Monthly Archives: July 2012

July 5, 2012 · 9:31 am

How To Make Better Decisions

I played in the annual July 4 scramble golf tournament yesterday.

A golf ball directly before the hole

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For you non-golfers out there, this is a team competition in which each member of the team hits a shot, the team selects the best one, and everyone then hits the next shot from that position. Once on the green, hopefully with more than one ball, the team chooses from which ball position to putt and everyone gives it a go from there. If the team is playing pretty well, there are often a few decisions to make. Do we forsake some distance for a better lie? Do we putt the shorter putt or the straighter one? Do we chip a ball that’s off the green but close to the hole or putt a ball that’s way on the other side of the green?
Your thinking is influenced by your particular abilities. I’d always rather putt than chip, and while distance isn’t usually a problem for me, it might be for the other members of the team who’d rather hit out of the rough if they can be 25 yards closer to the green.  And of course, this raises a business point too.

There’s a good piece today in Lifehacker about how as part of beating back confirmation bias (the tendency to listen only to the data or opinions that confirm our own) we need to take the other person’s perspective – walk a mile in their shoes – as we consider their opinions.  It works for research too – who funded it, what might the researcher’s biases be, etc.  Most importantly, when we’re asking for advice, taking the person’s perspective along with the advice helps overcome the blindness confirmation bias can instill.  This is a good article on that phenomenon.

The ability to get past your own beliefs in considering outside information is a key to being successful.  It goes with the ability the synthesize and communicate your thinking effectively.  We won the tournament yesterday so I’m very happy with how we communicated and thought as a group, even when my opinion was overruled.  Even when our shots weren’t perfect, our thinking was awfully good.  How’s yours?

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July 3, 2012 · 9:20 am

Surprise!

“Surprise” is a loaded word.

Mega Surprise

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We delight in surprise parties (well, maybe as long as we’re not the one being surprised) and we dislike surprise hairs in our soup (particularly if they’re not our color).  It’s a powerful concept, although I guess the scientists would tell you that it’s not the surprise itself that’s the issue – it’s the emotions that follow the surprise event.

Surprise is a concept of which we need to take full advantage in business while simultaneously avoiding it like the plague.  When a customer can’t find something in the store, we can take joy in their surprise when a store employee digs around in the back until they find an item thought to be out of stock.  This happened to the Mrs. just this past weekend. She’s now a customer for life and has been telling the story to everyone.  Earned media indeed!

On the other hand, when you advertise a product on sale and are out of stock an hour after the store opens, customers feel as if they’ve been lied to – it’s hard for them to believe you haven’t pulled a classic bait and switch to get them to the store.

Managing people often involves surprises of both sorts.  There are little ones like a key person calling in sick and big ones like them resigning.  On the other hand, sometimes we’re surprised by pieces of business those employees find out of the blue or by their achieving a higher standard in their work.  Yay!

I guess what it all means is that we need to manage expectations constantly both to avoid the bad kinds of surprise and to increase the impact of the good kind.  No, we shouldn’t have people thinking that a hair in their soup is permissible – that shows a need to manage something other than expectations – but we can make sure that when we set standards we adhere to them.  Customers and employees notice.  Our job is to surprise them in the good way.  Given how few organizations are able to get to their own professed standards, it shouldn’t be that difficult a task.  You agree?

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July 2, 2012 · 8:19 am

Stock Photography

A picture is worth a whole bunch of words.  We all know the expression and it’s true: it’s often easier to show than to tell.

Flower Stock Photography

Flower Stock Photography (Photo credit: Carlos Lorenzo)

Visuals make presentations (and blog posts) more interesting.  Way back in the days before we all had access to everything (that’s before the Internet for you youngsters), stock photo houses made a pretty good living as photo resources.  When you only needed a generic image to reinforce a point, the photo house was your first stop.

The photo I’ve used could be used to illustrate flowers or spring or gardening.  The point about stock photos is that they are generic products.  They are used multiple times by different people for varying purposes.  They don’t really have any distinctive personality.  Why start the week with this?

More of us seem to be in the business of stock photography than we believe.  What I mean is that we are making products that are stereotypical.  Web sites look the same in terms of layout and functionality.  There’s way too much “me too” and not enough of a focus on what makes us unique or better.

The companies that get it right take what could be something stock and make it their own.  Apple did it with the iPod, which wasn’t the first MP3 player.  Amazon did it with online commerce – they were far from being the first store but they have taken the notion of a store and made it very much their own.

I could go on about this but you get the point.  Sure, generic products made and sold less expensively have their place.  They’re low margin and don’t inspire much loyalty (a low price point is a hard-to-defend place since anyone can lower their price if they want to sell at a loss).  We need to take our own photos and not buy from the endless supply of generic stock.  We need to constantly ask what makes our product or service unique and better.  All of us in business are better off when that happens.

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