Not everything need to be ATMish

Transactions at ATMs have been ridiculously made simple. You push a few buttons, the money will come out. No need to say "thank you" or "please". You need not smile, nod your head or exchange pleasantries. Its ultra efficient. Walk in, press buttons, get your money. Done. No more no less.

The rapid digitisation, automation, customer self-service etc., have all made life very quick, efficient and void of any emotion. Not everything, every transaction, every interaction needs to be like an ATM transaction. We deserve more empathy. Transactions can be more humane, real and personal.

Lets build bridges and not tear them down. Next time when you run into a routine transaction with a human, please see whether you are doing an ATM transaction or interacting with a human.

PS: Inspired by a section titled "Building bridges and not burning them", from the beautiful book What to do when its your turn (and its always your turn), by one of my favourite authors Seth Godin. I usually copy-paste excerpts from the books that I read. However I recently read this post by Derek Sivers, who asks us to not quote, instead make it personal and tell our version. It sounds like an interesting idea and will try it. This was the first post.

What RamP's Reading: Jun'20

 

The Art of Meditation
Matthieu Ricard shows that practising meditation can change our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. He talks us through its theory, spirituality and practical aspects of deep contemplation and illustrates each stage of his teaching with examples.

The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence
The Little Big Things. In this age of economic recession and financial uncertainty, the patented Peters approach to business and management—no-nonsense, witty, down-to-earth, insightful—is more pertinent now than ever.

Measuring the User Experience
Measuring the User Experience provides the first single source of practical information to enable usability professionals and product developers to effectively measure the usability of any product by choosing the right metric, applying it, and effectively using the information it reveals. Authors Tullis and Albert organize dozens of metrics into six categories: performance, issues-based, self-reported, web navigation, derived, and behavioral/physiological.


Leadership the Hard Way: Why Leadership Can't Be Taught and How You Can Learn It Anyway
Leadership the Hard Way presents a method of living and working that can truly facilitate the learning of leadership. Their method shows how to go against the current, fight conventional wisdom, and embrace the unexpected. It is about trusting oneself and valuing intuition, principles, and imagination as much as hard skills and analysis. Frohman combines his counterintuitive ideas with experiences from his own background?from escaping the Nazis as a child to becoming a leading innovator in the semiconductor industry?to show how readers can build their own leadership abilities. A leader?s values and personality, he ultimately reveals, are the only sure source of stability in a world of continuous change.