Be aware of the moment

November 5, 2012

I think there are at least three ways for a company to frame its relationship with the customer:

  1. We transact with you: This means the company exchanges its goods and services for your money. Of course, like anything else, this can be done awfully or brilliantly. Brilliantly done means the good or service is relevant, of high quality, delightful…, that the price is fair, that the transaction process is convenient…
  2. We serve you: This means that the company helps meet your needs, solve your problems, achieve your ambitions… This requires most of the elements of the transactional model – you have to serve something after all, but the orientation to the customer is different. The mindset is different. It’s one that places priority, even primacy, on the interests and needs of the customer.
  3. We have a relationship with you: This means the company engages with you in a more holistic way and that this engagement changes over time in an organic way in response to shared experience. And the phrase “engages with you” is critical. It’s not something they do to you. Or on you. Or even for you. It’s something they do with you. Now, of course, in any relationship there will be moments where A is doing something for B. Or vice versa. But over the long-term a relationship is about mutual interests and needs and is co-created equally by all participants.

A few interesting observations about the above:

First, a service relationship is a relationship. But it is not holistic. It defines a priori the purpose and nature of the relationship, and the roles each party will play. A service relationship does not have a lot of room for organic growth. The company can get better at serving you but that’s all they can be or do.

Second, a true relationship morphs as each party learns about the other, as the world changes, as they share experiences and make choices together… It is much more complete than a service-only relationship. It is much more relevant. [Of course limited service-based relationships can grow over time into a more holistic relationship.]

Third, frames 1 and 3 above place thew company and you on an equal footing. Frame 2 places the company in a servile position relative to you.

What got me thinking about all of this is an email I received from Carbonite – the web-based backup service. They reminded me that I hadn’t backed up my computer for a week and suggested I contact them with any questions. It was a very nice email. The reminder was helpful. They were serving me – identifying my need and reaching out to help me solve it. But they haven’t engaged me in a real relationship. Their communication is not fully relevant. It is not based on what’s going on for us today. It is not based on shared experience.

Why not? Because there has just been a massive storm – Hurricane Sandy. You’ve probably heard of it. It’s been on the news a bit. But it seems that Carbonite has not heard of it. They know I live in the northeast. They can probably tell based on my IP address and they can certainly tell based on the billing address of the credit card I used to pay them. So they know I live in the heart of the affected area. But they have not at all acknowledged that fact. This shows me that they are just not paying attention. They have not bothered to check to see whether my failure to back my computer up might be because I actually don’t have power.

What could they have done?

Easy. They could have sent an email saying that they’d noticed I hadn’t connected my computer to their servers in a while. They could have asked me whether I was OK, whether I had been affected by Sandy… They could have expressed a hope that all is well with me. That would have been enough. If they wanted, they could have gone further. They could have suggested ways I might select the few files that are critical to back up so that when I go to a place with free wifi I could backup just what is really needed. They could have suggested places I go to find power and wifi….

Bottom line: An email like the one I got from Carbonite is weird. It had some of the trappings of humanity but was blatantly missing what really makes humans tick, and certainly what makes human relationships possible – basic empathy or concern for another. When we get emails like that from companies, it becomes immediately apparent that they actually don;t care about us very much. That they want the money we give them but they don’t want to connect with us.

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Change the toilet, not the pipes

October 6, 2012

First things first. I’m about to use a toilet analogy to share an innovation and transformation idea. If toilet analogies bother you then either stop reading or get over it. I’m using this analogy deliberately for two reasons. The first is that that’s where and how the idea came to me. I was in a bathroom, saw a toilet and had the idea. And the second reason is that I want you to know how the idea came to me – because inspiration can come from anywhere if we aren’t too close-minded or prudish.

Imagine that there’s something troubling you about our plumbing system. Let’s say you believe it wastes water and you want to do something about it. Well, we’ve done that. We now have regulations in the US that limit the water flow for a toilet so that we waste less water. [Many people find that toilets don't work as well anymore and so they just flush multiple times thereby erasing any gains - a good lesson for any regulators to remember.] Anyway, let’s say you want to improve this even further. Maybe you think big and wonder why toilets have to use any water at all. What if the toilet did something to the waste to package it up in some way so that water was not required? Something tells me that’s possible.

But now your world gets complicated. You cannot simply create a brilliant new toilet because our toilets work as part of a system with our pipes. So unless your new toilet is going to use Star Trek technology to beam the waste to a dump, you’re going to have to make sure that whatever your toilet does to the waste will have to be tolerated by the pipes.

You could, of course, change the whole system. After all, our plumbing system is ancient. The idea of flushing waste into a set of pipes using water is very very old. Surely if we completely re-imagined this, we could build something better. I’m sure we could. And who is going to rip the pipes out of their walls to accommodate your new system? And who is going to convince every other building owner to do the same?

It just ain’t gonna happen.

And this is the point I’m trying to make about innovation and transformation. Of course you must be creative and imaginative. Of course you must think big. Of course you must identify big scary problems to work on. Of course you must reject the status quo.

But you also must be pragmatic. Human nature will not change because you want to be creative. The laws of physics will not change because you want to innovate. And the world will not simply reorient itself around you because you have ambition.

So here are my three recommendations for you:

  1. Think systemically. You have to identify the underlying system at play so you know the parameters and contours you have to deal with. If you think it’s all about the toilet, you might go one way. When you recognize that the pipes are an integral part of the system it will often take you in another direction.
  2. Identify the unmovables. Be real here, not lame. Unmovable means it just ain’t gonna happen. It does not mean it will require a lot of thinking or a lot of convincing. This is about being pragmatic not lazy.
  3. Optimize your impact. Figure out the most powerful change you can make to affect the whole system. This isn’t always obvious.

In short, when you’re trying to transform, you’re much better off trying to make a better toilet than you are trying to rip the pipes out of the wall.

How does that apply to your business? Or your life?

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What would Patrick Moynihan think about TED?

August 23, 2012

I came across an article on the TED blog about the 20 most watched TED talks. I found it at first oddly unsettling. And then I realized there was nothing at all odd about being unsettled by that. Here’s what TED has to say about itself:

“TED is dedicated to ideas worth spreading. And that leaves many wondering exactly which ideas have been spread the most widely in the six years that TEDTalks videos have been available online…”

Of course the fact that an idea has spread is not evidence ipso facto that it was worth spreading. See the Jersey Shore. Res ipsa loquitur.

But this post hoc logic is of a piece with the impact TED is having on the world of knowledge and ideas (or at least on the popular perception of that world). TED is about the consumerization of thoughts and ideas. It is about designing and packaging them into cute little bites that are easily digested by the masses. But is that what knowledge has come to?

I can assure you, the great thinkers of human history did not trade in memes. Pick up a copy of Plato’s Dialogs. Read Aristotle. Kant. Freud. Marx. If you don’t like “dead white guys,” read Margaret Mead. Read Simone de Beauvoir. Read Betty Friedan. Read Cornel West. (Note: I put none of those non dead white guys in the same league as the dead white guys. But that’s not the point.) These thinkers traded in thoughts. They waded into the detail. Deep into the detail. They explored ideas, formulated theories, tested them empirically and with thought experiments. Because that is what it takes to make the case for an idea worth having.

I enjoy TED talks as much as the next guy or gal. I also enjoy watching the Rambo movies. But I don’t finish a Rambo movie with the feeling of having immersed myself in the intricacies of military theory. Or even tactics. Nope. To do that, I’d have to pick up von Clausewitz. Or Sun Tzu. Or the like.

TED talks are definitely valuable. So is the quickie. So is fast food. These things have their place. But they are not the stuff of which healthy relationships, healthy diets or healthy intellects are made.

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Why do we work?

July 10, 2012

Once upon a time, people worked to subsist. Or, for a few lucky people, to get fat and have lots of women (sorry ladies, I don’t espouse that point of view but that’s how it was back then). But today, in so many places around the world, that is not why people work. In a large [...]

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Leading by non-example?

June 9, 2012

Doesn’t that sound silly? Yet leading by example is talked about as some special kind of leading – an above and beyond form of leadership. I don’t agree. If you’re not setting an example, you aren’t leading. Let’s think about what the word “lead” actually means. Consider the very simple case of leading someone to a place. [...]

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How to change the culture of your organization

May 31, 2012

Years ago, we used to believe that changing a large organization required nothing more than an act of communication. Of course crafting that communication was never easy but we used to believe in the power of hierarchy – if the person at the top issued the right communication then the organization would fall in line. [...]

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Principles for creating change at scale

May 30, 2012

Change is essential to the continued vitality of humanity and our institutions. Yet it can be so difficult for people to change. Even when we know we need to change, we often find it so difficult to let go of what we are, what we believe, what we do, and what we have. This is [...]

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What if you lost your title?

May 25, 2012

Imagine someone designed a device that could selectively wipe out human memory. Imagine that person used the device on everyone at your company – except you – to wipe out their memory of the organizational hierarchy. You go into work today and everything seems the same. People know what they do for a living. They [...]

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Leadership vs. management

May 25, 2012

Leadership is one of the most written-about topics – personal leadership, business leadership, political leadership, etc. Yet, in these turbulent times, we are more in need of leadership than we have been for a long time. So perhaps one more opinion about leadership will not be considered one too many. I’d like to focus on [...]

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A new kind of ridiculous

May 17, 2012

Below is a the entire signature from an email I recently received. I copied it in its entirety and did not edit it. This message (including any attachments) contains confidential information intended for a specific individual and purpose, and is protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, you should delete this message. [...]

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