What Great Service Leaders Know and Do: Creating Breakthroughs in Service Firms

Management has within its control the authority, and we think the responsibility, to improve service quality and productivity while increasing job satisfaction and employee engagement.  This project and the upcoming book is about ways that can be achieved.

The primary intent of this effort is to provide an understanding of how advances in services are being and will be achieved in organizations as well as how they are being held back.  Through explorations rooted in our experiences as well as a review of the underlying theoretical work in the field and its practical application, we present a narrative of remarkable successes, unnecessary failures, and future promise.  We write with a definite point of view.  The effort seeks to provide a roadmap for the design and delivery of winning services for managers entrusted with the task in the years to come.

We know what has produced success in service endeavors in the past.  We have observed and documented strong service principles and developed some service management concepts that have endured in practice over time.  However, it is quite obvious to us that what it took to produce a winning hand in managing in the service economies of the 1970s and 1980s is quite different than it is today.  Many of the same questions prevail.  But the management responses have to change to reflect future challenges facing service industries.  With the help of the thinking of outstanding practitioners, our goal here is to provide insights into what it will take to succeed in the future.

This is critically important as the vast majority of the world’s workers are employed in providing services to others.  The proportion continues to grow.  The way their jobs are designed and the way they are led will influence service workers’ job satisfaction; their loyalty to their employer and their customers; their productivity; the profits they help create for their employers; and the long-term economic development of cities, states, regions, and countries.  It will have a profound effect not just on the future of service organizations, but on a way of life for billions around the world.

In every service industry, one or two organizations--breakthrough services--are leading the way.  They are providing the blueprint for service futures.  If they are to be emulated, we need to understand what is different about leading a breakthrough service organization.