I don't know where I got it, but yesterday I found this file on my computer and decided to listen to it. Turned out to be a short clip where the speaker was talking about some bad customer service he received at a hotel he was staying at for a long time. He eventually decided to complain to the manager, who got things changed for him, but, it seems, not for anyone else. He wondered about the reaction of the staff and how, instead of using it as a lesson for everyone, they only responded to one person's needs while still treating everyone else badly.

Sometimes, managers miss the "teaching moments" that present themselves whenever something goes wrong, or sometimes when things go right. Instead, they tend to focus and take care of the immediate problem, and once it's solved move on to the next thing without trying to make sure that issue never comes up again, or making sure that, if it does, everyone else knows how to respond to it.

I know the business life of a manager is hard. Often it's going from one problem to the next, to the next, on and on. And yet, many times, if the manager is paying attention to these problems, there will be a recognition that it's a problem that keeps coming up all the time, maybe manifesting itself differently, and if one takes a quick sidestep, does some evaluation, and sees the issue for what it is, that if there's a one time class, or maybe a change in procedure, it won't happen again, or at least not nearly as often.

We can make our lives hard when we don't stop and look at some of the problems we have, and recognize that we've seen these problems before, and maybe can fix them to they never come back. The saying goes "if we don't study history, we're doomed to repeat it."

In business, it's definitely a lesson to be learned.