Creating Passionate Users

Management's role in passionate users

A few months ago, Skyler started working part-time at a Mrs. Fields cookie store at a local mall here in Colorado. They treated her--no, all employees--like ex-convicts. The default company assumption was "Employees are NOT to be trusted!"

This came through in policy decisions, but never more obvious than the what-to-do-with-leftover-cookies-at-the-end-of-the-night policy:

Employees must throw away ALL unpurchased cookies at the end of the night. Employees are expressly forbidden from taking leftover cookies home.

Skyler is the kind of person who collects stray animals and, in some cases, stray people. She has a soft spot for the homeless. She'd be delighted to take a nightly walk down Pearl street (or one of the other places in the area where you might find street folks of various flavors) and hand out leftover cookies (which, as a somewhat-obnoxiously born-again vegeterian/health nut, she'd accompany with a lecture on nutrition...)

But no, those cookies are destined for the trash heap. If she wants to take them, she'll have to pay for them. Because the company policy of "you must throw the cookies away" is based on the assumption that Employees are Bad. They cannot be trusted. If they're allowed to take leftover cookies home--so goes the company's conventional wisdom--you just KNOW what they'll do--they'll get closer to the end of the night and then go on a baking binge to generate as many leftover cookies as possible.

But hmmmm... if that's the worst that can happen... could it possibly be worth the bad will it creates between employees and The Management? And while it doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize that treating employees this way is NOT the path to stellar customer service (let alone something like passionate users), I'm stunned that this kind of management practice still happens.

Let's say the cost of the "extra" cookie dough produced by the highly immoral college student with the cookie fetish is, oh, $60.00 per month. This adds up, sure. But what about the cost of the policy aimed to prevent it? Skyler couldn't wait to find another job, in large part because of this attitude of distrust. The cost of employee turnover probably averages in the hundreds of dollars per month, and it's no stretch to assume that the less you trust your employees, the higher the employee turnover.

So the company LOSES money on the policy because what they save in cookie dough they lose in the costs associated with poor employee retention.

And we haven't even touched on whether this ripples through to actual cookie revenue in the store. Do employees who aren't trusted behave as nicely to the customers as those who ARE trusted? Perhaps it's subtle--after all, Skyler isn't going to be rude to people regardless of the company's policies. But still... that little drain on her personal enthusiasm while at work infuses everything she does, and that includes every interaction with customers.

Of course, most of us are not entry-level employees at a fast-food mall store, but it's amazing how this attitude of mistrust exists in other companies for even the high-paid individual contributors from software developers to designers. Even if the company doesn't have these kinds of "we don't trust you" policies, their lack of trust still shows. Managers who question everything you do...who don't believe you're capable of working outside the strict procedures and rules set down by Those Who Know All Things And Make The Important Decisions.

I'm continually surprised by companies that hire someone for, say, a $100K a year position, and then treat them like they might do or say the wrong thing at any moment. They aren't allowed to talk to the press. They aren't allowed to blog. They aren't allowed to make critical decisions about the customers. They aren't allowed to do what they THOUGHT they were hired to do!

Every contemporary management book and philosophy (and just about every manager) says that the key to successful management is: "Hire good people and then get out of their way." But how many companies or individual managers actually do that?

The footnote to Skyler's story is that she worked at Mrs. Fields only until the nanosecond that she found another job, which she did, at the Boulder Einstein's Bagels. And when I drop in for a latte or a bagel, I watch her in action interacting with the line of customers (the place is BUSY) and I notice the change. She's always nice, but there's something more. I now see in her the way people act when they know they're trusted and respected, and I swear the customers can feel it. And if even 2% of those customers decide to come back again that week simply because they had such a pleasant, energetic encounter with the bagel clerk...

[FYI: I've been out of commission for the last ten days, but I'm back : ) Sorry about the missing blogs... and Beth couldn't jump in because Beth and Eric are in the midst of physically driving/moving from Santa Fe back to Bainbridge Island in Washinton. If you've emailed me in the last week, I'm still trying to catch up. Thanks for participating while we've been gone!]