Friday, May 26, 2006

In Flander's Fields


The day was originally called "Decoration Day" as a day to decorate the graves of our fallen soldiers from the Civil War. Today we call it Memorial Day. It was first observed on May 30, 1868. It wasn't until after World War I that it became a day to remember the dead of all wars.

In 1971, congress passed the National Holiday Act moving Memorial Day to the last Monday in May so that we'd always have a three-day weekend. Some say that we've lost the original meaning of the day by making it part of a long weekend, and they may be right.

Many of us can remember when everything was closed for days like Memorial Day. It was a day of peace and rest. Today, many of us will have to work on Monday. The brave men and women who have given their lives for our country did so to protect our freedoms, including the freedom to work, play and shop on the day set aside to remember them.

In 2000, congress passed the "National Moment of Remembrance" resolution. It calls for all Americans to pause for a moment at 3:00 PM (local time) on Monday for a moment of silence.

Our lives move much faster in 2006 than they did in 1868. We do everything in a hurry. Under the circumstances, maybe a "Moment of Remembrance" means just as much as an entire day meant 200 years ago.

Where ever you are on Monday, whatever you happen to be doing, we hope you'll join is in remembering those who have died so that we can enjoy living in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

In 1915, John Mc Crae wrote a poem for Memorial Day. It was called "In Flanders Fields."

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Quality Is Hard!

I spent the last two days attending examiner training for the Missouri Quality Award. It's an intense couple of days. Even though many of us had been through the process before, some many times, it only seems to get a little easier each time. Like quality itself, quantum leaps are few and far between.

It reminds me of a former boss of mine. When things got tough, as they often did back then, he would say, "If this was easy, anybody could do it." Today, we might say "That's why we get the big bucks." :-)

As we were getting ready to leave this afternoon, someone, not a new examiner, said, "You know, this is hard." Of course, he was right. Quality is hard. It's hard to do and it's hard to evaluate. As a business person, it's very difficult to make an unbiased evaluation of your own business. That's why the Baldrige criteria are such a valuable tool. They don't tell you how to run your business. They give you a framework within which to work.

They tell you what to look for; what questions to ask. You start by evaluating your business. Where are you now? What's important to you? Why do you get up in the morning and what keeps you awake at night?

Once you have an honest appraisal of where you are now, the criteria tell you what questions to ask relative to the things you've decided are important. The answers will tell you what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong. Sometimes that's not easy to hear.

If it's any consolation, the examination is difficult too. Each examiner has his own education, his own experience, his own comfort zone. I do different things every day, but they're all within my so-called area of expertise. I know the products. I know the customers. I know the industry. Suddenly, I'm thrust into another business; another industry. I'm way outside my comfort zone. What is a Pugh Matrix, anyway?

OK, so it's hard. But, like my ex-boss said, "If it was easy, anybody could do it." Thank goodness there are things that we can do to be better than average; better than the rest. Who wants to be like everybody else? We want to be better. No, scratch that. We want to be the best. We want to be role models. We want to stand on top of the mountain. Guess what? That's hard.

Monday, May 15, 2006

Legendary Service

Over the weekend, I was in Columbia, MO for my son's graduation from the University of Missouri. Columbia is a city of less than 100,000 population. The University boasts nearly 30,000 students so you can imagine that graduation weekend puts a bit of a strain on the local hospitality industry.

On Friday evening, we were looking for a place to eat dinner. My son's roommate/landlord suggested a new restaurant nearby. Since they live on the western edge of the Columbia area, we guessed that they might not be as busy as something closer to the campus. We were right, but we were also wrong.

The restaurant is called the Cherry Hill Brasserie. It's a small place and it was full. On the other hand, the wait for a table was only about twenty minutes; not bad considering. We took a seat (four seats, really) at the bar and waited for our table. While we waited it was obvious that the place was "slammed" which is my former-waiter son's term for busy. My guess is that since the place is so new,this was their first graduation weekend and they weren't prepared for the crowd.

To make a long story short, or at least not so long, we were seated in about the amount of time the hostess had predicted, and the waiter took our order promptly. Then things started falling apart. We waited, and waited, and waited some more. We had no bread. We had no napkins. When the bread came, we had no bread plates. It was obvious that the place was very short-staffed and everyone was working very hard, they just couldn't keep up.

About a half an hour after we had placed our order, the waiter approached our table with kind of a deer-in-the-headlights look. "Sir, I'm so sorry for your wait. The kitchen misplaced your order and they're just starting on it now. I hope you'll be patient. We're really busy tonight. To make up for your long wait, your dinner will be on the house."

As you might guess from the name, this isn't a fast-food place. Dinner for four wasn't cheap. This was some serious damage control.

When dinner finally arrived, it was wonderful. I could cut my steak with a fork. Everyone else's meal was equally good. When we were done, the waiter suggested desert, but, because of the size of the portions, there were no takers. As we were eating, both the manager (probably the owner) and the bartender came to our table to make sure everything was OK, and to add their apologies for the delay.

The waiter had said that dinner would be on the house, so I waited for him to bring me a bar tab, since I didn't expect that to be included, especially since we ordered a round of drinks after he told us that the meal would be gratis. No, there was no charge for anything, just another apology.

I don't imagine getting a free meal after the restaurant makes a mistake is all that unusual. But, you have to understand, we walked into the restaurant about 7:00 and left about 9:30. On the Friday night before graduation in Columbia, MO, there's not a restaurant in town where we could have gotten in and out any more quickly. In fact, I would guess that 3-4 hours was more the norm.

But for this restaurant, that wasn't acceptable. They were under-staffed, they made a mistake on our order, and they apologized and made up for it. I may never go back to the restaurant, because now that Patrick has graduated, I'm not likely to be in Columbia very often. But, I have told this story to everyone I've talked to over the last three days, including several who live in Columbia. I'm telling it to you. Of course, you know where I'm going with this. Customer service, above and beyond what's expected is the stuff that legends are made of.

A free round of drinks, or free desert, or a percentage discount would have been enough to satisfy us. And a month from now, I wouldn't have been able to tell you the name of the restaurant. All I would remember is how slow they were. But, we were far more than satisfied. We were surprised and delighted. That's the kind of word-of-mouth advertising that you can't buy. You have to earn it.

Friday, May 12, 2006

It's a Small World

I guess it's ok to link to myself. I wrote this yesterday for our company blog and think it's worth sharing here. The internet has made the world a true global village. We can learn much from one another and have an influence on others that we can't even imagine.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

On Writing Good

Here's a cute post from The Baldrige Blog. The blog is managed by Texas Nameplate Company, a two-time (1998 and 2004) winner of the Malcolm Baldrige Award.

You can read Texas Nameplate's 2004 Baldrige Award Application summary here.

Quality Apathy Update

The Quality Digest link to the article, "Quality Apathy" has been fixed. It's an excellent article, one we should all read. Writer Scott Paton who blogs as The Quality Curmudgeon cites Starbucks as a good example and GM and Ford as bad examples of what's right and what's wrong with quality in America.

What I would add is that to find quality in the United States on a regular basis, we need to turn to the small business. Small business owners can't afford to give bad service and it shows. Despite lacking the resources of the giant companies, the independent entrepreneur has the advantage of being right there, on the front line. He also has the urgency that comes from needing each and every customer to stay in business.

Starbucks is good, no question. But, there are thousands of independently owned coffee shops in America that are just as good, many that are better. The same applies for just about every facet of US business.