Nuance Of Need

Ouch. The Beeb film can dramas that bomb.  Coldplay can release a rubbish single.  Phil Taylor can throw dodgy arrows.  Apple can make a product no-one buys.  Hey, even Obama can mis-read his autocue.  So we all come a cropper every now and then, but even so, I was beside myself that I made a schoolboy error the other day. I’ll paraphrase the (fairly informal) conversations:

Someone I’ve known a long time told me that another person whom they knew very well, but I did not, ‘really needs solution x’.

After an enjoyable amount of front talk with this third person, I ventured that their friend had told me that she ‘really needed solution x’.

What followed set me back almost irreversibly.

“That’s not right … I’m shocked they told you that … ”

Instead of climbing the ladder, I slid rapidly down the snake.  I’d committed so many sales crimes here.  And I acknowledged six immediately.

• discipline dropping during an informal chat
• not discussing things that cause the problem first
• no value of solution sought, let alone verified
• expecting to be able to take a short-cut
• one man’s need is another man’s irrelevance
• not establishing difference between what might be desirable and essential

Knuckles rapped, lesson learned, move on and remind myself ‘don’t ever do that again’.