If the blog postings seem a little light this week, it’s because I have been on the road a lot. This is conference season, and there are lots of interesting events to go to. Last week, it was Las Vegas for the annual user group meeting for Vurv Technology. This week, it was Phoenix for the Human Capital Institute National Human Capital Summit. Next week, it is New York for the Workforce Management Talent Management Conference and annual Optimas Awards.

I’ll occasionally include in this blog some of the best ideas that I pick up at these events, and the best this week comes from William Taylor, the founding editor of Fast Company and author of Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win.

Taylor said that good managers in today’s world must enlist everyone in the business to drive change and move things ahead. Ideas aren’t the province of the CEO or top managers, he argued, but can come from anywhere and anybody. Managers must foster that kind of thinking and push everyone to think of how to do things better.

He also said that there must be a mind-set flip. Managers must stop thinking of themselves as problem solvers and instead become solution finders, using the entire workforce to help come up with the solution. His parting words: You can’t always outspend the competition, but you can outthink them. So, keep it fun and draw on the brainpower of your entire workforce to make it happen.

Here’s one last view of March Madness and the impact it has on workforce productivity. For the record, I haven’t had a single comment or heard anyone argue (at all) that it has any negative impact whatsoever. It just goes to show you: Sometimes the things that get the most negative attention have the least amount of negative impact.

From an analyst at a large insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut: “I read your piece about productivity during March Madness. I can tell you that in some departments it probably does have an impact, though I don’t believe it’s necessarily a bad thing. My department—or I should say the people I sit closest to—are not into sports at all and it drives me crazy!! I can hear people a few ‘cubes’ over talking about the game last night, etc., and I wish I could jump on over and join in!

“The reason I think it is a good thing is because I look at it as teamwork. It’s sharing something (in my case, an obsession) for a sport that others are interested in and it brings you closer as a team. Yes, there is jibber-jabbering going on, but then everyone gets right back to work with a better attitude. I’m sure there are some people who take advantage of company time but that eventually shows up in their performance, and they are the type who would take advantage anyway. My worry is when March Madness is all over—that’s when I go through withdrawals!! Then it’s on to the Red Sox!”

Earlier this week, I questioned the commonly held notion that there is a huge loss of business productivity at this time of year due to the focus on March Madness—the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament. As I wrote then, I think such talk is nonsense and that there are no reliable metrics to back it up. In other words, it’s an urban legend.

I also asked readers to share their opinions on this issue, and as I thought, they jumped to a different conclusion: March Madness actually offers a little relief from the day-to-day business grind and can be both good for morale and boost productivity, too. Here are some of the comments:

From a senior loan officer in Dallas: “The only thing that will affect our day Thursday is what restaurant we will order lunch from to be delivered for the opening TIP OFF. Seriously, March Madness does bring our office closer together with the constant jabbing, competitiveness and just plain camaraderie with your fellow workers. It gives you an opportunity to interact with employees who during the year you might not chat with, unless it is in a stressful situation. I believe it cuts some of the tension and gives everybody a breather.”

From a director of finance and administration in Austin, Texas: “Although we don’t have a pool in our office (too small and disinterested), a once-a-year event such as this would be a wonderful way for staff from different work areas to interact and have a little fun with an activity—a teambuilding, if you will. The positives far outweigh the negatives. Gambling—shmambling!”

From a benefits analyst at a university in Kentucky: “Those party poopers should loosen up. Think of March Madness and the resulting discussions and bracket completions as a ‘team building’ exercise. Our department as a whole rarely (if ever) interacts on a personal or social level, so our friendly competition ($1.00 entry fee) has been a way for all of us to interact, laugh and compare notes. We work very hard every day and will continue to do so. However, for a few weeks we will have a friendly competition and a source of commonality outside our professional responsibilities. From the college basketball fan to the clueless, it has given us something to have fun with and share.  It has strengthened our team and productivity and at no out of pocket cost to the organization. A great ROI if you ask me!”

I just got back from a conference in Las Vegas (you can read about it in our Best in Shows feature, where the weather was warm and beautiful. I stayed at the Wynn Las Vegas Resort and Casino, probably the swankiest and most expensive new place on the Las Vegas Strip. It’s a great hotel in many ways, so I was really surprised that the customer service was so lousy.

Don’t get me wrong—the staff throughout the hotel and casino was incredibly polite and courteous. That’s all well and good, but courtesy without any real action behind it to solve your customer service issue is just happy talk. I’ve been seeing this more and more recently dealing with companies, and I have started to call it “Courtesy Without Consequences.” For me, it represents customer service that focuses on saying the right things without actually following through and doing the right things. It manifests itself in workers saying how sorry they are, or how much they want to give you good service, but in the end ignoring any real action to explain or fix your problem.

U.S. airlines are particularly good at delivering Courtesy Without Consequences. I had one particular experience with United Airlines recently where the customer service agent I was talking with (by phone) was so focused on apologizing or telling me how much she wanted to help that she was completely unable to concentrate on just what it was I needed. This was so frustrating that afterward, I e-mailed customer service at United to complain, only to get an e-mail version of what I had just heard over the phone. It was no more helpful (although much more aggravating) the second time around.

At the Wynn Las Vegas, I had to call housekeeping twice one day to get someone to clean my room. Despite the “We’re so sorry you are having a bad experience” happy talk, I didn’t get my room cleaned until nearly 8:30 p.m. Had someone bothered to call and follow-up after the first time I called (at 4 p.m.), they might have gotten the problem fixed sooner, saved me a second phone call and truly performed some customer service.

I could list all sorts of other minor, but annoying, customer service issues I encountered at the Wynn, but the point is this: Good management focuses the workforce not only on courteous interactions but also on taking responsibility to right the wrong, and then, on following up to make sure the customer is truly satisfied. At the Wynn Las Vegas, they’re batting .333 on this score. That’s good for baseball but terrible for any organization that lives and dies by keeping customers happy.

Arte Nathan, who was Wynn’s great HR chief before his recent retirement, told Workforce Management last year about Wynn’s hiring strategy for the company’s new casino and hotel in Macau. When I was in the midst of my customer service experience this week, I couldn’t help but think, “This wouldn’t be happening if Arte Nathan were still around!”

Today is a big day if you follow college basketball, because the NCAA men’s basketball tournament selections were announced last night. Today, newspapers will have graphics with brackets showing the matchups of the 65 teams, ESPN’s SportsCenter and other sports shows will be jabbering about the picks, and fans of the schools that made it in (or were left out) will be debating the decisions of the tournament selection committee.

In other words, today is Hoop Heaven if you are a college basketball fan.

But there is another side to this March Madness, and it is this: There are lots of workforce consultants who seem to think that the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and the focus some people will have on it, particularly this week, is the Scourge from Hell. I know this because I was inundated last week with e-mail pitches from consultants who want to be sources or offer their expert opinions on how March Madness saps America’s workforce. To wit:

One pitched me on how “harmless” (their emphasis) March Madness office pools “can have a significant impact on office productivity” and can also lead to personal problems for an employee, such as developing a gambling problem.”

Another one, from a lawyer, suggested that “employers should be more concerned about their liability should they implicitly or explicitly permit employees to solicit or manage participation in a March Madness office pool that involves cash stakes.”

Still another, from a well-known and respected outplacement consultancy, argued that the combination of the change to daylight-saving time and March Madness could hammer workplace productivity today. “Between sleepy workers, computer glitches and March Madness,” this consultant argued, “it will be a miracle if any actual work gets done on Monday.”

All of this talk about lost productivity due to March Madness is nonsense. I haven’t seen any credible research that supports the premise, and the “data” that is used to make the point is soft and suspect. One consultant cited “an estimated total loss for American businesses ranging between $400 million to $1.5 billion during the course of the tournament.” These figures reportedly come from a March 2004 story in the Detroit News that I couldn’t find on the newspaper’s Web site or anywhere else.

There are lots of things that can distract a workforce and become a productivity problem. March Madness certainly has the potential to be one of those, but whether it is just a minor diversion or major problem is up to the manager. Is this a big issue in your workplace? I’d love for somebody to write me and let me know if it is.