My Responsibility

The subject of my last post made an impression on me.  That is why I posted it of course.  The general idea of the post was that if a business - in my case a grocery store - wanted great customer service than it would be the responsibility of the person in charge to make sure it happens.  If the business is providing bad service the reason is the person in charge allows for the bad service to happen.

I guess you always know this in the back of your mind to sometimes you need to get slapped on your head to bring it to the front.  Reading the blog from www.marksandborn.com was my slap.

In running my store I have two assistant managers and multiple department managers.  Many times it seems that my plate is overloaded.  When examining why I realize that it is because I am loading my plate with other people's responsibilities - my assistant's and my department manager's responsibilities.  Because of this I cannot do what I need to be doing and what is in fact the most important thing for me to do - create an environment of service...making sure my customers are highly satisfied with their shopping experience and become ambassadors for the store.

My assistant managers and department managers are the subject matter experts in their areas - or should be.  I should not have to concern myself with the minutia of running their areas.  What would be the reason for me having them on my payroll if I am going to do their jobs - or interfere while they are trying to do their jobs.  I need to let them run.

Of course I need to train, follow up, train some more and follow up some more to make sure they are taking care of their areas of responsibility but by turning them loose and letting them run I can then concentrate on my job.

My boss read the blog from my last post and challenged all of his store directors to create the environment of service in their stores.  The leaders of our company have determined that this is the path we should take as an enterprise.  Now we just have to execute in our individual stores.

There are many paths that can be taken to get to the goal.  I will cover those in upcoming posts.  For now though I am going to turn my managers free and do what I am supposed to do - take care of our customers!