The Right Knot Improves Customer Service
I discovered a better way to serve my customers … all because I just learned how to tie my shoes.
This is in no way a poor reflection on my mother or maternal grandmother, who taught me as a young child how to tie the shoestring knot using a big ribbon around the neck of a 4-foot-long stuffed toy tiger. This is a reflection of a good-enough process providing sufficient results with easy-to-correct deviations. I never thought twice about tying my shoes … until a trustworthy source recently asked a fundamental question:
Are you tying your shoes the right way?
Of course, I am. Aren't I? My shoestring knot has two loops of near equal size, the shoestring ends (aglets) do not drag the ground, my shoes stay on my feet, and I only occasionally have to re-tie a loose knot.
Good enough.
But Runners World brings up the point that there is a right knot: it stays tight and many of us are tying the correct knot (a reef knot) on one shoe, but not the other. That’s me; how about you?
Now that I know the difference and I have bought-in to the benefit, basic though it may be, I’m relearning how to tie my left shoe (one of my 3 Words in action: Notebook). Six Sigma process improvement folks call this DMAIC: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control. I’m in the Improve stage and finding it surprisingly difficult to alter my habit, but now my deliberately tied shoestrings are matching examples of beauty and performance (not like the pre-insight image above).
This got me wondering about possible good-enough habits in the way I process work, in the way I work with others, and in how my team conducts business. I took a thoughtful look at the everyday things I never thought twice about, and found that I should. A tweak here and change there would achieve an even better experience for my customers and me.
Have you intentionally thought about the processes you initiate or manage: the way you manage your email interactions, engage in personal discussions, address challenging situations?
Many years ago my Psyc 101 professor started the year by wordlessly projecting this statement on the screen for 10 seconds, “You have every right to be who you are, but no right to stay that way.” Now I’m thinking about how that statement applies to how I do things.
I found ways to improve. What did you find?
