The FLASHPOINT Effect

Most towns have at least one legendary local business that's famous for consistently attracting people from miles around.  Whether it's a restaurant or a car dealership or a one-of-a-kind retail store, it's the place to which local residents like to bring their visiting relatives and friends.  It's the place that's "always jumping" with energized workers and lines of delighted customers, even while nearby competitors struggle just to stay in business.

Paul Levesque has spent two decades visiting and analyzing such high-performance businesses across the country and around the world.  He interviews management and staff, and probes behind the scenes to discover what really makes these places tick.  The findings from his research constitute the basis for his books, articles, and live presentations.

Central to his findings has been one key character-istic that sets all such operations apart:  the way they link employee motivation to customer satisfaction.

In a nutshell, the employees in such businesses are highly motivated to deliver customer delight at every opportunity.  This generates spontaneous positive feedback from appreciative customers—feedback that has a profoundly motivational effect on the workers.  It creates a kind of cycle in which employee motivation is driving up customer satisfaction, and the satisfaction from delighted customers is in turn motivating employees to strive even harder to keep the customers happy and coming back.  The two elements catch fire and begin fueling each other in a virtual chain reaction effect, a flashpoint of contagious enthusiasm.

For every business struggling in the shadow of a flashpoint competitor—or simply looking for a better way to create focus, alignment, and energy within its own culture—the question is straightforward:  if you don't already have the flashpoint effect working for you, how do get it started?  The answer, too, is surprisingly straight-forward.  In his 2006 Entrepreneur Press book Customer Service Made Easy, Paul outlines a proven step-by-step process team leaders can use to turn cynical and apathetic workers into customer service dynamos.  In his 2007 book Motivation, also from Entrepreneur Press, he maps out a powerful culture-shaping process designed to ignite and sustain a chain-reaction flashpoint effect in any kind of business setting.  As the AOL Welcome Screen reproduced here indicates, his unique and effective approach to culture change is attracting plenty of attention from the mainstream business community.

The reason there are so few flashpoint businesses, Paul Levesque firmly believes, is not because creating that kind of culture is particularly difficult.  The real reason is because so few businesses are "culture savvy" to begin with.  When it comes to transforming their organizational culture, they wouldn't know where to begin.

Paul Levesque shows you where to begin.  More than that, he spells out what needs to be done every step of the way, to bring the culture of your business exactly where you want it to be.