Obvious Adams Finds the Real Business Solution

Obvious Adams is a short story, first published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1916. Although the story is about his success in advertising, it was immediately apparent to me that Obvious Adam had something that all businesses need.

Adams would frustrate people when he spoke at the Advertising League meetings. People felt that everything he said everyone already knew. “He seemed to have a lot of people buffaloed.”

People did not understand why Adams was successful, since he was always stating the obvious. In fact, he was successful by doing just that, stating the obvious.

My favorite part of the story was when the president of his advertising agency asked Adams to figure out why only one of two stores that their client owned was successful. The client, the Monarch Hat Company had two stores in a large southern city large enough for both. The advertising dollars they spent helped the successful store, but did nothing for the poor performing store.

Obvious Adams was asked to travel to the city and try to figure out why the one store was struggling and the other thriving. The president had a hunch that there was something wrong and that if anyone could figure it out, Adams would.

After registering at his hotel, he found the first store within twenty minutes. “It was located on the corner of two prominent streets, with a prominent entrance and display windows on both streets. The other store he found 45 minutes later, right on Market Street, the main retail-store street of the city, also located on a corner. But Adams was surprised when he found the store to discover that he had passed it three times while he was looking for it!”

He immediately thought this must be the unprofitable store. He counted the number of people passing by each store, drew diagrams and spent the evening studying the situation. Everything supported his theory. He packed his bags and came back to the agency with the “obvious” answer.

The hat company, executives and all could not figure out real business problem. Did any of them go out on the streets and approach the stores as Adam’s did? No. They were not looking for the obvious problem.

How many times do we try to solve a problem as the obvious solution eludes us? We don’t even know, do we? Technological advances have only made this worse. We have all the tools, but lack the ability to look at a problem and find something obvious, something simple.

I recommend that you add Obvious Adams to your list of required reads. In an age where we deal with complex systems, we need to challenge ourselves to look for simpler solutions.