Customer
Spotlight
Customer
Spotlight
 SAINT LOUIS ZOO Changing Culture in an American Zoo |
| The St. Louis Zoo in
St. Louis, Missouri, has launched a large scale learning
project to create a service-quality culture, foster
commitment from leadership and employees, and bring about
true, lasting change. By questioning personal values,
reinforcing positive beliefs and helping people
understand the benefits of change, they have been able to
lay a foundation of employee involvement and create a
customer-driven culture.For 80 years
the zoo has been renowned for innovative educational
programs and aggressive preservation practices. In 1992,
the zoo leadership decided to take a number of steps to
launch a "People First" culture. They chose to
emphasize the personal aspects of quality and the
responsibility of each individual to provide that service
to their guests and to each other. GAUGING VALUES: The process began with an assessment of the full-time employee base. A specially designed questionnaire analyzed factors such as shared values, willingness to risk innovation and results orientation. The results were fed back to the zoo management and key concerns were clarified at a leadership commitment workshop. This management commitment was to be essential to successful change. Cultural
change involved five key areas: vision, values, signals,
skills and structure/systems.The vision,
or heart and soul, of the zoo was discussed and
translated first into a set of values and then into
actions.Signals,
which encompassed the messages that role models
communicated through their behavior, were addressed so
that these people always led by example. Skills provided
an opportunity to look at the capabilities within the
organization, and structure/systems helped the zoo see
how its people interacted.Systems,
which include factors such as reporting, information flow
and compensation are the push/pull mechanisms that
reinforce the other elements of the change process. This
is why it is vital for organizations to follow the change
process in the proper sequence.The next
step was to launch a seminar called Putting
People First. This two-day event was held for all
full-time employees. Participants represented a diagonal
slice of the zoo personnel -- curators sat next to
maintenance people, some of them meeting for the first
time.The goals of PPF were to:  Improve
service internally as well as externally. Help staff
understand their role in working towards a
customer-focused organization. Ensure
that all staff understand customers' needs and how their
actions can affect perceptions. Enable
staff to take on additional responsibility, own problems
and ensure that they have a heightened sense of the zoo's
mission. Bring
about a culture of "Service Begins with Me,"
and of "I am the St. Louis Zoo."RESULTS: Immediately following the PPF events, hundreds of responses to the "Unfriendly Systems" exercise and action plans were reviewed. A call for volunteers to serve on implementation committees resulted in a tremendous response, and these teams are still meeting regularly. There is now
a different climate at the zoo and a different
vocabulary. In an atmosphere of more openness, front-line
staff are feeling confident that they can turn to their
support systems for help. The zoo is running orientation
exercises for part-time and seasonal employees and
volunteers, new uniforms have been introduced,
compensation plans revised, and other systems and
procedures are under review.Without
doubt, PPF has served as a catalyst for a fundamental
change in attitude and behavior, and the foundation has
been laid to make the zoo truly People First. |
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