I took the past week off because I was spending time with a real-life business leader; my brother-in-law and our collective families. However, because this week marks the close of the first season of Undercover Boss I wanted to share my insights and perspectives as I have for the past few weeks.

Week 9 of Undercover Boss featured 1-800-Flowers a publicly-traded (NASDAQ: FLWS), florist and gift company that has been providing customers with fresh flowers, plants, gift baskets, gourmet foods, confections, balloons and plush stuffed animals. Chris McCann, President and COO of 1-800-FLOWERS, America’s largest florist and online gift shop, goes undercover. The company was founded by McCann’s older brother Jim. Chris’s role in building 1-800-FLOWERS.COM’s e-commerce channel has helped accelerate the Ccompany’s growth and earned him speaking engagements at numerous interactive conferences and universities around the country. McCann earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York. Prior to his association with 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, he served as President of Flora Plenty, a floral retail chain. He serves on the Board of Trustees of Marist College. 

Needless to say Chris is definitely a talented individual, but he is definitely overshadowed by his CEO older brother. It will be interesting to see if he is up to the challenge of taking the pulse of his company from the inside.

A few cool facts about 1-800-Flowers:

Jim McCann started the business in 1976 under the name Flora Plenty.

In 1996 Jim acquired the 1-800-Flowers phone number and changed the company’s name to it.

The company went public in 1999 and the name was officially changed to 1-800-Flowers.com

1-800-Flowers earned the 2009 Gold Award in the Online Flower Delivery category from TopTenREVIEWS; was listed as a Top Ten Mobile Retailer by Internet Retailer magazine in 2009; and was recognized by Computerworld magazine as a Premier 100 IT Leader for 2010. 

Lessons Learned:

1. What made you successful will not necessarily keep you successful. You need to be aware of where your industry is going in order to keep your company on a growth track. One of the best ways to do this is to encourage employee’s to attend conferences and professional development opportunities and bring back their learning to the organization.
2. You can have the greatest, and most well-intentioned programs to support and develop your employee’s, but if they aren’t well known and/or communicated, they aren’t doing anybody any good. Make sure your organization goes out of it’s way to promote what is doing, has done and can do for employee’s.
3. You learn about your organization by listening to your employee’s and shaping your policies and procedures around their input. Your employee’s can be an invaluable resource in showing you how to improve the organization.
4. If you set goals for your employee’s provides incentives for reaching them. If you don’t, don’t be surprised when they aren’t reached.
5. Build a relationship first, do business second. More often than not, people do business with people they know, trust and like, not just a brand.
6. The choice of a company’s name is important. It needs to describe the value and promise of the organization.  How do you adapt to the local customer?
7. One of the biggest compliments you can pay to someone is to “really” notice what they are doing. It makes them all of the difference knowing that people recognize, and appreciate, they work they do can mean a lot and make a huge difference in the morale and performance of a company.

Closing thought:

I think following quote sums up tonights show and the series itself. In one of Chris’ final statements to his brother in he stated “Your success starts with good people.” I think this is apropos. Whether you are a mom-and-pop retailer or an International giant, the truth remains the same…you are nothing more than your ability to deliver on your brand promise. Your brand promise is inextricably linked to your people and their ability to create that reality. Therefore, you not only need a good product and/or service but you also need great people to help create, develop, market, sell, deliver and support it. If there is any weakness in the entire process, you will know it.

What are your thoughts?

I took the past week off because I was spending time with a real-life business leader; my brother-in-law and our collective families. However, because this week marks the close of the first season of Undercover Boss I wanted to share my insights and perspectives as I have for the past few weeks.

Week 9 of Undercover Boss featured 1-800-Flowers a publicly-traded (NASDAQ: FLWS), florist and gift company that has been providing customers with fresh flowers, plants, gift baskets, gourmet foods, confections, balloons and plush stuffed animals. Chris McCann, President and COO of 1-800-FLOWERS, America’s largest florist and online gift shop, goes undercover. The company was founded by McCann’s older brother Jim. Chris’s role in building 1-800-FLOWERS.COM’s e-commerce channel has helped accelerate the Ccompany’s growth and earned him speaking engagements at numerous interactive conferences and universities around the country. McCann earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York. Prior to his association with 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, he served as President of Flora Plenty, a floral retail chain. He serves on the Board of Trustees of Marist College. 

Needless to say Chris is definitely a talented individual, but he is definitely overshadowed by his CEO older brother. It will be interesting to see if he is up to the challenge of taking the pulse of his company from the inside.

A few cool facts about 1-800-Flowers:

Jim McCann started the business in 1976 under the name Flora Plenty.

In 1996 Jim acquired the 1-800-Flowers phone number and changed the company’s name to it.

The company went public in 1999 and the name was officially changed to 1-800-Flowers.com

1-800-Flowers earned the 2009 Gold Award in the Online Flower Delivery category from TopTenREVIEWS; was listed as a Top Ten Mobile Retailer by Internet Retailer magazine in 2009; and was recognized by Computerworld magazine as a Premier 100 IT Leader for 2010. 

Lessons Learned:

1. What made you successful will not necessarily keep you successful. You need to be aware of where your industry is going in order to keep your company on a growth track. One of the best ways to do this is to encourage employee’s to attend conferences and professional development opportunities and bring back their learning to the organization.
2. You can have the greatest, and most well-intentioned programs to support and develop your employee’s, but if they aren’t well known and/or communicated, they aren’t doing anybody any good. Make sure your organization goes out of it’s way to promote what is doing, has done and can do for employee’s.
3. You learn about your organization by listening to your employee’s and shaping your policies and procedures around their input. Your employee’s can be an invaluable resource in showing you how to improve the organization.
4. If you set goals for your employee’s provides incentives for reaching them. If you don’t, don’t be surprised when they aren’t reached.
5. Build a relationship first, do business second. More often than not, people do business with people they know, trust and like, not just a brand.
6. The choice of a company’s name is important. It needs to describe the value and promise of the organization.  How do you adapt to the local customer?
7. One of the biggest compliments you can pay to someone is to “really” notice what they are doing. It makes them all of the difference knowing that people recognize, and appreciate, they work they do can mean a lot and make a huge difference in the morale and performance of a company.

Closing thought:

I think following quote sums up tonights show and the series itself. In one of Chris’ final statements to his brother in he stated “Your success starts with good people.” I think this is apropos. Whether you are a mom-and-pop retailer or an International giant, the truth remains the same…you are nothing more than your ability to deliver on your brand promise. Your brand promise is inextricably linked to your people and their ability to create that reality. Therefore, you not only need a good product and/or service but you also need great people to help create, develop, market, sell, deliver and support it. If there is any weakness in the entire process, you will know it.

What are your thoughts?