Lessons in service, brand and leadership can come out of early life experiences. By Lisa Hochgraf
By Lisa Hochgraf
Lessons in service, brand and leadership can come out of early life experiences.
Consider Denise Wymore’s first job—serving fast food at Beasley’s Fish and Chips.
Wymore, co-founder of 6th Story and author of The 2020 Vision of Marketing: A Focus on Purpose, told attendees of CUES’ Execu/Summit Monday about how her first employer, the owner of the restaurant, shared his values with his employees.
Sharing his values, Mr. Beasley told Wymore and her co-workers that what they were doing mattered. He would say things like, “If you are serving someone—even if you are bringing them tartar sauce—you are doing something worthwhile.”
To test how employees were doing, Mr. Beasley would come in to eat. If he saw employees doing their jobs right, he would stay at his table and eat. If they did something wrong, he’d come in the back and prepare his own meal. If he didn’t need to do that, he would come back after and thank everyone for the good meal.
So the employees' goal, Wymore said, was to “keep Mr. Beasley out of the kitchen.”
On Thanksgiving morning, Beasley cooked a meal for all his employees. He’d tell them, “Every other day, you cook for me. Today I am thankful for you, and I will cook for you.”
Wymore emphasized that Mr. Beasley taught her a lot about how organizations don’t have values, people do.
However, credit unions don’t always excel at knowing and showing their values, said Wymore, who has been working for them since her first teller job in 1980. At her first credit union, for example, she quickly learned that balancing her teller drawer was more important to some of the CU’s leaders than learning about and serving member needs.
What are the values of the people on your CU's leadership team--your CEO and board members? How are you showing them to your employees and members?
Lisa Hochgraf is a CUES senior editor.
