Subir Chowdhury’s book ' The Ice cream Maker ' is an quick reckoner of the basic principles of quality that one must adhere to , for sustaining a business. The principles are brought out in a form of a fictional story , where the protagonist , Pete faces a rather tough situation of turning around an ailing factory. It somehow reminded me of Alex of “The Goal”.

The book begins with Pete going to a retail mall which is one of the customers of its ice creams. An encounter with Mike, the manager of the mall changes his life for ever. Through various examples , Mike helps Pete turn around the factory . The fact that the lessons are universal makes this book a useful read

Takeaway’s  from the book:

  • Learning to Listen is the Most important element of creating a quality culture in the organization

  • Without passion, nothing is fun

  • Profits are the by-product of great service

  • Turn everything you do everyday out of necessity in to something you love to do

  • Encourage employees and make the people responsible

  • If you give employees more responsibility, more freedom, the right tools and training, compensation, give them opportunity to be heard and they will be more engaged in their work and more invested in their business

  • Enriching the products and Services you offer

    • Instill in everyone on your team, a passion for perfection in every minute of your work

    • The real measure of performance is how you do at your best, but how you do at your worst

    • Las Vegas - Kings of customer service

    • Deejay sydrome - Plays what he thinks the customers should listen

    • Need to think about improving the product everyday

  • Optimize

    • Need to recognize the price of failure

    • You need to do it right the first time

    • Need to get absolutely dogged on to details

    • Develop a sense of productive paranoia

As one can see that the above lessons are no rocket science, but it is unfortunate that these simple principles are not applied in a lot of organizations and hence result in failure.