Great Expectations Get Great Results

Remember the Gulf War? Remember "Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf, the American general who became a hero? Many interesting things came out of that, not the least of which was stories about some techniques Schwarzkopf used. They are the same techniques you and I can use to get things done.

One of the most succinct examples concerned Stormin' Norman and his experience when taking command of helicopter maintenance early in his career. He'd ask how much of the fleet could fly any given day, taking into account maintenance schedules. "Seventy-five percent" was the reply. Wondering why it wasn't 73% or 74%, but always 75%, he decided to set a NEW standard. "I don't know anything about helicopter maintenance, but I'm establishing a new standard of 85%," he announced. Sure enough, in very quick time, 85% operability became the norm. It's interesting isn't it? People perform to expectations. If you set low expectations that are what you get. Set them high, and it's truly amazing how your new level has a way of becoming reality.

Creating benchmarks - for your people and yourself - has an uncanny way of coming to pass. Let me give you a case in point. John Mitchell is a pharmacist in Stirling, South Australia. John simply set benchmarks for his team. Was it some complicated selling process? He developed a checklist to help his people identify up-selling opportunities. He gave the checklist to his team and then put up a white board where they would "chalk up" every successful up-selling transaction. It became a fun challenge for them to beat the others and achieve the highest tally for the week. His only cost for this incentive was dinner for two for the winner on his team. His reward was (and is) incredible and far-reaching! To his utter amazement, putting a performance standard on cross-selling now accounts for 50% MORE SALES value from every transaction. As he put it, he wouldn't have believed it until he saw it happen. (His profitability increase, of course, will be much, much more.)

Now take the case of Ian Stathie of Wray Owen Funeral Directors. He sent us an article from a US funeral industry magazine. In it is the most comprehensive set of performance benchmarks you can imagine, benchmarks that allow the members to strive for excellence AND measure their commercial prosperity. For example, they carefully monitor such things as the total number and value of "pre-need" insurance sales, total number of deaths that were pre-funded, percentage of embalming to total calls, percentage of casket to total calls and so on. Morbid? No, it's just sound and professional business practice.

They DON'T pay lip service to setting standards and benchmarks. They DO it and then monitor it. As the article says, "These are people who want to excel, people who want to give every family they serve extra value for their dollar - these are people who look at everything with an open mind." The truth is, too, that these people understand this great truth, "What you can measure, you can manage." Again, what you can measure you can manage. Put another way, if you are trying to manage something that you're not measuring, you've got a snowflake's chance - well, you know the rest. You have very little chance of managing it effectively.