Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

It’s Only Common Sense: You Gotta Make Sense

These things happen to all of us. We all have stories of “policy” superseding common sense.

Here’s a good one I heard a few years ago:

“I took my iPhone to Verizon one day because there was something wrong with the software and I wanted to get it fixed. The clerk checked to make sure I had the insurance, then she took my phone from me and smashed it against the counter and then made out the paperwork so she could hand me a new phone. As I looked on, stunned, she explained that if there is something wrong with the software, they had to send the phone in, and it would take weeks to get it back. But the insurance I was paying for every month covered and provided for immediate replacement if the phone was damaged in any way.”

Don’t things like this drive you crazy?

As a sufferer of OCD when it comes to being on time, I want to be rewarded for being early. I hate standing in lines. I hate it so much that I have been known to get to the airport at 4 a.m. for a 7 a.m. flight just so I won’t have to stand in the ticket line, or worse yet, the TSA line. It drives me crazy when they are not open yet. Why did they tell me to be early, just so I can wait around for them to show up?

How about these gems?

• “Oh, you couldn’t find the location of our store. That’s funny because everyone says that.”
• “Sorry, you can’t walk up and order at our drive-through window; it’s only for cars.” Even when the lobby is closed because of COVID rules?
• This is one of my personal favorite true stories from our own industry: “I’m sorry you had to return the boards because they were unacceptable. It will take us four weeks to replace them because our policy is to work on them after we have finished all the other boards we have to deliver.” Yikes!

The airlines, of course, are masters on the illogical one-sided policies—starting with their ridiculous zone boarding policies. Going back to my OCD, I hate not being the first one on a plane. That’s why I used to love knowing that if you order a seat in the back on the plane (coach, of course) you got to board first. Now, the new zoning rules make no sense to me. But the airlines now will let you be in the earlier zones for a small fee, which certainly makes “cents” for them.

What if you have gone to the trouble and expense of buying a first-class ticket and you still don’t get on first because of the people who need “extra time” rule? I once saw a woman with a walking cast get on with 12 teenagers because of that stupid rule. Even more, if you are so hampered to be allowed to board even before first-class passengers, then you are too hampered to get off first.

Anyway, airlines are just too easy—I could write a book about the stupidity of airline policies.

By now, you should get my point that to run a good business or organization you must prioritize common sense over policy. You must put customers before your own company. You are in business to serve your customers in the best way that you can. Sorry, Milton Friedman, but your theory that companies are in business to make money for their shareholders is as dead as you are. The companies that believe that tend to be the worst companies to do deal with and they are the ones who are in deep trouble.

To run a successful business today, you must put the customers first. You must dump those self-serving, internally focused policies that make everyone else hate you.

In our own industry, where we actually serve at the pleasure of our customers, this is more important than ever. No matter how sophisticated our technology becomes, we are still in business to build our customers’ products, exactly the way they want them, in the quantities they want them delivered, and exactly when they want them delivered.

We are in the problem-solving business. Our job is to make our customers’ lives as easy as possible. This means there is no room for stupid polices like the one that punishes them for rejecting and returning boards and by making them wait too long for the replacements.

It’s only common sense.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group.