Monday, 19 July 2004

Pushing the Envelope of Business Requires a Strong Identity

“Hardball involves playing the edges, probing that narrow strip of territory—so rich in possibilities—between the places where society clearly says you can play the game of business and those where society clearly says you can’t.”

An exerpt from the Harvard Business School’s The Hardball Manifesto.

The article’s examples of Hardball companies – Wal-Mart, Southwest Airlines, Toyota – are examples of companies that have clearly defined their identity and by-proxy their reputation. Once a compelling and engaging identity is defined, it provides a framework for making decisions. Without that framework, you can’t stand firm in a decision and can’t play ‘hardball’.

Thanks to Rob at Business Pundit

Do As Little As Possible – Part 2

He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soap box passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line.

This exerpt from The Case of the Empty Soap Box at Jon Strandes’ Storyblog is an excellent example of the Do As Little As Possible pattern I metioned earlier.

Some equally engaging stories of simple solutions can be found in the highly recommended Are Your Lights On?: How to Figure Out What the Problem Really Is and Ideas are Free: How the Idea Revolution is Liberating People and Transforming Organizations.

Working Pathways Defined

An architect once designed a cluster of buildings. When asked by the landscape crew where to pave the sidewalks, he told them to plant grass between all the buildings, wait a year, then, after the occupants had worn the most useful paths, the architect told the landscape crew to pave the pathways that the occupants had created.*

The architect could have commanded the landscapers to pave a network of arbitrary paths promptly ignored by the occupants. Each of us goes the way that makes the most sense to go. The wear we leave walking through grass, shows others the path that worked for us. If that path works for enough people, it becomes the primary throughfare – and will be paved.

Working Pathways, LLC is focused on exposing the working pathways throughout our daily lives – from how we shop to how we work. By exposing the knowledge and experience gained by a single individual’s journey, everyone (companies, clients, customers) can benefit. That’s what we do. Sound interesting? drop us a line.

* Thanks to Storyblog for this tale.

Sunday, 18 July 2004

Faster Big Macs Through Outsourcing

2 minutes 36 seconds is the industry average for a McDonald’s drive-thru transaction. How does Steven Bigari keep his 12 franchises under half that?

Outsourcing.

All the drive-thru orders at his Missouri resturants are taken by a call center in Colorado Springs – increasing his capacity 15%.

Brilliant.

Original Article: New York Times, 18 July 2004.

Thanks to Brand Autopsy.

Saturday, 17 July 2004

Anticipate Customer Needs

That was the mantra uncovered with each of the hotel concierge interviews we conducted a couple years back. Anticipating need is an excellent model for the customer relationship. It inherently means that the service provider – account manager, waiter, concierge, project manager – has a deep understanding of their service. Deep enough to know what clients need when by instinct or the subtlest clues.

I remember the story of a concierge-in-training responding to a guest’s request for coffee. He delivered the coffee and a single cup to the room – containing 2 guests. In this case, the lack of a second cup is more irritating than its inclusion.

Kevin Salwen from Worthwhile relays an interesting, unintrusive model for signalling need. Though it feels like training wheels for waiters, it supports a far better experience than multiple staff members continually interupting conversation.

Tuesday, 13 July 2004

Try Before You Buy

Even today, with all the Internet offers, shopping is often purchasing a product without first-hand experience with it. Our customer research has proven time and time again that if the product can be handled – it’s more likely to be sold.

Until now, it was nearly impossible for customers to actually try out a product without purchasing it and returning it.

The Washington Post recently published In-Store Testing, an article about Maytag, Best Buy, Whirlpool

As part of a new program, the company is encouraging consumers to test-drive appliances before buying them. Shoppers can throw in a load of laundry, wash dirty dishes and bake their favorite dinners. There’s even a package of cookie dough on hand in case people forget to bring their own

And [Raymond R.] Burke, the Indiana professor [University’s Kelley School of Business] , warns that mock rooms take up valuable retail space in a store. “There are serious costs associated with it,” he said.

Yes, formatting stores and products to support use requires a shift from an inventory-focused mentality to a customer-focused mentality. Products that can’t be seen, touched, and experienced cannot be sold. If you use your products as a way to facilitate a conversation with your customers, they’ll be more committed to you.

…estimates sales in the larger, interactive store are twice those of the older one. The biggest difference, he said, is how many appliances consumers buy. “Instead of buying one range, they buy the range and the refrigerator, and maybe the dishwasher, because they see how it works together,” he said.

Monday, 12 July 2004

Changing the Government

Government agencies are some of the most notorious change resistors. In 1999, the Mint started to change that reputation – receiving a customer satisfaction rating second only to Mercedes Benz.

“In the old days, we shipped fewer than 50% of our orders within eight weeks. Today, if it takes two weeks for customers to receive an order, they complain. When you change expectations, it’s very hard for an organization to relax and slip back into old patterns of behavior.”– Philip N. Diehl, Director of the United States Mint

If the Mint couldn’t survey its customers officially, Diehl himself would do so unofficially. A few weeks after joining the Mint, he embarked on his own personal fact-finding mission. He went to coin conventions, talked with the hobby press, found situations in which he could interact with collectors. He shunned the ceremonial role that the director of the Mint usually played at these functions (collectors would line up to ask for Diehl’s autograph), and did what any smart politician (and change agent) would do: He worked the room.

Continued in Mint Condition from Fast Company

Thanks to Frank Patrick for the tip.

Usability Not Usable? – Part 2

“People are usually not receptive to a newcomer waltzing in and telling them they’ve been doing their jobs wrong.”

Usability departments exist in a number of our client organizations. Unfortunately, their organizational structural frequently instills an adversarial relationship between the project teams and usability group. The usability group is considered an outside agency – ony evaluating ‘ready for prime time’ work.

This relationship places the usability professional in the lose-lose position of telling the project team their baby is ugly.

Here are 3 tips for making this process more valuable for everyone:

  1. Invite everyone in all the project meetings from the start. This includes developers, usability professionals, project sponsors, clients, and even a customer or two. (and make the meetings working meetings)
  2. Evaluate early and often. The earlier in the project customer insight is captured, the more valuable is it to the project (and the customer). The project is less malleable as time progresses, more decisions (good & bad) have been made, more constraints exist. Everyone learns from early evaluation.
  3. Create, don’t just destroy. Usability evalutions are most valuable and insightful when participants are offered alternatives to compare. Perhaps alternatives don’t exist for the initial evaluation session, but they surely exist for each additional. To make the most of the evaluations the learnings from each session to the next participant in the form of a rough prototype.

The quote beginning this post is from from Ester Derby’s article Change that Fits. Her story describes a recently-fired software development quality engineer. Usability professionals should heed warning.

How to Stifle Teamwork

As an appetizer for an upcoming Work Better article on collaboration techniques, I’m pleased to present these team work worst practices from Ester Derby’s Software Managemet Process Improvement weblog:

A clear strategy to stifle teamwork

Establish two classes of membership on the team [WP NOTE: i.e. developers and testers, employees and contractors, or people with technical focus and people with business focus] , then follow these steps to ensure that all are aware of the distinction

3) Hold meetings to discuss project business, and exclude the 2nd class team members. If they ask to attend, tell them the meetings are to discuss topics they don’t need to know about… or say “This is meeting is only for 1st class team members.”?

4) Swap in new 2nd class staff frequently (2nd class team member are fungible, afterall, unlike more important 1st class team members). This is a double-header strategy – it slows down progress, too!

8) Blame the 2nd class when the so-called team fails to work together effectively…“They just don’t understand how to work as part of a team.”?

For all 8 helpful hints, visit A clear strategy to stifle teamwork.

As illustrated by this article, teams are about quality interpersonal relationships. If the office culture doesn’t support building collaborative relationships – failure is imminent. For the project, the team, and the organization.

Thursday, 8 July 2004

Mobile Phone Etiquette Tips

SprintPCS has partnered with etiquette expert Jacqueline Whitmore to compile an excellent list of 10 mobile phone etiquette tips

Number 1…

Let your voicemail take your calls when you’re in meetings, courtrooms, restaurants and other busy areas. If you must speak to the caller, excuse yourself and find a secluded area where you can talk

Thank you SprintPCS for publishing this list. It should be distributed with every mobile phone sold.