MBA Critical For Success
During his tenure as the owner and CEO of Watermarc Food Management, a restaurant management company, Ghulam Bombaywala developed an appreciation for managers who had an MBA – but not an MBA of the usual kind. For Bombaywala, MBA stood for Mop-Bucket Attitude. He wanted the managers he hired to recognize that “no one, including me, is above picking up a mop and bucket to make the [restaurants] look the best they can be.”
Taking this line of thinking a little further, you might recast an MA as a Motivational Attitude, a BA as a Beneficial Attitude, and so on. It is hard to overstate the importance of the attitude your leaders take toward their work and toward the people they lead.
- Adapted from The Wiley Book Of Business Quotations
Don’t Fight and Flee; Socialize
In their book, The Leader as Communicator, Robert Mai and Alan Akerson suggest instead of retreating separately after arguments, debates or tough negotiations with staff, team members, or peers, get together for lunch or coffee. If the exchange was so heated that a cooling off period is required, do that first.
Authors point out that there is something good to be said for reestablishing the normal flow of work, in which a little conflict is nothing to worry about. Life and work goes on. Let the tension lapse and find something else to talk about over coffee or lunch.
Asking The Customer Focused Question
Intuit, American Express, GE and other companies are beginning to measure customers’ satisfaction by asking them this question, “On a scale of zero through 10, how likely is it that you would recommend us to your friends or colleagues?”
This question strategy is based upon that belief that asking customer to consider whether they’d put town own credibility on the line begets more honest opinions than traditional questionnaires. Companies report that recommendation scores do correlate closely to revenue growth, indicate when customers have doubts and encourage listening to customers.
Is it worth a try with you customers?
Adapted from BusinessWeek magazine
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“Opportunities are endless, especially when we are always looking for them,” says 
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