChurchWorld Leaders

August 31, 2012 //
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Customer service is, quite simply, how customers perceive their every interaction with an organization.

This may come as a shock to you, but churches should have customers, too. 

We just call them Guests.

Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine, customer experience analysts at Forrester Research, have just released a new book entitled “Outside In.” Subtitled The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business, Outside In offers a complete road map to attaining the experience advantage.

If you are a ChurchWorld leader, you need to understand the powerful truths contained in this book. Outside In certainly stands on its own, but over the next few days I’m going to be translating the content into the language of ChurchWorld Guest Services, and making applications to how you can take advantage of the Guest Experience in your church.

Go ahead and order a copy from Amazon now. It’ll be here in a couple of days. You’ll be referring to it frequently.

In the meantime, here’s an outline for your consideration.

The Value of Guest Experience

  • You need your Guests more than they need you
  • You are in the Guest experience business – whether you know it or not

The Guest Journey

  • Discover
  • Evaluate
  • Attend
  • Access
  • Use
  •  Get support
  • Leave
  • Re-engage

The Three Levels of Guest Experience

  • Meets needs – I accomplished my goal
  • Easy – I didn’t have too work hard
  • Enjoyable – I felt good about that

The Guest Experience Ecosystem

  • Deconstructed
  • Visible to customers
  • How to create a Guest experience ecosystem

The Six Disciplines of Guest Experience

  • Strategy
  • Guest Understanding
  • Design
  • Measurement
  • Governance
  • Culture

The Path to Guest Experience Maturity

  • Improve
  • Transform
  • Sustain

The Four Adoption Levels of Guest Experience

  • Missing
  • Ad Hoc
  • Repeatable
  • Systematic

Transformation Priorities

  • Build on strengths
  • Shore up weaknesses

The Rise of the Guest Experience Team

Understanding the importance of Guest Experiences in your church begins next Tuesday, September 4.

Class dismissed – enjoy the holiday weekend!

 

Part 1 of a multi-part series based on the book Outside In, by Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine

These posts “translate” the world of customer service to the language and setting of Guest Experiences in the church.

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Categories BookNotes, Guest Services

It All Begins with Hospitality

August 23, 2012 //
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Church leaders need to understand the fact that our competition is not other churches; it’s places that provide WOW! Experiences and to which guests compare our churches.

While that may seem a negative, it can also be turned into a positive by LEARNING from those top-notch places and their leaders.

Take for instance Danny Meyer, the founder and co-owner of eleven New York restaurants. He wrote a book entitled “Setting the Table.” Subtitled “The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business,” Meyer shares the lessons he’s learned while developing the winning recipe for doing the business he calls “enlightened hospitality.” They are lessons that the church can learn from. Here’s a sample:

Hospitality is the foundation of my business philosophy. Virtually nothing else is as important as how one is made to feel in any business transaction. Hospitality exists when you believe the other person is on your side. Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you. Those two prepositions – for and to – express it all.

Understanding the distinction between service and hospitality has been at the foundation of our success. Service is the technical delivery of a product. Hospitality is how the delivery of that product makes it recipient feel. Service is a monologue – we decide how we wan to do thins and set our own standards for service. Hospitality, on the other hand, is a dialogue. To be on a guest’s side requires listening to that person with every sense, and following up with a thoughtful, gracious, appropriate response. It takes both great service and great hospitality to rise to the top.

People duck as a natural reflex when something is hurled at them. Similarly, the excellence reflex is a natural reaction to fix something that isn’t right, or to improve something that could be better. The excellence reflex is rooted in instinct and upbringing, and then constantly honed through awareness, caring, and practice. The overarching concern to do the right thing well is there or it isn’t.

What a great learning environment for churches wanting to improve their Guest Services team!

Earlier this year, I posted a series on hospitality based on Le Bernardin, the famous restaurant in NYC owned by Chef Eric Ripert. If this post resonated with you, click on the links below for more.

Creating experiences of hospitality allow for positive, uplifting outcomes for human experiences and human relationships. They will help you connect to people coming in your door week in and week out.

How will you practice hospitality this weekend?

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Categories BookNotes, Culinary, Guest Services

What Do You Do When It Rains at Your Church?

August 20, 2012 //
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Working on the Guest Services Parking Team in the rain yesterday at Elevation Church’s Uptown Campus brought these thoughts to mind:

Rainy days, especially on Sundays and other days you have worship, can be a real challenge – for guests and for your regular attenders and members.

What do you do when it rains?

Maybe your facility has a covered drop-off area and it’s not much of a problem. Many churches don’t have that option. Now what?

Here are a few “rainy day thoughts” you might consider:

  • Make sure your parking team is dressed appropriately for the weather (unless it’s cold, simple ponchos work great)
  • Purchase a quantity of large golf umbrellas (with your logo!)
  • Recruit extra team members if possible to walk guests from the parking lot to the entrance, holding the umbrella for them
  • Or give them an umbrella to use walking from their car to the entrance
  • Coordinate with your greeter team the logistics of running umbrellas back and forth as needed
  • Reverse the process when the worship experience is over
  • Rain usually slows people down – plan for latecomers
  • Umbrellas left at the entrance can get tangled up in a mess pretty quickly; organize them neatly
  • Rain means wet floors, especially near entrances; alert the housekeeping/custodial crews so that the floors can be kept as dry as possible to prevent slips and falls
  • Rainy days mean visibility is less than optimum; have flashlights and directional lights available as needed
  • Rainy days are an opportunity to encourage your congregation to be servants; take a look at this post to see what I mean

That’s just a few ideas – what can you add to the conversation?

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Categories Guest Services

Mickey’s Ten Command-ments for the Setting

August 18, 2012 //
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In yesterday’s post the concept of the “setting” at Disney was introduced. Going a little deeper, from the excellent guest services book Be Our Guest, Disney vice chairman Marty Sklar gave the following list of setting design principles:

  • Know your audience – before creating a setting, obtain a firm understanding of who will be using it
  • Wear your guest’s shoes – never forget the human factor; evaluate your setting from the guest’s perspective by experiencing it as a guest
  • Organize the flow of people and ideas – think of your setting as a story; tell that story in an organized, sequenced way
  • Create a visual magnet – a landmark used to orient and attract guests
  • Communicate with visual literacy – use the common languages of color, shape, and form to communicate through setting
  • Avoid overload – do not bombard guests with information; let them chose the information they want when they want it
  • Tell one story at a time – mixing multiple stories in a singe setting is confusing; create one setting for each big idea
  • Avoid contradictions – every detail and every setting should support and further your organizational identity and mission
  • For every ounce of treatment provide a ton of treat – give your guests the highest value by building an interactive setting that gives them the opportunity to exercise all of their senses
  • Keep it up – never get complacent and always maintain your setting

Around the Disney organization, these principles were known as “Mickey’s Ten Commandments for the Setting.” Whether it was a movie, a book, or a theme park, the Imagineers at Disney know the importance of setting as they told their stories.

What stories are your settings telling?

From Be Our Guest, by The Disney Institute

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Categories BookNotes, Disney, Guest Services

Everything Matters

August 17, 2012 //
1

All organizations, knowingly or unknowingly, build messages to their customers (Guests) into the settings in which they operate.

Consider these pairs:

  • A luxury car dealership and a used car lot
  • A theme park and a traveling carnival
  • A designer clothing retailer and an outlet store

In each pair, people are buying a similar product – cars, entertainment, and apparel. But in each case, the setting in which they buy these products is communicating a great deal about the quality of the products and services customers can expect, not to mention the price they are willing to pay.

The simple fact is that everything, animate and inanimate, speaks to customers.

The above words come from “Be Our Guest,” the fantastic customer service book published by The Disney Institute. Talk to me very long about Guest Services, and you will hear me talk about Disney – probably several times!

Yesterday it was about Process; today, it’s all about Place.  When you think about a physical setting, it’s appropriate to start at Disney and understand what they call “the magic of setting.”

Setting is the environment in which service is delivered to customers, all of the objects within that environment, and the procedures used to enhance and maintain the service environment and objects.

Components include:

  • Architectural design
  • Landscaping
  • Lighting
  • Color
  • Signage
  • Directional designs on flooring and wall coverings
  • Texture of floor surfaces
  • Focal points and directional signs
  • Internal and external detail
  • Music and ambient noise
  • Smell
  • Touch and tactile experiences
  • Taste

Quite a list, right? Remember that when considering Guest Services…

Everything matters.

From Be Our Guest, by the Disney Institute

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Categories BookNotes, Disney, Guest Services

Puttin on The Ritz…

August 15, 2012 //
1

When it comes to refined service and exquisite hospitality, one name stands high above the rest: The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. With ceaseless attention to every luxurious detail, the company has set the bar for creating memorable customer experiences in world-class setting.

With unprecedented access to the company’s executives and staff, best-selling author and business consultant Joseph Michelli obtained the leadership secrets behind the company’s extraordinary success. In “The New Gold Standard,” Michelli takes an exclusive tour behind the scenes of The Ritz-Carlton and comes away with great reference work for church Guest Services Teams who want to learn and apply principles of a WOW! Experience to their own practices.

Michelli develops “5 Leadership Principles for Creating a Legendary Customer Experience” that you can explore in the book. I’ll take a look at those principles in a later post. First, here’s a quick look behind the brass lion that symbolizes excellence at the Ritz:

The Credo

  • The Ritz-Carlton is a place where the genuine care and comfort of our guests is our highest mission
  • We pledge to provide the finest personal service and facilities for our guest who will always enjoy a warm, relaxed, yet refined ambiance
  • The Ritz-Carlton experience enlivens the senses, instills well-being, and fulfills even the unexpressed wished and needs of our guests

The Three Steps of Service

  • A warm and sincere greeting, using the guest’s name
  • Anticipation and fulfillment of each guest’s needs
  • A fond farewell, giving a warm goodbye, and using the guest’s name

Service Values of Ritz-Carlton Staff

  • I build strong relationships and create Ritz-Carlton guests for life
  • I am always responsive to the expressed and unexpressed wishes and needs of our guests
  • I am empowered to create unique, memorable, and personal experiences for our guests
  • I understand my role in achieving the Key Success Factors, embracing community footprints, and creating the Ritz-Carlton mystique
  • I continually seek opportunities to innovate and improve the Ritz-Carlton experience
  • I own and immediately resolve guest problems
  • I create a work environment of teamwork and lateral service so that the needs of our guests and each other are met
  • I have to opportunity to continuously learn and grow
  • I am involved in the planning of the work that affects me
  • I am proud of my professional appearance, language, and behavior
  • I protect the privacy and security of our guests, my fellow employees, and the company’s confidential information and assets
  • I am responsible for uncompromising levels of cleanliness and creating a safe and accident-free environment

Gold standard indeed! These are priceless nuggets of truth that you can mine and put into practice in your Guest Services team immediately…

Why not start this week?

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Categories BookNotes, Guest Services

Utilizing the Power of the Lineup with Your Guest Services Team

August 14, 2012 //
0

It’s one thing to have a Credo, Three Steps of Service, and 12 Service Values like the Ritz-Carlton (see the post here for more details on these Gold Standards). Many businesses go through the exercise of defining key values or composing mission statements. They might even display them in their literature, or in imposing art displays on the corporate walls.

But how many business leaders understand the importance of regular and repetitive presentation of these core aspects of their business – not only to management, but also to their front-line staff?

Enter the “lineup” at Ritz-Carlton.

To truly appreciate the Ritz-Carlton leadership approach to repeated dissemination of the “Gold Standards” mentioned above, you would have to drop in on a section of the housekeeping staff as they prepare for their days work – or at the corporate headquarters – or in the kitchen of the fine restaurants that serve the hotel chain – or anywhere, and everywhere, throughout the entire organization.

You would observe that a meeting is taking place at the beginning of each shift. Not just any meeting, though: the leader in each group starts by sharing the Credo and talking about the importance of creating a unique guest experience. Another team member might share a guest story from a Ritz-Carlton hotel in another country. Another team member shares how what they do in their department helps create memorable guest experiences. Then a few quick announcements, special recognitions are given, and another team member closes the meeting with a motivational quote.

All in about 20 minutes.

Every day.

On every shift.

In every Ritz-Carlton hotel and office around the world.

The magic of the lineup involves the following:

  • Repetition of values – the core belief that values need to be discussed daily, and that values can’t be discussed enough
  • Common language – shared phrases across all tasks binds the team together
  • Visual symbols – The Credo is printed on a card that all team members carry at all times
  • Oral traditions – Personal, direct, and face-to-face communication makes a huge impact in a world increasingly dominated by e-mail, text, and voice messages
  • Positive storytelling – stories communicate life in a powerful and memorable way
  • Modeling by leaders – the active, daily presence of the leaders communicates the importance of the time together

What would “lineup” for each of your Guest Services teams do to preserve the core values, communicate the importance of everyone on the team, and provide momentum for the day’s activities?

Or how about this word for the process?

Alignment.

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Categories Guest Services, Vision

The 4 Principles of Guest Satisfaction

August 10, 2012 //
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…illustrated by parking cars…

…for a church…

…meeting in a rented facility.

Translate “customer” into Guest and you have a real opportunity for learning how to deliver WOW! Guest Services at your church.

A Perfect Product

Customers want defect-free products and services. You need to design your product or service so that it can be expected to function perfectly within foreseeable boundaries.

At Elevation Church’s Uptown campus, we meet in a rented theater – the former First Baptist Charlotte’s sanctuary, purchased by the city in the 70′s and turned into a performance venue. It’s a beautiful, intimate setting for our worship experiences – but it has no parking, other than a few spots along the street. Practically everyone attending drives from all over the city, so we have to provide parking to accommodate them. Our solution? We rent 2 adjacent lots for VIPs (our term for first time guests) and families with small children, a parking deck 1 1/2 blocks away for attendees, and a small lot about 3 blocks away for volunteers. All parking is free for people attending our services; we put up signage in a 1 block radius around the facility to direct traffic to the right place; we have friendly parking teams to provide the human touch; and our web site has a campus welcome page that includes video of where to park.

Application: Design the product (in this case, a service system) to get people from point A to point B, foreseeing all that is foreseeable. It’s just parking, right? But when you’re averaging over 50 new guests every Sunday, along with 1,100 other attenders, all coming into the same 2 block area in a short amount of time, you’ve got to remove as many barriers as possible. We drove and walked through the process of getting to campus, and designed  systems to get people into the garage or lot, up the sidewalks, and into the theater. Once there, the rest of the amazing team of Guest Services (VIP team, Greeters, Ushers, and First Impressions) takes over – each with their own unique system of providing an audacious welcome to guests and attendees. It’s an ongoing process, reviewed constantly to adjust to lessons learned.

Delivered by Caring People

Your perfect product now requires caring, friendly people to deliver it.

At the Uptown Campus, parking is concentrated into 2 primary areas, with the majority of that being in one parking garage – with only 2 entrances/exits. That simplifies the Parking Team a little bit (one of our other campus locations is in a mixed use environment, and has 5 surface lots, each with multiple entrances – but that’s another story!). With an optimum team size of 5 people, it’s our job to smile and wave at each car entering the lot, personally greet everyone, be visible inside the deck on multiple levels, and take the validated ticket as the car leaves.

Application: An interaction with just a single, caring, friendly team member can make a guest feel good about being there in the first place, and sets the stage through a powerful first impression about what’s in store for the rest of the morning. We’re the first face of Elevation – we take that responsibility very seriously.

In a Timely Fashion

In this fast paced world of instant results, our customers (guests) decide what is and isn’t an appropriate timeline. A perfect product delivered late by friendly, caring people is the equivalent of a defective one. Ouch!

Application: Learn your own customer’s definition of “on time” – and structure the process to meet that definition, not your own. I don’t know about your church, but at Elevation’s Uptown campus the intensity and volume of traffic increases incrementally the closer the worship experience start time approaches. For the 9:30 start time, traffic trickles in beginning at 9, picks up the pace around 9:20, and by 9:30 it’s cars lined up the street waiting to get in. We move the cars through as fast as possible, and encourage those in a long line to drive around the block and use the other entrance. As we greet, we remind drivers of the second entrance. In between services, we open two exit lanes, allowing the deck to empty quicker. For the 11:15 worship experience, it’s more of the same, only worse – the rush comes from 11:15 – 11:25. Our team is always brainstorming ways to make it flow quicker and smoother. Valet parking? Nah, just kidding! Would it be easier for everyone if they came earlier and weren’t as rushed? Sure – but it’s not going to happen.

With the Support of an Effective Problem Resolution Process

Everything described so far is great – in theory. But like most things in life, there’s reality. Sometimes we are short-handed on our teams. Occasionally we have equipment malfunctions with the gates or ticket machines, or our validator in the lobby isn’t working right. An occasional Uptown event (a Panther’s or Bobcats game, the circus, a big convention) sometimes creates more traffic on a Sunday morning. We’ve even arrived to find the main entrance closed, along with the first floor of parking, due to maintenance that we weren’t notified about. When these unexpected surprises occur, effective problem resolution is measured not when we have restored the situation to the status quo, but when we have restored customer satisfaction.

Application: Because until a problem occurs, the customer doesn’t get to see us fully strut our service. It’s almost become a game among our parking team to brainstorm what could go wrong with the process, and then come up with a solution to use when it happens. Main entrance blocked? No problem – in 5 minutes we can shift all the signage and personnel to redirect traffic down the block, around the corner, and into the rear entrance. Ticket validated but not working? We have pre-validated tickets to get out guests out and on their way. Lost ticket? Ditto. Guest have a flat tire, potentially blocking the whole deck? Pull off our best impression of a NASCAR pit stop to get them on their way. A guest wants to grab a quick cup of coffee or meal? We have a map of nearby coffee shops and restaurants. Someone pulls up wanting to know when the Children’s library opens? Our team leader has the schedules of nearby venues to give information as requested. Here’s the real goal: Resolve a service problem effectively and your guest is more likely to become loyal than if they had never run into a problem in the first place.

Want to learn how to provide extraordinary, loyalty-building customer service to your guests? The first step, as outlined above, is to learn what makes them satisfied. Customer satisfaction is based on the four predictable factors above. I’ve used just one part of the Guest Services practices of Elevation Church to illustrate the principles. Take these four factors, apply them in the context of your own place, and watch amazing things happen.

Check out Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit by Leonardo Inghilleri and Micah Solomon for more big ideas you can put to use as you build a five-star service organization.

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Categories BookNotes, Guest Services

Remembering My Father, Celebrating Book Lover’s Day

August 9, 2012 //
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Today would have been my father’s 85th birthday.

It’s also Book Lover’s Day.

Those two seemingly incongruent circumstances actually have a powerful connection for me.

After suffering a major stroke on February 10th, my father passed away on February 25th of this year. By the time I was able to get back to Tennessee to see him, he had lost motor functions and speech capacity. Over the few days I was there, the slow but steady decline continued.

I had last seen him during the Christmas holidays. While there, I spent some time alone at home with him. After suffering a series of strokes over the past several years, he could no longer read – but the legacy of his reading lines the bookshelves all over my boyhood home. In the quiet hours when everyone is asleep, I scanned the shelves and remembered hearing him talk about this book or that one. I pulled a few off the shelf, and opening them, was instantly transported back in time to a conversation about the subject, or to memories of the event itself.

I’ve been a reader of books since, well, before I can remember. My father was an avid reader, and he passed that passion along to me at an early age. Even though he worked 6 days a week, 12 hours a day, he often spent several hours reading at night. He and my mother insisted we go to the library in the next town and check out books – every two weeks. I would get the maximum number of books, take them home, and read them – usually in the first day or two. Then it would be an impatient wait till the next library trip.

Reading is a passion I treasure, and one that I am thankful to my dad for.

So here it is Book Lover’s Day, not an official holiday but one I eagerly celebrate. Book reading is a great hobby. It’s an important one, too. Employers look for it on resumes. Reading is educational, informative, and relaxing. It makes us both smarter, and happier people.

Book Lovers Day is a great day to celebrate. Just grab an interesting book, find a quiet, cozy place, and crack open the cover. Celebrating Book Lovers Day in August is pleasurable on the deck, under a shady tree, poolside, or in a cozy hammock. If you fall asleep while reading, that’s okay. It’s all part of the relaxing benefits of being a book lover.

I’m celebrating this Book Lover’s Day in a new vocation – Vision Room Curator at Auxano. My role requires me to read – and then write book summaries, Tweets, and blogs about what I’m reading.

How cool is that!

On this Book Lover’s Day, and in memory of my father, I’m trying to emulate Thomas Edison, who believed that voracious reading was the key to self-improvement. He read books on a remarkable range of subjects to address his endless queries. As Edison noted, “I didn’t read a few books, I read the library.”

My reading list this week:

  • Black Horse Riders, Philip Keith
  • Gates of Fire, Steven Pressfield
  • The Scottish Prisoner, Diana Gabaldon
  • The DNA of Customer Experience, Colin Shaw
  • I Love You More Than My Dog, Jeanne Bliss
  • This Is Service Design Thinking, Marc Stickdorn
  • Just Start: Take Action, Embrace Uncertainty, Leonard Schlessinger
  • Indescribable: Encountering the Glory of God, Louie Giglio
  • The Explicit Gospel, Matt Chandler
  • Counterfeit Gospels, Trevin Wax
  • Gospel: Recovering the Power That Made Christianity Revolutionary, J.D. Greear
  • The Permanent Revolution, Alan Hirsch

I prefer to think of it as creating innovation literacy.

If you want to know more about my dad, here is the eulogy I gave at his funeral. After the funeral, while my sons and I were moving some things around his gas station and I discovered one reason I am so passionate about guest services. And read this post to find out why readers are leaders.

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Categories All Because of Books, Family Matters, Generations
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