Prophets & Prophet Warnings – What HMV, Comet and the other troubled brands all missed

You would have to have been locked in a skiing lodge or hidden away on a very exotic Caribbean island for the last few months not to be aware of the slew of high street mainstays (Comet, HMV, Jessops, Blockbuster etc) that have fallen into administration either side of Xmas.

At the risk of stating the obvious and sounding very trite, these businesses – despite their very recognisable brands – have not adapted quickly enough, or thoroughly enough to the changing economic and technological climate.   Sadly 1,000s of very real people have consequently been made redundant and many members of the public and small suppliers will be out of pocket and feel aggrieved.   That said, this is not a new or unique situation.  Enough “big brand names” go to the wall on a fairly regular basis for us all to be aware of the fact that brands – even big ones – go under when they fail to adapt. 

The good news is that I am not going to spend the rest of this blog nostalgically bemoaning the loss of the recognisable UK high street brands associated with warm fuzzy memories, nor am I going to forensically pick apart the economic whys and wherefores of the passing of these once strong businesses – both of these angles have been extensively covered already.  Instead what I want to do is a bit of thinking about how to avoid going into receivership and in particular make an appeal to all CXOs to take the time to find and listen to a corporate prophet.

The corporate prophet?  Yes the corporate prophet.  Corporate Prophet – an individual with genuine and vital insight(s) relating to the future health of the corporation – cf. Freeman 2013

Throughout historic literature the role of the prophet / shaman / guru / oracle etc has always been to deliver difficult and challenging messages to the leaders of a faulty society.  The wise leaders are the ones able to see beyond their own position, sense the wisdom in the prophet’s message and call their society to action.  Sadly all too often the historical prophets are ignored and in many cases are ridiculed and/or tortured and killed by leaders keen to maintain the status quo.  Inevitably by ignoring the prophet’s warnings the leader and the society usually suffer a suitably painful demise.  Now I’m not saying that the CXOs of HMV et al deliberately ignored or disregarded the prophets sent their way but a raft of personal experience, supplemented by a cruise through the biographies of famous corporate leaders, reveals how the CXOs of the recent corporate casualties could easily have missed out on some timely wisdom from a corporate prophet.  Here’s why:

1) Corporate prophets are not easy to come by in the Boardroom

2) They are painful/no fun to be around and

3) Corporate prophets don’t often come with a label and can be disguised in a range of shapes and forms. 

So if you are a CXO with a desire to be a wise corporate leader my advice, based on the points made above is simple a) Take time on a regular basis to be with and talk with people who are not your direct reports, b) Work on asking people open questions and be prepared to listen to their answers – you won’t hear anything useful if you act defensively and/or aggressively to what others say. C) Look out for your corporate prophets in some unusual places.  The corporate prophet may be the employee who’s asking the difficult questions, they may be the former customer who took the time to complain or they may even be from one of those “fluffy” futurist consultancies.

So hands up all those CXOs who are humble/mad enough to seek out people who are angry at them/disagree with them/won’t pander to their ego.  If you’ve still got your hand up and are still reading – well done – hopefully you will find the insights you deserve.   When you look at the challenges associated with tuning into a corporate prophet it’s perhaps not surprising that CXOs often miss the difficult messages.  Here’s hoping you don’t miss this one.

Bionics – What the six million dollar man can teach us about the art of digital transformation

The very words “Steve Austin...a man barely alive; we can rebuild him...we have the technology” is enough to send a warm wave of nostalgia surging through me.  For those of you who, like me, were young/old enough to spend your early Saturday evenings during the late 1970s glued to the exploits of the six-million-dollar man you’ll already be hearing the theme tune and replaying in your mind that faux mechanical sound that was generated when Steve used his bionics – a sound that Michael Bay seemed to appropriate ad nauseam for the Transformer movies (but I digress).

For those of you who need reminding – Steve was an astronaut who was badly injured on his return to earth from space.  His right arm, both legs and left eye are replaced by "bionic” technology implants that enhance his strength, speed and vision far above human norms: he can run at speeds of 60 mph (97 km/h), his eye has a 20:1 zoom lens and infrared capabilities while his limbs all have the equivalent power of a bulldozer. He’s also very cool.

For me, the six-million-dollar man (over $30M in today’s money), is a great metaphor that exemplifies what effective digital transformation is actually all about.   It’s a great example of using the latest technologies to upgrade your current capabilities in a way that appears seemless, sexy and magical.   The latest Capgemini/MIT research shows that those who are digitally “bionic” (the Digirati) are 26% more profitable than their non-bionic peers.

What is fascinating is that the Capgemini/MIT research goes on to outline the key elements that the Digirati have in place – effectively describing the Digirati’s digital central nervous system (CNS).  The first element is the ability to use digital capabilities (social, mobile, web) to develop a much deeper and richer awareness of whom your customers are, what they value and why they would buy from you.  The second is the ability to process and interpret this welter of data and turn it into meaningful and actionable insights (data, analytics).  The third is the ability to respond (service, fulfillment, or sales) in real time (or very close) to the customers’ needs with the requisite empathy.  All whilst maintaining an ostensibly human face (just like Steve Austin).

Ostensibly the Digirati have finely tuned “digital senses” deeply attuned to customer needs, sizeable and smart “digital brains” capable of analysing and making sense of large amounts of data and strong and aligned “digital spines” enabling rapid “reflex-like” responses.  All three  elements of the digital CNS are essential for firms looking to generate competitive edge but the good news is that building any of them up independently will also drive benefits.  

So the message from the research for business leaders in relation to digital transformation seems to be as follows – Which digital capabilities you choose to develop first seems to be less important than the fact that you have started developing some capabilities.  Whether its digital senses, a digital brain or a digital spine matters not – you will need all three but having one or two of the capabilities is better than having none.

Santa Claus and customer Experience – Lessons from Miracle on 34th Street

Let me confess this now.  I cry when watching films – probably a lot more than is “normal” for a bloke, but there’s just something about a big screen, human story (or in some cases cartoon or puppet story) that gets inside me and brings tears to my eyes.    I know, I know, “man up” I hear you cry but I fear it’s a losing battle and I will forever get a little misty eyed when gazing at the silver screen or the telly.  On the plus side I can get really excited about films – they inspire me to think.

Last weekend I sat down with the family to watch the first of the Xmas films – Miracle on 34^th Street (featuring the fabulous Dickie Attenborough) and yes, I did have a moist eye at the end as the State of New York declared its belief in Santa Claus but that’s not the point.

The point is, as I watched the film I was inspired again by Santa Claus/Kris Kringle’s attitude to customer service.  For those of you who haven’t seen the film – there is a wonderful scene where a shopper “corners” a manager of Coles’ department store, seemingly to “complain” about the advice she has just been given by the stores Santa (Kris Kringle), who has advised her that the toy she wants to buy for her child is much cheaper at the store down the street.  Just as the manager is beginning to apologise the shopper announces that if that is the kind of service Coles is offering to their clients then she will be shopping there for all her household items not just Xmas toys.  Stunned but delighted the manager realises that Coles (thanks to Santa) has stumbled upon a truly differentiated customer experience and runs off to pitch the idea to the Board.  Of course, as this is Hollywood the idea works brilliantly and Coles’ has people queuing out of the doors delighted by the stores new service mantra.

Now I know that the idea of being “reassuringly honest” has and is being tried in a number of businesses (e.g AVIVA – “Quote me Happy”) to drive loyalty and better quality business.  As such, whilst deeply refreshing and good for the soul, it is not a new or novel approach even if it is a rarity.  However, what really struck me is that what Santa “gets” so clearly is that his organisation doesn’t “own” the customer.   His empathy with the customer is profound and he has a willingness to serve the customer that is above all else.  He is a true “partner” - he has set the customer free to make the right decision.  

We all know that as customers this is how we’d like to be treated by those institutions who aspire to be our “partners”.  Many supermarkets, banks, insurers, telcos, petrol companies, retailers and utilities companies want to be more than a company delivering a transaction.  Most really want us to have a loyalty inducing customer experience when we interact with them but too often they struggle to deliver it leaving us with the feeling that somehow we just became a captive, a “share of wallet”, a plus in someone’s sales figures or a sucker.  Why? – Surely by now we have understood the societal and economic impacts of being honest and the disastrous effects of miss-selling, miss -appropriating and miss-managing the customer.  What is the solution?

To deliver a compelling “partner like” experience to its customers an organisation needs to take a number of lessons out of Santa Claus’s manual.   So here are four things that Santa gets right  that enables him to be a real partner. 

1)      He has real confidence in his brand and product – he is not trying to sell a substandard, immoral or environmentally damaging product.   Xmas is cool.  He does not have to have regulators haranguing him to “treat his customers fairly” – it’s what he wants to do.  His reputation is exceedingly important and he will not jeopardise it.

2)      He knows his customers really well – he knows what they like and he listens to them – his data sources and analytics capabilities are so good he even knows who’s been naughty and who’s been nice.  

3)      He knows what’s right for us – like a good parent he is able to analyse and make sense of the welter of mixed messages that his customers emit and find the product that is actually what the customer wants or needs – which may be different from the product that the customer originally thought they might want.

4)      When his customers makes their choices he delivers – he has a genius supply chain and is capable of deploying all kinds of ground breaking technology (flying reindeers etc) to ensure that each and every one of his customers feels special and cared for.

5)      He only employs people who are prepared to believe in the product – now whilst his recruitment requirements (ability to make toys by hand, ability to live in cold climate, ability to wear garish hats and pointy cloth shoes) may seem odd to some but we all know that in order for his business to work the people who work in it have to believe in what they are doing and particularly who they work for.

So in a digital world my advice to businesses is as follows:

1)      Build great products – designed with, for and by your customers

2)      Deploy “digital senses” (social, local and mobile capabilities) that allow you to really get to know your customers well

3)      Build really smart data and analytics capabilities that are deeply customer sensitive and allow you to personalise your products

4)      Redesign your operational processes using digital capabilities fulfil your customers need as if it was magic

5)      Employ people who live in the digital world, believe in what you are doing and have the right capabilities

Happy Xmas and thank you Santa Claus

When work becomes play: Using Game Mechanics to Drive Digital Transformation

Here's a fabulous blog on Gamification by the effervescent Maggie Buggie our Head of Digital Transformation at Capgemini Consulting.  This is her bag baby.  Hope you enjoy it.

Gamification is a term that has experienced major market hype and to a certain extent has suffered for it.  That said, when you get below the hype there really is a tangible business potential to be harnessed by the application of intelligent, focused gamification interventions.

Gamification is the use of gaming mechanics in a non-gaming environment. The concept uses game thinking to solve problems and engage audiences.  It is regularly oversimplified to a lowest common denominator of “playing games at work” but to do so is to miss the point.  Within an organisation gamification utilises intrinsic human behaviours such as the need for recognition to drive and embed performance change and to augment the enterprise’s innovative capacity.

Against a background of changing consumer behaviours, the perennial challenge of driving ROI with historical technology and the burgeoning employee expectations of their workplace experience, the appetite of executives for innovative mechanisms they can deploy to create a step change in business performance is growing.  It is estimated that over 70% of all transformations fail.  Couple this with research estimates that over 71% of employees are not engaged or are actively disengaged from their work and the prognosis for most business transformations is not good.  Market analysts have indicated gamification based services as one of the next frontiers in the Digital evolution for business.  According to Gartner, “by 2015, 40% of Global organisations will use gamification as the primary mechanism to transform business operations” and Forrester has forecast that the gamification market is expected to be worth $2.5bn by 2015.

Cultural change is a key element of the Digital Transformation agenda. Increasingly our clients, across all sectors, are acknowledging the need to address and drive behavioural change as part of the cultural shift to a digitally enabled, change ready organisation.  People and transformation management intensity are key to unlocking the digital advantage as evidenced by our recent empirical research on Digital Transformation with MIT. http://www.capgemini-consulting.com/the-digital-advantage/

and have successfully unlocked increased business performance through digitally enabled transformation

“How” you approach and deliver digital transformation is as important as “What” you do.  What distinguishes the “digirati” from the rest of the pack is that they exhibit digital maturity.  

2013 will see a wider gap emerging between those who are successfully driving their business through digital and those who are not, and are therefore getting left behind.  Addressing behavioural change through enterprise gamification is a key part of both building enterprise innovation capacity and unlocking the digital advantage.  It’s the beginning of a new game in the Digital revolution.

The Innovation Showdown - Maslow vs Robbie Williams

Isn’t our own human nature infuriating – most of us have an innate desire and drive to build for ourselves, over the course of our adult lives, a cocoon of security.  This cocoon will be physical, monetary, emotional and psychological and act to protect us – it fulfils the need to “settle down”, “make things comfortable” and create a “safety net” for ourselves, our families and our enterprises – Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in action.  At the same time this very layer of protection can make us inflexible, unwilling to change and vulnerable to unpredicted changes in our circumstances and environment.  It also effectively kills off the felt “necessity” that is the “mother of invention”.  This is not good for innovation.

This observation is, of course, not new - the anthropologists, historians and psychologists have been studying the effects of this cocooning and the subsequent traumatic rebirths on civilisations, institutions and individuals for many hundreds of years (revolutions, paradigm shifts and mid-life crises).   So the idea of regularly embracing change and upheaval in order to survive and thrive in difficult times is well known (think Kaizen) and a proven strategy for success – think Apple and Steve Jobs.

Given that this is the case it never ceases to amaze me how many businesses fail to make the big leadership decisions required to invest in innovation and change when hard times arrive.  Instead most opt to batten down the hatches, put their heads in the sand and pray, effectively assigning themselves to the waste bin of history.   In essence – investing in innovation in a down turn is deeply counter-intuitive and deeply difficult but is nonetheless absolutely essential.   Unless an organisation wants to die slowly like the fabled frog in the saucepan of slowly heating water it must find leaders who are prepared to take the necessary risks, challenge the “perceived wisdom” of the cocoon, eschew the desire to retract and retrench and instead spend their efforts and energy on reaching out for the new.  

The irony is that most initially gung-ho leaders subscribe to the “succeed or die trying” maxim until the possibility of “dying trying” becomes a very possible outcome at which time the wisdom of the cocoon becomes overwhelming, the expansive rhetoric disappears and the hunker-down actions are mandated.  So what are us frail leaders, who hanker after the courage to make the difficult decisions, to do? 

Well the only thing I can see from my experience is to practice the art of deliberately and regularly lifting ourselves out of our comfort zones – make a deliberate act to take stock of our own levels of comfort and to ask ourselves if there isn’t some new challenge we can create in our lives.  This does of course require great effort and energy and flies in the face of the innate desire to build our comfort cocoons.  It does in fact require an almost zen like dedication to personal development and the discomforts of growth.  This is far from easy and at my current age I am deeply conscious of the lure of the cocoon but am keen to avoid jumping into it until I’m actually ready to die – after all a cocoon is just a coffin of our own making and in the words of Robbie Williams "I hope I'm old before I die."

So how do innovators tip the odds in Robbie Williams favour?  From what I have observed those innovators that still "have it" beyond the age of 30 are those that have practiced the art of pushing themselves, continually.  If we can practice this habit when we are not in deeply difficult circumstances we are in with half a chance of being able to successfully perform when our lives, businesses and countries encounter major upheaval.  My advice is to get yourself a provocative mentor or coach – not one who will act as a therapist, but one who will push you and not let you rest in your comfort zone.  You won’t necessarily enjoy the experience but it might keep you out of the cocoon and closer to the edge for a little while longer.

Snakes on a Plane - How to pitch an Innovation

Over the last month I have been working with a tech start up team looking at how best to bring a new product to market.  This has meant getting deeply involved with the team who have sweated blood and tears to build a product that has masses of potential.  Listening to them and getting right under the covers of the product has been a lot of fun and very energising.   However, what has been really interesting has been the debate and discussion we have had about how best to bring the product to market.  

Now as a student of the “art of pitching” I am a huge fan of the idea that the winning concepts are those that can be simply communicated in a way that creates a compelling mental picture in the minds of the audience – think of the eponymous pitch for the movie “Snakes on a Plane” – in 4 words you have a pretty good idea about what the potential film is all about.   It’s a genius pitch – shame about the movie.   So surely the task I should be helping the team work through is the creation of a simple, creative and pithy statement that sums up the product.  Well yes, but...

What has become clear as we have debated our go-to-market plan is, that for the product to be effectively launched, we need to be able to communicate its merits to several key audiences (not just one) – each of whom have very different motivations for engaging with the product.   We need to be able to engage our potential end users, we need to be able to engage our current and future investors and we need to be able to engage the CMOs and CIOs of medium sized corporates.  In effect we need to be able to explain our product simply in three or four different “languages” – languages that resonate with each of the audiences.  The need to be sensitive and adaptive to the diverse motivations of the different audiences is something most innovators only discover through the bitter experience of making an impassioned pitch that is met with bland indifference.  Too often innovators fail to get their product to market because they cannot think beyond the exciting tech they have created.   The reality is that most of the people you want to buy, invest in, or support your product really don’t care about the technology – they care about what it will do for them.

I have seen many pitches that have failed – not because of a poor product, but because of an inability to talk about the product in a way that lights up the audience it is being pitched to.   If you are pitching to potential investors they want to hear about how they will get a return on their investment (the money, the plan, the competition, the team) not how the technology integrates seamlessly with legacy systems.  If you are pitching to end users they want to know how using this product will enhance their lives (making it easier, cheaper, sexier etc) not how the user experience is configured.   If you are pitching to corporate clients they want to know what the product will do for them (their careers, their profits, their sense of control etc) not how much development time went into the coding.

So, in conclusion, when pitching, could all budding innovators and entrepreneurs please take the time to think about the audience they are pitching to and amend their pitch appropriately.  This simple tip cannot guarantee you avoid disappointment but it will massively improve your chances of at least getting your key messages across.

The Innovation Has Landed – What Neil Armstrong Can Teach Us About Delivering Innovation

Unsurprisingly, following the death last month, of a deeply unassuming Neil Armstrong, a mini outbreak of moon landing nostalgia has been released.   Now I am really not a space geek, but, having been born in the 1960’s, I can’t help but get caught up in the emotion surrounding the Landing of the Apollo 11 crew on the moon.  Now, whilst I love the romance of the “it’s one small step...” speech what has really caught my imagination and interest is the less well known story of the moments prior to touchdown.

Due to a computer malfunction, the Lunar Landing Module was steering itself away from the designated landing area towards a boulder-strewn area outside the originally planned “landing ellipse”.  (And this is the old school bit I really love) By looking out of the windows Armstrong realised the imminent danger and acted.  With alarms ringing out in the craft, Armstrong took semi-automatic control of the Lunar Module and with Aldrin calling out altitude and velocity data, landed at 20:17 on July 20 with only about 25 seconds of fuel left – thus salvaging the landing.

So what does all this have to do with Innovation?  Well, earlier this week I was having lunch with a previous mentor of mine who had just retired from a global technology services company having held the reins on Innovation there for the last 5 years.   What was fascinating was, as we compared notes, we both conceded that often the hardest part of successfully delivering Innovation is what we called “the last few metres”.  Just like Neil Armstrong we concluded that the best planning in the world cannot ever quite perfectly prepare you for the conditions you meet when trying to “land” a new innovation with its new user base.

Both of us were able to recount story after story of disasters, narrowly averted disasters and damp squibs that were down to the inability of the innovating organisation to manage the change and engage the user base with the new technology, operating model or product.   Many of you will remember the debacle of the launch of Heathrow’s Terminal 5.  Terminal 5 is now a fabulous, modern, slick airport terminal but its launch was massively blighted by huge failures in its security and baggage handling capabilities when it first opened.  The assumption was that everything would just work.  It didn’t and chaos rained, costing those involved some considerable sums of money.  Now T5 is an apocryphal tale but, from our sharing, we can utterly attest to the fact that week in, week out firms are wasting the money they have spent in design, development and testing by failing to manage the final implementation and user uptake.

The funny thing was that it wasn’t that people hadn’t thought about delivering the appropriate marketing, training, retooling or effort required to generate user uptake – it was rather that they just hadn’t done anywhere near enough of it at the right time.  We all seem to have a natural tendency to underestimate both what and how much it will take – in terms of effort and cost.

So, to those of you who are trying to deliver big, innovative, transformational changes – please, please, please do not scrimp on the “last few metres” and make sure you have enough support to land your innoavtion or repent at your leisure.

Thankfully for NASA, the USA and mini space nuts all over the world, enough contingency was built in to the landing protocols to avert disaster and we can remember with fondness the life and times of Neil Armstrong – still teaching us how to land 40+ years on.  Thanks Neil.