Organizational Democracy

Last year, I was in a video store in a mall.  A girl came into the store.  She was about fourteen years old.  She looked for videos — comedies and romances, rated PG-13 or rated R.  She left, and about an hour later, I saw her walk back into the store, this time with her dad.  I’d seen him watching big-screen TVs in another store with football and action movies.  The dad walked his daughter over to the Kids video section, for 5-7 year olds.  She was bored and tried to drift away to the Foreign Films section. 

Because I’d seen her shop on her own in the grown-up section for comedies and romances, and I’d seen him watching action and football, I knew neither of them wanted to watch the little-kid Barbie movies. 

He was shopping not for what she wanted, or what he wanted.  He was shopping for what he thought she should watch.  Neither of them were happy, and they didn’t buy anything, because they weren’t shopping for what either of them wanted.

This sometimes happens in other relationships too.

• “Why is this store so messy?”
• Safari/discovery session: “What do you think about the internet?”
• Obviously observing
• Needs analysis: the customer experience
• Hub and spoke

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 9:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.