Do you Beleive ?

Many years ago, a smart gentlemen for whom I'm privileged to call my friend and I came up with this title above for how we planed to revitalize our employer.

We developed a program that touched on just about all attributes of how we went to market and interacted with our customer base and redefined them around exceeding customer expectations and developing an almost religious level of zeal for customer success. We knew if we could make our people all about helping our own customers succeed then we'd be great as a business, and we'd have set ourselves apart in a stellar way from our competition.

"Do you Beleive?" was an internally focused program launch reference, that being phase 1 of our metamorphosis as a company. As I look back on my entire work-life there are few moments I'm more proud of, and belive had greater potential than the heady days of re-crafting our company vision and go-to-market strategy. At the same time, the program's death at the hands of vision-less bureaucrats was probably the turning point for me, and the point when I decided to leave them after 16 years.

I was reminded of this time in my life today when reading something written by Donal Daly and his references to Paul O'Dea's work regarding Innocent in the UK..read it here and bookmark that site as Donal's a great writer and offers an interesting perspective 100% of the time.

Innocent seems a company that "gets it", like Zappos or Gap Adventures. All of them understand that success is primarily measured by customer enthusiasm for their offering. If the end result of the transaction completed isn't your customer raving to five of their friends about your company - then you're not trying hard enough.

Now - let's also apply this a little personally - do you believe ? - and I do mean you. If you don't, I'd put forth that you're working at the wrong place, doing the wrong thing for yourself. Change it please - for yourself and others around you. Find the place where you can believe, where you want to be just because you believe it so passionately in what they do, and because you really truly care. The best part is that once you arrive, you'll find your people there.