A few of you may recall Maru and I were recently locked out of our flat, and had to call a locksmith to let us back in.
The 20 minute call-out ended up costing an eye-watering sum, but after a long-haul flight and a two week trip, we were just happy to get back into our flat.
This experience made me notice what’s called the locksmith paradox; a concept from Dan Ariely, a Psychology and Behavior Economics Professor at Duke University.
He describes that as a locksmith gets better at their job, they upset their customers because they get the job done faster.
This example gets to the heart of a mistake we’re prone to make with respect to perception of value. It’s easy to equate value with time, rather than outcomes.
If the locksmith puts in a solid hour’s work, and you pay them $200, that’s fair. But if they get you back into your house in 3 minutes, all of a sudden it’s a rip off—even though they got you back into your house in 5% of the time.
This paradox extends to many fields, disciplines, and projects—especially when outcomes have a non-linear relationship with inputs.
Aspire to be the master locksmith. And remember to reward the master locksmith commensurate to the outcome, not the input.