Ivory Tower

A number of years ago when I owned Productivity Press, I ran conferences called "Productivity the American Way. At each conference, I was able to get a CEO of a major American Corporation to Keynote. Miraculously, at the first conference, I got Michael Rose, CEO of the Holiday Inns, and thereafter I was able to reach close to 50 others. I was able to easily reach the secretary of the president. Today, it is totally different. It is virtually impossible for me to reach the secretary of the president of a major corporation. Most often, I can't even find the corporate telephone number. And if I do find it, I get a guardian, somebody whose job is to prevent me from even reaching the secretary.

How can you run a company and not want to talk to your customers?  Don't you want to learn from them. The result is obvious. In 1955, Fortune Magazine listed top 500 corporations in America. Today, only 60 survive. I believe the 540 have disappeared because of short term thinking, short term profits, with no long-term vision, and not being in tune with the needs of the customer. This has to change if American industry is going to survive.

I recommend the corporate phone number be made available, and all of these top executives spend at least one hour every day talking to their customers, listening to their suggestions, listening to their complaints, and showing a sincere interest in their needs.

I love this story from my Harada Method book: A woman comes in the Uniqlo store in Tokyo with the baby in her arms. She asks the store manager if she could please use the telephone to call a doctor because her baby is sick. The store manager says,  "I'm sorry I can't give you a phone. We have a company rule that we can't give the phone to customers."  Very unhappily she goes next door, gets a telephone and calls an ambulance to take the child to the hospital. When she gets home she sits down and writes a letter to the Tadashi Yanai, CEO of Uniglo and the richest man in Japan, and tells her sad story. He reads the letter and immediately call Takashi Harada and tells him to train all of his managers. "Yes, they have to follow the rules but they also have to know when to break the rule to serve the customer.  They have to learn to be self-reliant."

Funny, when you call a large corporation for service, you are told the call is being recorded for quality purposes. They are checking on their employees, but no one checks on the leaders
or the computer that initially talks to you.

I wish every CEO of a large American corporation would read this.