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I should have learned at a very young age. I was about 6 years old and my mother called out to my older step-sister and I, “First one to get here gets a surprise!” I got very excited at this news. My step-sister, Zanetta, just rolled her eyes and said, “She’s just going to tell you to take out the trash.” I had a million thoughts running through my head: I have to watch Zanetta close because she may take off and beat me there, my mom wouldn’t really do something that low down would she, I have to win, I wonder if the surprise is candy. As these thoughts raced through my head I decided there was no way my mom would play such a cruel joke. I took off running,sure that I was going to beat Zanetta, and win the glorious prize. Sure enough I got there first and my mom said, “Suprise, you get to take out the trash!” I couldn’t believe what just happened, and to this day I wonder how Zanetta knew the surprise was the trash.


Now I’m all grown up, or at least partially grown up, and I’ve just started to realize I need to pay more attention to what the prize is. To be more precise, I need to pay more attention to what game I’m playing and what I’m going to get out of it. Sometimes, O.K. often, I get caught up in the desire to win and then I lose sight of the prize. I could be playing for a bag of trash, but not even know it because all I want is to beat the other guy. I think I need to design a process here. Something like, when I notice myself engaging in a game, stop and look at what I’m playing for. If I’m playing just to say I win, then I should examine if it is worth all of the energy it will take to win. Does anyone out there every feel this way or have any suggestions on how they handle it?

We drove up to Springfield to get Big Blue serviced, and while waiting we walked up the street to grab a bite. The sign caught our eye, nice black letters on yellow, very readable. It sounded a little like the FSBO scene that’s gotten recent attention. It wasn’t instantly readable that the logo was a website address, but we got the idea. We looked closer and found that 1. a car seller drives up to the lot, 2. inputs his VIN number at the self-service kiosk, 3. enters a price and prints a window decal, 4. goes to the photo bay to shoot multiple pix, 5. parks in an assigned space, and 6. waits for buyers to find the car at the lot or on the website and contact the seller to haggle. AutoSaleByOwners.com charges a $100.00 registration fee (Act now and they’ll waive it!) and $35.00 per week to park in the lot.

To us, it seems like there is some sort of good idea here, but that the Process Design isn’t quite right. We’d suggest drop the parking lot and weekly fee, do just a one camera attached to the kiosk panning shot of the car, and let people register online with there own pictures. Any other suggestions about how to make this work better?