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.
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
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."
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?
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.
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.
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.