I don't know about you, but there are often things I start that then fall by the wayside. Blogging has been one of those; not that I haven't been writing "tips", it's just that they've only been going to my email list (send an email if you'd like to subscribe.)
So a few blog posts will catch up on the best email tips from the past year, starting with my experience from a trip to Japan a little over a year ago:
I just returned from
Tokyo - my first trip to Japan, and I was very impressed for many
reasons. Aside from very polite people, they really do think things
through. Three simple examples from my hotel: the elevators tell you which
one will arrive next several floors before it arrives; the tracks for the
curtains overlap in the middle (one curves behind the other); and in the morning
as you are walking down the hallway they play pleasant bird sounds.
None of these are earth shattering, but they all
make the experience a little bit more pleasant. And none require any significant
amount of extra work. Elevators these days are all controlled by one building
computer, which knows in advance which elevator it is sending where. The curved
curtain tracks allow you to easily close the curtains tight (it gets light there
early.) And bird sounds playing - simple.
When I mentioned these examples to my host, he
said they were examples of "kaizen". In North America, "kaizen" usually is
used to refer to continuous improvement in the sense of making things more
efficient. But Wikipedia defines is simply as "good change", the idea of
thinking things through.
A thought for you
- what simple examples of "good change" could your organization
implement to provide more value to your customers?
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