Don't make change for changes sake

A lot of my thoughts and therefore posts lately focus on customer care, quality, attention to detail and good service. I am not sure why all of this seems to be getting worse as I mature (I surely hope I am not sounding like my mother!) but seriously, please explain to me WHY a brand or service must change a product if the one you have is not only good, pleasing your clients and generating revenue.

The biggest case in point happened a while back when Coke tried to do away with classic Coke. All of you who are old enough to remember that it cause havoc for Coke, and soon, many $ millions later, Coke classic returned.

I experienced the same constant "innovation" of the weight loss approach at Weight Watchers. The feeling was, if there as not a new and better way to track what you ate and how you ate it, Weight Watchers would lose their customer base. I was fortunate enough to have a conversation with Jean Nidetch, the wonderful woman who founded Weight Watchers in the 1960's. Her comment was "I don't understand all these points and how it works. When I started the company, there was a list of foods you could eat and ones you could avoid. It was easy! And it worked. Now it's so hard!"

Instead of creating new opportunities, and identifying potential risks, (for example, the gazillion FREE diet apps that were taking over the world, Weight Watchers spent $ millions on a new "innovation" every 4 years. Today, if it weren't for Oprah, Weight Watchers would rapidly become a thing of the past.

Take a look at the i-Phone 7 - one hole for both headset and charger. The conversation I had with Apple about it was, "well, I can't tell you exactly why we did it because it is top secret, but believe me, we have many things planned and that is why there is now only one hole." And I say to that, "Steve Jobs, you are gone too soon."

So what is the point of this post? Nothing except my own personal rant about change for no other reason than to change, to make it appear as though it is something better has taken place, when in fact, it's a ruse to try and make the public think something awesome is going on.

My father, Edwin S. Shecter (a founder of the U.S. Quality movement) used to say, "if it ain't broke, make it better." To companies out there reading this post, please don't fix it if making it better takes away the things we love about it now.