If you are looking for a great story about engaging staff, leadership and innovation, then check out this story from Carol and John Duncan from Founders Cafe.
Carol and John run the Founders Café located in Founders Park. The café itself is in an historic wooden building giving it loads of character. The tables spread outside to a beautiful garden and the food is fantastic. It’s a great place to sit peacefully and to drink a Founder’s brew on a summer’s evening. However, one of the challenges that Founder’s face is that it is located out of the central town and in the middle of winter it can be a bit isolated from the main crowd.
What Carol and John did was to harness staff talent to help them. One of their staff came to them with the idea of a ‘45’s night’ at the cafe ie bring along your favourite 45 record to play. What the Duncan’s did next was LISTEN to this idea, then decided to go for it. They supported staff to put the idea into action.
Of course, in business we know that you can have a great idea, but the challenge is often how to market it without spending all of your profits in advertising dollars. Well, the Founder’s staff came up with their next great idea – send it out by text message. The key here is that because Carol and John credited staff with their own idea and helped to make it happen, the staff were keen to make it work. They were willing to invite their own friends to come along and make the evening a success.
And was it a success? Overwhelmingly! The story was reported in the newspaper which gave it even greater publicity at no cost. Hundreds of people attended the evening and had a great time. It was so successful that Founders want to have a repeat. A great example of what can happen when everyone is on board and pulling in the same direction.
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