I was riding a city bus from my hotel to a client’s office for an early meeting.  There were some seats open, one next to me, and some people standing.  At the second stop after I got on, a woman in her late twenties, very smartly dressed, eased gently down the bus aisle and asked if she could take the seat next to mine. I looked up from my phone, said, “Sure,” and moved to make room for her to sit.  On her left foot, the one closest to me, she was wearing a flip-flop sandal. On the other, a light gray foot and ankle immobilizer walking boot.

After a couple of stops, I turned slightly toward her and said, “Good morning…. How did you do that?”, nodding toward her immobilizer boot.

“Oh,” she said, smiling without looking up from her phone, “I was wearing high heels at a party and I rolled my ankle and broke a bone.”

“Wow!”, I said, “How long have you been in the boot?”

“Several months,” she replied. “It comes off in a few weeks.”

“Oh, good. Just in time for summer.”

“Yes,” she laughed.

“So, do you think you’ll go back to those high heels again?”

“They looked pretty cute,” she said, smiling with just a touch of defensiveness. “Anyway, I’ve done this before. No big deal.”

I recalled, just for a moment, the instant I mis-stepped off a sidewalk in Petaluma, California, grossly spraining my left ankle. I was about her age at the time; the ankle never healed properly and still bothers me, occasionally.  “Cute?”, I thought to myself. “You would do that again, just to look cute?”

Ah, well…. People have different risk tolerances and what economists call “objective functions,” ways they balance the multiple variables in their lives within certain constraints and with variables that they want to maximize or minimize. I would go to great lengths to minimize physical injury; she would go to great lengths maximize “looking cute in my high heels” apparently thinking nothing of physical injury.

When we’re exploring possible engagements or sales with clients, we’ll do well to understand the variables they’re seeking to maximize or minimize and the constraints within which they operate.

Nick Miller trains banks and bankers to attract and expand relationships with business clients. More profitable relationships, faster. He is president of Clarity Advantage based in Concord, MA. Additional articles on Clarity’s web site.