citizen Evangelist

Its funny what eventually comes back to you in time.

I was talking to a good friend last night and she reminded me about the conversations we had regarding communication & relationships. The topic was the Johari Window

From wikipedia: “A johari window a metaphorical tool intended to help people better understand their interpersonal communication and relationships. It is used primarily in self-help groups and corporate settings as a heuristic exercise.”

The core message of this tool is to communicate the complicated nature of identity and how we interact with the world. For example… I have things I know about myself as well as things I don’t know. When I don’t know things about myself, but others can see them, they are referred to as a blind spot. Companies and individuals each have blindspots. These areas of ignorance are problematic because we take actions that we shouldn’t… And often fail to take actions we should because we cannot see them.

On the flip side, I have things that I know about myself that I like to show others, and I have things that I like to hide. When I try hide those things about myself that I don’t want others to see, I use up energy that could be applied to getting things done. Also, a less than desirable state. They refer to this as the Facade.

The final case is where I’m blind to areas about myself… And so is everyone else. I’ve always thought about this as where real potential lives.

The philosophy here is to get everything out in the open because we can have healthier happier lives when we’re not harmed by our own ignorance or wasting entries trying to hide things we’re ashamed of.

So many people in so many companies know that their customers are unhappy but convince themselves otherwise. These facades lead to depressed sales and customer attrition. Admit you have a problem and start dealing with it. The person on the other end of the complaint is a person too.

More companies, however, are completely unaware how their customer’s feel. This is true of the satisfied customers as well as the dissatisfied. When was the last time you sat down with the people who contribute to your salary? Do you know the number one reason that any single customer does business with you? How about any reason they do business with your company?

When you don’t know this… You’re suffering from a blind spot.

Imagine if you could close that blind spot.

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Why is it that we expect that we can merely increase promotion of a product and dominate the market? At what point is it merely too noisey for us to break through?

Al Ries teaches us that in the United States, each year some 30,000 books are published. Every year, another 30,000 are published. This doesn’t sound like a lot until you realize it would take 17 years of reading 24 hours a day just to finish one year’s output. I tend to think of myself as a voracious reader. Granted, I’m not your typical reader of novels and entertaining readings. Instead, I occupy my free time with business texts.

Our information society has created an information glut that overloads every participant sooner or later. This reality has contributed to the diminished effectiveness of advertising and the increased competition for the attention of the customer.

How does this work? Processes create data. When that data is strung together in a meaningful way, it becomes information. Information then, can be analyzed and interpreted to form the benefit of knowledge. With knowledge comes wisdom.

The information age and the knowledge worker is a strong and incredibly beneficial innovation in today’s market, but it has created a new set of pressures and challenges for the market.

The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him, and sells itself.”
-Peter Drucker

When a company is able to create a self-sustaining feedback loop, the company has actually transcended and achieved the pinnacle of marketing excellence defined by Drucker above. The product resonates with the customer, and the customer is compelled to communicate their emotional experiences with the product to the public.

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Read an interesting article entitled “Can you spot the sure winner” by Eric Mankin which provides a quick benchmarking tool to evaluate how a particular product is positioned to dominate the market.

This tool (to the right) asks the user to evaluate the product against the alternatives on four (4) criterion: Lower Price, Greater Benefits, Easy to Use and Easy to Buy. A product that is able to outperform (score tens (10s) on each point) is sure to become a market hit.

What was particularly interesting to me was the fact that this tied together many of the elements I had seen referenced in Blue Ocean Strategy as well as the article referened in my post on June 6 - Eager Sellers and Stony Buyers.

In the article, Mankin does his best to provide several examples of each area of evaluation as well as a few product examples which demonstrate the theory he’s espousing. The core message is that while a specific product may not enter the market with the optimal mix, those in charge of the product must continue to strive for execellence in both reducing the barriers as well as providing high motivators.

An example which was provided which showed that some products can make it without good coverage was the Palm Pilot. Those who are familiar with the early days of Palm can remember many of the interesting challenges associated with finding and using the tool.

Of course, the product has evolved significantly in the last ten (10) years and I’ve even heard it referenced as a commodity in light of the all consuming phone device market.

I wanted to look at a more recent example to see how I could fair using the benchmarking tool and found myself drawn to analysing the Apple iPod. Granted, I didn’t look at specific model. I merely evaluated the iPod platform against the competitive offerings currently available in the market.

It looks to me that Apple has positioned themselves nicely. And, barring any biais that I’ve inadvertently introduced, really does conform to the logic of the methodology.

The one area where I have problems is looking at the notion of the Lower Price. For a comperable MP3 unit, iPod is more expensive. iPod, with all of the accessories, can offer a cheaper total cost than a high end entertainment system, portable entertainment system, and entertainment system for your automobile. But, I’m not sure that is what he was talking about.

This philosophy appears to marry up nicely with the chart in the Eager Sellers article referenced above. The more we force our customers / product users to change, the fewer we will win over. The more we are willing to change our product to adjust to our user’s needs, the more business we will win.

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The telephone game is something that I played some as a kid. It seems to me that I spent more time playing it in my Communication classes while at school. The entire point of using this children’s game in college was to demonstrate or illustrate just how much information get’s lost in the process of being passed from one party to another.

Ironically, in the effort to build our organizations into highly efficient and effective groups, we often establish departmental structures which create the same results as the telephone game.

As a result, there is a growing communication gap that exists between people who use products and those charged with determining the strategy associated with creating products. Restated, there is a communication gap that exists between customers and product managers. This communication gap is filled with various obstacles such as different people (sales, account management, support, etc.), different motivations (contract renewals, up selling/cross-selling, closing support tickets, etc.) different systems (CRM systems, excel spreadsheets, bug tracking systems, etc.) and different belief structures (customers are king, customers are necessary, customers are annoying, etc.). Each one of these elements has a dramatic impact on the quantity and quality of the information that is ultimately absorbed into the corporate consciousness and made available to the product manager. Further, it is rare that this information is provided without the context of the biases or the deficiencies of the communication channel.

Experience has shown that those who are empowered to make decisions on the direction of the product are typically the farthest removed from direct interaction with the market/customer. The very nature of customer orientation in the organization structure modifies the bias of the individuals involved. For example, there is an exorbitant amount of anecdotal evidence that illustrates how the front line of the organization becomes hardened to the customer / market’s feedback. This hardening occurs either as a natural result of building up a tolerance of the tone of the customer and boredom associated with hearing the same information over an over again or as the result of being placed in a position where the employee is not empowered with any mechanism for helping the customer with their true concerns. This is not to say that we are endorsing a requirement that a company should be should be nimble enough to immediately respond to customer feedback. Instead, we’re merely pointing out that failure to provide the employee and the customer with any sense of closure is not an acceptable behavior.

Further, a negative feedback loops starts to emerge as a result of organizational dysfunction, and further compounds the problems described above. When a customer doesn’t feel as though anyone will listen to their feedback, they have a natural disincentive to provide it. When an employee feels as though the organization doesn’t value their efforts to transport the information, the employee will have a natural disincentive to transport the information. If both the customer and the transporting employee have natural disincentives to provide and transport the information, the decision maker will not receive the information required to enable accurate and appropriate decision making. In order to improve the feedback process, it is absolutely critical that the organization seeks disintermediation of the transporter role. The newly factored transporter must provide the customer with the necessary incentives and reinforcements to foster frequent feedback and must actively pass the information on to the decision maker with out any bias.

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Henry Ford has been quoted as saying

“If I’d listened to customers, I’d have given them a faster horse”

While its true that it is often difficult to understand what a customer is asking for, no one should ever dismiss the fact that they are bringing the topic up for discussion. Let’s assume for one minute that Ford’s statement was completely true, did it not point out that there was a market hunger for increased speed? As a company with a social responsibility of creating profits, it is the responsibility of management to proactively seek out opportunities where there are cost effective ways to capture revenue. Henry Ford was able to use his knowledge of the combustion engine to make a revolutionary leap forward and deliver a solution to the customer’s request for a faster horse.

In order to be truly great, companies must find ways to proactively solicit information from their customers and translate those market needs into indicators of opportunity. The requests will often be expressed in the context of an incremental improvement, but often are the gateway to a revolutionary leap forward.

What’s amazing is that if a company makes a dedicated effort t

a) listen to its customers, and then
b) act on the request of its customers

the result is happy customers.

In fact, through this obvious approach, customers open doors to new opportunities. Getting to market with a winning product requires a strong product definition. The only way to achieve a solid product definition is to get and stay close to real customers in the validation process. The delivery of a good product naturally creates buzz in the marketplace, which, in turn supports the new customer acquisition, which in turn involves more customers in the feedback process to facilitate additional refinement/redefinition of the product, etc. This is the methodology for innovation and the engine that will propel the company forward.

Seth Godin offers the same perspective but states it a slightly different way. He challenges individuals and companies alike to seek to deliver the Purple Cow or the Free Prize Inside. In both contexts, Godin demonstrates how the pursuit of being remarkable and delivering value in excess of the customer’s expectations creates energy and a feedback process that enables customers to become the source of product promotion. In fact, customers happily provide the company with revenue and act as product advocates on your behalf. The opportunity, or challenge, is how a company can approach this from an operational standpoint that allows them to predictably and reliably repeat this process.

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