A couple years ago, a potential new client called me to discuss the SOW I had sent him. “When I do the math,” he said, “your hourly rate for a coaching session is more than I pay my attorney!” I asked how old his attorney is and he said 35. “You’re not paying me for the hour,” I said. “You’re paying me for the 40 years of business experience that I bring to each session.”
This story came back to me this week as I read about the creation of the iconic ‘Citi’ logo. Thirty-five years ago, when Citibank and Travelers merged, they needed a new image, so they contacted legendary designer Paula Scher. Sitting in the initial meeting, she allegedly sketched it out on a napkin in one iteration. When a Citi official questioned what she was charging for such a simple idea, she said: “It’s done in a second and 34 years.”
There’s an MBA-speak term for this: Labor Perception Bias. When things happen quickly, recipients often push back… feeling what they’re paying a lot for should take a lot of time.
There’s also a parable that brings it to life:
A factory owner hired an engineer to fix a broken engine. After a few seconds, the engineer took a hammer, made one strike, and the engine hummed back to life. When he received the bill, the owner protested greatly. So the engineer gave him a new invoice: “Hammer strike – $1; Knowing where to strike: $1,000.”
Helping my clients unleash greatness is the culmination of decades of learning, hundreds of hours of training and continuing education, and 11,000 hours of working side-by-side to achieve their coaching goals. Sometimes they arrive at the solution faster than they expected.
Hat Tip to yourstory.com where I saw the Citibank and Labor Perception Bias tales. Unfortunately, there was no ‘by line’ so I don’t know who wrote it. “Bad Generative AI!”
