Riffing Space

In the foreword to Crucial Conversations (I will tell you what I think when I am done reading it), Steven Covey writes:

I can see the wisdom in the assertion of the great historian Arnold Toynbee, who said that you can pretty well summarize all of history–not of society, but of institutions and people–in four words: Nothing fails like success. In other words, when a challenge in life is met by a response that is equal to it, you have success. But when the challenge moves to a higher level, the old, once successful response no longer works–it fails; thus, nothing fails like success.

It seems to me that there is much truth in this.

That’s how long my AT&T phone bill was this month. I recently purchased an iPhone (love it!!!) along with the AT&T plan that comes with it. Apparently, they not only log every call, but they also log every single data transfer. Every single one! So, as the title of this post suggests, the bill really is 47 pages long. What an incredible waste of paper, money, and resources to get this to my front porch. The humorous thing is that here are two titans of technology relying on an outdated, inefficient, and unnecessary billing system.

I love the idea of Salesforce.com! It is a perfect example of a “disruptor”, changing–practically overnight–the ways in which we think of CRM (customer relationship management), placing it on the web and offering a wonderfully scalable solution to growing businesses. And, of course, I love anything and anyone who challenges Microsoft.