Everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart. All that will be left of you and be remembered well is what was in your heart.
The burning fire in one’s eyes needs to be re-ignited ….
” Familliarity ” will not be good for one’s soul nor to the people surrounding you ; be it internal or external customers. The competitive winning instict and speed will be missing. An overdose of flexibility & tolerance will prevail.
Discipline will be compromised.
#passionsofwillie
Read a great article by Denise Lee Yohn. Sharing the article below.
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Ask people how to develop a good corporate culture, and most of them will immediately suggest offering generous employee benefits, like they do at Starbucks, or letting people dress casually, as Southwest Airlines does. Rarely do people point to encouraging employees to disagree with their managers, as Amazon does, or firing top performers, as Jack Welch did at GE.
But in fact, it’s having a distinct corporate culture — not a copycat of another firm’s culture — that allows these great organizations to produce phenomenal results. Each of these companies has aligned and integrated its culture and brand to create a powerful engine of competitive advantage and growth. Their leaders understand that a strong, differentiated company culture contributes to a strong, differentiated brand — and that an extraordinary brand can support and advance an extraordinary culture.
It doesn’t matter if your company culture is friendly or competitive, nurturing or analytical. If your culture and your brand are driven by the same purpose and values and if you weave them together into a single guiding force for your company, you will win the competitive battle for customers and employees, future-proof your business from failures and downturns, and produce an organization that operates with integrity and authenticity.
When you think and operate in unique ways internally, you can produce the unique identity and image you desire externally. You need to have employees who understand and embrace the distinct ways you create value for customers, the points that differentiate your brand from the competition, and the unique personality that your company uses to express itself — and your employees must be empowered to interpret and reinforce these themselves. You achieve this by cultivating a clear, strong, and distinctive brand-led culture.
If your culture and brand are mismatched, you can end up with happy, productive employees who produce the wrong results. For example, at a grocery store chain I worked with, employees were steeped in an operations culture that valued efficiency and productivity. As the industry moved toward an emphasis on customer service and merchandising, the company fell behind, because its employees were focused more on increasing inventory turns and sales per square foot. It had to confront the fact that its culture, though vibrant and vital, was holding it back from serving customers well and improving the brand image.
Without using your brand purpose and values to orient your culture efforts, you’re also likely to waste a lot of money. You may think you need to take extraordinary measures to attract and retain in-demand talent, like providing free lunches to employees, putting foosball tables and beer kegs in break rooms, and offering free gym memberships. As you try to one-up your competition in the war for talent, you’ll probably draw from a pool of perks and benefits that sound great but produce little more than a generic, fun work environment. And you may end up like social media software startup Buffer, which struggled to achieve profitability because its generous cultural practices, including offering vacation bonuses and wellness grants, ate away at cash flow instead of producing employees who were passionate about the brand offering and committed to developing on-brand innovations.
With a single, unifying drive behind both your culture and your brand, however, you reap the benefits of a focused and aligned workforce. No one needs to expend extra energy figuring out what to do or how to act in order to achieve what you want your company to stand for in the world. Your human resources aren’t trying to decipher what skills and behaviors will be needed in the future, or maintaining performance evaluation systems that are out of sync with your values. And your sales and marketing departments aren’t working at cross-purposes, each with its own view of what success looks like. Organizational silos are bridged and disjointed initiatives are minimized because everyone is singularly focused on the same priorities.
How can you tell if your culture and your brand aren’t interdependent and mutually reinforcing? A disconnect between your employee experiences and your customer experiences is a telltale sign. If you engage your employees differently from how you expect them to engage your customers, your organization is operating with two set of values.
I’m not just talking about the obvious problem of managers who treat their employees poorly. I recommend using the same principles to design and manage experiences for both employees and customers. If you want to consistently introduce new products and technologies to your customers, then cultivate a test-and-learn mentality among your employees and encourage them to experiment with the latest gadgets. If your brand is differentiated by the way your products and services look and feel, then infuse your employee experience with design and creativity. You can’t expect your employees to deliver benefits to customers that they don’t experience or embrace themselves.
Another indicator of a mismatch between your culture and your brand is the lack of understanding of and engagement with your brand among your people. Your employees should understand what makes your brand different and special from a customer perspective. They should clearly understand who the company’s target customers are, as well as their primary wants and needs. They should use your brand purpose and values as decision-making filters and they should understand how they contribute to a great customer experience — even if they don’t have direct customer contact. If your people think they don’t play a role in interpreting and reinforcing your brand and that brand building is your marketing department’s responsibility, then your culture lacks brand integrity.
To address these gaps and align and to integrate your brand and culture, start by clearly identifying and articulating your brand aspirations. Do you want your brand to be known for delivering superior performance and dependability? Or is your intent to challenge the existing way of doing things and position your brand as a disruptor? Or is your brand about making a positive social or environmental impact?
Once you know what type of brand you’re aiming for, you can identify the values that your organization should embrace. In the case of a performance brand, you should work on cultivating a culture of achievement, excellence, and consistency inside your organization, while a strong sense of purpose, commitment, and shared values is needed for a socially or environmentally responsible brand. When you have clarity on the values necessary to support your desired brand type, you can use it to inform and ignite other culture efforts, including organizational design, leadership development, policies and procedures, employee experience, etc.
How you operate on the inside should be inextricably linked with how you want to be perceived on the outside. Just as brands differ, there is no single right culture. Identify the distinct cultural elements that enable you to achieve your desired brand identity, and then deliberately cultivate them. When your brand and culture are aligned and integrated, you increase operational efficiency, accuracy, and quality; you improve your ability to compete for talent and customer loyalty with intangibles that can’t be copied; and you move your organization closer to its vision.
Denise Lee Yohn is a leading authority on building and positioning exceptional brands, and has 25 years of experience working with world-class brands including Sony and Frito-Lay.
lts been a while since I visited Europe. Even then, it was mostly for work and there was always a local host looking after us.
This time round, I took my family for a 12 day holiday to Amsterdam, Paris and Zurich. It was indeed a pleasant experience and we enjoyed it thoroughly. Of course there were moments of joy as well as moments of exasperation. Luckily, there was more joy overall.
As Alexis is only 10, it was great for her to see and also learn a few things on culture, behavior and mannerisms of people outside of Asia.
Firstly, on language. In France today, we are pleasantly pleased that the French we encountered in places we went spoke English. They understood us and were very helpful in giving us guidance. Though it will be nicer if they did it with a smile. Somehow they seemed moody and sullen.
The myth that the French spoke little English or ignored people who spoke English to them – does not seem to be true anymore. However, they do seem impatient and stern with an air of arrogance when giving answers (avoiding eye contact as well) : which I felt was rude.
We could see Pullman Hotel employs people from other countries to be at their front desk and breakfast area. Everyone was helpful and could cater to tourists from China, Korea and Latin countries, hence speaking in languages other than French whilst serving foreigners.
However, it was indeed contrasting when a low level receptionist was helpful and polite but instead the captain of the hotel simply refused to answer us a simple question ; but insisted that we spoke to the concierge instead. And he (the captain) was not even busy.
I was making a joke to my wife that perhaps this captain’s English was not so great and hence there is a defense machanism to divert me to someone else, instead of loosing face in case he did not understand me or could not answer me accurately. Or is he “looking down” on people who are not in “suit and tie” ?
The key point here is language. On our end, when we are in another country, it would be great if we spoke a little bit of their language. And on the French people’s end, it would be great too if they recognize the importance of English and other foreign languages today ( I HOPE THEY DO), especially if they want to host the Olympics in the near future.
Now, on the other side of the coin, we happenned to be sitting beside a middle age American couple who thought that their American language was most superior in the world. They ordered coffee and made a scene comparing milk vs. cream and complained that their coffee was “burnt” and tasted awful, when infact I guessed they were just not being accustomed to the strong taste of black European coffee. Thats fine – if not for the fact that they complained that the waiter was bad and did not understand English. Hello, you are in France, Mr. COWBOY who drinks only “light watery coffee” and light Budweiser !!
It would be like me (a Chinese) expecting the waiter to understand Mandarin and wanted tea to taste like Chinese Oolong tea and compalined that Mint Camomile did not taste good and was too diluted ???!!
Note – I am only too aware that not all Americans are like the ones I met here.
Again, the point would be on “language” ; and we should never assume that our language is the BEST in the world and that everyone else should understand it. Shame on us if we do.
Second observation – cost cutting !! I was surprised that today KLM and AirFrance have adopted the Air Asia way (or was it vice versa).
Checking in and printing of boarding passes can only be done via an automated touch screen machine. Any checked in baggage will cost 35 € and the machine accepts credit cards too. In CDG Paris and Zurich, the luggage tag is even printed out from the machine and we have to tag our luggage ourselves. Then when we went to the check in counter, there was no person there. We had to scan our ticket ourselves as well as our baggage tag too and then push our luggage into the conveyor system. Wow !! Zero personnel needed for the whole check in process. Tickets are printed on cheap paper. No more ticket cards.
In Asia, Air Asia is regarded as a budget airline. Now KLM and AirFrance too ? Seems like everyone is cutting headcount and cost. It is indeed inevitable.
Observation point – if one is not familliar with touch screen features, computer illiterate or uneducated, one will have challenges with these machines. We saw many passengers fiddling with the machines – obviously confused and lost. Sadly, there were also very few AF personnel available to provide assistance. Language was again another barrier here ; as foreigners had challanges communicating with the AF personnel.
Some autommated machines do not even accept foreign credit cards. (Not very ready on globslization, are you ?).
And with 35 € for 1 piece of check in luggage, everyone should travel light. Oh dear, we had 3 luggages to check in. Really … really ….nothing is for free anymore.
And it may be VERY WISE to check in early to avoid “timing stress”. With the queue and the confusion, it took us 1 hour 15 minutes to finally reach our boarding gate. The normal discipline of checking in 2 hours earlier may not be enough (unless of course you already know all the steps and procedures).
I am happy though to note that we no longer need to pay a 1 € coin to get a trolley cart. Years ago, I felt this was so ridiculous. Not so much of the amount of the money – but more of “how many foreigners would have a 1 € coins in their pocket ready on standby to get a trolley to bring our huge luggages ???”
Transportation in the city – we noted that it is so easy, comfortable, clean, inexpensive and efficient to travel by train. Every major cities are connected by rail and going from place to place was a breeze. Hence, it is important that one stays in hotel that is near the city central station. These stations are huge and had many lines, built years ago. Hello Indonesia, why oh why did we not learn this years ago ?
However, taxis are pretty expensive. In Paris and Amsterdam, some taxis have a fix rate of 50 to 55 € from the airport to any hotel in the city centre and vice versa. Of course, there’s always “thugs” who would prey on ignorant tourist and have their mileage meter switched on resulting to passengers having to pay 10 to 15 € extra. One thug even offered us a “traffic free route” for 85 € flat. Luckily, we refused.
On our last day, we were so lucky. Our taxi driver was polite, kind and honest. Told us directly when we boarded that the rate is fixed at 50 €, googled for us for that the Garuda check-in gate was at row 31 and when we arrived at the airport, he automatically helped us to get 2 trolley-carts for our bagages. All done with a friendly smile. Wow. How can I not give him a good tip !! Europe is wishing us a pleasant flight home.
Well all in all, we learnt so many things in our days here.
Personally, I would have preferred to be served with more smiles, humility and patience. It would be nice if they were more open and receptive instead of being defensive. They should listen better and not assume the questions we had and thus giving us wrong answers. It would be wonderful if they showed more care and sincerity for our well being.
We are tourist. Of course we would like to feel warm, welcome, perhaps even pampered.
Well what do I know ? Maybe Asians are spoilt when it comes to demanding for good SERVICE. Errrr … customer is king ? No ? Oooops who taught me that ?
Communication is always a 2 way street and perhaps some Frenchmen is also blogging away now on how we Asians cannot communicate well, being too demanding or having too many questions (asking questions does not mean one is stupid, mind you).
But hey Europe is Europe. One country differs from the other and obviously, different nationalities differ in their own respective manners and behaviors. Some do welcome foreigners with a smile whilst perhaps others may feel impatient on having to put up with aliens “invading” their country and perhaps their ego challenged for having to serve Asians ? Well, how delussional, arrogant and ignorant can one be ?
For today, I simply believe everyone is equal and Mutual Respect should be a culture for all human beings regardless of race, nationality, color or religion. The world would be a more beautiful place to live in then.
Good bye Europe. We enjoyed the scenery, the good food, the wine, the history, lakes, beautiful architecture, paintings, the clean drinking water from the tap, the friendly Swiss-German ; and we ceratinly would come back here again. The challeges we went thru were pale in comparison to all the other great things we encountered and saw.
To top it all, we met SUPERMAN in Zurich. Hello Clark Kent ….
Selling ….
Words, accompanied by visuals – makes it more convincing. Shouldn’t one have a collection of visuals to share with one’s customers ?
Words like warmth …….. space …. rustic beauty …. random artistry, simplicity …. tonality variation, inviting ………. all articulated by the sales person precisely understood by the customer.
Dreams can be shared ………clearly.
A true Passion to Sell
Is like finding love and falling in love
You believe in it, you pursue it
It’s non manupulative
There’s no deception, no coercion
It has to be of free will
You act, speak and smile with your heart
Your action match your words, pure and sincere
You serve, you simply do your best to impress
You get the sale, you take care of your customer
You hope for a long term relationship
Is selling your passion ?
Are you selling right ?
When we speak
When we present
When we try to influence someone
We must “FEEL” deeply for things we say
We MUST BELIEVE in it
We must be sincere
There should excitement
There should be enthusiasm
Only then can our proposition move our audience and make them emotionally connected.
Touch their hearts
Serve their needs
Show them WHY our proposition is important and meaningful.
Only then are we adding value and knowledge to our audience.
A well informed customer will be our good customer.
Challenges will occur. Crisis will happen.
Here is where EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION is needed. Like it or not specifics on corrective actions and deadlines need to be given.
Angry customers do not like vague answers. Today, every customer is a SMART customer and can smell poor excuses a mile away. Lastly, I cannot agree more that in today’s world “sorry” is simply NOT good enough. It is just a word.
An organization needs to demonstrate in clear actions how a “sorry” can compensate a customer who has suffered.
#passionsofwillie
https://www.linkedin.com/hp/update/6275917487687204864
The disastrous IT failure at British Airways (BA) that ruined travel plans for more than 75,000 has sent the company’s reputation and share value into a sharp dive, and its poor communication is surely not helping.
The airline’s parent company, International Airlines Group, saw a drop in stock of more than 4% on Tuesday; it finished the day down 0.41% on Wednesday.
Analysts at Citigroup estimated that the IT problems could cost British Airways around EUR 100 million.
According to YouGov Brand Index, which measures consumer perceptions of brands, BA’s “Index” score, which is a combination of metrics including quality, value and reputation, has also plummeted. It dropped by a statistically significant 9.5 points over the past week on a list of the UK’s 28 biggest airline brands.
The chaos all began when the airline’s computer systems went down on Saturday(27 May 2017) and there was no functioning back-up. UA cancelled all flights and only managed to resume full version Tuesday(30 May 2017), with thousands of passengers now still without their bags.In response to the turmoil, Alex Cruz, the chief executive and chairman of British Airways, said sorry a couple of times through three videos BA released on social media as well as its online press-room, yet he has refused to be publicly questioned and declined calls to step down.
According to The Daily Mail, he had even emailed staff members, urging them not to comment on the meltdown as the company “are not in the mode of ‘debriefing what happened’ but rather ‘let’s fix this mode’.
…If you do not want to get involved or cannot get involved, I would kindly ask you to refrain from live commentary, unless it is a message of support to the thousands of colleagues that love BA as much as you do.
– Cruz in his letter to the UA staff members.
Angry Twitter comments revealed that unclear organisations and explanations had left thousands of passengers stranded in airport terminals. Many waited hours for just a Twitter response, and some passengers were unable to call its customer services centre, or were directed to a phone line that costs at least 50p (HK$5) per minute when called from a mobile phone.
Adding fuel to the fire was the airline’s announcement on Monday, which said passengers who gave up on waiting in airport queues or on hold to the call centre were not entitled to the airline’s coverage of the cost of additional tickets.
The airline has now reportedly soften its approach, saying it will look “on a case-by-case basis”.
“It’s safe to say the airline hasn’t handled the crisis very well,” said Alan Casey, partner at Prophet.
In the first place, Casey said the information released by BA is believed by many to be incomplete, yet customers expect full transparency when a problem occurs – how long the problem would last, why it is happening, and the structural changes that the brand would made, both operationally and culturally. Casey said users expect the brand to explain how they would get back in control as soon as possible.
Although the brand explained the cancellation was caused by a worldwide IT systems failure, people familiar with IT will know it’s not usual to experience such destruction in a well-established company like BA. Such suspicions will destroy trust fundamentally, Casey explained.
“Either people would question if it is something else, for example, if the system is being hacked, and that BA is forced to shut down the whole IT system; or they will suspect BA had over-cut its IT budget. These two suspicions lead to concerns: could BA’s quality and maintenance be affected by the IT meltdown?”
Trust is fundamental, especially when it comes to an airline company. Customers do not want to fly on a system they believe is not safe or trusted.
Vincent Tsui, chief marketing officer at Next Mobile Ltd, agreed that BA should clarify speculations as soon as possible. “It would solve many problems if they could clarify that the chaos has nothing to do with BA, and they have yet to formally respond.”
However, Tsui said it is understandable for Cruz to refrain from being publicly questioned, and asked front-staff to keep silent.
“The larger the corporate is, the harder it is and the longer it takes for the CEO to understand which part went wrong in a catastrophic event,” Tsui explained. “It’s better though, if the chief can give a clear and concrete timeline on the steps that BA will take. For instance, he could say they will undergo a deep investigation on the issue and report two weeks later, so concerned customers and investors know what to expect.”
Furthermore, Tsui suggested BA explain its compensation through an FAQ on social media as soon as possible, as it would answer most of the passengers’ inquiries and help lift the busy customer service team’s burden.
“Going forward, people will still take British Airways, but it would be harder for the brand to charge a premium, with customers no longer feeling inclined to pay extra for the airline’s claim of quality,” said Casey. “The two remedies they should take now is to be over-communicating and over-compensating: being especially open on the information they have and the time BA would need to get the problems resolved, and make it up to the people most affected.”
“Sorry would not be enough – BA will have to invest in showing they are taking the crisis seriously.”
Drawing reference from Toyota’s vehicle recalls controversy between 2009-2011, which demonstrated a change in both culture and production line, Casey advised BA to show they are revamping its leadership and customer services to prove it is still a world-class airline brand.
When you are humble and ever willing to learn
Your teacher is EVERYWHERE and can be ANYONE
Learn and do what a good man does
Learn and see what “not to do”
Either way, you are learning
Be pushy and have “no mercy” on “time”
As “time” has no mercy on us
Do it now
Do it quick
Why wait ?
Why tolerate those who waste our time ?
Should we not increase our expectations on others to speed up ?
Once the MOMENT is lost
We will NEVER get it back.
Let’s not miss the chance
Nor live our lives with regrets
And fail because we have been slow
Due to others
Or from our own behavior
Dedicated to all SCs of Niro Ceramic Indonesia.
It has been a great day for me yesterday seeing all of you transformed to a new YOU !
Your energy and enthusiasm were clearly present and you participated whole heartedly. Thank you.
The training I hope will benefit you PERSONALLY ….. and enrich your lives.
Being focus, not giving up, pushing our limits and rising up to the challenge are what we MUST DO everyday. Be it in our work or daily lives.
The abilty to say “Thank You” , ” Sorry its my fault” and ” I need your help ” encourage us to be humble, not take things for granted and control our ego.
Live with a Big Heart …. be kind, be supportive, be positive. Be a good person. And you will have peace and happinness. The All MIGHTY will bless us.
Have great New Begining ….
I support YOU.
Sincerely
Willie Low
Passions of Willie 