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Good Boss Stories This is a large Australian Hotel chain whom a colleague recently did a job for. Another company value is Transparency. This is my favourite: staff can chat with the Chairman on a special section of their web site - and yes, the chairman responds! Also, company policy is that there are no BCCs allowed on emails - how great is that! As a great believer in equality and open communication (not gossipping behind doors), I just love this. The head of GM in the USA is using a similar strategy to by pass PR and talk directly to customers via his personal Blog.
My first job upon coming to Washington in 1958 was working at Mr. Danziger's Disc Shop. I remember my interview because Mr. Danziger gave me a 10-question oral quiz to see if I knew enough about classical music.
I was hired (by grace) and given customer service instructions, too. Every male customer was to be called "sir" and every female customer "ma'am." The Disc Shop, then located at 1623 Connecticut Ave. NW, was an informal center for classical and international music, with attention given, as well, to Broadway musicals and film soundtracks. Artists frequently came into the store to check on sales of their albums, and distributors generously served up promotional albums to employees. This broadened my appreciation of a wider variety of music than I might otherwise have come to know. I can't imagine a better first job than clerking at the Disc Shop, and to this day "Dan" Danziger was one of my best bosses. VANCE GARNETT “This is an excerpt from the book, Once While Travelling, written by Tony and Maureen Wheeler the founders of Lonely Planet an Australian Travel guide publishing business.”
I didn’t realize when I flew to the US that it was going to be an opportunity to see Americans at their resilient best. The overwhelming response was the same: they were understanding about why we had to make the changes, the were pleased we’d turned up to explain the reorganization personally, they reiterated that Lonely Planed had been a great place to work (and that they weren’t going to hold this against us!) and in many cases they thanked us for treating them with dignity, respect and (when it came to the question of dollars) generosity. When we knew how tough this news was for so many of our Oakland staff, it was embarrassing that many of them came over to say, “I know this must be rally hard for your,” and “We’ll still love Lonely Planet.” After our announcement the mood at the office was like a funeral and many of our staff headed across the Bay Bridge to a San Francisco bar to drown their sorrows. At their invitation I joined them. There was, however, a final coda to our San Francisco changes.
“Sure,” we replied. “There are no guarantees, and if you got the job it would be at Australian salary levels plus you’d have to get to Australia yourself and, although we’d do anything we could to help, it would be up to you to sort our visa problems and work permits. But you know what Lonely Planet’s about, so if you applied you’d certainly be a front runner for any position going.” A half-dozen of our American staff ended up moving to Melbourne. |
I was sorry to read of the passing of Littman "Dan" Danziger [obituary,
Jan. 29].
Maureen and I had sleepless nights arguing out the inevitability of
downsizing our overseas operations, but we quickly came to one firm
conclusion. If we had to do it, then it was going to be done personally.
We decided to make the announcements at all our offices simultaneously.
Maureen would stay for the Australian announcement, but if half of our
US staff were going to lose their jobs then I would tell them myself. So
in mid-March 2002 I followed Steve Hibbard and Ian Posthumous, our
human-relations chief, to the US and the next day dropped a bombshell
which, sadly, our staff had already seen coming.
“If a job comes up in Melbourne,” asked several of our departing America
staff, “could I apply for it?”