Mike Hohnen

I attended a fabulous workshop at the ALIA European gathering in Menorode last week.
The workshop is based Adam Kahane’s work and well described in his latest book Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change. I can highly recommend the book.

The big eye openers for me where:
1) It is not an either or but a both and – it is a polarity, and needs to be managed constructively
2) If you are excellent at one or the either don’t turn down the volume on what you are good at – start working on the part that needs improving
3) The task of a manager is a continuous process of balancing power and love

There is a great interview with Adam Kahane in S+B you can read it here

”Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economical change…

And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites – polar opposites – so that love is identified with the resignations of power and power with the the denial of love.

Now we have to get this thing right.

What we need to realize is that power with out love is reckless and abusive and love with out power is sentimental and anemic. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our time.”

Martin Luther king Jr.

The quote below, is from the 4Hoteliers site - you can read the full post here

In spite of the popularity of new electronic media, we expect the face-to-face meetings industry to continue to grow and to continue to contribute more to the US GDP. We also believe that were the studies available for other parts of the world, we would see similar, if not greater, increases.

It just reminded me of a few other famous quotes in history:

“I think there is a world market for as many as 5 computers.” – Thomas Watson, head of IBM,1943.

“The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty.” – President of Michigan Savings Bank, 1903, advising Henry Ford’s lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Company.

“Television won’t be able to hold onto any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” – Darryl F Zanuck, 1946.

As we all know there are many more like this.

My point is, yes we would all love to see f2f meetings grow, but the reality is that most of the professionals that I talk too are experiencing exactly the opposite. That be people in the meetting industry or their clients. Big corporations are talking about ‘travel avoidance’ as a way to cut costs. IKEA has an internal slogan ‘Meet more travel less’ – encouraging employees to use the electronic media for instead of traveling.

Personally I have never ever received so many offers of webinars and other online forms of ‘meeting’ that I do at the moment.

Yes we all prefer the quality of a a face to face meeting, the same way we prefer a delicious home cooked meal to industrialized fast food – but if what we prefer was equal to what we do there would be no fast food business…

New research shows that organisations can differentiate themselves especially in terms of the emotional element of the experience. Up to 60% of customer loyalty is created by the customer’s emotional experience, according to Professor Lars Grønholt, CBS.

The study’s main conclusions are:

 Strong relationship between Customer Experience Management ability and financial performance Customer Experience Management generates increased differentiation. High differentiation improves the companies‟ ability to create high market performance and financial performance.

 Customer Experience Management contribute to create significant financial performance If Customer Experience Management is improved by 10% differentiation capabilities will increase by 9%, that subsequently will improve financial performance by 5%.

 Top management involvement and implementation of customer focus in all customer touch points are the most important Customer Experience Management dimensions The two dimensions account for more than 40% of the companies‟ ability to differentiate from competitors and are the starting point for better market performance and financial performance.

 A balanced emotional and rational customer experience creates better results
Overall, top performing companies balance rational and emotional elements when creating customer experiences.

You can request the full study from Stig Jorgensen & Partners here

This all fits very well with our own experience working with The Service Profit Chain

Read more about our approach to the Service Profit Chain here

In creating its corporate university in 1985, Accor was the first service company in Europe to set up an integrated training center.
Twenty-five years later, Accor Academy locally trains 135,000 students a year through a catalogue of 120 different courses delivered in 16 Academies around the world.

However – you don’t need to be a giant like Accor to have your own corporate University!

If you belong to a smaller chain or association of independent hotels you can partner with us. We deliver custom made service management training at university level. This is what the association of Danish Conference Centers has done with result of now having educated more than 150 managers since 2004

Courses can be designed according to student levels on bachelor or masters level and with or without official accreditation. Also students can get certificates at both levels or go for full degrees. Programmes are accredited by the University of Chester(UK).

All GROW programmes are based on action learning. This means that students stay on their job while studying and have as their main focus to add value to their organisation and work towards solutions to real worklife challenges.

For more information drop me a note.

Consistency (or lack of ) is one of my pet rants.

Ask any newly hired hospitality employee what the name of the game is and they will tell you that happy customers is all about exceeding expectations. And it is.

But that also means that if I had this fantastic experience last week in your restaurant (or your: insert your business here ) and I tell my friends at the office about it and we all decide to go for a friday after work dinner – then that experience MUST at least match then one i had on my first visit – if not it is a huge flop and you have lost me for ever.

If I take a client out or book them a hotel or what ever I need to know that this will be not just OK but excellent – And I will pay more to be sure

Seth Godin in his blog asks:

“…how much extra would you pay for a plane that was guaranteed to be always on time, or a surgery that was always guaranteed to work? …. That’s because we’re often willing to pay a significant premium to avoid risk”

And he has a point.

In David Rock’s latest book your Brain at Work ( which i highly recommend ) Rock writes :

.. The one thing that is certain is that people will always pay lots of money to feel less uncertain. That is because uncertainty feels to the brain like a threat to your life..”

Excellent, is useless if is not consistent.

There is a fortune to be made in consistency.