Balcerzak Tour Takes Off to the Rocket City
Huntsville, Ala. marked the spot for day 2 of the Edward Balcerzak tour of the owned-and-operated Customer Care Centers, and boy what a day it was! The day started in frigid Huntington, W.V. (where the flight attendant said the temperature reached -19 degrees overnight) and we almost were unable to leave due to the frozen mechanics of the de-icing equipment. That’s a story for another day, and we did make it out in just enough time to make our connection to in Charlotte, N.C. for our flight to Huntsville (after a little begging and pleading to re-open the already closed flight).
After the group warmed up upon arriving in single-digit temperature Huntsville, Ed began to see all the inner-workings of the Huntsville site. Site Director Anita Hilbun and her leadership team led Ed through the Huntsville version of the employee lifecycle (similar to what he saw a day earlier in Huntington), which was capped off with Kandy Richardson-Fletcher’s QA team’s rally after this afternoon’s huddle.
But the highlight of the day was a visit with a dozen Butler High School students. Butler High is a school the Huntsville site has developed a close, mutual relationship with: site leadership learns just as much from these high school students as the students learn from DIRECTV. DIRECTV wanted to help a school in need from the local community, and Butler needed the help.
Led by the efforts of Jennifer Carpenter, the Recognition, Corporate Citizenship, and Events specialist in Huntsville, along with several others of Anita’s leadership team, DIRECTV is helping Butler students learn the necessary skills to be successful after their school days are done. The Butler students have developed a program called S.O.L.E.: a Self-Organized Learning Environment. S.O.L.E. is an innovative classroom setting in the high school that DIRECTV invested in to determine how students can change the culture of a failing school into one of a successful school. The students are learning some of the same principles that DIRECTV employees are learning about in the Customer Experience transformation.
In just two-and-a-half hours on Monday night, the group of students brainstormed and developed the website www.culturetransformations.webs.com and presented their findings to Ed and team during his visit. The results were nothing short of impressive. The students came up with – on their own – several of the essential leadership qualities we seek from DIRECTV employees: trust, family, community, and collaboration. The students also realize, through this exercise, to never lose the ability to take risks and that it’s OK to fail. Sound familiar?!
The unfortunate reality is that Butler High School will most likely be shut down at the end of the school year due to circumstance beyond this group of students’ control, but they will go down fighting until the end. They have one last project together – a trip to Washington, D.C. to see our national’s capitol and learn more about the various parts of our government. In order for this trip to become a reality, the Butler team has set up a fundraising site at butlerdctrip.blogspot.com. Today, the Huntsville Customer Care Center announced it would be donating $2,500 to the students’ efforts; Ellen Filipiak matched the donation, and then Ed matched Ellen’s match (plus $1, so he wouldn’t be outdone!). The students were beyond excited!
The afternoon of learning – from both the Butler students and the DIRECTV Customer Care leadership team – resulted in over $7,500 being raised for this educational effort. This is just another way that DIRECTV supports the communities we work and live in, and it once again makes me proud to work for such a great company.
Off to Tulsa we go (and hopefully some warmer weather – heck, even 30 degrees would feel balmy at this point!). Thanks, Anita and team for a great visit!
