

“Fantastic” beats “efficient” - edanm
http://blog.asmartbear.com/fantastic-beats-efficient.html

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andrewce
My non-profit organization sends writers into schools to teach writing/poetry
workshops to middle and high school students (we shy away from "dead white
guys" and New Critical Theory and toward practicality and accessibility).

We made the decision, very early, to not charge schools for these visits
unless they offered to pay us. Even though Nebraska is doing much better than
most states, economy-wise, most school districts are still facing a huge
funding shortfall, and can't afford our rates.

Simultaneously, we decided that we need to pay our poets, as it's not
reasonable to force someone to choose between teaching a sweet poetry workshop
and being able to pay rent (for those artists of ours who are in school or who
channel their excess funds to their own creative projects).

It's been a real struggle finding ways to expand our programming while still
having enough money to pay everyone, and it's meant that I've done a few
workshops pro bono (as has my executive director). Thankfully, my board of
directors is on board with this philosophy, and is moving very proactively
toward helping to close our current budget gap. Meanwhile, students who attend
money-strapped schools still get to hear and see and write poetry that does
not suck. My only regret is that we have more interested schools than we have
the people or capacity to serve them all, which is the best regret to have.

TL;DR: My non-profit, in a similar philosophical vein to this article, tries
as hard as it can to not charge for services, knowing full well that many of
our clients can't afford them. This doesn't translate to business, but further
reinforces the point that sometimes it's worth a bit of inefficiency.

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swombat
I'm not convinced about this point. The examples given (Zappos and Netflix)
are, from what I know, extremely efficient companies, and likely were so from
day one (in my experience, obsessive focus on efficiency doesn't magically
arise one day... it's either there from the start or it's never there). My
full response: <http://swombat.com/2011/1/24/provide-fantastic-service>

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lukev
I think the title "fantastic beats efficient" doesn't accurately reflect the
main point of the article, since there's no reason at all why you can't be
both fantastic and efficient.

I think a more accurate (though significantly less snappy) title would be
"Don't be afraid to do something fantastic just because the business model
doesn't look lucrative at first glance."

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smartbear
True, although I guess what I'm really saying is that, given the choice, you
might pick "fantastic" in certain cases, at least in one or two areas in which
it makes sense too.

Obviously if you have a profitable company you are, in some sense,
"efficient." The point is that going "above and beyond" takes more time and
money than not -- which is probably inefficient, especially at first -- and
the question is: Is that tradeoff worth it?

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swombat
That makes more sense. I'm still not sure whether there is a trade-off
involved, though. The more I think about it (particularly about the examples
you brought up, Netflix and Zappos), the more I get the feeling that the
efficiency led to the fantastic, rather than the other way around. I guess
this is fairly difficult point to resolve satisfactorily, though.

~~~
slantyyz
I suggest you read Tony Hsieh's book Delivering Happiness. My interpretation
of his history of Zappos is that they were fantastic before they were
efficient.

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otterley
Wow, the author just discovered the concept of loss leaders. Someone give him
a cookie.

