Last week we talked about tools and knowing who you are and what you bring to the table.  This week is we will dive into doing house projects and addressing customer needs.

A few months ago I came home and my wife had reorganized the pantry.  See the picture.  Before we had the colorful tubs we placed things on the shelves and grouped them into categories.  The buckets took this grouping to the next level.  I was standing in the reorganized pantry and she asked, “What do you think?  Pretty great, huh?”  My face instantly gave away my answer, so she responded with, “You don’t like it.”  I respond with, “I’m mainly neutral.  I don’t understand why we needed to do this.”

My wife then says, “The buckets make it easier.  How many times have you went to bake something and you couldn’t find the ingredients, because everything was disorganized?  The tubs solve that issue and keep all of the like things together.”  There is a flaw in this argument.  I reminder her that I don’t bake.  Everything I cook is either grilled or on top of the stove in a skillet.  All of my grilling stuff is always easily accessible, so I’m not experiencing those problems.  Essentially, she is solving a problem for me that I don’t have or care about.  In fact, her doing this actually creates new problems for me.  Before I could just see the stuff on the shelves and now I have to spend the effort trying to fit things into tubs and looking inside the tubs to find what I want.  All of this results in me being neutral at best toward the new pantry, when my wife was super excited.  #awkward

How does this connect with work?  Essentially our job is to solve problems.  With that said, I see two ways how this anecdote connects to our work.  First, how often are we solving our problems vs. solving problems our customers face?  If you’re anything like me, it’s easy to fall in love with something cool and never stop to ask, “Does this actually even help a customer?” 

The second connection is when we attempt to solve the problems of our customers, are we connecting our solutions back to what they value?  The mistake my wife made is that she tried to tell me the tubs in the pantry solved an organization problem.  I didn’t have that issue.  If my wife wanted me to be thrilled about the tubs in the pantry all she had to do was reframe the solution.  She should have said this, “I’m here with the kids every day and they go in the pantry and mess stuff up all the time.  I feel I waste a lot of time dealing with that and it adds to the stress I already have of taking care of them and doing everything else that I do to help the family run.  I think these tubs will make things easier for me and take some of my stress away.”  If she would have framed it that way I would have thought the tubs were an awesome idea.  Why?  Because I would have said to myself, “The less stress she has, the less stress the family has.  She spent minimal money and I didn’t have to put in any effort to fix this.  If the tubs make her happy, then she should just go for it!”  Connecting this solution to what I value, completely would have changed how I responded to the solution.

The challenge: Are you doing something because it solves a problem that matters to you or because it solve a problem that matters to your customers?  Are you connecting the solutions you provide to what customers value?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry