Crash course

Today and tomorrow I’m in an in-house marketing class, taught by professors from the Kellogg School of Business. It’s on value propositions.

Ordinarily I’d be wired at the prospect, but I have to say that, given the way things are run in my department, a “value proposition” is whatever supports the decision that was already made to develop an application, for whatever crack-brained reason senior management or the World's Greatest Expert devised. And whatever best practices I might learn in these two days, I have no expectation that I’ll be able to apply them.

I know this because last fall I took a different two-day course, in empathy-based customer research. It was energizing, really resonated with my experiences. But I realized that not only would these principles and procedures never be put into practice in my business division, they wouldn’t be used in any division.

There was no one among the 40 or so students with a title above manager. If the company were really interested in such things, there's be directors, GMs and other assorted senior management there soaking it up.

Still, it’s good to see how things might be, in hope that I might someday work in a place that values them.

Besides—it gets me out of proximity of the WGE for two days.