Winning at Service: Lessons from Service Leaders

Citation

Furrer, O. (2004), "Winning at Service: Lessons from Service Leaders", International Journal of Service Industry Management, Vol. 15 No. 5, pp. 515-518. https://doi.org/10.1108/09564230410564966

Winning at Service: Lessons from Service Leaders is a book written by a service manager for service managers, in this respect it is very successful. It contains also detailed case studies of four leading service firms, which make it very useful for students of service firms’ management. But overall, there are three main reasons why you should read this book:

1. 1.

   Winning at Service is special because it is written by a chief executive officer (CEO) who is not writing about himself our his company, but about successful firms that are directed by others.

2. 2.

   Winning at Service is also special because it is about European best‐in‐the‐world service companies, not American ones.

3. 3.

   Winning at Service is special because, even though it is rigorous, it is a very easy read for busy executives.

Let's develop these three arguments a little bit more before having a look at the content and structure of the book:

1. 1.

   Winning at Service is special because it is written by a recently retired CEO: Waldemar Schmidt. Unlike the authors of many other management books about leading firms, Waldemar Schmidt did not write about his own company and did not write his own success story; he wrote about four leading service firms, which he had been watching since they were small. His admiration for these companies grew along with them. Moreover, where other books about successful management have been written by academics, this book has been written by a practitioner; this gives Winning at Service an interesting point of view. To write this book Waldemar Schmidt, who is actually an executive‐in‐residence at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland and was CEO of ISS, the world's leading facilities support services group with 265,000 employees in 35 countries, has been helped by two co‐authors: Gordon Adler and Els van Weering. Gordon Adler is a senior writer at IMD and Els van Weering is a research associate and project manager also at IMD.

2. 2.

   Winning at Service is special because unlike a large majority of management books, which are about great American companies, it is about great European service companies, which have become world leaders in a very short time. The book is written around four very successful firms: Securitas, Group 4 Falck, Compass Group, and Sodexho. Securitas and Group 4 Falck sprouted from the same seed, planted in 1901, of a tiny guarding company across the street from Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen's fun park. Compass Group began as Factory Canteens Ltd, started after a law passed in 1941 by the British Government that people working from 9 to 5 in munitions factories should have one hot meal per day. And Sodexho was started by one pioneer who had 100,000 French francs start capital and spent his days in a mini‐van driving food to ships in the old Mediterranean port of Marseille. From these humble origins emerged the four most successful security and food services companies in the world. In the security services industry, Securitas and Group 4 Falck are numbers one and two; Compass Group and Sodexho Alliance have reached the same rank in the food service industry. These four companies are managed by five gifted leaders, whose insightful comments illustrate the book from one end to the other: Pierre Bellon (vhairman, Sodexho), Thomas Berglund (CEO, Securitas), Francis Mackay (vhairman, Compass Group), Lars Nørby Johansen (CEO, Group 4 Falck), and J. Philip Sørensen (founder of Group 4 and now vhairman of Group 4 Falk).

3. 3.

   Winning at Service is also special because unlike too many heavy academic textbooks, it is a very easy read for busy executives. Management books, though brilliant, are often complex, with long sentences and conceptual leanings and are therefore difficult to read for busy managers. Winning at Service is not a theoretical book. Moreover, it is in no way prescriptive, but rather descriptive; it presents how four service companies become the leaders of their respective industry. The book is easy to read because it is full of inspiring quotes from the managers of the four companies, it also contain some mind catching metaphors. I particularly like the story about the seven‐iron golfers. The story goes as follows: some golfers believe that you can play a good round of golf with a seven‐iron – one single club. However, champions consistently win with a full bag. The authors of the book argue that some managers are like seven‐iron golfers. They have a degree in some management discipline, such as accounting, marketing, engineering, or information technology and they launch their careers with work related to their degrees. Many, as they scale the career ladder to the top, often unfortunately remain biased toward their original academic degree. This is a problem because the accountant who turns into a managerial control freak is unlikely to create a large, world‐class company. The CEO who leans too far toward his sales and marketing background may generate a lot of sales, however, at the expense of profitability. The CEO with a manufacturing or a technology degree may produce the world's best products, but often customers do not need or want them. As explained by the authors, such managers are one‐club golfers.

To study these four successful companies, the authors turned first to the business models described by their leaders. They then spoke to industry experts, competitors, union leaders, financial analysts and customers, and studied databases and annual reports. They also studied the extensive literature and research on these companies and their industries, and considered any material in the public domain published in the last ten years. However, the findings of this book are largely based on in‐depth interviews with employees at all levels of the companies, from the people at the helm, including the CEO and/or chairman of the board, to the people at the front line. Based on the research done and these interviews, the authors developed a framework that describes how the four studied companies excelled. Here are the stepping stones of this framework: Pick your game and play it; Leadership at the heart; Passion for people; and Keep it simple:

1. 1.

   Pick your game and play it. The first element of the framework starts with a colorful illustration. The authors explain that according to astronomers, Earth wobbles as it spins. Irregularities in the Earth's rotation cause the location of the “true” North Pole to wander across the arctic landscape. Many service companies suffer from similar oscillations, they start with a clear focus, but eventually they wobble and waggle and lose focus, gradually meandering across the service industry landscape. One of the reasons for the success of the four companies is that they were able to maintain their focus. To do so each of them has developed replicable business models, which have first worked in small, local markets and then were applied in new locations or in acquired companies as the firms grew. To keep focused an organization of several thousands staff, top management has to make sure that every manager in the organization has a clear idea of how his or her unit is performing. Because simple and transparent performance measures support the clarity, the studied companies keep their measures simple and consistent all over the world. Focus is the key.

2. 2.

   Leadership at the heart. The authors started the second element of their framework with a questions: “What would happened if Pierre Bellon, Thomas Berglund, Francis Mackay, J. Philip‐Sørensen, Lars Nørby Johansen had not been running Sodexho, Securitas, Compass Group and Group 4 Falck for as long as they have? Would the four companies be the world leaders they are today?” They authors asked the very same questions to the five leaders. These ones primarily attributed their success to their teams of managers and legions of workers. They also all believe that role modeling is the best way to inspire their people and ensure that all their employees live the company values. But how do these values manifest themselves in their companies? What the authors of the book found is that:

   • •

     the five leaders are visionary industry shapers;

   • •

     the four companies have passionate and inspirational leaders;

   • •

     they are true entrepreneurs; and

   • •

     all five have an unusually intimate business knowledge that comes from long tenures ranging from 15 to 40 years.

   Leadership is at the heart of the four companies.

3. 3.

   Passion for people. In service industry, all comes down to people. So if all leaders care for their companies, not all of them truly care for their people. The five leaders in this book, as the authors put it, do. Compass Group, Group 4 Falck, Securitas and Sodexho care about their employees. Care runs through their cultures, their policies and their systems. It runs through the ways they recruit, integrate and develop, and retain people. They focus extensively on HR processes. They take a long‐view on recruiting. They grow and develop their people. They instill pride, create confidence, build teams, and provide resources. They also spend a lot, in time and money, for training. To keep top performers, they promote from within, map out clear internal career paths and offer broad incentive programs. In short, every individual counts.

4. 4.

   Keep it simple. Many American companies run on the premise that more control, more procedures and more labor add up to better service. This is not the case for Compass Group, Group 4 Falck, Securitas, and Sodexho. The four companies believe that people are able to perform well when they have a decent job with a fair pay and a proper training. They want every employee to be accountable for providing their customers with the services they want and need, at the agreed cost. To achieve this accountability and make every employee responsible, they designed their organizations as simple as possible by keeping their hierarchy as simple as possible (flat organization) and put the responsibility for financial results into the hand of branch managers and site managers (decentralized decision making).

To conclude, Winning at Service is not just about food and security services. It is about how to succeed in the service industry. Busy managers and services students will find this book interesting and useful because it integrates personal and anecdotic stories with rigorous and insightful ideas about the management service companies in a concise, well‐written, and easy‐to‐read little book.