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Just to follow on from that - I think the thing that irritates is 'cheapness' rather than lack of overt generosity. To give a couple of examples. The office wa
by goldcd 6y ago
Just to follow on from that - I think the thing that irritates is 'cheapness' rather than lack of overt generosity.
To give a couple of examples. The office was kitted out with poor monitors - cheapest Dell sold. Some people bought their own but most people were fine with them - they're just monitors and they're 'fine'. Then a small group were rewarded with 'premium monitors' as a prize for some internal competition - and this did cause annoyance, as it recognized that the company knew it was being cheap.
Second example. "We're getting new chairs!" Supplier dropped off half-a-dozen different models for us to try out and then we collectively chose our favourite.
Except we couldn't have it, as it was too expensive, and we got the "second choice".
Now that second choice was amazing compared to what they were replacing. An office full of premium ergonomic chairs cost the company a small fortune - but decision was tainted with cheapness. We weren't worth the chair we'd chosen. If they'd just pulled the chairs they couldn't afford from the competition, it would have cost the same and made us happy.
- malavwarke 6y agowell said frugality shouldn't be for cheapness. Thanks for sharing.
- mindvirus 6y agoMost important is how you stop frugality from becoming cheapness. If one of your values is frugality, you have to figure how people are evaluated on it. The big risk I see is it becomes about spending the least money, not spending money with the best long term return.
- walshemj 6y agoOne of the factors I feel in the collapse or Marconi was the obsessive penywise pound foolish attitude of its CEO.
- ghaff 6y ago>If they'd just pulled the chairs they couldn't afford from the competition, it would have cost the same and made us happy. That just seems like a very poorly executed trial. Clearly the company should have decided on its price limit up front and brought in chairs that conformed. It's not even really unreasonable to decide that the price of Mirra 2s (which are perfectly good chairs) is fine but Aerons is not. But, in that case, don't bring in Aerons for people to try.