Your Weekend Reading Suggestions from Management Excellence
OK, I received more than a few comments that last week’s reading list was a bit aggressive. Given the season and the fact that we want to leave everyone with adequate time to go out and do their part volunteering as well as stimulating the economy, I’ve trimmed the list this week to two great articles in the December issue of Harvard Business Review.
While HBR is a subscription publication (and in my opinion, mandatory reading for all professionals), a number of the feature articles are accessible at no charge during the month of publication. I know they started this last year to promote subscriptions and it appears to still be the policy.
The first article is Finding and Grooming Breakthrough Innovators by Jeffrey Cohn, Jon Katzenbach and Gus Vlak. The authors shoot down many of the myths that exist in identifying and nurturing innovators in the organization and offer some powerful and practical suggestions for recognizing and finding innovators and what to do with them once you’ve found them.
The article is framed by the questions most on the mind of board members and executives: “How can we sustain innovation? And Do we have a plan for developing future leaders who can facilitate this goal?” You’ll leave this article armed with plenty of thoughts on innovation in your work environment and some ideas to put into practice.
Article number two ratchets up the innovation theme with Reinventing Your Business Model by some true heavy hitters. Clayton Christensen (Innovator’s Dilemma), Henning Kagermann, co-CEO of SAP and Mark Johnson, Chairman of Innosight, an innovation and strategy consulting firm collaborate to help you better understand your business model and how to change it to leverage innovation.
This is a heady article by some sharp people, although I can’t help thinking that the book Tuned In does a better job distilling down the concept of adapting your approach to finding and filling unresolved needs and building your business around your customers. Read the article for ideas on defining, dissecting and reinventing your business model and then pick up a copy of Tuned In for a slightly more practical approach to a critical issue.
Enjoy your reading time and don’t forget to take notes.
“If I had asked customers what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
Filed under: Decision-Making, Marketing, Product Management, Strategy
Students of business history might recognize the quote above as coming from Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Company and one of the early management innovators. Mr. Ford’s quote raises a profound issue of when and how to listen to customers, or perhaps the more challenging flip side: when not to listen to customers.
The notion of not asking customers what they want and responding directly to their needs may seem like heresy to those individuals and organizations consumed with improving customer satisfaction and creating customer loyalty. In fact, you should always listen and importantly, observe. The real art in this process is understanding what customers really need, what problems they really would like to solve and what approaches and experiences that you can create that can surprise and delight them.
Harvard Professor, Clayton Christensen, seized upon this issue in his Innovator’s Dilemma/Innovator’s Solution books, where he suggests that a well-intentioned business may do everything right by listening and responding to customer requests, and ultimately fail as disruptive offerings upset the status quo.
In my own work in the technology space over the past two decades, it is easy to look back at product development cycles driven by a never-ending desire to cram in customer-driven features, without a good understanding of why those features were needed and whether they were solving key problems or attacking symptoms. It always felt like we were doing the right thing, but in hindsight, it was blind marketing. As Product Management systems improved and requirements development received more scrutiny, this situation improved. Nonetheless, it is hard to see how the forest is changing when you are staring so intently at the trees.
Christensen’s classic scenario is the company that dutifully enhances its offerings based on client input, ultimately creating bloated offerings with capabilities far exceeding what might be required of many or any buyers. In the interim, a disruptive offering…something perhaps with fewer features and priced much lower (not always the case) can easily swoop in and…well, disrupt the market. In essence, the well-managed, well-intentioned company created a vacuum that was filled by someone who understood the essence of the client’s problems…not just the features they were asking for. (Think “Faster Horses” versus a new mode of transportation.)
The authors of the recent book, Tuned In, tackle this important topic by suggesting that a firm focus on developing Resonators, products or services that practically sell themselves. Their six step process for creating a resonator and for Tuning In is in my opinion, a framework for avoiding the Innovator’s Dilemma that Christensen warns us about.
The design firm Ideo in their famous Deep Dive segment on ABC News showcase a process for design innovation that is what you might imagine a sociological dig would look like, as they follow and observe the various “buyers” of shopping carts in pursuit of understanding how this classic device could be grossly improved to better solve real problems. While there is a fair amount of criticism of the “made for TV” nature of this episode, it offers some classic lessons in looking and observing to identify significant and perhaps even disruptive improvements. Just asking a store manager or a customer about what they would like to see improved in their shopping cart may be insufficient for identifying what a shopping cart might actually be able to do. Think cell phones and the iphone.
The Bottom Line for Now:
My message here is intended as a cautionary tale. It is good and right and noble to pursue increasing levels of customer satisfaction in your framework for operational excellence. However, it is also easy to be misled by false signals, and sometimes those signals come from your customers. Remember, they know you in a narrow context, so when they engage with you to talk about improving the Widgets that you make, they are thinking about you only as the Widget Company and as users of your widgets. Their context is to give you ideas to improve your widgets. Just remember that it is quite possible that they don’t need a better widget or a faster horse.
You need to build the institutional intelligence, the systems and of course the talent that truly focuses on understanding the unstated needs of buyers. Of course, once you understand this, the real work of meeting and exceeding those needs as an organization begins.
-
Chosen by Guy Kawasaki's Alltop.com as a top site in the Leadership category.
Podcast
Available Now!
Practical Lessons
e-book
e-book-Leadership and the Project Manager - Developing the Skills that Fuel High Performance
