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Case Study – Deplaning Delta Air Lines in Detroit

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What do you get when you combine a New Year's holiday flight, Delta Air Lines, and a tight Detroit connection?  Gate agents yelling at pilots publicly, questionable security and safety standards, needless threats... and what I hope will be one excellent management case study on what happens when our employees get stressed, lose perspective, and literally no one is in control. A hazard of my profession is that I see exceptional service often - exceptionally good and exceptionally bad.  And when that happens, I … [Read more...]

Break All the Rules: Business Lessons from MasterChef

MasterChef

I have to admit I have this love/hate, moth-to-the flame relationship with reality TV: I resent that it's the nearly the only thing made any more, and yet I keep getting drawn back in. But what really fascinates me is when, like last night, an episode of MasterChef can serve as an advertisement for the importance of market research. If you didn't see it, the final challenge of the night pitted Red Team vs. Blue Team in true Gordon Ramsay style to cook the best hamburger for hungry truckers.  The truckers … [Read more...]

Eat Your Own Dog Food!

Process improvement mean high performance and higher profit.

The challenge with working in performance improvement is you see room for improvement everywhere... My wife and I just got back from a pretty good dinner at a Zagat-rated restaurant in Woodinville, WA. "Pretty good" might seem good, but at $83 it should have been "great." Frankly, I'm not concerned about the money. I'm concerned that I happen to know that the owners of this particular restaurant are dismayed about the current downturn and are seeking a way to turn things around. If only they had a way to … [Read more...]