Category Archives: BookNotes

Mickey’s Ten Command-ments for the Setting

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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

Everything Matters

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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

It All Began With a Mouse…

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The title of this post is actually a quote from Walt Disney himself, when asked to reflect upon the vast Disney empire shortly before his death in 1966. While Disneyland was successful, Disney World was 5 years from opening and EPCOT was just a few sketches on paper.

But Disney didn’t coin the term “Imagineer” for nothing.

The magic that Disney brought to the world was summed up in this phrase: “My business is making people, especially children, happy.” More than a statement, it was the basis for Disney’s mission as a business; it represented what the company stands for and why it exists. Changing just a little over the past 60 years, it is The Walt Disney Company’s service theme:

We create happiness by providing the finest in entertainment for people of all ages, everywhere

If you want to understand the “Process” of Guest Services, there is no better place to go than the Disney Company and look at their practical magic for creating the best known Guest experiences in the world.

Practical Magic

Disney has a simple definition for quality service – exceeding your guests’ expectations and paying attention to detail.

The Disney WOW! Factor is exceeding guests’ expectations

  • Paying close attention to every aspect of the guest experience
  • Analyzing that experience from the guest’s perspective
  • Understanding the needs and wants of the guest
  • Committing every element of the process to the creation of an exceptional experience

At Disney, the word Guest is always capitalized and treated as a formal noun.

Quality Service Cycle – the Practical Magic of Disney

  • Service theme – a simple statement, shared among all team members, that becomes the driving force of the service
  • Service standards – the criteria for actions that are necessary to accomplish the service theme
  • Service delivery systems – vehicles used to deliver service
  • Service integration – each element in the QSC combined to create a complete operating system

Sounds complicated, doesn’t it? It is, and should be – at least from your perspective. Spend a lot of time getting it right. Set up all the process you need to make it work. Implement your process. Evaluate it rigorously, and change it when necessary. Guestology, as Disney calls it, is both an art and a science.

But to the guest, it should all appear effortless.

The weekend’s coming – are you ready to welcome guests in your church?

From Be Our Guest, Revised Edition, by The Disney Institute

 

Puttin on The Ritz…

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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?

The 7 Step Road Map to Being All In

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To have any hope of succeeding as a leader you need to get your team “all in.”

No matter the size of your team, few things will have a bigger impact on your performance than getting your people to buy into your ideas, your cause, and to believe what matters.

– All In, Adrian Gostick & Chester Elton

Best-selling authors of The Carrot Principle and The Orange Revolution, Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton’s new book All In answers one of the most overlooked leadership questions of the day: Why are some leaders able to get their employees to commit wholeheartedly to their culture and give that extra push that leads to outstanding results?

As with their previous works, a huge (in this case, 300,000 person) study led to a groundbreaking finding: leaders of the highest performing groups create a “culture of belief.” In these distinctive organizations, people believe in their leaders and in the organization’s vision, values, and goals. Team members are engaged, enabled, and energized (the authors use the term Three Es).

Based on the extensive interview process and combined with their years of experience, the authors created a seven-step road map for creating a culture of belief:

  • Define Your Burning Platform – define the mission with great clarity and instill a sense of urgency
  • Create a Customer Focus – focus on customers and mandate a pro-customer orientation
  • Develop Agility – learn to see the future and position your team to meet both seen and unseen challenges
  • Share Everything – create a culture that is a place of truth, has constant communication, and exhibits marked transparency
  • Partner with Your Talent – success is direct result of your teams’ unique ingenuity and talent
  • Root for Each Other – high levels of appreciation and camaraderie create a tangible esprit de corps
  • Establish Clear Accountability – teams must be held accountable for goals, but have the responsibility and tools to ensure their success, with appropriate rewards at completion

All In is a book about culture, but more than that it is the story of how great leaders create unique, inviting, and rewarding places to work – or serve.

What about you – are you ready to lead all in?

The 4 Principles of Guest Satisfaction

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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.

Leaders Need to Work Out of Both Sides of Their Brains

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After my design thinking diatribe in yesterday’s post, maybe it’s time for a little balance in the ever-present battle between the linear, analytical left brain and the chaotic, creative right brain. There is an unavoidable but healthy tension between creating the new and preserving the best of the present; between innovating new ideas and maintaining healthy existing ones. As a leader, you need to learn how to manage that tension, not adopt a wholly new set of techniques and abandon all of the old. It’s not that many analytic approaches are bad – it’s just that in many organizations, it’s all they’ve got.

The VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous)future we’re living in will require multiple tools in the leader’s tool kit – a design suite especially tailored to starting up and growing new ventures in an uncertain world, and an analytic one suited to running established organizations in a more stable environment.

What leaders need is not a right brain transplant that throws the old left brain tool kit away – they need to be taught some new approaches to add to the tool kit they’ve already got. Business as usual can help leaders do things designers have trouble with. Design needs business thinking for good reasons:

Novelty doesn’t necessarily create value

The flip side of the defense of the status quo because of its familiarity is the pursuit of novelty only because it’s new. How many times have you seen (or have been guilty yourself) ChurchWorld leaders who have attended the latest conference and returned to their church to try the latest and greatest geewhizjimmyhawthingy guaranteed to (fill in the blank) your church?

Even value creation is not enough

Churches, in order to survive, must care about more than just creating value for the existing organization. It is an important, but insufficient, first step. To survive long-term, churches need to be able to execute and capture part of the value they create in a duplicatable process that accomplishes their mission and reproduces their “product” – disciples. While doing creating and innovating, they must in Jim Collins’ words “remain true to the core.” This requires solid businesslike thinking: can we translate a new and innovative idea from small experiment to a significant part of the organization’s being without messing up the recipe?

How many more stylish worship environments or new group ideas do any of us need?

Cool stuff is great, but design has the potential to offer so much more. Design has the power to change the world – not just make it pretty or more functional. Just because you can do a thing doesn’t mean you should do it. The discipline of design should address our most challenging problems, not just pretend to make us better or fulfill our dreams.

Part of an ongoing adaptation of Designing for Growth by Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Ogilvie to fit ChurchWorld realities

Does Word of Mouth Suit You to a T?

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More great stuff from Andy Sernovitz’s book “Word of Mouth Marketing“:

The Five Ts of Word of Mouth Marketing

  • Talkers – Find people who will talk about you
  • Topics – Give people a reason to talk
  • Tools – Help the message spread faster
  • Taking Part – Join the conversation
  • Tracking – Measure and understand what people are saying

Here’s your homework assignment: go here and download the 5 Ts worksheet. Now complete it for your church.

What are you waiting for? Dive into the Ts and turn them loose!

UPDATE

If you are doing something worth talking about, it’s time to put a plan together to help the conversations happen. Here’s a great worksheet to do just that, by Andy Sernovitz who is the author of the 5 T Worksheet above. The action plan will help you think about:

  • Who to assign what
  • How to start with the basics
  • How to experiment with different WOM techniques

Remember, everyone’s talking – why not help them talk about your organization?

Everybody’s Talking…

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Why not give them a reason to talk about you?

Word of mouth marketing has been defined as ” a) giving people a reason to talk about you and b) making it easier for the conversation to take place”.

Andy Sernovitz, author of “Word of Mouth Marketing”, has compiled some great ideas about how to use Word of Mouth: check them out here.

What’s the lesson for ChurchWorld?

Sernovitz lists 4 Rules for Word of Mouth Marketing. I’ve listed them here, along with my interpretation of how a church might apply them:

  • Rule # 1: Be Interesting. Nobody listens to boring, and that goes for churches, too. Do you communicate with passion and energy in all you do?
  • Rule # 2: Surprise People – Make Them Happy. Do you do everything with excellence? Do people leave your campus excited about what they’ve experienced, and ready to tell others about it?
  • Rule # 3: Earn Trust and Respect. Nobody talks about an organization they don’t trust or don’t like. Welcome your guests, then listen to them. Fulfill their needs, and work constantly to make the best impression you can.
  • Rule # 4: Make It Easy. Work hard on your vision so it’s easy to remember and repeat. What can people tell a friend about your church in one sentence?

In today’s hyper-connected world, word of mouth is more important than ever – even when the “word” is digitally transmitted.

 

 

A New Way to Play Follow the Leader

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Walt Disney’s unique definition of leadership:

The ability to establish and manage a creative climate in which individuals and teams are self-motivated to the successful achievement of long-term goals in an environment of mutual respect and trust.

Today’s post continues excerpts from Innovate the Pixar Way by Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson. The authors contend that Pixar has reawakened the innovative spirit of Walt Disney and set new standards for commercial and critical achievement. The book explores how Pixar has built an organization on the simple philosophy that quality is the best business plan. With a track record of 13 for 13 smash feature animation films, it’s hard to argue!

Walt Disney didn’t ascribe to the childhood playbook for “follow the leader” – instead, he created an environment of self-motivated creative thinkers who worked together to deliver a magical, magnetic, enchanting experience for his audience.

Pixar understands leadership the same way.

 

  • Establishment of a Clear Vision – Pixar has a clear vision and communicates that vision to its team. The best leaders are excellent communicators, engaging their teams by providing them with the tools and information needed for success – and then trusting them to do their jobs.
  • Creative Climate – Creative climates need leadership and a management style that helps them to develop and grow and allows them to have fun in the process. Pixar is in the people development business, going to great lengths to nourish and support its team members. They invest in people, creating a culture of learning, filled with lifelong learners.
  • Individuals and Teams – Pixar thrives on teamwork, but each person on the team is given creative ownership of even the smallest task. This level of autonomy and accountability is practically unheard of in the movie business, where a top-down fear-driven culture is the norm.
  • Self-Motivated Personnel – great leaders know that self-motivated people are essential to developing a creative culture. Pixar is continually on the lookout for new talent that can blossom with their unique culture. The team at Pixar is 100 percent self-motivated to being as creative as they can be and to making movies the best they can. Period.
  • Long-Term Goals – It’s always been about creating for the long-term at Pixar. Their definition of “long-term” speaks volumes about its culture. They go to great lengths to ensure that its culture can support new ventures and still remains true to their values.
  • Mutual Respect and Trust – Pixar team members have embarked on a journey together, nurturing one another in an environment of mutual respect and trust. When leaders exhibit a high level of respect and trust, earned over time, that’s exactly what they will get in return.

There’s no “follow the leader” game at Pixar. Their playbook simply calls for an open playground where leadership serves as a catalyst in the pursuit of big dreams.

If you were to hold up the “magic mirror on the wall” to your leadership style, what would you see?