Pay what you think it's worth!

MEDIA RELEASE, 25th MAY 2009

THE 'PAY WHAT YOU THINK IT'S WORTH' MODEL GOES B2B

In a ground-breaking step Melbourne-based business improvement and Productive Thinking consultancy, The Thinking Network, has offered 'pay what you think it's worth' terms to selected customers.

The concept has existed for some time in the restaurant business with Melbourne eatery, Lentil As Anything, operating in this manner since 2000, and a number of other restaurants in Australia and elsewhere following suit in recent times, in response to the global financial crisis.  Hairdressers and other consumer product and service providers have also begun adopting the model but The Thinking Network is pioneering the concept in the business-to-business arena.

The Thinking Network will undertake a Productive Thinking program for a fee determined by the client once the activity has been undertaken.

"The idea is based around picking and agreeing upon a key issue of concern to the business right now.

Then the client will choose a small group of people to work on the issue and allow them time from their normal duties to do so.  We agree on a rough timeframe, then get to work.  We take the group through the Productive Thinking process, from identifying the 'real' issue to having a well qualified solution ready for implementation.  The solutions will typically include a proposed action plan and a picture of likely benefits and costs.

The decision to implement any or all of the solutions is up to the organisation and it's at this point that they'll be asked to decide what they think the solution is - or might be - worth to the organisation.  Then they decide what to pay us," tells The Thinking Network CEO, Ken Wall.

Whilst the offer is very much a pilot program at this stage, with no more than six clients being offered the opportunity to take part, Ken will consider rolling it out in a more permanent and openly available manner pending the results of the pilot.

"We are demonstrating our faith in the Productive Thinking model and the facilitation skills of our consultants," says Ken, "And our clients are being given the opportunity to solve a thorny issue in a time in which there are many of them!"

Future jobs - what job would YOU like?

It has often been said that in a few years time a whole pile of jobs will exist that don’t exist today.  The only thing that changes is the number.  So I thought it might be worth looking at what jobs exist today that weren’t around a few years ago. 

It seems that a lot of them have to do with changing technology.  We didn’t have an iPhone maintenance guy 2 years ago.  There was nobody around to fix ‘twitter’.  We didn’t need employment agencies for out-of-work financial analysts! 

As I was looking through the list I wondered, which of those ‘new’ jobs would I like to have a go at. 

Then it hit me – I would love to be the guy that sets up the telephone numbers.  No – not the numbers you dial to get Aunty Betty on the phone and wish her happy birthday.  I want to be the guy that sets up that whole list of numbers that you have to press AFTER you have made the phone call! 

You know the story.  You have to start with the phrase, “Please listen carefully to the whole menu as numbers may have changed since your last call”.  Press 1 for sales, press 2 for service, press 3 for technical support, press 4 for complaints, press 5 to speak to a customer service operative and press 8 to hear the menu again.  If it were me I’d use bigger numbers and have longer lists, however… 

Then you get to choose from the ‘secondary menu’ – I know that’s what it’s called cos I looked it up!  The secondary menu is where the ‘choose a number’ technician could really go to town. 

Imagine you’ve just pressed 2 for service; the options are now endless...!  If your enquiry is about the model 347CDR-34 press 1, if your product was purchased after April 2008 press 2, if you know the extension number of the person you wish to speak to press 3 followed by the 7 digit extension number followed by the hash key, if you are phoning from Australia press 6, if your call is being routed through the Torsion Phase Eliminator, press 7, if you wish to return to the main menu press 9 otherwise stay on the line.  If you like the music press 4, if you would like to order the CD press 5 provided that you have your credit card number entered into the pre-selection audiophile receptor channel. 

Then we have the tertiary number choice menu – but you get the picture by now… 

The extra clever part of the system actually would involve a system of customer service operatives.  We would have to call them that because we wouldn’t be able to find any humans.

 I decided to program the system so that on a random keypunch the customers would find themselves speaking to the CSO (Acronyms are important here – we really need to create some more). 

Regardless of progress, the CSO would be supplied with a series of simple key phrases like “I need your help”, or “This item doesn’t work properly” or even “I’m really getting desperate…”  Whenever the CSO hears these words from the customer they are instructed to pass the customer on to another CSO, who is equally incapable of solving the problem, but who may succeed in getting the customer to hang up. 

Then comes the cruncher – I love this bit!  After I’ve set it up so that the customer has to go through AT LEAST the three levels and can only do so successfully by going back twice, (that’s a minimum of 14 keystrokes, 3 CSOs and no progress towards a solution) I would program the system so that every number the customer hits on the fourth time around the system will automatically take them back to level 1 – that’s it, the main menu!  Brilliant! I could have the silly customers going round and round in circles for hours!

 I resolved to learn how to do the programming and look for a job as a ‘choose a number’ technician, only I would turn out to be the maverick, wreaking havoc and confusion on the customer and causing an endless stream of customer complaints. 

It was then that the bottom fell out of my World.  I rang my bank, only to discover that they had already got the system in place.  The maverick role had been taken…

 

Positive News Only Day - Did it work?

Yesterday 10 May was Mother's Day in many parts of the World. That was certainly the case here in Oz! It was also the first 'Positive News Only Day' on twitter.  The original idea came from Kneale Mann (Twitter address #knealemann).  Many people started promoting the idea over the past week or so.  If you are a twitter user take a look at #gnod.  You'll see thousands of posts and it's pretty well impossible to work out how many people heard about the idea.

Was it worth it?  Well, I'm thinking that if just ONE person was able to give some good news it may have made a difference to them.  And if just ONE person was on the receiving end then that's pretty good too.  A lot of effort just to make one person happy?  Not if you're the one...!

But my guess is that it might have made a lot more people just a little but happier.  Let's hope so! And just because it's 11 May now doesn't mean we all have to get grumpy again!  Good news is, well... Good news!

Creativity Conference - Australia

The VERY FIRST Creativity Conference to be held in Australia will be in Ballarat from 11-14 February 2010.  Sponsored by the Thinking Network, over twenty leading International specialists in all forms of creativity, innovation and change have promised to run sessions at the conference. 

Creativity Oz will be modelled on the lines of the highly successful ACRE Creativity Conference in South africa, the Mindcamp Conference in Toronto, and the CREA conference in Europe.  A full range of interactive and participative workshops will be interspersed with keynote sessions from the World's best speakers.

More blogs will follow as the organisation of the event gains momentum.  We are establishing a new website for the conference to give up-to-the-minute news as the program develops.  Stay tuned for updates - and please leave a comment or send us an email with your interests and ideas to make the conference a huge success.  Look forward to seeing you there!

Ken and Co. at the Thinking Network.

Twitter - POSITIVE NEWS ONLY DAY!

Kneale Mann has had this wonderful idea that we should have a 'positive news only' day on twitter.  The suggestion is to put aside all the quotes, links, advice, self-promotion and grumpy posts.  Just for one day - and the day is Sunday 10 May.

Take a look at Kneales blog...  http://bit.ly/lR509

And while we are being positive on twitter, why not apply the same philosophy to anything you might post on any other social media pages?

And better still - how about a wonderfully positive response on the day to everyone IN PERSON? Not just your loved ones, but be positive to the grumpy guy, the person in front of you in the checkout queue that's a bit slow, your dog when you take him for a walk - even the driver that cuts you up on the freeway!

And if you're not on twitter?  Join up before the 10th May - and spread some sunshine!  Remember it's MOTHER'S DAY in Australia!

Don’t start a think tank without thinkers!

Think Tanks are all the rage!  Maybe it all started with Kevin Rudd’s 2020 Summit? 

Mr. Rudd asked 1,000 of Australia's top brains to map out strategies for the future at a '2020 Summit' in Canberra on 19-20 April 2008.  The results were published a year later.  962 ideas put forward resulted in nine proposals being given the green light by the Federal Government.  Was this value for money, and what can we learn from the experience? 

Proposals included a new ABC TV channel for children, research into a bionic eye, formation of a volunteer civilian force to deal with regional emergencies, a review of the tax system, a review of how the states and territories work together, a carbon pollution reduction scheme, a student scholarships award scheme, building an indigenous cultural centre and creating a white paper on homelessness.  Further initiatives include the broadband network, initiatives to help business and developing relationships with schools. 

But what if we had asked the same questions of group of people chosen at random?  Say the next ten people in a queue at the supermarket?  What proposal would they have put forward?  They may have missed out on the bionic eye, of course, that’s a bit specialized, but the rest?  My guess is they would have probably covered them all.  So was the think tank value for money?

 A more important question of course could be is there a better way to run a think tank in the future?  Surely we should expect much more from ‘the Country’s leading thinkers’?  So what might be possible? 

The Kevin Rudd experience in April 2008 can perhaps be seen as a giant version of a familiar scenario that happens in many organisations around Australia every day.  Groups of people gather together in the same room with an issue in mind and the intention of ‘brainstorming’ for the best solution. 

When the participants have been through some effective training in productive thinking the results are often spectacular.  Some great ideas have emerged and have produced amazing improvements in performance.  Delivery times cut in half, cost of production halved, huge slabs of time saved, and in the present economic climate, jobs and organisations could be saved too!

 But if the brainstormers haven’t been taught thinking skills, the results are typically disappointing.  They rely on one process and get limited results.  The outcomes are often a statement – and frequent re-statement – of opinion, and a reflection of ‘what we do around here’ married to vested interest.  Ideas re judged as soon as they appear, which suppresses any genuine creative thought.  Suggest anything radical and it’s put down as ‘too risky’. 

So why don’t we teach thinking skills?  Maybe because everyone thinks they can think?  And of course they can, but in how many different ways?  How many creative thinking strategies have you learned?  How about critical thinking?  But we know you can’t solve 21^st century problems with 20^th century thinking.  We know that the thinking that got us to where we are isn’t going to be the best thinking to get us into the future.  The thinking that created the current recession is certainly not going to be a suitable form of thinking for recovery!

 Perhaps one of the main reasons behind this lack of training in thinking skills is the view that ‘thinking’ is seen as a soft skill.  Soft skills are often considered as optional extras.  The hard skills like ‘knowing’ things take precedent.  But we didn’t ‘know’ the recession was coming.  And maybe we don’t ‘know’ how to recover?  Do we know how to cure poverty?  Do we know how to prevent terrorism?  Do we know how to maintain a healthy planet? 

So if knowing things is not enough, thinking becomes the only option; it’s not a luxury item any more.  And if that’s the case we MUST teach thinking skills at every opportunity; in schools, colleges, university, the workplace and the family. 

And as far as Think Tanks are concerned we really must teach the participants productive thinking skills, models, tools techniques and processes.  Then we have a much better chance of having a real ‘value for money’ think tank with the potential to come up with more options and better ideas.  And to extend the thinking beyond ‘what’ needs to happen, to include why it’s a good idea and how we might go about it. 

Let’s put the ‘think’ back into think tank.  Opinion tanks are a waste of time.