The Sixth Sense

Set the foundation

Chapter one of The New Gold Standard focusses on having a good foundation in place. It’s all about communicating core identity and culture.

Ritz-Carlton make a big deal of ensuring the mission, vision, values, are deeply embedded in all their staff. Everyone of them has a ‘credo card’ they typically carry around with them at all times. Everyone in the organisation can easily provide a clear and accurate understanding of the business’s mission and purpose.

Time is spent everyday emphasising and reorienting around the mission and culture of the organisation. This daily time provides space for repetition of values, emphasising common language, visual symbols, passing on of oral traditions (not just email), positive story-telling, and modeling by leaders.

The challenge for me reading this stuff is translating it into the volunteer context in which I primarily lead. It’s all very well spending time every day embedding the culture of the organisation, but what about when the opportunities for doing that are physically only once a week at best? And even then for only a couple of hours.

How do you go about embedding culture when there are far fewer opportunities to do it? I agree with all the things Ritz-Carlton are doing, I’m just grappling with what that might look like for us at Mosaic.

We do talk about our cultural values a lot. But I know we could do more and do better. I definitely think we need to improve our sharing or stories that positively communicate what we value. Stores (and visual images) definitely help things stick. I just need to remember to do this more!

Tags: Books, The New Gold Standard

New author interview

A few months back I included several author interviews on The Sixth Sense. I am very pleased to say that there is another one lined up which I hope to publish later this week.

Some of you who have followed my ‘blogging career’ will remember me writing about a great book I read called ‘The Starbucks Experience’ by Joseph A. Michelli. No matter what type of organisation you lead or are part of, the book was full of lots of really relevant information that is both useful and inspiring. I heartily recommended it when it first came out now and would still encourage you to read it now if you haven’t already.

Linked with this, Joseph Michelli has a new book out called ‘The New Gold Standard - 5 Leadership Principles for Creating a Legendary Customer Experience Courtesy of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company’. I am reading through this book at the moment and will share standout thoughts and insights as I go along. If it comes even close to The Starbucks Experience, I know I’ll be taking a lot away from it.

I am very pleased to be able to say that Joseph Michelli has kindly agreed to answer a few questions about his new book. And, as I say, I hope to be posting that interview later this week. Make sure you check back.

Tags: Joseph Michelli, Leadership, The New Gold Standard, The Starbucks Experience