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Scott Cook, Intuit
Think Young
An upcoming history of Hewlett-Packard suggests the great growth businesses came from two places: the market and the bottom of the organization. Expect your contributions to be led the same way, by your youngest employees. Seek them out. Make them your mentors. Get them into a room and ask them to lead in creating ways for your company and customers to benefit. Ask them to come back and share their paper prototypes directly with you. Then, help them act on some of the ideas that emerge. This has been a part of Intuit's culture from Day One. A quarter-century later, we now host Idea Jams for our 8,000 employees, where great ideas are suggested, recognized, and funded to accelerate innovation. Consider setting up your own in-house "science fairs" so employees can showcase their thinking.
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Fritz Maytag, Anchor Brewing
Take a Risk
We had an employee back in the '90s who once said to me, "I wish I was here in the '60s and '70s, when we were revolutionizing the beer industry worldwide." I thought about it and said, "You know, those were the days." We were making wonderful beer, and the world was beating a path to our door. But by the time that employee came to me, there were microbreweries everywhere. That got me thinking about ways to differentiate Anchor Brewing without spending a ton of cash. I decided on rye whiskey. We released the whiskey, Old Potrero, in 1996, after maybe $100,000 in start-up costs. We already had some of the machinery, and we had only one employee on the project, in addition to me. Today, the ROI on it is good, but that's not really the point. It has helped the company qualitatively more than quantitatively. More than anything, it has increased morale, given us a new edge, a new personality, and a nice little feather in our cap. Sometimes, you forget how fun it is to try new things. And you don't have to bet the ranch to do it.
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Barbara Corcoran, The Corcoran Group
Furlough Your Sales Staff
Hold a sales meeting and ask salespeople to take out their calendars and pick a few weeks to take for vacations. A recession is a good time for this, because sales are low anyway, and it's an opportunity to reverse the mood of the company. No one wants to buy from a desperate salesperson with sweaty palms.
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Ari Weinzweig, Zingerman's Community of Businesses
Be A Mensch
Going out of your way to do nice things for staff members can go a long way. Bring them a book they are interested in. Compliment them in front of their families so they feel good. Buy a small gift. The better you make them feel, the more likely they will pass on the cheer to customers.
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Richard Thalheimer, The Sharper Image
Disconnect Your Phone
In my new company, RichardSolo, we have eliminated phone ordering. Customers can't buy over the phone even if they want to. Providing customer service over e-mail is not only cheaper -- it's more efficient. It's hard to monitor phone calls, but with e-mail, you can quickly read all the customer comments. And if you do it right, e-mail doesn't have to be perceived as less personal. The key is to be polite, warm, and, especially, prompt. We try to respond to every customer comment or question in 30 minutes or less.
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Tony Hsieh, Zappos.com
Pay Employees to Quit
During the first month of training, Zappos offers new employees $2,000 to quit, plus their time worked. It sounds expensive, but in the long term, it's not. We want people to be here because they are passionate about customer service and because they like our culture. We don't want people who are just here for a paycheck. Those people generally end up leaving six or nine months down the road. By that point, you have invested a lot of time and money in training them. On top of that, if they are not really a culture fit, that can breed negativity, which spreads pretty quickly. That costs the company way more than $2,000.
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Chip Conley, Joie de Vivre Hospitality
Find Ways to Praise Employees
When you are going through rough times, it's easy to have depressing meetings and talk about things that aren't working instead of reminding one another about the things that are. So in 2002, the last time business was hurting like it is now, we started ending our weekly executive meetings a bit differently. During the last 10 minutes, any one of the 16 executives in the meeting could raise his or her hand and recognize someone in the company for outstanding work. So, for example, our VP of operations once commended a bellman named Joe at Hotel Rex who worked 16-hour shifts, two days in a row, when the only elevator in the hotel wasn't working. Then, the VP of IT said, "I'll go and thank him."
Just something small like that has had big, positive effects on our business. For that day, Joe was probably a burst of sunshine to everyone he came into contact with. Also -- and this is something I wasn't expecting -- we really helped build interdepartmental relationships. In a downturn, everyone starts to point fingers, and the silos between departments really start to kick in. But in Joe's case, he starts thinking that the IT department is pretty cool, because the head of IT took the time to come to him and thank him.
