Public Service Announcement: Amazon Prime is country specific.
So, when you want to use Amazon.com.au to send stuff to some friends in Australia, you’ll be paying for shipping within that country.
It’s not that big of a deal considering you wont be paying for shipping from the US to whatever country you want your goods to end up in.
This past week I tried the experiment. My username and password were international, my Prime members ship was not. Still, really cool that I got to send thank you gifts to some friends down under!
It’s easy to do the small things in life. They do take discipline, but they are also pretty easy.
I’m old enough now to see how the small things I’ve done have made a difference. There was a time I took some teenagers running. It was a great morning for a run. There had recently been a brush fire that cleared almost all of the bushes that made some of the terrain otherwise unaccessible.
We took off.
We ran by bison along the trail and when we hit the scorched earth our feet were wonderfully padded by fresh layers of ash. It was a blast.
One of the young men in the group attributed that experience to helping him love to run. Running was how he met a cute girl. Now that cute girl is his wife.
It wasn’t much at the time. It was just a fun opportunity to go for a run. I didn’t know how it made a difference until the wedding reception.
Yesterday at church I brought some post-it notes. Prior to services starting I shared the post-its with some of the children in the congregation and asked them to write “I’m glad you’re here today” and put it in the Sacrament Hymn (the song prior to taking the Sacrament [communion]).
It was fun to see faces light up. First of the kids as they were hiding the post-its in the books. Second of the families who enjoyed a nice message as part of their preparation for the sacrament.
I’m trying to get good at this blogging thing. It’s a neat workflow, and I enjoy looking at the stats and seeing what’s popular and what’s not. The blog is small. Few people read it. When few people read it, fewer people like the posts.
So, each day after I publish a post, I like it.
My wife noticed this habit some time ago and asked me what I was doing. Her tone implied that it was cheating to like one’s own post. I did it anyway, but I didn’t have a good comment for her inquiry. Now I do.
Of course, I like my posts. If I didn’t like my posts how could I expect anyone else to? What sort of an example would I be setting?
So, the next time you come here, don’t start reading from the top. Scroll down to the like section. If I didn’t like the post, it’s probably not worth reading. That’s unlikely to happen because I tend to like everything I publish here.
The next time you post a video on YouTube or a post on social media let people know it’s good enough to like and hit the button first!
Oh, and while you’re here, feel free to join me and hit the like button.
This was a big deal. Millions of dollars were spent to get to this point. On the call were resources in Hong Kong, S. Korea, and China. Not on the call were a team of other resources spanning from Florida to Hyderabad. The whole team would be waiting on the outcome of the discussion.
The topic, the first scheduled system outage. We needed to agree on a time and method for dealing with the interruption at a manufacturing facility. Mandarin was the primary language on the call. We let each section leader discuss the impact and their plans to overcome the disruptions of the outage.
I don’t speak Mandarin, but it was clear after about 20 minutes that we had an agreement that would work for everyone. Successful collaboration had occurred. We almost ended the call.
But agreeing wasn’t the last step.
Once we reached our consensus we needed to make sure that our plan to communicate and coordinate was smooth after all we just spent 20 minutes discussion what we’d do and when. How would we know when the when was happening?
How many times have you had a good plan go awry because we didn’t build in the communications plan?
Just as important as any agreement is the plan to execute that agreement. It may come across as tedious to talk about, but reminding your group that agreeing isn’t the last step should help them see the value in the effort.
The project managers in our building sit near each other when we’re not in meetings all day long.
The other day my neighbor had applied for an open position in the company and done her interview. During the interview she was asked what one thing she would change in how the project management office is working. She shared her answer with me.
It was awesome and articulate. It spoke to a real problem. As she was talking about what changes could occur I easily found myself becoming a champion of her solution. I thought it was great.
She was disappointed in the response. I asked why.
She explained that she felt her entire answer was inaccurate. No analysis was done to demonstrate that her answer was the correct one, so while she may have articulated her idea well, she couldn’t prove to herself that the idea had value beyond her own experience.
I tried to demonstrate that it did.
She didn’t accept my perspective. She was firm that the right answer could only be a researched answer. So I decided to use a bit of a research technique to help.
The technique is the 80:20 rule. It’s known as the Pareto Principle and paraphrased states that 80% of your value comes from 20% of the effort. Now, this is a principle, not a hard fast rule. Sometimes the ratio is 73:27, or 85:15, but the idea is still the same and usually remains close to 80:20 regardless of the industry or environment.
I asked my neighbor to consider the Pareto Principle means that she didn’t need to be 100% accurate about whether her response was truly top of the list. It just needed to be in the top 20%.
The conversation didn’t end with my neighbor changing her mind, doing a 180 on her perspective, and walk away with a new positive attitude. She’s not that type of person. Some people take time to change how they see things. My neighbor is one of them. I was grateful she listened in the moment. She’s the sort of person who also listens after the moments and considers other’s perspectives.
While I don’t think my answer was life changing, I do think it was truthful and uplifting. Since that conversation we’ve shared more thing that indicate the way we talked that day help to build a stronger bond of trust between us.
Trust is a good thing to have.
The right answer isn’t singular. It’s plural. Being in the range of right is better than not doing anything. Had I tried to search for the exact right words I wouldn’t have strengthened a friendship.
