In working with a client on the creation of their culture, one of the key phrases in their cultural framework is to : “create remarkable experiences“. This is a fantastic element within a cultural framework as it creates FOCUS on the client experience, one of the key areas that any company can actually control. It raises the bar from the far too common mediocre interactions we have come to term normal.
During our testing phase, where we opened the company to discussion groups so that everyone had a chance to voice their opinion or challenge the cultural framework, the culture team was challenged on the value of a remarkable experience and how did we establish metrics to determine what was and was not remarkable. The questioner failed to see any value in something that did not provide hard core data. It was a great question.
Culture in and of itself is a subjective arena, made up of a strange commitment of emotion and intellect. It develops organically simple by the interaction of groups of people or intentionally as a focused aspect of leadership design. The word remarkable is highly subjective. What might be remarkable to you could be unremarkable to someone else. So, where is the value in an organizationally wide commitment to REMARKABLE?
Turns out that remarkable can fit an entire suite of measurement tools. You can graph the economic weight of the focus on the client experience. You can distinguish social impacts of what we call at Creative Ventures DAZZLING BLUE behaviors. You can survey internal participation in the quest for remarkable. Even soft, subjective strategies can have value based measurement tools.
Remarkable can be converted to hard evidence.
Misters Kotter and Heskett surveyed 207 companies in 22 industries to determine the impact of experience based cultures within the performance of studied companies. Remarkable is an experienced based strategy.
Those companies that emphasized and held their teams accountable to a strong team and client based culture, outperformed their competitors in the following key indicators:
- Profit
- Return on Investment
- Stock Price
Walt Disney once pulled a train engineer out of his engine and asked; “what business do you think we’re in?” The engineer hesitated and Walt reminded him; “we are in the HAPPINESS business and if you don’t start smiling at everyone, you will be in a very different business.” 
Happiness is a very subjective measurement tool but I would challenge you to find an “unhappy” person at Disneyland. They train their cast members. They hold everyone accountable to happiness. They survey around happiness and low and behold, happiness becomes Disney’s “remarkable experience“.
Raise the bar with your commitment. Keep it top of mind. Hold people accountable. Then watch the impact your will have!
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