I finally got around to listening to The Gang XX tonight and thought this quote from Mike Arrington was priceless:
This is the reason why I’ve never raised money, because the one thing I don’t want to do is go to a monthly board meeting and listen endlessly to people telling me how to run my business …
Amen.
Tagged with: business
I received this email from a former employee today:
I was reading a book recently, called “The Goal” as I was flying to California. It is about a big
turnaround in a manufacturing plant in less than 3 months.It is a very nicely worded book. The reason I am writing this mail is because there is one character in that book, Jonah - a professor - and he is a management consultant and the kind of questions he asks the main character Alex, the Plant manager are sufficient for him to ‘click’.
It was so interesting and I was smiling whenever Jonah showed up in the book since he reminded me of you, the way you would ask me something when I used to work for you.
If you get a chance do read that book. The book is basically about removing bottlenecks in operations.
Its nice to feel like you made a difference. I would never describe myself as a Jonah, but its nice to know someone would.
Tagged with: employee-satisfaction, feedback
As anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, I’ve spent a lot of time over the last 3-4 years studying agile methodologies and most recently lean concepts and principles. I have most recently been reading a couple of books by Ricardo Semler, who runs his company in a completely democratic way - doing away with all top down authoritarian management principles and allowing the employees to make decisions on dress, salaries, where they work, when they work, and most importantly, how they work.
I remember when I had first read the book Agile Software Development with SCRUM by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle and I had sent an email to my manager with a link to the book and the small sentence fragment “common sense codified”. We began experimenting with Scrum within my group, but it was very difficult to get other groups on the same page. We wound up with a lot of sprints that ended when things left development and entered the “normal corporate process” to finish things up and get them to production. We also had a lot of conversations around whether what we were doing was “standard process”.
As I started reading books on TPS and Lean, the same thing occurred. It struck me how most of the things that are characterized by “lean” are just common sense principles explained in such a way that they sound like a “process” that manager types can “buy into”. But really, they work because they make sense - and people have the permission to standardize and then change their work rather than having things written down and subsequently treating these processes like they are set in stone. You can’t change them unless you go through an agonizing approval process up the management chain.
Over the years, I’ve read and listened to many podcasts talking about the same things going on in other companies. People struggle to be able to change the way they work because they have to get “management buy-in” to take action. So much wasted effort just to try something new.
Interestingly, once the “buy-in” occurs, over and over again people try to “implement Scrum” or “do XP”, mostly by the book, and do not throw out things that do not work for the group. For some reason, we all think we have to be a part of some “methodology” in order to be effective.
One of the most fascinating things about Semlers company is the explicit trust and ability to control ones own destiny that the employees of Semco seem to receive. I ran across a particular section of the book where he was talking about the process improvements that “just started happening” due to this culture change and I found some interesting similarities to lean that I thought would be interesting to highlight. He starts off with:
The factory committee spun off groups that studied the plants products and how the workers made them, looking for ways to save time and make improvements. These teams weren’t created by Semco; they formed spontaneously, as the bracing winds of democracy swept through the food service equipment unit, and often met after hours or during lunch.
Interesting, employees actually wanted to do a better job and self organized because they could.
He goes on, talking about some of the changes:
One group restructured the dishwasher assembly line, changing it from a sequential assembly process to a batch concept in which dishwashers are assembled in twos and threes by teams of workers that do many different tasks and spend the time between batches prefabricating the components they will soon need. They also came up with a system in which all the parts for the dishwashers were stocked in open racks in the middle of the factory. Metal tags, green on one side and red on the other, hung on each rack, and the workers would flip the tags when they saw it was time to reorder, ensuring a steady supply. This was a big improvement on the traditional assembly line, in which dehumanized workers have no role in decisions regarding the production process.
What we see here are people electing to move from an assembly line to, basically, work cells implementing small batches of inventory with workers that are skilled in multiple areas. They even set up a “Kanban” system, though I doubt they knew it, where they had visual cues of when parts needed to be supplied.
Note that not once in these paragraphs does he mention the word “lean”. There was no implementation of “lean”, no “lean” or “continuous improvement” initiatives. This just seemed to make sense to the people doing the work and since they were allowed to do it - and knew enough about the overall process rather than just their small piece of the overall process (i.e. they were multi-skilled), they were able to see the obvious and execute it without all of the red tape - and get great results for the company.
He goes on:
The strength of these groups was their diversity. They included factory workers, engineers, office clerks, sales reps and executives. They didn’t have a formal head; whoever showed the greatest capacity to lead got the job, calling meetings and moderating discussions. In more than one group, a shop-floor worker guided professionals. Instead of a seniority system, or boxes on an organizational chart that guaranteed power, the groups were held together by a natural system of collegial respect.
Again, you hear this a lot in TPS. People are trained from the bottom up in the company and have skills in multiple areas. While there are “leads” that are responsible for a product line, everyone has the ability to lead when they are the most skilled for the job at hand.
The only vague reference to lean that Semler makes in this passage is the following paragraph, where he draws similarities and differences between what Semco did and TPS (though Toyota is not explicitly stated):
There are similarities between this system and the Japanese approach to organizing manufacturing operations, but also important differences. In our groups, younger members didn’t automatically submit to their elders. Moreover, once a team decided an issue, it stayed decided. There was no approval needed to make a change. Then again, there were no special rewards for new ideas. It was a spontaneous process; people participated only if they wanted to.
As I read this it really got me thinking. In most of the process agile / lean related books that I’ve read there seem to be a few common themes:
One more principle that I would add would be “tolerate mistakes”. Many of the issues that I’ve come across with other groups is that if they make a mistake they feel they will be punished. I’ve had great success with my team in articulating that I know mistakes will be made, but I want them to be made once, a lesson learned, and things put in place (usually automated) to ensure they won’t happen again. I’ve found that if people know it is expected that mistakes will be made, and everything doesn’t have to be perfect, they are more receptive to trying something new.
But I digress.
What Semler’s story shows me is that if people are given the freedom to work the way that is most effective, they will. More than that, if you invest in them with trust, they will want to do these things as their commitment to the company will obviously go up based on how they feel they are treated.
Semler uses a key phrase throughout his books that is repeated over and over. “Treat people like adults”. Semco, Toyota, Amazon and Google seem to do a really good job at this, as I’m sure most high functioning companies do. Read this article called The Google Way: Give Engineers Room and you will see the same concepts outlined in the excerpts on Semco that I have just written about. It seems to be a common theme.
So my real question. Is methodology and process really the answer, or is it deeper than that? Is it the way we treat employees that cause inefficiencies? If it is, if we took this base principal of trust and actually implemented it, would our employees come to the same conclusions as companies like Semco, Toyota and Google?
I think they would, because the principles and processes implemented by these companies are really just common sense without all of the complications of “process” and authoritarian management. They encourage workers to work outside their “box” and learn what they need to learn to be more effective. I would guess these employees feel valued, because they can constantly improve themselves rather than just “be the guy that puts the screw in the hole”. When you are allowed to improve yourself, your commitment rises to those who “allow” you to do so. What you wind up with is a highly efficient company that can change on a dime because people are allowed (and encouraged) to change and improve.
Most interestingly, the processes wind up looking “agile” or “lean”, without all the cruft of trying to follow a cook book.
Am I officially becoming a hippie, or does this line of thinking make sense? Let me know if I should go join a commune.
Tagged with: agile, amazon, continuous-improvement, corporate-culture, democracy, lean, process, semler, toyota, tps, trust
While I still have a few books in the queue mainly focused around TPS, I started reading Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace, the prequel to The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works.
Not too far into it yet, but riveted again. Pretty amazing story. Highly recommend both books.
I’m really curious about a lot of the ideas in these books, and how they would work in a traditional company. I know I’ve made little adjustments in this direction even before reading the books, but now I’m really curious as to how extreme you can go. Ricardo seems to have had great success going more extreme than most. I admire his idealism and his trust in people.
Tagged with: Books, culture, democracy, self-organization, trust, workplace
It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book on business that has kept me captivated through the whole thing, but Ricardo Semler’s The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works certainly did.
Semler is the CEO of SemCo SA, a company in Brazil with a pretty crazy management model by conventional standards. A complete democracy. People choose where and when they will work. There are no permanent desks, no dress codes, and employees select their own salaries and bonus structures. Most ideas for new business for the company comes directly from its employees. The bottom line, the company is run on the base assumption that their people can be trusted to (and actually are motivated to) do what is needed to keep the business running and growing.
This is, oddly, the complete opposite of the normal viewpoint seen in corporations today that employees are not trustworthy, must be monitored, must be in the office during a certain timeframe and dress a certain way to ensure that they are “behaving professionally” and “productive”.
Semlers philosophy may seem weird to some, but it also seems to work, as according to Semler the company has grown from $4M a year when he took over the company from his father in 1982 to, as of 2003, an annual revenue of $212M. Reading the book, its hard to figure out what SemCo actually does, but the model in which it is run is so intriguing that by the end of the book you don’t really care.
Some of the most interesting assumptions, behaviors, and programs that I found while reading this book that SemCo pioneers:
Its extremely hard to characterize the thoughts contained in this book in a review. They are so different, and so people oriented, that the best thing you can say is once you read this book you will more than likely begin thinking about how to relocate to Brazil to be a part of it. The book is really well written and Semler has a great conversational style to his writing. It isn’t your typical business book, which would be expected being written from someone who is not the typical CEO.
Do yourself a favor and pick this book up. It will completely change the way you look at your employees and your company.
Related Links:
Tagged with: Books, leadership, trust, work-environment
37Signals has an article on the Signal vs. Noise blog about the Secrets To Amazons Success. Its a good read.
My favorites:
People’s side projects, the one’s they follow because they are interested, are often ones where you get the most value and innovation. Never underestimate the power of wandering where you are most interested.
Innovation can only come from the bottom. Those closest to the problem are in the best position to solve it. any organization that depends on innovation must embrace chaos. Loyalty and obedience are not your tools.
and finally
Everyone must be able to experiment, learn, and iterate. Position, obedience, and tradition should hold no power. For innovation to flourish, measurement must rule.
Check out the full article. There’s a lot there, most of which sounds like it comes straight out of lean books I have read. These three, however, are key for me. People are the greatest asset, and the things that they are passionate enough to “play” with are the key things that foster innovation. You just have to learn to trust them enough to let them play, and release some of the structure that “mature” companies think they require.
Another example of how Amazon gets it.
Tagged with: 37signals, amazon, innovation, systems
I’m reading The Machine That Changed the World : The Story of Lean Production by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos. It is an extremely interesting book.
I ran into this small paragraph yesterday that for some reason stuck in my head as something important:
The truly lean plant has two key organizational features: It transfers the maximum number of tasks and responsibilities to those workers actually adding value to the car on the line, and it has in place a system for detecting defects that quickly traces every problem, once discovered, to its ultimate cause.
I’m telling you, the Poppendeick books are great, but there is nothing like going right to the source for an explanation of lean. I’m about 100 pages into the current book and I am absolutely fascinated at how much of todays current corporate structure (multi-level, many people with very specific task sets or responsibilities) is based on things that Ford and Sloan did with their companies.
In IT, this management style is manifested through all the different groups one hears about all the time from people in the field: Development, Infrastructure, Business Analysts, Quality Assurance. Each its own little silo, with its own responsibilities - and never should one group know how to do, or be privy to, the information in one of the other groups. Handoffs occur between the groups via very large documents.
Sometimes it goes further than that. I was talking to a friend once (who worked at another company, BTW) who told me about how their DBA’s were responsible for uptime and performance of the database and had decided that developers were not allowed to use ORDER BY clauses in their SQL because it effected the performance of the database. These developers were actually forced to sort their results within the application, rather than use the capabilities of the database, adding additional complexity to an already complex application. Worse, management seemed to buy into the decision, as I don’t think I would have been hearing about the situation if it was overruled. Ridiculous.
Another quote from the book, same page:
In old fashioned mass production plants, managers jealously guard information about conditions in the plant, thinking this knowledge is the key to their power.
Again, shocking how much of this mentality you read about in corporations not even connected to automobiles. This sounds like just about every company I’ve talked to people about (or worked at) over the years.
I’ve come to the decision over the years that ultimate transparency is the key to breaking down silos. It only breaks down your silo, but hey - thats a start, and at least you are setting an example.
Its definitely very beneficial, I’m finding, to read about things that are completely outside your profession to give you some distance from what is being taught. The lessons flow in easily this way, because you don’t have the predisposition that you “already know how things work”.
I recommend to anyone in IT to pick this book up. Its absolutely fascinating.
Tagged with: agile, Books, corporate-culture, lean, process, silos
I really enjoyed Jason’s interview with Evan Williams (co-founder of Twitter, Odeo, and Blogger) especially Evan’s “lessons learned” about entrepreneurism:
1. Focus
2. Small things can become big.
3. Don’t go too wide.
4. Trust your gut.
5. Don’t do anything you aren’t absolutely passionate about.
Tagged with: business, calacanis, lessons, podcasts, start-ups, twitter
The other night the ignition switch on the furnace went out in the house. I watched as Jonna spent a ton of time searching for the contact information for the guy who came out the last time we had a problem. It took quite a while to find the information, but finally she found it. When she got a hold of him, he started asking questions about a blinking light on the furnace. We had no idea what he was talking about, but I did remember he gave us information last time he was here - I just couldn’t remember what it was.
Yesterday as I was driving to work, I was reflecting on the activities of the night before. Why did we not have this information available when we needed it? Where could we put it so that if something happened again, we could have it readily available? How can we take these kinds of notes effortlessly and ensure that we know where we put them?
Then a stark realization hit me. We’ve already solved this problem - at work.
In early 2004, at the urging of one of my direct reports, we installed wiki software at the office to solve just this problem. All of our information was scattered around network drives, none of it really searchable. Doug was very into Python at the time so we chose ZWiki, a wiki package that runs on the Zope application server. We used that for about 1 1/2 years until we finally bit the bullet and moved to MediaWiki, where our information repository lives today.
We actually have quite a knowledge base going there now, everything from detailed process information, to configuration information, to even some projects that are being managed on the platform, with detailed information about all of the issues encountered, configuration information, and the like. It has become a one stop shop for all information related to our environment.
And I’ve been the primary champion since it was installed.
This was when, as I was sitting in the car pondering this, that the title of this post came to me. The old adage is true. There are so many problems that we solve in our daily business lives that never get resolved in our personal lives, and vice versa. Its amazing to me that while we’ve done so much at work to centralize the information in our department (while decentralizing the authoring so that if something is found to be wrong it can be corrected) that I never thought to apply this at home to keep all of our information straight here. Instead, Jonna spends countless amounts of time searching through kitchen drawers for information on service providers and I sit trying to remember that one valuable piece of information that the furnace guy absolutely needs so that he can arrive and fix the part, rather than wasting trips to and from our house to first diagnose the problem, then go get the parts to fix it.
So, I’ve spent this morning getting MediaWiki running here at the Labs. Hopefully, I can motivate the family to use it as we have motivated our employees to use it at work to keep all of our important information centralized and updated. Its a simple thing to set up, but can be rather difficult to socialize. Luckily, we only have 5 people here, so the socialization might be a tad bit easier to do.
How many things do you struggle with at home that have been solved for years at work? Maybe you even had a hand in solving them, but the solution never seeped into your life outside of work?
This was a major “AHA” moment for me this week and I’d love to hear about other people who might have similar stories.
Tagged with: Digital Life, information, organization
One of my favorite “bad” movies that I just cannot switch past when its on is the movie “Road House“. As a matter of fact, we went out and bought the DVD so that when it is on TV, I can pop in the DVD and watch the “unedited” TV version of the movie - thats how addictive the movie is to me for some reason. I just cannot “not” watch it when its on.
So imagine my surprise when the latest episode of Manager Tools used Roadhouse as one of their examples when discussing Handling Peer Conflict When Your Directs Are Involved. The example was around one of their steps in handling conflict, which was “Turn the other cheek”. In the movie, there is a scene in which Patrick Swayze is laying down the rules for working in the bar now that he has been hired as a cooler. Oddly, the scene really does illustrate the point Mark was making quite well:
DALTON:
1. Never underestimate your opponent. Expect the unexpected.
2. Take it outside. Never start anything in the bar unless its absolutely necessary.
and 3. Be nice.EMPLOYEE:
C’monDALTON:
If someone gets in your face and calls you a <bleep>, I want you to be nice.EMPLOYEE: OK …
DALTON: Ask him to walk, but be nice. If he won’t walk - walk him - but be nice. If you can’t walk him, one of the others will help you - and you’ll both be nice. I want you to remember that its a job. Its nothing personal.
EMPLOYEE 2: Uh, huh. Being called a <bleep> isn’t personal?
DALTON: No. Its two nouns combined to elicit a prescribed response.
EMPLOYEE 2: [laughs] Well what if someone calls my mama a whore?
DALTON: Is she? [pause with employee laughter] I want you to be nice until its time to not be nice.
EMPLOYEE 3: Well, uh, how are we supposed to know when that is?
DALTON: You won’t. I’ll let you know. You are the bouncers, I am the cooler. All you have to do is watch my back - and each others … and take out the trash.
I guess it just goes to show you that there are leadership lessons everywhere, you just have to be looking for them. Road House, honestly, would have been the last place I would have looked, but damned if they aren’t there as well.
As an aside, I’ve just started reading a book called Leadership Sopranos Style: How to Become a More Effective Boss. Again, another place I would not necessarily look for leadership lessons. The book is pretty good so far. I’ll probably write something up on it when I finish it.
I like books and lectures that use pop culture to make the concepts more accessible. We need more of this in the world, rather than the dry theory of most leadership related material.
Tagged with: Books, leadership, lessons, movies
Photo by rbieber
Did you know that you could just walk into your local Starbucks and request a "Green Apron Book", that outlines the principles of Starbucks? I heard about this little booklet from a recent book I had read about the company and went in to my local Starbucks and asked for a copy. I was a tad surprised when the employees were extremely happy to give one to me. There’s something to be said about a company that is not afraid to share their core principles with their customers. There’s much more to say when they do it so enthusiastically.
I was totally impressed with being able to walk into my local Starbucks and get a copy of their “Green Apron book” after reading The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary.
I did find another review of the book and it was really cool to me that the reviewer offered the same observation that I did around the structure of the Starbucks principles:
After reading it that afternoon, what impressed me the most was the absence of rules. In their place were suggestions, goals, and the empowerment to make every customer’s experience a memorable one. It was at that moment that I realized the significance of Starbucks’ philosophy—not only for business, but for life in general.
This really parallels my thoughts on what I had read:
One thing that comes out fairly strong in most of the books I read about Starbucks (and Toyota as of late) is the acknowledgment of senior managements importance in setting the culture, ideals, and principles of the overall business while giving the “people doing the work” the ability to act within the framework of the principles.
Another cool thing I noticed. When you dig down into the detail of the Be Welcoming principle, you find the following:
Get to know your customer by drink or name.
This completely impressed me - because I experienced it. As a matter of fact, it impressed me so much that I wrote about the experience in the post “ Reaching “Norm” Status - The Ultimate in Customer Service” back in March of 2005.
Tagged with: Books, corporate-culture, customer-experience, Photos, starbucks
For some reason, if there’s a business book related to Starbucks, I just have to pick it up and usually wind up going through it as quickly as one of my favorite mocha’s.
This week I ran across The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary by Joseph Michelli. This book is the result of an 18 month study of what makes Starbucks work by the author.
Starbucks has been one of those companies that completely fascinates me. From everything written about them, they are run a lot differently than most companies one reads about. Their commitment to their customers, employees, and communities in which they reside is really unparalleled in the business world and I am constantly wondering how they make it work.
This book gives you some insight. In it, Michelli outlines the 5 principles that the Starbucks leadership team instills in its “partners” through tons of training and consistent modeling of behaviors by senior management.
To me, these seem like some pretty solid principles to build a business on. It almost seems “too ideal to be practically possible”. One thing that comes out fairly strong in most of the books I read about Starbucks (and Toyota as of late) is the acknowledgment of senior managements importance in setting the culture, ideals, and principles of the overall business while giving the “people doing the work” the ability to act within the framework of the principles. It seems that the more I read about these two companies, the more there is in common between them at a high level.
A book that I would be really interested in reading would be a book focused on the IT practices and principles in both companies. It seems to me that it is really easy to push down authority in a company which is distributed across the country, while that same practice in a corporate environment (especially IT, which is traditionally looked at as a “necessary evil” and liability rather than an asset) would be a little harder to foster this type of culture. I would be extremely interested to read an honest, detailed descriptions of how these areas of the company are run within the context of the overarching principles.
But here I go, digressing again. I thought The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary was an excellent book and would recommend it to anyone managing people. It documents an interesting framework for running a business and is full of great examples of each principle to illustrate application of the principle to “real life” in a business.
Tagged with: corporate-culture, leadership, principles, starbucks
I’ve started reading The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles From The World’s Greatest Manufacturer by Jeffrey Liker. I’ve figured that as my curiosity peaks on Lean Development and Lean Principles in general, I might as well go to the source.
Chapter One opens with a quote from Fujio Cho, the president of Toyota Motor Corporation from 2002. I read the quote and thought I’d post it up here.
We place the highest value on actual implementation and taking action. There are many things one doesn’t understand and therefore, we ask them why don’t you just go ahead and take action; try to do something? You realize how little you know and you face your own failures and you simply can correct those failures and redo it again and at the second trial you realize another mistake or another thing you didn’t like so you can redo it once again. So by constant improvement, or should I say, the improvement based upon action, one can rise up to the higher level of practice and knowledge.
Toyota is thought of as one of the most process oriented companies around, and yet they still acknowledge that you do not know everything up front and build that into the process. A book that starts out this way has got to be one interesting read!
Tagged with: agile, corporate-culture, lean, principles, process, quotes, toyota
A portion of this weeks edition of the Gillmor Gang (MidTail Gang - part IV - ugh!) really hit home for me this week. At around 14:34 in the sub-episode, Jason Calacanis talks about how he feels as an entrepreneur working in a big company. This section lasts through the end of the sub-episode. You have to give this a listen.
I don’t think what Jason is saying is necessarily only a view from an entrepreneurs perspective, but applies to anyone who wants to execute and has built their career on the ability to execute. As a company grows larger and things get more political, it becomes extremely difficult to execute anything, which can become extremely frustrating for anyone who just wants to get things done without having to talk about it for three months.
One quote that Jason threw out bears repeating:
Centralization and consolidation, I think, are two of the worst forces for building great product. Once you centralize stuff and put in controls, it just - it kills the process.
I think its great that Jason can be so honest about the experiences he is having at AOL. You rarely hear someone talk about these things and it was very refreshing to hear something that hit so close to home.
I must have listened to this section about 4 times last night on the way home. This section, in and of itself, was worth the 5 part download yesterday.
Tagged with: consolidation, corporate, culture, podcasts
I’m currently reading Lean Thinking : Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones in my quest to learn more about lean principles in general.
During my reading this evening, I came across this quote that I really liked.
Perfection is like infinity. Trying to envision it (and to get there) is actually impossible, but the effort to do so provides inspiration and direction essential to making progress along the path.
This kind of reminds me of this Bruce Lee quote:
A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.
People tend to think of goal setting from only the S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely) perspective. While these goals are important, and give you an idea of short term goals, the idea of a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) as outlined in Jim Collins Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies are also very important, as they give you somewhere to move towards.
Just a little something I was thinking about this evening after reading that quote. Goals of the ‘Big Hairy Audacious’ type, with buy in and commitment from everyone, can be a really good way to drive behavior in a long term direction rather than keeping everything at an attainable and realistic viewpoint, which can often keep us in a very short term frame of mind.
I’ve seen this blog entry from DreamHost (my web hosting provider) referenced a few times on the network. I finally got a chance this morning to sit down and read it. I have to say, I’m impressed with both the honesty and the transparency that DreamHost provides to their customers.
I’ve been a DreamHost customer since 2001. I’ve had only a few issues during this time, all of which were resolved in timely manner by their friendly staff. The last three weeks for them sounds like they were pretty challenging, but to see a blog entry detailing every event is an extremely refreshing thing.
Wouldn’t it be great if every company were this honest with their customers? I know I get pretty frustrated when I know that the site is unavailable (you know, because of all the indispensable value it provides to you, the reader ;)), but actually hearing an honest account of what happened rather than vague excuses or blame just increases my loyalty as a customer.
Good job DreamHost! Keep up the great work. This is just one of many reasons I’ve been here so long.
Tagged with: business, customer-experience, transparency, webhosting
