Since I’m quick to remonstrate when I receive poor customer service, I thought I’d take this opportunity to tell you about the outrageously awesome customer service I received this week from Suzanne Boutte (That’s pronounced “boo-tea”—and yes, she takes alot of ribbing for it) at the East Sunshine Street branch of Liberty Bank here in Springfield, Missouri.

Monthly, I batch a larger stack of deposit tickets than you can hold in two hands and take them to the bank. All of them except one are for deposits into accounts at Liberty. The other single deposit is for an account  at a competitor bank. Nearly every month I mess up and leave my singular deposit bundled with the many deposits to Liberty and mistakenly hand the whole batch to the teller at Liberty. Usually they catch it and tell me before I leave the bank. However, this week I dropped the deposit right at closing time, and once again I’d forgotten to pull out the single deposit to the competitor bank. Realizing what I’d done, I called Suzanne’s voice mail after hours and left her a message telling her of my mistake and asking her to pull the check out and hold it for me at the teller window.

The next morning I got an email from Suzanne. It had a deposit receipt from the competitor bank. Suzanne had caught my errant deposit and drove it to the other bank and made the deposit for me, then sent me the receipt. What a woman! Seth Godin would call her a Linchpin! I just call it great customer service, the kind I always get from Suzanne.

Thank you Suzanne Boutte! Don’t tell Gary and Gary (the CEO and EVP at Liberty), but if you ever decide to make a career change, I hope that you’ll come join our team.

I sat in a meeting on Monday with a lawyer, a doctor, a political consultant, and a real estate developer-cum-inventor as we strategized to influence the social, political, academic and economic climate of our state. One of the determinations was that we wanted to replace the welfare mentality of the populace—currently 1 in 6 Missourians nurses at the state’s nipple—with a dose of Puritan work ethic.

Fast forward 18 hours. I’m sitting in the exam room of my physician, the same one above. He’s telling me about how the great men he admires all died in their 50’s, that they were men of profound aspiration and achievement, but that they worked themselves to death; a not so subtle inference that I need to play more golf. “Sell all your companies but one and get a hobby” was how he put it.

Apparently I’m a Puritan. Who knew?

My mentor from the other side, Fred Smith, says good communication must produce a feeling, transmit a fact, and stimulate an act. If you are in the communication business and you’ll do those three things, you’re likely to hit your mark every time.

Jim Collins uses a concept regarding building your team in which he asks: #1. Do you have the right people on the bus? #2. Are they sitting in the right seat on the bus?

I recently picked up an idea for how you know whether a person you’ve already employed really belongs on your bus, or not. When your cell phone rings and the Caller I.D. shows John Doe, if you don’t want to answer it because it is John Doe, then that is a sign that John doesn’t belong in a seat on your bus.

Whose calls are you dreading or avoiding? As Jesus said to Judas “What you must do, do quickly.”

Did you know Jesus was regulated to death. The whole sin, atonement, salvation narrative not withstanding, Jesus died a victim of regulations.

Think about it:

• Jesus had parades and public gatherings for which he didn’t get permits. The Bible says the religio-government leaders of the day resented his large gatherings.
• Jesus was guilty of the unauthorized practice of medicine. He healed people he wasn’t supposed to, on days he wasn’t supposed to.
• Jesus operated a winery without the proper license. You remember when he turned the water into wine without obtaining his vintner’s license.
• Jesus caused construction without a building permit. It was the people he was leading who did that roofing job in Mark 4 when they removed the roof and lowered their friend on a pallet so that Jesus would heal him. I’ll bet that wasn’t a permitted construction project.
• Jesus violated the blue laws; you know those “not on Sunday” rules we used to have in America. Jesus picked and threshed some grain on the Sabbath and the regulators nearly lost their urine because of it.

I think you see my point. While God had a divine motive for offering up His Son, the people who killed Jesus ultimately did so because He repeatedly violated their rules. World-changers do that. They do the “right thing” not the “rule thing.” They cut the crap, move the ball forward, get in motion, make a difference.

I’m not against rules and regulations. Its good to have a few. Ten is a good number.

Did you know there are over 4500 identified federal crimes? That doesn’t include state crimes, local criminal statutes, or the tens of thousands of regulations foisted upon you by hundreds of agencies of the various governments to which you are subject. One law enacted in the aftermath of 9/11 created sixty new crimes alone. Really? Sixty? SIXTY new crimes contained in one law!

Greek philosopher Isocrates said: “Where there is a multitude of specific laws, it is a sign that the state is badly governed.”

In the first century, Tasedus wrote of Rome: “Formerly we suffered from crimes.  Now we suffer from laws.”

According to attorney Harvey Silverglate the average busy executive commits three felonies everyday—three things that an ambitious prosecutor could turn into an indictment if he or she chose to do so.

Harry Truman appointed a Supreme Court Justice named Jackson who is reported to have said, “Herein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor; that he will pick people he thinks he should get, rather than cases that need to be prosecuted. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone.”

Regulations or freedom? You’ve gotta decide what you want, and you’d better make your wishes known at the ballot box and in your legislator’s ear. Personally, I’m not gonna just sit idly by and take it anymore. My congressman is on speed-dial. How about yours?