I am excited to announce that we have our first guest blog post below authored by Regan Howell. The pictures were provided by me to give visual symbolic representation to Regan’s thoughts.
By Regan Howell
As I was thinking about the power of culture, I keep coming back to an experience I had at my last job.
Four of us were flying from Houston Texas to Dammam, Saudi Arabia. Two flew a US-based airline, one flew an Arabian Gulf airline, and one flew a European airline. In all four cases there were tickets sold, baggage handled, multiple aircraft, pilots, flight attendants, ticket agents, etc. But culture of those three airlines determined the experience (the “feel”) of both employees and customers. The experiences of the four of us; the meals, the material of the seats, the interaction with flight crews, the entertainment was pre-determined to an significant extent by whether we flew Airline X, Y, or Z!
As we look at our own organizations, what experience do we want our teammates to have? What experience do we want our customers to have? What do we want them to “feel”? What does our organization need to be in order to succeed, or survive?
I am interested in what the two on the same flight experienced. I would suspect that even on the same flight they experienced different things. Specializing our cultures to notice individuals and to treat them simmilarly and uniquely is difficult yet doable.
That is a great question and an astute observation. I will have to check with Regan on the experience of the two who had the same airline, but I think you bring up a valuable point. I love the idea of being intentional in trying to specialize our cultures to treat individuals similarly and uniquely and agree that it is a difficult thing to accomplish. I would love to hear any ideas, recommendations, or examples to consider in how we could take on this worthy but hard objective?