So there is an old story
I heard from someone last weekend and thought to share it with you all.
There was a small town
and it had a sweet old lady who was the most popular sweet seller ( Mithai
Seller ). Every day you could see lines outside her shop.
Interestingly, she
didn’t make the sweets her self. Rather she only sold them and had them outsourced
to a sweet maker.
Now, one fine day a
gorgeous young lady opens a sweet shop right across from her shop and goes in
to business. Fact to be noted is that even this gorgeous young lady did not
make the sweets herself but rather outsourced it to the same sweet maker the
old lady was purchasing from.
On the very first day
there was a huge line outside the new shop... yes, indeed many had come to get
a glimpse of this gorgeous girl and customarily buy some sweets too :)
For the next few days
the line out side the young lady’s store kept increasing while the line outside
the old ladies store kept dramatically decreasing.
However, about a week
and half down the time line … the reverse started happening. The line outside
the old lady’s shop started to increase while the line outside her neighbors
started to decrease … until the old ladies clientage was back to what it used
to be.
Since everything seemed
to have been same in both shops one bystander remarked that it doesn’t make
sense that the beautiful young lady’s shop is empty … there was confusion.
So, one person decided
to figure out this little puzzle. After a lot of investigation and eventual
failure he decided to go and ask the old lady her secret to such success.
This is what the old
lady said:
“ Dear Sir, I don’t do
anything special to my mithai (sweet) but I think that it has something to do
with how I weight the mitahis. You see, when someone orders 1 KG of Mitai , the
young lady put 1.25 or 1.5 kg on the scale and removes the extra to measure the
full 1 kg….. While I always put 600 to 800 grams and then add mitahis to
complete the 1 KG.”
 |
| Scale |
Surprising… don’t you
think?
I believe it is the
truth.
Regardless of the fact
that both measure exact weight the perception that people leave with is that
they are getting something with the old ladies style while they are loosing
something with the younge ladies style.
The same I believe
applies when one makes out policies at any organization. If you were to include
all the exceptions in the policy … in no time will people start to view the
exceptions as rules and rights. Rather if policies were straightforward and
exceptions were reviewed on a case to case basis thou the decision may be the
same in either case… the perception the employees leave with is that they have
been heard and given special attention and treatment… perceived value
addition means better motivation and improved word of mouth.
That’s my thought for
today :)
