Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

People just like hanging out at Wegman's and this habit has transformed the family food chain business into one of the best in the country.

Wegman’s …  flagship site in Rochester, New York … looks more like an event than a food store.  Employees fuss over customers … one another … and artistically arranged of fresh foods … much in the same way new mothers fuss over toddlers. Spills are quickly taken care of … music fills the isles … customers laugh and chat with clerks and workers slap one another on the back as they pass in between rows and rows of the best food displays in the state.

Steady signs of support spring up from all over the store ... for shared goals ... and people seem to have an unusual sense of expectations that create excellence. They also regularly support quality events like the LPGA.

Leaders empower workers, while at the same time asking accountability for quality. Last week I lunched at their fresh fish bar to watch the amazing balance this store strikes between workers from every background who laugh as they chat among themselves – and the attention to work and their customers that marked this top at the top in Fortune 100. What we  see at Wegman’s is really problem solving with the brain in mind … and it can happen in any business, although it happens in few.

What problem persists to hold your company back from success that Wegman’s lands with customers here in New York and reviewers across the nation?

Imagine what you’d like to see as a client coming to your firm and you have already drawn from new or unused parts of the brain to solve growth problems.  Regardless of your company’s size … age … or challenges … you can  perform better by using your intrapersonal intelligence to think more as your clients do. See your staff through their eyes -- and then create a set of strategies that might have prevented the last ten customer service problems.  Problems tend to get quality solutions  whenever we ask from the viewpoint of a client, “What was so great about this experience that I will be back soon?” Then simply work with your staff to make it happen, and look for evidence that it did. When a company draws from intrapersonal intelligence, clients find freedom to speak and feel heard and brain based solutions emerge daily from that exchange.

Could this quality have come to the famous food chain because Robert Wegman ... its founder valued diversity, loved life and gave money as well as support to many people? What do you think?