Quit Lying to Yourself

Bill McCurry

Cars weren’t yet in every driveway in 1927 when City Center Bank (Kansas City, Missouri) opened a drive-thru window. Twenty years later Red’s Giant Hamburger (Springfield, Missouri) opened the first fast food drive-thru window. Today, the majority of our fast food is handed out through a window.

What’s the relevance to horticulture? You must look for ideas everywhere and embrace whatever will accelerate your business. Probably nothing is further from horticulture than a Toyota factory where Sakichi Toyoda instigated an investigative process now known by management everywhere as “The 5 Whys.”

Its basic premise is to ask “why” until you get fact-based, root causes to any problem. Usually it takes five “why” questions before the final effective answer emerges. (Check out a great layman’s example showing how it was used in a family setting—http://tinyurl.com/htdf5yt.)

That article was on my mind when a reader called. His problem was customers told him they don’t come to his garden center on good weather weekends because it takes too long to check out (he says the wait is rarely more than 10 minutes). Rather than ask why he wasn’t listening to what well-meaning customers were trying to tell him, I asked the initial “Why?”

“We don’t have room for more checkouts because of all the merchandise we carry,” he said. I again asked “why?”

This time he said products often needed time-consuming price checks at the register. I asked “why?” a third time.

“The new chip card machines take twice as long and we only have two readers for four registers.” I asked “Why?”

“I put newer people, who aren’t well-trained, on the registers so my best people can be out helping customers.” He listed a few more innocuous excuses and finally sighed. “What should I do?”

“Why?” I asked for the fifth time.

“Some customers aren’t coming back and I need every customer. It’s starting to hurt my business.” Now we were getting toward the main issue—he must change to survive, but how to do that?

We reviewed his list of excuses. I said, “Each of your excuses is within your control to resolve. It looks like you’re lying to yourself. If you really wanted to keep those customers, you would adjust your operations to increase checkout stations or make dramatic changes like field checkouts with mobile equipment at the customers’ cars. You know the solutions, but you haven’t decided you want to implement them.”

The caller started back through his litany of excuses. I went back to “Why?” He brought up the inventory space making it difficult to add more checkout stations. Was improper buying a factor in his checkout problem? What other benefits would he see if he were more disciplined?

His people on the register were the least efficient, least trained, learning on-the-job. Why? He felt his best, most knowledgeable people should be circulating to work with customers not tied to the register. He didn’t hire any cashiers until the season was almost upon him.

Two registers had to share a credit card machine. Why? He had delayed investing in new machines because of expense and fees, never considering the customer experience.

The correct answer to “why change?” is: “I want prompt, efficient checkout so the customer feels our professionalism and knows we care about her.” From there it’s easier to knock down all those excuses.

A well-identified problem is easiest to solve when you’re not lying to yourself. GP

Bill would love to hear from you with questions, comments or ideas for future columns. Please contact him at wmccurry@mccurryassoc.com or (609) 688-1169.