Costco continues to amuse and amaze by offering more than the usual products to pile in the cart.  The Costco Connection magazine for June (www.costco.com, "connection") has a page devoted to "Fresh Views," with mini-features on: Wally "Famous" Amos (who has moved on to found Wally's Muffin Company),brainstorming techniques, and a quick summary of a 2009 book, Extraordinary Groups: How Ordinary Teams Achieve Amazing Results.

My big takeaways this month, aside from a hankering for a muffin or a chocolate chip cookie, were from Extraordinary Groups.  One - not quite an aha! moment - was that a group dynamic can hinder, rather than stimulate, group productivity.  The other was that "exceptional experiences can be thoughtfully nurtured and intentionally encouraged."

Good stuff, but the authors may have missed the larger point, which is that transporting tools and techniques for elevating group performance, to the operation of business relationships involving entire companies, can magnify and multiply the consequences of what might be accomplished.

Maybe an even greater message, though, lies in how Costco works at a fuller customer relationship by providing unexpected value, beyond the nuts and bolts of selling them tires and tube steaks.