Can a circle be beautiful?
There is no universal definition of art and what is considered art differs across societies, geographies and time. The word art stems from the Latin word for craftsmanship and craftsmanship is a result of thought, preparation, hard work and maybe a bit of inspiration.
The pioneer Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky was famous for painting circles. To name just a few, he was followed by the Spanish artist Joan Miro (see the Red Sun by Miro) and by the modern British artist Richard Long.
Is the circle beautiful? The answer is maybe, depending on the viewers’ taste, however what can make a circle artistic is the craftsmanship that it represents.
Every weekend, on midnight between Saturday and Sunday, WorkPlaceLive generates an automated report of a circle. This circle is a pie-chart depicting customer satisfaction with the support desk over the past week. While the survey is an opportunity for customers to express feedback good or bad, the level of satisfaction has been close to 100% with the occasional customer expressing dissatisfaction, on average once a fortnight. Somehow, the eye and mind are always drawn to those small slivers of the pie-chart that represent the one ‘poor’ response or the merely ‘good’ responses. Instead of resting on the laurels, the efforts are drawn to improving on the blemishes. Probably, like with a football team that wins 4-1, the talk in the dressing room will dedicate a disproportional time to how the one goal was conceded.
But last week was different. The weekly report was a solid circle of ‘excellent’. Did we receive less responses? Have our customers changed? Have they become less demanding? The answer is a resounding NO to all questions. Our customers are very demanding and rightfully so and they used the survey to express their gratitude for the excellent support received. The solid striving for perfection, the thought and the hard work have culminated in this simple, yet beautiful representation.
We will not rest on our laurels now either. We set the bar high and we will continue to strive to exceed our own targets.