Why Cleveland has got to PLAY BALL

This short story begins when I was teaching a section of MIDS-411 at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve Univesity in 2003. I had asked Jennifer Thomas, now the director of the Civic Innovation Lab, to be a guest presenter to the class on the topic of "Why it is good to stay in Cleveland after graduation". Jennifer provided a wonderfully energetic view of Cleveland, recounted several very positive local trends and then, at the end of her presentation, asked the class (approx. 32 students) how many intended to stay in Cleveland after graduation.

ONE ...

ONE! 

One hand went up confidently and another two "kinda" went up but would not firmly commit. The one hand that went up, (Patrick) did indeed stay in Cleveland and remained employed by Case Western Reserve University for quite a while after graduation.

Jennifer and I lamented the response afterward. I spoke about it several times after the event, only to be assured I was misreading the trends and that my anecdotal experience was not indicative of the energy being invested. Ideas such as a revitalization of the Flats, the upcoming construction of our new convention center, the building of the Medical Mart, etc. Some of these mega-projects have indeed successfully come together such as IdeaStream, the Euclid Transit line, Browns stadium, Gateway ... but I sense the community almost universally undervalues the accomplishments because they have not truly improved the quality of life for any but a few. (What does a new stadium mean if we perpetually drop the ball???)

For many months, I have sat quietly by, building a tight technical community known as Boundless Flight, Inc. using technicians from Mobile, AL, Chicago, IL, Denver, CO, China, and even Romania. It has worked because we did not build an overdependence for either revenue nor talent on Cleveland. But lately, due to the national, regional, and local "doom and gloom" addiction, it has been tough to remain positive and emotionally energetic.

Enter Margaret Vandervort, a talent recruiter for the Cleveland Clinic.

Being innately irrationally optimistic at times, I am naturally attracted to energetic, positive people. Margaret started Twittering a few weeks ago about how great the Cleveland Clinic is and I hooked right in. With my daughter working as a nurse there, I am one of the Clinic's biggest fans. Margaret's Tweets are all about what a great place Cleveland is, how wonderful the theater district is, how marvelously diverse the restaurants are, how the Cleveland Clinic is one of the best places IN THE WORLD to work ... and she is right on. Margaret, for the past few weeks, has been a voice of consistent sunshine and warmth in a room of SO MANY gloomy streams of consciousness. Thank you, Margaret, for the encouragement you have brought. But yesterday reality once again shook me out of the lovely dream Margaret's energy and perspectives has rocked me into the past few weeks.

I was having an account review session with Bridget Ginley at the KoKo Bakery on Payne and east 37th. Bridget had been unable to get out that morning on account of the snowy weather and I had an interview with WCPN re: the governor's budget presentation (which, by the way, I was incredibly encouraged by!) so I swung over to her neighborhood to spend some time discussing the most recent activity from her accounts.

Sitting alone at the side of the bakery dining area was Brian. (No last name for fear of casting a shadow on his wife's situation - you will understand in a moment - but I have his card!) Brian was feverishly cutting away on his laptop and looked just "on the edge" enough to potentially be a resource for Boundless Flght, Inc. so ... I interjected Bridget and I into Brian's life and began a dialog. Brian is a Kent State grad (as is Bridget), lives in Painesville, and is generally very happy in Cleveland ... but no more than ten exchanges into the dialog, Brian (was he reading my mind??) informed me that he would soon be moving to Santa Clara, CA where he would be working at the corporate offices of his company AND that he would be taking his wife with him when he left. He told us his wife is of Chinese descent and works as a technician at the Cleveland Clinic. On one level, I immediately felt the loss of yet another excellent technician (why else would they invest to move him out to CA?) but on another level altogether I felt the COMBINED loss of not only Brian but his wife as well. What a ripple effect! As the technician achieves excellence, his value to the company he remotely works for increases to the point where they want him "at home" and along with him goes a second sharp, alert, energetic mind.

Ouch.

OUCH! Not only do Margaret and the other recruiters at the Clinic have to recruit people to fuel the organization's growth, but they also must recruit to backfill the ongoing regional talent depreciation. I am sure this is going on everywhere but as Cleveland is having one of its snowiest Januarys in recorded history, it is not hard to imagine Brian's wife WANTING to move to CA and very hard to imagine someone from Jacksonville, FL or Houston, TX, etc. WANTING to relocate to Cleveland.

Bottom line:
I am making it my DUTY to support, enable, and encourage the talent recruiters of Cleveland in 2009. When I find openings, I am going to distribute them to our network. When I hear of fatigue and discouragement in the ranks, I am going to pipe in an uplifting note. When I hear of frustration within the ranks, I will dedicate training on new tools. When I sense a lack of support INSIDE the recruiters' companies, I am going to contact their managers and supervisors and give them my encouragement to provide training, encouragement and support to those who daily make the pitch to "come here!" and who remind us how blessed we really are in Cleveland.

Bottom up, folks, bottom up. No matter what President Obama, our congress, Governor Strickland, and the leadership of Cleveland say, we will only pull out of this "slump" one pitch at a time. They may make the rules, set the ticket price, hire the umpires, and turn the lights on in the stadium ... but they aren't the ones running, throwing, hitting, and catching. We are.

Play ball,

Gary

How to Generate Low Customer Satisfaction Case Study : The Winking Lizard

Gary's Winking Lizard Story:





Let me start this with a short note highlighting how much I and my company enjoy participating in the Winking Lizard Beer Tour every year. We enjoy it so much that in some years (2004 for sure), we have even finished two tours. We use the Beer Tour as a great reason to bring together friends and business acquaintances that otherwise would never have met and many of these relationships have lasted several years.





That being said, all is not well in Lizard Land.





On December 6 of this past year, I was heading back from a business trip to Columbus, OH. We had just attended a 6-hour demonstration of the


Rover Ink product (http://www.roverusa.com/) at the


Platform Lab facility (http://www.platformlab.org/)


and after a 2-hour drive, we were ready for a bite to eat. We pulled off 71 in Brunswick and returned to the Winking Lizard restaurant where we had opened our original card #5769. That evening, we asked our waitress to pull our current tour list, and we started to go down the list to identify delicious candidates to move us closer to our goal of tour completion. Just a few days before, I had been to the Lizard on Rockside Road with a couple of friends and we had knocked three or four beers off the tour that I KNEW we had polished of at least six or seven beers that were still on our list of beers to yet be consumed. I mentioned it to our server in Brunswick and was told that :





"this happens all the time, you should keep all your receipts so you can show which ones you have checked off the list".





I didn't think a great deal about this as I was sure we would have enough business activity between December 6th and the end of the year to make up for the discrepancy.





On Decemember 20th, I went to the Winking Lizard in Lakewood. There I had dinner with a friend and picked up a 6-pack of the outstanding brands to take to my daughter's place for our Christmas dinner on the 25th. With the words of the server ringing in my ears, I made sure I kept everything, the detailed list of what we consumed, the charge receipt, and even the place mat that we used to mark off the 9 beers we had purchased.





On December 27th, I returned to the Lakewood Lizard knock a few more off the tour. At this point, there should have been eight or so left on the "to do" list. To my surprise, there were still 18 listed. I encouraged my server that there must be some mistake because I had been in that same restaurant only a week before, had wonderful service, chatted with the server about our tour being "almost done", and had knocked several off the list. She got the manager who told me she couldn't do anything unless I had the receipts. No more. I got back in my car, drove back to my office to pick up the paperwork, and brought it all to the manager who then made sure the list was properly deducted from the tally. Had I not made that trip, I am sure to this day that the manager that evening would have thought I was just trying to get a few knocked off for free and that there really was no problem. On the side, while I was picking up the paperwork, one server told my friend that "this happens all the time" and apologized profusely for the inconvenience.





On December 31, I went back to Lakewood to finish the tour. On this trip, Jim Elliot, the manager, came out to meet me and extend his personal apologies for the prior incident. He was honestly sorry for the situation and offered the following explaination, "When the server closed out your bill, they must "release" your tour number of the credit never occurs."





I explained to Jim that I own a software development firm, that we have supported POS systems and database systems for many companies such as his and that it CAN'T be that tough a problem to be occurring so many times ... and please, W.L. management, don't blame the servers. It is your system that is broke when the problem occurs over and over and over.


I will go to the Tour Party at Browns Stadium and remain enthusiastic as we obtain our 2009 tour card. I won't let my other 12 jackets be orphaned from their '09 brother by my frustrations. But I hate to think how many people have decided not to pursue the tour due to their similar frustrations and I hate even more to think how the morale of servers have been dinged by such a poorly designed system. Any system that pits a restaurant's servers against their MOST LOYAL customers





Get on it, Lizard managers, we look forward to much better from you in 2009.