Polle de Maagt 
Polle de Maagt
It's a made-up principle with real truth in it. When a person or an organisation gets something wrong, what repairs it is rarely the monetary value of the gesture. It's the empathy, the warmth and the personal touch.
I once worked on research where the opposite showed up clearly: when the compensation was too big, people felt bought, and ended up less happy than before.
It isn't about what the gesture costs. It's about what it says.
works for colleagues too
Where it came from.
Years ago, tired after a string of conferences, Vitaly Friedman of Smashing Magazine and I gave each other a challenge in Sofia: work the words ice cream into your talk without the audience noticing. Whoever did it most seamlessly won.
try it in your next talk
Later we did the same among speakers at InSites Consulting: every speaker got a list of words to work into their story in the hour before going on stage. It became an exercise of its own, the secret ice cream.
A second ice cream principle.
Brand strategist Sol Horowitz uses the same name for something else: ask ten people to agree on one flavour and you get chocolate or vanilla every time. Groups agree on what's easy to agree on, not on what's interesting.
Both versions hold. One is a reminder of empathy. The other is a reminder that nothing kills creativity like too many voices.
Try it.
Next time something goes wrong with a customer or a colleague, ask: what's the ice cream here? Small, personal, fast. If only a big gesture would fix it, the problem isn't the gesture.
