Maria...

Greetings to you this Monday Morning.
I met Maria, or rather I should say that I observed Maria for a couple of hours on my Jet Airways flight from Kolkata to Mumbai over the weekend.
She was one of the in-flight crew members designated to ensure the comfort of passengers. Maria, I thought, was special for two reasons, one is that she had an extraordinary ability of developing a rapport instantly and very naturally with passengers of all age groups from a 2-year-old to a 70-year-old and second and more important was that she seemed to be one of the very few people who truly and genuinely loved what she was doing i.e. her job as an airhostess.
Observing her and the effect she has on her passengers took me back to the story of the famous turn around of the loss making Scandinavian Airlines (SAS). When Jan Carlzon took up the position as the CEO, he had only one message from the board, Turn the company around. That is what he precisely did. During the course of this turnaround he talked of what is called as a "Moment of Truth". He said that each year 10 million of their customers came in contact with approx., 5 SAS employees and each of this contact lasted for an average of 15 seconds. Thus SAS employees "created" in the minds of their customers 50 million "Moments of Truth" and these moments would ultimately decide, more than anything else, if SAS succeeded or failed as a company.
The message is simple-Top executives and managers may sit in the board room and make a lot of important decisions, but what has a more far reaching impact in business is what actually happens on the field, particularly in the services area. Managers have to get on the field and understand what kind of moments of truths their staff is creating in the minds of the customer. Managers need to identify, reward and create role models of the Marias that work for them because employees like Maria make their company successful.
Way to go Maria, wish you all the best for a long and successful career.
Have a great week.
Sudhanshu Pandit.
January 24, 2005.