Grin of the Cheshire Cat

What will be your customer's memory of you?“It [the Cheshire Cat] vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.” – Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)I never ask the graduates of Wizard Academy, “What could we have done differently? How might we improve?” To do so would be to ask them to search their memories for disappointing moments. These are not the images I want to cement in their minds. Instead, I ask, “What was your favorite moment during your time with us?” This causes the students to recall each of the high-impact moments during their time on campus and relive those moments in their mind. It doesn’t matter what they choose as their favorite, I just want to flood their minds with happy memories.The grin will remain after the rest of it is gone.It is important to control the Last Mental Image (LMI.) What procedures do you employ to make sure your customer has a positive LMI of their experience with you?Today the world is forming its LMI of Michael Jackson. So far, the stories and comments have centered on his impact as a performer and his contributions to music. The foibles and flaws that interested us yesterday no longer seem important. Michael Jackson is dead and the world seems a tiny bit smaller.Want to hear something bizarre? A few hours before Michael Jackson died, I woke in the night with an itch in my brain. The scratching of that itch became the subject of a rabbit hole far deeper than any I had ever created. When I finally realized the depth of the project I had begun, I said, “No one will ever click to even the halfway point. This is going to be the rabbit hole to China.”The itch in my brain made a lot more sense when I heard Michael Jackson had died.He and I were exactly the same age.Roy H. Williams