The genius that is Kenny Rodgers

Yes, that Kenny Rodgers, the famed country and western singer. "Why genius?" You say. Well because he gives good business advice in his 1978 hit "The Gambler"*. The chorus line beginning with "You got to know when to fold 'em, know when to hold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run"

The reason I mention this now is because in the last couple of days I have "walked away" from business, rather than get embroiled in something we are not equipped to do to the standard that our clients should expect of us, or in the second case we don't want to design a tool which we believe won't work for the client and would affect both our reputation and client's reputation too.

In the first case, we were presented with a product design project that has a large graphic design and print element. This not being our core competence, and not wishing to simply subcontract the work out thus raising the clients costs, we decided to forward to work on to a competitor. Now some may think that's just crazy but think about it for a moment.

If I had taken on the work, it's doubtful first of all that after all the time spent doing cost analysis and quoting, the price would more than likely have been uncompetitive if the project where to be outsourced, wasting my time, the subcontractors time and worst of all, the client time.

If I had elected to do the work in-house in order to price competitively, the likely outcome of winning the order would be out of control costs as the project would no doubt take longer due to the lack of in house experience and probably run over budget and past schedule... not good for one's reputation!

In the second case this week of knowing "when to walk away" we turned down a long standing enquiry to design a tool for a medical device manufacturer. At Buff Design, we don't just simply design products, but we design entire product lifecycles, including manufacturing processes and equipment.

The story goes back to last August, when we were approached to help solve a manufacturing issue with a medical device production. The company was having to scrap more than 60% of its production to non-conformance issues. We flew over to the client's site to take a look first hand at the production process and quickly concluded that the work holding that had been specified was simply not working as it should. We proposed a new fixture design that we could guarantee to solve the problem and reduce scrap to at maximum of 0.3% but costing €40,000.

We demonstrated the business case and showed the client that a return on investment would be seen in less than 3 months by reducing scrap and speeding up the operation a little too.

Since submitting the proposals and quotation the client has asked if we would reduce the cost of the tool by simplifying the design. Knowing that the proposed design is one of only two pragmatic solutions and the one chosen would require less maintenance thus the total cost of ownership over the life of the tool is less, we declined the work because once again we believe that our reputation, our commercial partners and the client's reputation would be damaged as a result.

My thinking is, that such decisions whilst difficult to make are necessary for the long term good of all concerned, believing as I do that what goes around comes around. Sometimes it's hard to keep the faith, and the payback seems to elude you, but in the end it comes back to you as in the case with the tool design, the client has now decided to take our advice and go along with our proposals almost one year after first submitting them.

So as a reminder, listen to Kenny when he says "You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run'

*Written by Don Schlitz