“We ‘re a service business that just happens to to collect waste. I never get out of the bed in the morning thinking I’ m in the waste industry. Never, ever, ever. I don’t go to the waste management trade shows. Personally I can’t think of anything worse to do. It doesn’t inspire me. But I will read every book about the service industry. I wanna know what’s the best service industry in Asia. I wanna know what’s the best service industry in the US. What’s the latest thinking in service? And then apply them to our little waste industry.” S01E09 of the Rethink Culture podcast shines the spotlight on Gene Browne, the founder of The City Bin, a leading waste management company and a five-time winner of the ‘Deloitte Best Managed Company’ in Ireland.  Gene recounts how City Bin started in 1997 as an experiment in service quality, out of his passion for creating amazing customer experiences. How his entrepreneurial journey was part luck and part naivety, especially when ruthless competition burned his warehouse to the ground. The lessons of expanding to the Middle East, and seeing how middle management struggled to adapt to the company’s autonomous culture. 26 years later, his unflinching attention to customer service has become deeply rooted in the company; like treating his customers the way he would like a business to treat his parents; tying  employee bonus to customer satisfaction to align employee actions with company values; and even apologising for bad service to customers by sending them flowers. Gene talks passionately about avoiding aspirational values, in favour of those principles that are as unique to any company as a fingerprint is to any person. And about giving his staff the gift of education, with a pledge to help the 80% of his less educated workforce to achieve their lifelong education goals. Listen to Rethink Culture wherever you get your favourite podcasts, including: (Spotify)  https://open.spotify.com/show/4BLXQ8CgFHvYG6UoIQazj9 (Apple podcasts)  https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/rethink-culture/id1655123154(YouTube)  https://www.youtube.com/@rethinkcultureFurther references: Gene Browne on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/genebrowne100/City Bin: https://www.citybin.com/Books references:Good strategy Bad Strategy, by Richard Rumelt https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11721966-good-strategy-bad-strategyBuilding the Happiness-Centred Business by Paddi Lund [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10088113-building-the-happiness-centred-businessMastering the Rockefeller Habits by Verne Harnish https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16120.Mastering_the_Rockefeller_Habits