You must check this out if you have not yet discovered it.
173 Drury Lane is a blog written by 4 customer evangelists about a company that has been slipping in market share: The authors have a long-standing emotional attachment to this company (J.Sainsbury plc), and they want to see it reemerge victoriously.
Start your walk down 173 Drury Lane on this page: About this site.
I discovered it when guest author Adrian Trenholm did the most gentlemanly thing: He sent me an email to let me know he’d linked to my Daily Five Minutes post in one of his comments.
Talk about another way to reinvent a business! And what a marvelous application of the blog as a medium to do so! (On that point, read the questions posed by Max Blumberg.) I’ve picked up their feed to follow the discussion, and I’d encourage you to do so as well, for thus far the site is exceptionally well written.
For example, you must read Adrian’s story on The fabulous baker boy. Second take the trackback to read Johnnie Moore’s Small Interventions, Big Changes, and then third, read the comment string.
Besides the discussions by Adrian and Johnnie, for me the story also perfectly illustrates how empowering new knowledge is for people, and how learning that is internalized just must be shared:
“And remember how he didn’t take the trouble to learn when he wasn’t a baker? My wife went to buy yeast last week and our hero not only serves her, but as he does so, he turns to the puzzled looking Saturday girl standing next to him and says, Come and learn something: I will show you where we keep the yeast.”
Thank you Adrian, I do love and appreciate your connection to the Daily Five Minutes as an ideal and on-going intervention technique, and as you can imagine I wholeheartedly agree!
On a side note, I could related to the baker boy’s early confusion ”I suppose Adrian’s 50 grammes of fresh yeast (I think I know what that is) is just as exotic to me as my bowl of poi (made from taro) would be to him :-)
I also learned a new word — truculent. I love reading the English language at the hands of the English themselves!
I’ve picked up the feed for 173 Drury Lane for I very much want to see how this blog continues to play out, and I’d encourage you to do so as well.
173 Drury Lane is an interesting blog to write. I agreed to guest author because I care a lot about food – health, taste, trade, animal welfare and environment are all important. I would love to think that Sainsbury’s might be influenced by my telling stories about how other stores have bucked the fast/cheap food trend.
Stores like Sweetbay in Florida and Wholefoods all across the US are succeeding because their people are educated and enthusiastic about what they sell. These stores set out to create a culture in which the work is about sharing a passion for food with the customer, rather than merely “bagging groceries.” I think that is a really exciting development.
Of course, my own blog is barely two posts old and you are encouraging me to go off topic and post bread recipes…
PS
Rosa, do you prefer one-, two- or three-finger poi? We need to know…
Two-finger poi is definitely the best Adrian!
However I’d also like the bread recipes … I’m getting hungry.
Teach what you learn: a virtuous cycle
Rosa Say has very graciously linked to The Fabulous Baker Boy on 173 Drury Lane, a blog I guest author with Johnnie Moore, Freddie Daniels and Max Blumberg. I had drawn my own conclusions about the meaning of my story – that new skills, pride in one’s …