Polle de Maagt 
Polle de Maagt
It's a made-up principle with real truth in it. When a person or an organisation gets something wrong, what repairs it is rarely the monetary value of the gesture. It's the empathy, the warmth and the personal touch.
I once worked on research where the opposite showed up clearly: when the compensation was too big, people felt bought, and ended up less happy than before.
It isn't about what the gesture costs.
It's about what it says.
works for colleagues too
Where did it come from?
In May 2014, I spoke at Bulgaria Web Summit in Sofia with, among others, Vitaly Friedman of Smashing Magazine. We were both tired after a string of conferences. The evening before, over a drink, we gave each other a challenge: work the words ice cream into your talk without the audience noticing. If the audience noticed, you lost. Whoever did it most seamlessly won.
try it in your next talk
Later we did the same among speakers at InSites Consulting: every speaker got a list of words to work into their story in the hour before going on stage. A great way to challenge both creativity and speaking skills. It became an exercise of its own, the secret ice cream.
How do you try it?
Next time something goes wrong with a customer or a colleague, ask: what's the ice cream here? Small, personal, fast. If only a big gesture would fix it, the problem isn't the gesture.
The same name, a different lesson: Deciding on ice cream, on why groups always end up with vanilla.
