STRATEGY CENTRAL

Think about the programs and products you are currently offering.  Think about the experiences you are currently offering to your customers. 

I know you might struggle to think about what you offer as program or product.  You may even have a little righteous indignation thinking about the word customer.  But if you want your organization to matter to the next generation of customers you need to spend some time thinking this way.

Reading Design Thinking: Integrating Innovation, Customer Experience, and Brand Value I tripped across this line:

“The services that product brands provide to their current customers were designed and developed to satisfy the lifestyle and values of their past customers (p. 122, Design Thinking).”

Go back and think again about all that your organization is offering.  Got it clearly in your mind’s eye?  Now ask yourself…how much of what you’re offering is designed to appeal to the people who aren’t your customers yet?

Craig Groeschel’s insightful comment that “If you want to reach people that no one else is reaching, you’re going to have to do things that no one else is doing” is born out of this understanding.

Perpetuating the programs and products…the experiences…that were designed to appeal to today’s customers, will eventually result in a disconnect.  To the extent that you’re offering programs, products and experiences that were designed to appeal to yesterday’s customers…the disconnect has already happened.

You can pick up your copy of Design Thinking right here.

How tuned in is your organization? I asked a friend who had just moved to a new organization, “How’s the new reality?”  He said, “To borrow a phrase from Leonard Sweet, I live in the Google Era, but my work environment is Gutenberg Era.”

Makes you think, doesn’t it?  How many of our organizations are operating as if the Gutenberg press was still an exciting new idea?  Okay…maybe none.  But how many are operating as if yesterday is still the present?

It’s not easy to stay up with the times. It is a challenge. But if you’re looking for help, I want to recommend Chief Culture Officer by Grant McCracken.

I don’t know about you, but I love a really cool logo.  Tripped across this collection over at creativefan.com today and thought you might want to check it out.  My personal favorite?  Check it out…and be inspired.

One of the blogs I read almost everyday is Gaping Void by Hugh MacLeod.  Word of warning…sometimes often profane.  At the same time, Hugh’s insight is very keen.  Not every post or cartoon is dead on, but a lot of them are.  There are definitely times when you just have to nod your head.  There are other times when you have to think, “You are one crazy dude!”

His first book came out recently.  Ignore Everybody, a collection of 40 keys to creativity, is an engaging read and a good overview of the kind of thinking that will either get you in trouble…or onto an insanely great idea.

Need an example of Hugh’s brand of thinking?  Here’s one of my favorites:

If you are into marketing, innovation, creativity, etc., this is a book you might want to check out.  At the same time, you need to be aware that “Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships.  That’s why good ideas are always initially resisted (p. 2, Ignore Everybody).

“To reach people no one else is reaching we must do things no one else is doing.”

That line seems like a no-brainer.  Obvious.  And yet, when I heard Craig Groeschel say that at Willow’s Leadership Summit last year I scrambled to write it down and then had trouble thinking about anything else for the rest of the day.

“To reach people no one else is reaching we must do things no one else is doing.”  Got it.  Definitely.  Makes a lot of sense.  If what you’re doing right now is not reaching the people you’re trying to reach…then you’d probably want to try something different.

I want to figure out how to do that, which is why this diagram from Change by Design by Tim Brown leaped off the page when I saw it.

Here’s the gist.  When you’re preoccupied with the needs of your existing customers…you’ll focus your attention on providing incremental improvements.

If you want to do anything beyond the status quo, you’ll need to begin making evolutionary changes (extending beyond existing offerings or adapting to reach new users).

Really, Groeschel was referring to revolutionary innovation.  Maybe we find it difficult to reach people no one is reaching because we’re unwilling to go to the lengths of creating new venues and new methods that are beyond incremental.

Reacting to Craig Groeschel’s line, Andy Stanley said, “You can change the music, the style, dress different and take out the pews, they still aren’t going to be reached.”  If you want to reach people no one else is reaching, you’re going to have to do things no one else is doing.  You’re going to have to create.  Incremental change will never get it done.

How does arriving where you’ve already been sound?  Depends I guess.  If you like where you’ve been, you might want to go there again.  After all, there are places we’ve been that we love going back to.  At the same time, as a metaphor for vision…most of us are dreaming of arriving somewhere we’ve never been.  And arriving where we’ve already been is the last thing we’d set out to do.

And yet…when it comes to strategic planning, we’re often hung up by the fears of the agents of status quo who prefer consistent, predictable outcomes.  “Will it pay for itself?”  “Will we get buy in from the core?”  “Are you sure this will work?”  Sound familiar?  These are the sound bites of those seeking reliability and “the goal of reliability is consistent, predictable outcomes (p. 37, The Design of Business).”

On the other hand, if you’re dream of arriving somewhere you’ve never been, a desired objective,…then you’ll be looking for a different route than you’ve taken so far.  You’ll be looking for a path that goes to a different place than you’ve been before.  That route or path is found in the search for validity, not reliability.  And the discovery of what is actually valid is the only way to get from where you are to where you want to go.

Keeping an eye on the effectiveness of strategy is essential.  Clarifying what a win is and launching strategic steps designed to produce that win are essential to organizational success.  Evaluating effectiveness is just as important.

Have you ever slowed down long enough to evaluate whether your strategy is actually working?  Most organizations never really get around to it.  Why?  I’m finding Roger Martin’s The Design of Business very helpful in teasing out one of the most basic reasons.

It has to do with the fact that most organizations that have had any amount of success become really good at repeating the steps that led to their previous success.  In a sense, they’ve refined and perfected a set of procedures that successfully produce a certain product.  Martin refers to this as developing an algorithm (an explicit, step-by-step procedure for solving a problem).

The advantage that an algorithm offers is significant.  In the same way McDonald’s produces a quality product with very little variation, developing effective strategies that can be used again and again make it possible to repeat previous success.  The dependability of the algorithm reduces the risk that operator quirks will derail the effectiveness of the organization.  The organization can produce what the customers wants every time.

As long as what the customer wants doesn’t change.

What happens when what the customer wants changes?  You’d better go back to the drawing board and develop a new strategy.  What do most organizations do?  Keep running the same algorithm and hope the outcome was a fluke or that customers will come to their senses and return to seeing the world as it used to be.

“What organizations dedicated to running reliable algorithms often fail to realize is that while they reduce the risk of small variations in their businesses, they increase the risk of cataclysmic events that occur when the future no longer resembles the past and the algorithm is no longer relevant or useful (p. 43, The Design of Business).”

Scary?  Should be.  See yourself?  Hope not.  What do you need to do if you realize that your organization’s future no longer resembles the past?  Don’t hope for a mindset change on the part of the customer.  Go back to the drawing board.  Begin developing a better understanding of your customer.  Tip?  The people you’re currently reaching are not the customer you ought to be trying to reach.

One of the key concepts in Roger Martin’s The Design of Business is the notion that the pursuit of reliable or predictable results keeps many organizations from the kind of exploration that pursues the next opportunity (or the more current opportunity).  This is big for all of us, but to really catch the significance you need to think about how an understanding of what works develops.  I detail it in this discussion of the difference between heuristic and algorithm.  Trust me…I know this sounds way technical…but it is worth the journey.  Take 5 minutes and check it out right here.

Once you’ve caught on, the next step is recognizing that when the stakes are high, it is much more palatable for most organizations to settle for tried-and-true and predictable…even when the world has changed.  That’s why so many of us are still doing what worked in the 80s and 90s (or 60s and 70s)…even though we shake our heads when it doesn’t quite work the same way now (or anywhere close).  We want to explain is away, but we have a harder and harder time.

Need an example?  Think about McDonald’s being late to the healthier-menu-item game.  Their sense of reliable kept them focused on the path that had been so successful in the past.  Their next steps were based on what had always worked.  And when Subway burst on the scene with a healthier fast food concept, McDonald’s was caught unprepared.  It was some time before they conceded that the world had indeed changed.  Only when they recognized that the tried and true no longer worked did they begin to “emerge from the trough.”

An example from my world?  There was a time when participating in the activities of a church was an all day affair.  Church-goers rode into town on a wagon, attended a worship service as a family, went to a Sunday School class, stayed for dinner-on-the-grounds, worshiped together again at an evening service, hitched up the horses and went home.  Although that time is clearly in the past, many churches still operate with that worldview still intact.  Shaking their heads, they wonder why churches are growing that offer a more streamlined approach.

Settling for reliability is guaranteed to miss the main chance when the world changes.  On the other hand, the pursuit of validity is a high-stakes gamble that doesn’t always produce a big win (or even a win).  It’s risky.  It’s a venture into the unknown.  It seems crazy.  And yet, you cannot move to a new trajectory without the willingness to search for validity; an understanding of what is actually happening.

Whether you are a speaker or a writer you will benefit from The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience by Carmine Gallo.  I’m constantly looking for ways to add a little extra snap to what I’m doing.  42 pages into this one has already convinced me that these secrets will make an immediate difference.

A quick google of “Steve Jobs presentations” finds almost 2 million results.  Why?  Because his presentation style is widely regarded as crazily engaging.  Gallo’s work reveals the working parts of Jobs’ presentation work.  In The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs you’ll learn how to:

• create an inspiring brand story
• answer the one question that matters most
• paint a specific, memorable and consistent vision
• deliver unforgettable moments

I tripped across the book when I saw this short video interview with Carmine Gallo, “a presentation, media-training, and communication-skills coach for many of the world’s most admired brands.”  If you long to communicate more effectively, this video will really whet your appetite .

Looking for ways to take your presentation skills to a next level?  I highly recommend The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs.  One word of caution?  Martin Lindstrom was right.  “If you pick up this book, your presentations will never be the same again.”

One of the highlights of Drive ’08 was Andy Stanley’s talk, Random Thoughts On Leadership.  I’ve referenced it before and it is a great talk.  Really one of those talks that the audio hangs in the consciousness for years.  The basic gist was that Andy took 5 memorable quotes that had affected his thinking and riffed on how they were impacting his leadership and North Point’s front-of-mind decisions.  I highly recommend that you purchase it and listen to it over and over.  Great insights to be had.

In the 18 months since it was delivered Andy and the North Point crew have taken the talk and dealt it out in its 5 key ideas, the random thoughts, in 5 podcasts that were part of their Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast series.  You can find out how to download the most current additions right here.  Unfortunately, the podcasts aren’t archived permanently.  Being an enthusiast…I’ve archived them right here.  Here are the quotes and the audio:

What no one else is doing.  “To reach people no one else is reaching we must do things no one else is doing.” Craig Groeschel, Senior Pastor, LifeChurch.tv

Become a Student:  “The next generation product almost never comes from the previous generation.”  Al Ries, Focus: The Future of Your Company Depends on It

Breaking Paradigms “What do I believe is impossible to do in my field but if it could be done would fundamentally change my business?”  Joel Barker,  Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future

Assumptions “If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what would he do?  Why shouldn’t we walk out, come back in and do it ourselves?”  Andy Grove, Former CEO, INTEL

When memories exceed your dreams:  “When your memories exceed your dreams the end is near.”  Chuck Bentley, President of Crown Ministries