Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

Deep Lessons from the World of Pasta Sauce

When it comes to human behav­ior and human pref­er­ences, there is no one best way to do things.  Tay­lorism is fine and dandy for auto­matic pro­duc­tion in fac­to­ries, but as a frame­work for think­ing about the world, “the one best way” is a sure way to busi­ness dis­as­ter (or at least sub-par per­for­mance) and an inabil­ity to truly please peo­ple (yes, your cus­tomers are people).

Here is an inter­est­ing pre­sen­ta­tion by Mal­colm Glad­well, of Tip­ping Point, Out­liers and Blink! fame, about the change in think­ing that took place in the North Amer­i­can food indus­try since the 1970s.  The food indus­try went from look­ing for the one “best” prod­uct to serve the mar­ket to find­ing the “best prod­ucts, plural” to serve the var­i­ous dis­tinc­tive sub­groups in the market.

The best points from this presentation:

1. Peo­ple are not all the same, so don’t treat the mar­ket as one homo­ge­neous mass
2. Peo­ple don’t always con­sciously know what they want, so don’t keep ask­ing them verbally
3. It’s not bet­ter or worse, it’s just dif­fer­ent — a con­tin­uum, not a hierarchy

I think these key points are help­ful for mar­keters and com­mu­ni­ca­tors across the board, and this pre­sen­ta­tion makes these points wrapped in a very mem­o­rable framework.

Enjoy!  Buon appetito!

What Do You Do? How You Phrase the Answer Can Make or Break You

Mar­ket­ing isn’t some­thing just for the mar­ket­ing depart­ment.  It’s some­thing we all do, but it’s just that most of us do it very poorly.  The clip below is talk­ing about indie musi­cians mar­ket­ing them­selves — you know, the kind that the big labels haven’t picked up, nobody knows about, and are try­ing to get peo­ple to check them out — but the advice applies to everyone.

It applies to every busi­ness, where you need to inter­est cus­tomers imme­di­ately.  It applies to every­one look­ing for work, where you need to make an impres­sion in your cover let­ter and at the inter­view.  It applies any­where, any­time when you need to get someone’s atten­tion and give you their time and their interest.

Of course, it’s also good to think of a mem­o­rable answer to the ques­tion, “What do you do?” for the next time you’re at a party and get asked that hon­est, sen­si­ble ques­tion.  BTW, you are not your job title.  What is it that you do?  What do you accomplish?

But that’s lead­ing me to a new topic for another post some other time.

Still, we all would be well-served by think­ing about what it is we do, and then phras­ing it in a way that is inter­est­ing and mem­o­rable.  Yes, even for those of us who aren’t indie musicians.

Did You Know Addresses Don’t Work the Same Way Everywhere?

It’s really cool to find out that I’ve been using a basic assump­tion that I didn’t even know was there.

There are some things that are so fun­da­men­tal to the way that peo­ple where we grow up think that we don’t even real­ize that cer­tain basic assump­tions have been made.  It is not until we see for our­selves that peo­ple else­where do it dif­fer­ently, or hear about it, that we real­ize, “Oh wow, there is another way to do this!”

As they say, fish know noth­ing of water.

Take a look at this quick lit­tle gem.  I’ll bet you never real­ized that the way we think of addresses in the West isn’t the only log­i­cal way to do it!

Police Remind Themselves to Play Nicely with Protesters

As a follow-up to my ear­lier post about gov­ern­ment and pro­test­ers liv­ing in har­mony, I thought I’d share some of the com­ments that I saw at work today.  The fol­low­ing are taken ver­ba­tim, straight from an offi­cial document.

“Protests are part of every­day life, espe­cially in Toronto. Impor­tant to con­sider that cit­i­zens have the right to law­ful protest.”

“The pol­icy is not to dis­cour­age protests. The aim of the Com­mu­ni­ties Rela­tions Group is to work with them and advise the pro­tes­tors of the ground rules.”

“Pro­vide writ­ten “Free­dom of Speech Expec­ta­tions” to protest groups. Pre-Summit out­reach to protest groups by police is a key ele­ment in the facil­i­ta­tion of law­ful and peace­ful demon­stra­tion activity.”

From my brief inter­ac­tions with indi­vid­u­als of a decid­edly activist stance, and from my infor­mal sur­vey of protest group web­sites, I get the impres­sion that many activist groups read­ily com­pare our police forces to the Gestapo and other politically-guided secret police forces.  While I’ve had the dis­tinct impres­sion that some indi­vid­u­als within the emer­gency response com­mu­nity hold a decid­edly dim view of pro­test­ers, I think that is the excep­tion rather than the norm.

Con­sider the empha­sis given to try­ing to enable peace­ful protest as the right of con­cerned cit­i­zens in a demo­c­ra­tic soci­ety.  There is no intent to shut any­one up.  There is no intent to limit what any par­tic­u­lar group can say.  The only con­cern is to keep the protests legal — which means it does not infringe on the rights of oth­ers and does not dam­age property.The fol­low­ing is a par­tic­u­larly telling quote:

“Ensure that the press have access to protest sites because pro­tes­tors want their issues raised.”

Some­times the secu­rity forces will des­ig­nate par­tic­u­lar areas as “approved” protest areas.  My impres­sion from what I’ve heard on this front is that the secu­rity agen­cies are try­ing to find log­i­cal, open spaces for pro­test­ers to con­gre­gate, with­out infring­ing on secu­rity zones — zones which the secu­rity agen­cies will defend with phys­i­cal and legal force — and which will still give the pro­test­ers the vis­i­bil­ity that they are look­ing for.

Finally, I find it inter­est­ing that men­tion was made regard­ing the pro­tec­tion of local busi­nesses and prop­erty owners:

“Legal deter­mi­na­tion whether it is an unlaw­ful assem­bly or not. Dec­la­ra­tion required of “unlaw­ful assem­bly.”  Do not use “riot” because it inval­i­dates insur­ance policies.”

Insur­ance poli­cies typ­i­cally do not cover dam­age caused by war and riots.  So the dec­la­ra­tion of civil dis­tur­bance as a riot has seri­ous finan­cial con­se­quences that may be wholly unintentional.

It’s com­fort­able and con­ve­nient to put one group in the box labeled “Good Guys” and another group in another box labeled “Bad Guys.”  But it isn’t always that easy.Take, for instance the fol­low­ing quote:“Ethnic groups within the GTA have a his­tory of engag­ing TPS to iden­tify indi­vid­u­als within their com­mu­ni­ties who are likely to attempt to change a peace­ful and law­ful protest into an unlaw­ful one.“Protests typ­i­cally turn vio­lent because of a lim­ited num­ber of troublemakers.

Most pro­test­ers just want to be heard.  As a result, many groups have learned to work with police agen­cies and will “out” the trou­ble­mak­ers in their ranks.Government, police, and pro­test­ers aren’t likely to ever become “best friends”, but they cer­tainly can exist and act in a har­mo­nious man­ner that reflects the val­ues of a demo­c­ra­tic society.

Ottawa MPs costing you money, all for photo opps with Haitian orphans

Politi­cians love photo opps with lit­tle babies. They also love photo oppor­tu­ni­ties with orphans from Haiti, and are will­ing to incon­ve­nience many peo­ple and cost tax­pay­ers money for them. Maybe you’ll want to think twice about vot­ing Con­ser­v­a­tive again in the next fed­eral elec­tion in Canada.

Then again, politi­cians are politi­cians, no mat­ter what party they come from. Maybe this would hap­pen regard­less of party affil­i­a­tion. Still, as a tax­payer and vot­ing cit­i­zen, you should know what’s going on.

You have undoubt­edly heard on the news about Hait­ian orphans almost at the end of the adop­tion process being expe­dited and trans­ported up to Canada. Well, here are some more details.

1. All Haiti evac­uees are sup­posed to be flown to the Mon­tral air­port at Dor­val. A recep­tion cen­tre with med­ical, social, secu­rity, and immi­gra­tion ser­vices is all set up there.
2. The vast major­ity of Haiti evac­uees are des­tined for some­where in the Province of Que­bec. Makes sense, since Haitians speak French & Creole.
3. Fed­eral min­is­ters are in Ottawa and (a) don’t want to fly to Mon­treal, and (b) would have to fight through Que­bec provin­cial red tape to get photo ops with the orphans at Dorval.

So, the solu­tion seems obvi­ous, from a politician’s point of view: Fly the whole plane­load of orphans and other evac­uees to Ottawa. Get a pic­ture taken with the orphans, make the vot­ers feel good, get a few more votes.

The prob­lem is that Ottawa has to set up a recep­tion cen­tre for the incom­ing orphans and evac­uees when Mon­treal already has a per­fectly good one set up. It also means that after the plane lands, and the orphans & other evac­uees are processed, they’re all trans­ported by bus. Where to? Right to the Dor­val Air­port recep­tion cen­tre where they would have started out if the planes were directed to Mon­treal in the first place.

This isn’t cost­ing tons of money, but it is cost­ing you the tax­payer some­thing. It also shows the slick side of pol­i­tics that gives politi­cians the bad rap they some­times right­fully deserve. They’re will­ing to cause other peo­ple trou­ble and use tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars to do some­thing that has no ben­e­fit or value to any­one other than giv­ing a few politi­cians an oppor­tu­nity to look good.

We all want to help the Haitians, and we all want to help kids. But the next time you see a photo of an MP next to a group of Hait­ian orphans, or any politi­cian next to the group-we’re-helping-this-quarter, ask your­self and your elected rep­re­sen­ta­tives to what extent the shots were staged and whether they cost extra tax­payer resources and money to make possible.

You’re pay­ing for politi­cians to look good. You should know when that’s hap­pen­ing and ask ques­tions. Some­times it’s jus­ti­fied, some­times it’s not.