Tag: easy

The Original Nintendo and Being Easy to Work With (4-8-26)

You can’t talk about Mario without talking about the original Nintendo console.  This week is about how temperamental those original game cartridges were and being easy to work with.  This entry is inspired by a nostalgic trip down memory lane that Jenna Alspaugh took me on.

The Nintendo console was launched in the 1980s with Super Mario as the flagship game.  When the console worked, it was amazing!  You were instantly transported to the mushroom kingdom to experience a new type of entertainment.  The only problem is that the console didn’t always work immediately.  Getting it to work was like performing a ritual for the video game gods and hoping for their blessing.  You’d grab the video game cartridge, blow into it to clean it, insert it into the system, wiggle it just slightly, say a few more prayers, and then hit the power button.  You’d repeat variations of this until it finally worked.   

Let’s connect this to work.  Whether or not you’ve ever played Super Mario, we’ve all likely ran into some version of having to put in a lot of extra effort just to make something work correctly.  When have you interacted with processes or systems that were just difficult?  When have you interacted with people who were just difficult?  How did those make you feel?  In both experiences, I’ve left those situations feeling frustrated and wondering if it was worth it or not.  Also, I felt less inclined to use that service or partner with that person again.  Also, since we are being honest, have you had times where you were being the difficult person?  (sheepishly raises his hand)  While it’s true that bumps and mistakes are going to happen, we can also ensure we are doing things to make it as easy as possible for customers and partners to work with us.

The challenge: How can we make it easier for customers to interact with our products and solutions?  How can we make it easier for individuals to partner with us?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Simple does NOT Equal Easy (6-18-14)

All apples are fruits, but that doesn’t mean that all fruits are apples.  Apples and oranges are not interchangeable.  I feel the same way about “simple” and “easy”.  Things that are initially easy are simple, but this doesn’t mean that all simple things are initially easy.  For example, riding a bike is simple and easy, right?  Not really.  Nobody jumped on a bike for the first time and said, “Whoa, this is easy and simple!”  Instead, we practiced with training wheels and then after that we crashed and fell a lot until we finally figured out how to ride a bike.  Now riding a bike is simple, because we put the work.

We live in a world that is growing increasingly complex, and we keep trying to find ways to simplify it.  Getting to simple is not easy.  It’s not magic.  Getting to simple is hard work.  Making things simple requires 2 distinct processes.  You need one person to communicate things in a way that reveals the essence AND the person listening needs to put in the mental work to internalize concepts until they understand them.  Often, if we don’t think something is simple we blame the person for not being able to boil a complex idea into a one pager or 3 bullet points on a slide. However, if we are honest with ourselves we aren’t always willing to put in the hard work to think through concepts in order to make them simple.

Together we are trying to do things that are simple but not easy.  We are trying to be more patient centric and we are evolving to more of a strategic account management thought process where we spend more trying to understand our customers and accounts, plan how to deliver value, and execute the plan in a way that will provide value to customers.  These concepts are simple, but all of the work that goes into being able to do these things is not easy.  There are a lot of working parts and we need to put in the due diligence to think through how they fit together.

As leaders, how are we setting the standard that we expect people to spend significant time thinking through concepts before saying, “It’s not simple enough” and throwing out the ideas?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry