Wal-Mart.com Tests Ship-To-Store

Big box retailers are continuing their search for the Holy Grail of Retail – increasing merchandise selection without increasing real estate costs.

For years, Click’n’Pull for years. Unlike Click’n’Pull which is only available for in-store items, “Ship to Store” is only available for Wal-Mart’s web exclusive items.

This development is interesting in 3 major ways:

  1. It recalls the heyday of Sears & JCPenney catalogs, where orders could be placed and picked-up in-store.
  2. Both Sears & JCPenney currently offer an “order online / pick-up in-store” service. Sears.com has offered it for the past 4 years and seen 22% of online customers make additional sales while picking up their orders.
  3. This is for items not normally stocked by Wal-Mart. Knowing that Walmart.com merchandise is of higher quality and the store merchandise. Is this a way to gradually increase the quality of in-store merchandise, therefore a play against Target?

Dallas Morning News articles: Wal-Mart tests store pickup for online buys

How Not To Do Customer Research

We do quite a bit of customer and employee research here at Working Pathways. From in-depth 1-on-1, deep dive, interviews to quick email surveys to observational studies – our expertise runs the gamut. Whatever the study, each participant involved is 1. screened and qualified and 2. receives some level of compensation for their time and insight.

With that in mind, here’s how not to conduct a customer research telephone study:

  1. Don’t tell recruits who’s sponsoring the study. That’ll just skew the data and hey, why do participants need to know anyway?
  2. Don’t tell recruits why you’ve called them. That’ll skew the data also, say ‘satisfaction with products you may or may not have used’.
  3. Don’t tell recruits how long the interview will last. Participant’s time isn’t valuable, we can use as much of it as we’d like.
  4. Don’t compensate them. They should be happy just talking to us.
  5. Be surprised when nobody wants to talk with you.

In our experience, the most insightful research comes from passionate customer, they want to share their experiences with your products. You won’t get the valuable stories through a dispassionate qualitative satisfaction survey on products they haven’t used. They only come out when you respect your customers and consider your time with them a business appointment – pre-scheduled on both parties calendars. Like a business appointment, in this mode – one party compensates the other for the interaction.

Want Better Collaboration – Improvise

The earlier collaboration techniques post (Stop Asking Questions) was based a key to successful improvisation. This post digs further into the relationship between improv and collaboration.

Good improvisational comedy teams believe a group of individuals working together can start with nothing and quickly create something engaging, desireable, useful, and valuable. From this perspective, the keys for successful Improv apply to any collaborative effort.

As such, there are 7 keys to successful improvisational collaboration:

  1. Acceptance of a new idea from the standpoint of exploring its possibilities; An attitude of “Yes, and” rather than the destructive “but” .
  2. Attentive listening to all the partners on the team.
  3. Temporary suspension of critical judgment.
  4. An attitude of relaxed openness to new ideas. Exploring the far reaches of “What if ___?”
  5. Reframing situations to explore creative possibilities.
  6. A willingness to take chances, to risk appearing foolish, i.e. Stop Asking Questions.
  7. An understanding that no choice is absolutely right or wrong, though each may turn out to be more or less productive in a given situation.

Thanks to the Applied Improvisational Network.

Moving Day.

I’m moving workingpathways.com to a new host this weekend. So, there maybe some flakey-ness over the next couple days. Apologies for any interruptions in advance.

The move is complete and successful – if the site feels faster now, this is why.

Thanks for your patience.

Want Better Collaboration – Stop Asking Questions

The first step to a collaborative environment is to banish questions. Yes, banish the question mark from all conversation.

Questions reinforce heirarchial relationships rather than build the peer-to-peer relationships necessary for innovative, effective collaboration.

Step #1. Everyone is smart and everyone’s knowledge is of equal value.

A question forces someone else to make something for you.

Step #2. You can create things others find valuable.

Only Pigs Can Talk

I’m reviewing an excellent presentation [pdf] on the agile software development landscape when two bullet points on Scrum’s daily meetings stopped me:

  • Chickens and Pigs are invited.
  • Only Pigs can talk.

It took Googling to decipher the metaphor.

Though it goes against my earlier stifling team work post, identifying who’s involved and who’s committed is an excellent way to focus energies and keep the project on task.

Take a look at your projects – are you involved or committed? Where can you be more committed and less involved?

Further in the presentation:

“The error [is] typically 100 times more expensive to correct in the maintenance phase than in the requirements phase.”- Software Engineering Economics.

Reminds me of a story in the automotive design world. Traditionally, automotive designs were modeled in clay. Clay hardens as time passes. So, the longer a decision was put off, the harder – literally – a change is. Just because software doesn’t have a physical manifestation, doesn’t mean it’s not as time-sensitive as clay.

Two final bits of insight from the Extreme Programming camp:

  • If the future is uncertain, don’t code for it today.

  • Do the simplest thing that can possibly work

In other words: Do as Little as Possible.

A French Hour Sprint

Your new project is scary – though isolated and contained, the timeline ridiculous, the deadline immediate. The team is understandably nervous. What’s the easiest way to success?

Institute French Hours – or what we’ve (until now) called a Sprint.

Here are the 4 rules of French Hours:

  1. You can’t do it all the time.
  2. Every person must want to do it, and there must be an alternative job if anyone chooses not to.
  3. Everyone on the team has to be reminded of the uniqueness of the situation (and the team) on a regular basis.
  4. You have to stop.  All at once.

These rules are carved in stone. If you’ve been through one – you know that. If you haven’t, I’d highly recommend it – the speed, the straight-forward deadline – they’re refreshing projects. Just keep the 4 rules in mind.

Go pick up the August 2004 Fast Company and get the full story.

Ten Ways to Rearrange Deck Chairs

American, Delta, United, and US Airway have either flirted with for filed for bankruptcy in the past 18 months. To provide some guidance in these tough times, Forbes suggests 10 Ways to Fix the Airline Mess.

Of the 10 suggestions, 8 are Repeating the Same Action, Expecting a New Result, – have the US government bail them out.

First off, this strategy have been attempted to varying degrees by the steel industry, the auto industry, the citrus industry (“There are a lot of people in Iraq who have never had orange juice”), oh, and yes the airline industry.

Secondly, a bail out by the US government is not a sustainable response to poor management or shifting market conditions. An effective solution is to listen to frequent fliers and return the mystique to jet travel. Wait, NetJets and Citation Shares have the luxury market and are doing well.

The two remaing suggestions from Forbes: streamlining security and de-Hub-ing are valuable solutions. These are clear, visible , changes that add value and convenience to travelers.

The Point-to-Point (vs. Hub) model seems to be working real well for at least two airlines not flying in red ink.

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