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support ventured by the mailroom staff. I was totally impressed by how knowledgeable they were about goings on both in and out of the company. The Director always knew he could count on the mailroom staff to offer insight into customer feedback; observations made by them benefited the company as a whole. This was so inspiring for me. Here I am in a Management meeting, which comprised mostly of Managers and a handful of their staff. There was no ego-tripping in this meeting just, simply put, ordinary people doing extraordinary things and achieving great results. Every person in the room was treated with respect and the added bonus was a productive and fun meeting.

As a consultant, whenever I tell this story to other company Management, I invariably get the rhetorical comment of, "now what could a mail person possibly bring to a management meeting, after all he/she is last on the totem pole, so to speak." This type of misguided thinking always blows me away. Fortunately, as we have seen, with a little coaching and getting out of the box, this type of thinking can change as Management sees first hand the value of empowering and relying on all the links within the company chain.

A Manager, whose mind has been opened, when passing a mail person in his or her company, will more likely stop and acknowledge this employee for who he is and what he truly represents. Hopefully, decision-makers will always remember, "nothing evades our attention quite so persistently as that which we take for granted". (Roger Von Oech)

Learn more about this author, Debora Spadafora.
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