The impact of 5 minutes of listening….

Aghhh

 

In 1997 I’m teaching a course on our product. It was a tool that allowed insurance brokers to manager their clients. We had integrated office into it. So I explain the integration of excel and one lady is clearly annoyed and starts to complain about excel and how her life was so much easier before she had to use excel.
It’s almost time for a break, so I say lets take a break now and you show me what you need to do with excel and why it’s such a bad tool.

Glad that someone finally listens to her, she opens excel and puts in 10 numbers and then gets her calculator out of her pocket, adds the numbers together and puts the result below the 10 numbers. 
She had been forced to use Excel already for a year or 2. She had been complaining all the time. And no one took the time to listen to her and explain that excel could do the calculation for her. When I showed her that excel could do that, she looked at me with a look I never will forget. A combination of pure ecstasy that the tool could help her and even more anger that no one ever showed her that. 

>> if you use a tool, yet keep working as before and don’t get the explanation of why and how, a new tool won’t help you much.

And this lady? She took a one week course in Excel, became a big Excel fan and eventually the biggest supporter inside her own company. 

All because of 5 minute of listening to her. 

This is why I try to keep listening to the people in the companies that are “ASKED” to go agile…