Doing the Wrong Things Right

I read a great blog post by Dan Pink on this topic and thought it would make a great cartoon. This might be a good one to print out and put by your computer or where decisions are made or priorities are set. Watch against activity that feels good and right, but doesn't clearly lead to results or value that your customers perceive.

Being Bolder

What's the worst thing that could happen? It probably isn't as bad as you think (or as likely).

Mission or Adventure

Perfection isn't Perfection

Little Product Innovations

"I base my fashion taste on what doesn't itch."
- Gilda Radner

When my sister was little, she was (and still is) a beautiful girl. Long, curly hair. Cute-as-a-button face. But would the girl wear frilly dresses? No way. They itched.

When I read this quote from Ms. Radner (a hilarious comic by any measure) I thought about those days. Her wanting to wear denim overalls while my mom was trying to get her into a pretty dress.

This was before the days of the tagless tag (an invention that my toddler sister would have cheered for). Before they made fabrics softer and clothing more seamless. Those inventions were there, right in front of us, the whole time. But we didn't see them. We didn't recognize the pain for what it was...a design problem to be solved. Once we identified it and named it, I am sure we could have solved it. My Mom is a great seamstress and our family is full of artists and problem-solvers, so I am sure we would have invented the tagless shirt, lined children's clothes, or the adaptation of swimsuit fabric to children's dresses. The problem had not been named, so it couldn't be solved.

What problems are you facing today that are like that? Moderate annoyances or hinderances that keep things from being truly useful, truly beautiful, or truly comfortable. Observe it. Name it. Then go about solving it. This is how we save the world, one itch at a time.

Quality is Job...well maybe it isn't even on the list

I read Seth Godin's new book Tribes. In it, he makes some very provocative points about the fallacy of quality.

"Quality is not only not necessary, for amny items it's undesirable. If we
define quality as regularly meeting the measured specifications for an item,
then quality matters a lot for something like a pacemaker. It doesn't
matter at all for a $3,000 haute couture dress.

More fashion = less need for quality."

I found this statement very interesting. If something is more fashionable, it doesn't have to be "six sigma." More art. Less science.

I wonder if there isn't a graph that would show that people's expectation of quality rises as commoditization takes over a product. It becomes less unique. Less differentiated. And as a result, the marketplace raises the standards of "sameness." Predictability is favored over excellence. The restaurant franchise wins out over the brilliant chef. The factory pumping out millions of widgets wins out over the inventor.

Seth's point, and one that he doesn't advocate alone, is that quality is something the "factories" used to value, but that in many ways we have evolved beyond it. With the use of technology. With a growing discontent for sameness. We are demanding leadership and sometimes (or ALL the time) leadership is messy.

Makes me wonder how much we as leaders of companies, organizations, families, and product lines should emphasize quality, in its traditional definition. Maybe more effort needs to be put into true differentiation and a value that extends beyond predictable mediocrity.

Gift-Giving Subscription Plans

An innovative company in Brazil is offering a subscription service targeted to male gift-givers (surprise, surprise) giving them an easy way to send gifts of chocolate, flowers, etc for a low monthly fee. Check out the link above if your Portguese is pretty good or see the Springwise article. I am wondering what other things could be done on a subscription service.

Keeping up with holidy, birthday and anniversary correspondence is a natural. Jack Cards makes the chore (I mean priviledge) of sending personalized cards easier by sending you the cards in advanced, pre-stamped and addressed, so that you can zip off a personal note and everyone will wonder "how does she do it?". What if this was combined with a tiered service that sent along gift certificates in the cards or better yet, allowed you to categorize your address book into close family and friends, colleagues, and casual friends allowing you to tailor the gifts to each (keeping track of what you got them in previous years). Combine it with a 24x7 concierge service and you text a message or call them with immediate needs (flowers for a friend who just lost a grandparent, for instance) and it starts feeling like having a personal assistant.

What if you took it even further. What if there was anniversary plan that combined a time share with this gift subscription, to create custom luxury get-aways for a couples' wedding anniversary? You could tie this into the "themes" of each anniversary. You know the ones that say you give paper or clocks on the 1st anniversary and the 50th is gold? They could tier the offerings based on location and budget. I'd love the 3rd anniversary luxury trip to Italy to celebrate leather and glass which are traditional gifts for this anniversary or the trip to Japan on the 12th anniversary for silk and pearls.

Well, duh

Sometimes you see products or ideas and immediately think "Brilliant! Why didn't I think of that?" Here are a few that I think are great.

In the land of the Dutch, where bicycles reign, a new company is combining bike racks with hand pumps for tires. Springwise pointed it out and you can learn more at http://www.heklucht.nl/. I love when convenience and user experience are combined with common materials to deliver a new thing. Somehow this reminds me of a former colleague who installed a beer keg in his garage and punched through the adjoining wall, so that he could tap beer right from his recliner in front of the TV (okay, maybe that is exactly opposite of a bike rack).

If you have ever juggled silverware and your plate at a potluck, then you'll love snap-and-dine. All the pieces are joined together to create a sturdy surface for the buffet line. The only thing they need to add is a glass and a napkin. This one was from CoolHunting.

The final submission is not a product, but rather a crowd-sourced service of sorts. When we were choosing names for our children I found a very useful site where strangers had gone to the trouble to rate and comment on names, ranking them according to perceived attractiveness, intelligence, athleticism, and other criteria that might come back to haunt the kids later. I found it very insightful and I really valued getting the feedback early before we made a mistake. Now, you can get strangers to provide your image consulting in much the same way. Your very own focus group. Sadly, the site and service are only in German, but what an opportunity for someone in the States to do something similar (or to utilize their high school German). Check it out at checkyourimage.com.

So, you think you can consult?

MarketingSherpa recently posted a quick quiz to determine whether or not you had the chops to be a consultant. Take their little survey yourself here.

I could answer "yes" to the questions here which was a fine start, but frankly didn't think that is all there was to it. Here are a few more I would add to their list.

#6. Security
Consulting professionals, especially those starting out, have feast or famine existances. This is typically because they are building a client base and have limited resources to spread over servicing current clients and finding new ones. This leads to lumpy and inconsistent revenue. To consult for a "living," one must consider it like any start-up business and expect a bumpy ramp.

#7. Expertise
The best consultants (and the ones that claim the most success) specialize. They don't try to be all things to all people. They are not a temp labor agency, they are supposed to be adding real, differentiated value to their clients. So, there are manufacturing consultants and there are "Lean manufacturing consultants." They are IT project management firms and their are "ERP conversion " consultants. Pick a niche. Dominate it. Read "Crossing the Chasm" and specialize.

#8. Find Clients First (then quit your day job)
I'd highly recommend any would-be consultant read "Never Eat Alone" by Keith Ferrazzi. Fantastic, motivational book on networking in which he outlines a blueprint for starting a consulting business...secure a few clients and then strike out.

#9. Treat Your Business Like a Business
I'd recommend you read David Maister. He writes about professional services companies and his work (now in print with his new book "Strategy and the Fat Smoker", his podcasts, his videocasts, and his blog) is just great.

Pattern Pedal

The folks at geekhouse bikes in Massachusetts, can build you a custom bicycle to your specifications. Pretty cool stuff. But, not as cool as something they have called "sublimated powder coating," which is a processes that allows any digital graphic to be fused into a powder coat on a bicycle. See inset picture for an example of how complex the designs can be.

So, you can create your own sleeping bag or blanket. You can personalize Kleenex boxes or M&Ms. Why not trick out your entire last-chance summer get-away by designing a custom bike with your graphics on them?

Clothing Rental

Springwise wrote about a clothing rental business called Transitional Sizes. For a monthly fee they rent clothes to women who are changing sizes (due to pregnancy or weight loss) anywhere from size 4 to size 26. You can have clothes that fit each month, and when they don't you turn them back in for new ones. The website looks a little too eBay (come on guys, you can take some better photos of the clothes), but is a good concept.

I'd love it if this were combined with a MyShape.com style clothing store, so that they could pick out a wardrobe for you that would match your styles and measurements, and the season and weather in your part of the country. At the end of the season, you return the package in exchange for some new pieces.

I love the subscription model as it builds loyalty and referrals with every compliment, plus it takes the guesswork out of shopping. Trust me there are a lot of women with disposable income that don't like or want to take the time to shop!

3 Ways that Technology Fails

"For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three." - Alice Kahn

I love technology. I especially love database-driven, web-enabled technologies with great interfaces that make important things easier to do. Seriously, I really do.

But, I have become aware recently (or should I say "reminded") of ways in which technology can fail to deliver on its promise.

1. Stop-Drop-and-Roll When Technology Makes Something Simple More Complex

Forget scale. Forget extendability. Sometimes business needs are simple. You need to answer the phone and route calls, for instance. How hard can it be really? Incredibly difficult once you create phone trees, voice prompts, scripts, and queues. Add to that a hold music music track from Hades (a stress-inducing piece of classical music that is reminiscent of a battle scene from an epic film) and you have a comic combination of making something simple hard. Part of the problem is trying to fit all possible needs into one solution, when in fact a customer-driven approach would call for multiple, smaller solutions.

For example, some websites are packed with information for everyone which makes them hard to navigate, contain too much copy, and lose their purpose (for example see anything that the good folks at Microsoft post), so all technologies are prone to this kind of complexity. In contrast, stands very simple web page design where the text is a clear call to action, the copy is natural speech, and all of the content fits "above the fold" without making the user scroll to read.

Using the web page example and applying it to my telephony problem, I wonder if the solution is this. Replace the complicated phone tree with its 50 options (and the hold music that enrages already irritated callers) with a pleasant woman's voice who says "Thanks for calling us. We love to hear from you and want to make sure you talk to the right person who can help you the best. To skip to sales, press 1. To go straight to technical support, press 2. Or just hold and a real live, honest-to-goodness human being can assist you. On our website you will also find a directory of contacts that might help you connect even more quickly. Again, thanks for your business. Please wait a moment while we connect you."

If technology makes something more complex, you should stop it, drop it, and roll with something new. For instance, if your customer base is known and finite and if you have more than 2 options on any phone line, break it up and pass out new numbers. It could be that your business is too complicated for the technology to solve. This leads to my second principle.

2. Don't Pave a Cow Path (or Pave Only Cow Paths that Lead Somewhere)

A colleague of mine once told me a story about how a farmer sold his property to a developer and they decided to build houses along gravel roads laid down where the well-worn paths through the pasture land that the cows had cut over years of grazing. Years later, they paved those gravel roads and although the residents complained, only the old-timers remembered the someone hadn't sat down to design the best layout for the neighborhood, but had instead paved the cow paths.

How often do we do this? Come up with a great technology solution to a problem we don't understand fully, just because the technology solution is in hand or can be envisioned. I am guilty of this more than I like to admit (being generally optimistic about technology and life and having this natural impatience to get on with something already). We start building solutions for things that only work the way they do by accident. Or, we throw out a perfectly good "cow path" solution in favor of a more complicated one.

One of the most successful development projects I was involved with was an internal corporate application. Before writing a single line of code, I lived the workflow of the application (however painful it was) for several months managing an Excel spreadsheet. During this "alpha" phase, I worked out all the communication flows and templates, the policies of who needed to be copied on what, and started to quantify the benefits of automation. The core workflow changed quite a bit in those early days and got refined in this manual process, and I was able to articulate requirements for a little application that is still very useful and powerful (and has gone through numerous iterations as new needs and ideas were explored).

This reminds me that one must make careful choices about what gets paved and why. Living in a tent on a cow path for a while, while taking land surveys might be a perfectly reasonable way to "write" requirements.

3. Nothing Replaces an Outside-In View

Companies love to create Inside-Out solutions. You need to know how many product returns you get and why products fail, so you adopt a nifty little service application to manage the transactions. It works great. Unless, a customer wants to see all their transactions and the status of each. Maybe that gets a little tougher. Or unless a sales person wants to see all their transactions and the status of each, across multiple customer accounts, geographies, product lines, or departments. Then the transaction system doesn't quite serve the purpose. Before you rush out an implement a fully-integrated CRM package (which can be wonderful by the way), remember the problem you are solving and the points above. It could be that the outside-in perspective would tell you to keep the transaction system and implement a report instead. It could be that a fancy, automated report isn't needed, but rather a regularly scheduled phone conference with a key customer to walk them through any open issues and assure them of your attentiveness to their issues. It could be that you have back office communication or coordination challenges, that once solved through better roles and responsibilities, the issues are minimized and more manageable.

It is good to keep in mind that most customers don't really care about the efficiencies of your business overall, how the same phone tree helps them and their competitors, or what you are doing to solve problems for everyone. They really want their problems solved. And, it is always easier to solve one issue than ten.

Technology can be a part of that. It can help coordinate information, make dispersed and diverse team act together, and can provide feedback loops in real-time. It can be game changing or tactical, but it is only a part of the whole solution.

Secret Agents and WOM Marketing

It is clear that building word-of-mouth marketing is critical for the success of a product or company and often it can use a bit of help to get started. I am always interested about how companies do it. I found a few insights that I thought I would share here.

For well over a year, I have participated in SheSpeaks, a sampling network of women. They have sent me products to review. I loved the Sonicare toothbrush. The Nicole by OPI nail polish took a little getting used to, but is interesting (this one is new and I have some coupons, by the way). The salon hair care product that made me smell like almonds, but look like I hadn't showered in weeks was an emphatic "no!"

Today, I learned about another network like this called BzzAgent. I don't have much to report other than they reallly get the word-of-mouth thing and I have heard about the founder's latest ebook on no fewer than 3 blog posts this weekend from folks I follow and respect. I read the book tonight and it had some nuggets in it.

If you know of others, post the links in comments here.

Just Playing Around

"We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys." - Eric Hoffer

What are you playing around with today and might actually be the next big thing for your business?

Years ago I worked for a software company and while we were developing software, one of the programmers came up with an innovative prototyping tool. We showed this tool to some other folks who loved it and over time, that tool became the best selling product of the company. Something that wasn't on the roadmap at all when the company began.

I wonder how many businesses start like this. GetSatisfaction.com, an innovative service that brokers companies and their customers, started as a way to handle support requests for the sale of excess and obsolete marketing items from defunct internet start-ups in the early 2000's. Twitter started as a side project and has become huge.

What are your side projects, again that you are playing around with, that should be moved to the core of your effort?

A Product-Liability Litigators' Dream

Volvo promises an injury-free car by 2020. Is is a marketing ploy, a safety-conscious consumer's dream, or a product liability ligitigator's windfall? Judge for yourself.

Storytelling and Branding

I was reminded recently of the important connection between storytelling and branding. There was a good presentation about from Mickey Connolly, who is a founder of the training and development company Conversant and co-author of the Communication Catalyst (another one I'd recommend).

Danny Meyer in his book Setting the Table related how he tries to turn diners in his New York City restaurants into evangelists. He talked about taking a page from the auto maker and watch manufacturer's playbooks, who have "long understood that people buy their products not just ecause of how the product itself performance, but to tell a story about themselves." His job as a business owner is to "give people a story worth telling."

So, what does your product brand tell your customers about themselves? Do you sell leading-edge technology so that your customers can feel like they are early adopter and insiders? Do you sell fashionable items, so that customers can feel chic? Do you sell at value pricing so that customers can feel frugal and responsible? Do you sell green products, so that customers can feel a part of a larger environmental movement? All products tell a story, some better than others, and the brands that understand that have a huge advantage.

It is a challenge for business leaders, no matter the size of the company, to think about what they want their customers to feel about themselves having bought, used or experienced the company's product. I have spent some time thinking about it for Creative Outlet Labs.

Connecting the Dots

I have mentioned before the great book entitled "Setting the Table" by Danny Meyer. He writes about building and nurturing relationships with customers, something he calls connecting the dots.

As Danny writes, "Dots are information. The more information you collect, the more so you can make meaningful connections that can make other people feel good and give you an edge in business. Using wahterver information I've collected to gather guests together in a spirit of shared experience is what I call connecting the dots. If I don't turn over the rocks, I won't see the dots. If I don't collect the dots, I can't connect the dots. If I don't know that someone works, say, for a magazine whose managing editor I happen to know, I've lost a chance to make a meaningful connection that could enhance our relationship with the guest and the guest's relationshi with us. The information is there. You just have to choose to look."

This concept really resonated with me. On a personal level, I have found that when I am learning something, the best test of understanding is when I can connect the learning to another discipline or something else that I have experienced. Sometimes I imagine that I can feel the connections in the brain developing when this occurs.

On a professional level, I have seen the power of connections. When one relationship or bit of information can be leveraged to help someone else. The circles of influence and connection growing. You can see it happen in qualitative and measurable ways. One of my favorites is LinkedIn. From my profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferbdavis you can see links to people I have worked with and questions I have answered to try to assist others, as well as information about me and my experience that might be useful in us working together. Lots of dots there to be collected and connected.

If you are on LinkedIn and know me, please send me an invitation to connect! If you are not, you should definitely check it out!

The beautiful photo (showing the connection between dots in a store window and the reflection of square windows in an adjacent building) came from AnnPar on Flickr.

3 Ways to Error-Proof Your Product

"I like an escalator because an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. There would never be an escalator temporarily out of order sign, only an escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience." - Mitch Hedberg

We once built an incredibly useful web application at work to handle a business problem that was labor intensive, a critical differentiator for our business, and was something that we needed to scale. The application was slick and worked really well, at least I thought. Then we started getting new users to try it and as they learned the nuances, we found they needed some "Do you really want to send this?" or "Do you really want to delete this?" confirmations added in to prevent some errors. In addition, logic needed to be added to the site that would prevent incorrect data from being entered in the first place. One colleague described the early version of the application as a gun without a safety. Powerful, but a big dangerous in the wrong or inexperienced hands. We quickly identified the risk areas and put fixed in place, but not without causing some consternation first. I have found that there are at least 3 ways to error-proof your product.

1. Make the Error Impossible

Usability experts like to focus on making the "right" thing to do obvious. I believe, however that equal attention needs to be played to making the "wrong" thing impossible (or at least horribly difficult). The shaped solid ink cartridges in a Xerox color printer is a great example of this. You can't put them in the wrong slots. They don't fit. All products and applications should be error-proofed in this way. Some people check for email formats on entry fields or check sum credit card numbers to ensure they were typed correctly. What about making sure in other ways that people can not proc

2. Take the Pain out of Error States

For a higher standard still, you can look to the quote above about escalators. How can you make a disabled, broken, or improperly used product still functional, but just not as functional. Instead of a 404 error on a website, what about sending users to an alternative page with a training video or with the offending part of the code pre-selected with defaults to make it easier for the user? Maybe in addition to sewing extra buttons into shirts, they should include safety pins. If the people mover at the San Francisco airport is not in operation, people can still walk on it and get a bounce in their step and view the artwork and displays on the wall. Remember, too that delays are error states and entertaining customers while they wait is also a way to take the pain away.

3. Reframe Unavoidable "Errors" as Opportunities for Differentiation

Taken one step further still, what about taking the unavoidable (or frequent) errors and turning them into differentiation points. For instance, all products eventually reach the end of their useful life (the ultimate error state). What about providing real solutions for empty packaging, used products, or those products which are at the end of their useful life? I firmly believe more people should bundle in recycling/removal or upgrade programs into the costs of their product. What other errors are unavoidable or frequent enough to justify looking at them differently? If most people mistakenly hit some key, select an inconvenient option, or have problems with particular types of installations, why not develop programs around those things and turn them into features that are marketed as differentiators, rather than error states to be avoided?

10 Ways to Change an Industry

Following the recommendation of a colleage and an unability to get an appointment with our normal primary care physician, we went to ZoomCare this weekend. If you are in Portland I highly recommend you check out their services. In any case, their approach illustrated 10 ways that innovators can change industries. I really hope my dentist, my hairdresser, and other service businesses I frequent are reading this.

1. Let your customers buy/schedule online
Go to http://www.zoomcare.com/ and pick your appointment time. So simple. Again, why can't I schedule a hair appointment like this? We scheduled my husband's appointment after hours and it was confirmed via email (our choice) by the next morning. The doctor had read the comments that we had put on our appointment request prior to the appointment.

2. Let customers be spontaneous
Their website includes a real-time graphic indicator of the wait time in their two offices. This is handy for estimating how an impromptu appointment will affect your day. There is no wait if you have an appointment, but if you don't, you can see how busy the place is without leaving your house.

3. Seize a niche
ZoomCare is in the gap between urgent care centers and traditional doctor's offices. You don't get to pick your doctor. They don't treat heart attacks, strokes, offer kidney dialysis, or deliver babies. They are a healthcare solution for folks that are generally healthy, but need periodic treatment.

4. Publish a price list
It is crazy to think that ZoomCare's website might be the first fee schedule I have ever seen in healthcare. Normally, insured patients don't even know what their healthcare is costing them (besides their co-pay and then the statement that they receive showing what the insurance has paid). This doesn't lead to good consumer behavior. It is fee schedules like ZoomCare that make me think that I could accept one of those catastrophy-only healthcare plans, where I'd pay out of pocket (but before tax) for office visits, etc. The fees didn't seem too bad and even if all of us came into the office each month, the fees would be less than I am paying in insurance today (and my employer pays most of it, so I am only seeing a portion of the actual cost).

5. Don't underhire your front-line staff
ZoomCare hires front-desk staff that have college degrees and diverse backgrounds. Where other doctors offices have clerks, these guys are more like cruise directors. I suspect the hiring managers would love their office associates had experience in a circus, speaking multiple languages, and had degrees in diverse fields. After all, they are the face of the company and should be a reason people come back. The doctor was great, too!

6. Treat your customers like intelligent, rational human beings
My husband was shown in his diagnosis by the doctor (with the use of a video screen). Then the front desk person walked him through the treatment handout at the desk and had a bag of information ready for him when he left.

7. Partner seamlessly
Zoomcare accepted our insurance (it was listed on their website as one of the plans they accepted). They emailed (or appeared to email) the prescription to the pharmacy of our choice. My doctor's office by contrast, made me call into their separate prescription line and I had to provide the phone number and address of the Costco pharmacy that I wanted them to use, something they could have Googled as well as I could.

8. Don't partner when you can provide
The office itself had a whole little store front set up where they sold over the counter treatments and other items that their customers might need. It reminded me of the little stores set up in hotel lobbies for those who forgot their toothpaste. If the patient needed aspirin and some cough drops, they could get them right there and avoid yet another stop along the way.

9. Don't underestimate the power of a happy customer
We were told at Zoomcare by someone (who was impressed by the follow-up phone call he received to ensure he was feeling better). We have gone on to tell no fewer than 12 people (and that was before this blog post) about the service.

10. Make your customers beg for more
We already wish they had an office closer to us (it was worth the drive, but could be more convenient). The ZoomCare brand could certainly expand to a whole range of health services. I wish they had dentists/hygenists on staff (although my dentist's office practices would make them a great candidate for running a ZoomCare Dental office). They could expand to vision care. They could expand to an online over-the-counter medication store with home delivery. They could expand to home health care of other types. The positive brand they have built can expand out to new endeavors. Perhaps ZoomCare will expand to a neighborhood near you!

The distance between "To" and "For"

What would people do if every service issue at a company was handled in such a personal manner as Seth describes here. When is the last time one of your executes signed a personal apology letter or a note thanking someone for their business...or in this example the outer case of an xBox 360? As he said in his post, "humans like humans. They hate organizations." How can you make your company more human?

First, I'd recommend you read Danny Meyer's book about his career in the New York restaurant business called "Setting the Table" and think about how hospitality might apply to your business. My book is heavily dog-eared (a sign of a winner) and he writes a lot about the human dialogue and its impact on business success.

According to Danny, hospitality is at the foundation of his business philosophy. "Virtually nothing else is as importan as how one is made to feel in any business transaction. Hospitality exists when you believe the other person is on eyour side. The converse is just as true. Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you. Those two simiple propositions - for and to - express it all."

And that is just on page 12. Trust me. You'll love this book and will hear me mention it again as it has influenced my thinking on many things about customer service, product development, and strategy execution.