He read the summary, not the work

01Lived

Some years ago I pitched for and won the mobile strategy for a big UK insurer. The engagement went well, and eventually I presented the final report, excited and hoping that implementation work would follow. I was living in a house where every room was open plan, so my office was a little cubby hole under the stairs, quiet and half soundproofed, and it was in that little box that I took the call. The board director told me he was very disappointed, really disappointed, not impressed at all, and I went numb. It remains the only time in my life that I have felt absolutely devoid of feeling, and it wasn’t embarrassment in the slightest. It was the shock of hearing something I believed deeply and viscerally to be important, something I had poured genuinely innovative work into, being played down. Most people would have asked questions there and then; numb, I couldn’t. I had been paid, they weren’t asking for the money back, and I could easily have let it die there. Instead I kept pushing back, and although my first couple of approaches genuinely annoyed them, I knew they were an ethical company who wouldn’t punish me for pestering, and I felt that getting to the truth would be useful for both of us. Eventually the man in charge agreed to look at the work again, because the conviction and confidence I showed on the calls, in his own words, simply didn’t match what he had read. That was when it emerged that he had never been given the full document, only a summary. They apologised profusely, and in the end it all went in a different direction.