In November 2015, I almost died of a kidney rupture and a lung infection. It was an experience that changed my outlook on life profoundly.

First of all, I decided to make as many beautiful memories as possible. By spending more quality time with my family, by exploring the world and by trying to craft wow-experiences for my clients – to have consumers and brands create beautiful memories together.

Secondly, I decided to not accept the horrible status quo of suboptimal relationships between companies and consumers anymore. Not as a consumer myself and certainly not as a professional. I started doing fewer meetings and more doings. Fewer powerpoints, more doing stuff. And even more than before, I obsessed about changing companies to be less about ads and more about acts.

I made a career out of it in which I try to learn about companies and their customers. And try to bridge the gaps between them.
By inspiring the companies to change.
By creating plans and strategies to bring this change into practice.
Through engaging and communicating this within these organizations.
Because I think we can and have to be better. We need to change to be less about ads and more about acts.

The difference is remarkably simple – it is in how you peel off the post-its.When you peel off the post-it vertically (like most people – me included – do instinctively), the post-its will curl up, stick less and fall off. However, when you peel off the post-it horizontally, it will stay in its place and wont curl. Again, yes, there is a right and a wrong way to do post-its.Then there are ‘wrong’ post-its. Lets put it this way: if you peel off cheap post-its from your local supply store the wrong, you’re sure to have them fall off. If you peel off better post-its the wrong way, there is a chance they will actually stick. It is always a great way to instantly know whether the facilitator bought the cheap knock-offs or the real deal: just peel off a post-it vertically and try and stick it to a wall.No sponsoring here, but for me, without a doubt, 3M post-its are the best. Never failed on my in all those years doing workshops.
… and then there’s the digital post-it, as used in whiteboarding tools like Mural and Miro for remote workshops. Although I do still like the feeling of having physical, tangible post-its in my hand and do appreciate the group dynamic that goes into the blood, sweet and tears of a productive workshop, there is clear value in remote workshops where you use digital post-its.

Because of the structure, workshops tend to go faster and with less noise. Captured ideas are digital, so easily captured, and re-used in the rest of the product design, innovation or customer experience process or in something as simple as a recap.There are always ways to improve your meeting design and facilitation skills. Even on the detailed level of something simple like post-its. There is a right way and a wrong way to use post-its. There are better post-its. And then there are the best (?!) post-its.

On subscriptions

Subscriptions are here to offer you something on frequent basis, without you having to think about it. Your morning briefing by The New York Times, your contact lenses subscription, your baby diaper subscription. And, with digital growing ever more, your digital content subscriptions. The imperative of a paid subscription service is pretty much to have a monthly payment leave your pocket and get into the pocket of the subscription service company from now until the end of time. That’s the whole game. It’s why there are entire services, message boards, social media threads, and advice columns devoted to helping you cancel. The business model is based on human nature: inertia. Companies count on you *not* doing anything and staying subscribed.

It is one of my may annoyances and something really tangible to talk about when discussing the subject of personalization. Instead of sending me more emails when you know me better, send me less emails because you know me better and know what I don’t want. Instead of retargeting me more when I bought more products on your site, retarget me less because you know that I don’t need anything.

Enter Netflix.One of the by-effects of subscription services is unhappy customers who have been paying for not using the service.How to avoid unhappy inactive users?Automatically unsubscribe Netflix members after a year of inactivity.

• Satisfaction
• PR value

Netflix is automatically canceling members who haven’t been watching

If you don’t watch anything on Netflix for a year after you join, the company will send you an email asking if you want to keep your membership. You’ll also get a message if you go two years without watching anything on Netflix at any point. If you write back to say, “Yes, please keep charging me for all these seasons of Friends reruns I’m ignoring” nothing changes. If you ask to cancel or don’t write back at all, Netflix automatically stops charging you. Change your mind within 10 months, and you can return to the service with all your settings intact, just as you left them when you deactivated.

Netflix announced this in a recent blog post by Eddy Wu, Product Innovation:You know that sinking feeling when you realize you signed up for something but haven’t used it in ages? At Netflix, the last thing we want is people paying for something they’re not using.

So we’re asking everyone who has not watched anything on Netflix for a year since they joined to confirm they want to keep their membership. And we’ll do the same for anyone who has stopped watching for more than two years. Members will start seeing these emails or in app notifications this week. If they don’t confirm that they want to keep subscribing, we’ll automatically cancel their subscription. If anyone changes their mind later, it’s really easy to restart Netflix. These inactive accounts represent less than half of one percent of our overall member base, only a few hundred thousand, and are already factored into our financial guidance.

We’ve always thought it should be easy to sign up and to cancel. So, as always, anyone who cancels their account and then rejoins within 10 months will still have their favorites, profiles, viewing preferences and account details just as they left them. In the meantime, we hope this new approach saves people some hard earned cash.

— Eddy Wu, Product InnovationYou could challenge Netflix on not going far enough in their pro-active service. Two years is a pretty long leash, especially given that the standard Netflix plan currently costs around $13 a month. That’s $312 plus tax by the time Netflix will notify you. In some cases the credit card tied to your account will expire before you hit two years, making this exercise merely a PR exercise for edge cases of edge cases. By Netflix’s own estimation, its nudge notification will only apply to one half of one percent of its users—a few hundred thousand people in all—which indicates that they’ve got room to tighten it up a little.

It would amazing when more companies would start doing this. Can you imagine your fitness subscription automatically stopping? Or one of those many digital tools (marketing automation, getting things done tools) you don’t use but still have a subscription of? Website domains you’re not using?

For some companies, this will be a challenge, but Spotify knows when you’re listening. Hulu knows what you’re watching. Amazon (Amazon Prime) knows the last time it shipped something to you. Digital subscription services know exactly how much you’re getting out of them. If the answer is “nothing” they should absolutely give you a tap on the shoulder and point you to the door. The choice to stay is still yours! But at least companies can remind you that the choice exists in the first place.

And if that is too difficult, please unsubscribe me from the email newsletters I’m not reading.

And stop targeting me with the ads I’m not clicking.

Simple as that. Don’t keep charging people for something they’re not using. Don’t bug people with things they don’t want.

Your thoughts?

Before, during and after

When you consider events as having a “before”, a “during” and an “after” (see the related model as well), each of these moments in time suffers their fair share of attention deprivation. People will turn up ill-prepared for big things in life, the “before”. They will not be fully present with their minds in the “now” (pretty much my whole travel blog is about that), the “during” and people will fail to learn from things that happened, the “after”. As wide-spread as this problem is, it also applies to meetings. And I’m guilty as charged. For most of my career, I have been ignoring the “after” part of the meetings (which sounds way cooler than it really is).

Reflection

Reflection is the first step in learning (see learning spiral or overview-insight-impact model). Taking a moment to breath, think back on what happened, what you saw, what you heard, what you thought, what you felt, helps to learn from the event and define actions. It also increases the change you will act upon the meeting, value the meeting and decide on if the meeting was necessary or necessary in that specific form in the first place.

Actions after reflecting on your meeting

This reflection might trigger a wide variety of actions. But some things I almost always act on:

• Filling out a quick reflection. I added a simple bottom part on my 1:1 templates that forces me to quickly reflect on the meeting and indicate the impact of the meeting and the mood of the meeting.
• Sending a quick recap of the meeting and follow-up actions. After the meeting, I will send a quick recap of the meeting, summarizing the key elements discussed and the key action points, making sure we’re on the same page and that agreed-upon actions get implemented.
• Input for the next meeting. I will keep my notes and use it while preparing for the next meeting.

Certainly not always, but it might trigger:

• Changing the frequency of the meeting.
• Changing the setup of the meeting.
• Changing my preparation before the meeting or actions during the meeting.
• Reviewing my meeting templates
• Follow-up with the person. It might well be that in reflection, I realised that I missed a specific remark from that person or did not act/follow up in the best possible way.

Turning reflecting on meetings into a habit

• During/after the meeting: I added a small bottom part to my meeting notes templates, like my 1:1 meeting template (also see example in this post) in which I leave room to reflect on the meeting: what are the key takeaways, learnings and next steps, what was the impact of the meeting and what was the mood of the meeting.
• After the meeting: To make sure I do reflect on meetings, I add 15min blocks of reflection time in between or after meetings.
• After the meeting: To make sure I do reflect on meetings, I usually add an extra block of time in my calendar at the end of the day to make sure I reflect on meetings of the day in any case and that I have plenty of time to send follow-up emails.

Conclusion – reflecting on meetings

When you’re spending such a large part of your working life in meetings, it makes sense to make the most out of them. Part of that is reflecting on the meeting. Carving out some time during and after the meeting to do so helps have better meetings but -above all- better actions as a result of the meeting.

Models and exercises I referred to in this post

These are the models and exercises I referred to in this post:

• Before-during-after model
• 1:1 template
• Learning spiral
• Overview-insight-impact

I bet I can save you money on your outbound shipping rates. And… If I can’t, I will buy you a pizza. Here’s why: Because is one of the world’s largest US marketplaces, we have two things going for us:
1. We work with gazillions of vendors.
2. We can pool our combined volume together and get amazing UPS, FedEx, USPS, and DHL rates.

That’s where the pizza comes in Because of those combined rates, we can pass along those shipping rates to our partners. There’s a dang good chance we can save you up to 35% on your existing shipping methods. So…want to take me up on the bet? Here’s the deal. Reply and tell me:
a) how many packages you ship each business day, and…
b) the average weight of your most common shipment, and…
c) what carrier are you shipping most with now?

I will do a quick rate check and send you a sample of our rates. If my rates aren’t lower than what you currently pay, I’ll send you a gift card good for a free pizza (no anchovies). Looking forward to hearing from you

Covered in pepperoni,
John
http://rateadvantage.tanga.com
John Trujillo
Senior Import/Export Representative
Tanga
25 S. Arizona Place, Suite 410
Chandler, AZ 85225

• Lower customer service volume
• Satisfaction

Technology has become such an integral part of our daily lives that when technology is not available, it causes big big problems. No wifi. Power outage. Cell phone provider that has a temporary issue. Instagram down. Cloud sync down. News websites unavailable. Etcetera. We are getting so used to technology just “working” that services being offline causes frustration, irritation and sometimes mild forms of panic, including media writing about services being down.

So, giving consumers and media insight or a way to check the status of key services helps them to give context to a potential outage and reduces customer service questions, media frenzies and uncertainties overall.

For long, Apple has been sharing the status of their key digital service on a dedicated web page. The Apple System Status page.

I guess the first time I can remember I consciously tried to validate a statement was when I was six years old. When I was six years old, my family (my brother Sem, my dad, my mom and I) were visiting Billund’s LEGO land park and were spending the week in a nearby holiday park. My parents had given me a bracelet with the address details of our holiday home and had explained that in the unlikely scenario that I would get lost in the park, I would be able to show it to other people who could help me find our home away from home back.

That would be my first deliberate act of validation. Sure, my parent’s plan was great in theory, but was it in practice? That must have been my line of thinking.

So at the first possible presented opportunity, I walked to a nearby home and proudly presented my bracelet to the local Danish lady who looked confused at first, but then brought me to my parents. A win-win. I had my validation. My parents were right.

It was enough to teach our kids the phone song.