It seems that everything is happening all at once, and
the idea that when you are ready it comes feels better than ever,
finally I have some time this month to go back and fully train
and exercise and it feels so good to be back while still on
my purpose of One Million Euros in lees than 5 years lately I
have been enjoying my little ones more than anything we only live once so let´s
do it all, yesterday I found a story over the Internet that involves a
young man, his dying grandmother, and a bowl of clam chowder from Panera Bread.
It's a little story that offers big
lessons about service, brands, and the human
side of business — a story that underscores why efficiency should never come at
the expense of humanity.
The
story, as told in AdWeek,
goes like this: Brandon Cook, from Wilton, New Hampshire, was visiting his
grandmother in the hospital. Terribly ill with cancer, she complained to her
grandson that she desperately wanted a bowl of soup, and that the hospital's
soup was inedible (she used saltier language). If only she could get a bowl of
her favorite clam chowder from Panera Bread! Trouble was, Panera only sells
clam chowder on Friday. So Brandon called the nearby Panera and talked to store
manager Suzanne Fortier. Not only did Sue make clam chowder specially for
Brandon's grandmother, she included a box of cookies as a gift from the staff.
It
was a small act of kindness that would not normally make headlines. Except that
Brandon told the story on his Facebook page, and Brandon's mother, Gail Cook,
retold the story on Panera's fan page. The rest, as they say, is social-media
history. Gail's post generated 500,000 (and counting) "likes" and
more than 22,000 comments on Panera's Facebook page. Panera, meanwhile, got
something that no amount of traditional advertising can buy — a genuine sense
of affiliation and appreciation from customers around the world.
Marketing
types have latched on to this story as an example of the power of social media
and "virtual word-of-mouth" to boost a company's reputation. But I
see the reaction to Sue Fortier's gesture as an example of something else — the
hunger among customers, employees, and all of us to engage with companies on
more than just euro terms. In a world that is being reshaped by the relentless
advance of technology, what stands out are acts of compassion and connection
that remind us what it really means to be human.
As
I read the story of Brandon and his grandmother, I thought back to a lecture delivered two years
ago by Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, to the
graduating seniors of Princeton University. Bezos is nothing if not a master of
technology — he has built his company, and his fortune, on the rise of the
Internet and his own intellect. But he spoke that day not about computing power
or brainpower, but about his grandmother — and what he learned when he made her
cry.
Even
as a 10-year-old boy, it turns out, Bezos had a steel-trap mind and a passion for
crunching numbers. During a summer road trip with his grandparents, young Jeff
got fed up with his grandmother's smoking in the car — and decided to do
something about it. From the backseat, he calculated how many cigarettes per
day his grandmother smoked, how many puffs she took per cigarette, the health
risk of each puff, and announced to her with great fanfare, "You've taken
nine years off your life!"
Bezos's
calculations may have been accurate — but the reaction was not what he
expected. His grandmother burst into tears. His grandfather pulled the car off
to the side of the road and asked young Jeff to step out. And then his
grandfather taught a lesson that this now-billionaire decided to share the with
the Class of 2010: "My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of
silence, he gently and calmly said, 'Jeff, one day you'll understand that it's
harder to be kind than clever.'"
That's
a lesson I wish more businesspeople understood — a lesson that is reinforced by
the reaction to this simple act of kindness at Panera Bread. Indeed, I
experienced something similar this past week, and found it striking enough to
devote another blog post to the experience. I can just say by now that a
couple of extraordinary (and truly human) gestures have come to me and they
have won my loyalty.
"What
is it about business that makes it so hard to be kind?" I asked at the
time. "And what kind of businesspeople have we become when small acts of
kindness feel so rare?"
That's
what's really striking about the Panera Bread story — not that Suzanne Fortier
went out of her way to do something nice for a sick grandmother, but that her
simple gesture attracted such global attention and acclaim.
So
by all means, encourage your people to embrace technology, get great at
business analytics, and otherwise ramp up the efficiency of everything they do.
But just make sure all their efficiency doesn't come at the expense of
their humanity.
Small gestures can send big signals about who we are, what we care about, and
why people should want to affiliate with us. It's harder (and more important)
to be kind than clever.
