Three cheers for Michael Dell who announced at the Consumer Electronics Show "Plant A Tree for Me," a first-of-its-kind global carbon-neutral initiative that plants trees for customers to offset the carbon impact of electricity required to power their systems.

While Dell’s commitment to environment and energy efficiency -- especially encouraging customer action for positive impact -- is admirable, I can't help but wonder if part of the motivation is to offset the company's mishandling of customer service issues that exploded in the blogosphere last year.

"If you ask people to tell you what problems they have in measuring liquids, they may tell you the glass gets hot, it may break, etc., says Alex Lee, President of Oxo International, creators of one of my personal favorite kitchen tools: the angled measuring cup.

"If you ask them to show you, you witness a highly inefficient process that they wouldn't tell you about because it's the norm."

This NPR interview with Lee teaches two important lessons:

• to Think Different(ly): no wonder Apple feels the love because their products and packaging, too, embody this brand promise;  and
• that finding the problem is "70% of the way there," says Lee