Noise Between Stations

Author: Victor

  • The listening-to-customers wake up call

    Looking back through the classic management texts I realize the call to listen to customers isn’t new. Here’s a few that counsel an emphasis on customers:

    • Innovation in Marketing (1962)
    • In Search of Excellence (1982)
    • Moments of Truth (1987)
    • Relationship Marketing (1991)
    • The Experience Economy (1999)

    The repetition of this message isn’t surprising as it’s easy to walk around a modern corporation and meet plenty of people who should be familiar with their customers but aren’t. My little wake up call consists of asking, “How many of your customers have you met?” even when I know the answer is “none.”

  • Steve Jobs and the parable of the concept car

    We thought a lot about concept cars last year and how we could translate this practice to other industries. So it’s fun fun fun to hear the latest Steve Jobs metaphor…

    You know how you see a show car, and it’s really cool, and then four years later you see the production car, and it sucks? And you go, What happened? They had it! They had it in the palm of their hands! …What happened was, the designers came up with this really great idea. Then they take it to the engineers, and the engineers go, ‘Nah, we can’t do that. That’s impossible.’ And so it gets a lot worse. Then they take it to the manufacturing people, and they go, ‘We can’t build that!’ And it gets a lot worse.”

    Of and course, he counters that with a “No, no, we’re doing this…Because I’m the CEO, and I think it can be done.” It’s good to be the king.

    Link courtesy of G-Bomb.

  • A challenge to the design thinking/business design community

    A recent post from Jess inspired several interesting comments about who designers are really, and how to gauge the maturity of an organization’s design. Unless you really like thinking about this topic, it must seem like an awful lot of navel gazing, which is fine as that’s one thing that makes blogs useful to us: debating half-formed thoughts.

    But for me — someone who wants to make an impact on my clients welfare — Jess gets to the heart of the matter when he says, “I don’t know that the term “design thinking” will actually make an impact in the boardroom…” Although I explicitly talk about design thinking on this blog, I don’t think this term will impact the boardroom, at least not directly and not in the short term. It’s esoteric, too easily confused with style/form/function, and suffers from navel gazing. It’s what we do using design thinking that will impact the boardroom. The benefits as a concept are already understood, and to activate that concept in executives’ minds — and for the community to make substantial progress — we must frame the idea of design thinking differently.

    No one has framed it well yet, because we’re still discovering it. But perhaps we’re now ready to move forward.

    My challenge to the community is to reframe design thinking / business design in a way that will impact the boardroom.

    Here’s how I would start framing it…

    1. The pace and complexity of 21st century society present formidable challenges that require us to compliment our judgement thinking with an additional way of thinking which is collaborative, abductive, experimental, personal, integrative, and interpretive (replace with your own definition)
    2. This way of thinking leads us to do (fill in kinds of actions)
    3. These actions benefit companies by (fill in kinds of benefits in a way that impacts profit)
    4. The above can be summed up by saying, “(fill in summary in ten words or less)”

    That summary is the frame.

    (We could get very meta and apply design thinking to this problem, which I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader).

  • Bloomberg and the open office

    I’m a big proponent of tearing down the walls and cubicles in offices to encourage teamwork. Even Herman Miller, who introduced cubicles decades ago, is opening up the cubes and shaving down the partitions.

    So I love the story of how New York mayor Michael Bloomberg replicated the trading floor atmosphere at City Hall…

    Wandering through the cavernous Board of Estimate chamber on the building’s second floor, Mr. Bloomberg said he would make his office there, forsaking an ornate private enclave that was the inner sanctum for previous mayors and their closest aides. The mayor-elect said he would create a huge workspace that would be just like the open-air trading room in which he worked at Salomon Brothers and later recreated at his private company, Bloomberg L.P.

    He would put his desk in the middle of the room and seat his top deputies and staff members around him, he said. Dozens of other aides would sit at cubicles placed side by side, ensuring the access of lower-ranking managers to the mayor’s inner circle and bringing with it more accountability.

    Mr. Bloomberg said the office setup had been critical to his management style. “It promotes cooperation,” he said. “When people aren’t happy, you see it. When people aren’t getting along, you see it.”

  • Tim Brown on design thinking

    Organizations need to take design thinking seriously. We need to spend more time making people conscious of design thinking — not because design is wondrous or magical, but simply because by focusing on it, we’ll make it better. And that’s an imperative for any business, because design thinking is indisputably a catalyst for innovation productivity. That is, it can increase the rate at which you generate good ideas and bring them to market. Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems. When you bring design thinking into that strategic discussion, you join a powerful tool with the purpose of the entire endeavor, which is to grow.

    More: Strategy by Design

  • JetBlue and outsourcing

    woman on headset at computer at home Bruce Nussbaum (on his new blog, congratulations Bruce!) argues that JetBlue has pushed prices down through smart operations while avoiding outsourcing. While I agree, one could say CEO Neeleman has been outsourcing in an innovative way for years, by not housing a call center and instead “homesourcing” this function to individuals’ homes. The cost advantages come from relocating the employees geographically and lowering overhead, the same as if he sent the function to India (but without the political backlash).

    I don’t know how Neeleman arrived at this idea, but this is just the kind of solution I think can come from good decision design, of creatively generating further ideas in the face of convention to arrive at new and better options.

  • Reframing control in social media

    We’ve been working for several companies facing how they and their markets change with the further spread of social media. It’s creating enormous potential for more democratic media production and sophisticated tools, but a lot of it will rely on companies understanding it and being receptive to it. We’re developing a framework to help companies do this, and one of the key considerations is not scaring the shit out of them.

    I’m referring here to the control issue. Some have simply said “you must give up control.” J.D. Lasica puts it more gently: “We’re transitioning to a new kind of culture. More participatory, more open, more interactive where the locus of control passes.”

    I agree, and yet telling business people they’re losing control isn’t likely to go down well. People like control. Managers like control. Control helps us survive in an uncertain world.

    Jeff Jarvis frames it a different way: “The No. 1 lesson of the Internet whether you’re Howard Dean or a media company or a marketer, is that you have to give up control to gain control.” He cites a benefit, but still we’re left asking, “How much control does one give up? What do we really stand to gain?” Business managers aren’t an audience of socialists, they’re an audience that needs to make money to keep themselves and their colleagues employed in an uncertain economy. social media diagram I think frames that appeal to good old fashioned business drivers will be more effective, such as:

    • build communities of loyal customers
    • reduce content creation/acquisition costs
    • increase audience size through viral marketing
    • offensively compete with would-be disruptive media forces

    …and so on. We outlined these in the form of a poster, Social Media and Value Creation. It’s a work in progress; we haven’t seen established companies pursue this course yet and everyone will be learning.

  • Don’t Think of an Elephant!

    book cover I finally got a around to reading Don’t Think of an Elephant! in which George Lakoff applies his linguistic and cognitive ideas on framing to American progressive politics. It’s a compelling, important book, and the theory can be used anywhere, particularly the hierarchy of vision -> values -> principles -> policies -> ten-word philosophy. It’s also short, there’s no excuse not to read it.

    — — — — —

    My running notes…

    Reverse engineer the conservative phrases: Bush said, “We don’t need a permission slip to defend America.” This invokes the parent-child relationship; we understand large social groups in terms of small ones. He specifically used the strict father frame (see James Dobson‘s Dare to Discipline). Essentially it is a father who can

    • Protect the family in a dangerous world
    • Support the family in a difficult world
    • Teach his children right from wrong

    This leads directly to the morality of self-interest and Adam Smith’s free market capitalism.

    Progressives have a nurturant parent model that is gender neutral and assumes children and the world is a good place, and our job is to make it better. The values are

    • freedom
    • opportunity
    • prosperity
    • fairness
    • open, two-way communication
    • community-building

    The conservatives have factions, but they found their common interests and invested in institutes and think tanks, which paid off in media exposure.

    The progressive Enlightenment emphasizes truth, but the truth must be presented in way that fits people’s frames. Concepts are instantiated as synapses in our brains, and facts that don’t fit aren’t strong enough to create new structures.

    Self-interest forms the basis of conservative values, but doesn’t act on the surface. People will vote against the candidate who gives them tax cuts if they identify with the values of the other candidate, even if that’s a worse choice for them personally.

    Tailoring issues to polls can be useful, but the conservatives real method is to say what they idealistically believe, they talk to their base using the frames of the base. The undecided in the middle have multiple frames present, and you can activate one with your language. Clinton’s “welfare reform” and “the age of big government is over” did this by stealing the enemy’s language.

    Taken further it becomes Orwellian — opposite — like Clear Skies and Healthy Forests. It signals where they are pushing unpopular initiatives and are vulnerable. See Frank Luntz. Deceptive frame is morally reprehensible and eventually backfires.

    But the words must follow from ideas. The idea, the frame, is already is people’s minds. If it isn’t, you suffer from hypocognition, the lack of a needed concept.

    (It occurred to me while visiting Germany that Germans don’t mind paying their high taxes because it’s a great value; they get awesome service for their tax dollar. I think Americans are used to a certain level of service and figure taxes will go up without a corresponding increase in service. Could service level in the business sense be used in government?)

    Progressives are often on the defensive because the conservatives are better funded. Progressives fund grassroots, conservatives fund infrastructure. The right cuts taxes, the left helps the poor, and the right privatizes the left.

    Solution: talk about values. See the Rockridge Institute.

    Strategic conservative initiatives attack at the root: tax cuts disable many social programs, tort reform disables many environmental lawsuits (and subsequently cuts donor money from Democrats).

    Strategic initiatives can start as slippery slope issues: Intelligent design, partial-birth abortion…

    Hierarchy of action: identify your moral values, generate political ideas, invest in infrastructure, frame those ideas in language.

    The media requires stories, and stories require frames.

    Voters vote based on their identity: who they are, what values they have, and who and what they admire, more so than based on self-interest.

    Some Conservatives are better named radical right-wingers.

    Schwarzenegger = stereotypical strict father. He used a Voter Revolt frame, which turned around is a Right Wing Power Grab frame, claiming to represent the people while leveraging the resources of the Republican infrastructure.

    When you understand the strict father model, you understand how gay marriage is such a threat to everything conservative. Arguing for gay marriage must go beyond the pragmatic benefits of marriage, the frame “freedom to marry” evokes the American ideals open to all. It’s about equal rights and having a state that provides them. Appeal to sanctity rather than basic economic fairness.

    To extend the strict father metaphor to war, anything you do against the evil side is good, whereas progressives would view certain actions as evil even if they’re used to battle evil people.

    Addressing the culture of despair suffered by Islamic communities in the middle east might make them more willing to take more moderate positions towards American culture and other elements they object to.

    Nixon’s “I am not a crook” illustrates that the use of negatives frames the situation the wrong way, we must use positive language.

    Applied to foreign policy:

    • Values: fairness, minimal violence, an ethic of care, protection for those needing it, a recognition of interdependence, cooperation for the common good, the building of community, mutual respect…
    • Concerns: environment, women’s rights…
    • Actions: Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Kyoto accords…

    …if foreign policy doesn’t follow from moral norms, contradictions arise, such as being anti-terrorism while ignoring terrorism of Russians and Pakistanis or sponsoring terrorists ourselves.

    A perpetual state of war contributes to the conservative agenda by sapping money from social programs (and not raising taxes).

    Lies, in the case of President Bush’s reasons for going to war, can be explained in terms of exaggerations, misleading statements, mistakes, rhetorical excesses… A lie may only be a lie if that person didn’t believe what was said. And ultimately lies are minor compared to the betrayal of trust.

    Wedge issues: guns, babies, taxes, same-sex marriage, the flag, school prayer.

    “Ten word philosophy” with my modifications:
    Strong economy
    Prosperity for all
    Better education
    Effective Government
    Mutual responsibility

    Always start with values, values everyone shares.

    Use rhetorical questions: “Wouldn’t it be better if…”

    Show moral outrage with controlled passion.

    Always be on the offense. Don’t negate the other person’s claims; reframe. Never answer a question framed from your opponents point of view.

    Tell a story where your frame is built into the story.

    Use wedge issues: “Do you support a Military Rape Treatment Act to allow our raped women soldiers to be treated in military hospitals to end their rape-induced pregnancies?”

  • Handles On Everything

    table lamp with big handle Remember when everyone copied the translucent color of the old iMacs and missed what made them special underneath? Here’s a surface feature that’s incredibly useful, seemingly obvious, and worthy of copious copying: a big handle to reposition your lamp, courtesy of Tobias Grau. The rubber feels great in your hand. The ball joint allows positioning in any direction. You grab it and put it where it belongs and focus concentration on your work, the way it should be.

    On the same trip to Europe we rented an Opel Meriva that used a similar big handle to reposition the side view mirrors (and similar-feeling big, grippy volume knob on the stereo) instead of timid little electronic buttons. Such a simple thing, and yet the physicality evokes an emotional response that makes me smile and pull out my wallet.

  • Marketing & mental models

    I sincerely think human-centered designers’ (I use the term designer in the widest sense) ability to regard problems in a personal way results in drastically different solutions. Lately I’ve been looking at how marketing programs are designed to fit customers’ mental models, or not.

    For example, here’s JetBlue’s frequent flier program: short flights earn 2 points, medium flights earn 4 points, and long flights earn 6 points. Book online and you get double points. 100 points earns you a free flight.

    Compare this to the American Express rewards program, where I just scrolled through pages of Terms and Conditions text. The eligibility section has five paragraphs, here’s the first paragraph (that last sentence kills me):

    The program is available to Basic Personal Card, Gold Card, American Express® Preferred Rewards Green Card, American Express® Preferred Rewards Gold Card, Platinum Card,® Rewards Plus Gold Card, FSA Gold Card, Fidelity American Express® Card, Fidelity American Express® Gold Card, Fidelity American Express Platinum Card® and some Blue from American Express Cards, Basic Optima,® Optima Platinum, Optima Gold Card or Business Management Account members whose American Express® Credit Card or Optima Card account is associated with an eligible AMEX charge Card account enrolled in the program (“Eligible Amex Credit Card”). Basic and Additional CMs holding a Business Card from OPEN: The Small Business Network (“Business CMs”) who have one of the following Cards may also enroll in the program: Business Gold Card, Business Platinum Card,® Business Centurion® Card, Executive Business Card, Business Purchase Account, Business Costco Card or Business Membership Rewards Card. American Express® Rewards Green CMs and American Express® Rewards Gold CMs may also enroll and remain enrolled in the program as long as they have another eligible AMEX charge Card account enrolled in the program. Basic and Additional Corporate CMs may enroll in the program unless their company has chosen not to participate in the program. Accounts or Cards not listed in this paragraph (e.g., Student Optima Card, American Express® Credit Card for Students, American Express Costco Cash Rebate Card, Hilton HHonors Credit Card, Delta SkyMiles® Credit Card, Starwood Preferred Guest ® Credit Card, IN:NYCsm, Incentive Funds Cardtm, Golf Card, American Express® Cash Rebate Card, Blue Cash from American Express, Corporate Purchasing Card, Corporate Meeting Card, Corporate Defined Expense Card, Business Travel Accounts, line of credit accounts, Delta SkyMiles Business Credit Card, Gold Delta SkyMiles Business Credit Card, Platinum Delta SkyMiles Business Credit Card, Community Business Card, Business Cash Rebate Card, Cardless Central Billing Accounts and other non-Card accounts) are not eligible for enrollment in the program. Card eligibility is subject to change.

  • New business design blog: bplusd.org

    My friend Jess and I have shared hotel rooms at two recent conferences, where he gently challenged and explored my thoughts on design and business. He’s smart, humble, and dedicated, so I’ve taken his skepticism seriously and use this space to address the criticism he offered. I’m happy to see he’s now doing the same on the bplusd blog, where I’m looking forward to hearing more from him.

  • GM’s enterprise product development

    Bob Lutz explains plans to centralize their design and engineering budget and what that means for building automobiles worldwide…

    We expect a reduction in our architecture count over time of 50% as we introduce more converged architectures replacing the regional architectures we have today… For example, as we develop our new global mid-size architecture, which will replace such vehicles as the Opel Vectra, Chevy Malibu, Pontiac G6 and Saab 9-3, we’ll realize significant savings as a result of this new system. We’ll move from three closely related regional architectures to one global architecture serving nine different models in all four of our regions. We expect a 40% reduction in our prototype builds, a 20% reduction in material costs as a result of the common components, and 25% reductions in both engineering costs and overall investment. That one program alone could save us more than $1 billion over the course of its lifecycle.

    Having just drove an Opel Meriva in Italy, a mini minivan not available here in the U.S., I can see the wisdom in leveraging great architectures worldwide. But we’ll have to see if a Saab is still a Saab when it has a Chevy chassis.

  • It’s alright to cry at work

    Stephanie Rosenbloom’s Big Girls Don’t Cry in the NY Times offers many opinions on women crying in the office, all of them against it. When I was a young manager, a woman in my group came to my desk to ask about a resourcing decision I had made. Unhappy with it, she broke into tears. In the middle of an open landscape office. With everyone looking on. It was uncomfortable, but this is a biological reality…

    Scientists do not know exactly why women tend to cry more easily, but Dr. Frey said several factors may be at work. One is the hormone prolactin, he said, which is present in mammary glands and induces lactation but is also found in the blood and in tear glands. Boys and girls have about equal levels of prolactin levels in their blood during childhood. But from ages of 12 to 18, the levels in girls gradually rise, and that may have something to do with why women cry more than men.

    In my case, we stepped into a conference room, closed the door, and I explained my decision. She agreed, ended the conversation by giving me a hug, and we went back to work. Ever since I’ve thought crying in the office is not only a normal part of work, but to discourage it is to discriminate against women. The 21st Century organization needs to be different from the factory or office of the 20th Century. Especially in companies that strive to push the boundaries of design and innovation we tap into the personal and emotional conduits of our customers and ourselves to create new products and services. That can’t happen when we deny our own emotions.

  • Peter Rowe on design thinking

    design thinking book cover …design has often occupied an ambivalent position, being characterized as either a form of fine art or a form of technical science. From all perspectives, however, design appears to be a fundamental means of inquiry by which man realizes and gives shape to ideas of dwelling and settlement. Furthermore, design is a practical form of inquiry insofar as it is concerned with making and a certain commonplace usefulness, quite apart from its more esoteric benefits.

    Design Thinking

  • Chuck Owen on design thinking

    Design thinking, as a complement to science thinking, embodies a wide range of creative characteristics as well as a number of other special qualities of distinct value to decision makers. In advisory roles, properly prepared design professionals could make substantial contributions to a process now dominated by political and economic views….

    I would nominate for design thinking the following characteristics and ways of working:

    • Conditioned inventiveness.
    • Human-centered focus.
    • Environment-centered concern.
    • Ability to visualize.
    • Tempered optimism.
    • Bias for adaptivity.
    • Predisposition toward multifunctionality.
    • Systemic Vision.
    • View of the Generalist.
    • Ability to use language as a tool.
    • Affinity for teamwork.
    • Facility for avoiding the necessity of choice.
    • Self-governing practicality.
    • Ability to work systematically with qualitative information.

    Design Thinking: What It Is, Why It Is Different, Where It Has New Value (.pdf)