Seeing the cracks they can’t

“Care more than others think wise.
Risk more than others think safe.
Dream more than others think practical.
Expect more than others think possible.”

– Howard Shultz, CEO Starbucks

A few weeks ago, we talked about the unique ability of market leaders to see past what their customers can see. It is market leaders that, when asked, “Why fix it if it ain’t broken?” respond with, “because I see the cracks that you can’t see”.

Starbucks debuted a new logo several days ago, and the announcement was not without its naysayers. Customers and marketing pundits alike criticized the company for the new design and the decision to change it at all. Discussion boards lit up with questions and comments: “I think this new logo is a bad decision”, “Why is it that when a company has any kind of milestone (good or bad), their executives feel it is necessary to mess with the company logo?” or “Why must companies feel compelled to tinker with what is already working?”

Granted, consumers may still be bruised from recent faux pas when it comes to abrupt logo changes. In October, Gap changed their 20 year old logo and customers found out the next morning when they logged into the website; no prior announcement, no preparation, nothing. After more than 7,000 impassioned and angry customers complained on Facebook and across media outlets, the company retracted and reverted back to the old logo.

Starbucks, on the other hand, has subtly lead customers to this point of change. It’s like the frog in a boiling pot of water. If you drop him in at once with the water already boiling, he’s going to jump right out (thank you, Gap). If you drop him into lukewarm water and slowly increase the temperature, you’ll have a nice pot of stew for dinner.

Historically, Shultz has closely protected the brand he worked so hard to build. After expansion threatened Starbucks in 2008 and 2009, he stepped back into leadership, scrapped new location builds, strengthened existing stores, rolled out new store designs and slowly introduced customers to a new idea of a Starbucks experience, one broader than “coffee shop”. In his video announcing the change, Shultz says of the logo redesign: “We’ve allowed her to come out of the circle in a way that I think gives us the freedom and flexibility to think beyond coffee”. This change allows Starbucks to stretch, breathe and move towards the untapped markets they’ve been planning for long before the logo redesign was announced.

It takes courage for a company to make a change like this. But when the change is managed responsibly, like this example, customers eventually see that the change is just another logical step in the process towards growth, towards delivering the solutions and fixing the cracks that the market doesn’t have eyes to see today.

Fifteen years ago in Pour Your Heart Into It, Shultz identified one of the values that remains a backbone of the brand today:

“When things are going well, when the fans are cheering, why change a winning formula? The simple answer is this: Because the world is changing. Every year, customers’ needs and tastes change. The competition heats up. Employees change. Managers change. Shareholders change. Nothing can stay the same forever, in business or in life, and counting on the status quo can only lead to grief.”

If you’re going to be a market leader, you can’t move forward with your eyes fixed on the rearview mirror. If instead, you focus on untapped opportunities, you’ll be able to gently guide customers to a place where they cautiously release their white knuckled grip on the way things “were” or “are”, and partake in the change as the company proves that “new” is better.

“See”, you’ll say, “that wasn’t so bad, now, was it?”

And they will agree.

______________________

Filed under: Uncategorized

More

“He carried a ladder almost everywhere he went and after a while people left all the high places to him.”
– Story People

What is your ladder going to be this year?

How are you going to get ahead in work? In life? What are you going to do to take your position or your organization to the next level? How will you enable yourself to be more, notice more, achieve more? How will you enable your organization to do the same? How are you going to make yourself or your organization into the one that gets left with the high places?

Filed under: Uncategorized

Overcoming the Fear of Extinction or Suffocation

In many organizations, there is an attitude of self-sabotage among workers. This is based on two types of fear: extinction or suffocation.

The fear of extinction rides on the rusty hinges of scarcity. Jobs are scarce, people and technology are not. Some employees don’t want to learn new technology because they fear that the technology will replace them in their job. The secretary that refuses to learn how to use computer programs to do her job more efficiently is self-sabotaging based on fear of extinction. If she learned how to do her job with the help of technology she would be four times as efficient. But if she was four times as efficient, only 25% of her day would be filled with activity. If only 25% of her day is filled with activity and she doesn’t know what else to fill it with, people might start to question the need for her position. And that scares her.

The other type of fear, on the opposite end of the spectrum, is the fear of suffocation. This is the fear seen at the desk of a worker at the department of public safety. This fear stems not from scarcity, but abundance. This is the idea that the job is still going to be there tomorrow regardless of how many customers you serve today. There will always be people that need a driver’s license, so it doesn’t matter if he serves 7 or 70 customers today. Either way, he’s going to serve the same unending flow of people tomorrow. If he serves them faster today, that just means he has to serve more customers before quitting time. And he fears suffocating under all of the work.

In both scenarios, the worker is trying to preserve his or her well-being. They sabotage the outcome of their work by not producing what they’re capable of producing. Neither the secretary nor the DPS worker is as efficient or effective as she or he can be in order to prevent extinction or suffocation.

But here is where their formula is flawed.

What these two don’t realize is that they’re measuring the future on the wrong rate of return. The secretary fearing extinction is thinking that her rate of return for work will diminish. The more efficient she becomes, the less work there will be and the less of a need for her position. The DPS worker, fearing suffocation, tells himself that the faster he does his job, the more he’s going to have to process, which means he’s going to keep getting the same rate of return for his work. No matter how fast he works, the work will always be there and he’ll be getting paid the same amount. “So why don’t I just relax, take my time and just do what I can within the eight hour day?”, he thinks.

However, there is a different outcome possible in this scenario. Workers that ignore the fears of extinction or suffocation and instead look for ways to approach the problem with a different mindset will ultimately end up changing the rate of return. They’ll even end up altering the scale of measurement. When the secretary becomes more efficient at her job by using new technology, she clears her day of the mundane tasks and leaves room for new ideas, new ways of doing things and new projects to come through. More work flows through her pipeline, enabling different parts of the organization to reach solutions faster, lifting organization as a result. When the DPS worker chooses to approach the customer not from a work flow perspective, but a problem solving perspective, the worker is open to new ways of thinking and approaching the situation. He frees himself to find ways to improve the problems rather than simply process paperwork. He has the potential to satisfy customers in a different way and change the environment of the organization as a whole.

Over time, this shifted perspective can change the status quo in the organization, enabling workers to serve the market in new and different ways. Re-channeling the fear can have long-term benefits to the system.

Coming soon…an example of what it looks like when a leader refuses to accept the status quo and ambitiously forges a new path as a solution to an age-old problem. Stay tuned!

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“Dam”med if you do: Tidal Waves and Chain Link Fences

Here is your challenge for the day: you know that a tidal wave is coming. You don’t want the water to disrupt your world. So you have an idea.

You’re going to put a fence that looks like this:

in front of the wave that looks like this:

Really?

Really.

Not very effective, right? The reality is that you can’t stop the wave from hitting. There is nothing you can do that will make that wave change its mind.

And yet, we see chain link fences hastily erected in front of tidal waves every day. In fact, this very act was embodied just last week. Not in the physical sense of steel vs. water, of course. In the allegorical push vs. pull, big-rusty-business-machine vs. organic-ecosystem-employee or customer, shouting vs. listening, controlling vs. multiplying sense. This is the battle between social media and the tight-fisted behemoths that want to regain their semblance of control in a changing world.

EMI Music learned this the hard way last week when they seized control of embedding indie-pop rock band OK Go’s music videos. In 2006, OK Go’s music video “Here It Goes Again” posted on YouTube received tens of millions of views, brought concert crowds to five continents for 700 shows and even propelled the band to win a Grammy. For the band, it was viral promotion at its finest. For the EMI Music, it was free advertising. And then big business got greedy. Record labels started making money on YouTube video views. But not on embedded views where videos were posted on blogs, in emails, on websites. So several weeks ago, EMI Music denied users to the right to embed Ok Go’s videos. The result? Views on Ok Go’s new video dropped 90% in one day, from 100,000 one day to 10,000 the next. The bigger impact? OK Go “peaced-out”, ditching EMI Music as their record label and starting one of their own.

Short-term, small picture, myopic mindsets can lead to a hasty attempt to seize control. Schools fear losing the attention of students so they ban social media in the classroom and across campus. Businesses fear losing productivity, so they censor social media in cubicles and meeting rooms.

The bottom line: you can’t control a force that is bigger than you. The driver of social media is the same driver of business: relationships. It’s a cumulative force that is bigger than any one person, and it is bigger than a business or any one person can control. You have to find a way to work with it, change with it, use it to your advantage.

So let’s try the question again. You know the tidal wave is coming. You don’t want the water to disrupt your world. So you have an idea. How about putting a fence like this:

 

in front of a wave that looks like this:

 

Okay, so it’s not a fence…it’s a dam. It’s also a better alternative. It’s a source to harness the power and create energy from the tidal wave of the changing environment. Rather than stopping it, embrace it. Work with it. Change with it.

Like Ben & Jerry’s. Their most recent Facebook post on the fan page earned 199 “likes” and 36 comments. The one before that received 746 “likes” and 145 comments from their 1.2 million fans. And Red Bull. Response to their most recent wall post garnered 605 “likes” and 62 comments from their more than 2.3 million fans. These businesses use social media not as another megaphone to shout boiler-plate, stiff and familiar messages to customers, but instead as an engaging environment, a figurative comfy leather couch on which to sit with customers or employees to listen, engage, break bread and interact.

Your audience no longer wants to be told. Period. They want you to listen. And if you don’t, there are millions out there who will.

When you face the onslaught of change, the tidal wave of social media, you’re going to have to change your defense, because the chain link fence is not going to work any longer.

Filed under: Management, Relationships, Uncategorized