I’m sure many of you have been in a conference room and listened to a presentation. Or maybe you’ve been the one in front of the conference room giving the presentation. It’s a business ritual – participants both willing and unwilling arrive. Time is spent struggling with a projector and laptop. IT is called and apologies are made. And then it’s down to business. Keep reading – there’s more
Category Archives: Huh?
Too Much Noise
I’ll keep this brief.
My head hurts. There’s too much noise. It’s everywhere. Email, RSS, Tweats, Friendfeed, etc. Political noise getting in the way of the real issues. Facebook noise stopping real communication. There’s even noise about noise – search the Twitter stream for “noise” – lots of folks are overwhelmed.
Maybe it’s given us all technologically-induced ADD. Who can focus for more than a minute?!?! Try and unplug – it’s like quitting smoking or drinking or any bad habit. Your skin crawls, your mind races. Your breathing speeds up, as does your heart. “What’s going on? What am I missing?”
Thoreau suggested that our lives are frittered away by detail. “Simplify, simplify.”
Which is why I don’t post more than once a day and not on weekends – let’s give it a rest once in a while.
I love technology. I love what the web has done to improve lives and give people the opportunity to grow beyond the boundaries of their physical communities and learning resources. But PLEASE! Don’t you hate when people use their cell phones loudly on the train? Don’t you hate it when the TV in the next room is up too loud and you can’t read? Don’t you hate it when the kid next door is banging on his (drums, guitar, clarinet- whatever) and you can’t think? YOU wouldn’t make that noise!
So don’t.
Filed under Huh?, Reality checks, Thinking Aloud
Consumer Reports
I’ve been reading Consumer Reports for decades and I’ve always found it to be a useful resource. Today, it helps me blog!
One of my favorite parts of the magazine is in the very back – a page called Selling It. The page contains “goofs, glitches, and gothcas” – things marketers have done either in error (goofs, glitches) or on purpose to deceive consumers in some way (gotchas). If I were a CEO and my company or product ever appeared on this page, I’d be making some wholesale changes very quickly.
Typically, the goofs are based on sloppy work – someone didn’t proofread something such as a bust of Thomas Jefferson with a plaque affixed commemorating him as our second president. I guess the TV series about John Adams had it backwards – he must have followed Jefferson into the White House. Then there are the ads that promise to “Illuminate underarm sweating for up to 6 months with a single treatment” (Botox) or for an “Insulted Cargo Vest” (I’m not sure who said what to it but they should apologize).
More egregious, in my opinion, are the gotchas – CU catching marketers engaging in deceptive behavior. Not the big guys? How about a box of Kellogg’s All Bran that features “real strawberries” on the front but which contains far more “strawberry flavored apples” in the ingredients than the few freeze-dried strawberries consumers are lead to believe would predominate. As we all know (hey – we’re consumers too!), this kind of thing goes on all the time and it shows a total lack of respect for your consumer.
It’s not hard to stay off this page. Be honest, be careful, have redundant systems to check the checking, hold people accountable, and if something ever does slip through, apologize, make restitution, and be open. And most importantly, fix the problem and the system or people that permitted it to happen.
Filed under Consulting, Helpful Hints, Huh?
Consult Keith 