Personal "Signature"
Last fall I was asked to speak to 3,000 employees of a large
supermarket chain in the Midwest on building customer loyalty and
regenerating the spirit in your workplace.
One of the ideas I stressed was the importance of adding a personal
“signature” to your work. With all the downsizing, re-engineering,
overwhelming technological changes and stress in the workplace, I think
it is essential for each of us to find a way we can really feel good
about ourselves and our jobs.
One of the most powerful ways to do this is to do something that
differentiates you from all the other people that do the same thing you
do.
I shared the example of a United Airlines pilot who, after everything
is under control in the cockpit, goes to the computer and
randomly selects several people on board the flight and hand writes them
a thank-you note for their business. A graphic artist I work with always
encloses a piece of sugarless gum in everything he sends his customers,
so you never throw away any mail from him!
A Northwest Airlines baggage attendant decided that his personal
signature would be to collect all the luggage tags that fall off
customers’ suitcases, which in the past have been simply tossed in the
garbage, and in his free time send them back with a note thanking them
for flying Northwest.
A senior manager with whom I worked decided that his personal signature
would be to attach Kleenex to memos that he knows his employees won’t
like very much.
After sharing several other examples of how people add their unique
spirit to their jobs, I challenged the audience to get their creative
juices flowing and to come up with their own creative personal
signature.
About three weeks after I had spoken to the supermarket employees, my
phone rang late one afternoon. The person on the line told me that his
name was Johnny and that he was a bagger in one of the stores. He also
told me that he was a person with Down’s syndrome. He said, “Barbara, I
liked what you said!” Then he went on to tell me that when he’d gone
home that night, he asked his dad to teach him to use the computer.
He said they set up a program using three columns, and each night now
when he goes home, he finds a “thought for the day.” He said when he
can’t find one he likes, he “thinks one up!” Then he types it into the
computer, prints out multiple copies, cuts them out, and signs his name
on the back of each one. The next day, as he bags customers’
groceries-“with flourish”-he puts a thought for the day in each person’s
groceries, adding his own personal signature in a heartwarming, fun and
creative way.
One month later the manager of the store called me. He said,
“Barbara, you won~t believe what happened today. When I went out on the
floor this morning, the line at Johnny’s checkout was three times longer
than any other line! I went ballistic, yelling, ‘Get more lanes open!
Get more people out here,’ but the customers said, ‘No no’ We want to be
in Johnny’s lane-we want the thought for the day!”‘
The manager said one woman approached him and said, “I only used to shop
once a week. Now I come here every time I go by because I want the
thought for the days” (Imagine what that does to the bottom liner) He
ended by saying, “Who do you think is the most important person in our
whole store? Johnny, of course!”
Three months later he called me again. “You and Johnny have transformed
our store! Now, in the floral department, when they have a broken flower
or an unused corsage, they go out on the floor and find an elderly woman
or a little girl and pin it on them. One of our meat packers loves
Snoopy, so he bought 50,000 Snoopy stickers, and each time he packages a
piece of meat, he puts a Snoopy sticker on it. We are having so much
fun, and so are our customers!”
That is spirit in the workplace!
– Barbara A. Glanz