PPRuNe Forums - Service Heroes

Just read the following in our local paper, and it reminded me very much of the way many of us work on board..................

Service Heroes

You find them at the post office, in restaurants, on airplanes and at the bank. They have a lot in common with top athletes; high ambitions and a professional attitude in everything they do. Thye’re driven by an unstoppable competition with themselves; they go to uninspiring meetings, read dead-boring product descriptions and mind-numbing directives from management, just to make sure they are always up to date.
When these people continuously drive themselves onward, stimulated by satisfied custumers and grateful colleagues, it can also be a strategy to survive the tough day-to-day business they operate in.
Paradoxically, management often dislikes them, while customers love them.

Service Heroes are creative but demanding. They require response to their ideas and often choose to “go their own way” if their organization makes it difficult for them to do the job the way they believe it should be done.
At the same time they are seldomly Prima Donna’s who let their own quirks take precedence over what’s best for the orginazation or the people they work with.

A lot of the authoritarian controll & steering mechanisms management tries to use on these people are futile. Instead, it’s all about giving direction to competent people, and about using their knowledge, skills and esperience to to raise the level of service given by the organization.

Freely :) translated from an article in the Norwegian Aftenposten, written by Johnny Gimmestad. Exerpts from the book "Serviceheltene" by Tor Wallin Andreassen and Fred Selnes