Can I Alone Make a Difference?

Stephan Covey, in his book “The Speed of Trust”, wrote an incident which in my opinion, is a great learning for all of us. Stephan Covey, former president and COA of Covey Leadership centre, had travelled to another state within US for a workshop. He reached late (at around 10 pm) at the hotel reception and started his check-in formalities. While doing so, Stephan asked receptionist if dinning hall was open so that he could take dinner.

Let me tell you about US culture, in fact western culture. People in US take dinner very early, they sleep very early and they wake-up very early. Not like us, we feel proud when we mention our last night dinner time to our friends and neighbours. “Yesterday I had my dinner at 11 pm and then I watched a movie. I went to bed at around 2 in the night”. Other friend then increases the time by another hour and mentions proudly that his dinner was at 12 in the night and he slept at 3 in the morning.

In US, most of the restaurants stop serving at around 10 pm. This I realized during my first visit to US in 2003. Myself and my colleague, had gone to US for a training program. Training session got over by 5 pm, we reached hotel at 05:15 pm. We waited till 08:30 pm, took a cab and went to a nearby market for the dinner. Surprisingly, all restaurants had closed their doors at that time and we were wondering what had happened. Fortunately, we could locate one Indian restaurant, and to our astonishment, it was open and people were dinning inside. We went in, and the first question which we asked was, if everything was OK in the town. Why restaurants were closed. The waiter explained us that the culture in US is to take dinner by evening and sleep early.

Anyways, jumping back to the incident wherein Stephan had asked the receptionist about the dining hall, the receptionist answered in denial. However, receptionist arranged a burger for Stephan so that he would not sleep empty stomach.

Next day morning, Stephan reached the conference room wherein he was supposed to do a workshop. As soon as he started, he found out that the board marker, available in the conference room, was dry and not able to write anything. He stepped outside of conference room and after a few minutes, he could find a laundry boy. Stephan told his concern of board marker to the laundry boy and the laundry boy promised him to help. In another few minutes, laundry boy came back with a new board marker.

Those of us who might have visited or stayed in a four/five start hotel in our country, may question, how come there was no staff available outside conference room. Being four/five start hotel and Stephan, himself doing a workshop, there should have been five to ten people from the hotel staff to help him. Hotels in US are not like our country. Employment in US is very expensive. Many hotels/restaurants/companies, they keep minimal possible staff, as they have to pay in dollars. Next time if you travel to US, don’t expect staff at hotels waiting for you to take luggage or to show you your room. Sometimes you will not find any person except the receptionist in the entire hotel.

Hotel receptionist arranged a burger for Stephan, when in fact it was not her duty. Laundry boy arranged a marker for Stephan, when in fact it was not his responsibility. Stephan was so happy with the staff gesture, he promised the hotel staff and the management that for any future trip to that state, he would stay in the same hotel only. He also promised them that he would do all his workshops of that state in that hotel only.

The gesture, the help from the staff was very small, but the impact was huge. Sometimes we think, what difference we can make as an individual. Sometimes we think, what difference will it have on business by doing a small favour for our customer. Imagine the opposite of it, many times we do not realize that we lose a potential customer or a potential project by a very small negative gesture. I think service industry, be it hotels, restaurants or CROs/CMOs/SMOS, continuous training programs in this regard is must.?