A post from Boy Genius Reports a couple of weeks ago made me stop and think about how bad some of the solutions that we come up with are for actually addressing root cause issues. They are offering customers a discount on their phone bill as long as the customer agrees to see advertisements on their lock screen. Yes, customers always want to cut the cost of their bill. Yes, companies want to increase their revenue from ads. No, this is not a good way to achieve either goal.
This is a story for all of us though. How often do we see the though process: a) Employees want fewer meetings. b) Managers want fewer meetings. c) All meetings get cancelled and before long there’s no communication at all. Same thought process but it leads to bigger problems.
We’re all blind to the easy answer sometimes. The important thing is to remember that our actions have consequences, even in seemingly trivial things to us. Because what is trivial to us may not be trivial to our clients or our employees.