Should Restaurants Eliminate Tips?

How do you feel about tipping? Are you happy to reward a well-done job or do you have more of a Mr. Pink attitude toward gratuities?

A pair of recent Slate articles got me thinking about tipping. The first is pretty straightforward and makes the case that tipping at restaurants should just be banned (Tipping Is an Abomination, Jul 9). The argument is that the practice is bad for customers since it leads to uneven treatment and bad for workers since it allows employers to pay absurdly low wages. But what happens when a restaurant simply eliminates tipping? That is the topic of the second article written by a former restauranteur who did just that (What Happens When You Abolish Tipping, Aug 14). In lieu of tipping, the restaurant added an 18% service charge to the check. Thus it pricing was more like an auto service station that breaks out its labor charges from the cost of parts.

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The Secret Life of Garbage

I was recently sent a fantastic infographic called “The Secret Life of Garbage” which explains what happens in the end to end process of garbage collection, recycling and disposal. I’ve embedded the infographic below.

Co-incidentally I’ve just finished an assignment with a waste management client so I thought I’d share a few insights into the process.

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The Straw Point: How Process Can Win or Lose Customers

In every process we have customer interaction points - how well we manage these “moments of truth” with our customers influences their levels of loyalty towards the firm. Loyal customers spend more and are more likely to recommend the firm to friends or collegues so making customers more loyal should be a major focus – and to do this we need to look at process from a customer experience perspective. How should we do this?

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Process Glue – Explaining the Benefits of a BPMS

I like to think of a BPMS as process glue. Organisations will always have manual processes and disparate systems. These are the areas where work slips through the cracks, where time is lost, where customers are forgotten. A BPMS helps glue the process together. It provides process visibility, it stops the errors, it speeds the process up, it kills manual work, it provides meaningful data, it gives the customers what they need…(if the process is optimised first!)

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Joining All BPM Methods Together – Is That Even Possible?

It is difficult for consultants to market and sell a comprehensive BPM solution because we are often dealing with organizations that seek to play one BPM approach against another. Customers are confused how is your BPM approach different from Lean or 6Sigma, and why should they use BPM at all. It is many times difficult to explain that BPM is a more comprehensive approach to process improvement than any single method and it is focused on integrating, aligning, managing and measuring all of an organization’s business processes and that Business Process Management includes the application of all the other available methods, where, when and how they are appropriate. BPM is an approach that is inclusive, not exclusive, of other approaches. So, it is not BPM against Six Sigma, Lean or any other but it is BPM with all the previously mentioned methods.

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Is ERP a Ready Made Meal in the Supermarket of Process?

There’s still a great appetite for ERP tools despite the fact that they’ve been around for quite some time. To me an ERP system is like a ready made meal - packaged, pre-processed and on the outside quite a nice idea. The idea behind ERP is that you have a bunch of processes that support key organisational capabilities built into an integrated software system. It’s a fix, but it doesn’t fix everything - there are always processes that need to be changed and gaps that need to be filled.

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Social BPM: The Watercooler Just Got Cooler

I never quite got social BPM. “It’s like facebook but for corporations” the BPMS marketing departments screamed! “It will change the way we do business” they cried!

The success of social media is primarily that it’s fun and easy. We get a laugh out of sharing our catbearding photos (well I do…) and having innane conversations with people on the other side of the world that we haven’t seen for years. It’s an escape from the day-to-day humrum. So what is social BPM given that it’s focus IS the day-to-day humrum?

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Can Do!

The Right Time…
Like most good things, there is a right time and place for challenging the troops to reach beyond what they believe possible. The right time is after the decision is made. Once the course is charted, charging up the troops to give it their all is crucial.

Churchill’s speech occurred after his decision to continue resisting the fascist onslaught. He wasn’t asking the people whether they could face the challenge ahead – he already knew they must. He was preparing them for that challenge.

…And The Wrong Time
The wrong time to motivate the troops to take on stretch goals is before the decision is made.

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