As e-mail, voice mail, and technology allow people to conduct business without ever seeing each other, competitive edge can very well be re-creation of conversation -- specifically conversation that allows people to feel a “family” connection. It’s a connection that recalls fact that commerce was traditionally an intimate affair.

My great-grandfather started a shoe store, first account Florsheim shoes ever had. Farmers would hook up their horses and trot into York, PA. By learning about customers from his father, my grandfather knew their type of farm, their family members, what kind of shoes they needed. In short, business knew its customers and customers TRUSTED that a product or service would be delivered “as promised”. Reineberg’s Shoe Store was known for “fitting feet” not just selling shoes. Business was conducted on a family-like connection.

The same was true of employees. Employees TRUSTED that company would listen to them as if they were members of an extended family. Employees knew that my grandfather would value their individuality, understand that personal and business life were connected, and pay a fair wage for a day’s work. He also never asked more of others than he asked of himself.

Times have changed. But it’s not too late to develop family “trust”. However it’s not easy.

Customers abandon companies they do not trust and so do employees. Trust develops over time and can be dashed in an instant. But improving organizational trust is more difficult and subtler than installing new software. Research conducted by Leonard Berry, author of Discovering Soul of Service, and professor at Texas A&M concluded that successful companies tend to act like extended families. They display these “family traits” in five ways:

But Halloween evening was anything but cheerless at 421-room Arlington Park Hilton in Arlington Heights, IL. Creativity, energy, and vision produced an event that not only garnered immediate press and local attention, but is also sure to have long-term residual effects for new business. Take heed and see what ideas you can extrapolate for your business. Here's recipe:

First ingredient: a lemon. In hotel business, that means low occupancy. Second: a surrounding residential neighborhood with growing families, schools, businesses, and senior citizens. Third: An empowered and creative director of catering, a town mayor, an eager-to-have-fun-high-energy hotel team from sales, catering, and conference services. Fourth: a dash of courage and a generous dash of money. Mix well with laughter, fun, and childhood fantasy.

The result: a Halloween party for 3,000 children, their parents and 150 younger-than-Springtime folks over 65 years of age, an energized work force, tremendous goodwill, increased awareness of hotel, and lots of press.

But this event did not occur by magic. It first took Director of Catering, Samantha Agnew, to realize that lemonade could be made from seasonal low of room count and meeting rooms. The hotel approached senior citizens for their help, offering a free room and dinner for Halloween if seniors would decorate their hotel door of Halloween, pass out a hotel-furnished pillow case of candy to children walking down halls, and take fliers out to local grade schools to get attendance.