While grocery delivery seems commonplace now, it wasn't always this way.

In fact, several years back, an 89-year-old Pennsylvania man was snowed in during a blizzard before the holidays.

His daughter, who was worried that he was going to run out of food during the blizzard, desperately called all the grocery stores in town to see if anyone would deliver food to him. Most grocers said "No, we don't deliver." But then the woman called Trader Joe's.

The local Trader Joe's said that they don't normally deliver, but they had compassion on this man who was stuck in his home during the blizzard and was likely to run out of groceries.

So Trader Joe's assembled a grocery list for this man of low-sodium foods that would be compatible with his diet and delivered the entire order to his home in under 30 minutes.

On top of all that, they refused to take payment. They insisted that all of it was free and wished the man and his family a Merry Christmas.

Most companies have an annoying list of checklists and hoops that you have to jump through to do anything generous for your customers - hoops that are meant to be so tedious no one in their right mind will even try to jump through them. Just stick to the script, just follow the rules, don't try to do anything extraordinary. But that didn't stop the folks at this Pennsylvania Trader Joe's from helping a man in their community who was in need.

I have no idea if Trader Joe's corporate was aware of the act or if they would have approved in the first place. But I don't think that matters...

These employees did the right thing, won the hearts of that family, and of pretty much everyone else who later heard the story.

That won't scale - and that's precisely why you should do it.

I’m the President of Prolific Brand Design. But I know I can’t be involved in every customer interaction. So…

When a team member proposed some cool new ideas for our process to me, I said the following:

“Look, I trust you. That’s why I hired you. If you want to try something new even though it’s not a part of our process, go for it! I think that would be amazing.”

Most businesses would ask for a proposal… map out a process… and kill the idea with the fist of bureaucracy. I think that if you hired someone to do a job, you should trust them to use their judgment.