The Mouse, Bird, and Fox

A haughty bird spotted a mouse crawling through the field.

The bird landed next to the mouse and said: “Oh, poor mouse! A hungry fox prowls this field! What are you going to do if he sees you?”

The mouse answered: “I have but one option – I will run away”.
The bird boasted: “I know several ways to escape the fox!”

Just then, the fox arrived!

The mouse ran away, and the fox ate the bird while it tried to figure out which escape method to use.

Moral: It pays to keep things simple! 

Business Synergy and Why Value Creation is Abundant

The best way to grow and market your business is to continually innovate and add value for your customers.

One way to do this is through collaboration.  A lot of innovation and value creation happen at intersections - between products, disciplines, and services.

I saw a reminder about this today when I read how Dunkin Donuts and Mondelez have created Oreo and Chips Ahoy based Coolata coffee drinks, and donuts.

Collaborations and synergy opportunities like this are endless - which shows abundance, because value can be created out of thin air, simply by combining things which already exist.

25 Year Old Hubble Telescope Shows That Old Tech Isn't Bad Tech

The Hubble Telescope recently celebrated its 25th anniversary.  During that time, it's completely changed our understanding of the universe and, with the latest camera upgrade, it's better than ever and taking great photos.

The Chicago Tribune had an article on this and mentioned how the Hubble "was conceived in the 1940s, designed in the 1970s and 1980s" and it still has old computer hardware from that time.

I'm not surprised that the 1980s computer hardware still functions very well because, in those days, they used simple and robust designs based on unix.

Today's computers and software are much more complex, but not necessarily any better.  A lot of the complexity, storage, and space is taken up because of the graphical user interface (GUI) and object-oriented, inefficient programming.

In the old days, programmers were better engineers, and they used simple, elegant command line commands.  Today, hardware and memory are cheaper than programming talent, so software is bloated with large object libraries, so that mediocre programmers can just slap together modules.

Always Keep Things Simple

If there is one rule for success, I believe it's "keep things simple." 

I know that, ironically, this advice sounds, well, simple. But, don't underestimate how hard it is to follow.

Human nature is such that we have an urge to complicate things. We think it shows off our abilities, sophistication, and intelligence. We hide behind complexity to mask our insecurities. We think that if we only do the simple stuff, we are "naked" - there is nothing special to distinguish us and we are replaceable.

The truth is we are replaceable no matter what we do. Employees, businesses, suppliers, vendors, etc. - they can all get replaced by their competition. But, if you keep things simple, and succeed, and give a delightful experience to your customer (everyone has a customer), you have a better chance to stick around.

Simplicity, success, and customer delight go together because, when you keep things simple, they tend to be robust - less goes wrong, and there is less to maintain and less to breakdown. Simplicity leads to accuracy, reliability, and lots of "up time".

Don't Be Upset About Being Upset

I don't think that a lot of our stress, worry, and mental anguish comes from our reactions to external events.

Instead, I think it is our reaction to how we reacted, compared to the way we think we should have reacted.

For example, when I was younger, I used to get nervous and dread going to the doctor or dentist because I might (or would) get a shot.  What I realized was that a lot of the suffering was because, almost unconsciously, I was beating myself up over being nervous - that I was being a wimp and should be calm and cool.

When I stopped beating myself up, and said "OK, you're nervous, it's just a reaction, it's temporary, and you'll be fine after the appointment.  Just let yourself be nervous", I ended up much better off.

Walt Disney: "Plus It!"

I read that Walt Disney always liked his "imagineers" to keep pushing the envelope - increasing the value they generate.

Whenever they would do or create something, he would always exhort them to "Plus it!"

One story is that, after Disneyland opened,  Disney wanted to spend $350,000 to create a Christmas parade on Mainstreet.  His accountant objected, saying that customers will already be in the park and won't be expecting it.

Disney replied that that was the reason they should do it (it wasn't expected).

Especially in this age of global competition and attention scarcity, how are you pushing beyond the expected to shower your customers and prospects with value?

Creeping Complexity

Complexity can easily creep in through even seemingly insignificant decisions.

For example, naming the computer servers in your organization.

I've been in one company where they named one set of servers after U.S. presidents, and another set after animals.  On the other hand, another company named them things like chidirsdap05 and chihdirdap05.

In the case of this second company, many hours were lost over time with people trying to communicate server names in meetings and conference calls.  Risk and errors increased because people typed in the wrong names and worked on the wrong servers.

In the first company, there was never any misunderstanding if you were told to log into "Reagan" or "giraffe."

I've also seen this in other examples.

For example, in an organization, one software payments application assigned sequential numbers to transactions.  So, for example, "10,301" followed by "10,302", etc.

Another application assigned Oracle auto-generated IDs such as "B65AZX456RD45WRFT" and the next one would be "B65AZX457LD45WRFT" - the difference is a couple of positions in the middle of the string.

When it came to help desk support and tracking payments for customers, which one do you think created extra complications and headaches?