Because of their attitudes, zebras are much trickier to domesticate than donkeys. A ducking reflex makes them frustrating to lasso, and their peculiar social structure means a herd will not follow a captured leader. No matter how similar they look, they are more than just striped donkeys.
**
Since the industrial revolution highlighted standardization as a way toward profitability, people have been standardizing services. Everything gets streamlined – from scoping to pacing to pricing until basically anybody can do it, given a manual.**
Streamlining services lowers costs, meaning lower potential downside for the provider, but that usually comes with an unspoken consequence: limited upside to the client. Anybody can do it, but only if clients know what to ask for, and the manual fully reflects reality. Do these two conditions sound like your field of work?
There’s basically no point at which standardizing the job of a cafeteria worker makes it worse for the client, but that doesn’t mean the same is true for teachers, although they both provide services. Their jobs look similar, but only on the surface level.**
Professional services can be beneficially standardized only up to a point, after which everybody, including the client, is worse off.**
When making a pricing decision that would lead you away from what most clients expect, remember: you are like a zebra and not a donkey.