Episode 18
off ramp, not cliff
The ethical responsibility we have to provide to our customers what we told them we would provide. And if we have to stop providing a service, we must provide customers with an off-ramp, so that they can ease out of our service and into something else, rather than a cliff which leave them scrambling, or falling.
Transcript
Hi everyone.
Speaker:And thanks for tuning in.
Speaker:This is PowerPivot, where we talk about how to be business leaders with ethics.
Speaker:This morning, I got an article in my inbox.
Speaker:I subscribed to a number of, of, of news aggregators because
Speaker:I can't keep up otherwise.
Speaker:And one of the news aggregators sent me an aggregation that included a Wired article
Speaker:about how Meta is hitting the brakes on Portal, AR glasses and other hardware.
Speaker:That's their headline.
Speaker:And I wanted to talk for a minute in perhaps less poetic form, about the
Speaker:responsibility that we have to our people.
Speaker:When we create something.
Speaker:One of the challenges that I have had, and that a lot of my friends have had
Speaker:on an ongoing basis is getting really bought into a particular product.
Speaker:And then having that product disappear.
Speaker:Because it's not sufficiently profitable, because it's not sufficiently on brand,
Speaker:because a new CEO or a new somebody else took the helm of a company.
Speaker:And, you know, it's, it's not small companies alone that are doing this small
Speaker:companies do this often because as small business owners, we are trying to find the
Speaker:place where we have sustainable business, where we won't go out of business, where
Speaker:people won't be just left high and dry without anything that we provide, where
Speaker:we won't have to close up shop entirely.
Speaker:But when Google does it, or when Meta, which is, you know, Facebook
Speaker:and then changed their name.
Speaker:When, when those companies do it, it makes it very hard to trust that we can
Speaker:lean into relying on their software.
Speaker:And this is true of any company that starts to build a really robust user base
Speaker:and then build out additional features.
Speaker:If you're taking away features.
Speaker:If you're taking away products, you know, Google, and it's like Google
Speaker:music, play shuffle, shuffle nonsense, and now it's YouTube Muisc but it's
Speaker:different and it's subscription.
Speaker:And like, where does that leave the people who bought a ton of music
Speaker:inside the Google play ecosystem.
Speaker:Well, you can download it, but then what you end up with is a bunch of
Speaker:files with no metadata that your music player can use to sort it.
Speaker:So one of the things that we don't talk about a lot is the, is the
Speaker:ethical responsibility we have to our customers to provide what
Speaker:we told them we would provide.
Speaker:And it's hard because our survival is part of the picture.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:As, as a company, we can't, we can't.
Speaker:Afford to to not make business decisions, especially small companies, right?
Speaker:We can't afford to not make good business decisions because if we do the company
Speaker:folds and we don't provide what, what we're providing at all, one of my client
Speaker:companies provides PR support for people.
Speaker:If they fold entirely, then nobody gets PR support.
Speaker:So they have to make some decisions based on what will keep them afloat.
Speaker:One of my client companies provide sales support.
Speaker:If they don't continue to provide sales support their company,
Speaker:clients then are without sales support and have to scramble.
Speaker:You know, if somebody is doing an event production piece, I, I spoke to somebody
Speaker:recently who's who had a PR support person who specifically was hired to
Speaker:do their PR for a particular event.
Speaker:And then the person pulled out like a few days before the event;
Speaker:left the company, scrambling.
Speaker:The company pulled it off, to their credit, but, we can't just be like,
Speaker:oh, nobody's affected by our decisions.
Speaker:People are affected by our decisions and it's not just us.
Speaker:And it's not just the people in our companies.
Speaker:Although I talk about that a lot.
Speaker:It's also the, the people in our ecosystem, the people who have
Speaker:bought our products, the people who need us to provide something.
Speaker:If I decided to switch learning management systems, I still have to
Speaker:provide, you know, some kind of access, some kind of transition period, some
Speaker:kind of warning something for my people.
Speaker:I can't just suddenly not provide it.
Speaker:I mean, I can, but it's not ethical to do so if I have any other choice,
Speaker:Now I may not have any other choice.
Speaker:Something may go desperately wrong.
Speaker:And I just can't.
Speaker:But as long as I can, I need to make sure that people have at least enough warning
Speaker:to, you know, download the products that they purchased or to access the
Speaker:products that they purchased, or to ask me the questions or to have access to
Speaker:me, whatever it is, we can't just stop.
Speaker:And in an economy that moves this fast, that's hard because sometimes you sit
Speaker:down, you do a little, you know, review of where you've been and where you're going.
Speaker:Like maybe you're using the intensives planner or maybe you're not, but
Speaker:you, you sit down and you, you do an evaluation of where you are and you
Speaker:realize that this product is draining you or that product has basically no
Speaker:return on the investment you're making in it, but somebody's relying on it.
Speaker:And so you need a dénoument.
Speaker:You need- you can't just throw people off a cliff, you need a gentle letdown.
Speaker:And how do we provide a gentle letdown when we ourselves are under stress?
Speaker:Well, as intensives, it's not in our bones to do gentle anything, and it's certainly
Speaker:not in our bones to do gentle letdowns.
Speaker:And so what's really important, especially if you're intensive, is that you get
Speaker:somebody who is less emotionally wrapped up in the process than you are on board
Speaker:in the room immediately, and be like, okay, I need to get rid of this product,
Speaker:or I need to, to transition out of this.
Speaker:How are we gonna do that gracefully, how are we gonna take a, a good look at, at
Speaker:who is relying on this and how they're relying on it and make sure that they
Speaker:have the opportunity to make the shift.
Speaker:Here's another one.
Speaker:I've been trying to switch off of my current learning
Speaker:management system to a new one.
Speaker:And the reason that I'm trying to do that is because they told me that I would
Speaker:be allowed to continue at the old fee structure, even when they implemented
Speaker:a new fee structure and then they just emailed and said, you have a month.
Speaker:And then we're changing your fee structure to the new fee structure,
Speaker:which doesn't work for me.
Speaker:It's not.
Speaker:It doesn't make business sense to me.
Speaker:So I need to be shifting, but they- because they told me it was gonna be
Speaker:okay, I stopped thinking about it.
Speaker:If they had said from the beginning, "Okay.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:In four months we're gonna be transitioning everybody
Speaker:to the new fee structure.
Speaker:So if that doesn't work for you we would encourage you to start figuring
Speaker:out what else you're gonna do now."
Speaker:That would've been ethical.
Speaker:They didn't do the ethical thing.
Speaker:And that's now why I really wanna switch.
Speaker:If I can't find a good platform to switch to, I may have to stay with them in
Speaker:the same way that I have to stay with Facebook and I have to stay with other
Speaker:platforms that I'm not thrilled with, but it will not be because I'm not looking.
Speaker:I will be constantly looking for a better platform with
Speaker:better ethics, until I find one.
Speaker:Even if I have to carry on with this one for a while.
Speaker:So what they've gone is they've gone from me being like, okay, that's taken care of.
Speaker:I've thought about it.
Speaker:It's stable.
Speaker:To me being like, where am I going next?
Speaker:Where am I going next?
Speaker:And there are other kinds of services that I constantly
Speaker:have a "where am I going next?"
Speaker:Because I don't trust those companies.
Speaker:If I'm relying on a service from Google, that's not part of their core
Speaker:suite, I'm always looking for something else because I never know when I'm
Speaker:gonna have to jump because I never know when that ship is going down.
Speaker:If I'm relying on something from Facebook, I'm always looking for
Speaker:an alternative, I'm always kind of alert to better possibilities.
Speaker:And those two providers specifically keep my attention because they are
Speaker:so big and they provide so much to so many people and I'm embedded in
Speaker:their ecosystems in, in a couple of ways, but that doesn't make me happy.
Speaker:I would rather be with somebody who's super stable, who just provides what
Speaker:they provide and provides it really well.
Speaker:Even if it means I have six different products under my, under my belt because,
Speaker:those six products are the best at what they do, but they interface really well.
Speaker:Integrations are becoming, I think, absolutely the key.
Speaker:Specialization and then integrations.
Speaker:So much better.
Speaker:Because otherwise, you know, like when I signed up for Clickup, Clickup
Speaker:is project management software.
Speaker:It's great project management software.
Speaker:It's pretty terrible CRM, which is what I originally signed up for.
Speaker:So now I'm using a product called Dex, getdex.com, highly recommend, that
Speaker:a friend of mine pointed me to, she knows the founder and it's a, a small
Speaker:startup, but it sucks in the data that I need from the places that I needed to.
Speaker:I want it to have a lot more features and a lot more integrations, and I want it to
Speaker:be a lot more robust, but it does the core function that I need really, really well.
Speaker:And part of me wishes that like it were part of Clickup, but part of me
Speaker:would be really happy if they just had a nice, deep integration available for
Speaker:those of us who have both products, because I want Dex to continue to be the
Speaker:brilliant, all-it-does-is-keep-my-Rolodex organized product that it is.
Speaker:And then I wanna be able to connect my Rolodex product to my project product.
Speaker:And I wanna be able to connect that with a very deep integration, but I don't
Speaker:need them to be owned by the same people.
Speaker:I don't need them to be developed by the same people, because I would
Speaker:worry that it would get neglected.
Speaker:if it came under the umbrella, say, if Dex became part of Clickup, I would be worried
Speaker:that Dex would get neglected and that it would be developed half-heartedly or not
Speaker:at all, or that it, they would launch new features without really testing them.
Speaker:Because it's not their core product, it's not their core focus.
Speaker:So we have a responsibility to develop what we do well and to provide it well.
Speaker:And if we have to provide an offramp, to provide an offramp and not a cliff.
Speaker:Thank you for tuning in.
