My daughter cleared her tenth (High-School) exams with CGPA 9.0..! She was promised a mobile as a reward, and yesterday, I had to buy a mobile..! For various reasons, I was heavily in favor of LG Cookie. My experience is that LG have perfected their phone software long back, and features which are just now arriving on many phones were there with LG since ages. Somehow, the guy at the CROMA store had placed his customer accurately, and was hell-bent upon selling us a Samsung Corby Color. Now this Corby Color has five different backs, which come in five different colors. All 5 backs together must be costing less than Rs.200/- (oh, five dollars). He showed many features about java and zoom and bluetooth-hack and image-processing, et al. Ultimately, my daughter decided she wanted the Corby Color, the most important reason being the five different color flaps which can blend well with different colored dresses from a fashionistic perspective!!! (won't the entire army of software designers in LG / Samsung hate it! Their brilliant efforts to stay ahead were vanquished by a few simple pieces of colored plastic!!!) This was the first lesson about priority / importance: Importance is decided NOT by erudition or technical brilliance or quality of effort, or anything on the input side. Importance is simply a function of how the feature fits the User's (or customer's) needs!
Then came the hardest lesson for me. Today morning, I hooked up her phone to my laptop and tried to transfer phonebook entries to her phone. The idea was that she would automatically get all the numbers of umpteen relatives and family friends, and some important people...! There was no question about family names except some of my Mamas (uncles) had to be re-named as her Ajobas (grandpas), and some of my friends like Gobi, had to be respectably named as VinayKaka! The real issue was with Important People. I have almost a thousand names in my phone-book, numbers of many VIPs and VVIPs collected over the past decade..! I am in touch with most of them, but obviously not all. Whenever a name came up which I thought was very important and a good name to have in the phonebook, my daughter had wrinkles on her forehead..! There was one who is the lifetime chairman of a non-profit international organisation. "So what!" Another was the owner of the first branded non-stick cookware in India. "So Whatt!" Another was the vice-chancellor in a University. "SSSOOO Whattt!" and it went on..! I was aghast to see pure disdain on her face when I tried to give her numbers which some people would have gone to great lengths to obtain!!! Imagine my surprise when a critically acclaimed film star who has also become a producer was shot down..!
Phew..! Thiss generationnn!!! (and similar other exclamations about the generation came to my mind and I even verbalized a few..! )
And then there was the realization which came from a Service Management Perspective!
In a service catalog, which services are important? How do we decide the Priority model? By looking at how much each service serves the user/business or how it addresses pain-points!
At her age, my daughter simply failed to see how a vice-chancellor of any university would be a great entry in her phonebook!
The trump card came from her in very simple words...
She asked, "What would be the average age of people in your phonebook?" A little mental arithmetic gave a ballpark of 38-45 years.
And then she asked, "What should be the average age of people in MY phonebook?"
"Phew..! Ohh godd!"
How much I still have to learn, just have to keep eyes and ears open..!
Cheers!
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