During the days of stock take, we generally meet all staff of Home centre. Actually, I really like to participate in the occasion of a stock take. Every time on stock take many faces to meet the first time and many faces become familiar as well. On the annual take of 2018 when we were at Al Asmak mall, I meet Mr Mazher. He is a store manager of Home centre and he is a smart and cool guy as well as friendly, familiar type of guy. I like to make discussion with him in many ideas and he usually gives me a proper idea about the topic. On that day we discussed the customer. How angry customer is Handel. Dealing with customer and assisting them is easy to do but when the customer gets angry with the product, service and facility it's a critical point in business. Ya'know on retail if we make 100 customers happy and 1 customer unhappy than on next day definitely we lose 9 customers and its compulsory to make each customer happy by listening to them, understanding them and providing the respectful, delightful and open heart service to each customer equally. Generally retail has to sides as buyer and seller. For the buyer, we should see only those who spent their money. Gender, age, nationality, profession and colour etc have nothing to do in business.
The following story once shared on PBS by the Car Talk brothers Click and Clack, turned out to be an urban legend. But I’ve rewritten the story to engage you in solving the puzzle and offering a valuable lesson in strategic thinking. The story supposedly involves “Fred” complaining to Ford Headquarters that his car won’t start whenever he buys vanilla ice cream. Let’s hear from Fred:
“We have a family tradition of sending me out to buy ice cream after dinner each night. We vote on what kind of ice cream we should have, then I drive two miles to the store to get it. But every time I buy vanilla ice-cream, my new Ford won’t start. If I get any other of ice cream, the car starts just fine. Please explain why my car is allergic to vanilla ice cream?”
Ford headquarters asked him to carefully document his next four nights of buying ice cream. The first night the family voted for vanilla ice cream, and sure enough, after he bought vanilla from the store and came back to the car, it
wouldn’t start. The second night, he chose strawberry, and the car started promptly. The third night, chocolate was the choice and the car started fine. But the fourth night when he ordered vanilla, the car failed to start again.
wouldn’t start. The second night, he chose strawberry, and the car started promptly. The third night, chocolate was the choice and the car started fine. But the fourth night when he ordered vanilla, the car failed to start again.
What’s going on? Now, dear reader, think about it for a moment. What do you think the reason is? What’s your working hypothesis (fancy word for “best guess”) as to why his car won’t start? What additional information would you need to be sure?
Ford asked Fed to repeat his ice cream visits but to carefully capture data concerning the time of day, type of gas used, outside temperature, the time it takes to purchase, drive time back and forth, flavour selected, and whether the car started or not.
Scrunching the data provided a clue: It always took Fred less time to buy vanilla then any other flavor. With that additional insight, what’s your new working hypothesis about the root cause of the problem?
Ford then sent an engineer to the store to investigate further. The engineer studied the store layout, noting that vanilla, being the most popular flavor, was placed in a separate case at the front of the store for quick pick up.
All the other flavors were kept in the back of the store at a different counter where it took considerably longer to get served. It was clear that now the issue was why the car wouldn’t start when buying ice cream took less time. Once time became the key variable– not the flavor of ice cream – the solution became apparent: vapor lock.
Before cars had fuel injection, when a car was shut off, it needed time to cool down before it would restart. This happened to his car every night but because Fred got vanilla more quickly, the engine was still too hot for the vapor lock to dissipate. But the extra time needed to get the fancy flavors allowed the engine to cool down sufficiently to start. Problem solved.
Lesson Learned: If your initial interpretation of the solution to a problem doesn’t make logical sense, search for alternative solutions. Refine and test your initial initial, dig deeper, get data.
Don’t confuse correlation with causation. Just because buying vanilla correlated with a stalled car, that was not the causative factor. The rooster crowing in the morning doesn’t cause the sun to rise, though it may like to think it does.
The practical business application: when your team is underperforming, it’s easy to blame the people. But as W. Edwards Deming reminded us long ago, look deeper at the system, the process, and the interfaces to see if they are working in sync. That’s likely where the problem is.
Be strategic and intelligent about discovering root causes. And be assured that your car should start regardless of what ice-cream flavor you are hungry for.
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