Just before Christmas, I was doing some last-minute shopping in one of the Oxford Street department stores. As usual at that time of year, there was a long queue for the checkouts. When I eventually got to a till, I was surprised to see two people there. There was a young man operating the till. And there was a tall older man bagging the goods sold. Although they were busy, you could tell that they were working well together, and enjoying exchanging a few words with customers and each other when they could.
Despite this, the older man had a gravitas that you associate more with the Board room than with the tills of a busy store. Not surprising really – he was a senior manager doing a shift supporting the front-line staff at their busiest time. What was surprising (apart from him being there at all) was the easy way he appeared to be accepted as part of the team.
Here was a real “one-team” culture in action. He was not just doing what the organisation expected. He was doing what he believed in, and so it came naturally. His colleagues saw it as perfectly natural and normal too. Everyone was comfortable, and it worked.
Culture is the pattern of behaviours that people adopt in order to be accepted in a community. It is defined by what people really value, not what they say they value. In that store, people really valued working together as one team to deliver happy customers. That meant that there was nothing awkward about managers working on the tills. Actions speak louder than words, and clearly it works for them.
Walking the Talk
That experience prompted me to re-read Carolyn Taylor’s “Walking the Talk”, an excellent introduction to corporate culture. Here was an organisation that has a clearly-defined culture, and knows how to maintain it by walking the talk. Sadly, in my experience most leaders are better at the talking than the walking, and in any case most organisations don’t really know what culture they want (if they think about it at all). That’s a lot of value to be losing.
Many years ago I used to make pottery as a hobby. After a few years I got to be good enough that friends sometimes asked me to make pots for them. Of course, that is when things start to get a bit difficult – what to charge them? I could have said “I’m a hobby potter – if I cover my costs, that will be fine.” But then, if a friend asked me to make something (in principle at least) it was instead of buying from someone who was trying (and mostly struggling) to make a living out of potting. For someone like me to undercut them seemed wrong. I always charged about what I thought they would have had to pay a ‘real’ potter for something similar. That way I felt that they were choosing my work just because they liked what I made. When I explained, everyone thought that was fair.
Over the years, I have learnt just how important it is to value yourself appropriately. I once took a job at a rather lower salary than I had been used to, rather than continue the uncertainty of searching until I found a better one. I discovered that because I had accepted that valuation of myself, understandably everyone else did too. The job didn’t challenge me, so I got bored, but it seemed to be impossible to persuade anyone within the organisation that I could be adding more value if only they would ask me to work on some more difficult problems – of which there were plenty. The job I was doing needed to be done. Before long, I left to go to a job at a more appropriate level.
This can be a difficult balance for an interim manager. Price is only an imperfect proxy for the value of the job, but what a customer expects to pay is usually a good indication of how they see it. We all need to pay the bills, but accepting a disparity in price perceptions is not usually a good basis for a satisfying relationship in any kind of transaction.
Coming home from work the other day I saw a poster on the Tube which grabbed my attention. Leaving out the unnecessary details, it said
“Buy a ……, get a free …… worth £49!”
Is it really? Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The company may choose to sell the gadget for £49 normally, but that certainly does not mean it is worth £49 to me. In fact, it almost certainly isn’t – it might be worth more, in which case even if I had to pay for it I would think I was getting a good deal (and I may well have already bought one anyway), or it is worth less, in which case I’d never buy one normally, but might be tempted to get one for nothing. It is pretty unlikely that they have hit on exactly the right value for me.
Our entire economic system is based on the idea that things have different values to different people. That is how trade works – if it were not like that, it would be impossible to make a profit on trading, so there would be no incentive to do so. I buy something because it is worth more to me to have the thing than the money. The seller sells it because they value having the money more than the thing. It may be in the trader’s interests to confuse value with price, but in the end we all make our own judgements about what something is worth to us.
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What do you think when someone offers you something for nothing? I suspect most of us say thank you very much, put it in our pocket or bag … and then often forget about it. The problem is, when we give nothing for it, we tend not to value what we received.
Many years ago I was involved with promoting amateur music events. Sometimes there were few costs to cover, and the main aim was to attract a reasonable audience, so an easy option was to make admission to a concert free. What happens if you do that? You often get a smaller audience than if you sell tickets at a low price!
Why should that be? Well, put yourself in the shoes of the punter. You see a poster advertising a free concert, which looks interesting, so you make a mental note. Come the day of the concert, chances are you have either forgotten about it, or something else more attractive has come along. Since you have invested nothing, you choose to do the more attractive option. Because the organisers have not made you put a value on the event, you may treat it as being worth nothing, unless something else gives it value for you (for example you know one of the performers). There is little difference between something for nothing and nothing for nothing.
On the other hand, if you have to buy a ticket, even for a nominal sum, you must give the event a positive value. In addition, if you have to buy the ticket beforehand, you have made an emotional investment. You are more likely to remember about it, and less likely to decide to do something else.
Luxury brands do something similar but in reverse. The product itself may not be objectively any better than something cheaper, but the value people put on it is higher, so they are willing to pay more.
Value has a significant emotional component, so pricing is always partly a decision about emotion. Never undervalue that! 
I have recently moved house. I moved from a small and very ordinary town in Oxfordshire to a bustling area of London. What a contrast! From largely white to multi-cultural, from sleepy to vibrant, from staid dormitory to entrepreneurial.
One of the big differences is shopping. In Oxfordshire, there was little choice but to buy all your groceries from one of the big supermarkets. When I first lived there, there were many butchers, greengrocers and bakers. Over the years they have all shut up shop, unable to compete with the demand for the convenience of "all I need under one roof" and "open when I get home from work", even if supermarket prices can be high. Here I am spoilt for choice, especially with butchers, fishmongers and greengrocers. What a delight to be able to wander up and down the stalls, with the noise of vendors shouting out offers, with the bright colours of peppers, tomatoes, oranges and lemons and the indefinable smells, looking for the freshest, the fattest, and (wishfully) the tastiest.
The right price
One thing though took me by surprise. The price of bananas. Most of the market fruit and vegetables are good value by comparison with the supermarkets. But bananas? I’d guess the market price is about double the price in supermarkets! What is the right price? What is going on? The big chains compete with each other, not with market traders. If one shop puts a price down, the others pretty much follow suit. If one decides that bananas are to be a loss-leader, probably the rest do too. And this sort of pricing is like a ratchet – if it becomes established, it is very hard to move it in the other direction. The supermarkets may paint themselves into a corner. Pricing matters – and not just because companies exist to make a profit. Price sends a signal about what something is worth. “You get what you pay for” as the saying goes. Paradoxically, you may get more people coming to an event for which they have to buy a ticket than will come to one that is free, because the free event is not valued. Needing an income, I once took a job which paid considerably less than I had previously been earning. Result? I got very bored because no-one thought to use my higher skills. I was pigeon-holed by my price, and I left as soon as I could. Pricing that does not match value may serve a necessary short term purpose, but in the end it serves no-one very well. The right price matters.
Have you ever noticed how the crowds waiting for commuter trains at Paddington (or doubtless most other big terminus stations) nearly all stay on the concourse until the platform is announced, even though each train usually runs from the same platform every day (so the regular commuters who are the majority all know which it is likely to be)? Consequence – a great crush as everyone rushes at the ticket barriers at once.