Would you be happy if a problem that could take weeks, was solved in 5 minutes?
The client was NOT.
An ex-colleague contacted me asking for help. Her team was participating in an entrepreneurial competition that could make them win big. They have reached the semi-finals, and they needed to start materializing and bringing the idea down to earth, and she thought I could offer some help.
I saw this as a good opportunity to experiment applying value-based contracts to individuals, something that I have found more difficult to do than with companies. So, with no further initial requests from my part, we agreed to meet.
From the beginning of our conversation, it was quite clear what she needed. To make an estimation of the physical dimensions of the device they were ideating to build. This way, they would see if it was technically viable.
Her thought process looked like this:
Make a preliminary design → 2. Estimate the size → 3. Address viability
So, she came to me asking, “can you help me design this device?” The typical scenario of looking for a desired solution instead of *any* solution to the problem. And in this case, the desired solution, i.e. designing this device, was not easy.
All that mattered to me was that what she needed was to know an approximate volume of the device. Regardless, how that was estimated:
2. Estimate the size → 3. Address viability.
This scenario was particularly known for me. Some years earlier, I made a similar mistake in another competition. We spent hours designing a solution, just to realize that a bunch of high school boys/girls won us doing literally zero calculations and without any significant knowledge about the subject.
Once I understood that, I asked her: "Why don't you get a commercial solution, dismantle it and measure its volume? There is no better estimation about what you potentially could achieve that what a mature market tells you. You can buy it on Amazon or eBay, the cost is ridiculous, it may cost you 50-100 €, even a broken one serves. This will save you a lot of time and will give you a much more precise estimate than designing something for the first time".
She saw value in the solution, but she did not show any excitement. I would describe her reaction as reluctant acceptance.
This surprised me and even angered me a bit. How was it possible that people are not able to see added value?
The facts are the following:
A problem that otherwise would take weeks, was solved in 5 minutes.
The client was NOT super happy about it.
I interpreted my surprise as a signal that I was expecting things to be different, that I expected that people would value things by their own value, not by their apparent value.
Also, my anger signaled that I needed to adjust some boundaries, that I wanted things to be otherwise. So, I made myself two questions:
Why was this happening? What could I do with this?
These are the lessons I learned:
Lessons & potential solutions:
We tend to attribute little value to the solutions that come with (apparent) little effort or are not sophisticated. Sometimes because value is hidden behind simplicity. Other times because we focus on time spent, apparent effort or any other kind of visible expensive signal, blinding us from seeing the real value we are adding.
Make value provided obvious: A simple debriefing at the end of the meeting may serve this purpose. In this particular case, something like this could have work: “You came to this meeting with the idea of discovering how to design the system so that you could approximate its volume, right?” “This conversation has given you a much easier and effective way to know the volume. Isn't it?” “How much do you think it would have cost you to find someone who knows how to design it to market standards?” “How much time and money do you think that you have saved?”.
Remove easiness out of the equation: I would prefer if people appreciated value in its pure form, but this doesn’t seem the case. What isn’t conscious or visible usually is considered non-existent. Removing the appearance of ease and effortlessness from the stage may be a good way to overcome it. Just putting some time between the problem exploration phase and giving the solution has served me well in the past. As my friend Costas would say, give the solution after going a couple of weeks on vacations.
Filter out people that can’t or do not want to value your work: Some people just will never be able to appreciate what you are offering, or just have zero-sum mentality and don’t want win-win agreements. Clarifying terms as soon as possible can help to filter out these people and avoid wasting our precious time. It is also important to do it smoothly to avoid false negatives. Many times, this way of working cannot be understood until it is experienced.