Outstanding Customer Delight: Taking a Lesson from a Pal

LEAN Frog team members were recently in east Tennessee supporting the First TN Superintendent’s Study Council. While in the area, we were able to see the legendary Pal’s Sudden Service fast food restaurant at the original location in downtown Kingsport, TN. You see Pal’s is not your ordinary burger joint. Started in 1956 by Pal Barger, Pal’s specializes in quality food, ultra efficient operation and outstanding customer delight. Through consistent concentration on and application of these metrics, Pal’s became the first restaurant company to earn the prestigious Malcolm Baldridge National Quality award. Congress established the award (named after late U.S. Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldridge) to recognize U.S. organizations for their achievements in quality and business performance. Today, the award recognizes performance excellence in each of six sectors: manufacturing, service, small business, health care, nonprofit/government and education. When you think of school systems, do Pal’s metrics (i.e., quality, ultra efficient operation, outstanding customer delight) come to mind? What would our schools be like if those were the first thoughts that came to mind? What would our country be like if quality, ultra efficient operation and outstanding customer delight were associated with our U.S. school systems?

I’d like to call your attention to two things that Pal’s Sudden Service did on their journey to becoming the performance leader in the restaurant industry. First they benchmarked successful organizations in their sector. For Pal’s this meant reviewing successful restaurants nationwide. To date, seven school districts have won the coveted Baldridge award. These systems are a great resource for learning best practices in education.

These award winners include the following systems:

Pal’s also established their own performance excellence program. They developed guiding principles and methods to ensure performance excellence in the fast food industry.

At LEAN Frog, our focus is on developing operational excellence for schools and systems using LEAN Six Sigma systems and processes. We have identified Five LEAN principles that can make an immediate improvement in your school system.

Value is defined by the end user and the stakeholders (i.e., students, educators, parents, community, etc.) Understand fully the value you deliver to customers and stakeholders. Strive to increase that value and consistently deliver more value than expected. (Here is an example of how one school used a little creativity to create big value).
Teach ALL your employees to understand value and then listen to their ideas for increasing value. Employees often have excellent ideas for creating outstanding customer delight.
Eliminate/control all aspects of the operational costs (in time, energy, and money) that do not directly create, increase or deliver value. These costs are waste and prevent your ability to meet and exceed expectations.
Understand how value is CREATED by the organization and how it FLOWS to your end users. Flow value through systematic, optimized processes.
Measure performance at all levels: Strategic and Operational. Reward and recognize success. Learn from failures-FAST, then try again. Pursue Perfection through both continuous incremental and radical improvements. Think outside the average school system “box.” (See 8 simple things you should start measuring in your non-instructional areas).

We encourage you to incorporate these principles in your school district’s performance excellence program and let us know your results. If you have questions about developing a performance excellence program within your school district or need help with implementation, give your pals at LEAN Frog a call.