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Top Class Caribbean Service for Every Class

At my first stay at Sandals back in January I was amazed at how they were able to take the best of Jamaica, and deliver it in a way that not only a tourist would appreciate it, but also in a way that a local Jamaican would.

I could see them shift gears. When they realized that I was Jamaican, the accent would disappear and they seemed genuinely happy to see me there, and several times went the extra mile to make the stay a memorable one.

And they succeeded fabulously.

However, Sandals is the exception to what I perceive to be a general low level of customer service afflicting the region.

This is not to say that the service delivered to tourists is not different. In fact, in a prior blog I spoke about the three levels of service: Tourist Service, Frien’ Service and Res’ a Dem Service.

Tourist Service is rendered to foreigners, and the more foreign-looking, the more likely the service is to be polite, helpful and solicitous. It does not apply to locals.

Frien’ Service is the best service a Caribbean local can expect to receive. It is warm, connected and intimate, and comes when the server recognizes the customer from some prior acquaintance or connection.

Res’ a Dem Service is the cold, indifferent, mash-up-face service that is given to the general public, and I have seen it in every CSME island that I have visited in the region (and also Bahamas).

Our people often cry racism when they see tourists being treated better, but the cause is not racial hatred… it is more like a welcoming nature to outsiders.

While these are gross generalizations, I have found that they have a spark of truth deep inside. The reasons Sandals has been able to be so effective, is that they are able to create an environment in which their employees deliver Frien’ Service to people that they do not know, but act as if they know. Also, they expose their new recruits to an extraordinary level of service that they themselves have never personally received before.

Here is a sample of some of the guests’ reports.

The fact that makes this remarkable, is that there is not a single island I have visited in which there is a local company giving excellent service to local people, unless they are consuming a very high end, and expensive, service.

Regular, everyday service is consistently delivered as Res’ a Dem Service.

In a project I once studied, I noticed that the North American consultants that were used never did define what they meant by “excellent service”. It seemed self-evident and self-explanatory.
When they spoke to upper managers, they too understood what “excellent service” meant. After all, many of them had studied in a First World country, and had taken trips to visit Macy’s, Harrod’s and DisneyWorld.

However, what they failed to realize was that they knew what excellent service was because they had received it first-hand from a consistent service provider. Having a good impression of Disney service comes from multiple first hand experiences that are mutually reinforcing. The consultants and senior managers had all had the very same experiences.

However, the average Caribbean person has not had that kind of experience. Instead, they know Frien’ Service and Res’ a Dem Service. The latter is the default, delivered when they have no connection to the person in front of them.

Companies and consultants need to be very careful to not just define the experience, which is a cognitive requirement, but also to create opportunities to give employees an idea of what consistent, high quality service feels like when the recipient is not a tourist or a friend.

This can be done in several ways, and I think that Sandals does this by immersing their employees in a culture in which it is easy to give good service, as a function of the way they are themselves treated by their management.

I cannot say with certainty that this is so — I have no first-hand knowledge of what happens on the inside. But when I read the remarks in the link given above, and reflect on my experience I know down deep in my bones that the smiles are not faked, and the extra mile that employees go is not just done in order to get something in return (indeed, there is no tipping allowed.)

The fact that Sandals has been able to do this on a large scale across several properties on different islands (presumably effectively) tells me that it is built into the Sandals system.

And this is what our public services, banks, retail stores, food shops and mini-buses across the region have not begun to do — develop a way to systematically deliver a positive customer experience, starting with their front-line staff.

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I Don’t Care

I recently read a fascinating New York Times article about following what you love in life.

The article, by the authors of Freakonomics, started out by asking why it was that the best soccer players all seemed to be born in January, February and March.

It turns out that the reason has nothing to do with the Zodiac, seasons or school holidays. When young boys and girls are moving up in the soccer systems in their respective countries, they are all subject to age group requirements, and it turns out that the requirements coincide with calendar years. For example, to play Colts football (under 14), the players must have been born in 1992 or earlier.

Naturally, players born in early 1992 are larger (on average) than those born in late 1992, and therefore would have received that little extra encouragement from early on that the others would not have received. They would have been encouraged to develop whatever talent they had more frequently. In other words, if they had a dream to be a footballer, it would seem to those around them that they would be more likely to follow the dream than the rest.

It brought to mind a conversation I had back in 1992 with a new boss of mine. Her name was Norma, if I recall rightly.

I had just changed managers, and we were having an intro meeting, to really get to know each other. During that meeting, I told her that I really did not care about performance review, as others opinions of me just didn’t matter to my career.

This was plenty big talk for a 25 year-old.

But it was true. I had been doing a lot of growing and reading up until that point, and had very recently read a study that said that the difference between the largest and smallest raise in the typical department was some $2000. I was stunned.

I considered myself a high performer, and to learn that the difference was that small made me think that those who busted their butts to get to the top were separated from those who were lazy and did no work by a mere… $5.58 per day after taxes. That worked out to some 70 cents per hour.

This was clearly ridiculous.

I was in a rat race for a 70 cents per hour difference? That worked out to a Coke back then, or a candy bar.

A friendly supervisor could not believe it either, and he checked the numbers for our own department, and the numbers were almost exactly what I had read.

I felt like a fool.

And I stopped competing, as my dream was not to be promoted, but to leave and start my own company.

Even as I was telling Norma that the review does not matter to me, I could tell that she did not believe me.

Until, that is about six months later when it came time for her to deliver the review. I kept putting it off and putting it off, until it finally was overdue and we sat down to speak in a cafeteria in Bedminster.

She started in, and I could see that she had forgotten.

She continued, and I interrupted her by saying “But Norma, don’t you remember? Performance review does not matter to me.”

She stopped and stared at me. Her world and my world paused… I explained that it was not personal, no reflection on her, it was just that I was not interested as I found that it made no difference. The people who were evaluating me, I explained, have no idea what I am doing here, and I knew that nothing they said was related to what I was doing.

Poor Norma. She was flabbergasted. I was a bit surprised that she had forgotten, and also nervous because I was basically upsetting the status quo by not pretending that this mattered.

From my recollection, we went on to talk about other interesting things, unrelated to the review, relieved that the pretense was finally over. I can’t say that we became close after that, but I would say that had an understanding from that moment.

It was a turning point for me and my career, and when I did eventually resign to go my own way several months later I was stronger for having dealt with my fears in a straightforward way — by telling the truth.

At the same time, I do understand what it was like to be caught up in a rat race. AT&T Bell Labs was, at the time, not only my employer but one of the best places in the world for a scientist or engineer to work. Getting fired was almost impossible back then. And, I remember vividly an old-timer telling me that I should not think of leaving, but instead should stay until I was vested in the pension plan… at the 30 year mark.

Many AT&T veterans were skillful at one thing — staying an employee of AT&T.

In the years since I left, AT&T split into several pieces and my department was disbanded. The company was recently acquired for very little, and the number of employees before the acquisition was at a very small fraction of the 100k+ men and women that I remember being on payroll.

I’m unsure as to why the soccer article reminded me of Norma, and the conversation. I guess that I am grateful that even though she was shocked, she did not try to talk me out of my thinking. In fact, she applauded it, which gave me some assurance that I was not mad. Just different.

Just like those January-March soccer players got some encouragement to later become world stars, I also benefited from the same. What a workplace it would be if people could only be encouraged to follow their hearts.

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The Dual Income Profession

In 1991 I was exposed to a fact that I have never forgotten.

In a training course that I have long forgotten, I learned that the profession I was about to enter full-time (I was an AT&T employee back then) had a bi-modal distribution of incomes.

What it simply meant was that consultants fell into two distinct groups — one group that earned a lot (median US$75k at the time) and another that earned much less (median $US45k.) The study went on to describe the difference in marketing techniques between the two groups.

Given that this was a time before the internet truly existed as we know it, the marketing techniques did not include an on-line component. However, the difference basically came down to consultants that used content-based approaches that reached a mass audience, and those that did not.

“Content-based approaches?”

Basically, it was saying that the more successful group relied on speeches, public seminars and other relatively high-risk, high-reward approaches to get the messages in which they believed, into the listening ears of large groups. They also wrote books, articles and other pieces for publication, once again for mass consumption.

The less successful group, from the research, relied on cold calls, free workshops, letters and paid advertisement to try to reach a relatively small number of prospects with little more than a shout of “here I am!” These were all very low risk techniques.

It is not too hard to extrapolate these findings to the world we live in 15 years later. Now, there are just more tools to use, most of them involving new technology.

However, the basics are the same — the market rewards those in the profession who develop a unique point of view, and then are willing to develop the speaking and writing skills to get their point of view in front of audiences in high-risk, high reward ways.

Nowadays, we have more avenues available to us through internet technology.

  • A book can be self-published for US$2000.
  • A website can be launched for free.
  • A blog can be created and updated for free.
  • Digital videography and pictures can be created for US$200 or less.
  • Newsgroups can be created to address any subject matter of interest.
  • Voice recordings can be made available to the world at the flick of a few buttons.

A consultant said to me a few weeks ago that he basically “did not believe in the internet” and thought that clients had no interest in viewing web pages. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I have not had a paper brochure for more than eight years or so, and do not plan to ever have one again, and that no-one had ever had a problem visiting my site to download over 30 articles or 40 blogs with content that spoke to them in ways that a brochure could not.

The truth is, it is not the website that makes the difference, but just as it was in 1991 — what separates the higher earners from the others is courage. In 1991 and also in 2006 it is the high-risk, long-term payoff activities that have the best return. Some examples include:

  • Speaking in front of large groups and risking rejection.
  • Writing and risking never seeing it published.
  • Putting ideas out in public, risking that others will take them and make better use of them.
  • Investing in a website and risking it being ignored.

I have taken the cowardly route in all of these at different times, and have to work hard to keep on taking risks. And then I come back to that old article, and looking at that bimodal distribution gives me faith that it all might work out one day if I continually give up any fear of looking foolish!

P.S. I recommend the book “Creating a Unique Brand in the Consulting Profession” by Allan Weiss as the best and only book of its kind that I have ever read, and even though it was written a mere five years ago, it is already stale (no mention of blogging, which was in its infancy).

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CSME — Is It for Real?

I think most Jamaicans view the advent of CSME with some interest, but no real passion. After all, this is not Miami we are talking about… and truth is that we know more about Broward Mall, Pembroke Pines and Miami Lakes than we do about Long Circular, the Savannah, St. Lawrence Gap or Broad Street.

Our minds are firmly planted in Greater Miami.

This is a pity, because while the hoopla around CSME may not “grab us,” it is a timely reminder that the whole “10-1 leaves 0” business actually has left us poorer than our smaller counterparts in the Federation of old, and unlikely to catch up in the near future. We need to be careful not the make the same mistake twice.

While the changes initially planned by CSME are modest, they are a concerted move on the part of the region’s governments to bring us into alignment with much larger forces in the world.
These forces are stunningly described in the book “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman, in which he talks about what he calls the 10 Flatteners, and how they are enabling China, India and other countries to experience massive growth in their economies.

His book serves partly as a warning to the United States, which is echoed by Richard Florida in his book “The Flight of the Creative Class.”

9/11 laws that make residency and citizenship in the United States more difficult are only hurting that country’s ability to compete at the heart of its strength — technological innovation. Scientist and engineers who are unable (for example upon completion of their PhD’s) to stay in the US and work are taking their skills and returning to China and India. This is leaving the US bereft of much needed talent in colleges, research laboratories and industries.

Furthermore, the US is seriously considering erecting its own Berlin Wall along its border with Mexico. Instead of flattening barriers, new ones are being created to keep America “safe.” It is no wonder that some are wondering if this is what Bin Laden was hoping for all along — the US drowning its own strength in its own fears.

It certainly runs counter to the direction that most countries want to move in, and the direction in which Caribbean countries must go. In particular, the poorest countries in the region (Jamaica, Guyana and Haiti) have experienced an exodus of their Creative Classes in recent years. In most cases, the emigre left their country of origin unwillingly, with its warm climate, familiar feel and spicy cuisine. It makes visitors to the region wonder why anyone would ever leave.

CSME is probably too late for those who left to live in the US and Canada for economic opportunities, but it is not too late for those of us who remain. Perhaps we might be able to leverage the 6 million people in our region, and the combination of skills and natural resources
to create opportunities that might attract back those who have left, and persuade those who stay that their best bet is not to join a long line to get a US visa, but instead to browse a website or jump on a plane, and learn what is happening across the region.

Perhaps we can join together in igniting some measure of economic success that we could not achieve apart. If so, then the CSME is an excellent start.

P.S. If you are visiting this blog after the IMCJ conference: Welcome! The presentation is available by visiting www.fwconsulting.com and clicking on Ideas and then Download(s).

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A Man I Know Who Followed His Heart

He had his light and phone cut off. He lived out of his car for a while. He was ashamed to tell others how little money he had. He told his clients to find someone else, and they refused. Everyone who knew him told him was crazy, and that he should cash in on his MBA.

Today he is the coach of the fastest man in the world — the holder of the record for the 100m dash, Asafa Powell.

The man behind it all its Stephen Francis, known to Wolmerians who went to school with him as “Clagga” (or was that “Clappa”?)

His personal story of sacrifice and achievement is a dramatic one, as the events I mentioned above all happened in the space of 4 short years, according to the story told in the Gleaner entitled: Creating World Champions.

I remember him well as a rather disheveled, bright guy who was a member of the Schools Challenge Quiz Team from the year he was in fourth form, and I was in first form. He was not athletic, and did not take part in sports, but like anyone who was on the Schools Challenge team he was able to study, and retain a tremendous amount of information.

He eventually got a degree in Accounting, and then an MBA, and somewhere along the line he decided that he was interested in something new: Track and Field. I remember hearing the news that he was coaching Wolmers Track Team — it seemed like madness to me, as Francis was a brains, not an athlete!

After his MBA, he got the kind of job you could easily retire from — a consulting position at Peat Marwick. I am sure his parents were proud. I imagined that they relaxed, knowing that he had “set himself up.”

I can only imagine what they thought and said when he quit that job to follow his dream of training athletes…

The article is fascinating. In a way I should not be surprised as he has a combined background that can only be a powerful asset to his athletes — after all, not many track coaches have MBA’ s from top schools like the University of Michigan.

And there are not too many that have coached the fastest human being on the planet. In fact, there is only one.

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Doing The Work

This past weekend I attended a personal development seminar based on The Work of Byron Katie.

Byron Katie is actually a woman who, at the depths of a suicidal depression, developed a body of thinking that fits nicely into 4 questions and a turnaround statement, that is basically the opposite of the original stressful thought.

There is a great deal of information on her website: www.thework.org and I have been using these questions and the line of thinking she has invented for about two years now, with great effect in my personal life, and also in my business. I guess you might say that I used as much of it as I could on my own, before actually investing in a two day trip to DC to do it in person.

Through doing the work, I have been able to develop a stronger capacity to question the thoughts that come into my head. While I conceptually knew that “I am not my thoughts, but instead I am the thinker,” which is a fairly common statement in most personal development courses and books, her steps give ana easy way of quickly dealing with stressful thoughts at the moment they arise.

While we all know at some level that stress is not caused by life itself, but instead by our thoughts about life, this is a difficult idea to put into practice.

In short, her four questions are a way to meet the stressful thought with four quick questions, and over time I have noticed that the lag time between the stressful thought and the questions has only gotten shorter — which has lead to a more peaceful inner life.

Given that I know it works from experience, I believe that I’ll be developing some offerings for my clients based on The Work. I would say that it passes the first test for new ideas that I have, which is “Do they work for me?”

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Books I’m Reading Now – -April

Just a quick update on the books that have recently attracted my attention:

Reading List (paper books)

  • The Answer to How is Yes by Peter Block
  • Home with God by Walsch
  • The Flight of the Creative Class by Richard Florida
  • The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
  • What God Wants by Walsch
  • A Course in Miracles (text)
  • The Sins of Scripture by Bishop John Shelby Spong

Listening List (audible.com mp3’s on Creative MuVo Slim)

  • 2 further talks / sermons by Marianne Williamson
  • Freakonomics — Jared Diamond
  • I Need Your Love, Is That True? — Byron Katie
  • Fast Company Magazine Monthly Summary
  • The Right Use of Power — Peter Block
  • The Funny Thing Is — Ellen Degeneris
  • The Energy of Money — Maria Nemeth

eBook list (Palm Tungsten eReader)

  • She Comes First — Ian Kerner
  • Tomorrow’s God — Walsch

I got a new Creative Zen that has 30Gb of space, but I haven’t yet moved over my audible.com account to that device.

I am going through my usual list of magazines: Time, Runners, Bicycling, Tritahlete, plus the occasional others. And of course, there is my daily reading list of : Jamaica Observer, Jamaica Gleaner, Trinidad Guardian, Trinidad Express, New York Times, Sun-Sentinel — and now and then I read the Barbados Advocate.

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An Excerpt from Tantie

“Tantie” is a Trini word meaning Auntie, that in Jamaica means “Teh-Teh” or “older female relative, usually an aunt, who can really talk”.

This excerpt is from a weekly online newsletter called Tantie which is sent out in Trinidad. One section, “Backchat”, is an opportunity to folks to send back their impressions, and this Trini’s response caught my attention.

* T R I N I D I A R Y http://www.trinidiary.com *
* your source for events in Trinidad and Tobago *
* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *
* *
TUESDAY 4th APRIL 2006 VOL:7 ISSUE:014

BACKCHAT: Issue 013

So wearing black as a sign of mourning I can live with.

But driving with car lights on to protest crime??? Walking against crime? Signing a petition to be delivered to our “figurehead” president? WHAT exactly do, or will, these actions EVER accomplish? To whom are we protesting? Neither the criminals nor the politicians care!

Volunteer your time and expertise to a civil society organisation working to alleviate our myriad social problems….and THEN talk to me about crime solving.

Donate a part of your paycheck to one of these same organisations, or to a family that can barely pay its rent and eat when the month comes, and THEN talk to me about crime solving.

STOP driving on shoulders, putting on your seatbelt only when you see a police officer, and breaking rules whenever you have the chance….and THEN talk to me about crime solving.

Sensitise your children to be compassionate for their fellow humans, to love everyone as they come, and to be generous with the gifts that the universe so bountifully bestows….AND THEN TALK TO ME ABOUT CRIME SOLVING!!!

Leave your comfort zones behind. Judge not, lest you be judged. Love thy neighbour as thyself. Increase the talents given to you by the universe, and use them for the good of your downtrodden fellow people. //Trinidad


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Doing What is Loved

A friend of mine from overseas was working in a client bank in Jamaica as a consultant on a major project. He needed to open a local account to do some transactions, and decided to open an account at the local branch of the bank.

He found a branch and tried to open the account, but ran into such poor service that he had to return several times, after which he just gave up in frustration.

He mentioned his experience as a matter of urgency to one of his colleagues in the bank, a vice president.

Her response was: “You mad or what? Why you never come to me first? I would never go into one of our branches to do any of my banking! And deal wid dem people deh? No sah, I only go to the branch manager. Here, next time come to me and I will take care of it for you.”

On a quite different occasion, I was eating my lunch while reading the Jamaica Overseas Gleaner, while living in New Jersey. As I turned the pages, I came upon a picture of a mad-man with his head full of live maggots eating his scalp alive.

That was the end of lunch.

I was so disgusted that I felt compelled to call the editor, who I happened to know because I had placed several business ads in the past. The editor was not in, but I did reach the Advertising Manager, who I also knew. Let’s say her name was Mary. She was second in command.

I made my complaint, including the part about the effect the picture had on my lunch. Mary said “Let me tell you something – when I went to pick up this week’s edition from the printer, one of the guys drew me aside and asked me how we could print this. I looked at it for the first time, and that was when I knew that this week’s Gleaner was not going to reach me!!” (In other words, she would not be reading it).

I was flabbergasted… and momentarily speechless and could only recover to ask her, quite weakly, to pass the message on to the editor.

The stories might be different, but the underlying theme is one that I find in too many companies in the Caribbean — too many people doing work they either do not believe in, or do not even like. At times, it seems to me as if all the people who love to serve customers were somehow secretly switched with workers in factories, and on farms, far away from people — while the ones who hate people are stuck in front-line service jobs.

Many Caribbean workers seem to be in jobs they either vehemently or passively dislike. Converely, very few seem to be enjoying what they are doing for a living.

And, we are not very skillful at hiding this fact from each other.

I don’t know yet what the cause of it is yet, but there is at least some lack of care that takes place when people are hired — managers and executives do not seem to be smart about hiring people who even care to use the products and services that the company offers.

In a sports store the workers don’t play the sports. In a shoe store, they don’t wear the shoes. In a health-food store, no-one knows the products because they don’t consume them. In a bank, no-one actually uses the branches if they can help it.

This is just bad for business, and worse for both the employee and the customer, who must now suffer in each other’s presence, while trying to get work done.

I do know that in a tight economy people are just plain afraid to pursue what their heart tells them to pursue. Some use the opportunity to migrate to finally free themselves of these mental chains, but sadly, many are not able to undergo the transformation required. It takes courage to believe in one’s ability, in the face of the culture that is screaming out the stupidity of doing so.

Yet, those who do are the ones who can make up the new Creative Class across our region.

If there is any fault, it lies in our education system, which asks a 16 year old to restrict his or her education to at most 4 subjects for A-levels/CAPE. I will never forget my own junior semester at Cornell in which I did Photography, the History of Art, Government and Philosophy — for full credit — even as I majored in Engineering. Doing these courses (which stand out in my mind as critical to my personal development) sounds bizarre to the Caribbean-trained professional, for whom education has been reduced to a mere instrument — starting at age 16.

This instrumentalism is a travesty, and as I type this I think that there is a certain sadness to see that a decision to pursue training in a career, will end up keeping someone locked in a job for which they have no passion.

One of my favourite authors, Kahlil Gibran says it quite well:

Work:

And what is it to work with love?

It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.

It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.

It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.

It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,

And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.

Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, “he who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is a nobler than he who ploughs the soil.

And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet.”

But I say, not in sleep but in the over-wakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;

And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.

Work is love made visible.

And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.

And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.

And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.

—————————————————————————
Brilliant.

Maybe the new freedom for our people, hopefully including our Creative Class, will be about a personal courage that transcends the culture’s rules.