The Engineer and the Frog

Michael Hammer used to tell a story about an engineer walking across the quad who finds a talking frog.

The frog says, “If you kiss me, I’ll turn into a fairy princess and be your girlfriend for life.”

The engineer picks up the frog, puts it in his pocket, and keeps walking.

The frog wriggles and insists, “Hey, kiss me! I’ll be your girlfriend for life.”

The engineer pulls it out, looks at it, and says, “I don’t think you understand. I’m an engineer. What would I do with a girlfriend? Now, a talking frog—that’s cool.”

Hammer would pause and say, “For the engineers in the room, this is not a joke about frogs.”

And it isn’t.

It’s about missing the point.

Too many pricing leaders are the engineer in this story—fascinated by the mechanics of the talking frog. They study elasticity curves, refine list architectures, and automate approval flows. They can model anything, but often fail to translate that work into the language of enterprise value, growth narrative, or investor confidence.

The fairy princess in our world isn’t romance—it’s relevance. It’s connecting the mechanics of pricing to the mission of the business.

You don’t get credit for collecting frogs. You get credit for knowing which ones are worth kissing.