It has been a couple of weeks between blogs. The reason is that I took a 12 day cruise through Italy, a couple of Greek Islands, Egypt, and Israel. The cultures were amazingly diverse and, from a leadership perspective, very interesting. What I found even more interesting was the culture of the cruise ship itself.
Like most cruise ships the staff is made up of many different nationalities, often clustered around types of jobs. Despite their diversity, they manage to focus on the customer (guest as they call them), and provide seamless service. How do they pull it off? How do they overcome their differences both in culture and in job status, avoid conflict, and work in harmony – at least from the guest’s perspective?
They are all – literally – in the same boat and I think we can learn a great deal about how to lead diversity and create a customer focused culture from cruise ships. I will write more in future postings on these subjects.
