Chip R. Bell's Blog, page 2

Happy Veterans (and Private E-Nothings) Day

The word “veteran” means someone who served in the military. But it also means someone who has had long experience. Service in the military does not begin as an experienced soldier but rather as an anxious, naive, and lowly recruit. A recruit has no rank, no ribbons, and no power; just a lot of KP and guard duty all night long in the cold. Boot camp starts for most with a sergeant screaming in your face, making nasty remarks about your mother, and demanding you do fifty push-ups on command.

 

Wh...

Voting Fuels Freedom

The last few months I served in Viet Nam with the elite 82nd Airborne, I served as battalion adjutant—it is like the chief administrative officer over about 1,000 soldiers. It was a relief from having served many months in heavy combat as an infantry unit officer. Periodically soldiers came from the field to headquarters for a few days of rest and resupply. One of the soldiers to stand down (as we called it) was a South Vietnamese soldier assigned to one of our rifle companies as an interpreter....

Is Your Customer Experience Beautiful?

Check out the photo of this bearded iris in my side yard. Poet John Keats reminded us that “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” I have a friend who grew up in the U.K. His two favorite superlatives are “beautiful” and “brilliant.” And, his labels have little to do with prettiness or with smarts, but everything to do with awesome.

 

So, how would your customers characterize their experiences with your unit or organization? Would “beautiful” (aka awesome) be a superlative they would use? A beauti...

Are Your Promises to Customers Sacred?

Mescal is a unique adult beverage I occasionally enjoy. I like is served chilled and neat (meaning no mixers or ice). Mescal is in the same beverage family as tequila, but is made with different types of agave plants; tequila is made only with blue agave plants that grow in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. But there is more.

 

Tequila is made by removing the heart of the agave plant (the pina), cooking it for hours in an oven, after which the juice is squeezed out and distilled. On the other hand, ...

Do You Have Command Presence?

“You can pretend to care, you cannot pretend to be there,” wrote Texas Bix Bender in his book Don’t Squat with ‘Yer Spurs On!

 

Bender was describing a vital feature of effective leadership—command presence.  People who spend more than twenty minutes in the military know the power of command presence. Officer school candidates are drilled on the proper manner of a leader—focused, attentive, and engaged. Command presence is not about control, it’s about connection; it’s not about power, it is abo...

Now, You Can Have Your All

True confession: I am a huge Queen fan. And, one of my favorite songs is their “I Want it All.” The Brian May lyrics convey an assertive search for a dream come true. The message of the singer is a pronouncement that says: I gave in to external events along the way to live a lesser life than I could and now I am going for my all, not just for my some. I am willing to courageously surprise you (shake you to the ground) by what I can become. Here are the lyrics to the second verse of the song:

 

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What If Your Customers Ran Your Business?

I was working with a client in Alexandria, VA. At lunch, I wanted a simple sample of Old Town cuisine and walked to a small diner a few blocks from the Kimpton Lorien Hotel where we were meeting. The staff was noticeably happy and eager to please. The food was excellent; the ambiance peaceful, and I felt compelled to pass my compliments to the owner.

 

“He’s back in the hospital,” the waitress told me as if was a widely known fact.  “You know he had a heart attack and has been out for the last t...

The Gift of Writing Inside Your Customer’s Imagination

“Electricity” is a captivating song in the acclaimed Broadway hit (and movie) Billy Elliott.  The song is actually the answer to a question the evaluator asked 11-year-old Billy after he had auditioned for a slot at the Royal Ballet School in London; “What does it feel like when you’re dancing?” The song was written by Elton John and Lee Hall. Here are a few of the lyrics.

 

I can’t really explain it, I haven’t got the words.

It’s a feeling that you can’t control.

I suppose it’s like forgetting,...

By the Customer: The Power of Customer-Created Offerings

He stood on a platform in the early afternoon of a cold November day only a few feet from the edge of Soldier’s National Cemetery. He was dizzy and feverish, suffering with the beginning of smallpox. It had been four months since the end of the bloody Battle of Gettysburg. And, he delivered a two-minute speech that would be memorized by students for next 150+ years: Four score and seven years ago…”

 

Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address captured the essence of American democracy in its closing w...

Innovating with Crazy Customers

Alice (of Alice in Wonderland fame) had a very vivid imagination. Had she been on the job market today, she would have no doubt been sought by Pixar, Google or Amazon. If you read Lewis Carroll’s classic you know the colorful adventures of Alice’s wonder world.  In the Tim Burton 2010 movie version of the book, Alice’s father was tucking her into bed when she reported she had seen a dodo bird earlier in the day, a rabbit in a waistcoat, and a smiling cat and a purple caterpillar.

 

“I was not aw...