Category: Agoge (Page 5 of 5)

Mark (a marketing guy) and myself were talking through a product launch we are about to do soon. I was chatting to him about the benefits of this new service that my team and I had put together. He diplomatically tells me some good benefits, but others are just features. He was right of course, and somehow in my haste to nail things I missed it. I thought I would check out some blogs and found this one with a rather good example.

"The lesson [about benefits] was hammered home for me a few decades ago in my first career. I was representing my employer, International Harvester at the International Plowing match. I was on tractor displays. My job was to explain all the features of the new tractors to the farmers.

I had memorized the details of the tractors – horsepower, PTO power, tire options, etc. I even prepared some cue cards with this information in case I forgot.

But I was jolted into realty when some farmer with crooked teeth stared at me after my dissertation about horsepower and said, "Can she pull a three-furrow plow in sandy clay?"

The question shocked me. I didn't know the answer. And I realized that that was the important question. I didn't know the answer and the company had not prepared me for it. They had given me facts – not relevance."

My lesson. I really need to get in front of some real customers to make sure we are not just talking about features, while they sit there thinking about getting stuck in the clay.

Quote from Benefits vs. Features – George Torok

It was to be a challenge to the scale of biblical proportions! One man versus a multitude of people masquerading as tiny little envelopes on his screen. All of the envelopes are open, which was an indicator to the man was at least checking them for urgency and shaping the view that they could wait. Gone already of course, are the envelopes that couldn't wait or simply required but a handful words and minimal thinking to conjure up a response. Eradicated are the countless daily spam that arrive offering him all kinds of advances and enhancements to parts of your life I dear not mention.

What lingered in my inbox were the hard emails. Emails I actually had to reflect on, process and even make a decision on. Emails that required more than an effortless one line answer or that simply were not a priority for me. These emails needed thought and in many cases well crafted responses. So yesterday I spent the best part of the whole day clearing emails, and handling the related requests. Some of my time was spent at Machina drinking a mocha and a flat white, the rest of my time was at work nailing detail to reply with.

Now here is the point! Email is an incredible non-urgent method of communicating. It is a fantastic way of providing information and updates in a timely manner. But I must say I have a key philosophical issue with email today and it's use in most companies. It is this:

When we send an email we mentally transfer the problem to someone else until such time as they handle the problem themselves, forward it to someone else, or respond. I do it all the time by the way!

Now my philosophical issue is that when we do this, we generally think our email or problem or question or information is more important than the other things people have on, or dear I say it, we don't even think about what they have on and just send the email.

We expect an answer from emails and most the time get one, when in fact it could be distracting people from doing really important tasks. There is generally no opt out, just an expectation that you will handle it. People live with their inbox open, are continually distracted and productivity plummets as they bombarded by a multitude of people masquerading as tiny little envelopes.

Yesterday I cleared some emails going back 3 months. I considered resolving to focus on clearing all my emails each week, but then I thought I would be allowing the envelopes to determine my priorities rather than me. I am happy to spend a day every few months clearing the backlog and sometimes I admit that I actually just delete the email a month or so after it was sent. If it was really urgent they would have called me or asked me when I had an opportunity to say no.

What is a potato plate?

"Potatoes, on their journey from spud farm to French Fry, are blasted with water, washed, scrubbed, and at 120kph, pushed through a tube fitted with a series of knives. The waste water from this is full of starch from the cut surfaces of the Potatoes. The starch is extracted and in doing so it returns clean water to be reused by the Potato processor, and dried Potato starch to be used by us in the making of our Trays and Plates!" (www.potatoplates.com)

Why do I ask?

Because yesterday in a moment of sheer brilliance (with the aid of financial reward) I managed to get Jim to eat 2 of them. Daniel (better know as denial) cooked us an awesome pasta dish for lunch, and provided potato plates. Well, us being the kind of people we are, started tasting the plates, and before long I was looking for the one of the younger guys to substantiate himself and elevate his position in potato plate eating rankings!

Jim finally took the honours. I am quite sure he was the only person on the whole planet of earth to eat 2 potato plates yesterday. Gee that would be something to write home about!

Cost of medical advice to get unblocked – TBA

Cost of getting Jim to eat the plates – I'd rather not say

Cost of 2 paper plates – 36c

Yet another wacky day at Agoge – Priceless