Category: Innovation

Friday, 4.22pm

Sheffield, U.K.

You gotta keep trying to find your niche and trying to fit into whatever slot that’s left for you or to make one of your own. – Dolly Parton

Life happens one decision at a time – and at any given day you wake up and you are where you are.

Because of those decisions you made.

One of the things I believe is that if something is well designed you don’t need to force it to do the right thing.

For example if you have a good product that the market needs then you will be able to find customers, especially in this day and age.

Of course such a statement is unprovable – and not particularly helpful.

There are many cases where very good products were ignored for a long time before they were finally adopted.

Like the clockwork radio invented by Trevor Baylis, for example.

The challenge we all face is whether we do things the way we are told or the way we want to.

For example, any job you start, any organisation you join, any club you belong to, will have goals and rules and targets.

If the contribution you make is measured in terms of these targets and they can becoming all consuming in some cases.

These goals are there for what seems like a good reason – to provide direction and motivation – but they can also change the purpose of the organisation they are meant to be helping.

But, you say, surely they are the same thing – the goals you write down must match your purpose?

Not always.

Let’s take a hospital, for example.

The purpose of a hospital is to treat sick people and make them better.

The primary purpose anyway.

Let’s say you set a target that every patient must be seen within four hours – then what happens?

People start to focus on the waiting time statistics – and they do everything to make sure it’s inside the target.

That includes sending people to different hospitals or creating an application process to be allowed to wait in the first place.

Very quickly the primary purpose of the hospital becomes the management of waiting times.

And that’s not the same thing as treating patients.

This is an admittedly simple example but it’s a fact that the purpose of organisations are often subverted without them realising.

Deming used to write of many organisations being stable systems for the production of defects, for example.

Now, the point I’m trying to make is that when you try and fit into a plan or process something is always compromised along the way.

In many cases, especially in the early days of your career it can seem like you have no choice – you do things the way the boss wants or you find another job.

You spend your time forcing yourself through square holes.

And this takes effort – complying with the rules and reports and structures and processes can be exhausting and unrewarding.

But the alternative is finding a you shaped hole to go through – and that also takes effort.

You need to find out what you’re shaped like – what’s unique about you and why you’re different and where you fit.

That takes time and experimentation and error.

But eventually, if you’re lucky, you’ll figure out what shape you are.

And then it will be easy to squeeze through a hole shaped like you.

Effortlessly.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Wednesday, 9.30pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. – Nelson Mandela

I was speaking with a friend the other day and we were talking about children and how to relate to them.

A couple of decades ago your parents, our parents, didn’t really have much training before they had children.

They worked things out through a mix of folklore and advice from those around us – advice that came from memory rather than from knowledge.

Now, you and I have no such excuses.

We live in the world of the Internet, where there is information everywhere and advice on anything, if you choose to look.

And one of the perennial problems we have is getting things to change – things that we believe are not working as they should.

Some of the earliest work in this field is by Chin and Benne who came up with three basic ways to change things in systems that involve humans – social systems.

The first way is what is called rational empirical.

This supposes that if you and I sit down and you explain all the reasons why I should change what I’m doing then I will listen to you and change my ways.

I take it you’ve had a go at that with kids at some point.

The second way is called power coercive and it has to do with using power to get your own way – forcing it through because you have authority or the ability to get what you want done.

That’s probably been something you’ve tried as well.

And these two approaches are just as widely used when it comes to organisations, societies and governments.

The rational approach assumes that if you put the science behind something in front of people they’ll make the right choices.

If you know that smoking harms your body and if the information is on the packaging then the rational thing to do is stop smoking.

Information and the dissemination of information is the way that the rational way makes things change for the better.

The equivalent of the power coercive approach is laws and regulation and policy – the things that try and set out what you should do and what will happen if you don’t comply.

So, you have rules on where you can smoke, for example.

You have laws that legislate for clean air or waste management – where you want people to literally clean up their act.

But then under the same umbrella you have opposition and protest, trying to get politicians to put forward your ideas through lobbying or using direct action to make your case.

Then you have a third way – the normative re-educative way.

This approach relies on you taking a walk, a journey with other people and examining what they think.

You try and look at things from their point of view and reflect back what you hear.

What you’re looking for is an experience where the right way emerges from the social interaction with others – where you start to listen, understand, compromise and change.

Now, all these ways can lead to change happening, although it isn’t always clear whether the change is because of the way that was used.

You have examples of this in books like Freakonomics – where a mayor might assume that the drop in crime during their tenure was because of their strict policies and investment in the numbers of police officers on the street.

It turned out, however, that the drop might have actually been because abortion was legalised and many people that might have been born into poverty and eventually become criminals were never born in the first place.

You might have heard the phrase “poor boys go to prison, poor girls get pregnant.”

So, it’s not always clear where change comes from.

This model is also old and should be used just as a starting point.

None of these ways will probably work in a real life situation if used in isolation.

In real life you probably need good reasons to do something, you need to be in a position where you can make some progress and you need to be willing to put the time into taking people along with you, and even examining some of your own thoughts along the way.

The point really is that change takes time – and learning, from others and by you.

So, if you are going to spend your life working on changing something – make it something you really care about.

Because it’s not going to be easy or quick.

And it may not happen in your lifetime.

And make sure that when it’s all pored over many years from now you’re on the right side of history.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Monday, 5.58pm

Sheffield, U.K.

A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world – John Le Carre (Spywriter)

Perhaps you’re a sociable sort of person – someone who goes out and meets customers regularly for a drink and a catch up.

Perhaps you like golf days and sports events and having a good time.

Personally, I’m not good at that sort of thing – which is why reading Simply better: Winning and keeping customers by delivering what matters most by Patrick Barwise and Sean Meehan is a reassuring read – and a novel one.

The unexpected message at the heart of this book is that people don’t do business with you because of the unique and special things you do but because you do the basics better and cheaper than the competition.

That is, actually, a little surprising.

And that’s because we’re all so used to hearing about the Unique Service Proposition or USP.

If you do a business plan there will be a section asking for your USP

A USP is important – but not in the way you think.

We assume that the USP is the reason the customer buys from you – they’re so overcome by the awesomeness of that one thing they can only get from you that they rush to get their money out and sign up with you.

Barwise and Meehan argue that we have this wrong in their short book.

For example, it’s important to interact with your customers.

They find that customers of successful companies and not so successful companies spend around the same amount of time interacting with customers.

The unsuccessful ones, however, spend time socialising while the successful ones get down to business and talk about how the customer is getting on with the service and product.

During execution the successful companies focus on getting the basics right – proving the category benefits that are taken as for granted by the managers in the firm.

The unsuccessful ones focus on the exiting and edgy stuff they have – while the successful companies walk away with the business by doing the core things well.

Successful companies understand what customers need and build that.

The unsuccessful ones build cool stuff and wonder why no one buys it.

Now, you may thing tagging such approaches as successes and failures is a little harsh – you could think of examples that break the rule – and you would be right.

But it’s not hard to realise that people keep buying from you because you deliver the basics they need at a price they’re willing to pay.

Being different matters before they do business with you – being distinctive and having a USP matters when you’re advertising.

It’s not the thing you build operations and execution around.

It’s a simple message really.

Be bold and creative and distinctive in the way you promote yourself.

But when it comes to execution, get the basics right before worrying about frills or extras.

Simply be better.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Saturday, 7.25pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Doing your best is not good enough.You have to know what to do. Then do your best. – W. E. Deming

We live in a world of soundbites and quick responses.

In case you haven’t noticed there is currently an election campaign going on.

One of the parties has come out with a pledge to offer free broadband for all.

When I first heard this I wasn’t sure what opinion I ought to hold.

My first reaction was that it sounded strange, weird – what sort of thing is that to worry about?

The response of almost everyone else seemed the same.

The leader of the other party called it “a crazed communist scheme”.

At which point I started doubting myself – because that particular chap is not known for his grasp of the truth – and I have personally heard him say something on the lines of we’re going to give everyone gigabit broadband which “I understand is a good thing.”

I am not convinced that he would know the difference between a broadband connection and a can of baked beans.

And, after seeing a couple more tweets I’m starting to think the whole proposition is actually quite a sane one – everyone should have access to broadband – not just people like us who can pay for it.

Now, the purpose of this post isn’t really about the politics of this one issue but it is about what it means to improve something – your business, public policy or your personal life.

And the one thing that’s worth understanding is that it’s not a quick fix – none of these can be simply improved by having the right goals, working harder, buying more stuff or throwing money at the issue.

So, where should you start?

W. Edwards Deming, writing in Out of the crisis, describes how the chain reaction above “became engraved in Japan as a way of life” and how every meeting with top management had this in front of them.

If you have one aim for yourself, or for your business, aim to improve quality.

And that’s quality without caveats – quality at any cost.

Only quality matters, nothing else is worth tracking or studying or having an opinion about.

Okay, maybe that’s too extreme.

The chain reaction describes what happens when you don’t give the customer defective products – you get to keep making a living.

And, weirdly, when you improve quality – when you make fewer mistakes, get things right more often – the customer stops paying for all those mistakes and gets more value.

Maybe you can lower prices and be more competitive – make them even happier.

It’s a strange way of thinking to many – what we think we should do is raise prices for the same stuff all the time.

But what if you could provide better stuff AND reduce prices?

Would you, as a consumer, like that?

Or does that sound like another crazy communist idea?

This post doesn’t really have the full solution to transforming your business.

This blog has parts of it, however, in different places.

But really it’s not that hard – because while the detail depends on what you do and the situation you’re in – you know that transformation is going to take time.

And you now also know where to start.

Start by improving quality.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Thursday, 8.50pm

Sheffield, U.K.

If you are in need of truly world-class copywriting… You Are Probably Going To Have To Learn To Do It Yourself! – Gary Halbert

I’ve had a few conversations recently that reminded me of the work of Gary Halbert.

You’ll find his stuff all over the Internet and it’s well known amongst a tribe of direct response marketers.

I’ve found the work of Halbert and his friend John Carlton always readable, direct, in your face and really what’s needed when you need to come back to earth every once in a while.

As you probably know, if you read this blog, I like theory – ideas and approaches and models and possibilities.

I like theory because a good theory has the ability to explain what has happened – it helps you make sense of the past.

A theory is not the same as a method – it doesn’t tell you what to do but why things are the way they are.

So, if you talk theory with people they will often look at you with polite puzzlement – wondering why they should care.

After all, when you need to get something done you need some rather more hardboiled advice.

And that’s what you get from the likes of Halbert.

Take, for example, his approach to writing copy.

It’s all laid out here, almost – but here is the nutshell version.

Start with the quote above – if you really want to explain what you do, then you’re going to have to spend some time working on it yourself.

Start by creating a fact sheet that lists every thing about you, your business and your product or service.

Write down as many points as you can – the idea is to go on and go on and then go on some more.

Create pages and pages if you can.

Then, when you’re wiped out start restating the facts as benefits.

Go through each point and explain it in a way that make it clear why it’s a good thing.

For example, some time back I was looking for a way to capture what I spent a lot of time doing – something that is described by a particular approach called Soft Systems Methodology.

Using this term is stating a fact – it’s a tested methodology with a modelling language and useful characteristics.

Do the last two paragraphs, however, really explain anything to you?

The benefit of using this approach is that you can “make good choices”.

That’s the benefit.

One benefit, anyway.

Moving on, once you’ve got your list of benefits the next thing to do is craft an offer.

An offer has two components – price and value.

Price is what you pay and value is what you get.

For example, pay be $1,000 and I’ll give you half a day’s consulting.

That’s a starting point.

Now, you need to make the offer a strong one – something that pulls together the benefits you’ve identified with a commercial deal that gives the prospect a huge amount of value at no risk whatsoever.

This takes some thinking – because you have to deliver REAL value, not just some made up stuff, and really get rid of any RISK – because without doing that your prospect will stay scared and refuse to buy.

The next thing to do is go through your swipe file – your collection of headlines and advertisements and editorials that you’ve saved – the examples that remind you how things are done and where others put their money.

If you haven’t got a swipe file then create one.

Once you’ve filled your head with all this information it’s time to take a break.

Literally.

Step away for a day or so.

Have a long nap, go for a walk, do anything else.

Give your subconscious time to work.

At this point, frustratingly, Halbert’s letter ends and he talks about writing copy the next time.

So, let’s borrow from the end of this letter about editorial style ads.

Find and read some rave reviews of products and services.

Wouldn’t it be nice if a reporter wrote up one of those for you?

But that’s unlikely so you’re going to have to do it yourself.

Write it like you’ve just discovered this fabulous product or service and just can’t wait to share what you’ve found with the world.

Talk about the benefits starting with the most powerful and work your way down.

And, at the end tell the reader where they can find and buy this amazing thing.

And write it in a way that an editor would be happy to see in their paper – something that is fact checked and robust and strong and verifiable and authentic and truthful.

If your business isn’t any of those things, you’ve got some more work to do first.

You know that saying about polish and it’s effect on a turd.

But if you do have something that a customer needs – then this is the way to tell them about you.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Wednesday, 9.17pm

Sheffield, U.K.

I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening. – Larry King

I’ve been thinking for a while on how to get better at listening – and what kinds of models might help.

But first, why bother with something like that at all?

There are a few reasons.

Let’s start with Zig Ziglar’s maxim that “You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”

But understanding what other people want is not as easy at it sounds.

Many situations we end up in are actually quite complex – they have multiple stakeholders with multiple points of view, a range of pros and cons that need to be evaluated and often a choice between a worse outcome and an equally bad one.

What we’re trying to get at is what Peter Checkland called a “rich appreciation” of the problem situation – a picture that is “as rich as can be assembled in the time available.”

And this is something different professionals have much experience doing – although from their own specialist points of view.

A journalist, for example, wants to know more – wants to know the detail and the back story and they’re looking for what is new, what is newsworthy.

They ask questions to do this – questions that probe and push and all too often stop being useful.

For example, I heard an interview the other day where a reporter was trying to show that a leader of a major political party would not use the armed forces under any circumstances.

He pointed out that the person in question had always voted against military action.

He then went on to ask whether the interviewee knew differently – quoted the various wars that the person had voted against and generally suggested that the person’s approach was “A Bad Thing.”

But is that really the case?

Is it so bad to believe that war is absolutely bad, that sending people to die should be avoided – that wars often make things worse rather than better?

Is it always better to have a jingoistic leader who is happy to send your son or daughter to fight and die in a far away land while their own children sip champagne by the sea?

The person being interviewed didn’t really have any good responses – but the point really is that the whole thing was shoddy journalism – something that was stretched out to make an unnecessary point rather than to critically examine the issue itself.

So we probably shouldn’t look to journalists for best practice here.

What about therapists – people who listen professionally?

I had a look through Learning ACT : an acceptance & commitment therapy skills-training manual for therapists to see how they go about it.

The problem with our common sense approach to problems, the authors write, is that we try and “fix” things.

When something bad happens we try and avoid the events that started everything or push away the bad thoughts that come with them.

Doing this, unfortunately, often makes things worse.

If your friend let you down when you were a child and as a result you stopped trusting people and never made any more friends that is probably not the outcome you had hoped for in the beginning.

The book talks about an approach that is more about looking without judgement at what is going on and accepting it – to then move on.

What a therapist will do listen to you – listen to your presenting problem, the thing you say you have.

Imagine you’re a small business owner and want to grow but are struggling to win new clients – that’s your presenting problem.

The therapist will then ask what you’ve done so far – what solutions you’ve tried.

As you talk through these she’s trying to do two things.

The first is to divine the purpose behind your actions.

What is it you want from this growth?

Is it more money? The ability to sell? Thoughts that you can employ people and free up more time for your family?

The second is to understand how well things are working or not working.

Have the things you tried worked?

Have the things you avoided helped?

Have you tried joining networking groups?

Have you tried cutting down on TV and spending more time connecting on social media?

The thing is that you wouldn’t be in therapy if everything was working.

But the therapist has to listen to you talk about your solutions and how they’ve panned out until you realise for yourself that they’re not working.

All the things you’ve tried, the bag of tricks, the hacks and shortcuts and routines, the investment, the sales teams, the email campaigns – none of them are getting you the results you want.

It’s hopeless.

Creatively hopeless.

That’s a good point to reach.

Because that’s when you can open up to new possibilities, new approaches that are perhaps more in line with the purpose that sits underneath what you do, a purpose that might not have been fully visible to you until it was pointed out.

The thing is that any response by the therapist during this process that gets judgemental, argumentative – that tries to fix things will backfire as the other person stops, gets defensive and attacks or retreats.

They don’t make it through to that all important point where they realise that things have to change – where they have to be done differently to move on.

And they stay stuck.

That’s a kind of stuck that keeps you in place – things just haven’t worked again.

Creative hopelessness has a chance of getting you moving.

And the possibilities can suddenly be endless once again.

And you made that happen.

Because you listened.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Tuesday, 8.08pm

Sheffield, U.K.

A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity – Dalai Lama

I was working on a presentation when I came across Austin Kleon’s commentary on a HBR article by Ryan w. Buell on operational transparency.

Kleon points out that the overall message from Buell resonates with his idea of “Show Your Work”.

It’s worth looking at why, however, in a little more detail.

The image below is an extract from the presentation and shows what Buell found when he looked at how people reacted to different levels of operational transparency.

When you can’t see what someone is doing for you then you tend to think that they must be putting in less effort.

For example, you probably don’t think that Google works all that hard to get you a result – but behind that microsecond response is a gargantuan machine.

You don’t get appreciated that much when you’re invisible.

Let’s say you’re locked away in a backroom beavering away on a client’s account – if you spend a week doing something and no one knows about it how much are they going to appreciate your service?

How much are they going to value what you’re doing?

Buell found that people who couldn’t see what was going on were less satisfied with their suppliers.

But things get worse.

When what you do is a black box, when it’s opaque then people trust you less, are less loyal to you over time and don’t really want to pay for what you do.

Now, how many times have you heard service professionals moan about how their clients don’t want to pay them.

It’s especially common in sectors where there is a hard-charging, sales-driven mindset.

Although, arguably, all sectors have that to some degree.

Let’s take a few examples.

How many of you think that estate agents or recruitment consultants are worth what they’re paid?

The chances are that you get messaged every so often by a recruitment firm – someone who wants to charge you 20% or more to find you an employee.

What do they do for that money?

In my experience few agencies actually take the time to explain what they do.

The ones that do are more likely to be given a chance.

Many service professionals are, however, reluctant to give away too much – seeing value in their secret or proprietary methods.

But the days of such approaches is perhaps behind us.

Before the Internet perhaps you listened to people who claimed to have knowledge that no one else did.

Now, that’s unlikely.

Having secret knowledge, that is.

What Buell found is that showing people what you did – increasing operational transparency – helped improve the score on how customers thought and acted about you.

And this fits in with an emerging trend in the world of work and business.

If you get better at designing your service around the real needs of your customers – and if you collaborate with them in an open and transparent way they are more likely to want to work with you.

The value of things like trust and loyalty cannot be overstated.

In today’s world whether your business survives at all will probably depend on whether you get that.

Maybe we should refer to the old days as BI – Before Internet.

AI is here to stay.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Monday, 7.32pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. – Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon

I caught a bit of a conflict resolution podcast and what caught my ear was how the same principles lie at the heart of defusing an argument, whether it’s a hostage negotiation or a dispute between children in school.

In addition, some much overdue tidying uncovered a copy of the Psychologist which had a special collection on how people communicate.

The introduction to the papers, by Elizabeth Stokoe, introduces you to how powerful words can be.

In a hostage negotiation, for example, the objective is to keep talking until the situation can be resolved.

Each “talking” encounter is like a pass in a football game – a series of successful passes is needed to get the ball to where it needs to be to score.

When Stokoe and her her colleague, Rein Sikveland, looked at the recordings they found that when the negotiators used the word “talk” the negotiation often broke down – the bad guys didn’t want to “talk”.

But they would “speak”.

One explanation, perhaps, that the word “talk” has been so overused over time that people have become resistant to it.

Parent’s want to “talk” to you, teachers bring you up to their desks for a “talk” and managers set a time for a quick “talk”.

You often don’t end up feeling better after that.

“Speak” has fewer of those associations, so maybe people react less poorly.

The thing, Stokoe points out is that you’d never have seen this if you hadn’t listened to the real thing – the actual recordings of the encounter.

Too many people study things that describe the real thing – what Stokoe quotes Roy Baumeister as calling “proxies” – surveys, questionnaires and the like.

What we should be doing is spending more time pushing through the force field that separates us from the real world and looking around.

Doing what’s called “naturalistic observation.”

It’s not easy to do, clearly, and it’s hard to pass off as science.

But it is – it’s anthropology, action research, grounded theory and gemba.

Think of it like this.

You could look at any place on earth now and probably find a picture and descriptions and videos and recommendations.

But would you still learn something new if you went for yourself?

I think the answer has to be – almost certainly.

Cheers,

Karthik