I have had the distinct privilege of speaking to over 2,000 audiences in every state in the union and over 20 countries. In my humble opinion, the greatest company on the planet is Milliken & Company out of Spartanburg, S.C. They do textiles right!

Milliken does things different. My involvement with Milliken & Company began in the early eighties when I first met Roger Milliken. He was a no-nonsense executive who put up with precious little with which he disagreed. His work force was never the highest paid in the industry, but it was internationally known as the best trained. Milliken believes in continuing education.

When I lived in South Carolina, I was a regular speaker at many of Milliken's Pursuit of Excellence (POE) programs. Milliken required 40 hours of continuing education from each of its employees. The company paid for it, and you had your choice of how to fulfill the requirement. Some joined Toastmasters; others attended the POE weekends.

I have had the privilege of joining the likes of Tom Peters, CPAE, Ken Blanchard, CPAE and others over the years as we addressed Milliken's now famous POE seminars.

If continuing education worked so well for employees, Roger Milliken figured why not extend the process to customers? Do what? That's right, have continuing education for the people who buy your product.

"Come here customer…. sit down….we're going to teach you how to be a better customer." Do what? Huh? I know this is definitely thinking outside the box, but it works.

Chrysler used to purchase thousands of feet of cloth from Milliken which they converted into bucket seat covers in a Chrysler automobile. While attending a Customer Opinion Program one day, Milliken was trying to convince the Chrysler buyers to talk back and give Milliken's guys some feedback on how to better improve their service. Sessions like this particular one helped create such terrific programs as "just-in-time-delivery," eliminating having to warehouse huge supplies of products for weeks at a time before they are actually needed.

Chrysler's geek engineers were sitting in a session one day and suggested to Milliken's geek engineers that if they could get the cloth trimmed into ovals instead of rectangles, it would save the Chrysler geek engineers 19%-21% in labor costs when producing a bucket seat cover in a Chrysler automobile.

The Milliken geek engineers said "no problem bubba… we can do that." (Of course, they had to translate bubba to them because the Chrysler geek engineers were Yankees from Michigan). "We can tool it up to make it an oval, a star or whatever you want it to look like."

Now that left Milliken with a bit of a problem. What was it going to do with all the leftover trim from the corners of the rectangle? Milliken turned that into a $50 million-a-year rag industry… simply by listening to the customer.

Another great program Milliken had was one they called their ECR program, an acronym for Error Cause Removal. Most companies don't reward whistle blowing, no matter how noble the whistle blower. Instead, they penalize people for finding a better way to do something.

Milliken decided to implement the ECR program. If any employee can find a better way to do something, they take the idea immediately to their manager. If the idea has feet, they implement it immediately. Bingo! Change happens that quickly.

Not only did Milliken implement the new idea immediately, they also empowered their managers by giving them cash to give out on the spot to the guy who presents the new idea. What started out as a program to remove unnecessary costly errors has turned into one of the most creative ways industry has found to improve performance.

And now you know some of the many reasons why I think Milliken is the most creative company on the planet.

What if you implemented a customer training program for your clients? What if you took the time to ask the client exactly how they wanted your product or service delivered? Try it. It could make you millions!