You should always listen to your clients. Sometimes you might even learn from them.
Tektit’s company culture as well as all our consulting services are based on the same foundation: the Tektit value system, which is reflected in the mode we operate and the way we communicate.
Based on our framework of values, principles and actual outputs the team members write short stories from their daily business that help us reflect on what we have learned. We want to share these value stories to a bigger audience now. They might inspire others to think about their own values and how they want to work. Join us on our journey and tell us which values come to your mind while reading the story - let us know in the comments.
Value story (IV): Quality over profits
Microsoft founder Bill Gates once said: “Unhappy customers are the greatest source of learning.”
The customer in this story is a manager with huge consultancy experience from his former job. He wasn’t really unhappy, but initially had a very fixed idea how the findings of our project should look like. So when Tektit first shared the report (in the context of an IT Architecture audit of the organization’s IT systems), he had a lot of ideas on what could be done differently. Not once, not twice, but every time we met to discuss the newest version.
To be clear: He wasn’t wrong. There are always several ways to present something. Our first approach was addressed to the team we had analyzed before. Meanwhile the management board was also interested in our results - but required a completely different reporting format.
Despite being already above the agreed project budget, the Tektit team kept on iterating on the project report together with the manager to achieve an ideal result for the client.
Due to the clear principle “quality over profits”, there was no discussion in the team, whether we should charge the client for the additional work. We saw this as an opportunity to learn how to create better reports by closely collaborating with the client.
The revision and iteration resulted in a tremendously better report, which could be used by the management board and teams alike. The extraordinary commitment and the close collaboration between the client’s team and Tektit team resulted in a high level of trust on both sides.
The clear structure and concise recommendations convinced the client’s management team to award Tektit with a large follow-up project. And the report can serve as a template for other projects’ reports.
The high quality standards of our work make us feel happy and fulfilled. And they even open up additional sources of revenue in the medium term.