Louis Sideways, owner of Sideways Marketing, knew how his pitch would go over. Reliable Services Systems Inc. had hired Sideways Marketing to explore ways to make its company culture more fun.
Gary, CEO of Reliable Services Systems Inc., had this reasoning: “We hear that you’re the guys that bring mischief and delight to these situations.”
But wherever Sideways turned, their definition of delight was different, and there certainly was no room for mischief.
Reliable Services Systems Inc. delighted in never missing a service call. They loved having a backup to a backup to a backup for all of their systems. They cheered on making things simple and easy to understand. Even their spreadsheets lacked color—just shades of gray.
Sideways had no problem with the way Reliable Services Systems Inc. conducted itself. They were following the company’s culture of reliability. Good for them. Still, why did they hire Sideways Marketing?
Of course, the employees all had the same general complaint. Nothing interesting ever happened. Every day was exactly the same. They knew exactly what to expect.
Sideways readied his pitch because they’d paid him to do so. He insisted on taking little money up front, and usually this would have resulted in him brainstorming ideas for about four minutes. However, he really wanted to nail this challenging job, so he spent days trying to come up with some great ideas.
Sideways kicked off the meeting with the CEO Gary with a question projected on a slide. “What was the best day of school when it happened?”
“The best day was when we got to go to the science museum,” Gary said. “I loved that place.”
Sideways changed the slide to say a ‘snow day,’ completely ignoring Gary’s answer and said, “That’s right, a snow day. Because, as the 1990’s Nickelodeon movie said, anything can happen on a snow day.”
“I’m from Tucson, Arizona,” Gary said. “We never had a snow day.”
Sideways made a note to seriously talk to his office manager about which meetings they took. What was he doing here?
Sideways continued, “So, the great thing about a snow day is you could hope for it, but it did not always happen. It was a day that suddenly opened up and was completely unstructured.”
“Well, we don’t have snow days at Reliable Services Systems Inc. because we’re reliable,” Gary said.
“I realize that, but the idea is that you need to have some spontaneous days and shake things up in a way that won’t seriously inconvenience your customers,” Sideways said.
“Like maybe new pencils day?” Gary asked. “We have that on the first day of every quarter.”
Sideways quietly turned off his slideshow. Clearly Reliable Services Systems Inc. was not ready to hear about glitter war day or sporadic jungle cruise day. “What if we found some crazy pencils?”
Gary’s eyes lit up.