Louise has had a rare kind of kidney cancer for the last 10-11 months. She believes in prayer, and has a lot of people praying for her. Add your own prayers to the list on her behalf. She believes that with God’s help, she can beat it.
She receives chemotherapy treatments, and recently had an idea for a way to brighten her day while she was taking them: Red shoes.
“I just thought the would make me feel better to look down at my red shoes,” she explained.
So she called Zappos to place her order. She was greeted with their “usual greeting that is so comforting.” She skipped the company’s joke of the day, and soon was greeted with a customer service rep. “Gracious” was the word she used to describe this individual who helped her with her order. “We talked a little, and I explained why I wanted these shoes. She, as all of your employees, [went] out of her way to please customers. That was that.”
The next day, to her surprise, Louise received a beautiful arrangement of red tulips, in a bright red vase and a beautiful red ribbon. She couldn’t imagine who sent them. She opened the card and began to cry. The card read,
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It’s a long way from Fairfield, Connecticut, the home of General Electric, to Henderson, Nevada, the home of Zappos. The gap is even wider between their respective products and services.
GE is a multinational American technology and services conglomerate. Zappos sells shoes, handbags, and other items online – to the tune of more than $1 billion this year.
Both made the news last week. And it all has to do with their “Bottom 10.”
General Electric is a household name; chances are, you have something in your home with it’s name emboldened on it. The only original company still listed on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, more recently, GE is the company that Jack rebuilt, and one of the most admired in the business world today. Jack Welch determined in the 1980s that GE would be number 1 or 2 in particular industry or leave it completely. He also started the practice of firing the bottom-performing 10% of his managers every year.
Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that GE was sending its century-old appliances business to the auction block. Say it ain’t so! The American company that “brings good things to life” may be bringin’ ‘em from Korea or Sweden or somewhere else. From a sentimental perspective, it hurts. But from a management perspective, it was an overdue decision.
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