Zero re-orders

Not good enough to finish....but you say nothing.

Hi Reader

Last Sunday I sat in the bar of a cool local hotel and watched the staff turn out €15 cocktails like they were doing them for the first time. Aesthetically, the bar is comfortable, appealing & embracing to sit in. The service is prompt & pleasant .

The drinks were a disaster.

I spoke to the F&B manager later. He's a friend. He told me client feedback had been strong. He was pleased with how the summer had gone.

He’s my pal so I had to tread carefully but at the same time if he’s my pal then I’m doing him no favours just nodding along, right?

I asked how many people had reordered a second cocktail that night. The number was zero.

The people whose opinion actually mattered had voted, and they had voted with their next drink. The feedback he was collecting from those willing to fill in a form or offer a comment was easy praise from people who either didn't know what a good cocktail was or didn't want to spoil the atmosphere or offend anyone. The people whose experience had been genuinely compromised were saying nothing at all.

Theirs is the only signal that matters.

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Most business founders & leaders are falling head-first into the same trap.

They’ll tell you that the clicks are up and the comments say something like "wow, cool idea." The engaged customers keep coming back. Somewhere in the middle of all that, however, the specific piece of the operation that's quietly killing the business goes unmentioned because nobody in the business feels like they should, or can, voice an alternative narrative.

Bill Walsh, the coach who built the San Francisco 49ers NFL dynasty, described what he wanted in the people around him. People who could hold their own view with conviction and change it just as readily when evidence or logic demanded it. The line he used was memorable. "Sometimes there are three sides to a coin."

The specific thing Walsh built into his teams was the discipline of inviting constructive challenge and rewarding people for delivering it. Important to note that it wasn’t tolerating it but actively creating the conditions where it happened. The founder who cannot access that discipline is running the same business as my pal, the F&B manager; they’re surrounded by pleasant feedback while the important & critical signal goes unheard.

I’ll leave you with this to think over. And please do because I think, actually I know, that it’s hugely important for you: who in your business/organisation is currently encouraged to tell you the thing you don't want to hear? More than that, when did you last create the conditions where they willingly could and would?

I work with business owners & leaders who feel they need to think differently about their obvious, and not so obvious, issues and bottlenecks. That may sound a little cryptic but if it feels interesting then let's have a chat - you'll get me at paulclarke.ie@gmail.com

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