The best way to describe it was that I felt like I was in another dimension. It was called Hell.
The setting was Chicago’s O’Hare airport on Saturday, July 20, 2024. The day after the CrowdStrike snafu.
I won’t bore you with all of the travel details but the executive summary includes:
✅ having my flight canceled and rescheduled at least 30 times in a 24 hour period
✅ zero availability of hotel rooms or rental cars anywhere near Chicago, or as far away as Milwaukee, for the entire weekend
✅ spending the night on a sofa bed in the hotel room of a gracious new friend I had met the same day who fortunately was not a serial killer
My ticket out of that nightmare was via the last ‘roomette’ on an Amtrak train on Saturday afternoon. An 8 hour journey as opposed to a 1 hour flight, but at least I would get home that day.
We’ve all seen how travel can make people crazy🤬 Now imagine MOST flights in the ENTIRE country canceled or delayed over multiple days. People could have easily lost their cool.
But the fact that they didn’t is what saved me from completely LOSING MY MIND.🤯
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Covid, George Floyd, divisive politics, the economy, and numerous controversial issues have all caused people in general to have a lot more anxiety and shorter fuses in the past few years. Somehow, I did not see any of that on this day.
To the contrary, everyone I encountered was calm and helpful. Many of them even had ✨a sense of humor✨, and showed their personality⭐️, while still being professional.
This includes the Delta agents who had a very long queue of people they needed to rebook, the hotel receptionist who was trying to find people rooms, and the Amtrak staff in the station, as well as the crew on my train ride.
Their collective serenity must have impacted me deeply because once I purchased the train ticket and knew I had a way home, I intentionally chose to embrace the moment and enjoy ‘slow travel’ (which if you know me well is probably shocking given that I live for process improvement and efficiency). Sitting in my own private roomette, watching the green countryside of Wisconsin roll by, I read, listened to classical music, did some work on my laptop, and had a nap. It was amazing.
The whole experience reminded me of something Amy Langer shared on the RevOps Champions podcast. (Amy was a co-founder of Salo, a staffing company which was acquired in 2023. She’s an expert on building and scaling a professional services company.)
One of my biggest takeaways from that conversation was Amy’s perspective on the importance of relationships, “the first relationship to nurture in professional services is with employees, as this empowers external client relationships”.
My Titanic-esque travel fiasco was rescued by the hotel, Delta, and Amtrak employees. They all contributed to me having a good day, despite all of the technical and logistic issues. Based on my experience that day, Delta, Amtrak, and Sheraton must do a pretty decent job of making sure their employees feel valued and empowered to make decisions, in order to provide good service to their customers.
When I think of our team here at Denamico, I’m so proud when I hear a young team member talking about ‘my client’ and taking ownership in the outcomes they’re trying to drive for that client. Or a business development person taking a meeting at 7pm to meet with someone in Asia. And there’s nothing better than direct feedback from a client about the fantastic experience they’ve had with someone from our team.
Hearing about Amy’s experience made me wonder if I do enough to make sure our team members know they are the secret sauce🥫of Denamico. It’s their education, experience, training, commitment to continuous learning, and motivation to help their clients, that differentiate us.
I’m sure there’s more I could be doing. And Amy shares some good suggestions in the podcast, so more to come on my progress with that.
In the meantime, I’m going to be more proactive in telling people how their actions positively impacted me so they know they’re appreciated. You’re welcome to join me.
Cheers and hope you enjoy the last few weeks of summer😎
Kristin
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Kristin Dennewill
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