Make Culture Happen. blog part 2 of 2

Picking up where we left off last week…

At Shamrock, our unique corporate culture is borne from the intentional work that we do—and most importantly, the way in which we do that work. Our charge is to help individuals and companies perform at their highest levels. Here’s how we make that happen for each of our key stakeholders: 

Individual Employees. What attitude do you bring to work every day? How does that affect the people around you? We encourage and celebrate the four key concepts in the book FISH:

1.    Play – Have fun! Take your job seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously
2.    Make Their Day – Find a way to make someone’s day, every day!
3.    Be Present – When talking to someone, give them your full attention
4.    Choose Your Attitude – Bring positive energy and enthusiasm to work every day

Implementing these principles is likely to make you better at your job and happier in your work.

The Company. We believe in nurturing a workplace environment where everyone works to make each other better. The book Gung Ho! provides some great guidance with three simple principles:
•    Worthwhile work – everyone’s work is worthwhile and important to the company’s success
•    Empower employees with the control to achieve the goal
•    Cheer each other on!

Work to reimagine your workplace: Create an office/warehouse/jobsite where people are free to ask questions and challenge the status quo. Celebrate teammates through continuous encouragement and positive feedback—this creates a cohesive sense of team comradery where everyone achieves more.

Community & Charity. We believe in giving back and helping others. And we do it together. Shamrock’s Culture Club keeps our team engaged with events like blood drives and kickball games, volunteering and charity fundraising. This provides quality time together away from work, and makes our employees feel better about themselves and the company they work for.

Our Clients. Satisfied clients are not enough; we want our clients to be Raving Fans! In his book, Ken Blanchard explains the three secrets of Raving Fans Customer Service:

Step 1: Decide what you want - Create a detailed vision of your future customer service model centered on your customers.
Step 2: Discover what the customer wants - Be prepared to alter your vision in response to your customer’s feedback and individual needs.
Step 3: Deliver your vision plus one percent - To create a raving fan you need to exceed on delivery of your customer service promise each time the customer deals with you, the customer needs to believe that they can count on you again and again. Consistency creates credibility!

Also consider that Raving Fan clients are less likely to leave, and more likely to offer additional opportunities and expand your business relationship.

Again, at Shamrock, we believe in being more than a company that provides great marketing related products and services. We believe in helping individuals and companies perform at their highest levels. We’ve created a culture where having a positive attitude and helping and cheering each other on is expected. We are proud of our commitment to giving back, and we celebrate when our clients send Raving Fan thank you notes because we’ve succeeded in exceeding their expectations.

We are a trustworthy, effective, and likeable company. Yes, culture matters!

If you’ve got questions about how to implement a corporate culture program like ours at your company, connect with me at bdegarmo@shamrockcompanies.net.

Good luck!

Bob De Garmo

Create an Engaging Corporate Culture

Many of us spend the greater part of our waking hours at work. In fact, the average person will spend 90,000 hours at work over his/her lifetime. That’s a lot of time invested—so we ought to find ways to make the very most of it.

At Shamrock, we’ve always worked to create an engaging, creative work environment. Ours is a workplace that commits to our local communities, to giving back, to serving our customers, to fostering teamwork, to empowering our employees, to creating relationships—Shamrock is more than a place to work; it’s the opportunity to be part of something much bigger.

That commitment is what has shaped our unique corporate culture: More than 15 years ago, we implemented programs that continue to support—and identify—who we are and how we choose to make success happen for our employees, partners and clients. These programs are based on the management books by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles: Ravings Fans, Gung Ho!, and Fish.

Here’s a snapshot of the guiding principles:

RAVING FANS. The foundation of this customer-service directive is very simple:

• Decide what you want
• Discover what the customer wants
• Deliver plus-one (Go over and above. Always)

GUNG HO! teaches that everybody plays an important role, whether that be selling, assembling or answering the phone. To that end, we must empower our employees, and get out of the way so they can do their jobs. Takeaways from Gung Ho! are:

• Do worthwhile work
• Be in charge of achieving goals
• Celebration – cheering each other on

FISH. An extension of Gung Ho!, Fish promotes a super-positive work environment and is based on key customer-focused ideas:

• Be Present. Be emotionally invested: Put your phone down, look people in the eye, and really focus on what you are doing and the people you are doing it with.
• Choose Your Attitude. Take responsibility for how you respond to people. You have the power to consciously choose how you are going to treat others or manage your stress—own it.
• Make Their Day. Find simple ways to serve and delight people in meaningful and memorable ways.
• Play. Make what you do at work enjoyable and fun. Take your work seriously, not yourself: The energy you create is truly contagious.

These philosophies contribute to Shamrock’s unique culture—and we continue to identify new ways to incorporate these into our everyday operations. Beyond that, I’ve learned that trust goes a long way toward framing corporate culture.  Without it, people tend to operate in silos and find themselves isolated from the group. By working to establish open, honest communication—in dealing with both positive and negative issues—you can foster a greater sense of team and gain credibility with your employees. 

Always, I’m interested in your feedback. Share your corporate culture ideas with me on LinkedIn:

Bob De Garmo

A Culture of Creating Raving Fans

“Your customers are only satisfied because their expectations are so low and because no one else is doing better...

Just having satisfied customers isn't good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create Raving Fans." 

That’s the premise behind Ken Blanchard’s revolutionary approach to customer service.

Customer feedback is gold. But if you don’t have processes in place to collect that input, then you’re coming up short. In his book Raving Fans, Blanchard identifies three steps to creating raving-fan customer service:

1. Decide what you want. What kind of customers are you looking for? What type of relationship do you want to build with them?
2. Understand what your customers want.
3. Deliver plus-one. Whatever it is that you do—perfect that—and then add 1% more: It’s the extra push that will set you apart. 

At Shamrock, Raving Fans isn’t a theme—it’s part of our culture. It has helped establish a framework for our customer-service directive. We use an internal auditing system that tracks how we exceed client expectations, and identifies areas where we can improve, and address and prevent problems before they impact our customers.

Shamrock is feedback fearless: While our team asks customers to tell us what we can do to improve, it is equally important that we share that same raw feedback with our customers. For Shamrock, feedback is a two-way street; if our customers aren’t open to that exchange, then it’s not the right match for us. In 2016, Shamrock’s fulfillment operations had a 99.95% accuracy rate—that stems from continuously tweaking and refining our processes based on customer feedback.

In order to deliver world-class customer service, you have to put systems in place to receive constant feedback. Further, you have to have people on our team who welcome and embrace that input. It ties back to culture: Can that open exchange work for you? Can you operate in a feedback-fearless mode? The results will blow you away. Feel free to contact me directly at dfechter@shamrockcompanies.net or 440.250.2157.

Good luck,

Dave Fechter

Dave Fechter will celebrate his 20 year service anniversary with Shamrock in May 2017.  He started as Plant Manager and worked his way up to his current role as COO. Dave is a devoted Notre Dame fan and proud alumnus. He is a huge sports fan in general because he loves competition of any kind, including the intellectual - he aspires to be a contestant on Jeopardy! When he's not absorbing every new bit of information he can, he's absorbing music. He does more than listen - he enjoys the history, technology, coordination and execution.  He even plays a little guitar.