Client behaviour

By Fiona Czerniawska.

Sixty-six million years ago. In the apocalyptical gloom, the world’s last dinosaur is dying. Snout down in the icy mud, its eyes starting to close, the dinosaur glimpses movement: A small animal, whose fur has kept it warm, is scurrying. “I wasn’t expecting that,” thinks the dinosaur as extinction finally closes around it.

The world is full of surprises.

We were interviewing a consulting firm recently that, on the cusp of winning a multi-million-dollar transformation deal, found themselves out manoeuvred by a much smaller firm, against all expectations. “We’d dismissed them,” said the partner we spoke to. “Not only had we never heard of them, but they hadn’t listened to the client’s brief, had questioned the scope of the project, and come back with a proposal that didn’t deal with the key issues.” Just a minor detail, then, that the client loved a genuinely innovative, more challenging approach.

By Alison Huntington.

Passing through Heathrow Terminal 3 recently, I was accosted by a woman with an iPad who wanted to ask me a few questions about my experience at Heathrow that day. Being British, and therefore socially awkward, instead of telling her I’d really rather read my newspaper, I said “Yes, of course.”

Among the pretty mundane questions she went on to ask me was one about whether I’d recommend Terminal 3. 

“Erm, yes, I suppose,” came my response, with half an ear on the tannoy announcements.