Out and About
Remember the two houses on Avenida De Sol that flooded over and over, and the county finally agreed to purchase them (so it couldn’t happen to anyone else)? Those two houses are slated to be demolished, but first the county is loaning it to the local fire departments to do some training. They are very excited to have an actual house to train in. They had the houses for two weeks and they made good use of them. We have that story on page 2A.
There are just not enough hours in the day. There is a lot that needs to be done, and I see inefficiencies all around me that I want to fix – and a lot of them aren’t mine to fix. However, there is a lot I need to work on as well. Not sure what the psychology is behind this – but it is a lot more fun to work on someone else’s problems and ignore mine. I know theoretically – I need to help myself first – but I have more motivation to help others than myself…and it gets me in trouble. I’ve learned that you can’t help someone more than they want to help themselves. I love feedback, but there are a lot of people that don’t. If people didn’t care, they wouldn’t give you feedback. It is a lot easier to just be indifferent – unless you are me. Honest and constructive feedback is worth more than gold. And to prove it I just Googled “Feedback is gold” and I got the following back: “Every piece of customer feedback for you and your business is valuable. Gold dust if you like. A customer telling you everything is good is an endorsement that you should continue as is. A customer telling you that there’s room for improvement gives you an opportunity to learn, to develop and to improve.
Asking a lame question doesn’t work. “Is everything okay?” in passing conversation is a closed question and will solicit usually a “yes” answer. It’s an easy response. Asking “What could we do to improve our service?” is an open question and will solicit answers that will allow us to improve.”
The following comes under the category of, “be careful what you wish for.” We had mice running around the attic of our office in Milton. We are leasing there and the team members at that location said they were hearing scurrying while they worked. I told them that if it bothered them – to please let the landlord know. Well, apparently the landlord decided to put up poison or traps. Guess what, now they are not enjoying the smell of decomposing critters. We have contacted the landlord again to ask them to remove the source of the stench. In the meantime, luckily, I have air fresheners there that I can turn up the volume on (so to speak) with an app on my phone and we are doing our best to cover up the smell until the critter getters arrive.
Quote of the Week: “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” Ken Blanchard (1939- ) Author, Motivational speaker, Consultant, Management expert