IDEAS

Good Intentions Are a Lousy Operating System

Birthdays! I love birthdays. I want the birthday boy or girl to feel recognized, loved and appreciated. Really. I even bought a stack of birthday cards so I’d be ready. Then, well, somehow we get to the day of and I haven’t sent one.

I know, I could look ahead on the first of every month, write all the cards, and put sticky notes on them telling me when to mail them. I could do them a week at a time. I could set a reminder on my calendar for three days ahead. I could probably come up with fourteen ways to make sure every birthday card arrives exactly on time. I haven’t. Yet.

What I did was solve one little piece of the problem. I made sure I had cards. Which is helpful. Having cards eliminates the moment when I remember someone’s birthday, realize I don’t have a card, add “buy birthday card” to a list somewhere, and then forget why I needed one. Progress. It just doesn’t get the card into the mailbox.

Here’s the problem: it doesn’t matter how much I care if I don’t do anything to demonstrate that care. I know I meant to send the card. I know I thought about your birthday two weeks ago. I know I saw something funny that reminded me of you and thought, I need to put that in her card. I know all of the lovely intentions that were floating around in my head. You don’t.

We judge ourselves by our intentions and other people by their behavior. Of course we do. We have access to our intentions. We don’t have access to each other’s.

Which means the people around me don’t experience how much I intended to care about them. They experience what I did. This is where birthdays start looking an awful lot like business.

Businesses have intentions, too. We intend to take great care of our customers, to check in. We intend to recognize employees, remember important details, and create an experience that makes people feel like they matter. We mean every bit of it (just see the mission, vision, and values statements). The customer still experiences what we actually do. That’s why good intentions are a lousy operating system.

If something matters to the experience we’re trying to create, intention isn’t enough. We have to figure out how that intention becomes something another person can actually experience. That’s where systems get fascinating to me. A good system helps me turn the intention into action.

In the case of birthday cards, I don’t need AI to write a heartfelt message to my friend and send it under my name. That may defeat the point. I need something to tap me on the shoulder three days earlier and say, “Hey Pam. You bought all those cards for a reason.”

Even better if it reminds me she’s taking that big trip next month, her son just graduated, or this is her first birthday since she started the new company. Give me what I need to remember. Then let me (okay, maybe help me) write the card.

That’s where I think technology can be incredibly useful. It doesn’t have to do the caring for me. It can help make sure the things I care about don’t disappear somewhere between I should do that and actually doing it.

Because nobody gets to experience the birthday card I intended to send. I have to put it in the mail.