There are many books which define Corporate Excellence through the tools of quality measurement both in product and service. But once in a while, there comes a book that brings about the inherent and underlying feature of Corporate Excellence, which many a time is overlooked owing to its in-tangibleness. Tom Peters, in his path breaking book – In Search of Excellence – explained the reasons why a particular company, irrespective of it’s industry affiliation, stands tall in comparison to its competitors. The attributes of the corporate functional superiority, as per Tom Peters, lies not in product or the measurable service quality but it exists through extensive and genuine customer engagement. The book – In Search of Excellence – lays down guidelines that will enrich every entrepreneur or a start up to look forward to success by embracing the well-researched corporate thought process as envisaged by Tom Peters. Although, the theoretical teachings in the book are numerous, but this post will focus and distill the anecdotes of the corporate conduct.
Night Out with Tom
Tom Peters and his associates, once after dinner, decided to spend the night in Washington. The hotel reservations were all taken and the hope of getting a room for the night was dim. Tom was close to a place called “Four Seasons” and had stayed at the place earlier and had liked it. He braced for a usual cold shoulder accorded to late comers. But to his astonishment, the concierge looked up, smiled and called him by his name and even inquired about their well-being. That’s when Tom realised the reason why “Four Seasons” was tipped as the “place to stay” in the space of a brief year. It was how the customers were treated, that made the difference. The act of polite enquiry and recognition by name made a world of difference to the analysts, which made their preference in choosing a place to stay during their forthcomings visits inclined heavily towards “Four Seasons” hotel. The other prospective clients too experienced the same comfort of words and reception and thus spread the advertorials of “Four Seasons” through word of mouth – the cheapest but the most effective marketing avenue. The corporate excellence is built on the principles of genuine customer engagement especially seen through unusual effort on the part of apparently ordinary employees.
Boeing and Product Champions
Once Tom was speaking to the Boeing executives about his research and making the point that excellent companies seem to take all sorts of special trouble to foster, nourish and what he called “Product Champions”- those individuals who believe so strongly in their ideas that they take it on themselves to damn the bureaucracy and manoeuvre their projects the system and out to the customer. Bob Withington (Chief project engineer – Boeing 787 Dreamliner), who was part of the discussion, went on to tell a story about how Boeing had really won the contracts for the swept-wing B-47, which was later to become the highly successful first commercial jet, the 707.
He recalled how a small team of engineers completely redesigned the B-52 in the Dayton hotel over a sleepless weekend. The engineers wrote and produced a 33 page bound proposal and presented it to the Airforce just seventy two hours later, the following Monday. This tiny team of champions, moreover, presented the proposal with a finely sculpted scale model, which they had made out of materials purchased during the weekend for $15 at a local hobby shop. The tale of this little dedicated team going to extraordinary lengths to get results on behalf of a truly massive corporation showed that the small, competitive bands of pragmatic bureaucracy beaters were a source of much innovation and the fundamental reason for corporate excellence.
Not just a Salesman!
Tom had dropped by a small electronics store to purchase a programmable calculator. The salesman’s product knowledge, enthusiasm and interest in the customer were striking and naturally caught Tom’s attention. Tom reached the brink of his inquisitiveness and inquired and as it happened, the salesman was not a store employee at all, but a twenty eight year old Hewlett-Packard (HP) development engineer getting first-hand experience in the user’s response to the HP product line.
HP prides itself on its closeness to the customer and that a typical assignment for a new MBA or electrical engineer was to get involved in a job that included the practical aspects of product introduction. So, here was an HP engineer behaving as enthusiastically as any salesman you’d ever wanted to see. The passion for the work you do, can never be camouflaged.
A similar anecdotal account during John F Kennedy’s visit to the NASA found him speaking to the janitor on duty. Kennedy asked the janitor, who was cleaning the floor, his duties at NASA. The janitor beamed and replied, that his responsibility involved helping astronauts reach space. The ordinary employee who is passionate, adds dignity to the work that he does, for which the internal gratification is so strong that it quenches the recognition thirst and helps the individual thrive further. Corporate excellence is built on the shoulders of such employees.
IBM to the fore
Another discussion ensued, in which a prospective client in a major computer system purchase for a hospital, chose International Business Machines (IBM) over the other technologically advanced computer software developers. He said “Many of the others were ahead of IBM in technological wizardry but IBM alone took the trouble to know us. They interviewed us extensively up and down the line. They talked our language, no mumbo jumbo on computer innards. Their price was fully 25% higher. But they provided unparalleled guarantees of reliability and service. They even went so far as to arrange a backup with a local company in case our system crashed. Their presentations were to the point. Everything about them smacked about assurance and success. Our decision, even with the severe budget pressure, was really easy. We chose IBM”. IBM championed both corporate and product excellence and the testimony of which came from the horse’s mouth.
Corporate Excellence, thus, is not a deliverance through memos and official directives but rides on the ordinary but passionate employee culture, in which the unassuming worker functions as a corporate by himself.
Hope you liked the corporate anecdotes on excellence and will benefit from them. In Search of Excellence is a great book and I strongly recommend you to get a copy for yourself.
Thanks for reading.
