Have you ever heard of the concept, “The Dorman’s Fallacy?”  

So it comes from a guy called Rory Sutherland, who wrote this incredible book called Alchemy.

And he talks about The Dorman’s Fallacy, where it actually, purely from an efficiency point of view would make more sense… you know say in a hotel or something where somebody’s got to walk in a door, where you either have a doorman, that’s greeting you, and it’s a human or an automatic door.  

So purely from an efficiency point of view, having an automatic door is cheaper, okay, so it cuts out having to have a whole human salary.  

However, there’s a fallacy that that’s the best thing for the business.   

Because at the end of the day, what that doorman brings, the human doorman is so much value to the relationships that the clients or the customers have with that hotel, for example, and they go way over and above just the financial benefits or the immediate financial benefits.   

Because, you know when you go to a hotel and you first arrive, they might come out and open the taxi door or the Uber door, whatever it might be, they’ll open the door for you, which that’s great.  

They might give you directions.  

They might tell you, you know, go over there, check-in there.   

They might take your luggage.  

When you’re going out on the town, you’ve got the map and you don’t know which way to go, they might point you in the right direction.  

There’s so many other things that that human can do that the automatic door can’t.   

So when you’re looking at your business, there’s going to be similar tradeoffs that you need to make.  

Purely from a cost and efficiency point of view, this might be the best way you need to go, however, what impact does that have on the experience to the client?  

And what sort of peripheral value or what are those extra things that doing it this way, so not going down just the efficiency route, what other benefits can be brought to the table, that really, even though you’ve got a more efficient version over here, they can’t be replaced.  

And weighing up the two before making a decision.  

So too often we just narrowly look at it and go, how can we just make this process, this part of the overall approach more efficient? 

But you’ve got to also look at, “what would also make it more effective, and deliver a better experience that’s more valued by more humans that we’re actually delivering it to?” 

Anyway, I thought it was a really cool way of explaining how we need to look at the bigger picture, consider the client and then make the decision for what’s the best course of action for the business.  

Because after all, You are Valuable