Author: alearningaday

Were you there when I needed you?

That’s the question a customer subconsciously asks about the customer service of a product or service they use. Ideally, the product would demand no customer service (e.g. Google) but in most cases, you do need help. Whether it’s via an FAQ, a forum, or via an email, live chat or phone helpline, they’d like to have it resolved immediately.

Outstanding customer service aims to answer that question with a resounding YES. They do 3 things very well –

1. They are available as and when their customers need them
2. When they are contacted, they respond enthusiastically to ease their customer’s pain
3. They make sure the feedback reaches their product teams so improvements can be made where possible

It’s the same question our co-workers, friends, and family ask us. Our co-workers want us to be accountable of any output we produce. And, if they needed us, they’d like us to be available, enthusiastic, and have an eye to train them to solve future issues themselves.

Are you around when your customers, co-workers, friends, and family need you?

On Babylonia, Pangali, Fibonacci, and paper money

This week’s learning is part 1 of an extensive 12 part series on The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson. Even though money and finance play a huge role in our lives, I didn’t really know much about financial history or understand the key building blocks of the global financial system. This is my attempt at synthesizing Niall Ferguson’s excellent book. I hope you find it as useful and as fascinating as I did.

We begin with the most obvious financial instrument – cash. Records of paper money first existed in Babylonia and the concept of interest is believed to have stemmed from the natural gain in livestock (a farmer’s cows gave birth..) over a period of time.

Europe, however, was still very backward in this regard thanks to its use of Roman numerals. This was until a young Italian mathematician named Fibonacci published a book after studying more advanced Arabic and Indian systems including decimals, exchange rates. While the Fibonacci sequence was the work of Pangali, an Indian mathematician, his work spread rapidly from Pisa and was adopted extensively in Venice, the trading hub.

Jews in Venice and around the continent began taking active part in the business of money lending because the bible forbade Christians from doing so. The Old Testament, however, had an ‘out clause’ which allowed Jews to lend money to non-Jews. Hence, the famous story of “The Merchant of Venice” with Shylock the Jew asking for the famous pound of flesh.

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Sketch by EB

Before we proceed, it is also important to understand 3 underlying conclusions from ‘The Ascent of Money’ –

1. Poverty is not a consequence of financiers stealing money from the poor but more the absence of a proper financial system for the needy to seek support from. Loan sharks in poor neighborhoods often charge interest rates of 11 million per cent per year. Financial systems are key to removing poverty..

2. Finance tends to amplify human behavior and our tendency to over react. The world is far from flat in terms of income distribution and there is a big reward to those who are financially literate.

3. There is nothing as hard to predict as boom and bust in finance. Finance has an evolutionary aspect to it – financial products keep coming into existence and only the fittest survive.

Wish you a happy weekend and happy week!

Intent

We had a great question in the comments of the post on Benjamin Zander’s reaction to failure “How Fascinating.”

The commenter felt the bullish optimism could easily come off as sarcastic.

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I agree. It can.

That said, if the intent is right, it rarely goes wrong. We have powerful sensory systems that detect intent very quickly. It’s these systems that alert us when we feel someone is not being genuine or when someone is bull shitting us. Only the greatest con men manage to complete deceive us and these days, it’s hard to be a con man for long because your reputation can be broken with one tweet that goes viral.

If your intent is aligned with what you think, feel, say and do.. it shows.

Fierce resistance is natural

Every time I face change, my first reaction is fierce internal resistance – “I wish things could be the same. I don’t want to things to change.”

But, the best things that have happened to me have happened after I’ve switched sides in the fierce internal battle. Resistance, like the instinct to procrastinate, is just one of those things that exists to be overcome. Expect it, destroy it, and be done with it. It’s the right thing to do. Make it habitual.

Change is going to happen anyway. You are better off if you embrace it.

Standing and outdoors

In a wonderful 3 minute video, ASAP Science illustrates he importance of going outdoor from time to time. It isn’t ground breaking or revolutionary. Simple things are always simple. We all know the importance of exercise – doing it is a different matter.

The second covers a topic close to my heart – sitting. We spend too much time sitting and it’s harmful for our health. I spent many hours one weekend hacking together a standing desk at home in London 1 year or so back. Now that I’ve moved back to Singapore, I’ve realized how much I miss it. I tried checking in at the Ikea here for it and it was an exasperating experience. No one understood what a standing desk was and they were extremely unhelpful with hacking anything together. It was late in the night, I was low on willpower, and I just got myself a normal sitting desk.

A standing desk is unquestionably good for us. Why, then, is it so hard to find? And how can we fix it?

For now, I just hope every one of you will take this idea with you when you go furniture shopping next and make it a point to ask the manager of the store about a standing desk. Perhaps we’ll make a dent in the system soon enough..