Posts by Service Elements and Christine Hill featuring the aviation business and airport customer service tip of the week.
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Service Story: Profile of Excellence
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Wednesday May 15, 2013A co-worker recently discovered an article (Molloy Associates, 1988) written about her brother-in-law on his Commitment to Excellence for outstanding contributions to the Commercial Finance and Leasing Industry. He commented that his commitment to excellence goes back to his origins. His father, a former Southwestern Bell telephone lineman, provided the necessary focus by teaching his son that "whatever you do, just be the best". From those lessons, whether it was a game of golf, a $5,000 transaction or a $5 million transaction, he approached it with his best effort. People who worked with her brother-in-law over the years saw that more could be accomplished out of what seemed like less by "good old-fashioned hard work". In addition, he... -
Soft Skills Have Hard Value
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Wednesday May 8, 2013Body builders and professional trainers understand the importance of and spend a lot of time building “core strength”. “Core” Training with regard to getting in shape is the balanced development of the deep and superficial muscles that stabilize, align, and move the trunk of the body, especially the abdominals and muscles of the back. It is now common understanding among many of these physical fitness professionals that without core training, optimum development will not be reached. The same is true in training for business and professional development. What has traditionally been referred to as “soft skills” training and includes proficiencies such as communication skills, conflict resolution and negotiation, personal... -
L.I.D. Template for Meetings
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Wednesday May 1, 2013Too often, management meetings tilt too far in one area – for example the ‘information dump’. Many meeting audits show senior managers spending up to 80% of meeting time listening to presentations, with little time left for real dialogue and sometimes even less for new learning. A format that could be useful for regular management meetings is LID: L – Learning I – Information D- Dialogue To gain a more balanced agenda for meetings, 1/3 of the meeting should be set aside for each of the above objectives: 1/3 for Learning; 1/3 for information; and 1/3 for dialogue. The discipline of the three equal parts ensures that planning is a broad participatory process, not driven solely by individual agendas. Participatory... -
How to Make A Company Great!
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Wednesday April 24, 2013What does it take to be a truly GREAT Company? In a recent article in Harvard Business Review, researchers presented their findings for a two year study that identified top-performing companies*. Their data came from 25,000 companies that have traded on U.S. exchanges anytime from 1966 to 2010. They not only identified top performers, but tried to find common reasons why these companies held their status for so long. The top companies were put into three categories: Miracle Worker , Long Runner and Average Joe according to their competitive positioning. There were a total of 174 Miracle Workers . Miracle Workers were companies that fell in the top 10% of ROA (return on assets) for a significant amount of time. Long Runners... -
Givers and Takers: Part II
By ServiceElements, Christine Hill - Wednesday April 17, 2013Last week’s article expressed the importance of recognizing that every organization’s success depends on the generosity of its employees. Every organization has employees that make decisions every day about whether to be givers or takers. To continue this topic, we return to the study done by Stanford University on givers and takers in organizations. The least productive workers in this study were givers —workers who had done many more favors for others than they had received. But when Flynn turned his spotlight on the top-producing workers, he found that they, too, were givers who did more favors than they received. Those in the middle were the takers . The successful givers produced 50% more annual revenue, on...
