I love Seth Godin. his books, blog, and insights. I just finished his most recent book ("The Dip" is due out May 10th), Small is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas. I read it from cover to cover, over the course of a couple of weeks as he recommended. It's the first business book I have read from cover to cover in the past year. While I could write about many other riffs, the one that jumped out at me was about choosing to join the best of the best.
"You get to make a choice. You can remake that choice every day, in fact. It's never too late to choose optimism, to choose action, to choose excellence. It takes only a moment-one second-to decide.
Before you finish this paragraph, you have the power to change everything that's to come. And you can do that by asking yourself (and your colleagues) the question that every organization and every individual needs to ask today: Why not be great?"
It has been my experience-I have asked that question many times in my career-that, despite a wide range of responses to the question, the root of every one of them is that they choose not to be great because they don't know how to transform themselves or their organization into a focus on excellence.
They can't visualize, imagine, or even set a goal to excel because they don't know what to do next. In consumer sales and service they look at a company like Nordstrom and believe it is about everything they can't afford to do as a company. "Well, we just don't have the budget to afford a return policy like they do." When discussing Nordstrom, the extraordinary quality of their face-to-face service is what sets them apart from most other retailers. As the last paragraph of their history (on their website) states, "The company's philosophy has remained unchanged for more than 100 years since its establishment by John W. Nordstrom in 1901: offer the customer the best possible service, selection, quality and value."
I have been shopping at Nordstrom's for decades and I am yet to meet someone who wasn't focused on helping me as if i was the most important person they were going to meet that day. They recruit, attract, and develop sincere highly motivated personnel. Their leaders educate, motivate, and appreciate their staffs daily. Most of how they became great is about simple common sense.
The questions I would ask myself, my colleagues, and my staff would be: How do we become great?, Does anyone have any ideas? Has anyone been great or a part of a great organization? Does anyone know how, other than their great products, Nordstrom became great?
As Seth Godin says, "You get to make a choice." Choose to start a discussion about how you and your organization are going to be great.
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