jewellery

All relationships benefit from intentional reflection and corresponding action. No friendship thrives under neglect. No marriage thrives under complacency.

The word “intentional” is doing a lot of work here. It’s easy to buy jewellery. If your wife is a jewellery person, the occasional gift of earrings will probably improve your marriage. But if your wife isn’t a jewellery person, you can only buy her so many earrings before the gesture starts to have the opposite effect. It reveals to her that you haven’t taken the time to reflect on what she would actually appreciate in a gift. That the gesture is just a gesture. A rote and performative action. It will increasingly feel like an insult.

You get what you put in.

Metaphors are dangerous things. Carried too far, they can lead to incorrect conclusions.

So don’t read into the marriage metaphor too much here. The point is that you might think you’re doing the right things in your marketing, sales process, and implementation stages - but unless you’ve put in the necessary effort to really, truly understand the unique needs of your customers and the unique value of your solutions, you might be blowing money on jewellery when what your customers really want is some flowers and a day to themselves at the spa.