Your Friday Lesson with Richard Branson

Build a Corporate Comfort Zone.

Employees must feel free and encouraged to openly express themselves without rigid confines so they can do better work and make good, impactful decisions.

"This may sound like a truism," begins Richard Branson, "But it has to be said: It takes an engaged, motivated and committed workforce to deliver a first-class product or service and build a successful, sustainable enterprise."

Your Friday Lesson with Richard Branson

Perfection is Unattainable.

"There's an inherent danger in letting people think that they have perfected something," says Richard Branson. "When they believe they've 'nailed it', most people tend to sit back and rest on their laurels while countless others will be labouring furiously to better their work!"

For this reason, Branson never gives anyone a 100% perfect review of their work. He believes that no matter how “brilliantly conceived” something is, there is always room for improvement.

Business Tips: Customer Delight not Satisfaction is the New Goal

Customer Delight

Satisfied customers defect at a high rate in many industries. Because satisfaction alone does not translate linearly into outcomes such as loyalty in terms of purchases, businesses must strive for 100 percent, or total customer satisfaction and even delight to achieve the kind of loyalty they desire.

Current studies attribute a higher degree of emotionality to the dissatisfaction end of the satisfaction continuum than in the past. For example, customers who have experienced service failures feel annoyed or victimised. 

Although victimisation is felt at a deeper emotional level than irritation, both can result in outrage. By focusing on more intense customer emotions, such as outrage and delight, we can understand the dynamics of customer emotions and their effect on customer behavior and loyalty.

What strategies do you use that help gratify and delight customers?

I hope you found this information on the Customer Delight helpful. Let me know how you apply this knowledge in your life and in your business.

Just one more thing before you go … I’d like to ask you to do one important thing for me – spread the word about this article.

That is all -

David

Excellence

The society in which you grow up determines by and large how you perceive excellence and the goal of getting the very best out of your life.

Some cultures might attribute excellence to a few brilliant, hard-working, exceptional cases. Other cultures, such as the one in which I grew up, value modesty and urge people to try to be “average”.

Excellence, however, is for all of us. Excellence is about getting the most out of our talents. Excellence is about trying to make a little dent in the world, so that when we move on, we will have left behind a better place for those who follow.

You might think that striving for excellence means perfectionism. Perfectionism is the opposite of excellence. While perfectionism is about spending 95% of your time on the final 5% improvement in a project, excellence is all about identifying how you can reach 80% of your outcome in 20% of your time.

Perfectionism is about shielding yourself from the fear of failure, it is about uncertainty and doubt. Excellence is about knowing yourself and your strengths, taking pride in yourself and showing your talents in broad daylight to make this world a better place.

Achieving excellence is a project that takes daily effort in many differing aspects of your life.

Your Friday Lesson with Richard Branson

You Can't Run a Business Without Taking Risks.

One of Richard Branson’s favourite sayings when advising about taking business risks is, ‘The brave may not live forever—but the cautious do not live at all!’

Every business involves risks. Be prepared to get knocked down, says Branson, but success rarely comes from playing it safe. You may fail, but Branson also dares to point out that "there's no such thing as a total failure."