Today, I braved the freezing cold to read at a cafe. Only these weekend trips to a cafe can redeem an otherwise “slacker” weekend of leisure. After all, there are no beds in a cafe, and without opening a laptop or reading a book, you feel completely out of place.
Besides taking in the cafe’s background music, the chatter of the crowd acts like ambient noise that helps me focus. Of course, sometimes my attention accidentally wanders to other people’s conversations. Today’s topic stems from the thoughts sparked by one such conversation—an apartment landlord training a new employee.
After briefly introducing the scope of work responsibilities, the landlord shared a secret trick for retaining tenants: on holidays like Christmas, give female tenants flowers and peace apples, and give male tenants two packs of Furongwang cigarettes and peace apples. Although buying bouquets and apples at a markup during Christmas might temporarily feel over budget, in the long run, the revenue generated from lease renewals and tenant referrals will far exceed the value of the gifts.
Most apartment landlords probably only care about collecting rent and basic property maintenance, making holiday gift-giving quite optional. Furthermore, this landlord chose quality-guaranteed brands for bathroom toiletries and common-area cleaning supplies. It’s clear that this owner truly cares about improving the tenant experience and running their business well. Here’s wishing this landlord a thriving business!
In fact, the workplace is quite similar. To stand out among colleagues performing homogenized work, fulfilling your core job duties is just the baseline for staying with the company. You need to think more about how to deliver surprises to yourself, the company, and the manager evaluating your performance. I am re-reading Steve Jobs for the third time. In it, Steve Jobs brought surprises to the audience and consumers during his 1984 keynote and every presentation after returning to Apple, thereby fostering consumer recognition of the brand and reliance on the ecosystem it built.
I believe a so-called “surprise” comes from going a step further in thinking and action beyond doing your core job. For example, if assigned to develop Requirement A, on top of completing the development task for Requirement A, you model the commonalities across various requirements so that when the next requirement comes along, it only takes a configuration change to complete, significantly reducing development costs. Pair that with numerical metrics in your summary, and it will definitely give people a sense of “surprise.” Of course, one shouldn’t go to extremes and cause an incident that turns it into a “fright.”
Beyond the workplace, personal life also needs some “surprises” (written as “small, certain happinesses”). Every step of accumulation, reflection, improvement, and growth is actually a “surprise” to oneself.
