Yet again, I’ve come across another post by a would-be/current founder who’s asking for advice. They’ve framed the question in an abstract way, dancing around the subject, trying to get the advice that they want but without providing sufficient information about their idea for the community to be able to add any significant value. It’s…
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I mentioned in a previous short article about how companies can misinterpret what their clients want and in another about industry reactions to issues. In this article, I want to explore how companies can force their issues onto the customers. Background I was reading up on electric cars (EVs) and in the last year the…
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Are the features you provide in your products the features that your customers want or those you think they want? Variants on that question are common. But all too often, a feature slips through and you have to wonder how it got there, how was it approved, why did the company spend time and effort…
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Here’s a quick exercise on perspective, scope and how we view problems. How big is your enterprise? Follow that question with these two questions: How big is it compared to the size of your organisation? How big is it compared to the size of your team? That’s the internal focus. Now let’s try a different…
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I was being interviewed by a prospective client a few years ago and I was asked an odd variant of a common question. There are more typical versions of that question, e.g. “what accomplishments are you most proud of?”. This variant blended the 3rd person perspective with reputation and achievement. If was more along the…
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Also known as “Take care of the customer in front of you, not their future selves.” I’m minded of this, specifically regarding how organisations can manipulate the perceived balance of power between them and their customers when applying refunds. Mistreatment I’ve noticed that it’s not necessarily specific companies, but the industry sectors they operate in.…
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If you create an appropriate framework, people can understand what to do when you haven’t told them the details. All too often, organisations define rules that do not need defining. They may choose to set criteria for approvals, or host panels in order to evaluate submissions. A better approach in many cases is to create…
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Treating your customer as valuable could be the first step to understanding what your customer values. I went shopping in my local supermarket. It was eventful for the number of things that went wrong for me, all of which could have been prevented with some foresight and some real-world gemba. It was early…
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I’m writing a new book, this will be my second*. I’d written a couple of chapters last week, one of which focussed on how organisations leave problems for the customers to resolve, but that they don’t think of it that way. In one chapter, I used the example of “Warning. Hot Water.” signs, stipulating that…
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There are a number of company-hosted competitions, events, hackathons all with the aim of introducing innovation to the host company. I questioned the rationale behind these initiatives in the first part of Outsourcing Your Future. The P&G Signal Accelerator Innovation Brief for Daycare Subscription is a good example of how these can be presented to the public,…
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