Covey - The 7 habits of highly effective people

"Everybody," he replied.
"Everybody? Really, everybody?"
"Yes."
"Housekeepers?"
"Yes."
"Waitresses?"
"Yes."
"Desk clerks?"
"Yes. Do you want to see the mission statement written by the people who greeted you
last night?"
He pulled out a mission statement that they, themselves, had written that was
interwoven with all the other mission statements. Everyone, at every level, was involved.
The mission statement for that hotel was the hub of a great wheel. It spawned the
thoughtful, more specialized mission statements of particular groups of employees. It
was used as the criterion for every decision that was made. It clarified what those people
stood for -- how they related to the customer, how they related to each other. It affected
the style of the managers and the leaders. It affected the compensation system. It affected
the kind of people they recruited and how they trained and developed them. Every
aspect of that organization, essentially, was a function of that hub, that mission statement.
I later visited another hotel in the same chain, and the first thing I did when I checked in
was to ask to see their mission statement, which they promptly gave me. At this hotel, I
came to understand the motto "Uncompromising personalized service" a little more.
For a three-day period, I watched every conceivable situation where service was called
for. I always found that service was delivered in a very impressive, excellent way. But it
was always also very personalized. For instance, in the swimming area I asked the
attendant where the drinking fountain was. He walked me to it.
But the thing that impressed me the very most was to see an employee, on his own, admit
a mistake to his boss. We ordered room service, and were told when it would be
delivered to the room. On the way to our room, the room service person spilled the hot
chocolate, and it took a few extra minutes to go back and change the linen on the tray and
replace the drink. So the room service was about fifteen minutes late, which was really
not that important to us.
Nevertheless, the next morning the room service manager phoned us to apologize and
invited us to have either the buffet breakfast or a room service breakfast, compliments of
the hotel, to in some way compensate for the inconvenience.
What does it say about the culture of an organization when an employee admits his own
mistake, unknown to anyone else, to the manager so that customer or guest is better
taken care of!
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