Two experiences today demonstrated to me the importance of seeing the big picture.

This morning I was trying to work at the Caribou Coffee I’m at every morning, except the WiFi wasn’t working. As I tried to connect to the WiFi, I overheard the shift manager speak with an employee for nearly two minutes about making sure the right-sized cups were placed in the right spot in their work area.

Once the manager finished talking cup location, I approached her for assistance with the WiFi. As soon as I said, “I’m having trouble with the WiFi,” she blurted out, “That’s an issue with the Internet service and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“I was just thinking you could reset the router,” I said, taken aback at her brusqueness.

“There’s nothing we can do,” she said again.

I walked back to my seat, had her refill my half-empty cup, and left.

This afternoon I read on Fast Company that an 18 year old has developed a tool that lets Twitter users quickly find people to follow with similar interests as their own, called FollowFormation. I go check it out.

I did what I needed to do and clicked “follow” to start following those with the interests I had selected, but nothing happened. I ended up waiting eight minutes and still, nothing happened. It seemed to me the application this 18 year old, named Brian Wong, had created wasn’t quite ready for primetime.

I went back to the Fast Company post and wrote:

Decent idea, except I’ve selected six categories w/ 10 people to follow per each and have been waiting 5 minutes for it to “get into formation,” yet nothing has happened. Perhaps you can select more than one, but selecting more than two breaks the app.

If you’re interested in social media, Web, tech, sports or entrepreneurship, my Twitter is http://twitter.com/nbarron.

As I’m leaving work today, I see Brian Wong has started following me on Twitter, and then e-mailed me to see if I was still having trouble with FollowFormation. In order to contact me via e-mail, he had to click through to Societrends from my Twitter profile and fill out the form on the blog. Not exactly manual labor, but more effort than a lot of people would extol to reach out to someone, especially if that someone had not spoken too kindly about something they had worked hard to create.

Yet Brian put forth the effort, and I gave FollowFormation a second try, which I wouldn’t have done had he not reached out to me. FollowFormation worked like a charm the second time around.

The Caribou manager had in front of her a daily customer with a problem. Even if she couldn’t help me, she should have at least taken more time to hear me out and then offer an explanation. Instead, she brushed me aside.

I plan to go back to this Caribou in the morning because I took the initiative to look up the phone number I need to call when having an issue with WiFi at a Caribou Coffee. I think this is probably a phone number the manager could have provided me. Instead, she seemed more focused on where coffee cups were placed.

These stories serve as reminders to all of us that good leaders and successful people are able to see the big picture, even when human nature may pull them in another direction. I gave Brian Wong every right to ignore me, or be curt with me, but he saw the big picture. He didn’t see an angry customer, he saw an opportunity.

In doing so, he gained a user and a fan. It’s people like Brian Wong who create the stuff I write about on Societrends. By reaching out to me, Wong has ensured at least one positive blog post, as well as an automatic connection to me for any future innovations he may unveil.

Brian Wong sees the big picture. Do you?

- Nick Barron, Green Buzz Agency Social Media Consultant

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