Business Evolutionist

10 Days...

It's been 10 days since my last post - I'm still here, just buried.

I was in Boston yesterday, for what was supposed to be just the day. My flight home kept getting delayed and they finally cancelled it around 8:30. Ended up staying the nigt in Boston (note to self: always pack an overnight bag, you never know). My flight home this morning was delayed, I got home just in time for a four hour meeting this afternoon... so, I've got a couple of days worth of catching up to do.

My schedule this month is daunting - posting will be VERY light, but hopefully good! ;-)

The Really Bad Email... 5 Minute Improvement

I'm sure we all get email that, while legitimate, is just crappy. The solicitor just talks about themselves: "We", "Our", "I", etc. It's always focused on the company, a product, or some combination of those things.

"We have this thing and it can do all sorts of neat stuff...", blah, blah, blah...

I have one from a little over a year ago that I've held on to for some reason, because it was just so bad.

Dear NWLEAN members,

As the developers of AccuStudy time and work measurement software, we want to be a part of your lean manufacturing and process improvement efforts. Our focus is on providing you with state of the art tools and resources.

While time studies continue to be an important part of process evaluation, traditional approaches using stopwatch and clipboard make the effort time consuming and tedious. If you have a moment to visit our web site at www.intervalsystems.com, we believe you’ll agree that AccuStudy is a fundamental advancement in process evaluation --- allowing you to receive accurate and compelling real-time data on process bottlenecks, non-value activity, and potential process improvements.

We’ve built AccuStudy with a very intuitive approach to data collection, using a hand held computer containing hundreds of icons representing manufacturing and assembly tasks. We’ve combined this icon approach to data collection with a powerful set of PC based analytic tools. After uploading the hand-held computer data to a desktop or notebook PC, you can choose from a set of predefined reports or export the data to Excel for further analysis. The learning curve for the entire product is a matter of minutes.

From our home page you can download a set of free product demonstrations . We hope you’ll take a moment to look us over.

Thanks for letting us interrupt your day with this note and we wish you the best for 2004.

This seems like a great tool, but I wonder what the yeild was from this type of email?

I decided to take 5 minutes to see if I could improve it... here you go:

Introducing a free how-to guide: "The Lean Managers Guide to Using Time & Work Measurement Studies to Improve Performance"

• Are you concerned about Process Bottlenecks?
• Would you like to improve your process performance?
• Would you like to know if your employees are spending too much time on non-value added activities?

If so, download the new whitepaper: "The Lean Managers Guide to Using Time & Work Measurement Studies to Improve Performance"

You'll discover:

• Why Stopwatch & Clipboard Efforts yield less than optimum results


• 3 key steps to collecting the right data to improve performance


• And so much more...

Don't let another minute of less than optimum perfomance go by: Download your free copy today!

Not great. But the same basic text... AND nothing about the company or the product, which people don't care about anyway... I'd be willing to bet that if they can give something away for free - add a little value to peoples lives - they'd have a much easier time getting people to look at their software.

This is just one example - I get stuff like this all the time, as I'm sure you do. People sending emails talking about the offering (book, software, service) they have, and how I should really look at it. Stupid. Most of these end up in the trash pretty quickly.

Companies forget that there is a recipient of the message they're sending - and that person cares far more about themselves than they do about you or your product.

Ha! I guess it all goes back to the "What's in it for me" question, huh? Not a bad filter to apply to messages before they're sent out - these companies should ask if there is something in it for the recipient or not.

So, do you have examples like this? Good emails? Bad emails? Have you ever sent one back to the sender - with a suggestion on how to improve it?

A Number or a Person?

Do you travel? Do you travel frequently? Do you belong to any of the "frequency-based" programs at airlines/hotels/car rental places?

I'm getting ready to do a fair amount of travel - so I finally signed up for the Marriott Rewards program (I've already got the airline programs in place)

After signing up, one of the options on the account page allowed you to add existing reservations. Which would have been nice, since I just stayed 3 nights at Marriott hotels in California and Texas. All they required was a confirmation number... so I entered the ones from two weeks ago, but nothing. I guess they must be "new" reservations - that have not occured yet. What a pain.

First, I understand that they don't people going back a year or two, pulling in all their old reservations, but this was less than a month ago. Actually, I don't understand - I've been a loyal Marriott customer for years, not that I've travelled a ton, but when I do, my first choice has always been a Marriott.

Second, this shows that I'm not a person, I'm just a number.

I'm not doing this because I expect to be doing a lot of personal travel, I'm doing this because I expect to be travelling a lot and I want seat upgrades, nicer rooms, nicer ammenities, etc., while I'm on the road - cause I really don't like to be away from home, so I want to be as comfortable as possible during the trip.

The bottom line is this: I can show that I was a guest, who cares whether or not I had a "number" when I stayed? And why do you need to sign up for these things at all? I'm a person - and they should have their back-end systems be able to determine who I am and the frequency of patronage. I shouldn't have to tell them that I want a king-size bed, smoking room. They should know that by now, right?

Help us serve you better?

David over at Perception Analyzer was kind enough to send me a link to a local Oregon site so I could check out what bands are playing while I'm there. How cool is that?

So, he sends me this link with these instructions:

IE only, doesn't work properly with Firefox

Interesting. Even more interesting was the landing page I came to:

What zip code do they want? My home zip code? What does my PA zip have to do with serving me better? Oh, they must want the Portland Zip, so that they can customize my experience (nope, that wasn't it). What about year of birth? What does that have to do with anything? Oh, they might want to know what type of content to present based on my age... (not that I could tell). Gender? What on earth?

This was annoying. As you can tell by the graphic, I didn't enter the info and just clicked the "go to" button. Nope, it wouldn't let me through.

Does this make sense to anyone? I did make it through to the site - and thank you again to David for sending it, truly (this isn't his site, he just sent me the link).

But why do companies put up this kind of barrier between you and your potential customers. If I find something useful, I'm a lot more than willing to enter a little bit of personal information.

What they should have done was allow me to create a list of my favorite clubs, or set reminders on upcoming events - I might even be willing to provide my email address for that.

Portland... anyone?

Is there a song or something about Portland? Regardless...

Looks like two nights in Portland Oregon are up next.

Anyone live in Portland? Anything fun to do in Portland?

Possible trips in the near future: California, New York, and Massachusetts... oh, and Toronto as well... almost all one day/night trips. Can you say LOADS of Frequent Flyer miles? ;-)

All Marketers Are Liars

That is title of the new book by Seth Godin. Somehow, I'm still trying to figure this out, I was sent an advanced proof of the book.

What can I say, the book is true Seth. I liked it as much as Survival is Not Enough, which is still one my favorites of his.

If I had to sum up the book in a single statement, I'd use the following quote:

Just as nature abhors a vacum, so too does the human mind. Where there is a lack of information, the imagination will rush to fill a void.

~ Carl Jung

People prefer to be able to explain things, they want a logical explanation for everything that occurs. That includes all the details about the goods we purchase. If you don't provide people a story, they'll make one up - and more than likely, it won't be as good as one that you could come up.

One of my favorite stories in the book is the iPod shuffle story.

Everything happens for a reason, doesn't it? Even if you don't consciously agree with that statement, you brain sure does.

The ability to refine our superstitions is one of the brain's greatest talents. Unlike virtually any other living being (or even most computers), humans insist on finding a theory to explain what happens to them.

The New York Time recently ran an article about otherwise intelligent, rational people who were sure that the shuffle feature on their iPod was broken. The shuffle feature is supposed to randomly select songs and play them. These users knew for certain that something was wrong because their iPods appreared to keep playing certain songs over and over. Instead of being random, it appeared to these users that the iPod was favoring some songs over others.

A quick look at the song count on my iPod confirmed that this is exactly what happens - some songs are played ten times as often as others. But that's the way it's supposed to be. That's the way randomness works. Random doesn't mean perfectly even. Far from it.

These supersititious iPod owners, though, had made a decision about what their player liked (and what it didn't like). They gave the machine a personality. Whenever a particular song came up again, they made a mental note of it. "Aha! See, it does love Fatboy Slim. There he is again." Of course, they were just as quick to ignore those instances when a rarely played song came up.

Overall the book is great. True Seth - thought provoking and very entertaining.

The Reaction Economy

People say that this is the "Experience Economy".

Others have called it the "Attention Economy".

Still others have called it the "Emotion Economy"

I think that they're all right, but wrong at the same time.

What we're really in - and have always been in - is the Reaction Economy.

Someone has an Experience.
It produces an Emotion (positive or negative).
They focus their Attention on it.
They have a Reaction.

Experience -> Emotion -> Attention -> Reaction

The goal for a business is to reverse engineer the Reactions that they want.

If the Reaction you're looking for is happy, repeat customers, then the goal is to figure out how to move them in a way that causes the Reactions that you want.

Manufacturing "experiences" that don't cause Reactions, is a waste of time, money, and energy.

If you focus on the reactions you want people to have, it forces you to understand them at a whole new level. Asking what would make someone do 'X' forces you to look beyond the simplistic answers.

Progress with the Boulder...

I walked in to my bosses office this morning and asked him to help me figure out the boulder.

Does it matter if he figures out for a way to frame it?

Not to me it doesn't.

He agrees that:

1.) It is a boulder
2.) It's worth pushing

Here is the problem, in a nutshell:

There are the things that a business and it's employees care about...

Doing a good job, looking good, protecting their turf, SCM, SRM, PLM, SAP, Systems, document management, standards, best practices, ad-infinitum.

Then there are the things that customers care about...

And not one of them is on that list of things that the company cares about.

So, how do you get people to start thinking of those things in terms of how they affect the things that the customers care about?

We've all been told how important the items from the first list are. We're measured on them. But it is doubtful that many organizations have a common thread that brings together everyone in the organization in a way that focuses on the customers as the first priority on every decision, in a way that cuts across operational boundaries.

When I worked at Hershey Foods, I had the privilage of serving on the companies Internet Focus Team. The manager of the team, Rick, was one of the smartest guy's I've ever met. His job was to sell the Internet to the old-school managers at the company. No small job back in 1998.

He put in place a very simple tool for the group to use, The Framework for Value.

This was the filter by which all projects would be chosen.

Does this project help us to Improve Relationships? Lower Costs? Improve Efficiencies? If the answer was yes, we could proceed.

I'm not using this for the boulder I'm currently pushing... but thinking about it is helping me determine how to talk about it in a way that should make everyone agree that there is a boulder and that it needs to be pushed. Also, the one thing I love about this is the relationship aspect is front and center, so even if something is done that isn't in that category, it is still visible at all times.

Like I said, Rick is a smart guy.

Pushing a boulder up a mountain...

Work has kept me pretty busy the last couple of weeks - and most of it is my own doing. I'm trying to push a boulder up a really steep mountain and every time I make a little progress, it feels like someone is pushing in the other direction or the mountain is gettting bigger. My trouble at this point is I can't seem to articualte the boulder in terms that anyone else understands...

There is a part of me that want's to rush in to one of the big bosses office and shout like a lunatic - but I've stopped short of that drastic action.

Hopefully I'll be able to blog about this at some point.

In the meantime, I'm off to read Seth Godin's new book - All Marketers are Liars - which came in the mail today...

So, question for you: tell me about some big challenge at work, that involved getting a bunch of other people to see your vision of a better future... and how you went about it.

Product or Customer Focused?

Here is a stunning example of a business thinking about its product before its customers:

NEW YORK (AP) -- NHL players might be replaced next season. Commissioner Gary Bettman will not.

I dare you to find 10 people in the entire world who read that line and breath a sigh of relief... (Gary Bettmans family and the NHL owners don't count). Actually, I dare you to find 10 ticket-buying, jersey-wearing, talk-about-last-nights-game-at-the-office hockey fans that are excited about this "news".

My apologies for blogging about Hockey again, but this is a great example for businesses on what NOT to focus on. It isn't about products, or features, or "things" at all - it is about people. Yes, I know, people care about a good product - so make sure that the "product" you deliver is the one the one people want... in this case, it isn't replacement players.