Below is an Autogenerated Transcript

If you want people to come up with new ideas and new insights, you’ve got to start by getting them to think about what it is that they’re doing from another perspective- a different point of view. And that requires education. Education in fundamental service principles like the one I just showed you on the six levels and how the stairs are always slipping down. Education provides people with insight. It gives them an “Aha! I hadn’t really thought about it that way.” For example, service is not what I do. Service is what someone else experiences as a result of the actions that I have taken. From that new perspective is where you’re going to get people having new ideas.

Saying, “Well, as long as we’re looking at this from another point of view, what if we tried this?” “What if we did that?” “What if we invented?” “What if?” And they’re going to get a much better understanding of that first sentence that says, “What is service waste?” Let me answer that question for you.

Service waste is any action that you take to serve a customer, that the customer does not appreciate and value. So you may be doing a lot of legacy procedures or treating everybody the same way, but if everybody is not the same person, you could be committing a lot of inefficiency and waste. So when you teach people, aha, they have insights, aha, they get new ideas, and then not every idea is a good idea. You’ve got to evaluate the ideas. Some ideas can be done quickly. Others will take time. Some can be done by the people who came up with the idea on their own. Others will need more cooperation and collaboration from others. And some can be done at no cost or low cost. And some will need a budget.

Ideas that can be done now by the people who come up with the ideas and don’t cost a lot of money. Those are called quick wins and there should be nothing in the way of making them happen. The other ideas should be evaluated, improved and prioritized so that the best ideas rise to the top and then get implemented. The prioritization is quick wins now. Longer term, look for things that are important. Choose ideas that will have high impact. Focus on those that, when they’re successful, can be scaled to other areas. And finally, then you take the action.

You know who is going to do it, what they’re going to do when they’re going to do it, how you’re going to track progress, what support they need and how you’re going to record and share the results. So when you hear people say, “I want to inculcate the DNA of excellent service into my culture and I want it to happen quickly.”, they don’t necessarily understand what it takes. Teaching people, getting them to think, generating ideas, evaluating, prioritizing, and then taking action.