
These experiences will help them develop an understanding of customers’ needs, the judgment required to act without perfect information, and the ability to learn from both good and bad outcomes. Provide employee “artists” with experiences such as apprenticeship with a master, stories of outstanding customer service, and extended time with a customer. In a surgery center, repetitive work that can be standardized (such as high-volume hernia repair or Lasik corrective eye surgery) is managed separately from more complex inpatient surgery that requires individual judgment. Manage artistic and scientific processes separately.
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So continually expose artists to customer feedback.Īt Steinway, piano voicers (who adjust completed pianos to perfect each instrument’s feel and sound) interact directly with professional pianists. Artistic processes must rely on external measures of success.

Hall and Johnson recommend these steps for managing your processes once you’ve determined which ones should be artistic: Develop an infrastructure to support art Ritz-Carlton recaptured its reputation for unrivaled service when it empowered employees to improvise their responses to individual guests’ needs.

If your process is artistic, train employees in the judgment required to respond creatively to variable conditions.


Not only does the wood used in soundboards differ, but professional musicians appreciate the instruments’ unique “personalities.” Ritz-Carlton adopted an artistic approach to service after discovering that tightly defined procedures weren’t meeting the needs of its diverse customer base. Steinway & Sons, for instance, uses artistic processes to make concert pianos. If those two conditions aren’t present, mass processes (which eliminate variation) or mass customization (which controls it) will be required. Companies need art in variable environments (if, say, raw materials aren’t uniform) and when customers value distinctive output. Identify what should and shouldn’t be art. Tuck professors Hall and Johnson advise companies to rescue artistic processes from the tide of standardization with a three-step approach.ġ. Imposing rigid rules on them squashes innovation, reduces accountability, and harms performance. Many processes-such as leadership training or auditing-are more art than science. Managers have gone overboard with process standardization.
