Designing High Performance Organizations, Designing High Performance Selling Processes

I'm a tremendous fan of Whitney Hess. Whitney calls herself a User Experience Designer. When I look at her stuff, I see principles that apply to successful organizational design and to developing high performance selling processes. Some translation is needed---but really obvious. Whitney gives us important lessons not just for User Experience Design but for creating high performing, aligned organizations.

This is a great presentation on the 10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design. If you are a sales or marketing professional, just do a global replace for User Experience Design With Customer Experience.

Pay attention to Slide 22, in sales and marketing terms, what Whitney has defined is the one of the secrets to establishing a sustainable and differentiated value proposition.

10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design

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Delivering Happiness! Zappo's

Zappo's is one of the hottest and most innovative companies around. This is an inspirational presentations by Tony Hsieh, their CEO. There are important lessons in this for any business professional.

Zappos - Startup2Startup - 03-26-09

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What Have You Learned Today?

Nina Simosko wrote a great post at the Slow Leadership blog. She addresses the issue of "can you ever have learned enough." Somehow, the answer to the question seems obvious, but as she implies, unwittingly, many seem to have stopped learning.

There are all sorts of excuses, probably the most dominant is "I'm too busy," the arrogant ones: "I have such deep experience." The list can go on.

Nina points out: "...thinking that you know it all is a sure sign of troubles to come...." As a consultant, unfortunately, many of the problems I see organizations have is they (and the individuals in the organizations) no longer have the mechanisms to learn. Sheer momentum seems to propel them forward. Learning seems to be limited to reading market research about the industry, analyzing competitor performance, looking at technology developments within the industry.

Yesterday, I was on a conference call with a team of people from a large technology organization. One of the participants---the chief technology strategist---chided the others on their waste of time in trying to understand the needs of their customer's customers and the business side functions (e.g. VP of Sales, Marketing, Strategy) of their key customers. "We work with the technologists in our customers. They know what is needed, they drive the business and its requirements. Talking to the business leaders is a waste of time." This organization is struggling to remain important to its customers--with these views, it is easy to understand why.

Two weeks ago, I spoke to a top executive of a small systems integration company. He had a "formula" for doing business. It had been successful in the past, but was failing now. When I encouraged him to consider some different approaches and to look at different examples, he responded: "We know what to do, we have been successful, we will recover just by executing more sharply and more quickly." My sense is he will continue to struggle, but will never achieve the growth he would like and the organization deserves.

Perhaps I'm lazy, but I have always wanted to look around to find new ideas and consider new approaches. I have always thought it is fantastic to look outside the industry I work in---after all, we all know each other and to some degree are becoming "in-bred." I have discovered a wealth of ideas in other industries that I can adapt and modify to help us innovate and improve performance.

Nina highlights the importance of keeping an open mind. She reminds us that learning and lessons can come from many sources. Learning is not just limited to what we read, what we encounter in classes, what we learn from guru's and consultants. She states, "Wake up each morning and ask yourself, 'What am I going to learn today?'"

I would extend Nina's thoughts by taking a slightly more aggressive position: as individuals and organizations, we must institutionalize curiosity! We must challenge everyone in the organization to learn from both traditional and non-traditional sources. We must challenge them to bring these ideas into the business---not into the suggestion box---but constantly be updating how the business works, based on these new ideas.

In following Nina's challenge---I believe a day is wasted unless you learn something new! Comments?

Why Don't Managers Think Deeply

Today, the Harvard Business Review Working Knowledge Newsletter and Art Petty On Management had complementary articles on Why Don't Managers Think Deeply? It's a fascinating topic that should concern all leaders. Both are worth reading, and, dare I say, thinking about.

I'd like to add some of my own opinions about why manager's don't think deeply:

• People confuse form with substance: Brilliant presentations, PowerPoint's, or "hot programs" may be attractive and create a lot of interest, but many have no depth beyond the bullet point on the chart. People haven't really thought about what the strategy and the most effective means of execution. People don't get into deep discussions about the issues or alternatives.
• Activity trumps results and effectiveness: We. particularly American business professionals, have a bias to activity. We see nothing wrong with Ready, Fire, Aim. The activity is often unfocused, aimless, and ineffective. We are often to busy with our activities to take the time to think.
• Activity can be mistaken for accountability: "Busy people must be doing important things and producing good results." In reality, busy people may be busy people, but "busyness" does not necessarily mean a lot is being accomplished. The greatest sin made in the name of "busyness" is multitasking--we simultaneously sit in a meeting, process our emails, text message on our phones, and think about what we want to do on the weekend. This keeps us from focusing on what we must do.
• Thinking---at least results focused thinking-- forces us to make choices. It forces us to commit to a course of action and to execute it. Many people are afraid to commit to a course of action. It is better to react or do nothing than it is to commit to something and to be held accountable.
• Thinking deeply is messy hard work. It is difficult to reduce it to a bullet point. It is demanding and takes time---but time spent thinking doesn't look like activity. The results aren't pretty and can sometimes be complicated to present and get others to support.
• Thinking deeply requires the ability to integrate and synthesize. Some people just aren't good at this--but it is critical for leaders.
• Thinking deeply isn't rewarded in a lot of organizations. It's hard to measure, consequently hard to reward. Thinking takes away from "busyness." it's easier to measure and reward activities.
• Thinking deeply may be threatening to senior executives. Senior executives who don't take the time or have difficulty thinking deeply about issues will, justifiably, feel threatened by subordinates that take the time to think before acting.

And I could go on, but enough for now. I would be remiss though, if I didn't look at some of the downsides of thinking deeply. I have encountered people in business who are deep thinkers, yet who cannot translate the results of their thinking into meaningful action.

Deep thinking must be accompanied my meaningful---thoughtful action. Without this it is never tested and the results are never produced.

Renaissance Teams

"You can't make a renaissance person anymore because of the range of what you would need to do is just impossible. But you could actually assemble a renaissance team." Bruce Dau

Interesting quote from Roger Martin's Opposable Mind. Worth thinking about in building teams, encouraging collaboration, innovation and creativity.

Fashion In High Technology

I just returned from CES. Not many big stories, though it seems the computer and related technology industries have had an epiphany--fashion in product design is important!!! There was a lot of news about the colors, design, and other factors to increasingly appeal to the sense of fashion.

This is not new news! Apple has had tremendous fashion forward design for years (and I'm a PC guy). There have been moments of inspiration in past years.

One of the things I think the press has missed, however, is that the while the final form and function are critical deliverables in fashion related businesses, the business management process that enables companies to make money from "fashion" provides important lessons for technology related businesses. The ability of these businesses to get close to their customers, to understand and quickly respond to trend in the market--to drive them where possible, and to make money in with fickle customers are all important lessons that can be applied to fashionable and unfashionable technology products.

Rather than writing more on this, if you are interested in understanding this more, I will provide a link to a paper I wrote on this topic in 2004. The paper; Technology Companies Must Follow The Fashion Leaders, can be found by following the links.

Prisoners Of Our Own Experience

There was a great article in the New York Times on December 30, Innovative Minds Don't Think Alike. It suggests "as our knowledge and expertise increase, our creativity and ability to innovate tend to taper off."

While the article focuses on innovation and creativity, we encounter the same issue in our work with clients every day. We all become prisoners of our own experience. By that, the solutions that people look for tend to be the same old solutions that have been used over and over.

Organizations and people tend to define their strategies, processes, and approaches to business, based on their collection of past experiences. Some benchmark their competition, either copying practices or reacting to competition. Most executives are knowledgeable of their own organizations and what is happening within their industry.

However, many of these efforts do not create new and innovative practice for the organization. They represent small increments in improvement but not the dramatic change. The same thoughts and approaches, maybe polished up, are cycled and recycled within the organization and the industry.

To escape this prison and drive dramatic change in business, people and organizations need to look outside their companies and industries. In the New York Times article, it is suggested that outsiders and consultants can help organizations get a fresh look at things. This is a great approach. However, it is important that executives make a consistent practice of looking at other industries and companies. A B2B executive can learn a lot by looking at consumer products companies, and vice-versa. Old ideas and approaches from other industries can become very innovative and fresh when applied within your own company.

We encourage our clients to constantly learn by wandering around. We encourage exec's to look at very different industries, companies with different business models. Don't just look for ideas within your company, competition, or industry. Look outside to get a fresh view.