SHOT
“Our clients want flexibility.”
CHASER
There is a saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The road to flexibility is no different.
Sales wants to say yes to close deals and meet diverse client needs. But each custom request risks pulling away from the core offering, leading to service sprawl. This dilutes focus, drives up costs, and makes it harder to deliver consistently at scale.
Operations wants to say yes to keep clients happy, but each new client-specific process introduces more variability. Over time, this makes it nearly impossible to manage, audit, or resolve issues when they arise. This complexity strains resources, slows down delivery, and increases the likelihood of costly errors.
Small companies know that flexibility is what got them to where they are, and don’t like surrendering “agility.” Large companies can be mired in years of overgrowth, like a garden that’s been allowed to go to seed. Regardless of size, too often companies don’t realize they’ve gone too far, despite obvious signs of slower growth, overwork, burnout, and complications that ultimately undermine the very quality clients value.
Now, it’s fair to say that there is no one-size-fits-all model. For tech-enabled companies, the challenge is to maintain a scalable, standardized product while managing client expectations for flexibility—or at least for configurability. For more strategic or full-service market research firms, a more bespoke approach is actually part of the company’s value proposition and promise and factors into the margin profile, even if it implies operational complexity and greater costs.
But it’s also fair to say that there is a lot of resistance to structure and process that is based more in unwarranted fear, overcautiousness, and simply ill-founded beliefs about what customers want.
The bottom line is that standardization is never a bad thing, even in high-touch businesses. What’s ultimately hard about it is often not the work, but the cultural shift required to operate in a different way. Teams need to first buy into the change. Then they need to devote the time to make changes. Above all, they need to view the work not as a one-time project but as a commitment to continuous improvement. Without this mindset, even well-designed processes can degrade over time, making sustainable improvement impossible.
INSIGHT
Any effort to determine the “right level of flexibility” begins with standardizing around the core product and aligning with your Ideal Client Profile (ICP). For tech-driven companies, this means creating flexibility within a scalable framework—for a product that is configurable within set boundaries. For ad-hoc or full-service firms, it means establishing clear parameters around customization, mapping workflows, and developing consistent processes that can be scaled and audited. In any company, thoughtful standardization aids in training, quality control, and resource management. This approach, paired with proper staffing and a commitment to operational excellence, enables companies to deliver the flexibility clients want while maintaining efficiency, quality, and long-term scalability.
Above all, have the courage to ensure that doing right by your customers doesn’t mean doing wrong by your business.