Great service, it turns out, is not made possible by running the business harder and faster on the backs of a few extraordinary people. It's made possible — profitable, sustainable, scalable — by designing a system that sets up everyone to excel.

Our central point here, as elsewhere, is that your performance management system has to be both internally consistent and integrated well into the rest of your business model. All the parts have to work together.

Great service, it turns out, is not made possible by running the business harder and faster on the backs of a few extraordinary people. It's made possible — profitable, sustainable, scalable — by designing a system that sets up everyone to excel.

Scenes like this played out across the country. And they did because BBBK's incentives to excel not only worked for individuals, but they also worked seamlessly with the rest of its employee management system. We're not suggesting that the company's approach is somehow universal, although its deliberate balance of "trust and verify" shows up in the management systems of many other successful service companies.

Our central point here, as elsewhere, is that your performance management system has to be both internally consistent and integrated well into the rest of your business model. All the parts have to work together.