The great news is that I’m scared.  Really scared.  Why is this great?  Because it means I still care.  It’s easy in today’s workplace to fall into a rut of not giving a sh** about your work, and some organizations even encourage it.  On the other hand, being scared in your job (fear of harrasment and/or layoffs notwithstanding) is great.  It gives you the impetus to work harder, create better results, and achieve your goals.  And according to Seth Godin, it also means that something is going to happen.  Hopefully something big.  Real big.  I could also screw this up completely and turn this into a complete clusterf**** (hence most of the fear).  But, I’d like to think this fear is caused by a fear of wasting the potential of this opportunity right in front of me.

But, I digress.  Work starts at 9 am tomorrow, let’s find out what happens!

Most people who have been around dogs (read: everybody) should know this already.  I mean, I’m sure some people really are that dumb.  However, I like to imagine the world as a place where stupid people are in the minority.  After all, 60.4% of us didn’t vote for the harper government.

So what’s up with the mixed messages at work?  Why is it that bosses will give you one job description and then expect you to drop everything to fill in another role?  Case in point:  I had to blow off a customer today so I could drop a car off for a minor repair (I’m a used car salesman, in case you didn’t know).

Did I want to blow off the customer?  Hell no.  My job, or so I’m told, is to sell cars and make customers happy.  At least, that’s what I was told in the sales meeting less than an hour before that.  Yet somehow, a manager re-defined my job as being the lot-runner-around-guy.  Now I’m out one sale, and the customer is probably writing in his own blog about what a jerk I am.

Moral of the story:  If you’re going to tell your staff something, stick to it.  Just because it’s convenient to give them one task and force them into doing another task instead, doesn’t mean either task will be done well.

Little known fact:  I really love making jam.  I don’t know why, it’s just the way it is.  So once I finally made a batch that I was willing to share, there was only one thing to do:  Sell it on Etsy!

The only beef I have with Etsy’s other jam sellers is that few of them really put an effort into developing a brand that lends itself to viral activity.  Granted, that’s coming from a person who still hasn’t made labels or even a logo yet.  However, I did go to the trouble of developing a story to go with the brand:

Old Man Jam is made by a crazy old man who only hates two things: Rotten young whippersnappers, and everything else. Despite this, he often recruits said whippersnappers to help with his jam. This is so he can pin the blame on someone else when he makes mistakes.

The old man doesn’t believe in artificial sweeteners, health fads, boring jam, or deodorant. Instead, he firmly believes in re-imagining what jam could taste like, and how exciting breakfast (or lunch, or dinner, or desert) could really be. He also believes that aliens are reading his thoughts, which explains the tinfoil hat. In my experience, it’s best not to question the old man. Or talk to him. In fact, just try to avoid eye contact. It’s probably for the best.

Whippersnapper Fingerberry Jam

This jam is a wild and crazy combination of blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, and severed fingers. You see, the old man loved the way this turned out. Unfortunately, his assistant forgot to write down the recipe. And, well, since the young whippersnapper wasn’t using his fingers to write with, the Old Man taught him a valuable lesson by choppin’em off and throwin’em in the mix. Personally, I think the severed fingers added a certain something something…..

Yes, that’s really the description on the posting.  Strange, yes, but there’s a reason for the madness.  You see, the story is something that people can talk about, something they can pass on in conversation.  You could even post it on Facebook, just for laughs.  If I just said “mixed berry jam, and it’s really good,” well, that’s not something to pass around.  Taste and opinion are subjective matters, and what one person thinks is good, another person thinks is crap.  Besides, mentioning jam often turns the conversation from the person who brought it up, to the person who jumps in and says “my Grandma made the best jam.  Sure, Grandpa died of E. Coli because she never boiled her apple butter, but who doesn’t want to die of deliciousness?

Check out the posting here to get your own jar of awesomeness!

With that in mind, I’ve found a new purpose for this blog.  At the risk of getting all political (and/or stepping on the Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation’s toes), I’d like to point out all the crap that Harper keeps wasting our money on, and some of the things that he could buy instead that would actually make this country a better place.

Here’s our first example:  According to the Ottawa Citizen, Col. Michel Drapeau (retired) estimates that we’re spending about $100 million/month on the war in Libya.  Here’s what we could have done with $100 million:

1) Hire an additional 2,699 teachers in Ontario (according to starting pay rates listed here)

OR

2) Large double double and a blueberry fritter for every man, woman and child in Canada

OR

3) Pay 0.017739007% of our national debt (according to debtclock.ca on May 21st, 2011)

Three things to note:  1) This is figuring on one month’s spending on Libya to pay these teachers for an entire year,  2) I didn’t actually check this one, but it’ll be close.  3) We pay about $84 million per day in interest on our national debt.  Just sayin’.

I’m not saying Ghadafi shouldn’t be removed, dead or alive.  I’m just saying, we’re spending a lot of money to deliver a single bullet to Northern Africa.  Maybe we should have called UPS first……

Most other people in the world would be beside themselves in my situation; that is, pondering ways to hatch your golden egg, when someone bigger, richer, and more powerful than you comes and scrambles it.  For me, this is great news.  Why?

When I wrote “Class of 2009,” my first self-published book, it was hard to get the target market to understand it.  For those that don’t know, it’s a photo book about classic cars and trucks in Manitoba.  Simple as this may sound, people just didn’t get it.  Everyone else before me had done calendars and DVDs on the same subject, and so that’s what everyone else did.  Now, if someone else wanted to spend their summer selling books at car shows, they would probably make a killing simply because people are now familiar with the product.  Personally, I’m leaving that up to my favourite Winnipeg bookstore.

Yes, it’s true that this company could squash me like a bug.  They might sue me for something random and illegal.  They might flood the market space with effective marketing, or tie their brand name to the product the way that Kleenex is tied to tissues.  They might not let me access the primo retail space, the best online e-tailers, or the top wholesale distributors.  They might not, could not, in a box.  They might not, could not, with a fox.

The thing is, they’ve spent millions to create a new product category, which means I don’t have to spend millions.  And since the other company isn’t Apple, I don’t have to waste time stealing members from their tribe of customers–I just have to create better value for the customers already looking for a tribe.

Sometimes, being second isn’t so bad….

Now, being a former photo editor and current “two-way” photojournalist (which isn’t as dirty as it sounds), I have seen a lot of pictures from a lot of new photographers and models.  And these images, well, they looked like every other picture from every other new photographer and/or model.  It’s not that the pictures were bad (they weren’t) or that the photog/model team didn’t work hard (they did), it’s just that the poses, expression, composition, and lighting were just a little too much like the pictures on a thousand MySpace profiles and Deviantart galleries.  And that’s a good thing.

Why?  Because it’s the starting point, that’s why.  It’s the diving platform upon which every creative person climbs onto and jumps off from.  The catch is, you have to have a solid footing on this platform before you can do a spectacular backflip that wows the judges.  You might call it mediocrity, but it’s in that mediocrity that you can hide, improve, and master your skills, one piece at a time, until your greatness is ready to emerge.  It’s then that you can jump off the diving board and make a splash.

Just don’t wait to long to make that splash, though; eventually, the proverbial competition ends, and the judges go home.  Then, you’re just stuck on the diving board of mediocrity, with no one to care what your jump looks like.

Five minutes later, he hadn’t taken a single drop out of it.  I finally grabbed it, started sucking and chewing on it, and nothing came out.  I kept trying different methods, but to no avail.  Sadly, I gave up and gave him a drink in his old bottle.

I have spent seven cumulative years studying at the university level, yet I can’t figure out how to make that sippy cup work.  My son (who is less than a year old) can’t even talk yet, but someone at the sippy cup factory expects him to figure out what I can’t.

Bad design is one thing; arrogant design is another.  Expecting an infant to figure out some complicated trick in order to get water places your design on the same level as playground bullies who pick on the kindergarten students.

Chainsaws are awesome.  Any schmuck can use one to savagely destroy something, yet talented artists can use one to create great works of art.

The key thing is that whatever change you create with a chainsaw, it’s going to be permanent.  Imagine, for a second, if every solution that needed to be permanent was, in fact, permanent.  Customers aren’t excited about your product?  Axe it and find something exciting to sell.  Customers are never happy (and/or unprofitable), no matter what you do?  Axe them, and find someone exciting to sell to.

If you’re in this business for the long haul, do things for the long haul.  Fire up the chainsaw, savagely cut and thrash, and make your changes permanent.

Seth’s blog post this morning on “Service Design” (similar to what I call Customer Design), really hit close to home for me.  In it, he talks about making the connection between the person who designs the customer experience, and the person who actually carries it out.  In most cases, the manager who decided how much to spend on cleaning supplies is completely isolated from the customer who is repulsed by the filthy store.  Or even worse, the manager has no respect or concern for that customer.

What’s really sad about this situation is that the (now upset) customer will blame the front line staff.  The front line staff are now upset, having been blamed (and often humiliated) by someone else’s design.  They’re now less capable of giving great service to the next person in line, who is also turned off by the sticky floor, or the long line up, or the disorganized displays.

Here’s one possible solution:  force the service designer to be a customer.  Make them go to the store/dealership/hotel/restaurant/etc., and buy the cheapest, smallest thing there, at the busiest peak time, when the staff are stretched to their limit.  If the design was done right, the experience will be a reward for great work.  If the design was done wrong, it will be an awful punishment-and a great place to start re-designing.

Think about this:  You walk into your local Wal-mart to buy socks.  If you’re a guy, they’re in the menswear department, in the aisle closest to the main door.  I don’t know why they’re closer to the door, and to be honest, I don’t care.  What I do know is that every Wal-Mart in Canada keeps their men’s socks in the same place, regardless of the store’s layout or shape.  This menial detail saves me the hassle of finding an “associate,” and simultaneously decreasing their staff workload, simply because I can find the socks.

But we still need to ask–do I need someone waiting on me hand and foot to make me happy?  In this case, no.  Although my last trip to Wal-Mart wasn’t for socks, I was still able to find the toy cars (yes, I’m a grown man who still buys Hot Wheels) and leave, interacting only with the cashier.  Because the store’s design is user-friendly and consistent, my customer goals were achieved without having a (paid) staff member following me around.

Would that have worked at a car dealership or mattress store?  No.  Those products have a high involvement in a customer’s life, therefore, the customer’s decision needs a high involvement from your staff.  Does it work for a value-pack of socks?  Absolutely.