Saturday. Late afternoon. 56°F on the patio. A little cold to be out here, but there’s a peaceful quality to this time of day. Got the fountain working. Good sound again with the new pump. Wish you could see the sunset…but can’t find the cable to pull over the picture from the camera. Dohhhh!
Got some new (old) tunes playing today. Got a Borders gift card from my son Chris. Good times. Wish you were here.
If there is a fundamental question it is this one: If my organization went away tomorrow would anyone notice? Ever asked that one? Ever asked it about yourself?
It’s kind of a George Bailey question. Have I made any difference? Does my life matter? I think most of us ask it about ourselves and even about our organizations. I wonder how many organizations ask it. That probably is the key. After all, even if most of us are asking it personally if the organization itself isn’t even aware of the question…well, then it’s just business as usual. Until it isn’t.
Bill Taylor has a good take on this over at the Mavericks at Work blog. He writes that,
"what both senior executives and rank-and-file employees wonder and
worry about are basic matters of meaning and purpose. Am I proud to be
part of this company? Does what I do matter—both to my colleagues and
to the outside world? If my company went away tomorrow, or if I didn’t
show up for work, how many people—if anybody—would notice?"
That’s it, isn’t it? At least that’s part of it. I really believe that until the organization itself is lead to ask this question you’re unlikely to see any significant willingness to change.
Christmas Eve. All is calm, all is bright. 2007′s version is a good one. Hope your’s is as well.
Tripped across this over at Valeria’s. Very interesting to see it unfold.
Sunday afternoon. 4:15 p.m. 65°F Got an Anna’s hummingbird that’s hangin’ with me. She digs the Jimmy Buffett’s A1A on the iTunes. Actually…she probably likes the blooms that are still happening on the patio. Good times in So Cal. Wish you were here.
“Great ideas often look identical to stupid ones right up until the moment they work.” Scott Adams, Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!
Great insight over at Brand Autopsy today. Taking a look at Scott Adams work (Dilbert), John Moore points to what could lead to an interesting discussion for all of us. Here’s the question at the heart of Moore’s post: Are we trying to make the "indifferent" passionate about our product? Or trying to fuel the passions of those most passionate?
When you look at your organization…which do you think you’re doing? Love Moore’s takeaway.
If your product only attracts indifferent customers and fails to attract passionate customers … chances are, that product will not succeed.
He does give a caveat, admitting that "this isn’t an absolute predictor as the abandoned product graveyard is
littered with products that failed despite attracting a small, passionate customer base." At the same time, think about how many of us are really leaning the other way.
One of the most influential books I read this year (2007) was Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow. Really a great book with lots to think about in the area of exceeding your customer’s expectations. One of the great aspects of the book was the reading list at the end of every chapter and one of the books cited was How Customers Think by Gerald Zaltman.
I’m about 120 pages into it and suffice it to say this is an interesting book. Not light reading. Not holiday reading. But definitely the kind of information that could transform the way you look at your customer. Want a taste? Think about this:
"Ninety-five percent of thinking takes place in our unconscious minds—that wonderful, if messy, stew of memories, emotions, thoughts, and other cognitive processes we’re not aware of or that we can’t articulate."
What’s it mean? Ponder the idea that 95% of all the thinking your customer is doing is happening at a level that even they don’t understand. The other 5% is the part attempting to make sense of the decisions they’ve really already made.
Hmmmmm. What’s that say about how we’re designing what we’re doing?
What I’m loving about the book? There’s more than just where things are unfathomable. Lot’s here too about how to dig deep enough to understand how to design it to appeal to the "cognitive unconscious."
Ever checked out The Lexus Covenant? What a commitment! No compromise. Lexis "will win the race because Lexus will do it right from the start." It goes on to say that Lexus "will treat each customer
as we would a guest in our home." That’s serious.
Bill Taylor has another great post over at Mavericks at Work after listening to a talk by Nancy Fein, vice president for customer services with Lexus. A couple really inspirational stories about living out the commitment of the covenant.
Love the last line of the covenant:
"If you think you can’t, you won’t…If you think you can, you will! We can, we will."
Serious stuff.
I guess the question of the day is, "What is your commitment (covenant) and have you lived up to it?"
If you’re around me any time at all you’ll probably hear me say that there’s an upside and a downside to everything. It’s somewhat related to the idea that there is no problem-free solution to anything. That being said, we’ve talked a lot about the importance of innovation and change, but we haven’t talked much about the costs of innovation.
One of my favorite writers is Bob Sutton. As a co-author of The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action and Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense he’s produced some really good work examining some commonly held assumptions…that turn out to be false or at least only half true.
In today’s blog post, Sutton refers to a quote from James March, the highly regarded Stanford professor emeritus. This is a great quote! Ought to be posterized and put up on some walls that I know. Read it carefully and thoughtfully. There’s a lot here that many of us need to hear.
"Unfortunately,
the gains for imagination are not free. The protections for imagination
are indiscriminate. They shield bad ideas as well as good
ones—and there are many more of the former than the latter. Most
fantasies lead us astray, and most of
the consequences of imagination for individuals and individual
organizations
are disastrous. Most deviants end up on
the scrap pile of failed mutations, not as heroes of organizational
transformation. . . . There is, as a result, much that can be viewed as
unjust
in a system that induces imagination among individuals and individual
organizations in order to allow a larger system to choose among
alternative experiments. By glorifying imagination, we entice the
innocent into unwitting self-destruction (or if you prefer, altruism)."
Looking for a good book to start the new year with? Strategy and the Fat Smoker by David Maister will be out in January and it looks great. I’m only about 35 pages in and already several really good sections. The title sounds really strange…until you realize that it plays off the metaphor that in the same way fat smokers know what to do in order to change…so do organizations.
On that note, check out this paragraph:
"The primary reason we do not work at behaviors which we know we need to improve is that the rewards (and pleasure) are in the future; the disruption, discomfort, and discipline needed to get there is immediate."
How true that is! Looking forward to working my way through this one!
