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I pay my respects and acknowledge all Traditional Custodians of Country and on whose land I live and work. I recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture. I pay my respects to their Elders past and present.

Hey reader

this week the sun is shining for me, both literally and metaphorically. I hope you can say the same. I've been grateful for a number of people reaching out to connect and to give me feedback on my work. I even had a lovely chat with an architect from Latvia, which blew my mind a little. A special hello to Uldis.

I was also finally able to shower indoors for the first time in about 5 weeks, now my bathroom renovations are complete. Whilst that was awesome, I wasn't so impressed with the builders. They left it to me to clean up some of their mess and took my hose nozzle. They were lovely guys and made an effort to be considerate, but in the end I was left with a metaphorical bad taste in my mouth.

It's got me thinking about a cognitive bias known as Peak-End Rule. A bias that can work for you or against you and it's worth knowing about in your work. It can set you up for future success.

I got you

Michael

Peak-End Rule

Peak-End Rule is a cognitive bias that effects the way we remember events. Our memories are biased by the emotional or experiential peaks, both positive and negative. The peaks being the parts that are most prominent in our memory. Most of all, how we ultimately recall the experience is influenced by how we felt at the end, rather than an overall recollection. This means we can influence how someone recalls an experience by how and what we choose to do at the end to colour it. There's evolutionary reasons for this, but that's not important for our purposes here.

A perfect example of a bad Peak-End was told to me by the plumber doing my bathroom: Recently, on World Plumbing Day (who knew that was a thing?) a large plumbing supply company put on a BBQ for plumbers - which is a terrific gesture. Unfortunately, however, they didn't supply nearly enough bread for the sausage sandwiches - only a small cost to them in the greater scheme of things. The result was that the majority of plumbers left the event feeling only bad will to the company. Not only that (worse still) they told this scornful story to other plumber friends.

Let's consider my bathroom in this context. Despite the inconvenience, I mostly recall a positive experience/peaks - the builders worked hard to be considerate and keep me updated. Unfortunately it ended badly. Imagine if the builders had hired a cleaner at the end. Leaving the bathroom beautifully clean, perhaps with a fresh roll of toilet paper, new bar of soap and a couple of new toothbrushes. Very little cost to them and it would have left me feeling delighted instead of mostly recalling my annoyance with them.

Architecture is a long process. With many highs and lows. They're the parts your clients will remember. The key is to first consider how to maximise delivering highs throughout the process, to reinforce your clients' positive experience. Most of all, how are you going to leave your clients feeling delighted at the end? Despite the potential for a tedious niggling process getting projects to completion. This delight is the thing they will remember you for. It's the reason they'll rave to all their friends, colleagues and casual acquaintances about you, imploring them to engage your services.

What's going to be your peak end?

You got this.