What I Learned at my First Job Still Guides Me Today

At one of my first jobs as a reservations agent at Northwest Airlines, I soon became unsettled by not contributing to a better work environment. Like my co-workers, I viewed my job as an “individual contributor” instead of being part of a team. I saw opportunities for improvement to work together. In alignment with leadership, we created skills training for my coworkers to achieve better results through collaboration. It was my first “grassroots leadership” moment. The lessons of what we learned together back then have influenced my career path, and frame my approach to helping your teams succeed today.

“What Can Improving the Shelf Life of Lobsters Tell Us About Strengthening a Culture?”

There is an old saying in Maine, “who was the first guy who had the guts to eat a lobster?”

To me it illustrates the difficulty of guiding teams and organizations through process change.

In fact, when a large retailer noticed that lobsters were negatively impacted during shipment and receipt, my team was engaged to help find a solution.

Our “root cause” analysis identified one of the reasons; failing to properly “purge” new lobsters by removing waste products from the tank.

In retail, time is money. Getting fresh lobsters quickly into the tank and ready for sale was a priority. “Purging” meant extra time to place the new lobsters in a different tank before the sale display tank.

Despite the new purging procedure we put in place, nobody wanted to “be the first” to try the new process when “that’s the way we’ve always done it.”

More than a training issue was at stake here. We had to explain the “why?” We had to help support the employees to be able to make the change while enhancing the life of the lobster.

We discovered that the employees did not have visibility to the big picture data. Metrics showed that improving lobster care resulted in better sales and customer satisfaction.

By using tools that helped us match employee learning styles, we supported the “early adopters” in changing the process. We created systems to get everyone else onboard to protect the sustainability of the process. The result? Multi-million dollar savings and improved customer satisfaction.