First Class Post

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Apr 302010
 

First or second class stamp? An easy decision – save money and send it second class unless it’s urgent. Ah, but what if the customer perceives we are treating them as second class or that our communication with them is unimportant. But will the addressee know what stamp we used? Will his/her secretary remove it from the envelope before handing it over? Does he/she have a secretary? OK, decision made, first class to be on the safe side.

But hang on, what if the recipient thinks that we are being wasteful? What if they think we could reduce our prices if we saved money where we could? You are right, lets go second class unless it really is urgent. But have you taken into account the 280,000 items that go astray in the mail each week? If the letter goes first class it will spend less time in the mail so will have less chance to get lost won’t it?

Perhaps the answer is to hand deliver. Gosh, maybe we need to set up a committee to consider this in more depth. Right, let’s mail out the invites. What stamp shall we use?

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Mission Statements

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Apr 292010
 

We are going to put a man on the moon. Now that is a pretty clear mission statement. Everyone inside NASA in the 60s knew exactly what they were trying to do. Everyone outside NASA knew what NASA was trying to do. And they did it, although most of you are so young that you will have to take my word for it.

Thinking back to my corporate days, I have to say that I have no idea what any of our missions statements said and probably even less idea as to what they meant. I’d be reasonably sure that is the case in many (most?) large organisations. That is if they think it worthwhile having a mission statement.

There is a story about a group of US senators touring the NASA facility in the mid-sixties. They came across a guy cleaning the floor and stopped to ask him what he was doing. Leaving aside the fact that I would have thought it pretty bloomin obvious, even to a politician, the guy’s answer demonstrated the effectiveness of NASA’s mission statement. He said simply, “I’m helping to put a man on the moon.”

Good grief, I’ve just realised that I don’t have a mission statement. Maybe I’ll go clean the floor while I think about it.

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Purple Hens

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Apr 282010
 

One of the earlier posts described how a large recruitment organisation advised that we should leave details of our hobbies off our CVs. This still bothers me. When I have done practice interviews with school students in the 14 to 16 age range, it is often their hobby or out of school activities that light the fire in the conversation. It’s what allows me to discover that they have considerable depth beyond academic qualifications (or lack of).

It is part of Brand You, part of your DNA. It is what makes you different from the rest of the crowd in grey pinstripe suits. So please go on breeding purple pole-dancing hens and do tell us all about them.

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Brand You

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Apr 272010
 

Tom Peters talks about Brand You. That is, how each person develops their own brand ID. It happens even when we work for a large organisation. If we are able to develop that brand so that it stands out we are more likely to be promoted than if we remain relatively anonymous. Standing out does not have to mean that we are any good. Just that we stand out.

Seth Godin says that everything we do carries our DNA. Our style of doing things. Our brand. So why is brand David Wike hiding behind The Watercooler? I suppose it seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe contributors to the blog are people who have some of the same DNA threads in that they can see an amusing aspect to serious subjects. Maybe look for something to smile about. Maybe our contributors want their brands to stand out a tiny bit more. Whatever the reasons, I think we may all be quite good at what we do. Well, I am, dunno about the rest!

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Imagine if …

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Apr 262010
 

Imagine if you weren’t constrained by being sensible. Or cautious. Imagine what would happen if you didn’t fear failure or were not constrained by the conventions of what is already in existence. Imagine what would happen if there were no competitors because no one had done it before. Imagine if you didn’t worry about looking ridiculous. Imagine if there were competitors but you were going to do it completely differently. Imagine if you were Edison and thought you could light up houses by passing an electric current through a thin wire. And failed more than a 1000 times before you made it work. Imagine if you were David Lloyd and went to the bank to borrow a few million from people who could not imagine what a sports club would look like. Or you were Richard Branson and, because you had a few record shops, imagined you could ring up the CEO of Boeing and rent an aircraft to take on the might of BA and other world players.

Imagine if you were still a child and had imagination. Where a cardboard box could become a house, a castle, a car or whatever you wanted. Or a climbing frame, a broomstick and an old sheet would let you set sail on the oceans. Imagine if you hadn’t lost your imagination somewhere along the way.

Imagine if …

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