I’ve just flown to Sydney (where I’m writing this) from LA to begin a week’s speaking tour. I flew in the nose of a Qantas 747. (When I first began visiting Australia, first class used the upper deck for a piano bar and leather couches. It’s now used to house business class.)

There are three flight attendants for 16 of us in first class. The service is superb—proactive, gracious, responsive. One woman spent ten minutes using several adapters trying to get my Mac plugged into the ancient power system onboard. Another offered me one of the extra bottles of wine on my departure.

The plane wasn’t new, the amenities were the usual, but the service was absolutely fabulous.

The first class team
When I inquired, I was told by the attendant responsible for my seat that he was semi-retired and invited to fly once or twice a month. Qantas has a team approach, whereby first class attendants always work first class, so that they become expert in what’s required and how best to deal with any situation.

I immediately realized that this was brilliant (and was manifest in the excellent teamwork and flawless service). I’m sure that union rules in the U.S. would probably prohibit this, and in 3.5 million air miles I have not found a U.S. first class service that matches (or even nears) the likes of Qantas, Air Singapore, Virgin Atlantic, and so on.

There is something to be said for specializing in excellence. It rewards the employees and the customers. Instead of a crazed egalitarianism, why not focus on the best people in the right places? At Amtrak’s club in Penn Station in New York, there is one hostess I encounter who is extraordinarily cheerful, polite, and helpful. There is another who is obnoxious, condescending, and rude. Why would you put such a person in a position of hosting a club for your best customers? And why wouldn’t you monitor that? Clearly, they have people who do it well and willingly.

Bar tenders are famously friendly because their livelihood (and the success of their employer’s establishment) is directly reflected in income in the short term. A surly bartender isn’t going to eat very well. Just as I patronize establishments where people are pleasant and supportive, I choose my airlines based on their service, which means I almost always fly overseas on foreign carriers.

Concessions to excellence
Are you specializing in excellence, or are you acting as if everyone deserved a chance, not matter what the impact on the customer, client, and your operation? Are you making reasonable concessions (such as part-time work, shared jobs, latitude in scheduling) to attract and retain people like my flight attendant, who don’t want to work as regularly but can contribute mightily when they do?

Not everyone has the temperament or the skills to do any job. Forcing them to do so doesn’t create equality, it creates uneven service. You can put wings on a goat and force it out of a plane, but you still don’t have a flying goat, although you will have a mighty angry one. If you are really committed to excellence, you have to be committed to excellent people.

Flying to LA from the Phoenix Airport, I encountered a police officer there with a black German shepherd. He explained that she was superb at finding explosives. Not all German shepherd can (my white one certainly couldn’t, no matter how much training they gave him).

I don’t want them to give all the dogs a chance. I want the best, whether for my safety or my service.


© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

Alan Weiss, Ph.D. is the author of 30 books appearing in 9 languages. He runs his famous Million Dollar Consulting® Colleges all over the world, and has consulted with over 500 organizations, such as the Federal Reserve, Mercedes-Benz, Hewlett-Packard, and J.P. Morgan Chase. He serves on a half-dozen boards, and is the only non-journalist to have ever received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Press Institute.. You can reach him at Alan@summitconsulting.com or his blog, http://www.contrarianconsulting.com.