A 52 year old man working as a cleaner at a public library was instructed by his supervisor to wipe the lockers.
He took a piece of dry cloth to wipe the lockers. As he finished "wiping" each locker, he slammed the door back so loud that the banging sounds echoed through the whole long corridor and could be heard as far as one level up and one level down. His colleague, a 70 plus year old lady, came by to check what was happening. He told her, "I'm going for a job interview tomorrow and the salary is $1300." She replied, "You are working in an air-conditioned environment yet you are so unhappy. Your interview tomorrow pays you $100 more but what if you're asked to sweep the whole car park under the sun?" Is the man unhappy over his pay and the amount of work he has to do? What makes him think that the next job with higher pay will be easier? Will he still be as unhappy at the new job? The best thing he can do is to do what he is doing now well. And if he is not appreciated, promote himself out of the company. A billion dollar listed company is implementing a new IT system that's going to cost $50 million.
This new system will consolidate all the data and information of various departments into one platform. Essentially, it will makes management of its customer information more efficient (one database access), work processes between different departments more smooth among other benefits. This direction came from the top management and staff are pulled from various departments to be in the team and financial resources are committed. The problem is that most of the staff involved in the project feel its a stupid system which is not user friendly, cumbersome and a waste of time. In fact, some of them even wonder if this project will be successful in the end and thought the company may ends up wasting more resources just to maintain the system. The staff are not convinced of the benefits of the systems that were communicated to them. But nobody is saying it. But since the order came from the top, everyone just follow whatever responsibilities and duties they are assigned. Are the staff too resistant to change without giving more time to see how the system will works after it is fully roll out? More importantly, will the top management be willing to abothe project halfway if it finds out through the various feedback that the system does not serve its purpose? Or go ahead with it since so much resources have been committed to this? Could they have tested out this idea cheaply before committing? "When I went to school," he once explained, "they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy.' They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life."
You see what you know.
You see more of what you know. You cannot see what you don't know. You don't see what you know. Can you see what you don't know? Focus, big picture, blind spot, self limitation, testing, linking, taking risk, playing safe, learning. What if points are deducted for every wrong word? "The real measure of success is the number of experiments that can be crowded into twenty-four hours."
Three persons = 3
Five persons = 10 Ten persons = 45 Hundred persons = 4,950 Small fish in big market.
Which will you choose? A few staff gathered around for some coffee as the system is down.
There were nothing else they could so except to wait for the system to be up again. The senior vice president saw them and quickly summoned his vice president to his office. He wants her to find ways to find things for the staff to do instead of waiting for the system to be ok. He said, "Later the senior staff see them doing nothing." A bridal boutique invested $45,000 in a virtual fitting room.
Its sensor capture clients' body measurements as they are trying on a dress. It then projects their image with their chosen gown onto a virtual mirror. With this technology, staff are able to offers recommendations to clients based on their choices. Clients are able to quickly select dresses with the most appropriate size, color and design for themselves. This technology has boosted business and improves productivity for the company. Appointment time for each client is reduced from four or five hours to three hours. With the 20 percent saving in time, the shop can put in 30 percent more appointments. Staff attrition rate also went down because there's fewer work-related injuries related to handling of heavy gowns and more opportunities to learn and grow. Survival of the fastest?
Survival of the smartest? Survival of the richest? Survival of the coolest? Survival of the strangest? Survival of the strongest? A lady with her eyes fixed on her mobile phone was walking from the underground linkway from the train station to her office building.
A man coming from the opposite direction knocked into her and she dropped her phone. He was in a hurry or deep thought that he didn't even realize he has knocked into her. Or did he purposely do that as she could possibly be blocking his way? The lady was shocked and turned to see who knocked her but he was too fast and she could only catch a glimpse of his back. She was apparently pissed off with the man who didn't even stopped to apologize. She kneel down to pick up her phone and check if the screen has cracked from the impact. So who is at fault here? She was busy watching something on her mobile phone while busy walking in a underground linkway filled with people rushing busily. The man was busy rushing to his destination. Every day, every one is busy with something. Busy fetching kids from school and to tuitions. Busy rushing deadline for projects. Busy queuing for the latest smart phone. Busy catching Pokemon. Busy chasing after the bus. Busy catching the Korean drama. Busy making the next sale. What are you busy with? At the end of the day, everyone is going to end up at the same one place. Go do something that matters. A man won the fifth prize, a hamper, during his company's Chinese New Year's lunch.
There were two bottles of wine, a packet of mushroom, dried scallop, a few boxes of nuts and dried mangoes among other items. Hampers looks impressive and outstanding because of how the items are stacked and packaged. Everyone loves receiving one during festive seasons. On the other hand, many of us also know that some of the items are really cheap stuff depending on the price tag. As he was dismantling the hamper, he noticed the items were bind together by rounds and rounds of scotch tape and double-side tape. This is to ensure that the items are fixed tightly in the shape so they do not fall off. One by one, the items came off the hamper. Then he decided to take off the nuts and dried mangoes from the boxes as they were quite big. When he opened up the boxes, the nuts are packed in air sealed plastic bags dropped out. The sizes of these plastic bags are only one-sixth the size of the boxes they were in. These items are packaged in big boxes so that they will look nice, big and expensive on the hamper. Two weeks ago, some construction workers erected a external elevator at my flat. They were dismantling some structure on the exterior of my flat. Apparently some of these exterior structure dropped off from other flats in my estate. As they were dismantling them, I realized that they were just metal structure fixed to the walls and covered with plywood to beautiful the exterior of the flat. These are some protruding parts in the flat to make it aesthetically nicer. But they serve no real purpose. And when things start dropping off, they have to do something about it. A man was taking to his niece about her first year in polytechnic when she visited him during Chinese New Year.
While she was sharing with him about her life as a student at polytechnic, she suddenly popped the question, "Are you shocked that Donald Trump won the US Presidential Election?" He was quite surprised that she was following current news on politics as he thought kids of her age would be more interested in Korean pop stars. Of course, that is a general assumption and may very well be true as well. To her question, he replied, "I'm not surprised he won." Although he has personally felt that Hillary Clinton would win and expected her to win given the bad reputation Donald Trump has on the news, he knows one thing for sure - Anything can happens. Likewise, in your business, anything can happens. Your biggest customer may stopped buying from you for no apparent reason. Your most loyal staff betrays you. Your failed business turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Don't be surprised. |
AuthorOutrageous Marketing Archives
May 2020
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