Little Details - Part 2

Little details are not just for hi-tech companies.

For two years my son Connor had a double lumen broviac catheter through which he received medication and IV nutrition. The two ends of the catheter were color coded blue and yellow to signify the size of each lumen. Over time Connor became VERY protective of his central line and gave each side a name. Thomas was the blue lumen and Ben the yellow. They were named after two of the trains in the Thomas the Tank Engine series.


On multiple occasions Connor needed his line replaced due to infection. Sometimes he required a temporary line to be placed to allow the infection to clear prior to the new broviac line being placed. One time, during the procedure to insert the temporary line the intensive care doctor, Dr. Chopra, recognized that the temporary line had blue and white ends instead of blue and yellow ends like his regular line. Having spent enough time getting to know Connor to understand that this would be a problem, Dr. Chopra took the time, while Connor was still under sedation, to wrap surgical tape around the white end and color it yellow so when Connor woke up he would have his Thomas and Ben. I cannot tell you how much that meant to a sick 8 year old boy and his parents. The Little Details make all the difference.

Little Details

My wife got a new iPod today. Nothing fancy, just a refurbished gen2 iPod shuffle to use at the gym. Apple is well known at this point for their attention to detail and I could wax poetic about their packaging, simple set-up process, etc..but that story has already been written.

Here is what impressed me. Her new iPod is light green (she really likes it which is nice since it was the only color choice). She took it out of the box and plugged it in to the computer. iTunes launched and immediately recognized it as new, so the registration process started automatically. And what do you know, the picture on the registration screen is of a light green gen2 iPod shuffle. That is a little detail that says a lot.

Are you paying attention to those kinds of details? If you are, your customers probablly love you and are telling other people about you. Keep up the good work.

I Can't

When somebody tells you that they can't do something what are they really telling you? Typically they aren't telling you they can't, they are telling you they either don't want to, or are not willing to. There is almost nothing that can't be done. Certainly they may not be equipped to do it right now, but that does not mean it couldn't be done at some point in the future. The difference between can't and can is some combination of time, resources, willingness and priority. So when somebody tells you they can't do something figure out which area they are lacking in: time, resources, willingness or priority and what you can do to help them solve their problem so they can help you solve yours.

Ocean Drive 10-Miler: Before and After

Simplicity - Part 2

Things don't become simplified on their own. However, complexity is not the natural opposite of simplicity because things also don't become complex on their own. Left alone most things just become chaotic.

Simplicity - Part 1

I've been reading and thinking a lot about simplicity recently. Here are some quotes to get the conversation started.

Simplicity

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. ~ Charles Mingus

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction. ~ E. F. Schumacker

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. ~ Hans Hofmann

Purity and simplicity are the two wings with which man soars above the earth and all temporary nature. ~ Thomas a Kempis

Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves. ~ Edwin Way Teale

Preserving your market by giving it away

I received my next book from the Thomas Nelson book review blogger project today (more on the actual book in a future post). What was far more interesting than the book itself were the extras that came with it.

The book was marketed (on the cover, spine and back) as free. Not that the book itself was free but that you as the reader were being given freedom to interact with the content in multiple ways. By buying the book you were given access to four different formats. The actual book, and downloadable files in pdf, ebook (for the Amazon Kindle or Sony eReader) and mp3 formats.

So instead of giving up the sale of the actual book (which has the highest profit margin by far of the four to my understanding) or trying to pit one form of content against the other they instead bundled them together and give them all to you for the same price you would have paid for just the actual book. In order to preserve their highest margin form of content delivery they give away the lowest margin forms and it doesn't actually cost them anything extra because once the electronic forms are created there is no marginal cost for each additional unit distributed.

How could you preserve your market and your profits margin by giving your products away?