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@binhonglee
Spiral of Self Fulfilling Prophecy
I recently called this restaurant to place an order ahead of time so I can arrive and pick the order up timely. However, every time I call they'd pick it up, ask me to hold, then only 5 - 7 minutes later someone would talk to me.
Thread...
While waiting, I started to think about why would a restaurant put "taking an order over phone" at such a low priority. Obviously I don't know the inner workings of the restaurant and I've never operated a restaurant myself so these are all pure speculations.
I figured maybe it's because the volume of phone call is low so the incentive of improving the process is low. But then, what if the volume is only low because the customers are "trained" (with bad experiences) to not place order over phone?
less calls -> less sale volume -> lower priority -> bad experience -> less calls
You get the idea. It "could" go the other way too (until it reaches the point of diminishing return).
PS: I say "could" because we don't know. This could also be peak number of calls, who know?
In that case, this sounds like self-fulfilling prophecy. By assuming low value, you put low emphasis on something, and in return got low value (which you'd then proudly point at it and say "I told you so").
"Most of the time, you either put in 100% of the effort to get 100% of the result or anything less for 0%. When something doesn't work out, people claim that they know it wouldn't work out so they put in less effort. Of course it didn't, you didn't actually tried meaningfully."
I put that in quotes because I remember hearing someone said this to my mum when I was much younger (like in my teens) and thought it was interesting.
(Note: I think this person was trying to get my mum to join their MLM so I won't get into the weeds of it.)
Maybe they were quoting someone else, I wouldn't know, but it stuck with me enough that I still think about things like this sometimes. (The conversation was also in Mandarin so I roughly translated that quote.)
Did I fail because I didn't try hard enough or because I focus on the wrong stuff? It's sometimes hard to tell without actually fail first. Maybe next time when approaching a problem, don't go with a predetermined failure in mind. Give it a shot. Who knows if it'll actually work.
That said, I'm not saying you should just go around and be like "well I haven't fail yet, maybe you sucked". It's also important to not be egoistic and think you're *that* much different than everyone else. Ask for advice and learn how others have attempted to solve the problem.