The Productive Pessimist

  In my run down coastal UK town, the past few weeks have been hell for local retailers, with teenagers treating major shoplifting sprees - taking electrical items, clothes, alcohol, not "just a few sweets or a bit of makeup" (assuming you're the kind of person who thinks it's 'fine' to steal 'small' things in the first place... I'm very much not  of that mindset...) - as something that's just...a normal part of them not having to be in school, and their parents aren't able to afford to be at home to supervise them. (If they're not actually at a legitimate job or course...lock them in the house. Take every set of keys, including those for the windows, with you...or teach your kids basic morals...) Parents aren't able to even take three  consecutive weeks off from most jobs, let alone six - so, even if you believe parents "should share the school holidays equally if they both work", it's not possible. In offices and oth...

  Everyone wants to be able to not just charge  the luxury price, but actually reliably bank  the luxury price, customer after customer, week in, week out, with no complaints or refunds, but without offering the luxury experience. 'Luxury' doesn't have to be unique, exclusive, or out-of-this-world 'special'; what makes something a luxury  experience, and has people choosing it without thinking about it, even when a very similar experience is available from a nearby business charging 50% or more less than the luxury item is that luxury = zero friction. The experience of minimal friction is why people will pay half a week's groceries cost to have a single meal delivered to them; for those people, the friction of identifying the meal you want to eat, pulling out/buying the ingredients, prepping and cooking them, and cleaning up afterwards is more friction than they can handle at that moment; in contrast, putting in an order and waiting for it to arrive is very low ...

  I don't usually write personal accounts. That's not what The Productive Pessimist  is about, I tell myself. Problems are universal. Problems don't have names. We're here, as a company, to solve anyone's  problems. But The Productive Pessimist also claims to provide the solution by living through  the problems.  We talk about how our lived experience informs and complements our professional expertise.  Which means, sometimes, personal accounts are exactly  what The Productive Pessimist is about. The recent EHRC legislation around access to "single sex" spaces is deeply personal. So is Kathleen Stock's recent musing on "why are  so many young people using walking sticks, hmmm?" I won't be linking to either of them. They'll come up easily enough on a Google search. I'll be speaking on both of them, because of both of them bring up problems for businesses, and both of them are deeply, brutally personal. The advisory in the title isn...