Costco vs. Walmart - Lessons from investing in employees

[SheilaT]

11. This nails it.

It's been my experience that upper management not only does not fully understand what the front line workers even do, but don't respect those very front line workers. Many of those bosses could not successfully do the very jobs that keep the company in business. Look at the show "Undercover Boss" and you see that over and over again.

When it comes to flying, for instance, what ultimately matters is not how cheap your ticket is, but what that experience was like for you. So it is those employees who work out of the airport, plus the reservations people if you actually call up to make your booking, who matter. So the ticket counter agent, the gate agent, the baggage handler, and the mechanic are crucial. And then the pilots and flight attendants. Back in the Golden Age of flight the CEOs of airlines had often started out in one of those jobs. But for about thirty years now it's just all the graduates of MBA programs, who are taught that if you can run one business you can run any other one, and that employees are fungible items. And they're wrong on both counts.

I only wish I had a Costco here in Santa Fe.