Insights on Service Inspired From Outside

#4: When Silent Inspiration Sounds the Loudest

by Gerardo Pelayo, Ph.D.

After the MLS calendar published that Inter Miami was scheduled to visit New York Red Bulls on March 23rd, press coverage was expected to focus on the visitors' star, Leo Messi, widely considered amongst the best players in the world. Instead, some morning papers found themselves reporting on an unscripted story, as insightful as it was heartwarming.

Each player enters the pitch joined by a young child (A.K.A. a mascot) who stands by them as the anthem plays before kickoff. It was pouring at the stadium when this happened. While the players had rain jackets, the children didn't and that's when it happened: Dante Vanzeir removed his jacket and put it around his mascot.

As the child's face drew the biggest smile, the player next to Dante took notice and did the same with his mascot... then the next player... and the next... a faster chain reaction with every player until all 11 New York's mascots had a rain jacket around them.

The mascots took a grander memory than they were expecting. Can we, service industry leaders, also take more than the link to a viral video out of this?

1. Dare to care. Someone had to be the first to break from inertia, empathize with the situation, and act in consequence.

How to apply the concept: reward challenges to the status quo, empower employees, listen to the voice of frontline workers, and systematically enable emergent ideas to be put to the test.

2. Make the impact visible: no mascot asked for cover, yet their unquestionable excitement as they were wrapped in the rain coats, very likely influenced the other players to react.

How to apply the concept: communicate the impact of new initiatives, celebrate early wins, build cultural trust in the relationship between the actions taken and the outcomes.

3. Leverage contagious behavior: it's empirically more likely to change one's inertia and care about someone else's experience when you notice that others are doing it as well.

How to apply the concept: measure and publish team's compliance against expectations and processes and set incentives accordingly; don't let members in your team feel cheated or taken advantage of.