Turned On: Eight Vital Insights to Energize Your People, Customers, and Profits (Paperback)

~ (Author) "What's wrong with hospitals is that the people in charge don't think about what it's like to be a patient in that bed " says..." (more)
Key Phrases: bold goals, national sales director, customer enthusiasm, Mary Kay, Charles Schwab, Levi Strauss (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Dow and Cook feature jargonless prose (for the most part) and practical, hands-on philosophy. Their eight principles range from building a strong foundation to leading with care. All their points are backed by experience: practices found at Ritz Carlton and Marriott hotels, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Intel, and Schwab, among others, are offered as proof of the authors' concepts. Barbara Jacobs --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Dow and Cook show how ordinary people can achieve stunning results and create long-term vitality.

Five years ago, Roger Dow, vice-president and general sales manager of Marriott Hotels, and Susan Cook, president of the consulting firm Think Customer, founded "The Service/Quality Leadership Forum 2000," as a bi-annual learning laboratory for senior executives. Leaders from fifty of the nation's most innovative companies, including Xerox, Motorola, Charles Schwab & Co., and Mary Kay Companies, come together to share successes and explore new ways of doing business. In Turned On: Eight Vital Insights to Energize Your People, Customers, and Profits, Dow and Cook go behind the scenes to create the ultimate guide to long-term vitality.

Businesses today are alarmingly out of balance - too many organizations focus only on short-term financial results. Downsizing and uncertainty are leading to employee apathy, fear, and indifference to customers which sabotages any chance of enduring success. The organizations in Turned On are also relentless on the bottom line, but balance that intensity with an equal obsession for inspired people and enthusiastic customers. Consequently, they radiate passion, energy, and an aura of perpetual success.

Dow and Cook take an in-depth look at this flourishing new breed. They analyze prominent companies such as Intel, Levi Strauss & Co., The Ritz-Carlton and USAA. They introduce rising stars like Rural/Metro, a private ambulance and fire protection company that is cutting fire-loss by 50% at half the cost of its public sector counterparts. Seven of the book's featured organizations made Fortune magazine's 1996 list of America's Most Admired Companies. Three are Malcolm-Baldridge National Quality Award winners. In the last five years, the stock price for each of the publicly traded companies in Turned On increased 215% while the Standard and Poor's index increased only 17%. During that time, their total revenue increased 300%, and their profits have gone up a whopping 600%. -- From the Publisher --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks (March 28, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0887308619
• ISBN-13: 978-0887308611
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #972,499 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It truely energizes you!, January 5, 1999

By A Customer

A great book with stories that exemplify the main ideas contained in the book. Contains an "Insight to Action" after each chapter which helps you apply the concepts. If anyone is interested in finding ways to provide extaordinary service to customers, or become a better leader, read this book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The One book that's as important as an new-employee manual, April 23, 1998

By A Customer

This is one of the most inspirational, motivating, and empowering management books available. After reading just a few pages, you find yourself picking up other copies to give to coworkers, clients, and friends.

Dow and Cook have found the ingredients to successfully attract, excite, and retain employees focused on customer-centric goals. Having read their insights, I now know why companies such as Marriott and Schwab are so successful. An excellent, must-read.

5.0 out of 5 stars A comment for this book, November 9, 2003

By	Lau Wai Sum, Maria (CityU of HK- BBA Marketing) (Hong Kong) - See all my reviews

Summary:

This book is mainly about how to switch on the employees and customers become inspired, passionate and alive, so that the organization could earn profits. Thus a question would be raised, how to create such a passion in an organization?

The answer would be regulating employees and customers by the leader in the organization. There are both the internal side and external side.

Internally, a leader should guide the values system, promote leadership in all levels, renew them regularly and care everyone in the organization. In an organization, a strong foundation should be built and a goal should be set. Also, it should simplify the structure of organization and make use of technology to measure and enhance the efficiency of process, so that the organization could run smoothly. The organization should also need to nurture their employees to build a winning team, the head and heart should be hired by the organization, thus the organization should provide resources for them to learn and compensate their contribution. Moreover, the organization should try to make everyone feel special, so that the workforce would able to work hard and loyal to the organization.

Externally, it¡¦s not easy for the organization to tackle with the customers as each customer has their unique emotion, needs and desired. Thus the organization should employ a new rules, present the choices for customer to choose, provide customerized service and develop personal relationship with them.

Comment:

I think this book is really great as it¡¦s easy to understand and I get many feelings after reading the book.

For the leader part, I agree that it¡¦s really a hard job to be a leader as the leader should be a person who is able to energize the team members, able to be divided the job equally according to their strength and wants. There is no ¡§perfect¡¨ person in the world, so a leader should contain both competent, able to deal with personal relationship that include dealing with the conflicts between the team members.

Also, a leader needs to energize the others. Just as Horst Schulze in Ritz-Carlton said, ¡§he said a leader is hardly to find someone to energize himself.¡¨ Thus a leader should energize by renew themselves.

In real life, I have tutorial with a 7 years-old girl and I¡¦m just like a leader whereas she is just like an employee. It¡¦s not easy to control her as she thinks that learning is a difficult and hard job for her. If she finishes two works today, she needs to work three in the other days. Thus, she would not like to finish the work and shows a very slow speed, lack of passionate attitude to me. It¡¦s really annoying to me as I do not know how to deal with her.

Thus, after watching this book, I learn something. I try to let her know that homework is her responsibility as a student. She plays happily in school with her friends and so she also needs to do her homework, happy and homework is together. No matter how difficult, she needs to finish all for everyday. Of course, it is not an easy to let her understand as she is just 7 years-old girl. So I use many examples to illustrate, e.g. I tell her what¡¦s the responsibility for me, her parents, etc. Also, her friends are able to do her homework without the others¡¦ help, so she is lucky that there is somebody helping or accompanying to do the homework. Moreover, I try to increase her interest to do the homework by giving her stickers. I design a table to make record. I hope that these all tools could help me to solve the problem.