A month ago, I was spending the weekend with family in Long Island, NY. I woke up in the morning, to find that the weatherman was wrong and the flurries we were expecting turned into an overnight snowstorm. The sidewalk and driveway, car included, were buried under a foot and a half of snow.
I always enjoy Winter, the white powder, the look of purity, and the calm that comes with heavy snowfall. While enjoying my morning coffee, I was watching my uncle clearing the snow around my car and sidewalk using his 212cc engine red snowblower, managing to dig my car out and plowing a path in no time. Sitting next to the window, I also watched his neighbor, Mr. K., grabbing an old snow shovel and attacking the white monster manually. With cold air on his skin and looking through the cloud that was his breath, he plunged his shovel into the snow. Starting with the front door, working his way to the porch and stairs. He was moving, singing, and sweating and it seemed that he had a great time and got a good workout at the same time. Both men started the work simultaneously. While my uncle was done after a bit less than one hour, Mr. K. was still shoveling when his wife called him in for lunch. I was in shock, he had dug for hours and it seemed like all that work had been done, only made a dent in the snow.
At lunch, I asked my uncle about his neighbor and why he’s not using a more technologically advanced approach (e.g. snowblower) to tackle this time-consuming and redundant task of clearing a path in the winter months. The answer was that Mr. K. feels the need to do all the work personally to ensure the job was done.
Yesterday, I had a meeting with a mid-size media agency, who I approached concerning our automation and optimization software for Digital Advertisement. To my surprise, I was introduced to Mr. K. who is the CMO of the company!!!
I was in a pickle. What should I do? On the one hand, I know that AdScale’s automation software could assist Mr. K and his employees to free up important time and achieve better results. On the other hand, from my experience last month, Mr. K. is the kind of man who shovels snow manually even so that there are better and more efficient ways available.
As you can imagine – that was a hard sell.
Don’t be Mr. K.