WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling

"WOW! What a lovely experience Singapore was!"

A friend of mine exclaimed, sheddig cigarette-ash in a corner while stamping a ticket coupan on railway platform. He had just returned having enjoyed a 10-day sojourn in there. The ash that he shed fell on an automatic ticket vending machine (ATVM).

Everything so neat and clean there!
Everything in working condition! 

Responding to a customer so quickly, with smile and with such a respect! And back here nothing works!: He continued.

Things do work here! I corrected him pointing towards the stamp-pad he was using to ink his ticket. Things do work here but (I smiled saying) on bypass-surgeries:

1/ Stamp-ink-pad as a bypass for vending machines (jammed due to dust),
2/ Long queue on window counter due to "staff shortage" (read "absenteeism")
3/ High-technology ATM "out of service" due to "breakdown" or "stockout of currency notes",
4/ Half the toll-tax lanes blocked due to equipment on Toll-booths "out of order",
5/ Traffic jam on a flyover, half of it's width being full of potholes,
6/ Fyover over-the-flyover in order to bypass chaotic traffic underneath it,
7/ 'Diversion' because half  the road bottlenecked by garbage and vendors,
8/ Garbage not picked up because disposal-van broken down.

The list of bypass-surgeries is endless.

By the way can you tell me top reasons (rather root-causes) of  "breakdowns" of equipment in particular such as vending machine, I asked him. 

Key to the "WOW experience" that you 'told' me about is in there my friend, I told him. 

He looked at me sarcastically hinting "not to be professor-like". I can afford to be one here in blogpost, at least for the sake of waste-elimination whatever may be it's worth in reducing global warming. Hope he reads this sometime.

A couple of top order root-causes of typical "breakdowns" that lead to loss of desired performance are:

1/ Dust and Dirt (due to littering like by my friend who might have behaved well in Singapore)
2/ Loose connections in equipment
3/ Casual attitude towards both the above (lack of maintenance, littering, etc) because apparently the causes don't look dangerous

Same logic of root-causes can be extended to the breakdown of health also. 

Actually his comments on Singapore were in praise of "the 'lovely' culture there" i.e. their attitude of prevention of such root-causes with a sense of proactive urgency. South Asian countries including South Korea, Singapore, etc. were one of the firsts to have learnt this from Japanese Kaizen culture. 

What is culture?

Culture is a sum total of behaviors (such as follows) as reflection of attitudes, beliefs and values in every walk of life, moment-in-moment-out.

Shedding cigarette-ash in an ash tray or a dust bin, for instance, is a desired behavior unlike the one exhibited by my friend. 
Not smoking in a public place is a desired behavior. 

Being wasteful at the cost of life, abandoning smoking itself is a desired behavior.

Being frugal on any kind of waste be at personal level, in society or at work.

Sum total of such desired behaviors 'results' into "WOW what a lovely experience" kind of impression of good culture. 

How does one get desired culture?

Getting desired culture is about getting desired behaviors.

Most difficult approach is to 'tell' others to 'behave'. Easiest way out is to get it from 'self'. Then 'recognise' the 'self' for having done it in order to stay motivated. Then find 'others' who do it and recognise them.

This is 'selling' approach to get the desired behaviors.

How does one do this professionally if in position-of-power to do so?

1/ Decide not more than a couple of strategic goals for "WOW experience": Choose one of the top priority apex goals to delight stakeholders and focus on it.
2/ Break the apex goal down into smaller ones
3/ Identify behaviors complementary to the smaller goals
4/ Remove hindrances (3D: Dirty-Danger-Difficult situations) in performing processes to achieve the goals and remove wastes to make the processes lean

5/ Demonstrate leadership by performing such behaviors yourself

6/ Lay a platform and use it at regular frequency to recognise desired behaviors and to punish undesired behaviors particularly if repeated intentionally
7/ Make corrections to improve the above process (steps) on-goingly.

In short,

1/ Set a behavior goal and focus on it!
2/ Behave it rather than preaching it!
3/ Lay a platform to recognise the desired behavior although it's outcome (of the desired behavior) may not be as desired. You may have to reprimand or punish an undesired behavior though!

4/ Enjoy the resultant improvement in culture although it may not be a WOW one! 

5/ Move on to the next priority goal

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder: Please do consider leaving a comment or sharing this post.

Make It Simpler, Rest Will Follow 
How To Make A Difference 
Big-Be Or Bug-Be ! 
Treat Root-causes, Not Symptoms ! 
Nauseous Communication Gaps 
Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis 
Raam or Krishna-Shyam: Tell me Hey Raam! 
Will It Work Here?  
Some Moron ! Some Great !!! 
That's How Morons Work 
You seem Reasonable if you appear Un-reasonable 
Smart-Moron Who Breaks Your Glass  
WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling 
Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy 
Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation
Ridiculous Poison-culture versus Maverick Kaizen-culture 
Tolerate Once, Twice, Thrice? 
That's how some business partnerships work 
Taken-For-Granted ? You Deserve It !! 
Technology in-place, security dis-placed
IQ-EQ-or-SQ: What-is-more-important?
Do you know a Best-Career-Plan 
Customer or Custo-Mer?  
Experienced A Delightful Payment ! 
An Experience of Heart-and-Soul 
Less With More And More Gets Sore 
Should one care for value?  
ABCD of India Shining
Beware Of Political-Presentations 
Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis 
Hoarders Of Filthy Hoardings