I have been reading the book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins and it is essentially a study that was done over a number of years that looked at companies that went from good to great and those that didn’t…it also goes over similarities and differences between those companies that went from Good to Great and those that didn’t…

A common theme throughout the book is culture, leadership and the people….and how it plays a factor in companies going from Good to Great….

I literally put down the book and head out for a haircut to SuperCuts (i need a simple buzz and trim haircut) at 4:50pm on a Sunday…when I get there four hairstylist are working and I already begin to hear one or two say….”This is my last haircut, then I can’t do more, I gotta get out of here”…..then the phone rings….”Don’t answer it, tell them we are closed at 5….I need to get out of here”….all this time I am sitting waiting for a haircut and clearly don’t want one of the “unhappy” SuperCuts team members cutting my hair (too bad as I am an excellent tipper!).  Bottom line, if this was Boss Undercover, SuperCuts management would NOT be happy….trust me!

To the contrary, my wife and I recently founded our own 501(c)3 non-profit charity called ODASH …..I went to Chase bank to setup the proper bank accounts and as I was leaving the bank my cell phone rang and it was Chase congratulating me on my recent incorporation of ODASH and asked if I had any banking needs….quite a different experience that what I ad with SuperCuts…I actually thought Chase was monitoring me from their parking lot before they made the call…LOL  Bottom line is that I had a much more positive customer experience with Chase – thank you Chase!

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 28th, 2010 at 11:26 am and is filed under Entrepreneurship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.