Brand – Page 3 – The Consulting Artist

Principles of Work

There are two reasons for today’s post.

Reason #1

New Toy

I’ve been playing with something called Haiku Deck. It’s like PowerPoint, only simpler, primarily because it helps you get back to the idea of using a presentation more like a storyboard, or a backdrop, rather than a set of bullet point speaker notes (yawn!). I can’t be the only one who despairs when someone giving a talk uses their slides as an autocue? One of the things I love about Haiku Deck is you can enter keywords about your slides, and Haiku Deck will search a huge library of free and paid for images, to act as visual sparks for those keywords. I’m keen to share cool stuff I come cross, so why not head on over to Haiku Deck, register for an account and have a play.

Reason #2

Principles of Work

I’ve been asking people what it feels like to work with us. And I say us, because I frequently work with partners, and a lot of what I and we do is informed by many people. I wasn’t looking for company values as such, that feels too grown up, and too solid. Instead – what I’ve been looking for is a few principles, feelings perhaps, that help describe what you might expect when working with us, based on the experience of others. It’s developmental and adaptable, so what do you think is missing? What might you change? And if this idea is helpful to you, why not steal it and give it a go yourself?

Opportunity Cost

A couple of months ago I wrote about preparation, and some people’s unwillingness to invest in it. Bizarrely the same people who don’t want to pay for something to be done well, often still expect it to be delivered to a great standard.

On a related matter, I saw this meme on Facebook yesterday which brought a smile to my face. I hope you like it, and this may be the one and only time you see a cat here on the blog. Like a lot of these memes, this one is spreading fast and I know not from where it originated. If anyone knows the source, please tell me so I can credit it.

The example I shared previously, had it been accepted by me – would have turned an already tiny fee (sorry but I can’t bring myself to tell you how low the offer was) into something quite microscopic and definitely unprofitable, when spread across the time needed to prepare and deliver the work. If you run your own business, you’ll already have your own measures in place in order to check and test this kind of stuff. You do have those – don’t you…?

Somewhere in the mix, there is a point below which you not only devalue yourself and your service, but you also cost yourself other, more interesting and useful opportunities. And I think this often gets missed. I know it can be tempting to say, ‘what the hell, I’ll take the fee, it’s money in the bank’, and of course, it’s your choice, but I think that way, impoverishment lies. Working for peanuts can not only set a dangerous precedent for future work, it also starves you of time that you could be using to develop something of greater, and ideally mutual, value.

I guess the important word here is mutual. Ultimately if you’re happy being stiffed (or doing the stiffing), that’s fine. But if you believe your work is about reciprocity, about helping people including you, then the next time you’re offered work that isn’t profitable, don’t just think about the money – think about all the other, useful, productive things you could be doing with that time to build something really fantastic.

Curious to know what others think. Whether you be the buyer or the seller, is there such a thing as a win-win scenario?

Viagogo Vianono – Slight Reprise

Systems are funny things eh? I mean, you can wait weeks and weeks and weeks for a company to deliver on its promises, all because the system is broken and a manual intervention is required.

I’ve lost count of the number of times Viagogo has told Carole things like, ‘Your bank wouldn’t accept payment, we’ll have to do it manually which takes much longer’, and, ‘we’ve processed the refund it will be with you in the next fews days’.

In our frustration we’ve escalated our complaint to Viagogo’s CEO, who chose to remain silent. We’ve nagged Viagogo on Facebook and Twitter and all to no avail. False promises, more delays.

And so it came to pass that last Wednesday, Matthew Jeffery planted the seed of an idea about writing a song of complaint. Keira then provided the Viagogo Vianono hook and on Wednesday evening, my angry little tune appeared on Youtube.

What happened next? At sometime after 11pm that very same day Carole received a text saying the refund would be processed immediately. The following morning, a £334 refund appeared in our bank account.

That’s it then, the power of song finally prevailed, the system miraculously become unbroken and we got our money back.

Carole’s immediate response was: I eventually received good customer service, but it took a song to get it!

To which I replied: I’m sorry but I don’t agree that you got good service. The simple fact that Viagogo were able to settle this so promptly as the intensity grew, shows me that all their previous delays were unnecessary. They could and should have refunded you weeks ago. Mind you, if they had then we wouldn’t have this blistering tune!

And Carole responded: Well I do agree that up until yesterday I’d had worse than no customer service. I’d had a whole lot of empty promises. However I’m now of the opinion that some of the people I spoke to were well intentioned. They were just hung out to dry by their colleagues, supervisors and managers alike. Having done that job years ago for a company with a with a similarly screw you attitude I know what that feels like. If ever a company needed some ‘stop doing dumb things to customers’ help this is it.

Thanks for the plug Carole 😉 – and in addition, you also reminded me of Broc’s comment on yesterday’s post: I’m a firm believer in the idea that the customer experience never exceeds the employee experience (CX<EX). I share that belief, so I wish you a happy Friday and ask that as you go about your work today, please consider what you are doing and how it is helping you and your colleagues to serve each other, and the customer, better. And if what you are doing is not contributing to that impact, ask yourself – ‘Why am I doing this?’