The Duncan Report

What's Your
Leadership Legacy?

By now you may have seen what’s being called "the PowerPoint heard ‘round the world."

It all started when Shane Atchison and Tom Farmer, two executives from a Seattle web design firm, arrived at a Houston hotel (at 2:00 a.m.) to discover that their "guaranteed" rooms had been rented out. In trying to resolve the situation, the tired road warriors received shoddy service. So they filed a complaint in the form of a PowerPoint¨ presentation entitled "Yours Is a Very Bad Hotel."

Proving the potency of hand-to-hand viral e-marketing, the complaint has now been seen by tens of thousands of people – maybe millions.

Shane and Tom sent the original complaint to the hotel, and copied a couple of friends and Shane’s mother-in-law. That was it. Well, yes, the last screen did express the hope that their friends would "send it to their friends," but they never imagined how the monster would grow.

"Call us naïve, but we figured that meant perhaps twenty or thirty people," Tom told me in a recent email. "We never dreamed it would get passed around like this. Trust us. We had no idea."

So far, Shane and Tom have received thousands of sympathetic emails from six continents. Obviously, their creative complaint struck a responsive chord. Take a look at it by clicking on the link at the bottom of this newsletter. Then ask:

If ours is a service economy, why is there so much terrible service?
When you're a customer and feel betrayed by a service provider, what do you do?
When you're providing service and you'd like to be more responsive, innovative or sympathetic, what do you do?
What are your customers saying about the service you provide?

That last question is especially critical. Smart leaders use a very broad definition of the term "customer." They regard their own employees and colleagues as "customers."

The CRM (customer relationship management) folks say responsiveness – or the way people are treated – is a key ingredient in a customer experience that results in loyalty, commitment and return business. The smart retailer or service provider works hard to understand the customer’s expectations, then goes to great lengths to close the gap between expectation and reality. Failure to do so is deadly.

Back to what Tom Farmer told me: "If nothing else, this (the now-famous PowerPoint¨ complaint) proves that hand-to-hand email has power – and the Internet can amplify consumer concerns in amazing ways."

Tom said the thousands (millions?) of people who passed the document along to friends joined a new kind of communications network. "We’re used to networks like NBC or CBS that you view passively" he said. "But ours is spontaneous and proactive. Everyone who helped circulate the message … adopts it and co-owns it and decides where it goes next. We think that’s interesting and important. Given what happened to [the hotel chain] here, so should service providers."

And so should leaders. Believe me, even without the Internet, news can travel extremely fast in your organization. That applies to good news, bad news and even make-believe news (unsubstantiated rumors).

Years before the Internet was in use I consulted for the new CEO of a multi-billion-dollar firm that was on hard times. During the CEO’s first day on the job, the head of the company’s motor pool asked what car he wanted for his personal use. He requested a simple Chevrolet with standard options. Then the conversation went like this –

CEO: "When the car arrives, just give me the invoice and I’ll write out a personal check."

Transportation guy: "Oh, you don’t understand. You get a free company car."

CEO: "No, you don’t understand. This company lost millions of dollars last year. I’ve been asked to turn things around and, beginning today, nobody gets a free car."

The CEO immediately told me about the conversation and asked that I check to see how long it took the word to reach employees a thousand miles from headquarters. What would you guess? Two days? One day? It took less than 10 minutes for people several states away to get word of the new CEO’s policy on executive privilege.

For the next several years I saw that same CEO demonstrate wisdom, courage and kindness in hundreds of private acts that quickly (almost instantly, in some cases) became part of his leadership legacy.

I see other leaders badly erode their credibility by ignoring or miscalculating the power of communication. Somehow they assume that either nobody notices or nobody cares if they are petty or thoughtless in dealing with subordinates and colleagues. Oh, how dangerously wrong they are.

The issue here is not gossip. It’s the natural tendency to pass along information (perceptions) about the way people are treated – which is one of the most important determinants of loyalty, commitment and return business.

Hmmm. That sounds a lot like what the experts say about customers, doesn’t it?

Why the similarity? Because people’s feelings cannot be neatly compartmentalized. They have many of the same needs in every one of life’s roles.

You return again and again to a first-rate retailer like Lands’ End or L.L. Bean or Nordstrom because you’re confident you’ll have a positive experience. You’ll be treated with dignity, you’ll be listened to, your needs will be met. And you reward the retailer with your loyalty and lots of return business which, by many metrics, is the best kind of business.

The great companies we know honor the same principles with their people. They treat them with dignity. They listen to them. They meet their needs. And they’re rewarded with loyal workers who are passionate about strong performance and great results.

For smart leaders, this has very little "Ah-ha" factor. They understand and practice the principle almost instinctively. For others, the notion of employee-as-customer seems foreign and counter-intuitive. They are the ones whose competitive advantage is slipping or nonexistent.

If you’re one of the former, my hat’s off to you. If you’re one of the latter, I simply say "get with the program." You should be treating your employees at least as well as you treat your very best customer.

Either way, you’re building your leadership legacy.