the experience design blueprint Archives

September 20, 2016

Learning Innovation From Bees

There is something you should understand about ideas. It isn’t always the highest quality ideas that advance. Sadly, in many organizations and groups, WHO an idea comes from matters most; but, it shouldn’t. In this regard we could learn something from nature, in particular from bees.

Bees have a healthy innovation culture

Each morning, scout bees venture off in search of nectar, water, and better nesting grounds. This pursuit is necessary to sustain life for the entire colony. When a bee discovers a stash of nectar, water, or a great nesting site, it returns to the hive and performs a waggle dance.

In this dance the energy exuded signals to the surrounding bees the value of the treasure found. More waggle means a better stash. This is a fully inclusive process. No scout bees returning to the nest are discriminated against because they don’t carry a certain title, possess a certain number of years experience or have a direct relationship with the queen.

Every Organization Has Buried Treasure

Bees appear to work alone but are always working in a larger distributed team for a common purpose to keep the hive alive and thriving. Whether you lead an organization or simply work with or for one, act more like a bee and less like a raccoon and your hive may soon thrive, too. Imagine the treasures organizations could free from their employees’ imaginations if those employees were as engaged as waggle dancing bees.

Recipe #40: Dance Like a Bee

Have a discussion with your team to brainstorm how you can work together more like bees and less like raccoons. Discuss how your organization handles shiny objects and how you can establish the equivalent of an innovation waggle dance.

About The Author

Gregory Olson is the author of The Experience Design Blueprint, a book about designing better experiences and then making them come true. Chapter 8: Bees & Raccoons especially pertains to this blog post. His latest book is L’ impossi preneurs: A Hopeful Journey Through Tomorrow, a light-hearted and deadly serious book about a brighter future where we live more meaningful lives, governments invest in people and sustainable progress, and technology serves humans.

Gregory Olson founded marketing strategy and design firm Delightability, LLC. with the belief that if you delight customers then success will follow. He believes that we all have the potential to do better, as individuals, organizations, and communities, but sometimes we need a little help. Gregory serves as a volunteer board member for Oikocredit Northwest, a support association for social investor, Oikocredit International and as an advisor for Seattle University’s Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering.

August 5, 2016

Small Business Leaders Struggle with the 3-Legged Stool: How to Overcome

Like most entrepreneurs and small business owners, you likely have a long list of things that get shoved off to the back burner waiting for another day or week when there is more time. The trouble is, more time never actually arrives, right?

Today is no different from yesterday and tomorrow will look much the same. You only have 24 hours in a day. When it comes to time, there is no aristocracy of wealth. Genius or laziness is not rewarded or punished with any more time.

The 3-Legged Stool

Every small business owner struggles with maintaining balance among these areas:

Maintaining a smooth operation – invoicing customers, paying expenses, having good procedures in place to prevent business breakdown and wasting resources
Delivering value – providing to customers whatever your business does as its core offering, i.e., products, services, and support
Promoting value – performing the sales, marketing, and business development functions to ensure 1) prospects know your business exists; 2) customers understand your value and provide you with validation; and 3) employees, partners, and customers stay engaged.

Stop Letting Your Personal Life Suffer

The person sitting atop a well-balanced 3-legged stool has the opportunity for a personal life. Chances are you’re not very good at all three legs of the stool. In a large company you have the benefit of departments to focus on activities related to the different legs of the stool. That probably isn’t the case in your small business where you have to spread your time, talent, and attention across sales, marketing, account payable, human resources, product development, etc. Even if you are good in all areas, you’ll struggle with the limited time available. When the legs of the stool get out of balance or become all-consuming then you and your personal life get sacrificed or worse, topple to the ground. Business performance then also suffers. We’ve all been there.

Five Things to Overcome the Struggle

Recognize the need to slow down: sometimes you need to slow down in order to speed up. It is true when hiking up a steep trail and it’s also true in business. As a now deceased friend has taught me, “Make time to linger.” R.I.P. Donald Marsh.
Revisit your operation: perhaps you need new operating mechanisms that could prevent snags in the business operation that if left unresolved will end up consuming resources. As a start, begin to identify where your time gets wasted. If you don’t know, begin monitoring your own time over the next week or month. Identifying the workarounds could be a place to fix first. If you have employees, they’ll know these rough spots.
Stay on course: your energy spread in too many directions can fatigue you and crush personal and business performance. Be deliberate on your destination and script the critical moves needed to get there. Read the Destination Postcards article for an exercise that can bring discipline to charting a course and then staying true to that course.
Confront reality: mind the uncomfortable gap you have between your current performance and expected performance. Focus on key areas and find acceptable discomfort for what you’ll not work on in the near term. You cannot do it all, so find some peace in accepting that. See Business Performance Continuums exercise.
Force multiply through others: recognize that you cannot do it alone. It is difficult to involve somebody else in your projects and business, especially if you already feel overwhelmed. But, chances are you’ve wasted more time agonizing over how to start a project that another person would have completed by now, if you engaged them. There is plenty of talent available to help you in whatever your endeavor is. More talent on the team can come in many forms: full-time or part-time, employee or alliance with a service provider. At Delightability, we are a virtual marketing department serving clients’ needs, providing both consulting and creative services. Whether small or large projects, every one of our client engagements involved busy business leaders, like you. But, remember what our clients have now come to realize, namely, that you don’t get the benefits of a strategy not implemented.

Write that down on your wall or whiteboard and revisit it often, “You don’t get the benefits of a strategy not implemented.” Eventually, you’ll do something different to close your uncomfortable gap across the 3 legs of the stool while at the same time getting your personal life to soar.

about the author

Gregory Olson is a business and marketing consultant, author, and speaker. He founded strategy and design firm Delightability, LLC. with the belief that if you delight customers then success will follow. He believes that we all have the potential to do better, as individuals, organizations, and entire nations.
Gregory Olson’s latest book is L’ impossipreneurs: A Hopeful Journey Through Tomorrow, a light-hearted and deadly serious book about a brighter future where we live more meaningful lives, governments invest in people and sustainable progress, and technology serves humans.

Greg also authored The Experience Design Blueprint, a book about designing better experiences and then making them come true.

November 4, 2015March 3, 2018

Make Work Feel Like Vacation: Destination Postcards Exercise

Making Work Feel Like Vacation: Destination Postcards Exercise
Much of the time we muddle through. Okay, maybe not you, but those around you. 😉 We show up to work, we grind through the day, glancing at the clock that’s embedded in our computers, smartphones, and burned into our psyche. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to get “in the zone” where we become deeply engaged in something, perhaps writing an article or code, talking with a customer or colleague, or crafting whatever it is we craft. In those moments and in our “free time” we seldom feel as though we’re grinding through. After all, we are excited to meet the weekend and few people ever grumble about being on vacation; quite the opposite. So, how can we find that vacation feeling while we ARE muddling through our busy lives?

Our Minds are Ruled by Two Competing Systems
The key is to leverage your brain’s natural abilities to be rational and to be emotional, two things that are often at odds with one another. In the book, Switch: How to Change Things when Change is Hard, the authors reveal that psychologists have discovered our minds are ruled by two sometimes competing systems – the rational mind (the rider) and the emotional mind (the elephant). Switch is a great book and I recommend you read it. It is a great companion to Chapter 13: Taking Flight, in The Experience Design Blueprint. Change is difficult and no matter where you sit in the organization you need to become a master of it.

Destination Postcards Exercise
Switch inspired me to create a tool I use for my own businesses and with clients. I call the tool the Destination Postcards exercise and I know it can help you, too. I’ve shared the steps here as well as a visual reminder so you can be more deliberate about creating the future you’d like to see unfold AND make it feel more like a vacation.

“If you don’t know where you are going, any path will take you there.” – Sioux Proverbs

Step 1: Envision Great Possibilities
Our rational mind appreciates the certainty of the path ahead; we want to know where vacation will be. As in planning a vacation, the first step in the destination postcards exercise is to actually decide where you want to go. Every business, non-profit, and governmental organization has multiple destinations; these are the destination postcard categories. The list that follows is not exhaustive. Choose the categories important to the future of your organization. Be creative and be aware of blind spots while choosing.

Categories for Destination Postcards:

technology
organizational
financial
customer
brand
communications
community
competitive
products and services
recognition
other?

Step 2: Prioritize Categories
Not all categories have the same importance. It really does depend on the type of organization, its current state, as well as the competitive and customer environment. See the related article on business performance continuums to assess the current and future state of the organization across nine dimensions. Once your categories are selected, it can be useful to prioritize them by using a convention common to prioritizing features in product development. Rank each category on whether it is a MD (must do), SD (should do), and CD (could do) item for the organization.

As you prioritize, free yourself of resource constraints. After all, resources can change or even be creatively worked around. It is most important to think about the expected impact to the organization for each of the categories. Again, be careful of blind spots and be mindful of your various stakeholders. See the related article Customer Schmustomer: Audience Schmaudience.

Step 3: Make a Statement About How the Future Feels
By establishing the categories that are most important to the organization, you’ve appealed to rationale mind (the rider). In Switch vernacular, you’ve directed the rider by pointing to the destination. This is necessary, but not sufficient. Next, you’ll want to appeal to the emotional elephant; you’ll not reach your destination without the elephant.

To do this, write a statement about the desired future state for each category. How will you know you’ve arrived? What will you see as different and how will that make you feel? You can either write a statement or add bullets to show some detail about the desired future state. If this were a vacation you might write something like “feel my toes in the warm sand” or “be able to ponder the ancient Incan empire from atop Machu Picchu” or [insert most excellent vacation experience here]. If we imagine what it is like to be there, our vacation will be more thoughtful and we’ll be more present once we arrive. This is true of vacation and in business. Here is an example for your business using the category, Recognition. Once we’ve arrived at the destination we might feel the following:

be able to credibly apply for “most green citizen” award
media and partners are recognizing our organization’s thoughtful work
awards and framed articles hang on trophy wall in lobby
our products are labeled with the Cradle to Cradle Certification
we have more twitter followers than Edward Snowden

Step 4: Empower a Good Story
At this stage, you’ve created a narrative for the organization’s future. You’ll have more clarity yourself, and if you did this exercise with colleagues, you’re better aligned to a common future. You can reference the destination postcards as you build your strategic plan and tell stories about the future.

Go even further by creating physical postcards that can be handed out to employees, partners, and other stakeholders. On one side, make a visual to represent the category; on the other, list the milestones you’ll achieve along the way to reaching that destination. These physical cards can be seen, touched, passed around, referenced and updated periodically. This can be very motivating for all story tellers of the organization. It can also keep people (yourself included) on the right path.

Step 5: Ah, The Path
The Destination Postcards Exercise is a critical tool, among others, to shape and inform a strategic plan. I usually do this exercise with a CEO, executive director, or early stage entrepreneur, but it can be easily extended to include a larger team. I’ve sparked good dialogue among board members using the same exercise in non-profit organizations.

The exercise can be an inclusive process that enables people to get on the same page, something usually overlooked by the committees that shape plans. Imagine the natural forces within our minds that sometimes oppose each other, instead working in harmony. This is the harmony we feel while on a good vacation. And, now imagine all of those minds on your team working better together toward a common future. Oh, the possibilities.

Remember, business planning like vacation is better with postcards. I hope you enjoy your next one. If you are a consultant (internal or external), try using this tool with your organization (clients) and watch attitudes, engagement, and positive outcomes soar. Your destination awaits you; happy travels.

about the author

Gregory Olson’s latest book is L’ impossi preneurs: A Hopeful Journey Through Tomorrow, a light-hearted and deadly serious book about a brighter future where we live more meaningful lives, governments invest in people and sustainable progress, and technology serves humans. This book challenges each of us to think differently, spark our own conversations, and play a role in nudging the world forward to create a better future for all. Find it at Amazon, CreateSpace e-Store, Barnes & Noble, Bokus, or order it from your local bookstore.

Greg also authored The Experience Design Blueprint, a book about designing better experiences and then making them come true. Exercises and mental models in the book will build your confidence and competence in envisioning better possibilities and then making them come true, whether you are working alone or alongside a team. Chapters in the book that especially pertain to this article include:

Chapter 8: The Promise Delivery System
Chapter 11: Barriers to Innovation and Overcoming the Wall
Chapter 12: The Three Psychological Zones
Chapter 13: Taking Flight
Chapter 14: The World of Work Has Changed
Chapter 15: From Arg to Aha!

Gregory Olson founded strategy and design firm Delightability, LLC. with the belief that if you delight customers then success will follow. He believes that we all have the potential to do better, as individuals, organizations, and communities, but sometimes we need a little help. Gregory also serves as a volunteer board member for Oikocredit Northwest, a support association for social and impact investor, Oikocredit International.

October 25, 2015

3 Modes of Failure and 10 Reasons You Don't Get Help

3 Modes of Failure and 10 Reasons You Don’t Get Help

Modes of Failure
Failed, failing, and will fail. If you haven’t failed or are in the process right now, your time will come. It’s guaranteed. Here is why…

Failure happens to all of us. We all fail at some point. It is a fact. The frail human body demands it. We are not giant sequoia, the only natural living organism that doesn’t have a natural terminus to its life. Unlike humans, old age just keeps getting older for the giant sequoia. All other plants and animals undergo changes at the cellular level, as they mature and eventually die. A giant sequoia properly supported and shielded from insects, fires, and other damage will literally live forever. Key to their long life is a supportive ecosystem.

image of giant sequoia courtesy of National Park Service - delightability blog — Image of Giant Sequoia Courtesy of National Park Service

A Better Ecosystem
The giant sequoia is at peace within the forest ecosystem and within itself. Every tiny cone, winged needle, water carrying capillary, section of thick spongy bark, all work together toward making the giant healthier. This is true until the day the giant falls. The sequoia does eventually lose its ability to support and sustain itself. If it could reach just the right size or expand its support system as it grew, old age would keep on going. But it does usually fall under its own weight. In life and in business our ecosystems are inferior to that of the giant sequoia; we have much to strive for.

What to Learn From an Old Giant
Building your support structure should be like the ecosystem of the sequoia. A strong base of support can keep the organization healthy as it ages. Relationships should be symbiotic where both parties benefit. Avoid parasitic relationships that can weaken you. At the extreme, a parasite can unwisely kill its host. Healthy forests are comprised of diverse trees at different stages of maturity. Each offers something unique to a healthy environment.

Isolation Limits Perspective. Each of us can get into the heads-down mode, intently focused on our task at hand. But, focus too long in the same direction and you can lose perspective. It is easy to lose touch with the world that changes around you. Colleagues that share an office or a water cooler often share similar perspectives. As in nature, mono-culture can lead to a lack of diversity and unhealthy cycles where what nature provides to plants and the soil are eliminated. A less time-lapsed version of this limited perspective is the circular death mill, where army ants dutifully follow the scent of the soldier in front of them. Marching forward in a circular pattern together, they slowly grow weary and each of them dies. Their limited perspective never did reveal a clear path forward.

It’s lonely at the top, whether you are the Chief or the Chair or the master of your freelance domain.

Talk of Death is Easier than Failure
Conversations about failing are difficult to have within an organization. You might be searching for solutions, but somebody else might interpret your actions as you giving up. So, many play it safe instead; they don’t speak of failure, failed, or failing. This can lead to feelings of isolation. If you work alone as a freelancer, you already have this isolation built into your business.

If you’ve ever held the hand of a dying person, then you realize that even though you are in the same space with objects common to both of you, your experiences are very different. Of course they are, because your context is different. They are dying and you’ll go on to live another day, R.I.P. Karen and Lavera. It is much the same within and between organizations that work together. People are at all different stages of awareness, acceptance, solution finding, denial, anger, etc. In some ways, it is easier for people to talk with a person physically dying than it is for them to talk to another about their own organization that may be nearing the end. They often put on the “happy face” and pretend.

Positive Thinking May in Fact be Negative
People fixated purely on positive psychology can mistake a situation problem with a people problem. This can exacerbate the feeling of isolation and prevent people from getting the help they and their organization need. My friend, whose business DID recently fail, did all things right, and still failed. She didn’t attract it. There was no people problem. There was no energy she was exuding other than positive, wonderful, game changing, future making energy with jobs created, services provided and taxes flowing into the community. But, the situation morphed. The external environment changed and made her business illegal, by the stroke of a governor’s pen, backed by a state legislature. It was completely outside of her control. She didn’t even know it was happening, that is until it did. Like a sick patient, a business also needs to confront its reality. She did. Others, do not. See related post: Why Think Positive is So Last Year.

The Timing Goddess
Equally perilous, the timing goddess can be merciless. I saw many would-be good companies disappear during the dot-com bubble because funds available for investment dried up as investors recoiled to inspect their damaged portfolios. Guided by fear and greed, many investors were not good at separating the wheat from the chaff prior to, or following the bust. In fairness, the timing goddess can also bless a company, even one which at a different time would not pass scrutiny. Whether it is physical death or business failure people need comfort, assurance, and when appropriate interventions and remedies that can prevent premature or painful death.

Learning from Success AND Failure
We all love a great success story. There are no shortage of people who wish their brand could be “just a little more like Apple”, etc. But, success rarely follows a straight up-and-to the-right trajectory and it’s definitely hard to replicate, though many have tried. Most successes, like progress itself, are built on the backs of failed experiments, trial and error, early initiatives, course corrections, and false starts, etc.

I’ve had my own businesses fail. I’ve worked with others who business has failed, too. Some of my failures include ideas that couldn’t get going or those that got going and then fizzled later. I’ve also had projects that failed, campaigns, design approaches, even routes. The route failure was particularly painful because in the end our party hiked 3 times farther than originally planned. We arrived at our vehicle, hungry, cold, blistered, sore, and exhausted at 10:40 pm one dark and dreary fall evening – sorry Shannon and Lisa. All of my failures AND successes have helped to sharpen my approach when reaching for new destinations, whether in the natural or business landscape. But, I also learn from the successes and failure of others.

Expanding Your Village
In a software company that I started I created three levels of advisors. I had my official board of directors, comprised of one outside board member (a VC that extended a loan) and two insiders, one of which was me. This board provided little value to me, or the operation and was even detrimental at times. I also established a formal advisory board and what I referred to as my coffee-table advisors. Upon reflection, I view the latter group as the most beneficial. We’d meet for coffee occasionally to chew through an issue or to catch up and review. Meetings were usually one-to-one or one-to-few. Each of these advisors was experienced, retired, interested in my success, and didn’t need my startup’s stock options, a stipend or even an honorable mention. There was no formal written agreement. Each of them simply wanted to help.

By contrast, each of my formal advisory board members did have a written agreement that spelled out the number of stock options (warrants actually) they were to receive; there was no cash compensation or stipend. Each adviser provided something valuable and tangible to the business. In one case that was “starter” code that helped showcase our first prototype, the predecessor to our minimally viable product. Advisors also provided perspective, guidance, and feedback to less experienced personnel. In one case, an advisor provided access to their personnel and even some office space within their business. The strategic, technical, and financial advice we received was beneficial to me personally, as well as the business. All of my advisors provided access to their network, which was valuable and appreciated. None of what I’m sharing ever appeared on an organization chart and much of it remains unknown today, to the people involved in the company. In life and in business, it really does take a village. And that village isn’t always visible.

Failure, While Certain for Humans is Not for Business
While our own body’s ecosystem is prone to failure, our businesses don’t have to be. Like the giant sequoia, with proper care businesses can outlive their earlier human contributors. There is no natural death cycle for a business, even though some refer to the life cycle of a business. Tell that to Zildjian, a company that continues to reinvent itself. It’s leadership has persisted through revolution, changes in technology, movement across counties and continents, and even fire that gutted the factory. The company has persisted since 1623. You can be sure the company leadership from its inception to today, received much help from a broad village of support.

10 Reasons We Don’t Ask for Help
In some cases, the barrier that prevents us from getting help is the monoculture already mentioned. It has us seeking counsel inside the organization, reflecting what we want to hear. After all, outsiders might tell us something uncomfortable. Other reasons we don’t ask for help include:

We wait too long and convince ourselves that it’s too late to effect change. Feelings of hopelessness and even depression can accompany this.
We are too proud to ask for help. Leaders are accustomed to leading and not the best people to ask others to help them.
We don’t know where to begin. Things are not well, but we don’t have a question to ask or project to pursue. There is no clear path forward.
We are distrustful of strangers especially outsiders to our business. We may lose control.
We have a blind spot that we are failing and that others could possibly see more potential for our business.
We lack the knowledge of the type of help we need; there doesn’t appear to be a company doctor to ease or prevent our type of pain.
We believe our situation so unique that nobody could possibly understand or help.
We believe our business and current situation are too complex or dynamic. They are not stable enough; they change too quickly to immerse anybody. FYI – this can also prevent people from hiring new employees.
It is expected that I seek a self-help solution. The cultural drive for self-help can be strong and there could be stigma associated with getting help.
We have no budget for this type of this. Getting help outside of established patterns is rarely a budgeted expense anymore than one budgets for a healthcare emergency. Nobody plans for a chipped tooth (that happened to me in the recent past). But, sometimes an investment in your health or professional development is warranted (I feel much better with my restored tooth).

You can’t avoid death in life, but you can in business.

Summary
You can’t avoid death in life but you can in business. Notice that none of the ten answers was “because help was not available.” Like a patient that seeks medical care there is plenty of help available. There are general and specialized consultants to address challenges and opportunities for all sizes and types of organizations. But, you have to seek it out. Just like you establish care with a medical practitioner ahead of when you need it, it is a good idea to have some “go-to” people for your business health, too. If you do, perhaps you should let them know how you are feeling. They might have just the medicine you need. And, like a good doctor, each has a network of other resources standing by for referral. Cheers to your continued health and kudos to you for overcoming these 10 barriers when the time comes that you too, need some help.

about the author

Gregory Olson’s latest book is L’ impossi preneurs: A Hopeful Journey Through Tomorrow, a light-hearted and deadly serious book about a brighter future where we live more meaningful lives, governments invest in people and sustainable progress, and technology serves humans. Greg also authored The Experience Design Blueprint, a book about designing better experiences and then making them come true. The models in the Experience Design BLUEPRINT are equally relevant to organizations of all types and sizes including start-up entrepreneurs, nonprofits, for-profits, and government.

October 12, 2015

Use the 4 Action Levers to Improve Customer Experiences

Product and Service Village

Products and services don’t invent themselves, not yet anyway. And, their intended audiences rarely self-generate a groundswell of demand. Products and services with even a modicum of complexity require an organization to deliver those products and services over their life cycle. The organization should stand ready to provide assistance to customers from the moment they begin “kicking the tires” to the time they become a customer and hopefully a repeat customer and advocate. Inside the organization, it takes a small village to make all of this come together and to keep it operating smoothly.

Why Villages Need a Chief

Human history has taught us that villages want chiefs. What villagers really seek is a way to resolve disputes, a point person to make and enforce rules, and a source of wisdom. The chief is the supreme leader and organizer that hopefully keeps everybody safe, healthy, and prospering, even amid change and conflict. The chief is the one person accountable for everything, good and bad.

Product Manager as Chief
In many organizations, the product or brand manager is made to be the de facto chief of the product or service village. Think of the arrangement to be more of a central hub in a hub and spoke arrangement that keeps the business flowing around that product or brand. In smaller companies or startups the founder is often this chief.

Worry Might be the Chief’s Biggest Product

But, talk to any product manager in those sorts of arrangements (if you are able to) and you’ll discover that they’re running the busy program and don’t have much time for anything, let alone your conversation. They simply have to worry about everything and everywhere. In many innovation cultures they are also expected to be thought leaders as well as the protective visionary that understands all of the nuances and continuous changes in the business landscape and customer ecosystem. It’s daunting and exhausting, rife with employee burnout, outright failure, and lost potential for employees, organization, and customer alike. If you have been a product manager or worked closely with one, you know what I’m talking about. The to-do list always exceeds the to-done list by a factor of 10 or more. And, worse, few seem to understand or care because they too are running some version of the busy program. In Switch vernacular, this isn’t so much of a people problem as it is a situation problem. The good news is that this is a solvable problem.

It’s time to spark a new conversation

If you’d like to change this, you need to spark a new conversation in your organization. Here is some thinking to accompany you. Any improvement you make to a customer’s experience can be force fit into one of four categories as shown in the figure at the top of this article, namely:

more relevant communications
improved customer thinking
organizational readiness
better product and service interactions

If you have my book, The Experience Design Blueprint, reference Figure 7.9 in Ch 7: Improving the Journey. So, your organization needs to build competencies in each of these areas. Expecting all of this to fall on the shoulders of one person is wishful thinking, but chances are it isn’t producing very good results.

Benefits of distributed leadership

Formalizing leadership across the 4 competencies will improve the performance of your product manager. It will increase the firms absorptive capacity, improve the organization’s overall performance, empower employees, and enable the organization and brand to better connect with its intended audiences.

But, that isn’t the only power of the levers. They also serve as a system of checks and balances. After all, you can’t have more relevant communications or better product and service interactions if you don’t have improved customer thinking. And, if your organization isn’t ready or up to the task, then better product and service interactions or more relevant communications will never actually materialize.

The 4 Action Levers give you a way to do mental bookkeeping for making improvements in the areas of more relevant communications, improved customer thinking, organizational readiness, and better product and service interactions.

Compare this to the act of cleaning a four room house by moving all of the mess into one of the rooms. You’ve only shifted the problem temporarily. If you visit the affected room, you’ll notice the problem straight away. If you know classical physics then you also know Newton’s third law states that for every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction. That is an axiom that applies here. If you invest in activities behind one of the action levers then realize the other levers will be affected, too.

Why the Metaphor of Lever
Lever is an intentionally chosen word because with a lever, you amplify a small input force to produce a larger output force. It is a simple machine to gain mechanical advantage. With customer experiences, we can invest small actions into better understanding customers and gain a greater output of Improved Customer Thinking.

Use the 4 Action Levers to identify projects and programs that aim to improve the organization’s ability to deliver more remarkable products and services, build more authentic relationships, and communicate more effectively with intended audiences.

Improved Customer Thinking – Who are the audiences you are concerned with today and in the near future? What do you want them to think, feel, do and remember? Remember audiences can be internal or external to the organization. See related post Customer Schmustomer: Audience Schmaudience. See Project Ideas.
More Relevant Communications – What are the communications requirements across initiatives, time, and channels to authentically connect with your intended audiences? Remember that communications also includes internal communications. See Project Ideas.
Better Product & Service Interactions – What are the intended experiences you want your audiences to have over time when dealing with your organization? See Project Ideas.
Organizational Readiness – Customer experiences and journeys don’t happen in a vacuum. Organizations must be ready to interact with customers and also be mindful of the behind the scenes operational requirements. What will be needed to get and keep others ready inside and beyond the organization? See Project Ideas.

Concentrate improvements in any one area and you have the potential to make incremental improvements. But, synchronize improvements in each area and you have the potential to engage employees, create remarkable customer experiences, and smooth your operation. Do this correctly and you’ll still have time to leave early on Fridays, or work less each day as companies in Sweden have recently elected to do.

Recipe #28: Find the Critical to Executions

Reflect on your current and past execution gaps that prevented your organization from being ready to deliver remarkable experiences. As you go forward intentionally designing customer journeys, note what will be required in order to close the execution gaps. These comprise your list of CTEs: critical to execution. As you explore new projects and programs make CTEs part of your organization’s customer experience vernacular.

about the author

Gregory Olson is a consultant, speaker, and author. He authored The Experience Design Blueprint, a book about designing better experiences and then making them come true. The models in the Experience Design BLUEPRINT are equally relevant to organizations of all types and sizes including start-up entrepreneurs, nonprofits, for-profits, and government.

His latest book is L’ impossi preneurs: A Hopeful Journey Through Tomorrow, a light-hearted and deadly serious book about a brighter future where we live more meaningful lives, governments invest in people and sustainable progress, and technology serves humans.

September 16, 2015

Robots Don't Kill Jobs But CEOs Do

image of job stealing robot - Robots Don't Kill Jobs But CEOs Do - Delightability blog Robots Don’t Kill Jobs But CEOs Do
This message is especially for CEOs. Please forward to CEOs and board members if you have the courage. There is much talk of robots taking people’s jobs. It is easy to blame a machine, or another abstract like “a rapidly changing market” as Hewlett-Packard’s Whitman recently did as the company announced another cut of 25,000 to 30,000 positions.

But, to date, a robot has never walked a person to the door, not yet. And, markets don’t eliminate jobs either. I’ve yet to hear of market rain droplets falling onto workers, rendering them unemployed. No, the special words, “You’re Fired” or the equivalent actions are still reserved for humans. It is company leadership that kills jobs, not robots.

Yes, technology changes and so do markets. This has always been the case. But, let’s be really clear about what’s happening. Like stock buybacks, M&A activity and other initiatives that preoccupy the minds of board rooms and executive offices, this is about maximizing shareholder value in the short run.

image of hog that can't see - Robots Don't Kill Jobs But CEOs Do - Delightability blog More plainly, it is about greed. The intent is to move money that would otherwise be paid to workers and redistribute instead to leadership and investors, either directly or indirectly. It is a flawed equation from the onset. History is proving this more and more, if only we would learn. Unfortunately, maximizing shareholder value and its related bad ideas are still perpetuated by business schools, investors of the short run, and the unwitting. There are simply more stakeholders to the equation that are made to be invisible, namely humans and the environment. Smart progressive leaders and companies already realize this. So do the customers that align to those values.

board room image - Robots Don't Kill Jobs But CEOs Do - Delightability blog A better world begins with the decisions made at dinner tables and carried through to the office and the board room. CEO decisions don’t live in some special vacuum. When a Hungarian camerawoman decides to trip a man carrying his child as they strive for refuge and a fresh start, the world watches. And, when a CEO chooses to trip a person or family that relied on a paycheck, also on the way to somewhere, the world watches, too. The song of cuts has been played over and over again. In the case of HP, 100,000 jobs cut in the last 10 years. In the case of Microsoft 20,000+ in recent years. For HSBC is was 50,000 jobs recently announced to be cut and Deutsche Bank yesterday announced it will cut 25% of its workforce, or 23,000 human beings. Plenty of other examples abound. It is time to change the music. It’s also time to own up to the decision and stop blaming “things”.

We can pretend that these decisions will be in isolation and there will be no ripple effect or interactions, but that would be delusional. The effects will be long-lasting and far-reaching, inside and outside your organization. As a former CEO shared with me last week, “When there are deep cuts in the organization, it never recovers. Everybody becomes scarred. I can’t say I was unaffected.”

Self proclaimed plutocrat Nick Hanauer warns us in his Ted talk, “Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming.” In that talk he says, “We plutocrats need to get this trickle-down economics thing behind us, this idea that the better we do, the better everyone else will do. It’s not true. How could it be? I earn 1,000 times the median wage, but I do not buy 1,000 times as much stuff, do I? I actually bought two pairs of these pants, what my partner Mike calls my manager pants. I could have bought 2,000 pairs, but what would I do with them? How many haircuts can I get? How often can I go out to dinner? No matter how wealthy a few plutocrats get, we can never drive a great national economy. Only a thriving middle class can do that. ”

Nick realizes that he won’t be purchasing 1000s of computers and phones and haircuts and meals to make up for those workers who will lose their jobs and have to tighten their belts.

As fictional character in The Hobbit, Thorin Oakenshield, said, “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. But, sad or merry, I must leave it now. Farewell.” Tolkien’s worlds are make-believe, but ours are not. And, there is no my world, your world, and their world. It is all “our world”. I implore CEOs to make it a better world, not worse.

CEO actions need to make the companies they lead more relevant to more stakeholder and not less so. Let’s admit that the keys to the kingdom have been in the hands of the wrong people, the takers. This “taker” corporate culture has been more about taking, evading, cutting, dodging, buying back, and shifting. Boards of Directors have been complicit in this corrosive behavior. Others have watched from the sidelines cheering it on or in horror. The rabbit hole of greed is very deep. If corporate leaders continue on a destructive “taker” path, they’ll build an organization of diminishing relevance.

imagine mosaic image - Robots Don't Kill Jobs But CEOs Do - Delightability blog Human progress is overdue. It’s time we return the keys to the makers. Let’s once again make, create, invest. Let’s celebrate progress, collaborate, innovate. Let’s inspire. Let’s be authentic. Let’s be concerned. Let’s invite newcomers to the table. Let’s keep our promises both explicit and implicit. Let’s solve problems of the world. Boards need to support CEO actions in this regard and then hold them to account.

In this re-frame, companies have an opportunity to become more relevant. Relevant to the older worker and the younger worker alike. Relevant to the budding innovator that has yet to graduate. Relevant to the communities and the stores and channels and vendors that work in those communities.

If you are the CEO, ask yourself why should your employees, customers, partners, or other stakeholders be emotionally invested in the business when you are not.

There are plenty of people who can help you re-frame your business, redefine your products and services and build relevance for what’s next. Look for customer experience consultants, service design expertise, innovation consultants or as I prescribe in Ch 14 of my book, create an innovation neighborhood and stock it in part with outside entrepreneurs. Use technology to complement humans not replace them.

Jobs will be eliminated for reasons, some good and some bad. I realize this. But, if you are the human behind the decision to destroy jobs, then you must confront reality. You’ll eventually have to. Because the humans you eliminate will likely build robots and organize a silent revolution that will one day displace you, too.

about the author

Gregory Olson is the author of The Experience Design Blueprint, a book about designing better experiences and then making them come true. As discussed in Chapter 14, the world of work has changed and it’s not coming back as we knew it. The book is available in full-color print or on Kindle.

His latest book is L’ impossi preneurs: A Hopeful Journey Through Tomorrow, a light-hearted and deadly serious book about a brighter future where we all live more meaningful lives, governments invest in people and sustainable progress, and technology serves humans. Chapters in L’ impossi preneurs that relate to this article include Chapter 1: Flavors of Entrepreneurship, Chapter 5: Wealth & Economy and Ch 12: World of Work.

Some of the “impossible” ideas of Chapter 5 include Universal Unconditional Basic Income, an Innovation Clearinghouse, Participatory Budgeting, The Make Meaning Department, Empathy Builder, Building a Truth Sculpture, a Safety Net for Entrepreneurs, Household Prosperity Index, and revisiting the Corporation.

image of Greg-Olson-Managing Director of Delightability and author of Experience Design BLUEPRINT Gregory Olson founded strategy and design firm Delightability, LLC. with the belief that if you delight customers then success will follow. He believes that we all have the potential to do better, as individuals, organizations, and communities, but sometimes we need a little help. Gregory also serves as a volunteer board member for Oikocredit Northwest, a support association for social investor and financial institution, Oikocredit International.

September 15, 2015July 23, 2023

Acceptable Discomfort is Better than None

Acceptable Discomfort is Better than None
Acceptable discomfort is what you tolerate in the spirit of moving forward. In matters of work it might be about a launch, or an initiative. Closer to home it may be about vacationing or home projects on the way to growing old together. Think about the alternative. What if you halted forward progress at each step where you had some discomfort? You would become a puppet master of inaction.

If a particular issue or item is too uncomfortable, then ask yourself why. What does this matter so much to me? Is it so important that you should halt progress? Often, you’ll find that it is more important to move forward than to declare a shutdown. Remember, perfection is the enemy of good enough.

Acceptance does have ramifications, however. It means you might not get to vote on each item, every time. It means you won’t be able to inspect every nail driven, every line of code, every written word. You won’t review every spoken promise and supervise all interactions. It also means that decisions don’t get undecided when somebody on the team voices dissent. It means you’ll move forward even when you don’t have perfect information. And, you’ll likely do so at a pace that is too fast for complete comfort. You’ll trust where previously, you didn’t. But, it’s all going to be OK.

If we didn’t have acceptable discomfort there would be little progress. Think about the project that never completes, the product that never launches, or the organization that spits and sputters like an old junky engine. Think of the U.S. Congress and the bickering and obstruction that halts human progress and retards the economy.

You’ll get far more done together if you embrace the notion of acceptable discomfort. And, the feelings you’ll share when you reach your destination together will be far better than the feelings you’ll have with inaction.

about the author

Gregory Olson is a consultant, speaker, and author. His latest book project is l’ impossi preneurs: A Hopeful Journey Through Tomorrow.

Connect with Greg on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter.

Greg also authored, The Experience Design Blueprint, a book about designing better experiences and then making them come true. Exercises and mental models in the book will build your confidence in envisioning better possibilities and your competence in making them come true. Chapters in The Experience Design Blueprint, that pertain to this post include:

Chapter 7: Improving the Journey
Chapter 9: The Neighborhood
Chapter 11: Barriers to Innovation and Overcoming the Wall
Chapter 13: Taking Flight
Chapter 15: From Argh to Aha!

See a book summary. Read the book reviews on Amazon. Read The Experience Design Blueprint on Kindle or any device using the free Kindle Reader application or read the full color print edition.

September 8, 2015

Food for Thought and For Neighbors and the Friends You Will Meet

Food for Thought and For Neighbors and the Friends You Will Meet
So, you’re fresh off that Labor Day get together and don’t know what to do with all of the leftover food. There’s an app for that, and a platform, and a city, and it turns out, an entire movement. The sharing economy isn’t just for rides and rooms. More and more,
it includes food.

A Smartphone App to Share Leftovers

Whether you have leftovers to share or you are seeking some, LeftoverSwap provides a smartphone app to help facilitate the match. View leftovers near you, select and then arrange for pickup or delivery. Or, snap a picture of what you have to share and then make it available for others. The smartphone application is available for Google play or the App Store. Learn more.

A Platform to Source, Share, and Sell Food

In Adelaide, South Australia, RipeNear.Me, provides a platform for people to connect directly with growers or find food on public land. The site has the promise of eliminating waste at the source and even encourages more locally grown sustainable food in backyards, front yards, balconies, rooftops, vacant blocks, and other empty urban spaces. It provides a platform for growers to give away excess food or even establish a profitable ecosystem or micro farm. Join registered users in cities in 16 countries on 5 continents. Learn more.

A City that Embraces Food Sharing

In the city of Galdakao, in the Basque town in Northern Spain, the Association of Volunteers of Galdakao, under leadership from Alvaro Saiz established the Solidarity Fridge. The communal refrigerator sits on a city sidewalk with a fence around it. Anybody in the town of 30,000, can deposit food or help themselves to what’s inside. Simply stop by and grab what you need. Mayor Ibon Uribe, upon hearing the idea, immediately supported it with a small budget to get it started and to sustain its operation. A physical refrigerator in plain view is especially valuable for those without internet access or smartphones. The group wants to build a network of communal refrigerators and invites others to join. Learn more.

charity fridge - food sharing apps - delightability - gregory olson — photo courtesy of Mezmez

This isn’t the only Solidarity fridge. A similar movement in the Saudi Arabian city, Ha’il with 10 times the population, 356,876, was sparked by one man who installed a “charity fridge” outside his house. He felt that this did some good but spared the needy the shame of asking for food. Imagine other refrigerators similarly placed in public places. Learn more.

Would the mayor or city manager in your city have the courage to add a solidarity fridge? How about leadership at your church or mosque?

An Entire Movement to Drastically Reduce Food Waste and Loss

Solidarity Fridge was inspired by a larger initiative that began in Germany, namely, Foodsharing.de. Using the website, individuals who have food that is still good but cannot use it, can connect to people who need food. But, it isn’t only individuals. Supermarkets and bakers are participating in over 240 German cities along with 41,000 people. In the first year of operation the website received over 1 million visitors. People don’t have the stigma of registering with a food bank and then subsequently waiting in line. It is more dignified. Volunteers known as Foodsavers are happy to do their part in picking up food from bakers, etc., saving food from waste, and making the world a little better place. Learn more.

Reduced Food Waste is Sorely Needed

It’s a great thing the sharing economy includes food with more and more thoughtful people and organizations participating. According to projections by the World Resources Institute, by 2050 we’ll need to feed 9.6 billion people. And, according to estimates by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), one-third of all food produced worldwide, every year, goes to loss and waste. Food produced and not eaten is a huge cost, not just to producers but to society. Factor in the natural resources used for growing, processing, packing, transporting, and marketing and the cost of wasted and lost food increases dramatically.

So, before you dump those extra ribs or rice or whatever leftovers you might have this Labor Day or any day, think about sharing with another human before you share with the compost bin. Your neighbors will thank you. The stranger about town will appreciate your gesture. And, who knows, you might just make a new friend in the process.

More “impossible” ideas about the future of Food and Comfort in Chapter 7 of
L’ impossi preneurs: A Hopeful Journey Through Tomorrow.

About the Author

Gregory Olson is the author of The Experience Design Blueprint, a book about designing better experiences and then making them come true.

His latest book is L’ impossi preneurs: A Hopeful Journey Through Tomorrow, a light-hearted and deadly serious book to spark conversations among global citizens. In a brighter future, we all live more meaningful lives, governments invest in people and sustainable progress, and technology serves humans. Visit Press-Kit to learn more.

September 4, 2015

5 Lessons: Picking Up Passengers on the Train of Progress

Here is the situation. You’ve got some place you’d like to be; a destination yet to be realized. Progress, a big change initiative, the launch of a product or service. Whether you’re the chair, the chief, the executive director, product manager, board member, or some other concerned change maker, you acknowledge you’re not going to get everybody to the destination all by yourself. You’ll need other people to get on board and participate.

Here are 5 lessons to master so that you can all reach the desired destination together.

Onboarding is Essential

Assuming you all know the destination (that is another article) you’ll be picking up passengers (employees, vendors, partners, members, volunteers, etc.) at various stops. Be mindful that not everyone will be at the same level of awareness. Slow down and help people get on board. The recently boarded are not as familiar. Take time to show them around. You want to avoid cognitive overload, the proverbial drinking from the firehouse, where little is retained. Provide people with communication tools that allow them to slowly get immersed. See the related blog post about transfer and absorption value as key to better storytelling.

Maintain Smooth

As you journey together toward your destination, pace and rhythm are key. You don’t want passengers to get thrown off as you approach a corner too fast. You also don’t want a sputtering, inefficient engine. Emulate the smoothness of your washing machine’s spin cycle. In your organization you can establish operating mechanisms to keep things running more smoothly. Like the garbage service or doing laundry at home, operating mechanisms create a regular cycle to keep things from piling up or from being neglected. You’ll retain more passengers on your journey if you avoid abrupt changes, extremes, and neglect. Even a comprehensive strategy pivot can be smooth when thoughtfully handled.

Keep Synchronized

Some people will want to go faster. Others will think the journey is far too slow. Listen to both concerns. Consider ideas can come from anywhere, even the newest passenger. Inviting others to share ideas could shift your perspective for the better. Create a space for that conversation to happen. I call this the playground and it represents the idea zone. Read more about the 3 psychological zones in Ch 12. Remember, ideas are not judged in the playground and not all ideas will advance. But, it is still important for people to have a voice, be respected, listened to, and for their ideas to be considered at an appropriate time. Establish an operating mechanism to screen and advance ideas.

Don’t Ignore Conditions

There may be cattle on the tracks, a bridge out ahead or another hazard. Trains encounter changing conditions and hazards; so does your organization. Establishing “sensors in the ground” (see Ch 8) can serve as your early warning system, like seismometers that detect shifts in the earth’s tectonic plates. The journey will be smoother for all aboard if you confront reality and don’t pretend your passengers will be unaffected.

Be Mindful of the Audience

All passengers are not created equally. And, not all of the stakeholders to your organization are either. The women in car number 27 might need a little extra assistance. Same with employee X or customer Y or supplier Z. When we create average experiences for everybody we are destined to be supplanted by somebody more thoughtful to individuals needs and context. Case in point, would you like to wait for a yellow cab or message Uber?

Whether your train of progress is literal or figurative you can go further and reach your destination if you pay attention to these 5 lessons for implementing change. Ignore them and you may might find yourself navigating the journey alone or more likely stuck in a train that never leaves the station.

about the author

Chapters in The Experience Design Blueprint that especially pertain to this post include:

Chapter 7: Improving the Journey
Chapter 8: The Promise Delivery Systems
Chapter 12: The Three Psychological Zones

See a book summary. Read the book reviews on Amazon. Read The Experience Design Blueprint on Kindle or any device using the free Kindle Reader application or read the full color print edition.

August 31, 2015

Making a sandwich reveals your biases

Making a Beautiful Tasty Sandwich

So, you’re making a sandwich, a beautiful tasty sandwich. You gather the fresh pickles, tomatoes, lettuce, avocado, cheese, mayo, mustard, fresh ground pepper, etc. Then you reach for the bread. You open the plastic bag and if you are like most people, you automatically skip past the heel, like your looking for an ace in a deck of cards. You go straight to the “good stuff” towards the middle.

Running on Autopilot

Caught you! You’re like a robot or a computer running an algorithm, not even aware you’re running the program. Or rather, the program is running you. Why don’t you like heels? No, really, why? I’m pretty certain you’ve never performed a taste test to compare the crusty exterior with the interior. You’ve probably never examined it for detectable flaws. You likely are completely unaware of why you eschew, the crusty one. Maybe you’ve simply aped mother or father or a sibling. The reason doesn’t really matter. The fact is you have a blind-spot and a bias. It likely isn’t the only one. We all have them. I do, too.

Biases in the office

Patterns that are codified into the DNA of an organization reside with individuals. Schooling, past experiences, beliefs, and values all shape the biases we bring to work each day. Biases held by individuals and entire departments become woven into the innovation fabric of the enterprise. One classic and common bias is financial. “What is the business case?” “What is the expected ROI?” “Is this a big enough business to matter?” These biases for immediate results or large returns squash budding ideas that really could be the next big thing, if nurtured. Smart people everywhere are upholding these biases and unable to move forward. They are stuck in their own thinking; much like a trained elephant is tethered to the ground with only a small chain and spike that it could easily break free from.

Biases in our lives

Biases come in many forms. For some it is about not eating heals. Sometimes, these biases and blind-spot lead us to act in ways that are intolerant of others, insensitive to our surroundings, suspicious of others motives, and unbelieving of others abilities.

I once had a friend that came home from a job and went on to tell me about the completely incapable, intolerable, irritating new hire that had started that day. Within a couple of weeks the bias had subsided and the two pals were spending time together. What other blind-spots and biases might you have? Ask a friend or colleague to observe your patterns and practices. You might just learn something about your habits.

There you have it, robot. I hope you’ll soon savor the special loaf end, that crusty exterior, whether you slather it with butter and strawberry jam, make bread pudding, or homemade seasoned croutons. And, if you still decide to throw those heals in the compost, then at least you’ll do so with your eyes and mind wide open. Enjoy your sandwich.

about the author

Greg authored The Experience Design Blueprint, a book about designing better experiences and then making them come true. The models in the Experience Design BLUEPRINT are equally relevant to organizations of all types and sizes including start-up entrepreneurs, nonprofits, for-profits, and government.

The chapter in The Experience Design Blueprint that especially pertains to this post is:

Chapter 11: Barriers to Innovation and Overcoming the Wall