COMMON SENSE - THE UNCOMMON VIRTUE

A foolish king complained that the rough ground hurts his feet so he ordered the whole country to be carpeted.

The court jester laughed when the king told him about his order. "What an absolutely crazy idea, your majesty", he smiled, "why carpet the whole country? Just cut two pads and protect your feet". Problem is never a problem our reaction to the problem is the real problem.

This reminds me of a discussion that took place in a board meeting of a FMCG conglomerate. The sales of their toothpaste brand was steady and there was no growth, the market had reached a saturation point. The team was discussing ways to improve sales. All sorts of suggestions came such as free gifts, price reduction, increasing advertising spending etc etc. But none of these were convincing as the firm was already doing all of these promotional activities.

A junior in the marketing department came up with ideas. He suggested to start a campaign to make people believe that brushing teeth once a day is not enough, they need to brush twice a day to ensure good oral health. This would increase the tooth paste consumption and in turn sales of the firm.

The other suggestion was to increase the diameter of the toothpaste opening by 0.25mm, this would make sure that every time a consumer used the paste, the amount of paste consumed would be more, as more quantity of paste would come of bigger opening. The firm adopted these suggestions and within short time, the firm’s sales zoomed up.

The ethical dimension of the solutions are debatable. I am not discussing the ethical issues, what I am interested is the use of common sense to approach the issues.

Remember, common sense is the sixth sense. Solution to problems need not be complicated and may be available very easily, provided we use of this sixth sense. 

Never react in a haste to the problem, there is a solution to every problem.

Problem is never a problem our reaction to the problem is the real problem.

Dr. Sushant Joshi