The main point was that what should be motivating people to work at Di Bella is that they are drawn to their working environment, not that they are on $x pay rate. Having open discussions about pay between employees is not conducive to a good work environment (according to Phil).

Your review certainly makes me wish I had been able to be there, as well.

I will be interested in you giving us a more detailed summary of your 5 pages of notes at our next beer o’clock session.

I’d like to add the following comments, in the same order as your headings:

Regarding Marketing

My view of Marketing is, at its basis, is just relationship building. That’s the case even for transactional companies (like McDonalds, say).

Hence, the education process you mention must be a two-way street.

1) There must be an element of us telling potential clients about who we are.

2) However (even moreso), it should be us learning who are clients are, what their drivers are, and what keeps them awake at night (hopefully not Phillip’s coffee). Only when we know this can we be sure we are going to be able to deliver them the best solution for their needs (as distinct from our wallets).

In some cases – in the interests of building a long-term, genuine relationship, we will (as we do) tell the client that we just can’t help currently, and that they would be better served in this instance going across the road to Acme Incorporated.

Regarding Values and Focus

I believe you’re on the right track in determining that we’re not, at our heart, a software company.

As I have noted before on the blog, ICT is just an enabler. Any company that does not accept this is stuck with a much bigger issue in crossing the chasm than we have had to face.

However we’re also more than just a “Market Education Company”. For instance - through our deSide® software, we are very much actively involved in driving the market towards delivering a more efficient outcome. That’s more than just education, it’s active facilitation (albeit that we’re not consultants).

How to sum up, in a pithy phrase, all that we are? Well, I have not worked that one out yet…

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Also, an aside for other readers, our retention rate is very high, but I cannot put an actual number on it (so I’m not sure if 90% is true or not). We don’t know, as our back-end “Business Management System” is currently not all that it can be. That’s something we’re working to incrementally improve.

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Regarding Pay

I would certainly have liked to have heard Phillip discuss more on this one.

I agree that pay should never be something to be obsessed over at work (just as we should not be obsessing over what everyone did on the weekend, the latest sports reports, the weather, politics, or anything really). The key word here is “obsessed” – for instance, I have seen places where the local footy tipping comp goes a few steps too far.

Note that I heard it first hand, but it may be that Phillip’s approach is not too dissimilar from the core of the approach taken at Semco (as written up in Maverick).

In that company, my recollection is that having people’s salaries publicly available was designed to eliminate any water-cooler conversations that would otherwise happened (no half-truths to gossip about) and was aligned with the more holistic approach to having the company’s books completely open to all staff. In that way, all employees could be aligned to:
1) Identifying and implementing improvements for the company;
2) Seeing (directly) the impact that these efforts have on the company’s bottom line; and
3) Hence being paid accordingly.

Unfortunately, as we know, it’s often the sensational bits that are remembered, whilst the context of the message is forgotten (and I did not help by only mentioning the sensational bit in my earlier post).

Paul