Chip Conley – PEAK – How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow
Written by: on September 6, 2010
Chip Conley’s book PEAK is stacked full of ideas to create happy and passionate work environments in order to attract and engage the top talent in any marketplace, develop a loyal customer base and build a profitable and sustainable business.
What makes it different in my view is that he focuses on measurable ways to make the ‘intangible tangible’. He refers to the intangible as being the peak experiences customers, employees and investors have with great companies which inspire loyalty, brand status and ultimately foster peak performance for the companies themselves.
Chip is Founder and CEO of Joie De Vivre Hospitality, California’s largest boutique hotel company, consisting of over 40 award winning hotels, restaurants and bars. He says that 94% of world leaders think that the intangibles are important in business, yet only 5% have a way of measuring them.
Using Maslow as his inspiration, he created a new ‘Psychology of Business’ based not on just meeting the tangible, foundational needs of his stakeholders but, more importantly, focusing on the intangible, self-actualising needs.
Here are some of the points and tips he discusses:
- Teach all managers to personalise and customise their approach to recognition
- Create an exercise that helps your employees understand just how much they impact the customer experience
- Make a list of the 10 reasons people should join your organisation
- Create peak experiences for your employees that build their sense of community with each other
- Use employee reviews as a formalised time to show recognition
- Engage your executives and employees in a brainstorming session about how you would apply Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to the motivations of your customers
- Move beyond looking just at your company’s satisfaction surveys and look at the broad category you’re competing in. Ask questions that will allow your customers to think beyond the current product/ service offerings
- Help your customers to meet their highest goals
- Make your customers feel like they’re part of a bigger picture
- Offer your customers something of real value that they haven’t even imagined
Link to his talk http://enviable.wpengine.com/enviable-video/