Going The Extra Mile

During a training the trainer programme we discussed the concept of “going the extra mile”, i.e. doing something extra for a client that was not contracted for. One example, an electrician has a job to put electricity down to a shed at the bottom of a garden. Whilst there the house owner says “Oh, whilst you’re here would you mind just putting up a new light fitting for me?”. The electrician thinks that this is good for business and agrees to do it. It takes half an hour of his time, for which he does not charge, but he is late home that night which is the third night in succession that this sort has happened. At the end of the year when the contractor is questioned by accountant about how many of the give-away jobs are undertaken they tot up the total to a colossal £20,000 in lost revenue and time.

So, is this a good thing or not?

In Transactional Analysis terms we could think of it in terms of script. The script is a life plan that we make as children based on limited life experience. These decisions can have positive or negative affects. When a child hears messages such as “Go on, have a go, I will be there to support you” they are likely to develop confidence and abilities in a range of areas as their belief systems will be about taking calculated risks, being okay if they fail etc. How different this would be to the child who hears “Don’t be stupid, you’ll never be able to do that”. As children we then make decisions based on this limited experience and then, outside our awareness, we live our lives according to those early decisions.

So, let’s get back to the “extra mile”. If I have a contract with an organisation and then, on a number of occasions, they ask me to complete forms that are outside the contract and take up to half an hour of my time, what should I do? If I agree to writing reports for a company at no charge because I think this will be good for Mountain Associates then this may be an effective use of my time and money. However, if I don’t re-contract with the client company it is likely that they have no awareness that I am doing it over and above the original contract so the benefit for Mountain Associates is lost. In effect, I am saying, to the client company, that breaking a contractual boundary is fine and I am likely to end up feeling resentful as a result of the extra unpaid time and effort on my part. In addition the client is also more likely to do this again. On the other hand it may be that I am completing the forms because I think I “should”, not because we have made a business case for doing so. Perhaps my parents expected me to do things for others, or, I found that if I did things for others then they seemed to like me more, it is probable that I may continue to do this even when it is not appropriate.

How many times have you run over on a time boundary legitimising it as offering the client something that other consultants don’t do, or even that your train is not for another hour and you can fit in a bit longer with the client etc. On deeper exploration we can often find we have done so because we believed we “should”, or we wanted to be liked, not because in the here-and-now we firmly believe it is good for our business.

The problem with “going the extra mile” is when we do so in script not because we think it is good for business. The decision does not come from here-and-now Adult ego state and we are discounting ourselves and our value. Add up all the times you have done something because you thought you “should” and check whether you feel resentful.

We need to balance out doing things for free with the business case for doing so. If your exploration into the amount of time and energy you put into “going the extra mile” leaves you severely out of pocket and resentful I would suggest you might be in script.

I am not suggesting however, that there should be a business case made for everything we do for free for others. That is not the point. Businesses thrive on good will and good service. I am sure we can all remember the time a restaurant owner made us something special because of some dietary problem, or a store assistant carried something out to the car, or someone did not charge us for a broken appointment. These instances restore our faith in human nature, let along make good business sense. However, when we do things that are in script this can be bad for business and bad for us, as boundaries get broken which can have a detrimental affect on all concerned. That is why all of us in business for ourselves need to develop an awareness of script and our own script beliefs so that we can be here-and-now in the decision-making processes.