ScottWesterman.com

By Scott Westerman
In June of 2006, I went to Harvard. My company sent me to do some post graduate studies focusing on customer service and business metrics. It was a great week. Intense, exhausting and fun. But I realized early on that my real education began before the first class even began. Here’s how I documented the experience nearly four years ago.

Tangible Value
Clear Strategy
Committed Team
Excellent Execution

Those are the four take-aways from my experience at Harvard Business School. The professors were excellent. I was surrounded by smart people who were engaged and eager to learn. The atmosphere was conducive to learning, the technology was top notch and the food was first rate.

But if I had been paying attention, I would have learned everything I needed to know the moment I got off the plane.

When I heard I was going to Cambridge, I have to admit that my heart sank. I would have to endure Logan Airport and the Daedalusian maze that Bostonians call ground transportation.

I’ve written before about my preference for trains. The travel tips the college provided ignore the T, Boston’s rail transit system, and probably for good reason. Although it costs a fraction of a cab ride, it’s a hike to get from the Harvard Square Station to the HBS facility, and the footbridge across the Charles River is not conducive to wheeled luggage.

That left the taxi cabs. I don’t have a beef with Boston cabbies. They have a well deserved reputation for eclecticism in ethnic origin and personality. But the cab line at Logan’s Terminal C will instantly generate strong commentary from the regulars who must endure it’s winding queue.

It didn’t help that my connection arrived at 6:40 and that the opening reception was scheduled for 7. When I travel, the company considers Sundays an adjunct to the five day work week. And since my family time is my most prized possession, I do my best to book the last boat out. Airtran delivered on it’s promise this particular trip, and thanks to my strict carry-on luggage policy, I was at the end of the queue at 6:50 on the button.

The muttering of the regulars seemed to concur that from our remote position, we had an hour wait for a ride into town. That’s when Salem appeared and my lesson in the four take-aways began.

“Where are you going?”

He seemed to be taking a transportation survey among those of us at the tail end of the cab line. Many simply ignored his question, but four of us mumbled answers.

“We can do that. Follow me.”

A woman left her place in line and, with group dynamics in full sway, the rest of our quartet followed. We reentered the terminal and rode the escalator to the departure level.

“What’s this all about,” I asked the guy in front of me.

“You’ll see.”The guy knew something I didn’t.

Beyond the sliding doors there stood a spotless mini-van, a transportation company name stenceled on the door panel. The rear gate was open and Salem began tossing our luggage in the back.
“The front door of your hotel, 20 dollars,”he said to the first woman. He rattled off prices to the rest of us, finishing mine with a final flourish, “Harvard Business School, 30 dollars.”

I scanned my memory of Harvard transpo memorandum. “ab rides from Logan airport typically cost between 40 and 50 dollars.” Tangible value. This would be cheaper. We all climbed aboard.

“I always pick my own customers,” Salem said as we sped away from Terminal C. “I find people who are going in the same general direction, charge less and take as many as I can.”

The Thomas P. Oneal Tunnel connects Logan with the rest of the world. We were headed in that direction now and I could quickly see a line of about 150 cars crawling three abreast toward the toll booths. Salem seemed to be ignoring them as he raced along in the far right lane.

“Do you have one of those toll transponders that let you bypass this mess,” I wondered?

“I’m special,” was Salem’s grinning response. At that instant, we arrived at the front of the toll line and he cut the wheel to the left, sliding into a non-existent space between a vehicle and the toll booth. Salem waived his left hand in a friendly greeting that was met with a sonorous blast and a hail of epithets. We were now at the front of the line.

“I pick my own customers, charge less and give them excellent service,” he said. Clear strategy.

We shot away from the toll booth and were soon threading our way among the traffic in the tunnel. The speed limit therein was 45 miles per, but my eyes saw the speedometer top 60.

“Nobody gets people to where they want to be more quickly than me. My cab is the cleanest and I never make my customers listen to these.” He pointed to an array of CDs clipped to his visor. It was an interesting mix of heavy metal and Arabic. Salem seemed to read our thoughts.

“After 9-11, people are afraid of anyone who looks like an Arab,” he said. “But I love the United States and I love Americans. “And this…” he turned to look at us with his right arm outstretched, “is the realization of my dreams.”

We were on the freeway now, doing 80. Fenway park slid quickly by on the left. Salem’s lesson continued. “My daughter was born here. She will go to college on scholarship, perhaps to medical school. I tell her, ‘you give your best and good things happen’. This is how I work. To be the best. To show her that this is true.” Commitment, clear and simple.

I watched as he dropped off each customer. All gave him more than quoted fee. He had earned 30% in
tips by the time we pulled up the front of McKinley Hall. The entire experience had taken place in 20 minutes. By my calculation, I would be checked in and in the reception hall with time to spare.

Excellent execution.

I gave him fifty dollars.

I thought of Salem many times during the next five days. The Harvard experience was well worth the investment. But even now I smile as I think of how I learned the essence of sustainable success… from a Boston cabbie.

Have a great week!

Feedback welcome to scott@spartanology.com or @MSUScottW on Twitter.
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By Scott Westerman
“I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be.” Thomas Jefferson

I was the new guy in Jacksonville. Not yet in the seat, but about to become the vice president in charge of 640 people and a market of over a million. It was the day before I was to start. To get the lay of the land, I visited the local home and garden show.

Our company had a booth there and I watched, at first from afar, to see how well we were received by the attendees. Sandra and Jamie were our representatives, both gregarious, well trained and helpful.

I walked up and casually began asking questions. They were friendly and responsive. And then I said something that gave me away. I’m not sure what it was but Sandra looked me over and said, “You’re the new VP.”

I was busted, so I came clean. “Yup, I start tomorrow. You guys are doing a terrific job!”

It was then that I saw how others can perceive power. To Sandra, what I was had little bearing on who I was. She kept on talking, shifting gears to where she saw opportunity to improve our business processes and better serve our customers.

Jamie clammed up. I learned later that she told Sandra afterwards, “how could you talk like that to our new vice president?”

We all tend to be in awe of the powerful. When we know that someone has power, we listen more carefully and are circumspect in how we answer. We respond more quickly to their requests and try to curry their favor because we believe that they can influence our destiny.

In some organizational cultures, titles are everything. Rank has its privileges, the saying goes, and many of us spend our careers chasing it.

Over the years, my teams have grown weary of my telling the tale of the Servant Leader. Lao-Tzu defined the concept this way around 500 B.C.: “The highest type of ruler is one of whose existence the people are barely aware. Next comes one whom they love and praise. Next comes one whom they fear. Next comes one whom they despise and defy. When you are lacking in faith, Others will be unfaithful to you. The Sage is self-effacing and scanty of words. When his task is accomplished and things have been completed, All the people say, ‘We ourselves have achieved it.’”

In the gospels, Jesus is said to have told his followers, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Robert Greenleaf is a personal hero of mine. He was an AT&T executive who studied servant leadership extensively. In his pamphlet, “The Servant as Leader” he writes, “The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.”

“The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?”

Larry Spears, longtime head of the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, identified ten characteristic of servant leaders in Greenleaf’s writings:

listening,
empathy,
healing,
awareness,
persuasion,
conceptualization,
foresight,
stewardship,
commitment to the growth of others,
and building community.

No matter what your title may be, it’s possible for you to exert your personal servant power to positively influence others. Help them solve their problems and they are more likely to help you solve yours.

I tell my team, “First seek to serve, find out where it hurts and help make it better.”

The old sales maxim goes: you must first build rapport before you can earn the right to ask for the order. Too many of us come into the room with our sales pitch already underway.

In my one on ones this week, one of my team members asked, “how can I earn respect from someone who is hung up on hierarchy?”

We can earn just about anyone’s regard by helping them build their own self respect. This doesn’t mean capitulating on your principles, or knuckling under to a bully. It does mean choosing carefully how and when we react. As Stephen Covey says, “Between stimulus and response is our greatest power – the freedom to choose.”

Seek to understand why the other person is responding they way they do. Ask clarifying questions. Practice Greenleaf’s ten characteristics of servant leaders. And watch the magic happen.

If it doesn’t bring your boss into it. As your servant, she can help remove the obstacles to your growth and success.

My relationship mentor Keith Ferrazzi says that getting only happens when you give without expectation of return. That’s hard to do when each of us has metrics to deliver to our organization and to our loved ones. But it’s truly the only way that real returns will accrue.

And when the time comes where you are given a title that bestows power upon your shoulders, remember that you’re still a servant… you just have a bigger constituency who are depending on you.

Your greatest power is the power to serve others. Do it joyfully, patiently and tenaciously.

I’ve been reading my Martin Luther King, Jr. this weekend. We’re both Capricorns and on Monday we celebrate his legacy. “I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good,” he said.

And as you express your personal power in this pivotal time in our nation’s history, remember, too, JFK’s cautionary words.

“We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world – or to make it the last.”

I choose the former.

Have a great week!

Your humble servant,

Scott Westerman
@MSUScottW on Twitter
scott@spartanology.com
www.scottwesterman.com

Feedback welcome to scott@spartanology.com or @MSUScottW on Twitter.
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This week I took the MSUAA show on the road to the Grand Rapids YMCA Service Club. The topic was Social Media, that illusive band of applications that are changing the way we communicate with one another. The group included many people who have never dipped a toe in the Twittersphere, to whom Facebook sounds more like a collection of high school senior pictures, and LinkedIn was the way you installed another charm on your wife’s bracelet.

So we kept it simple.

If you’re new to Social Media, or want a good refresher on the basics, take a listen.

Audio: Social Media 101 16:00 7.5mb MP3

It’s firing around the Internet at warp speed. Adam Bertocci’s Shakespearian version of The Big Lebowski is overtaxing his home website to the point where it’s sometimes impossible to bring it up on your browser. Adam is an award winning screenwriter and filmmaker. Check out his professional portfolio here. His Elizabethian take on the Dude, or “the Nave”, is right on thyne money.

So, as a public service, here be the PDF file of his excellent mirth and merriment.

What if Shakespare wrote The Big Lebowski PDF

Link to the author’s site