Its all about how process things

So there is an old story I heard from someone last weekend and thought to share it with you all.

There was a small town and it had a sweet old lady who was the most popular sweet seller ( Mithai Seller ). Every day you could see lines outside her shop.

Interestingly, she didn’t make the sweets her self. Rather she only sold them and had them outsourced to a sweet maker.

Now, one fine day a gorgeous young lady opens a sweet shop right across from her shop and goes in to business. Fact to be noted is that even this gorgeous young lady did not make the sweets herself but rather outsourced it to the same sweet maker the old lady was purchasing from.

On the very first day there was a huge line outside the new shop… yes, indeed many had come to get a glimpse of this gorgeous girl and customarily buy some sweets too 🙂

For the next few days the line out side the young lady’s store kept increasing while the line outside the old ladies store kept dramatically decreasing.

However, about a week and half down the time line … the reverse started happening. The line outside the old lady’s shop started to increase while the line outside her neighbors started to decrease … until the old ladies clientage was back to what it used to be.

Since everything seemed to have been same in both shops one bystander remarked that it doesn’t make sense that the beautiful young lady’s shop is empty … there was confusion.

So, one person decided to figure out this little puzzle. After a lot of investigation and eventual failure he decided to go and ask the old lady her secret to such success.

This is what the old lady said:

“ Dear Sir, I don’t do anything special to my mithai (sweet) but I think that it has something to do with how I weight the mitahis. You see, when someone orders 1 KG of Mitai , the young lady put 1.25 or 1.5 kg on the scale and removes the extra to measure the full 1 kg….. While I always put 600 to 800 grams and then add mitahis to complete the 1 KG.”

Scale

Surprising… don’t you think?

I believe it is the truth.

Regardless of the fact that both measure exact weight the perception that people leave with is that they are getting something with the old ladies style while they are loosing something with the younge ladies style.

The same I believe applies when one makes out policies at any organization. If you were to include all the exceptions in the policy … in no time will people start to view the exceptions as rules and rights. Rather if policies were straightforward and exceptions were reviewed on a case to case basis thou the decision may be the same in either case… the perception the employees leave with is that they have been heard and given special attention and treatment… perceived value addition means better motivation and improved word of mouth.

That’s my thought for today 🙂