Sell the opportunity
Treat every problem as an opportunity, we are told. At first sight it is an attractive idea, but further investigation reveals that it is a little too glib. Problems and opportunities are similar but different things; in a sense they are the opposite of one another.
Edward de Bono, I think it was, who captured the difference as follows. Presumably, in general, we do things because we can see the benefit of doing them. A problem exists when we can see the benefit of doing something, but we do not yet know how to do it. An opportunity exists in the opposite situation: when there are things that we know how to do, but we have not yet seen the benefit of doing them.
Seth Godin’s post Sell the problem describes a neat shift in thinking which is potentially useful to many people in many fields. His point is that there is no sense in trying to sell a solution to someone who does not know that they have a problem; so he suggests concentrating on making them aware that they have a problem!
His approach has a lot of merit, however maybe the change in the framing of this situation can be taken one step further. If they do not have a problem, then they do not have a problem! And who wants to pay for, i.e. buy, problems? So why try to sell them problems?
Surely, in fact, Seth Godin is not recommending that we “sell the problem” at all? He is recommending that we “sell the opportunity”!
Concentrating on describing their opportunities which can be addressed by our capabilities, rather than on describing our solutions for their problems, is surely the way to have conversations with those people who do not have problems … and, frankly, do not want any!
But they do want opportunities, and they might be prepared to buy them!
Customer service! Is that what you call it?
Who is the worst?
When you think of very poor customer service, which business sector comes to mind?
For me, far and away the worst are car dealerships! I have limited experience of buying cars from them, it is their servicing business which stands out as being awful, sometimes ridiculously so!
Don’t judge a book by its cover!
If their business premises were a mess and their people scruffy, then one might expect poor service; but their premises are extremely clean and well-designed and their people are smartly dressed (if you excuse the proliferation of extreme hair styles on the salesmen).
So, it is partly the contrast that makes it so jarring.
Should I?
Perhaps I should recount the saga which lasted several weeks and included:
– their inability to find a fault despite the cause being suggested to them and, much later, finding it satisfactorily themselves
– their attempt to charge for an incorrect solution
– their reluctance to accept the results of tests by a specialist
– their attempts to charge for unnecessary work
– their creation of a new fault
– their attempt to avoid responsibility for that
– their grudging acceptance of my explanation of its symptoms
– and, finally and funniest of all, their expressed delight at their success in using their diagnosis manuals to trace the fault that they had created, based on my explanation of its symptoms!
“Safety is no accident!”
For some reason, I am thinking about safety, and this well-known slogan came to mind.
It makes you think
It is a neat double entendre. Not surprisingly, “safety is no accident” is a slogan that is widely used to convey the importance of taking a positive approach to safety, along the lines of: “our record of no accident did not happen on its own, you know!”. While this makes us smile, it also carries a serious message.
It keeps you awake
In areas of operation where safety is taken particularly seriously, it provides a useful focus on the need for continuous vigilance, effort and development. “Safety is no accident” is perhaps best known in the field of aviation. Writing this just before boarding a transatlantic flight, with “the world’s favourite airline”, makes me particularly mindful of this!
Helping other people to get what you want
“We are not a cruise ship. We are an explorer ship!”
This is one of the key messages in the passenger briefing on the ships of the Hurtigruten service which runs daily northbound and southbound along the coast of Norway. For nearly 500 passengers recently boarded at Bergen, almost all of them on a cruise going well north of the Arctic Circle and many of them cruising back again, over a total of 12 days, this message is an interesting form of: “I have bad news and I have good news”! Read more…
Choosing to be an “early adopter”
[This is a modified cross-post of my comment on a great post by David J Lowe.]
Choosing to be an “innovator”
When we think of finding innovative solutions we tend to think of “innovators”, also known as “technology enthusiasts” who invent new techniques or approaches in their search for new or enhanced capabilities in some desired area. It usually turns out that a very small proportion of these inventions are potential solutions; in other words, they fail most of the time. This behaviour occurs at the extremely early stages of the lifecycle of an innovation. Read more…
Meeting Ann Holman
Innovation was a theme on Friday morning, when I had the pleasure of meeting Ann Holman in person. What an energetic and forward thinker she is!
We’d already conversed briefly by electronic means, and so we arranged to meet IRL (In Real Life), as others have termed it. Ann had already tweeted, although at the time I had not seen her message, that drinking coffee at the Innovation Centre, Exeter University, was an important ancillary benefit of meeting me there! So we know one source of fuel for her thinking; and our meeting place was one element of the “innovation” theme. Read more…
Is “IT” “in denial”?!
Wow, the big picture of the IT world seems to be crumbling with increasing rapidity! Many people are at risk of getting hurt if they continue to hold traditional attitudes.
The post “Why the New Normal Could Kill IT” captures it well.
Thomas Wailgum provides an insightful description of the challenges facing the important operational aspects of IT in many organizations. Many of the symptoms and some of the causes that he describes are undoubtedly true and have been adversely affecting the performance of many people for a long time!
But, who really cares? Read more…
Innovation? What innovation?
We’ve always known “why?”
We can carry on doing the same old things!
Along the way, we can improve, sell more, and cut costs.
But in end, sooner or later, we need to do something different.
That is why we innovate.
Now we know “how?”
Nowadays, everyone is talking about innovation!
Many things seem mysterious for a long time, and then we get them under control.
It happened in “sales”, then in “quality”, now it is the turn of “innovation”.
In the past, a few people knew that they could manage innovation; now everyone knows.
There are processes for managing innovation using “ideation”, “co-creation” and, even, “open innovation”.
That is how we innovate.
But do we know “what?”
Do we understand what to innovate?
Now there is a question!
Let’s stop messing with the clocks!
The whole concept of adjusting the clocks with the seasons, “Daylight Saving” as the Americans call it, seems increasingly ludicrous the more that one thinks about it. In the UK, it is called British Summer Time and is abbreviated to BST; I call it British Silly Time.
The expensive consequences for computer systems, airlines, railways and many other systems and organisations having to mess about with times and schedules are completely unnecessary. And I have lost count of the number of times I have heard of people missing calls or online meetings due to misinterpretations of time zones and distortions in the name of “daylight saving”.
One would have thought that people who spend the most time involved with nature would find it the most ludicrous and that among those would be farmers. However, it seems that this is not the case as there is a discussion about introducing permanent BST or even “double BST” on the NFU website. Read more…
