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thoughts that come
out of our minds

The Narcissus Dilemma: Why Looking Good to Yourself Doesn't Matter

5/11/2015

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Reality is relative. It changes with each individual. What appeals to you may leave another person cold. And what makes sense to the seller may make none to the buyer. Here's a real world example.

I took a business class flight in April 2015 from Los Angeles to Berlin, and the accommodations were pretty darn cushy (the airline only offered coach and business classes, so business was equivalent to first). Yet the home screen of the video monitor in front of each seat was a series of rotating beauty shots of the plane's exterior. That may have caused the airline's executives to burst with pride; yet, as a passenger, there was nothing more pointless, especially when I remembered that the airline's website (which is plastered all over the planes) makes a three-toed sloth look as fast as a Ferrari.

Perspective Matters
For me, it would have been far more interesting to know what amenities were available onboard or what the various seating options were (in case I might be flying in coach the next time). Since business class passengers turned left when boarding, I had no idea what coach seating looked like to the right or, on an international flight, what was included and what was optional.

Considering that the airline anticipated that an overnight flight would probably involve sleeping, it was ideal that the seat reclined completely to function as a bed. Yet they seemed to ignore that business class passengers might actually want to do business...and provided no WiFi...not even for a fee, which would probably have seemed inexcusable to many business class flyers. (On the German and Italian trains I took in first class, Internet access was both available and free.)

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Walking the Walk: A Different Angle on Why the Cobbler's Children Need Shoes

5/9/2015

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Remember Detroit. When the Motor City’s auto executives were called before Congress to testify about their companies’ sorry financial condition and their need for a federal bailout, two arrived by chartered jet. The CEO of Ford drove to the hearings...in a Ford Escape Hybrid. 

The fliers were excoriated for their excess (though as part of an industry considered “too big to fail,” they were rescued). Ford didn’t ask for a dime. They were solvent throughout the worst downturn in decades.

Make Sure the Subtleties Are Obvious

Americans don’t often respond to subtlety, but they understood the implications of that situation. If the CEO put his personal trust in the products he made and the company was succeeding, it was a brand that consumers could rely on.

On the flip side are the companies who, metaphorically, make shoes that aren’t worn by their employees. For example, there’s the firm I worked with that developed monitoring software for mainframe computers. Their application could detect emerging problems and automatically trigger actions to correct them. Yet when, after the third system interruption in a single day, I called the head of the data center, he – sheepishly – admitted that, despite making the top-ranked monitoring tool in the industry, they didn’t use it themselves.

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