Where empowerment and micromanagement clash

A practical example of the challenge of empowering employees and yet protecting the image of your global brand.  Patisserie Valerie make great use of their customer email database.  Regular mailings with seasonal and speciality offers.  The quality of their produce stands out, they have invested heavily in perfecting the shipping of it – dry ice packaging and next day courier delivery.  Clearly, they have a lot going on and need to engage less experienced staff in this process.  Back in the late 20th century, they would have had a plethora of quality inspectors, quality assurance systems, and independent auditing of these to international standards.  Fast forward 40 years, and many organisations appear to rely on line managers to do this kind of job.  However, checking a marketing email message is just as much a part of the brand protection strategy as perfecting packaging and honing recipes.  Of course, the impact of this particular blunder will be minimal – it isn’t exactly a Gerald Ratner prawn sandwich fiasco – but like the piece of orange peel in the inflight magazine it indicates a lack of attention to detail.

I am sure anyone reading this will dismiss this as a rather pointless whinny from a grammar nerd, but spend just a moment thinking through what YOUR equivalent would be and put that extra minute of effort in.  You never know.

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