The Empty Chair!

On a Wednesday evening last month, I and one of my friend decided to meet and discuss few things which we wanted to discuss for a long time. Where should we go? That was the question both of asked each other. We needed a place which shouldn’t have crowd and gave us enough space to discuss things without getting disturbed.

We thought lets go to a upscale hotel’s restaurant which is usually not that crowded on weekday and even more at 6pm we expected it to be empty as its neither time for lunch nor dinner. So we arrived at the 18th floor restaurant of this hotel and straightway went to the coffee shop. As the scene from the 18th floor was good, we decided to sit side by side so that both of us can have good view of the outside view from the comfort of this restaurant while we chat. By the way as per our calculation the restaurant was 20% occupied and we had lot of empty chairs/tables around.

All good till now.

Suddenly one of the waiters patrolling the restaurant reached us and asked, how many people sir? I said, two of us. He said, Sir you have to move to the other side of the table as you are occupying two tables while one can suffice. We were taken aback. I said, but we are not using the table, we are just using the empty chair and anyway the restaurant is empty and we will finish in an hour or so and  I don’t see any issue in us sitting like this. He said no sir; if you are two people then you have to use one table only.

I didn’t argue and changed my seats. Now with this sitting position only one of us could have the view and the other could look at the walls of the restaurant on the other side.  Suddenly on those walls I saw the core values of this organization: It read: Do the Right Thing by using good judgment, respecting our communities, associates, owners, partners and the environment, and I found it very funny.

I called the same waiter and asked, Do you know what are your values? I mean what are the Values of the organization you work for? He was taken aback and said, No sir. I asked him can you find out and let me know. Amused he went to find out the same and came back after 15 minutes and blurted 3 values which weren’t the values of the firm.

 And then it descended on me: While organizational values, which is about the way in which an organization chooses to do business can be Greek to employees if they don’t believe in it. And before believing in it the first step is knowing it and understanding it. These are not mere words which are good to hang on the walls; these are the words which represent core guidelines which should influence the behaviors of the employees when they are dealing with the external world.

 Unfortunately very few organizations understand the value of the values and even lesser number actual do something about inculcating the same into the behaviors of every employee in the organization.

 One question to all my readers: What are the values of your organization and can you give one example in which the organization encourages you to live it (process/policies/people). I would be happy to know that. Also there are ways in which the same can be inculcated in employees including leaders and owners. Anyway that’s topic of some other post, till now I am still contemplating the impact that ‘empty chair’ had on me as a customer of this hotel.

Amen!