A successful banker goes into the Cadillac dealership and selects the most expensive car in the showroom floor. With every option available, a special paint job and premium price, the banker proudly takes the keys to his new car and drives away from the dealership.
Within 2 miles, the new owner hears a distinct “clunk-clink” coming from somewhere inside the car. Quickly dismissing it, he continues driving down the road. A few minutes later, he hears the same “clunk-clink” sound again. Irritated, he immediately turns the car around and drives back to the dealership.
After some choice words with the salesman, the dealership takes the car around to the shop and pulls every mechanic over to the Cadillac to figure out what is making the sound. After several hours of unsuccessfully replicating the sound, the dealership sends the banker on his way- assuring him there was nothing to be found and the car is in perfect working order.
The following morning, the dealership sales manager arrives at work to find the same customer standing at the front door with a less-than pleasant expression on his face. The “clunk-clink” was still there and if the dealership couldn’t fix it today, the customer was going to demand a full refund.
Again, every mechanic in the shop was assigned the task of finding this rattle. By lunch, they still hadn’t found anything wrong. Exasperated, the sales manager told the mechanics to tear the whole car apart- they were going to find the source of this “clunk-clink.”
With the entire engine bay, suspension and interior stripped out of the car, the chief mechanic slammed the driver’s door in disgust and finally heard a distinct “clunk-clink.” Opening the door back up and grabbing a flashlight to look into the inner door panel, he saw what looked like a glass bottle. Reaching down into the lowest portions of the door sill, he fished out an empty soda bottle that had a rolled up piece of paper in it.
After removing the paper from the bottle and unrolling it, he started reading a scrawled note clearly written with a worker’s hand. It read, “So, you finally found the rattle, you rich son-of-a-bitch.”
While this story was long-ago proven to be completely fabricated, it is a colorful way of demonstrating the damage a disgruntled employee can do to your product or reputation. Hopefully, you have never experienced an employee going to extreme lengths like this to demonstrate their dissatisfaction. Consider that an employee’s level of engagement or “buy-in” to the company’s efforts is more likely to be somewhere on a continuum between this extreme low and demonstrating complete ownership of their role and the organization’s well-being.
While an employee may not outright sabotage your reputation with a customer, they can make a series of choices that benefit them personally and fall outside of the company’s best interest. Those smaller choices are still damaging and undermine your organization over a period of time.
The days of employees just being happy to have a job and showing that gratitude by working hard and unselfishly are over. Even as job markets stutter, people are looking to work where they can be engaged in ways that go beyond pay and benefits. Increasingly, employee engagement comes from how the job or company makes them feel about themselves.
Are you engaging employees in ways that make them feel valued, respected, even loved? The intrinsic rewards of working somewhere are important and that includes how they feel about the company and their role within it.
Do you have a “Cadillac” story to share? If so, comment below or email me at matt.hottle@redhawkresults.com.