Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Seth's Godin's Blog - Bear Shaving

Seth Godin's Blog posts are great! Yesterday's post, "Bear Shaving," is one of my favourites so far.

In a nutshell, Seth's point is that too often people choose to deal with the symptom of a problem without ever addressing the root cause. The example Seth uses is shaving polar bears in response to global warming - an extreme but entirely ineffective response.

Something that Seth doesn't mention is an equally ineffective but so very common occurrence - responding to a crisis with an appropriate reaction, but when the response is too late to be effective. Think about, for example, removing an appendix after it has ruptured. Or apologizing to a customer for a customer service glitch, after they have switched to another provider.

The point is - make sure your response is appropriate to the situation, but also make sure you respond while it is still relevant.

No comments:

Post a Comment