I started a blog at Blogger because I changed email addresses and forgot my password at Wordpress. Most of the stuff I've written over the years is kind of dumb, but some of it might be worth preserving. I'm copying it over here so that when I forget my login info again, I can just copy it from this one place.
This week, I am engaging in some self-improvement. My company has “encouraged” all of us to participate in a two-day training course to teach us to be more service oriented. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for a heightened focus on customer service. I have been a customer often enough to appreciate the value of good service. Most of my trips to Wal-Mart remind me that our culture is not nearly service-oriented enough. My complaint is not about the motive of the course, but rather the application, and the poor practices that we’re being taught.
For example, one group exercise challenged us to “think outside the box a bit”.So, join me now for a whimsical look at the business world as illustrated by a zany series of questions and answers centered on the animal kingdom
Q1: How do you get an elephant in a refrigerator?
A1: You open the door and put him in.
Moral: Look for the simple answers.
Q2: How do you get a giraffe in the refrigerator?
A2: First, You take the elephant out…
Moral: There are consequences to your actions.
Okay, we have already violated rule one. I don’t want to nit-pick (well, maybe I do), but nothing like pre-existing limitations on space stopped us from hypothetically opening the door and putting the elephant in. Aren’t we complicating matters by insisting that the elephant be removed prior to the insertion of the giraffe? Oh well, moving right along
Q3: A meeting is called for all of the animal kingdom. Who doesn’t attend?
A3: The giraffe, because it’s in the refrigerator.
Moral: Use all available information.
Okay, now Im catching on; I’m starting to see the precedent. Each rule violates all of the previous rules. Obviously we had to save this one until after the first rule, because, otherwise, there would be no way we could have had the cutesy illustration (somehow I doubt all available information would have allowed us to merely open the fridge door and put the elephant in).
Q4: There is a river known to be inhabited by deadly crocodiles, but you need to get to the other side. How do you cross the river?
A4: You swim across, because the crocodiles are at the meeting.
Moral: This class is a complete waste of time.
The obvious and simplest solution would be to simply will yourself across the river (Just remember the acronym P.O.C.E.T.: physics only complicates easy things). Remembering the consequences of our actions, swimming will probably get you wet and potentially ruin your disposition; we should probably at least *look* to see if there’s a bridge. Using all available resources, I would probably check the schedule and attendance roster before simply assuming that the crocodiles were still in their important meeting.
After gleaning all of the useful tidbits I could from the animal illustration, I tried to force an attentive expression as I stared blankly into space until the next group exercise. For this exercise, we were given a series of facts concerning employees, airlines, destinations, and flight days. These factual statements were to be used to derive a summary of “who went where” for our hypothetical boss. Using every piece of information available, it was fairly simple to logically derive the information and fill in the nice chart provided with blanks for the names, airlines, destinations, and dates. The twist (you knew there had to be one) was that our boss only asked “Who went were?” If we filled out the other information, then we did too much. Of course, we couldn’t have gotten the answer without using all of the available information. They did make an important point though: Bosses HATE overachievers and complete pictures. I know my boss would be extremely upset (I would probably even get fired) if I handed him a report of Who/How/Where/When when all he asked was Who/Where. That is extremely unacceptable. We should probably all learn a thing or two from this illustration Destroy all superfluous information. Make your boss ask you for it, and then go to the trouble of re-creating it from scratch.
This will be quite applicable with one of my currently assignments I am supposed to research the feasibility of such-and-such to determine if it is a viable solutions for this-and-that After this terrific class, I not know that instead of risking my job by presenting a solution that explains the pros and cons, I need to simply send him an email with either “yes” or “no” in it. I will wait for him to ask for more (unlikely, I’m sure), and then I will try to tackle those assignments with a clean slate as they are asked of me.
So as I continue down the path of my career development, I will do my best to apply my new-found insight into the realm of customer support I will answer their concerns as simply (don’t get bogged down with the complexities of things like possibilities) and with as little information (Yes and No are ideal) as possible.< If they want me to put an elephant in their refrigerator, I will say no problem, as I open the door to first remove the deadly crocodiles.
No comments:
Post a Comment