How - Dov Seidman [132]
There are very few rules at Sewell. “I think that a lot of rules implies no trust in many ways,” Joe said. “You have to put rules or a stick in place—‘If you do this, I’ll do this to you’—if you don’t trust people. We have three guiding spirits at Sewell, and I always say that if we get these three things right, we don’t have to have a lot of rules.” Those “guiding spirits” represent the core values that bind everyone at Sewell in common enterprise: Act Professionally in Everything You Do, Be Genuinely Caring, and Maintain the Highest Ethical Standard. “If everyone has some strong, guiding principles,” Joe said, “it allows them to be creative, to be innovative, to be flexible, and to get out there and really do some things differently.”
There are just three values, but for Sewell they cover a lot of ground. When you bring your car into a Sewell repair shop, a team of technicians trained to work bumper to bumper does all the work required on that vehicle. Each team elects a group leader who guides the work flow, but other than that the team is almost entirely self-governing. Frontline technicians make every decision necessary to fulfill those three values, up to and including spending company money to do so. “Let’s say you brought in your Lexus. It is out of warranty, the window regulator went out, and you feel we should have caught it,” Joe offered by way of example. “Most technicians would have to talk to a service manager, who would review the records and maybe talk to his supervisor before making a decision, or something like that. At our dealership, the person that you first dealt with can make the decision to fix it. Now, you might ask why we would do that; won’t they just spend all your money? Actually they won’t. In fact, they’ll spend less than you hope.”
Spend less? Frontline personnel, with no profit-and-loss (P&L) responsibility and no commission structure, when allowed to freely spend company money, spend less?
“Yes. Think about it. If you give most people the power to spend freely, what are their concerns now that it’s their responsibility? ‘I hope I don’t do too much. I hope they don’t look at my goodwill account and say it’s huge.’ So they will worry about it almost more than we would like them to. Sometimes new hires will come back and tell the assistant service manager that they noticed the taillights are out on a car and they are worried this customer could be upset. We ask them, ‘If it was your mother, what would you want us to do? What do you think we should do?’ They want the reassurance at first. Over time, as they gain trust, they make these decisions themselves. If you give them the checkbook, they’re a lot more thrifty than if you took it away.
“Are we more vulnerable because we have fewer rules?” Joe continued. “Sure. But let me give an example. We give all of our sales associates a car, gas, and insurance. First day you start, if you work at a Lexus store, you’re going to get a new Lexus to drive. Now are we vulnerable? Could we have somebody go out, get drunk, and total our car or kill somebody and leave our dealership open to tremendous amounts of liability? That could happen,