Dealing with the Prez

Recently my wife rolled up to the check-out counter at Kroger with $196.00 worth of groceries.  She knows she had $196 worth of groceries because she had self-scanned all of her groceries, bagged them and loaded the into the cart to take out to the car.

Then some unfortunate things happened: First, she wanted to pay with a check; second, Kroger only accept checks up to $150 in self-checkout; third, and most unfortunate, she had only one check.

The clerk made an exception this one time and my wife went merrily on her way, right?  No, the clerk would not let her write the one check for $196 and she left without the groceries.

Seth Godin, in his start-up manifesto, The Bootstrapping Bible, discusses many advantages that small businesses have over the big boys.  One is Presidential Input and, in this case, its what you might have gotten from a small independent grocery store.  But not at Kroger.

If the president of Kroger had been standing where the clerk was, do you believe he would have made the same decision?  Risked losing even one customer? Risked all the bad word-of-mouth advertising? Let $196 walk out the door?  Probably not.

Company presidents don't do that.  Policy-ridden bureaucratic companies do.  And that's one of the benefits of working with small businesses: You can always deal directly with the President of the Company who is willing to cut through the crap, who sets policy and "will never lose someone over a stupid rule."