Customer Crossroads

Steve Jobs Inspirational Commencement Address: "Your Time is Limited, so Don't Waste it Living Someone Else's Life"

If you haven't yet read Steve Jobs' commencement speech to Stanford in June, you're missing out on something that will inspire you.  Find the whole text here, grab a coffee, and keep the Kleenex (r) handy just in case.

Having now read this, I'm going to press through the administrivia clogging my desk and try to mobilize something a little more meaningful this afternoon. 

Thanks Steve.  That speech is just one more amazing gift you have given the world while you were creating your own life story.

Does Your Strategic Intent Deserve Personal Effort and Commitment? Or Are You Guilty of the Seven Deadly Strategy Sins?

I've heard enough definitions of a mission statement to fill a stadium, and I bet you have too.  You might find it easier to cope with the concept of "strategic intent", which I picked up from the July/August issue of HBR, in an article by Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad called Strategic Intent *. 

It cleared some dust from my summer-fogged brain, and got me thinking.  It's worth reading the whole article for a number of good nuggets, but here's the part you should think about starting today:

"Strategic intent sets a target that deserves personal effort and commitment"

The authors note that the goal of "maximizing shareholder wealth" is not something we all think about in the shower, because it isn't very mobilizing.  Compare it to the examples they use of Canon ('beat Xerox') or Komatsu ('encircle Caterpillar').   

I used to work in a big company.  When I got promoted to the point where I interacted occassionally with senior executives, some real alarm bells went off for me.  I remember hearing one declare our corporate mission to be "having the best efficiency ratio in the industry". 

I knew this would not mobilize the few hundred people that worked for me.  Heck, it didn't even mobilize me.

(You don't have to be a global business to have an energizing strategic intent.  I commissioned some coffee mugs from Lucky Rabbit earlier this year; when they arrived, they announced their mission as the creation of everyday treasures.   And they are.)

The article clearly demonstrates how too much focus on the existing competitor landscape and existing company capabilities prevents reaching for real leadership.   A lot of strategy tools that we use don't help matters:

"It is not very comforting to think that the essence of Western strategic thought can be reduced to eight rules for excellence, seven S's, five competitive forces, four product life-cycle stages, three generic strategies, and innumberable two-by-two matrices." 

..."Moreover, even reasonable concepts like the product life cycle, experience curve, product portfolios, and generic strategies often have toxic side effects: They reduce the number of strategic options management is willing to consider.  They create a preference for selling businesses rather than defending them.  They yield predictable strategies that rivals easily decode"

This article was first published in 1989, but I found a surprising resonance with today's corporate dynamics ... just substitute the names of the companies they mention.

Seven Deadly Strategy Sins

The key points that captured my interest amount to a list of deadly sins, still with us long after 1989, and worth meditating upon as you face the mirror every morning:

1. Executives hope to motivate people with mission statements and corporate goals that are not motivating, not exciting, not ennobling, and often seriously dull
2. When organizations are overloaded with initiatives, executive credibility suffers along with effective execution
3. Executives need to share "reciprocal responsibility" with employees -- both the pains and the gains.  This means sharing the truth about what's going on in a meaningful way at every level of the business
4. Organizations that measure only on ROI encourage management to focus on moving the denominator (level of investment) down, not the numerator (revenue) up, leading to a cycle of downsizing that ultimately erodes value
5. Too much focus on inflexible SBU (Strategic Business Unit) organizations can favor outsourcing instead of development of core competence, resulting in less organizational learning, and ultimately less ability to compete.  (Yup, been there too.)
6. Moving managers too quickly between assignments encourages either abandonment of long term development of capabilities in the business, or attempts to jam long-term development into short time horizons, typically with acquisitions 
7. Focusing too much on the strategy hierarchy of corporate goals --> business unit strategies --> functional tactics fosters an elitist view of management and "tends to disenfranchise most of the organization".  Yes, there needs to be coherence, but not at the cost of ignoring all the brains that aren't in head office

Strategic intent:  What's yours?

PS.  You can't get people focused on building a better customer experience with a strategic intent that has some sort of feeble "shareholder wealth" mantra.  And that's why it's in this blog.

* Yes, you have to buy the article, unless you are already a subscriber.  However, there is a nice summary at this link, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page. 

Using the Power of the Web to Harness Opinion: marketocracy

Are there investors who can consistently beat the market but aren't working for a big fund manager?  Marketocracy thinks so. 

Forbes online describes their approach this way:

Ken [founder Ken Kam] and his team have recruited over 55,000 people to manage over 65,000 model portfolios that need to meet strict distribution and activity requirements – just like professional fund managers.

These aren’t people who have thrown darts and gotten lucky with one stock, they are real investors who been featured in the pages of Forbes and BusinessWeek and who have worked hard over the past three years to build up a record so they can have a shot at managing a real Marketocracy fund.

Marketocracy constantly analyzes and ranks all 70,000 investors and each month, selects their 100 best investors, the M100. These are investors who have proven ability to generate long-term results, but who also have demonstrated consistently superior long-term long term stock picking skill as well as shorter-term evidence that their investing style and strategy is working in today's market.

What does this mean? Out of tens of thousands of investors of all types, from value to growth to technical, Marketoracy is able to identify the 100 most successful investors with the hottest hands and bring you their picks.

My Take
I suspect that this system works better when it is small relative to the market, so  sign up now.  When there are a million people involved, or ten million, it'll probably have the same problems that fund managers of large funds have.  (Any economists want to weigh in here?)

This model does harness the power of the web to circumvent traditional channels and ways of doing things, giving power and influence to those who were disenfranchised.  It also reminds me a lot of electronic marketplaces for forecasting. 

You may have heard of these in the context of budget forecasting inside organizations -- markets are set up to trade in various budget forecasts, and individuals inside the organization can buy and sell the forecasts for some nominal benefits.  Forecasts created in this way are much more accurate than the traditional methods. 

Really, we are just beginning to see how we can use internet technologies combined with computing power to improve many things. 

Thanks to creative trend-spotter Apoorv D. for bringing this to my attention.

What the Heck is Ethnographic Research?

Leading edge companies are shifting much more of their research spend to ethnographic methods.  It's all about studying your target in their natural environment.  If you don't know what this is all about, here's your chance. 

The Qualitative Research Consultant's Association (of which yours truly is a part) runs regular web-casts on topics of interest.  *** These are not sales pitches, they are researchers talking about their methods for educational purposes.*** 

The upcoming event is scheduled for September 7, 2005, 12:00 to 1:00 PM ET.  These are good speakers and respected researchers, and it's a timely topic.  Plus the price is right (free).  Here's the official notice:

On-Site Insight: Ethnographic and Observational Qualitative Research from the Inside Out

Marketers are always looking for ways that research can "go deeper" with consumers, to access unconsciously driven behaviors. In this lively presentation, Jan Lohs, Lohs Research Group and Susan Sweet, Doyle Research Associates, Inc. will help even seasoned professionals understand why and when to conduct ethnographic and observational qualitative research projects to achieve rich, below-the-surface insights. The presentation will include intriguing examples and case studies of projects from home, retail and other environments, and will share ideas on ways to incorporate ethnographic elements into more "traditional" qualitative projects.

Susan Sweet has been with Doyle Research Associates in Chicago for the past 6 years, and has been practicing qualitative research over 10 years. Susan specializes in the areas of new product development, marketing strategy and observational research, and works to combine methods and techniques to meet individual client objectives. She is very active in the QRCA, having served on its Board of Directors from 2001-2003, and helped launch its award-winning QRCA VIEWS magazine.

Jan Lohs has worked in qualitative marketing research for over 20 years, founding Lohs Research Group in 1994 in suburban Chicago. She enjoys practicing a mix of ethnographic and more "traditional" qualitative research methods. She honed ethnographic research skills in retail environments working with Dr. John F. Sherry of Northwestern University's Kellogg School, and has conducted a number of ethnographic projects at retail for her clients, exploring the dynamics of consumer behavior at point of purchase. Jan is an active QRCA Member and is the current Chair of the QRCA Field Committee.

Pre-registration is required:     http://www.qrca.org/QCastRegistration.asp

After you hear this, plan to rethink your research spending.  Why?  Because good ethnographic research can change the way you think about your market and provide dramatic insights that yield competitive advantage. 

Acknowledgements:  Picture from an ancient copy of Grimm's fairy tales, and *I think* in the public domain.  If you think otherwise, do let me know.

To watch trends, watch artists

I was telling a more learned friend about the altered books I described in this post, The Memory Business: Your Life as Art, and she told me about Tom Phillips' work, A Humument.  I was trying to figure out where this trend came from, and slapping forehead with palm, didn't think to look for an artist at the beginning.  D'oh. 
 

The Humument is an altered book.  Phillips started altering this book in the mid 1960's, and continues to add to and change the work.  There are at least 370 pages of this book online in various places, and a variety of published collections.  The work is a virtual definition of post-modernism, as he started with a novel called A Human Document, and has created his own story using selected words from the original book, together with collage methods to create a new work.  (And also seems to have started something).

What's important to think about is this:

• Important trends often start with artists, who interpret the world and share that interpretation.  It's not about pretty pictures, it's about ideas.  (Consider the dialogue between science fiction and science, and how that dialogue has affected real world invention)
• Art that was once radical is now familiar.  Case in point, Andy Warhol's graphic style.  What looked like installation art fifteen years ago is surprisingly similar to the distressed clothing seen today.
• Great artists may be hard to understand, but they are rarely stupid.  When you read their own writings and commentary, you see nuanced and layered ideas and symbolism.  They observe, deconstruct and reassemble elements and ideas to evoke a response in the viewer.
• The symbols in art speak to us even when we don't fully understand them at a conscious level. (** see footnote)

To do something practical with this insight, you don't need to become an art historian.  You need, instead, to pay some attention to what artists think is important to think about.  These are not the artists who are painting pictures of fluffy kitties on the weekend, these are the kinds of artists that show at the Venice Biennale.  You could involve artists in your creation process -- many of the most creative product development companies do exactly this.   

** The footnote:
You may have seen or read the haunting Tennessee Williams play, The Glass Menagerie.  I found out something new recently that intrigued me -- the meaning of blue roses.   

A while back I took a short course in Semiotics, the study of signs and symbols.  I learned that blue roses is a symbol of impossible love, because blue roses do not occur in nature.  Laura, a central character in Menagerie, has the nickname blue roses, given her by Jim, the fellow she has long harboured a crush for, but who is engaged to another woman. 

You don't have to know that blue roses is a symbol of impossible love to understand the play, and Williams may only have intuited this himself.  But symbols have their meaning even when we don't know we're dealing with a symbol.  This is part of their power, and of course why advertising images are selected with such care.      

***Postscript
Apparently there now is such a thing as a real blue rose, thanks to Suntory Ltd. and Florigene Ltd.  Given the symbolism, you might want to use caution sending these to anyone you care about.  Thanks to BW for bringing this to my attention.

Teaching Customers: Football Classes

When the CFL realized their fan base was aging, they decided to take action.  One of their most interesting steps has been offering classes in football to women, called Football 101. 
For a reasonable fee ($35 - $60 depending on the team), women get up to four hours of education in football which includes meeting the players, touring the locker room, trying on equipment, getting a team playbook, learning what all the terminology means, refreshments, and tickets to a future game.

Not only has this been successful in attracting fans, it builds strong fans who feel connected with the players that they have met. 

There are plenty of businesses where the intimidation factor is huge, from opera to rock climbing.  By helping customers become part of the in-the-know group, you can build a better experience and loyalty. 

The Memory Business: Your Life as Art

Here are some of the dots that seem connected to me -- what do you think?

First Dot
This dot just arrived today as a press release:  PhotoPoetics offers to

shape your memories into a personal art piece using your photographs and writing an original poem about the event. 

Samples of their work, including audio poems, are here.  So if you don't have the creative talent or time to make a scrapbook or altered book (see next dots), someone can do this for you.

Second Dot
I've been interested in the explosive growth of scrapbooking, which is now the third most popular hobby, after needlecrafts and home decor painting.  Google shows 1.9 million entries for that word alone. This is not your grandmother's scrapbook, constructed with some photos and clippings and a few gold photo corners.  This is an industry, with special stores, papers, classes and conventions.    Samples, and more samples of scrapbook pages.

Third Dot
I recently discovered altered books. An altered book is usually a hardcover book that has been altered with paint, glue, pictures, and so forth.  Unlike scrapbooking, where the memory and pictures are front and centre, altered books seem to be more about personal emotions and imagery.  They are intimate works of art.  And like scrapbooks, appear to be almost exclusively the domain of women.  Samples and more samples.

These are just the latest artifacts of this trend, which has been picking up speed for some time now, beginning with the move of family photos into the livingroom.

Your turn
To me, this feels like it's about making meaning and context from one's personal experiences and emotions.  But I'd welcome input from you, dear reader.  Or add some more dots to the picture.  And what do you think the male version of this trend is, or is there one?