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Articles by Steve Curtin
Where theory and application meet
The term job purpose permeates my writing. It’s not lost on me that some readers will be asking, “What’s the point of articulating a job role’s purpose? Isn’t this just a theoretical exercise with little or no application or benefit inside the real world of work?” That’s a question that, as you may have guessed, I’ve heard before. I’ll tackle it now. Every job role is made up of two dimensions and three parts. These are illustrated in the Venn diagram below.
Misguided purpose (Part 3)
In this 3-part blog series, I will attempt to demystify popular misconceptions related to fostering a purpose-driven workforce. The first post in the series examined the fallacy that organizational purpose is equivalent to environmental sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and other noble causes. In the second installment, I revealed the difference between employees’ life purpose and their purpose at work.
Misguided purpose (Part 2)
In this 3-part blog series, I will attempt to demystify popular misconceptions related to fostering a purpose-driven workforce. The first post in the series examined the fallacy that organizational purpose is equivalent to environmental sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and other noble causes. In the second installment, I will clarify the difference between employees’ life purpose and their purpose at work.
Misguided purpose (Part 1)
Too many well-intentioned consultants and business leaders conflate organizational purpose with environmental sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and other noble causes. They do the same with employees’ life purpose and their purpose at work, in hopes of aligning the two. And they often overlook the distinction between the organization’s mission, vision, or purpose and the higher purpose of one’s job role.
What purpose-driven leaders do differently
After a 20-year career with Marriott, in 2006 I ventured into a second act speaking, writing, and consulting, primarily on the topic of customer service. Over the years, I’ve read dozens of business books to glean insights and keep abreast of trends. Two books have shaped my post-Marriott service philosophy more than any others: Drive (Riverhead, 2009) by Dan Pink and Start with Why (Portfolio, 2009) by Simon Sinek.
Going above and beyond is voluntary
For many years, I’ve gone on record saying that the reason you and I, as customers, consistently receive predictably poor customer service is because exceptional customer service is voluntary; employees don’t have to deliver it, and most don’t. It’s true. While there are things that employees have to do, providing exceptional customer service isn’t one of them. Instead, their focus is typically on protocol, processes, and procedures—the same types of things that managers tend to inspect.
The presence of purpose - Part 2
I was talking with my daughter about a friend of hers who had applied to work at the reception desk of a local health club. Her friend anxiously rehearsed the organization’s mission statement in order to recall it during her job interview. She got the job and later shared that, while the company made a big deal out of the mission statement during the interview process, it wasn’t a part of her daily work experience. This got me thinking about the typical hiring process at most companies.
The presence of purpose - Part 1
I routinely ask groups of managers, by a show of hands, how many would consider themselves to be a purpose-driven leader at work. I see a lot of hands. Next, I ask how many would consider themselves to a values-driven leader at work. Sensing a trap, audience members are more cautious now and look around the room at their peers as they tentatively raise their hands—just not quite as high as they did for the first question.
Does purpose resonate with your team?
“That business purpose and business mission are so rarely given adequate thought is perhaps the most important cause of business frustration and failure.” This Peter Drucker quote is a driving force in my work with clients to identify, instill, and reflect purposeful actions and behaviors that will attract and retain engaged employees and loyal customers. To assess the effectiveness of our efforts, clients use a variety of mechanisms, including employee and customer satisfaction surveys.
Blue ocean thinking
I was thinking about the widely-read business book Blue Ocean Strategy, which was published 20 years ago, and the application of its central premise to purpose-driven work today. In the book, red ocean strategies represent the way business is approached in most industries: competing for contested—and often shrinking—demand and market share.
Inspire employee engagement-on purpose
According to a recent Gallup article, by the end of 2023, 33% of U.S. employees overall were highly engaged, meaning they were highly involved and enthusiastic about their work and workplaces. Unfortunately, engagement levels slipped in the first quarter of 2024, dropping 3 percentage points to 30% among both full- and part-time employees. This is an 11-year low. And 17% of employees were actively disengaged, which is one point higher than the same period a year ago.
Buying in to purpose
Whenever I present to managers about articulating and revealing guiding statements, organizational purpose, or core values to frontline staff and connecting them to their daily work activities, I get the question, “What if they don’t buy in to these corporate ideals?” Now, you might ask, “Why on earth would they not buy in to them?
Happy Accidents | CustomerThink
Can your customers count on superior product and service quality regardless of the employee involved? Or is the quality of their experience reliant on the employee they happen to get? Most employees view their total job role in terms of the requisite job knowledge and job skills needed to reliably execute assigned duties and tasks. They are often oblivious to the greater why behind what they do and how they do it.
Digitize to Personalize
Today’s blog post is a part of a series that I will be sharing over the next couple of weeks related to what I learned at the Agilysys Inspire User Conference in Las Vegas, March 18-20, 2024. I learned to digitize to personalize. Data-informed organizations better serve customers by tailoring offers, activities, and amenities based on shared preferences, past interactions, current transactional insights, and predictive modeling.
Customers Are in Charge
Today’s blog post is a part of a series that I will be sharing over the next couple of weeks related to what I learned at the Agilysys Inspire User Conference in Las Vegas, March 18-20, 2024. I learned that consumers of all ages, ethnicities, and economic levels have embraced digital technology as a natural part of their everyday lives.
Maximize Return on Experience (ROE)
Today’s blog post is a part of a series that I will be sharing over the next couple of weeks related to what I learned at the Agilysys Inspire User Conference in Las Vegas, March 18-20, 2024. I learned the difference between return on investment (ROI) and return on experience (ROE). ROI measures the return on investment relative to its cost.
Strive for Top 5 in product and service quality
Earlier this month I analyzed 27 mid-range hotels in the Orlando market using publicly available data from Tripadvisor. These properties ranged from locations near the airport, convention center, and theme parks. After rating the hotels from best to worst using an approach linked to Bain & Company’s Net Promoter Score methodology, I reviewed hundreds of verbatim comments from the Top 5 (5-Star guest ratings) and Bottom 5 (3- to 1-Star guest ratings) hotels to identify common themes.
The impact of accretion in hospitality
I met a friend for lunch over the weekend. The night before he’d flown in from Las Vegas, having booked a room at a nearby Hampton Inn. He used the Hilton Honors app to reserve and pay for room 404 in advance and awaited an electronic key to arrive to fulfill his desire for a contactless check-in experience. As it happened, the key never appeared so, when he arrived at the hotel after 10:00pm, he was forced to make an unexpected stop at the front desk.
How to create an inspired workforce: Inspire
This is the eighth, and final, post in a series aimed at supporting the efforts of leaders, managers, and supervisors to create an inspired workforce.
How to create an inspired workforce: Evaluate
This post is the seventh in a series devoted to creating an inspired workforce. I will share additional posts over the coming weeks to support leaders, managers, and supervisors in this effort.
How to create an inspired workforce: Operationalize
This post is the sixth in a series devoted to creating an inspired workforce. I will share additional posts over the coming weeks to support leaders, managers, and supervisors in this effort.
Instill a sense of purpose
I came across a WSJ article this week titled Why Is Everyone So Unhappy at Work Right Now? The article mentioned the well-documented tension between the flexibility and independence enjoyed by those who work-from-home and the discontent felt by workers who have been forced to return to the office. Since the start of the pandemic, employers have increased spending on payroll and employee benefits such as mental health, childcare, and well-being bonuses.
What if employees don’t buy-in to the mission?
From time to time, I get a question similar to this: “What do you do if someone doesn’t buy-in to the company mission or purpose and resists your attempts to link these ideals to their job responsibilities?” It’s true that not every employee will buy-in to the organization’s mission, vision, purpose, and core values. Some will be cynical toward these higher ideals and view their jobs as “jobs”—a necessity to earn money to pay for things. This perspective is rooted in employees’ work experiences.
How to create an inspired workforce: Connect
This post is the fifth in a series devoted to creating an inspired workforce. I will share additional posts over the coming weeks to support leaders, managers, and supervisors in this effort.
How to create an inspired workforce: Reveal
This post is the fourth in a series devoted to creating an inspired workforce. I will share additional posts over the coming weeks to support leaders, managers, and supervisors in this effort.
How to create an inspired workforce: Uncover
Earlier this week, I posted the first blog in a series aimed at creating an inspired workforce. I will share additional posts over the coming weeks to support leaders, managers, and supervisors in this effort.
How to create an inspired workforce: Articulate
Yesterday I posted the first blog in this series. Over the next several weeks, I will share additional posts to support the efforts of leaders, managers, and supervisors to create an inspired workforce. In summary, the first step is to discover for yourself, and then reveal to all team members, the total job role. This includes, in addition to acquiring adequate job knowledge and sufficient job skills, reflecting job purpose—a team member’s single highest priority at work.
How to create an inspired workforce: Discover
Over the next several weeks, I will share several blog posts to support the efforts of leaders, managers, and supervisors to create an inspired workforce. Thankfully, my counsel does not include pretending to be someone you’re not by donning a cheerful, animated disposition and leading the team in a pre-shift cheer when that’s not your authentic self, personality, or style. Now, if that’s who you are, then great. Do that, too.
Enforcement versus enrollment
On his podcast, Seth Godin, makes a brilliant distinction between the use of enforcement and enrollment to bring about desired behavior. Enforcement: the act of compelling observance of or compliance with a law, rule, or obligation Enrollment: the act of enrolling or signing up Godin posits that if those in positions of authority take the approach of enforcement (mandated compliance), they will have limited success. A more effective approach is to promote enrollment (voluntary enlistment).
How principles, purpose, and core values link to culture
Tweet Stephen Covey used to tell a story comparing principles to lighthouses. The moral of the story was that you don’t break principles. You break yourself against them. Principles are timeless, natural laws that cannot be broken. They exist whether you choose to recognize them or not. Principles are guidelines for human conduct that are proven to have enduring, permanent value. They are essentially unarguable because they are self-evident. You can’t fake whether you honor principles.
The 3 Ps of purpose-driven customer service (Part 2)
Tweet Last week, I presented Part 1 of an activity that will enable supervisors, managers, and leaders to produce fresh suggestions for how the team can consistently deliver purpose-driven customer service. Part 1 introduced terms to distinguish between actions and behaviors, job knowledge and job skills, job functions and job essence, and organizational purpose and job purpose. These definitions will be helpful when facilitating the activity with your team.
The 3 Ps of purpose-driven customer service (Part 1)
Last month, I presented to a group of hotel general managers. These were the presentation’s three main objectives: Reveal the totality of employees’ job roles. Connect daily work activities to the higher purpose of the job role. Inspire greater employee engagement. Studies confirm that learning retention evaporates quickly without reinforcement. For that reason, we’ve had two follow-up activities aimed at reinforcing these objectives in the four weeks since the presentation.
Don't Leave Your Guests' Experience to Chance
Can your guests count on a superior customer experience regardless of the employee they encounter? Or is the quality of their experience reliant on the employee they happen to get? Most employees are aware of their job functions, the duties and tasks related to their job roles. These are outlined, often in great detail, on their job descriptions. It's what they were hired to do. It's what they were trained to do. And it's what they're paid to do.
HOTEL BUSINESS REVIEW
Coming up in May 2023... Eco-Friendly Practices: Confronting Challenges According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, hotels are accountable for 1% of global emissions. This number will continue to rise as development increases, which is why sustainability initiatives are so important. It's also a primary consideration for ecologically-minded travelers.
Hire for cultural fit
A company’s culture is the byproduct of the collective actions, behaviors, and decision-making of its employees. And employees’ actions, behaviors, and decisions are informed by the organization’s guiding statements and core values. To sustain a desired culture, even as employee turnover introduces a constant stream of new faces, it’s imperative that those responsible for hiring pose effective interview questions.
Repetition, action, and accomplishment
Tweet Most sophisticated organizations have articulated a corporate mission, vision, or purpose statement and a set of core values. If you work for yourself or for a smaller company that has yet to contemplate its why and the root beliefs that guide employee behavior, then start there. Once these have been revealed, it’s critical to do more than circulate a press release, post them on a website, or enshrine them behind a pane of glass that’s framed and mounted in the executive corridor.
Create Alignment Through Constancy of Purpose
Earlier this year, at a live management training event for a sophisticated multi-billion-dollar global company, I posed the following instructions in succession: “Raise your hand if you consider yourself to be a purpose-driven leader.” “Now, raise your hand if you consider yourself to be a values-driven leader.” As you can imagine, most hands went up. I followed up by asking two questions: “What is the organization’s purpose?” One person offered one of the company’s past advertising slogans.
Two types of KPIs
Tweet When you think about Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), what comes to mind? If you’re like most people, you think of metrics that matter to your industry and job function. If you work in a hotel, you may be thinking about KPIs such as occupancy, average daily rate, and revenue per available room. Restaurateurs are preoccupied with KPIs like average check, labor cost ratio, and food waste. And retailers track KPIs including sales per square foot, average basket/spend, and inventory turnover.
Connect every job role to purpose
Tweet Recently, I was a guest on a podcast with Wanda Wallace. She posed some great questions, including one about how to connect every job role, including support roles that operate behind the scenes, to the organization’s purpose. In reflecting on the question, I am reminded of three priorities: Relevance trumps virtue. Everyone contributes. Don’t settle. Relevance trumps virtue.
Purpose-driven leaders are on a quest
For decades, leadership luminaries such as Abraham Zaleznik and John Kotter have examined the differences between managers and leaders. Managers were labeled with terms like “order” and “consistency,” while leaders were celebrated with terms like “visionary” and “inspirational.” When the lists isolating the differences appeared side-by-side, the contrast communicated that leadership attributes should be a manager’s aspirational goal.
How to Elevate Customer Service by Design
For years I’ve been asked during Q&A sessions, “Why is customer service so poor?” It’s often posed as a rhetorical question with no answer expected. But I answer it anyway. The reason that you and I, as customers, consistently receive indifferent, transactional, or apathetic customer service is because exceptional customer service behaviors are always voluntary.
What is My Team’s Aspirational Goal?
This is the final article in a 4-article series that explores each of the Four Questions leaders must ask to reveal the total job role to employees, connect daily work activities to organizational purpose, and inspire the collective pursuit of a common aspirational goal. The act of contemplating and responding to each of the Four Questions is designed to bring job purpose into the light, first for yourself as a leader, and then to help you enlighten your employees.
What purposeful actions and behaviors do I exhibit at work?
This is the third article in a 4-article series that explores each of the Four Questions leaders must ask to reveal the total job role to employees, connect daily work activities to organizational purpose, and inspire the collective pursuit of a common aspirational goal. The act of contemplating and responding to each of the Four Questions is designed to bring job purpose into the light, first for yourself as a leader, and then to help you enlighten your employees.
What values guide my actions and behaviors at work?
Tweet This is the second article in a 4-article series that explores each of the Four Questions leaders must ask to reveal the total job role to employees, connect daily work activities to organizational purpose, and inspire the collective pursuit of a common aspirational goal. The act of contemplating and responding to each of the Four Questions is designed to bring job purpose into the light, first for yourself as a leader, and then to help you enlighten your employees.
What is my purpose at work?
This is the first article in a 4-article series that explores each of the Four Questions leaders must ask to reveal the total job role to employees, connect daily work activities to organizational purpose, and inspire the collective pursuit of a common aspirational goal. The act of contemplating and responding to each of the Four Questions is designed to bring job purpose into the light, first for yourself as a leader, and then to help you enlighten your employees.
Increase your customer service strength
I recently received a delivery of a weightlifting system by a local fitness equipment company. I met the delivery truck in my driveway and gave the foreman a quick orientation about the best door to use, location of the weight room containing the old universal weight machine that required dismantling and removal, and where to find me should they have any questions. Before we separated, the foreman said he would let me know before assembly was complete, and 255 lbs.
While problems may be beyond your control, problem resolution is not
On February 27 of this year, I placed an online order for a Husky 52” mobile workbench from The Home Depot. I chose to have the product delivered to a local store for pickup to avoid the $79 delivery fee. After the order was complete, I received an expected in-store pickup date of between March 24-29. Two days after placing my order I receiver confirmation that my order had shipped. Hooray! Everything was going according to schedule.
What pandemic? | CustomerThink
Over the holidays my wife and I dined at two steakhouses in the Denver area. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, we were not allowed to dine inside either restaurant. Instead, both restaurants had erected two 400’ sq outdoor tents with a seating capacity of 20 guests each. Both locations used exterior propane heaters to offset 30-degree temperatures outside.
Tampering masks true performance
Last week, I placed an order for a case of wine that shipped via FedEx Home Delivery® on Nov. 25th. On Nov. 28th I received a text from FedEx informing me that my delivery was scheduled for the following day, Nov. 29th. The text stated that ID and signature would be required.
Chat gone wrong | CustomerThink
Imagine paying $216 per year for the privilege of receiving your monthly invoice at the correct address. In order to change the billing address on his account, CenturyLink chat reps led one customer on a 68-minute odyssey that would involve four reps, three hand-offs (including the dreaded escalation to a supervisor), multiple requests for repeat information to authenticate the account, and a requirement to upgrade to a phone plan costing $18 per month more than his existing plan.
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