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| Smelly Fridge |
Janet, the VP of Marketing for a startup is preparing for a meeting with a potential customer.
Brian, the CEO of the company, self-professed marketing genius, has assembled
the team in the conference room for a final review. Joe, the VP of Sales, opens the small
refrigerator to grab a bottle of water. The
air throughout the entire office is quickly filled with a horrid smell gagging
the three people in the conference room.
Back to back meetings are scheduled with customers for the next few
hours.
Panic sets
in. Suggestions are flying from all
three. Janet runs to her desk and comes
back with a bottle of air freshener and starts spraying everywhere. Brian and Joe are frantically fanning the air
using the handouts and their notebooks. Just
as Brian is catching his breath, his Admin announces the first customer is here
and she is heading down to get them.
In the
afternoon, Sunil, head of engineering walks in the same conference room. He opens the fridge to grab a bottle of water.
The air filled with the horrid smell again. As he has the door open and is figuring out
his options two more engineers walk in. After
a few colorful exclamations, they jump into action. One grabs the trashcan and removes the source
of the smell, leftover Chinese food from last marketing meeting. Water bottles
are removed. Sunil unplugs the fridge and with the help of his engineers, take
the fridge to the balcony for a proper cleaning and to air it out.
In my experience,
this story is indicative of how Engineering and Marketing look at a problem
from very different perspectives. In most successful companies, they manage to
respect their differences and work together in finding the right solution for a
problem. In some companies these differences
lead to animosity and power struggles. In most cases, common sense requires
besides looking at a problem from different perspectives, we should also
consider time, budget, and resources.
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