Growth Dulls The Talent Pool

In my signature keynote presentation, I tell a story about flying Air Canada and one of the funny things that happened on-board the flight. But I normally prefer WestJet when flying in Canada.

When they started, WestJet was a fun airline with a lot of smiles, chuckles and a hip attitude about making flying fun. After all, they had no unions (unlike their competitors) and every employee was a shareholder which improved the service. But that was back when there were just over 500 employees and they were a small airline trying to steal their piece of the pie.

Now with over 7,000 employees, I've noticed that they're not quite as fun-loving or as cheerful as they used to be (with one flight attendant actually having a "personal space" crisis with me - Cripes it's an airplane - there's no place to "step back" to).

When you are a small organization, there is always a small talent pool of excellent people that you can choose from. But when you outgrow the "excellent employee" talent pool, the tendency is to move over to the "yeah-well-OK" talent pool. That's when an outstanding organization starts to look a bit more like what Seth Godin calls a bus service: they smile a little less, seem to enjoy their work a little less, show their fatigue a little more and reduce the effort just a little bit because the new employees just don't have that same level of excitement and attitude of service that the original small group had.

You're not likely to find 7,000 genuinely happy people all wearing smiles 24/7. But it's getting noticed. In fact, an attendee at one of my recent presentations shared his same concern - to the point of moving his travel dollars back over to Air Canada who seem to really be making an effort.

Canadian Business magazine recently rated WestJet as #10 in the list of Canada's Most Reputable Companies. Air Canada made the list at #25 - but as the magazine said, "Air Canada saw the biggest year-over-year jump in reputation of any company in the study." Are you listening WestJet?

Top-of-mediocre is always far easier to achieve than excellence because it requires less effort. Raise your corporate standards and make your employees come up to the level of expectation. If they can't cut it, stop settling for a warm body and find a way to recruit the the better employee. Never let your customers notice that your standards have dropped - because then you're just not special anymore. You've become mediocre and ordinary and you're risking your customer loyalty.
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Kevin Burns - Excellence Attitude/Culture Strategist
Speaking Web Site http://www.kevburns.com

Creator of Filter-Free Fridays™
Creator of the 90-Day System To A Greatness Culture™

Coming Soon Kevin's 8th Book - "Your Attitude Sucks - Finding Your Excellence In A Wasteland of Mediocrity

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