Positive Power of Principled Profit
Volume 5, Number 8—April, 2008

Positive Power Spotlight: Superquinn

I learned about this innovative and very customer-focused Irish supermarket chain in Stephen M.R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust (reviewed elsewhere in this issue), where he’s quoted: “Genuine listening ability is one of the few true forms of competitive advantage…Listening is not an activity you can delegate.”

Founding CEO (now President after the family sold the company), Feargal Quinn has earned the sobriquet “Pope of Customer Service.” Apparently a rather colorful character, he’s also a long-serving member of the Irish Senate and author of Crowning the Customer.

In his own words,

If you look after getting repeat business, profit will largely take care of itself. When faced with any business decision, any call on your time or resources, you need to ask, What will this do to help bring the customer back?”

This philosophy has generated consistent innovation since the company’s founding in 1960. The firm has a strong environmental consciousness too, and was an early pioneer of reusable cloth shopping bags designed specifically for maximum customer convenience (and which make even more sense since a tax was instituted on plastic grocery bags in Ireland). The store was also a pioneer in loyalty reward programs and online shopping, among other areas.

Perhaps the coolest innovation is a hand-held scanner program that saves time by letting you check yourself out as you add items to your cloth totes in your shopping cart (note the trust factor there), and keep a running total for you. When you’re done shopping, your bags are all packed and you go to a cashier to run up any items you couldn’t scan and make your payment. This could easily shave 10 or 15 precious minutes off the typical shopping trip, and it sounds so much more pleasant than the horrible automated checkouts at my own local supermarket (which hardly anyone uses).

Another Recommended Book: The Speed of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey with Rebecca R. Merrill

It’s good to see an important and well-promoted book on business ethics coming out of a major New York house (in this case, Simon & Schuster’s Free Press imprint).

Coveys basic thesis, peppered with lots of examples from his own and his famous father’s life and career as well as the business world in general, is that when people trust you, business gets transacted a lot faster, more smoothly, and less expensively.

He notes that almost every action either increases trust–creating what he calls a “trust dividend”–or deceases it, imposing a “trust tax.”

Covey identifies a number of factors leading to increased trust, and they basically break down to two key principles embodied in “4 Cores”: character (subdivided into Integrity and Intent), and competence (Capabilities and Results. It’s not enough to offer just one of those two. If you are good at what you do but people have reason to mistrust your ethics, you pay a penalty. But also, you can be a model of integrity, and if you’re not good at doing what you commit to do, you’ll pay a trust penalty there as well.

Building from those four core attributes, he identifies 13 specific behaviors that build trust, and spends a chapter on each:

• Talk Straight
• Demonstrate Respect
• Create Transparency
• Right Wrongs
• Show Loyalty
• Deliver Results
• Get Better
• Confront Reality
• Clarify Expectations
• Practice Accountability
• Listen First
• Keep Commitments
• Extend Trust

When evaluating these behaviors, in yourself or in others, it’s important to fid the “sweet spot” where distrust is overcome but judgment comes into play so you don’t get burned. And in that process, it’s important to recognize that each of these 13 behaviors has “counterfeits” that look on the surface like they’re building trust, even as they actually undermine it. As an example, flattery is one of several counterfeits to straight talk.

Like my own book Principled Profit, Covey repeatedly demonstrates that high-trust environments, based in both character and competence, wildly outperform the traditional hierarchical micromanaged corporate environment. Trust, in other words, is very good for business. It’s why all the local McDonald’s were left untouched during the Los Angeles riots–because McDonald’s had shown itself as a concerned community partner, for years. It’s why Johnson & Johnson is one of the only pharmaceutical companies that has a reputation for genuinely caring about its customers. It’s why when an IBM executive who had lost the company $10 million expected to be asked for his resignation, founder Tom Watson Sr. responded, “You can’t be serious. We’ve just spent $10 million educating you!”

My favorite chapter is toward the end of this substantial book: “The Fifth Wave–Societal Trust: The Principle of Contribution.” Spiraling out from previous chapters about trust within an organization (built around the concept of alignment: the messages reinforce the desired behaviors) and within a market (where the key element is reputation)–these are the third and fourth waves–the fifth wave is about “conscious capitalism,” a/k/a social responsibility: the idea (and the statistics to back up the claim) that making a difference in the world is good for the soul, and also for the bottom line. And the key principle is contribution–doing things specifically to improve the lives of others.

This is one of the most important business books I’ve read in a long time, and a complete validation of the points of view I’ve been promoting for years. Strongly recommended.