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Authors: David Novak
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“whatever it takes” to build customer loyalty. To encourage accountability, they created an ownership culture, and every employee in their stores wore an apron sporting the message, I ’M AN OWNER .
Competitive brand differentiation:
At Target, leaders talked about the concept of exaggerating the differences. CEO Bob Ulrich told me a story about how their aisles were bigger than the competition’s and every year someone would come in talking about how it would be more cost-effective to make the aisles smaller. To which he would reply, “But then we wouldn’t be Target, we’d be like everyone else.”
Continuity in people and process:
At UPS we learned how they put processes and discipline around what mattered most to their business—their drivers. They had developed a whole science of how to make delivering packages easier and more efficient for the driver, from the comfort level of their seats to the height of the step going in and out of the truck. Every detail mattered. And we noticed that all the great companies had CEOs and functional leaders who had worked together for years so they knew their business cold.
Consistency in results:
Coke and GE excelled in this area. At GE we learned about what Jack Welch called the “relentlessdrumbeat of performance.” These companies continually measured performance to make sure they were getting the results they wanted.
Just think about how much we advanced our position on the learning curve, in terms of what we needed to do to be a great company, by going out and studying those that were already great. One best-practices tour gave our company a base of knowledge and a focus that we have been building on ever since.
BECOME A KNOW-HOW JUNKIE
That early best-practices tour really reinforced the idea in our company that, for any problem we need to solve, learning all we can about it is the best place to start. There is always more to know, and when people ask me what I look for when hiring someone, an avid learner tops the list. People who are avid learners love what they do and seek out know-how wherever they can find it, which makes them a whole lot smarter and their results a whole lot better.
The examples below are tangible benefits that have come about as a result of our companywide commitment to always be learning, to being “know-how junkies.” They should give you some ideas about how you, as leader, can seek out opportunities for both you and your team to expand your knowledge about your business:
McDONALD’S IMMERSION DAY : Over the past six years, McDonald’s has grown its average unit volume by 40 percent, which resulted in a dramatic turnaround of the brand. So a few years ago, I asked every leadership team we had around the world to go to school on McDonald’s. We learned everything we could about them through store visits, research, and tapping former employees, which sparked our commitment to focus even more on the basics of operational excellence as well as to leverage our restaurants more throughout the day with the launch of breakfast menus and by expanding our beverage line beyond carbonated soft drinks.
BEST-PRACTICING APPLE : On the surface, Apple’s business may seem very different from ours. Nevertheless, the CEO of Taco Bell, Greg Creed, and his senior leadership team visited Apple in 2010 because the company has had such phenomenal success with creating new products that people want and a brand image that people buy into. One of the things Apple leaders talked about was the idea of “addition by subtraction,” which for them meant that, even though they could put forty buttons on an iPod, isn’t it more appealing for the customer to have to deal with just a few? Everything for them comes back to clarity and simplicity, and those concepts have been applied by leaders at Taco Bell in a variety of ways. For example, the team launched a menu-simplification effort that reduced the number of food items offered in order to make it easier for
Competitive brand differentiation:
At Target, leaders talked about the concept of exaggerating the differences. CEO Bob Ulrich told me a story about how their aisles were bigger than the competition’s and every year someone would come in talking about how it would be more cost-effective to make the aisles smaller. To which he would reply, “But then we wouldn’t be Target, we’d be like everyone else.”
Continuity in people and process:
At UPS we learned how they put processes and discipline around what mattered most to their business—their drivers. They had developed a whole science of how to make delivering packages easier and more efficient for the driver, from the comfort level of their seats to the height of the step going in and out of the truck. Every detail mattered. And we noticed that all the great companies had CEOs and functional leaders who had worked together for years so they knew their business cold.
Consistency in results:
Coke and GE excelled in this area. At GE we learned about what Jack Welch called the “relentlessdrumbeat of performance.” These companies continually measured performance to make sure they were getting the results they wanted.
Just think about how much we advanced our position on the learning curve, in terms of what we needed to do to be a great company, by going out and studying those that were already great. One best-practices tour gave our company a base of knowledge and a focus that we have been building on ever since.
BECOME A KNOW-HOW JUNKIE
That early best-practices tour really reinforced the idea in our company that, for any problem we need to solve, learning all we can about it is the best place to start. There is always more to know, and when people ask me what I look for when hiring someone, an avid learner tops the list. People who are avid learners love what they do and seek out know-how wherever they can find it, which makes them a whole lot smarter and their results a whole lot better.
The examples below are tangible benefits that have come about as a result of our companywide commitment to always be learning, to being “know-how junkies.” They should give you some ideas about how you, as leader, can seek out opportunities for both you and your team to expand your knowledge about your business:
McDONALD’S IMMERSION DAY : Over the past six years, McDonald’s has grown its average unit volume by 40 percent, which resulted in a dramatic turnaround of the brand. So a few years ago, I asked every leadership team we had around the world to go to school on McDonald’s. We learned everything we could about them through store visits, research, and tapping former employees, which sparked our commitment to focus even more on the basics of operational excellence as well as to leverage our restaurants more throughout the day with the launch of breakfast menus and by expanding our beverage line beyond carbonated soft drinks.
BEST-PRACTICING APPLE : On the surface, Apple’s business may seem very different from ours. Nevertheless, the CEO of Taco Bell, Greg Creed, and his senior leadership team visited Apple in 2010 because the company has had such phenomenal success with creating new products that people want and a brand image that people buy into. One of the things Apple leaders talked about was the idea of “addition by subtraction,” which for them meant that, even though they could put forty buttons on an iPod, isn’t it more appealing for the customer to have to deal with just a few? Everything for them comes back to clarity and simplicity, and those concepts have been applied by leaders at Taco Bell in a variety of ways. For example, the team launched a menu-simplification effort that reduced the number of food items offered in order to make it easier for
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