In the 25 years of my company’s existence, I had two clients who called us to help them with an issue for 2-3 hours and who, afterwards, asked to be billed. We have done many pro bono activities, thinking that it is better for us to give and invest first.

These clients said: ‘this is what you do for a living, it is common sense to pay you; for everything we sell, we ask for money as well, so it would be unfair not to pay you for the service provided, for the ideas that you gave us’. One of the companies is a large family company, operating internationally; incidentally, one of their values is the principle of mutuality. The second one is run by a person who has fairness as one of his values.

We were very surprised, as if those clients had done us a huge favour.
We live in a culture where people expect us to do a lot of pro bono work – ‘patriotic work’, as it used to be called in Communist times – to provide something for free.

In contrast, about 10 year ago, we invited a facilitator from Canada to run a workshop for our team. They billed us, apart from the course, the taxi from their place to the airport, the sandwich and the bottle of water bought from the airport.

I saw on TV a short story about a firefighter who got seriously injured saving someone from a fire. As it turns out, he was also saved by the doctors of a hospital in Austria; he was sent back to a hospital in Romania after his life was not at risk anymore. The Romanian government did not think it had a duty to save him; and so, the people around him and on Facebook had to raise money to help him. Ture enough, the firefighter has a duty to sacrifice himself (part of the job description, you may say) but does the State not have a duty toward its citizens?

We are shocked about what the government fails to do, and largely for the right reasons. Do we not do the same in many situations? Doesn’t it feel as we deserve something for free?

I was told by a friend who went to an interview, that she had to create a transformational plan for one of the company’s departments, to show what she would do in a certain situation. Those people took her ideas and implemented them, without hiring her or paying for the plan.

When a person sells ideas, as is the case in consultancy, it does not seem like a big deal; when something more tangible is sold – garlic, for example, then we pay. Garlic is palpable, something someone worked for, while a transformational plan for a department seems so easy to implement, that it can be taken without paying.