Thursday Three For All
It’s Thursday, kids. And around these parts that means Thursday Three For All…a trio of stuff that I’ve been reading and enjoying this week. Let’s go.
Inside Starbucks’ $35 Million Mission to Make Brand Evangelists of Its Frontline Workers. When is the last time churches spent 35 cents to get volunteers excited about the mission?
“[Employees] are the true ambassadors of our brand, the real merchants of romance and theater, and as such the primary catalysts for delighting customers,” Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz wrote in his book, Onward. Give them reasons to believe in their work and that they’re part of a larger mission, the theory goes, and they’ll in turn personally elevate the experience for each customer–something you can hardly accomplish with a billboard or a 30-second spot.
Great Leaders Simplify. A crucial, much-needed, must-heed article / blog post about the need to cut and/or trim and/or prune things down to their bare minimum. What I’ve noticed – or I guess observed in self-retrospect – about myself in the last few years, is that I have a tendency to get too wordy and make things a bit too complica…um, never mind.
Leaders simplify processes. The best leaders I know don’t like bureaucracy. These men and women are always interested in streamlining the process. The questions they ask include: how can we make it easier, make it faster, reduce the number of steps? How can we simplify the process?
Disneyland Carves Up Exotic Pumpkins. This is ridiculous. I can’t even get my pumpkin’s triangle eyes to line up.
For the fourth year, Disney has hired five carvers to make these unique pumpkins during the Halloween season. The artists usually work two at a time and complete a pumpkin or two each a day.
