Certainly, technology has its place and has made many things easier, but there are times when low-tech is the best option. Such was the case with a simple page-a-day calendar that showed the date by which someone was eligible to purchase alcohol. It was the perfect format for a small business and accomplished the job without much expense or implementation issues.
Before you reach for a high-tech solution, consider whether other methods may serve your needs. Low-tech may be high-value.
Ever wonder if anything good came from COVID? Well, here’s something that did.
During the pandemic, artist Hercule VanWolfwinkle drew some silly pet portraits and shared them with his mates on social media. It was designed to make them smile during a dark time, and he thought it would be the end of it.
But it wasn’t. Demonstrating the best of what social media can do, the drawings spread — and spread. He decided to accept donations for his drawings to support two charities that serve the homeless and their pets, setting an ambitious goal of 299 pounds. He has now raised 500,000 pounds from 30,000 donors and has received 80,000 portrait requests, all from “rubbish” drawings he shared just to bring a laugh to some friends.
Never underestimate the difference one person can make. Social media can amplify the good as well as the bad and help people turn “a jokey comment” into a major fundraising effort. What can you do with it?
Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, and it brought back memories of my visit to the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. It’s one of the most powerful and moving places I’ve visited, as it makes the horrors of the events feel as real as possible. I specifically remember a huge pile of shoes, each representing a person who lost their lives in the atrocities.
When people think about the Holocaust, many think of the gas chambers. Certainly, they were the culmination, but the annihilation did not start there. According to the World Jewish Congress, the Holocaust began with exclusion, indifference, and silence.
It’s that way with everything, both good and bad: we remember the final outcome and tend to forget all the little steps that led us there. All the decisions, actions, and inactions, those who spoke up and those voices that remained quiet. Every result is the culmination of a series of events that influence where things end up.
Commit to contributing early in the process rather than hoping someone else will represent your views or steer things in a favorable direction. It’s up to you to make a difference before the outcome is inevitable.
If you need proof that little things can add up to make a big impact, look no further than the US Postal Service’s semipostal stamps. Four designs carry a 12-cent surcharge, with the additional revenue dedicated to the causes the stamps support. Since their inception in 1998, the stamps have raised $112 million for research and preservation.
Semipostal stamps include Breast Cancer Research (1.1 billion stamps sold!), Save the Vanishing Species, Healing PTSD, and Alzheimer’s Research. People don’t seem to mind paying the surcharge, and enough people have done it to make a significant contribution to the associated causes.
The same principle applies to the “rounding up” of purchases at the register or to donation boxes for customers to toss in their spare change. People don’t mind paying a few additional cents, but the volume adds up to a meaningful amount.
Instead of thinking big, if you can involve enough transactions, maybe your best path is to think small.
I watched as the FedEx truck snaked its way up my street — driving the length of one house and stopping, driving past a few more and stopping, and repeating the pattern most of the block.
At first, it seemed silly that the delivery person would bother to drive such small distances, but soon I realized that she had covered the half-mile, and had she walked it would have been arduous to carry packages that far — and time-consuming to walk back to her starting point.
Much of what we do in life is like that FedEx driver. We think that we’re just taking small steps and that they don’t/won’t amount to much, but in the end, it’s how all the goals are achieved. Instead of becoming overwhelmed by the length of your journey, deliver one package to one house, and drive a bit more up the street. One task at a time.
Originally published in modified form on December 8, 2021
I was part of a class action settlement involving the Park Mobile app. My portion of the payout: 25 cents.
Most of the work to provide my settlement was undoubtedly done electronically — import the users, pro-rate their expenditures vs. total fine, email me with the results, payout through a credit on the app and not cash — but multiply that by thousands of users and it still had cost and effort involved.
Whether it be from a refund, settlement, rebate, or return, it seems to be a waste of resources to process out these small amounts. Would anyone be upset if there was a policy that small amounts were paid to one charity or foundation instead of to the individual? It means nothing to me, yet 25 cents multiplied by thousands could have an impact.
Maybe there can’t be a universal standard or one beneficiary that would appease most, but if you deal in such transactions, perhaps you can create a practice that works for your organization. Any unclaimed found items are donated after X days. Any refunds under $X amount are not paid out. Any amounts due under $X are forgiven. Let’s put our energy into the big stuff instead.
In the Olympics, there is a speaker in each lane of the track, allowing runners to simultaneously hear the starting pistol. You wouldn’t think that it would make a difference, but it takes sound .008 seconds to travel from lane 4 to lane 7. The runner in lane 7 (Noah Lyles) won by .005 seconds over the second-place finisher who started in lane 4. Without the addition of speakers to make the race equitable, Lyles would have lost.
We often think that we have provided our volunteers or employees with the tools they need to do their jobs, but I wonder if we consider what they really need to be successful. Are there equivalents to block speakers that would make a difference in their output? Have we given each member what they need to achieve their best?
Ask your people what tools would help them become more successful, and create ways for others to share what works for them. The difference in the Olympics is minuscule, but in the office, variances can be great.
Today is the 24th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I remember them like it was yesterday, perhaps because I visited the 9/11 site while it was still smoldering, have been to the 9/11 Museum, and last summer, visited the memorial site at Shanksville, PA. All the images and artifacts sear into your brain and make the horror very real.
Shanksville played an important role in the investigation because it was a contained and unfiltered site. Unlike in New York or DC, where remains of the plane and its contents were mingled with thousands of other items from the buildings, the plane in Pennsylvania went down in an isolated field, allowing the FBI to know that everything they found was from the plane or a passenger.
And amid that pulverized debris, in the ashes of what was left from a jetliner crashing, upside down, at 550 miles an hour — was a credit card. Somehow, the card was sucked out of the plane’s cockpit before it exploded, and it fell to the ground mostly unscathed. That card happened to belong to a Mr. Ziad Jarrah, one of the hijackers. This discovery was a key piece of evidence that allowed investigators to follow the money and track the source of the heinous act.
Never forget 9/11 — or that little things can have a big impact.
In a small town about an hour’s drive from major big-box retailers, an entrepreneur recognized a gap in the availability of pet supplies. The city probably couldn’t support a full store, so she opened a retail space in a permanent trailer that offers residents an ample selection of food, toys, and accessories. Judging by the traffic when we were there, the idea is a hit.
It’s a reminder that there is a large space between all or nothing. You can make progress in small increments, testing out a concept before you go all in, or by offering a reduced version of the grandiose plan. The key is to try something and refine from there.
The dogs of Three Oaks are very glad the trailer is there. What audience is waiting for you to take the next step?
During the night, I was bitten by a mosquito. I heard it, then I felt it, and once that happened, I could concentrate on nothing else. That stupid little itch kept me awake for too long before I lumbered out of my cozy bed to apply anti-itch spray. I would have been better off getting up right away, but I foolishly thought I could ignore it. Of course, the more I tried to do that, the more annoying it became.
And it’s not just mosquito bites that are like this. The keyboard key that sticks makes us growl every time. The squeak on the door causes us to grimace each time we open it. The overflowing file drawer never fails to create frustration when we try to cram one more document into it. The list goes on.
Instead of letting minor annoyances dominate our thoughts, it’s better to address them right away, even when they seem like small matters. Most of the time, annoyances continue to annoy.
