A Tale with Two Morals

Last week, I was working on a document for a project team of which I am a member. I had agreed to send it to my colleague so he could give his comments, and then we could send it to the entire team the next day, at the latest. I sent the document as an attachment, and went back to my work.
The next afternoon, I received an urgent e-mail from my colleague, which was forceful in its tone.
'Keith, (my colleague wrote), I am still waiting for his document. Let's not lose momentum on this. I would like to send this out to the project team as early as possible.'
I wrote back immediately that I had sent the document as an attachment in my previous mail. In case my colleague had a problem with attachments, I copied the text from the document and included it in the mail.
My colleague wrote back apologising, saying that he had somehow missed the attachment.
Originally, I had thought that he was obviously better with technology than me. This is an opinion I have about everyone. I am really bad at things like text messages, e-mail, etc., in fact I only have a very basic knowledge of any computer program. I still prefer to use a flipchart rather than Powerpoint. What is important, however, is that I know I'm useless. This is really a very important difference. I make it very clear to people what I am able and unable to do. This is why nobody is surprised when I send an e-mail with no attachments and only the text 'FYI' in the body. This is also why people will give me a copy of information in a way that is easy for me to take in, as they know that any other way increases the risk that I will not be able to talk to them about their offer later. To my knowledge, nobody thinks I am stupid. I try to improve my skills, but if I do, I keep it a secret!
Somebody who I'm reminded of in this aspect is Warren Buffett. First of all, I am in no way saying that the billionaire investor and I are similar in any other way (the difference in the number of zeroes in our bank account balances should convince anyone of that), but when I read the article on the swampland blog regarding Buffet's part in the fall of Lehman Brothers' Bank.

"Buffet was hurrying to a social event when he received a call from Bob Diamond, the head of Barclays Capital. Diamond was trying to buy Lehman Brothers and rescue it from oblivion, but he was having trouble with British authorities. So he had come up with another plan, one in which Buffett would provide insurance that might make it all work. It was all too complicated for Buffett to take in in a quick phone call, so he asked Diamond to fax him the details. Buffett got back to his hotel room around midnight and was surprised to find ... nothing. Lehman went under, and within days, the world was in a full-blown financial crisis.

Fast forward 10 months. Buffett, who admits he never has really learned the basics of his cell phone, asked his daughter Susan about a little indicator he had noticed on the screen: "Can you figure out what's on there?" It turned out to be the message from Diamond that he had been waiting for that night."

Later, when asked if Diamond's proposal would have persuaded him, Buffett admitted that it was a possibility.

For me, there are clearly two morals to this tale.
Firstly, we are (unfortunately) very definitley in the 21st century now, and part and parcel of this century's business in the fact that the main communication tools are e-mail, cellphone (including sms text messages), and voicemail. This is how business is done today. Many businesses no longer even have a fax. If someone carries a mobile phone, he or she should really be prepared to receive calls. If he or she does not answer every call, voicemail is inevitable.
The second moral is much more important, as it relates to my own technical skills. It is also one which many people are ignoring, and it is this: If someone asks you to send a fax, you send a fax. You assume that they have asked for a fax for a specific reason. They may prefer to receive faxes, or may not have time to listen at the moment, but a fax can be read at any time. Perhaps they don't have access to their computer, and don't know how to use voicemail.
A corollary of this rule is: If trillions of dollars may be at risk because of a vital part of the world merchant banking system is at risk, send a fax, leave a voicemail message, send an e-mail, send a letter by courier, and follow Warren Buffett to wherever he's going.

Anglik z Anglii

My friend is an Englishman who has been living in Krakow for some time. He keeps this very amusing blog which he describes as "him writing to companies and asking for things". Under the disguise of Anglik z Anglii, he complains about various things such as spelling mistakes (a can of tomatoes with 'peeled and choped' on the label), hygeine (a shop assistant picking up chocolate from the floor and placing it back into the display cabinet) and even the cultural ignorance of Polish musical institutions (the name of the group IRA having terrorist connotations in English)
Quite often, however, Anglik z Anglii complains about the kind of things we all complain about. Anglik would like to find apple-flavour yoghurt without cinnamon, he would like to buy biscuits that look like the picture on the packet. He would like to be able to buy a certain brand of beer that has stopped selling. He would like his teapot to stop making tea tasting of plastic.
Anglik z Anglii's blog is funny, lighthearted, clever and entertaining. What is interesteng for me is that it shows how far the gap can be between the UK and Poland in business-consumer relations. It's true that we don't all write to every company about everything, and I wouldn't write to a cinema about not getting free cornflakes, but there is a general rule in existance that when a customer complains, the customer is rewarded for making the effort. This is an unwritten rule, which companies use to encourage customers to provide feedback. However irrelevant it may be, there is almost no other opportunity for a company to get first-hand quality control information so easily. To paraphrase a business guru, if your customers aren't complaining, you should be really worried. Any effort should be made to get any kind of feedback.
My mother used to write to every company that dared to lower its standards. She complained to Cadbury that there weren't enough nuts in her whole-nut bar, she warned Kelloggs to check that there was a free gift insde every pack of Cornflakes, and when Nestle bought Rowantree, she asked if they had changed the chocolate used in KitKats, as she detected a drop in quality. Each time, she received a letter thanking her for her effort, and for providing the company with important information (actually, Nestle said that they had not changed the recipe, and suggested that her tast-buds were over-developed), together with a collection of chocolate bars, cereals, crisps, clothes with company logos, books, etc.
While I'm not suggesting that Anglik z Anglii is doing his best to get as much free food as possible (he does that for himself), it is nteresting to see that, at this time, to companies from around 15 have written back to him. Both of them have written excellent letters which thank Anglik for writing, and assure him that, if action has not been taken over his letter, at least it has been read carefully.
Again, looking at the follow-on effect, Our English Customer is satisfied after the fact, and a story about a company who he would never trust again becomes a story explaining why he would recommend this company to his friends. All for the price of one e-mail -and perhaps some free 'choped' tomatoes.