So here’s a good one. I emailed my local (large) newspaper yesterday, The Seattle Times, and asked when the paper was supposed to be delivered to my home in the morning. They gave me the times for weekday and weekend. I then emailed back and asked that my paper arrive by those times. They responded “We will notify your carrier”.

Two issues in one. First, Customer Service. Shouldn’t they have said “We will ensure that your paper arrives on time”? The principle here is that customer service should take the problem from the customer and resolve it – not bounce it to some other part of the organization as if they were somehow different. In the eyes of the customer they are all the same.

Second, we have the issue of Product Delivery. What other large organizations rely on independent contractors to leave their product on your driveway (or in the bushes, out in the rain, etc.), hopefully in time to be of use?

Is this a useful business model for the 21st century?

Jim

Health Care Reform

It is interesting how the process of making public policy highlights so many of the business adages in my book Fortune & Freedom: The Entrepreneur’s guide to Success. Previously I wrote about the need to define the problem before you attempt to solve it, and noted that little of this had been done in the national debate on health care. Someone must have read my blog, because starting shortly thereafter all I have been hearing about is the goals of health care reform. Unfortunately, there has been little discussion about specifics that would address those goals.

So let me give you an illustration of a business fallacy titled “Oh no, you did exactly what I told you to do!” See the picture in my book of the man with anguish on his face? He has just seen the result of his hasty solution to a problem he has not taken the time to define and analyze. Will this be all of us after the Health Care Reform initiatives become law? Or, to say it another way, let’s go back to the issue raised above, define the problems we are working to solve (there are plenty of them), and discuss and agree on solutions to those problems.

It seems to me that most people agree on the need and the goals of health care reform. The problems lie in laying out solutions to specific health care problems, and discussing and agreeing on these solutions. Pretty much all the discussion I have heard to date is vilifying the other guy for not agreeing with you. You certainly could not stay in business if you ran your company that way.