Latitude

A few weeks ago I popped into my new bank to make a deposit.  I handed the money and my driver's license the teller.  She blinked at me.  "I need to make a deposit" I explained.  The poor woman looked stricken.

"You need a deposit slip to make a deposit."  I could swear she was smirking at me.  Unfortunately I didn't know my account number.  This had never happened at my other bank.  After much haggling I extracted my account number and a blank slip from her, which she insisted that I complete myself at the counter.  Why was a deposit slip such a necessity?  She couldn't explain it, other than to tell me the computer required the slip.  The look on her face told me that she wasn't inclined to explain anything to me without just cause.  By the way, her name was "Joy".  That's an irony.

With the installation of the first computer used by bank tellers began the demise of customer service.  No longer was a person faced with the prospect of telling a customer "I don't want to help you."  Instead, a person could simply declare "The computer won't let me!"  The much maligned computer began its trek as a customer service scapegoat.

Now that we have computers everywhere, customer service suffers accordingly.  Programmers such as myself typically write programs in a way that makes it difficult (preferably impossible) for people to enter data or complete operations that we don't like.  Sure, situations may warrant a personal touch , but we have made the assumption that the person using the computer doesn't know their job as well as we do.  We're saving them from their own mistakes.  I can't imagine why people claim that programmers have poor communications skills.

This idea has been taken to such an extreme that we have millions of workers who are not allowed to make decisions.  They are not allowed to use their own judgment.  The don't have the latitude to solve problems, because our society is afraid they might make the wrong decision.  And they would, once in a while.

Empowerment happens when we begin to trust people to understand their own jobs, and make the right decisions.  Empowerment improves customer service because the employee has the latitude to do the right thing.

I was saddened about the recent death of a woman in the Phoenix airport.  Disclaimer:  Carol Ann Gotbaum should have been escorted by a family member.

She was approximately one minute late for boarding her flight, and they wouldn't let her on.  Supposedly she wasn't allowed to trade flights with another passenger for "security reasons".  What if someone had taken the time to realize that she had an emergency?  What if that person had been willing and able to help her?  Make no mistake about it.  An airport is an awful, lonely, terrifying place to be left.  Especially for someone en route to a substance abuse treatment facility.

It isn't good enough not to help each other.  This craziness has to stop.  Let's give our employees the latitude to do the right thing, and let's start expecting people to do more than perform the bare minimum to keep their jobs.  A simple smile and exchange of pleasantries can go a very long way.  I think it would have done an immeasurable amount of good for Ms. Gotbaum.

Update: I just checked my RSS feeds, and Seth Godin seems to be on a similar page today.

Sometimes We Need Emergencies

You may have heard of a perfectly awful situation called "Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy".  In these situations a parent will insist that their child is ill, and even fabricate or induce symptoms in the child.  If you've seen The Adventures of Baron Von Munchausen, you may recognize the similarities.  In the story the Baron spends a lot of time not helping people.  If he fixed problems before they were problems, he wouldn't be much of a hero.  Heroes fix big problems, not little ones.

Many of us see and try to fix problems every day, but we are often stymied by people who do not perceive the same level of emergency.  If we repeatedly try to impart our urgency, eventually we'll usually get tuned out.  Perhaps the Baron had a better approach.  Fabricate the solution, and wait for an emergency to arise.  Then people will be ready to listen.

Chunking and Self-Discovery

When people mentioned trying to "find themselves", I always wondered what they meant.  How does one "find" their "self".  Over time I realized that the definition of this discovery probably changes from one person to the next.  My own definition is to "know ones-self and understand what one can reasonably expect from themselves."  For example, I know that I have a difficult time letting a problem go unsolved.  I can expect myself to battle with keeping appointments if it means I have to stop working on a problem.

You may have heard of "chunking" in the psychological sense.  If you haven't, it is the act of dissecting an experience and filing away the important parts.  Your brain does this for you because it would be silly to remember every minute detail of every experience.  At one time or another you probably had a difficult time trying to remember something.  This is because it was not important.  Not to your brain, at least.  Perhaps you are thinking "But, it was really important."

No it wasn't.  Not to the "real" you.  If you examine what you do and don't remember, I suspect you'll find out all kinds of things about what's really important to you.

Pass it On

You might have seen the billboard featuring Christopher Reeve, with the caption "Super Man" on it.  This billboard has several brothers along our freeways, inspiring virtue in passing drivers.  One day, I became curious what good soul was sponsoring these billboards.  As it turns out, they are the product of the Foundation for a Better Life.  Interestingly enough, the Outdoor Advertising Association of America notes the fifth stage of the "Pass it On Campaign" on their Public Service Campaigns page.

This morning, another billboard caught my eye.  It told me that "Save your money, and one day it will return the favor".  The advertisement was sponsored by FeedThePig.Org.  "Boy, that's good advice, " I thought to myself, "people really don't save enough money.  Who would sponsor such good advice?"  The answer came to me quickly enough.  Banks.  As it turns out, I was close.  The sponsor is the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.  When I realized that this good advice was probably paid for by someone who would benefit from it, I was irritated.

The Outdoor Advertising Association of America certainly cannot fill all its billboards, all the time.  As a result it can donate billboard space to charitable foundations, like the Foundation for a Better Life.  This donation becomes tax deductible, thus recouping some of the expense of an otherwise unoccupied billboard.  Similarly the AICPA can drum up more business for itself, and get a tax deduction at the same time by creating the Feed the Pig organization.

Does a dual purpose behind a message negate the meaning?  Yes.  Should it?  Probably not necessarily.  The Foundation for a Better Life has certainly made my commutes, and those of others more pleasant.  The foundation may actually have inspired a few "random acts of kindness" here and there.  A nice use of an otherwise obnoxious billboard space.  Does Feed the Pig offer good, or bad advice?  Well...it's good advice, espousing the virtues of sound fiscal management.

Now I'm left wondering how I became such a cynic that my first priority when I encounter a charity is to discover who benefits from it.  That isn't bad either, though, because we should be aware of who may be manipulating us.  Now that I know, I still enjoy both sets of billboards while I commute.

Just say no to stupidity

Today, again, I had to fill out a bunch of multi-factor authentication forms.  In case you haven't had the pleasure, it's where your bank decides to rip all the speedy benefits of online banking out of your grasp because so many people are too stupid to avoid e-mail scams.

The enrollment consists of selecting a picture you will see when you begin your journey to log into your banking website.  Then you have to choose which of your high school friends was the biggest saint, and also you will be asked how many toes on your right foot have hair on the third knuckle.

You know, it shouldn't take me ten minutes to log into any site.  Not to mention...my online bill payment service gets broken every time some jackass devises a new security system.  Guess what?  You can't do anything about stupid.  Stupid people will always find a way to screw themselves, no matter how much you try helping them.  It's a sad fact of life.

The most annoying thing is that there are obviously a lot of flunky network administrators out there.  Hey, guys, maybe you should get off your asses, and check out CardSpace or OpenID.  At least give your site visitors the choice to use sensible authentication-don't just go for the worst idea you've got because it's the easiest!

What will be the next fad in online banking security?  Driving to the bank to retrieve a four page one use password that only works for ten minutes after it gets printed?  I'll bet that a bank somewhere is working on just such a secure system.

Those Crazy Law Students

First, I'd like to apologize for note getting a picture to demonstrate what I'm talking about.  This afternoon as I was returning from an errand, I walk past our local law school.  In passing, I observed a scooter chained to one of the bike racks.

Now, this thing is pretty large.  It caught my eye.  Without really considering what I had seen, I kept on walking.  At the end of the block I came upon another building from the same law school, and another scooter chained to a bicycle rack.  My first thought was "What kind of cheapskate buys one of these things in order to scam free parking at the bike rack?!  A moment of reflection reminded me that I was standing outside a law school.  Then I realized, these are perfect for law students.

They don't cost much to run.  Parking is free.  If you get hit by another motorist, you can sue them and get credit for an independent study project!

What if Gandhi had a patent on nonviolence?

So, I'm writing about Gandhi and Dr. King.  Of course, there are a lot of striking similarities in their techniques.  As I wrote my paper, I thought "What if Gandhi patented nonviolence?"  Then I wrote:

 

Rosa was no revolutionary, in fact, she was just tired and she really wanted to sit.  She didn’t care if she got arrested as long as her feet got a break.  She did, however get the attention of another person who was a revolutionary.  His name was Dr. Martin Luther King, and nonviolent civil disobedience was just the thing he needed to bring about changes to civil rights in the United States.  After a brief patent dispute with Gandhi on the topic of nonviolence, Gandhi and King worked out a licensing agreement.

 

Shame free plug: Visit the Gandhi institute at http://www.gandhiinstitute.org where nonviolence is alive and well!

Strangers=Danger

I live in a small town.  The same small town, in fact, that I grew up in.  My wife too.  The other day while driving to the office I had to do a double take.  Standing on the corner on the way out of town was the entire maintenance contingent from the high school, with signs that read "Strangers=Danger".  That's probably not necessarily true, but we'll overlook that for right now.

 

What the hell were the school custodians doing picketing?  What numbskull put together those awful fluorescent green signs designed to inspire powerful fear in onlookers of all walks of life?  As it turns out they are concerned about an initiative to privatize their jobs.  Our school system has been trying to find ways to save money, and apparently they think the smart thing to do is to cut the benefits for the people who have done such a good job maintaining our schools for at least the last decade.  Hey guys, thanks for donating ten years of your life...hope you didn't need insurance or jobs.

 

This afternoon as I returned from the office, I once again noticed the picketers.  They were blazing green locusts accosting every corner of our small town.  They decided to ratchet up the campaign, though, and they were all wearing ties and button up shirts (except Ms. Coffee, of course).  This was a brilliant strategy to show the community what they would miss if the initiative were to pass.  Except for one little problem.  Custodians might be as goofy as computer geeks.  They were clustered on three corners in groups of four people (give or take).  As I passed by, without fail, one or even two of the picketers in each group infallibly were staring off into space, their neckties askance, signs hanging at some random angle...completely unreadable.