Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Business Balls and NYC Traffic

It scares me a little when my mom drives in NYC because every other car is aggressive. My mom is a meek driver and doesn't protect her space in the lane. Inevitably, a car inches over and cuts her off, causing anxiety for my mom and usually anger from others that my mom lags behind. (OK, that might be me, but it happens to me when I see other meek drivers on the road).

We, in my current job, are so afraid of losing a customer who is having problems becoming self-sufficient that we are doing 10s of hours of content processing for them for free. Every week. No end in site. As a result, we are unhappy because of increased costs ($Ks) and they are unhappy because they are not self sufficient.

Instead, we should have said no and demand they process their own content or charge them a fee. This would have given them the incentive they needed to become self-sufficient.

Now we have an unhappy client and significant costs all because we don't have the marbles to draw reasonable lines with our clients. Clients, like NYC taxi cabs, will always inch for more. There is nothing wrong with accomodating them to keep going, but at a certain point you got to protect your space on the road if you want to get where you are going.

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