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My Wife's New 'Do': Pt. 7 – Expect Pain

January 13, 2010 by Christopher Wilson Leave a Comment

My wife’s new hairdo caused, for the first time in our marriage, and probably the first time in her life, a hair-related emotional breakdown. While getting ready to go out one day, this woman who had never given her hair more than a passing thought, had to rewash her hair 3 times and still didn’t get the ‘do’ correctly. She was running late. Our event was starting. My kid and I had had to leave without her, hoping she would eventually catch up. She didn’t. There were tears. And muttering under the breath. And possibly actual cursing, though she’s far too much of a lady to let me hear. And disbelief on her part that her hair could EVER cause such a strong emotion. We’ve also had a number of other, less extreme events, and stress over getting ready to leave the house on schedule has peaked a number of times.

The culmination of everything we’ve learned from my wife’s hairdo is this: Expect pain. No matter how well we prepare or train, prepare for things to go wrong from time to time, especially at the outset. Mistakes will be made by people who are still learning. Misunderstandings about how the new solution itself works or what it will do will occasionally cause issues and confusion. These will cost time and money. We must prepare ourselves for these small breakdowns, padding schedules a bit until things come under control. We must tell ourselves and our partners and employees that the occasional mistake is OK. Pick ourselves up, work through the pain and move on.

My Wife's New 'Do': Pt. 5 – Customization

January 11, 2010 by Christopher Wilson Leave a Comment

In the beginning, my wife’s new hairdo wasn’t a perfect fit. As she was getting used to it, she identified trouble areas that she needed touched up so that it would work better for her needs. She went back to the salon once a week for the first 3 weeks until it worked for her. While it certainly seemed excessive to me (and to be honest, I warned her that her hairdresser might shave her just to keep her from coming back a 4th time) her willingness to keep at it until it was exactly what she wanted has saved her time in trying to make things work and retraining down the road since it eliminated incremental changes at every visit over the next 4 months.

Time and use will eventually expose problems in even the most customized solution, and certainly for stock out-of-the-box products. We may find that we need either custom work or additional parts/pieces/plugins to fully integrate a new solution to our business. Keeping our eyes open for early adjustments, and being ready to take the time to make the ones we deem necessary early on will help eliminated poor workflows and habits and reduce the pain of retraining. No one likes giving up one poor solution for another poor solution.

My Wife's New 'Do': Pt. 3 – Maintenance Costs

January 7, 2010 by Christopher Wilson Leave a Comment

Some solutions are implemented simply because they save money or time, decrease maintenance, or increase efficiencies. In the case of my wife’s new hairdo, the solution actually requires additional recurring costs in both time and money. This particular hairdo requires more frequent visits to the salon to keep the hair short, recurring costs in hair styling product (something she never had to worry about before), and also more attention at home. Her hair, which used to be wash-and-go, now has to be styled. It also has to be tended to more often. For instance, before, if Louanna got caught in a rain shower, she simply combed it out and kept going. Now, such a situation requires a full once-over. And actions such as changing a pullover hoodie or sweater, driving with the window down, or putting on a baseball cap now require touch ups.

While seemingly counter-intuitive, many solutions in business also require increased maintenance costs. For instance, social media marketing often requires hours of time for someone to implement and maintain, while old marketing efforts such as throwing an ad in a paper or magazine or on television were relatively quick in comparison. Or entire IT teams may be devoted to the constant upkeep of enterprise software solutions and to keep their servers, PCs and networks up-to-date. These efforts, while costly in money and time, are made because of the potentially high payoff.

For my wife, the hope is that the benefits she receives from the new hairstyle will be enough to outweigh the amount of time it takes her to maintain her hair, especially as she gets more proficient at making the hairdo work. For us, we need to make sure that solutions that will cost us more than we currently spend in time and money will pay off in other ways. Otherwise, rethink implementing them.

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