By Paula Rosenblum, Managing Partner
3/24/2008
The following is an object lesson in how companies can avoid the obvious, and the "moment of truth" that finally drives a long-overdue decision.
Stop Eating Sugar!
There’s an old story you may have heard about a woman who was very upset with her son, because he was eating too much sugar. I heard this story in an Indian context, so I’ll re-tell it this way. Others may well have heard it from some other tradition.
This desperate woman took her son to a great Mahatma (or saint) reputed to have great powers and told him her tale of woe about her son’s sugar jones. “He eats sugar all day long. He’s not getting enough vitamins, he’s running around like a crazy person…. I can’t stand it. Please tell him to stop eating sugar.”
The Mahatma looked down at the woman and her son from his throne. He stared at her and the boy intently and said, “Come back in three weeks.” The woman was sure some divine energy had passed from the Mahatma to her son. She grabbed the boy by the arm and took him home, bowing in deep obeisance to the Mahatma.
Three weeks later, as promised, the woman returned to the Mahatma with her son. She was completely beside herself. “Nothing has changed,” she said. “What do I do now?” The Mahatma recognized her immediately, looked down at her son sternly and said ‘Stop eating sugar.” The mother was baffled. “Why did we have to come back in three weeks? His behavior has been as crazy as ever, and all you’re saying now is ‘Stop eating sugar?’ What has changed?”
The Mahatma replied, “My dear, three weeks ago, I was still eating sugar.”
Fast-forward to another Place and Time
Last week, we received an e-mail from one of our newsletter subscribers who asked, “Why is it I receive this newsletter but when I try to download from your site I’m told that I have to register?” I had to grimace and say “Our mailing list and registration database are two different unrelated entities. If you are registered in our database you’ll get our newsletter, but getting our newsletter does not mean you’re registered in our database.” Even as I wrote this to her, I saw the absurdity in it. Here we are, about to release a report on multi-channel retailing and the need to get all channels in synch, and we don’t even have our own house in order.
The more we thought about it, the more embarrassed we became. Like our retail survey respondents, we have our reasons. We started our company over the course of a weekend, and got our web site and mailing lists going very quickly. Business was good, and we were all too busy to think about bringing everything together. And we’re running so fast now, who wants to run the risk of merging databases? It’ll take time and effort. We might take our eye off the ball. Like I said, everyone has their reasons.
In the end, we realized we could NOT put out a report on the need to have all channels in synch until we did it. So we’ve worked with our web master and got the job done. You may have to add a few pieces of information the first time you download a report, but as of now, if you’re on our mailing list, you’re registered to download our reports and alerts. We apologize for any inconvenience we might have caused and now we can say with full confidence and authority:
Get your multi-channel houses in order!
Look for our 2008 report on multi-channel retailing next week.
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