ELECTRONIC HOUSE CALL - February 3, 2006

Have you heard? The Super Bowl is being played this Sunday! Whether this is a full-tilt workday or a day of rest for you, I hope you have some fun and that your team prevails ... unless, of course, you are rooting for Pittsburgh at which point you are on your own! Hey, I am just exercising a little editorial privilege here. Besides, when you live in Seattle, what other position can you take?

Actually, I will be watching the game in San Diego before delivering the opening keynote at the Great Harvest Bread Company convention on Monday.

WEBSITE MELTDOWN
Last Saturday my website just disappeared. Nothing. File Not Found. My ISP said that everything looked OK on their end, so the problem must be mine! (Don't you just love it when somebody tells you that? I am reasonably computer literate, but a long way from being a programmer. How was I supposed to be able to figure out where the problem was? How could a website that just disappeared be due to a problem of my creation anyway?

I was already in the process of putting together a new site with a new host, but it was still far from complete. Still, I could not afford to let the site stay down. The good news: Rather than spend days trying to figure out the problems with the old site, I got the new uploaded on Sunday ... and it worked. A few more adjustments and I will say goodbye to my old ISP forever. (There are always consequences to saying NO to a customer!)

The bad news: It will take me awhile to get the literally hundreds of pages of information from the old site properly linked on the new site, get some new copy written and generally tweak the cosmetics of the old pages to fit the new look. After that, there is a lot of work to do on graphics.

Content-wise, I think most of the important pieces are now functional, but if you come to the site, my apologies in advance if you cannot find everything you are looking for. I am working as fast as I can to get it all sorted out. In the meantime, please let me know when you find a broken link or a dead end and I will fix that first.

As a side issue, once I switched the site to the new host, it effectively disconnected my e-mail account, something that I didn't figure out until midday on Monday. If you sent me anything between Sunday and Monday afternoon, it is lost in the black hole. Please send it again.

Don't you just LOVE computers? :-)

THE UNFAIR ADVANTAGE
I went out for dinner last weekend. A very nice upper midscale local restaurant. The complimentary glass of champagne as a welcome was a nice touch. The menu was interesting and well-prepared. The wine list was nicely balanced. The desserts were yummy. The price was reasonable and the staff was very personable.

So what stood out? The service staff was not sharp. Friendly, yes. Sharp, no. There was no sense of urgency. No feeling of taking responsibility for the dining experience.

We arrived before the other couple (the ones that were paying the bill!) so we waved off the complimentary champagne saying we would wait and have it when our friends arrived. We would have welcomed a glass of wine while we waited, however, but nobody thought to ask.

The wine -- a lovely Sandidge Minnick Syrah from Washington State -- needs some time to breathe so as we got down toward the end of the first bottle, I was looking around for the waitress to order a second. (She should have been on top of it, but never mind.) We finally had to ask another server to find her. Under other circumstances, we would have just passed on a second bottle.

And so it went. Friendly but not professional ... and whose fault is that? The owner and I had a long chat about it today. He knew that training was a weak area but had been occupied with other projects and just had not gotten around to it.

If not now, when? Do you really want to wait until business slows down enough that you have more time? Why do you think business slowed down? It seems appropriate that we look at training in this month's survey.

THE FEBRUARY SURVEY
I am coming to believe that training is the ultimate competitive advantage. But the way we were trained is not necessarily the way that today's workers learn ... and many of the skills necessary to success were never formally trained at all!

This month we look at the good, the bad and the ugly about training -- what it is, how it is done and how well it has worked as a point of difference in market.

As usual, I will provide a compilation of all the responses to everyone who contributes to this project. Just click on the link below. Click here to add your thoughts to the February survey.

THE PERPETUAL QUESTION
What did you learn from your staff today?

I created a "Black Book" at our ice cream parlor/snack shop -- a composition notebook we leave on the main counter that I ask each employee to read during their shift. In the notebook, our employees write what items are popular, what customers are requesting, what we have run out of, etc. I also highlight new products as well as positive actions in this book as well as new rules/regulations. -- Kimberly Svetin, Kamoi Snack-N-Go, Kaunakakai, Molokai, HI

Listening takes a number of forms. A system for gathering staff feedback like Kimberly developed will never replace one-on-one face time, but it can be an effective way to gather information. If you adopt an approach like this, be sure to review the entries daily and discuss the comments with the people who made them. The more they know that someone is actually paying attention to what they say, the more thought they will give to what they put down.

People don't argue with their own information. The more the ideas come from your crew, the easier they will be implemented. The more good questions you ask and the better you listen to the answers, the more your staff will own the results. There is more to be gained from listening than just information.

Once you understand that employees don't leave restaurants, they leave managers, you start to appreciate that good listening skills help create loyalty and connection with your staff.

Never doubt that the most critical -- and perhaps profitable -- management skill you can develop is your ability to truly listen.

I will continue to collect your answers to this important question ... and you can add comments as often as you want. Just click on the link below and contribute your insights for the common good (and your own as well!)

What did YOU learn from YOUR staff today?

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