Sometimes good service is to tell to the customer they are not right?

I was recently at US on a business trip. At hotel restaurant I put the bill to my room bill. It was my first day there and I didn't remember my room number correctly, which I didn't notice. Then few minutes later the waiter came back being really sorry that She had made some mistake and I need to sign the thing again. I wondered a bit with the bill but eventually noticed that, the room number was actually the issue there.

For me, as a European and Finn, that's a bad service. I would have been much more pleased if the waiter would have just come to say, that she thinks that I may have entered the wrong number.

At the trip there was even a second similar thing that happened. I'm pretty sure I was at the wrong place and others had to make changes due to me, but others just kept telling, it was their fault.

I admire polite honesty on a customer service more than a fake pleasing. There's enough faking in the world.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel C. Dennett

Evolution theory and all the things related to it, has been an interest for me. This time I wanted to dig deeper and read Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel C. Dennett. It is highly appreciated book with good reviews.   It was a book I wanted to check out.

I had assumptions that this book dives in to the subject deep, but still I got amazed how deep it went. It started from old philosophic thoughts and then worked its way to Darwin and to latest thoughts in 1990's. All the topics were covered thoroughly with scientific way of comparing things from all perspectives.

Book covers subjects from the beginning of the whole universe to meme's. It talks about God and evolution theory. It covers philosophical thoughts. There is almost anything one can think that affect Darwin's original thoughts.

As an ordinary, non biology or philosophy expert, I was sometimes overwhelmed about all the information there was. Even tough sometimes I wasn't able to understand everything, I just kept going and tried to catch up later on.

I did enjoy the book. It was pretty hard to read, but the contents were such a valuable and brilliant, that it turned the book to positive experience. I did learn a lot during this book. It raised a lots of thoughts all the time I was reading it. For sure this wasn't the last book about these subjects I read. I need to know more sometimes.

I can recommend this book to people who are genuinely interested on Evolution theory, philosophy or biology overall. Without this interest, book might get too hard to read and follow. It is an excellent book, but pretty laborious to read. 

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review - This is Service Design Thinking

Service Design has been an interesting topic for me for a some time. Finally I wanted to get more understanding about it and its basic. That's the reason I got my hands on a book that was saying to be "the book" for service design -This is Service Design Thinking by Marc Stickdorn and Jakob Schneider.

I was super excited to start reading about the wonderful world of service design. I read and read and read and became really bored. First hundred pages of the book the authors are trying to say WE ARE IMPORTANT. I knew it already, designing good services is important and doing it structured way with service design must be even more important. After this start, I wasn't anymore really sure. If someone needs to state in so many different ways that they are important, maybe they really are not.

In the middle section book got better. It told in short articles, bit like blog posts, methods to do service design. Unfortunately these were quite simplistic and didn't dig into most of those properly. If you think of a book like Gamestorming, that's about ten times more useful for these methods than this book.

My hopes was for the last section of the book, examples of service design. As the whole book, that turned out to be a disappointment too. Examples were not really interesting and the way those were presented was quite dull. In one of the examples the designed service never got in to use, but they stated project was still a success. I think the exact opposite. Service which was designed but never got live, is a failure, real big failure.

Book was planned by top service designers and that might have been that the reading experience also failed. They tried in top of everything to renew the concept of a book with coloring, icons and lines going here and there. That made the book complex to read. Maybe there would not have been need to renew a such a working concept that a book is.

I honestly don't recommend this book to anyone. I want to believe Service Design and the people behind service design. This book does no good to the practice. There must be better books about the subject than this one.

I don't think I learned anything about this book. At least not in the positive way. Do yourself a favor, mark this to the "no go" list.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review - Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows

I've been wanting to get in to a systems thinking for some time already. As I often do, I'll try to find the best book for the subject. With systems thinking, book from Donella H. Meadows seemed to be it. Thinking in Systems was written already in 2001, but it feels as fresh as any book.

Book starts from very basic systems and theory round those. Even though it goes to very basics, it's not dull and boring, but interesting way to look on familiar systems. Via these basic systems book explains the underlying theories behind systems thinking.

Thinking in Systems builds cleverly up from the basics to more complex systems and to theories around systems. It is quite easy to follow, but it requires thinking to keep up with system feedback loops and other things affecting systems.

What is funny about the systems theory in this book, is that everything is actually quite simple and easy to understand as a system, but then on the other hand, no one can really tell how complex systems will actually work. I think this is actually how the world works, no one can really certainly tell how changes in system will at the end turn out.

Book introduces common pitfalls with systems. Most of are the things that can be seen almost everyday. People overcompensate on problems or react too heavily on some things. Often the underlying logic of system is forgotten and people are will fix something that has no effect in the overall or will make things actually worse.

It was an excellent book and I recommend it to everyone. This book will help everyone understand more about the world we live in. I'm bit sad to know that not that many will actually read this book. Systems thinking is not the trendiest subject out there. That's a pity. You can be different and read it.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: Racing Weight by Matt Fitzgerald

Since my triathlon enthusiasm started I have been trying to get in to a lighter weight for better results. Losing weight has never been easy for me and with raising amount of training load, it has been even harder. That's the reason I got my hands in to a book from Matt Fitzgerald: Racing Weight.

Matt Fitzgerald is a sport nutritionist with a background of endurance sports, coaching endurance sports and working for food companies making products for endurance sports. For me that was background enough to prove he knows what he is talking about.

Book takes comprehensive, but simple enough approach to endurance nutrition. It talks through the basics of diets and different sources of nutrition. It quotes many studies from different points of view to diets and training. It also explains different trends in dieting and their pro's and con's.

Racing Weight ideology brings eating back to basics. It supports foods that are natural. It tells athletes to concentrate on quality of the food and then your own appetite.

Book offers simple methods to improve food quality. It recommends to think or even to calculate a bit what you are eating, but it still keeps things pretty simple. Book also offers good ways to manage your appetite and concentrate that you eat for real need of energy.

I loved the simplistic and naturalistic approach of the book. This type of methodology is not about trends or one truth about dieting. It is a comprehensive way to improve your diet and with that your racing weight. It will be easy to not lose weight or improve fat percentage after reading this book. This doesn't offer any magic tricks, but it makes you think of the elements what makes your body to lose or gain weight. For results that will last, that is essential.

I recommend this book even for the people who are not endurance sports enthusiastic. It gives so much good information to everyone about diets that it's valuable reading for all. It's easy and fun to read, so it's really for everyone

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen