Category Archives: Corporate Darwinism

Nimbleness is Necessary

This is a common theme I hear all the time, and one that runs directly counter to the structure of most companies: it’s all about nimbleness.

tony-hsieh-is-zappos-ceoI’ve spent the past few days at the Silverpop Summit in Atlanta and two of the keynotes touched on this theme. Tony Hsieh from Zappos talked about how nimble their business model has been, literally redefining their core purpose 4 or 5 times in the past decade. Yes, through that time, they’ve always sold shoes, but that only really defined Zappos in the first few years of business. Since then, they’ve focused on customer service, then on HR, then on culture, and most recently, on happiness. Shoes are incidental. The evolution of the core philosophy of Zappos has been extraordinarily swift by the standards of most companies.

Then, today, Charlene Li gave us a peak at some of the central tenants of her new book, Open Leadership. Again, it’s all about creating a revolutionary managerial framework that takes advantage of more touch points with customers, faster communication lines, the ability to tap into social communities and a leadership approach that can quickly recognize and seize on opportunities, as well as identify and mitigate failures.

But it’s all about speed and the ability to change (or at least, adjust) directions quickly. It’s as if Darwin is teaching an MBA course.

This got me to wondering. It seems that when we look at the best examples of nimbleness, they’re all online companies. Amazon, Zappos, Saleforce – to name just a few. Why is this? Why can’t traditional companies compete with their online cousins when it comes to doing things quickly?

Well, I think there are a few reasons.

It’s all about the Environment

Darwinian change is driven by the environment. The more dynamic and hostile the environment, the faster the change. Nothing changes faster than online. We call it Internet Speed. Entire new business models are built from the ground up in months. And outmoded ones fade away just as quickly. If you’re slow to move in the traditional world, you’ve got plenty of company. But slow to move equals death online. It’s simply not an option.

Closer to the Customer

Online businesses live closer to the customer. They handle the customer service calls, sales, fulfillment and all aspects of the client relationship. There are no middle men clogging up the pipeline between management and the customer. Technology allows online companies to collapse distribution into a much flatter model than is found in the online world. And that means the distance between a customer and the CEO is much shorter, especially if you have a CEO that makes it a point to reach out consistently, like Hsieh at Zappos. This shorter feedback loop makes for much faster change cycles.

Flatter Organizations

Most online companies don’t have a very long corporate history. They are younger companies started by younger founders. And most of the online plays I know started with a determination to do things differently. They’re run in a much more open and transparent manner. Management tends to value culture and communication more than is typical (or possible) in the multi-layered multinational. Communications lines are shorter and more effective. And because they’re new and built on a more efficient model, they tend to be smaller as well.

Less Baggage to Carry

Finally, things that don’t work can be jettisoned much quicker online. If you launch a new site and it doesn’t work, it simply goes dark and everybody gets on with their online lives. There is no chain of empty locations across the country with for lease signs in the window. Online plays don’t have to keep resource sucking bricks and mortar locations afloat. It’s faster to invest in new opportunities online and faster to cut your losses if they don’t work.

If the corporate world now spins on the axis of nimbleness, I suspect it’s going to be hard for traditional companies to keep up with their online competition. Things are just moving too fast to keep pace, given all the odds stacked against them. In the next act of corporate evolution, I think I would have to cast the Multinationals as the dinosaurs and the online players as the mammals.

A Case for Outside In Thinking

girlzooConsulting as a business practice exists to serve two needs:

  • To provide subject matter expertise on an “as needed” basis; and,
  • To provide a fresh perspective on things.

It’s the second of these that I want to ruminate on a bit today. Why is an outside look at things so valuable for companies? Why can somebody on the outside see so quickly what is all but invisible to those on the inside? Increasingly, as my consulting career grows, I’m astounded to continually rediscover how different the view from outside-in can be from the inside-out view. Consultants look at things differently. Good consultants can translate that into insight for their clients. Great consultants combine that with their own experience and expertise to deliver what is, dollar for dollar, the best investment their clients can ever make.

Ideas from IDEO

Outside-in is a great business model. One of the masters of this, the design firm IDEO, has built an entire methodology around “design anthropology,” helping companies reimagine their products by providing a fresh look at things. They base innovation firmly on observation of real people, basically providing an outside-in view of the world. I’ve always been a huge fan of qualitative research, with ethnography in particular being an underused secret weapon. IDEO lives, breathes and eats this stuff. Better yet, they’re willing to share their secrets. You could do much, much worse than learn about more about the IDEO approach to innovation. Spend some time on the IDEO Resource page.

But why does being on the inside blind you to insights that are instantly observable to people on the inside? It’s not that the people outside an organization are so much smarter than the people on the inside. They have no special gift or source of information. They simply have a different view. Why?

Conforming to the Norm

As with most everything in life, I approach these questions from a Darwinian point of view – I seek ultimate rather than proximate answers. I suspect it’s because we humans, being herders, have a need to conform to the norm.

I’m in a unique position right now to test this theory as I’m writing this from a different culture – Germany. In the past few years, as I’ve traveled through different parts of the world, I’ve been amazed at how cultures shape behaviors. Yes, we have inherent human behaviors, but as you travel from culture to culture in Europe, the difference in national behaviors is almost palpable. Or at least, it is to an outsider. It’s probably not a coincidence that the most insightful cultural analyses have come from observers from outside the culture in question, from Alexis de Tocqueville’s (France) Democracy in America to Friedrich Engel’s (German) The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. Canadians actually have a long history of observing other cultures, in particular, America. I’ll touch on why that might be more in tomorrow’s post

I’ve written before about Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, a keen observer of culturally driven behavioral traits. His book, Bowling Alone, provides a razor sharp analysis of several cultural trends in America that are altering the very nature of our social bonds. But it’s an earlier work, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, that shows how our social connections determine not only our culture but also the effectiveness of everything from commerce to government. Let me veer a little off track to make a point.

The Making of a Clan

Analysis of cultures from mountainous, geographically isolated regions show that they tend to evolve around the power of the clan. These incredibly strong bonds of kinship have been documented in the Scottish Highlands, the Appalachians in the US and Southern Italy and Sicily as well as other similarly geographically restricted areas. There are strong divides between in-group/out-group that hamper the creation of inter-group trade practices and formalized governments. In particular, geographic restrictions on movement of genes in and out of the collective gene pool create even stronger kin selection bonds. Putnam, in his book, documents how this prevailing tribal attitude held Southern Italy back while Northern Italy flourished. There, easy trade routes lead to mercantilism and intergroup trading, reaching a peak in the trade guilds of Florence.

The impact of geography on evolved human behavior has also been fertile ground for UCLA’s Jared Diamond. Prevailing attitudes within a tribe quickly spread, bringing behaviors towards the group norm. The more isolated the group, the more homogenous the views and attitude of the group and the more resistant they are to an outside view. Because we conform to the norm, it quickly becomes true that either the members of the inside group are blind to realities easily perceived from outside, or, if they are aware, they cannot effect change because they’re stifled by the collective influence of the group.

There are some unique corporate conditions where this internal version of restricted group-think tends to flourish. Ironically, past success is usually a good indicator of future limitations in perspective. But again, I’ll get back to that in a future post.

Jet Lagged but Still Posting!

bitburgerI’ve just spent 16 hours on various airplanes, so the mental processes are not the clearest, but I promised myself I’d do a blog post before succumbing to the pharmacological effects of mixing Ambien and German beer.

Over the next several posts, I’ll be focusing specifically on the challenges facing B2B marketers. While the previous posts this week weren’t specific to B2B, the issues of “Wow” service and returning to the Core are certainly relevant in the B2B world, perhaps more so now than ever.

The past few months have been interesting for me. Perhaps because of the release of my book, perhaps because of a resetting of strategies, perhaps just because we’ve hit the tipping point on the adoption curve – whatever the reason, I’m having a lot of conversations with a lot of people about “getting it”. Something fundamental is shifting, and I think the message has finally seeped into the C suite. Not only is the message being heard, but it’s being acted upon.

Next week, I want to explore a theory by Brazilian economist Carlota Perez – Regime Transition Theory. According to Perez, there is a massive changing of the guard in business at pretty regular intervals, driven by significant changes in the market environment. These changes are often sparked by technological innovation. And it seems we’re in the middle of one of these shifts right now.

I’ll also pick up some of the threads laid down in the original BuyerSphere and see how it might tie into this shift. In the past 3 months, I’ve been talking more and more about the business buyer of tomorrow. I’ll be taking a deeper diver there as well.

But for tonight, (because it is tonight here in Germany) I really don’t want to do too much in the way of deep thinking, because the deepest I plan to go is to the bottom of the glass of Bitburger currently sitting beside me, then it’s off to bed. Auf weidersehen!

P.S. – bummed that Canada self destructed in the World’s hockey championship. Ian (Everdell, from Enquiro) and I had bought tickets to the Gold Medal game this weekend in Cologne, hoping that Canada would be there. Oh well, it will still be good hockey!

A Brave New World That’s Not So New After All

First published May 20, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

What the hell is happening? Everything is changing, and it’s changing much too quickly. We keep hearing that the game has changed, that nothing we knew before is still applicable. Ironically, I’m seeing a different trend. I’m seeing a need to return to our roots. But it’s hard to see the truth of that through the technological maze we’re currently stumbling through.

There is a reason companies exist. Somewhere at their core, there is something that sets them apart. There was a reason, back in the misty recesses of their corporate history, why the founders thought they could actually make a buck at this. The older the company, the further it is from the original spark that gave birth to a new entity, but it still lies somewhere.

To Look Forward, Look Back

As companies struggle to adapt to the digital marketplace, they tend to look forward, which is a really scary view of things. Everything is uncharted, unknowable and uncertain. There is a sense that we don’t know what lurks around the next corner. This also makes it seem that it’s imperative to figure out what’s changed. “What,” I hear repeatedly, “is the thing I need to know about how the world is changing?” The answer, I suspect, is not so much what you need to know, but what you may have forgotten because you were distracted by the onslaught of change.

Let me get less cryptic. There is a company that sells technical innovation. It has been doing this for over a century. That original spark, way back when, was to take its understanding of its core technologies and apply them in new ways to solve customer problems. The entire company was built around that core.

Bigger was Better…

Today, the company is struggling with change. The marketplace is shifting. It seems that it must be time to grasp onto something new. At the very least, the company must be open to trying many new things, and trying them quickly. Like many manufacturers, over time those direct ties to the ultimate consumer of their products have had more and more links forcefully jammed into the supply chain, leaving the manufacturer several steps removed. Size and success used to dictate the creation of a distribution network, because physical proximity to the customer was required. Technology is sending that requirement into oblivion, industry by industry. At a minimum, it’s severely altering the importance of the middle links in the chain. Technology is allowing customers to get closer to manufacturers, and vice versa.

This is certainly a change in the way the company has done business over the past few decades, but if we look further back, the company gets back on familiar ground. Technology is bringing it closer to that original founding spark, and I have to believe that’s a good thing. This company became successful by having discussions on the shop floor with the people that were doing the job and struggling with a problem. They identified the need because they could see it. It was right in front of their nose. Innovation came from observation. The spark of success was alive and well and could be found in that small gap between the company and the customer. The 20th century need for infrastructural support stretched the gap, forcing the spark of innovation to become systemic and scalable. And in that, something important was lost.

…But it’s a More Intimate World Now.

But technology is closing the gap once again. And, in the process, as it brings the potential to relight all those sparks, it’s also bringing the opportunity to have those shop-room-floor discussions in millions of locations simultaneously. If the company looks back to the core reason it exists, and understands why that’s important to customers, it will know what to do with technology.  The answer isn’t in the sea of change that’s descending on it – but from remembering why the company’s founders decided this was something worthwhile, something that would make it worth coming to work each day, and turbo-charging that purpose with technology.

Making “Wow” Scalable

bad-customer-serviceAs I said in yesterday’s post…”Wow” is a moving target. As we have more “Wow” experiences, we expect more “Wow” experiences and if we don’t get them, we go away disappointed.

Does “Wow” Increase Share Prices?

Every year for the past 3 years, BusinessWeek does a national survey to find the top Customer Service champs in America. Last year, Amazon topped the list, followed by United Services Automobile Association, Jaguar, Lexus, The Ritz-Carlton, Publix Super Markets and Zappos.com. BusinessWeek poised the very pertinent question:  does increased customer satisfaction lead to greater equity values. Is being nice to people good business?

In a study from 2006, Claes Fornell and his fellow researchers found the answer was a strong yes. While customer satisfaction is a factor seldom watched by Wall Street, Fornell et al found that a portfolio comprised of the top 20% of companies in the American Customer Satisfaction Index would have outperformed the market (based on the DJIA) by 93% in the period 1997 to 2003. It also left the S&P 500 in the dust (201%) and the NASDAQ (335%). Interestingly, the only time the market indexes outperformed the customer satisfaction portfolio was during the irrational exuberance of the Dotcom bubble in 1999 and 2000.

In 2009, Bruce Cooil and a group of researchers from Vanderbilt did a similar study and added an interesting nuance to the Fornell study. They looked at four different portfolios picked on the basis of customer satisfaction scores and found that the portfolios that performed the best were the ones where the score was rising. Picking stocks based on high satisfaction scores alone wasn’t a consistent winning strategy. But picking stocks where the score was rising year over year and where the company’s scores were above the national average outperformed the market by over 100% through a ten year period. The worst performing portfolio? The companies where the satisfaction score was dropping, even if it started from a fairly high level.

So, it’s not necessarily the high score that generates the loyalty, it’s scaling customer satisfaction to keep it on the rise. As I said yesterday, the secret of “Wow” lies in exceeding expectations. This introduces a dilemma for the business owner. How do you scale customer satisfaction?

How Zappos Scales “Wow”

For the answer, let’s look at one of the consistent winners in the BusinessWeek Survey, Zappos.com. CEO Tony Hsieh approaches customer service with the ardour of a religious zealot. But the journey he and Zappos have taken there has gone through some twists and turns. In a recent keynote I had the opportunity to attend, Tony shared that Zappos core philosophy has evolved in the past decade. In the beginning, the core goal for Zappos was selection. They wanted to deliver online shoppers the largest selection of shoes available anywhere. Zappos founder Nick Swinmurn started Zappos because he was looking for a pair of boots. He came up empty handed. Surely, it shouldn’t be so hard to find the right pair of shoes, in the right size and the right color. Swinmurn’s answer? An online shoe megastore.

Soon, however, Zappos realized that selection alone wasn’t enough. In 1999 and 2000, people were wary about shopping online for anything, including shoes. Trust was essential in convincing customers to make a purchase online. Enter Hsieh. Zappos built the trust by focusing on customer service. No questions asked return policies. Free overnight shipping. Zappos switched it’s core corporate philosophy from selection to satisfaction. Happy customers fuelled word of mouth, which drove Zappos to higher and higher sales numbers.

Zappos retooled their operation to deliver a “Wow” experience. They brought shipping in house, creating their own fulfillment centre in Kentucky and later Las Vegas. They created a symbiotic, joined at the hip partnership with UPS. They re-engineered the process from order placement to doorstep delivery, aiming to knock the socks off their customers. Zappos began to systemize “Wow”.

It was at this point that Hsieh and Swinmurn learned their next lesson – “Wow” is best delivered person to person. People are the secret behind the scalability of “Wow”. If you hire great people, and treat them well, they’ll naturally aspire to deliver exceptional customer service, and because each employee is empowered to respond appropriately to each situation, they can scale “Wow” on the fly, reading a customer’s expectations and shooting to exceed it. Hsieh and Zappos switched their core philosophy yet again, from customer service to culture. HR became the primary focus of the company.

“I Just Want a Pizza!”

In his keynote, Hsieh gave us an example of how “Wow” could scale to ridiculous lengths if you let good people do good things.

Hsieh and some friends were celebrating one evening on the West Coast. As they headed back to their hotel, one of the group, an old college friend, mentioned how hungry she was. The group offered to stop for a bite. “No,” the friend said. Her heart was set on the pizza she was going to order from room service when she got back to the hotel. All day long she had been dreaming of this pizza. She went on at length to the group about how much she was going to enjoy this pizza. Very soon, Hsieh and company got very tired of hearing about this damned pizza.

They returned to the hotel at a very late hour and the friend phoned room service:

“I’m sorry ma’am, but room service shuts down at 2 am”

“But I was going to order a pizza…”

“I’m sorry ma’am, the kitchen is closed.”

“But my pizza…”

“Sorry, there’s nothing I can do.”

Crestfallen, the friend put the phone down. The group, who had gone up to the room to continue the celebration, looked up.

“Room service is finished. I can’t order my pizza. What kind of hotel shuts room service down at 2 a.m.? Pizza’s are supposed to be eaten late at night.”

At this point, Hsieh, inspired no doubt by some of refreshments consumed over the course of the evening, made a suggestion:

“Call Zappos!”

“What?”

“Call our call centre. We always say how great our people are…how they can solve anything. Call Zappos and see if they can help you.”

Soon, the group joined in, all gaining inspiration from the liquor consumed over the course of the evening:

“Yeah, phone Zappos. Let’s see how good they are.”

So, she phoned Zappos –

“Hello, Zappos. How can I help you?”

“I need a pizza.”

“Excuse me?”

“I was out with some friends and all I wanted was a pizza when I got back to the hotel. But I got back here and room service is closed. I can’t get a pizza!”

“Ma’am, you know you phoned Zappos, right?”

“Yes…”

“Zappos…the shoe store? Accessories? Clothing…?”

“Yes. But can you help me? I really need a pizza.”

“Just a minute…”

A few minutes later, the call centre operator was back….with a list of pizza delivery restaurants in the area that were open all night.

That’s how you scale “Wow”.

The Trouble with “Wow”

customer-service-cartoon-thumbThere’s been a lot of chatter recently about “Wow” experiences. This has been held up as the holy grail of customer satisfaction, an experience so amazing it makes the consumer stop in their tracks, jaws dropping and heart a flutter. But there’s a nasty little surprise awaiting any company aiming for impossibly high bar of “Wow.”

“Wow” is a moving target. “Wow” never stays in one place for long.

There’s a pretty simple equation that defines “Wow” for us:

Experience – Expectation = Reaction

So, Wow depends on our expectations going in. It’s only a Wow if it exceeds expectations. And our expectations are constantly changing.

Let me give you an example. Zappos.com is one of the poster children for Wow. CEO Tony Hsieh has tried to consistently deliver Wow to his customers. He gives one example. The Zappos Head Office is located a stone’s throw from the UPS distribution centre in Las Vegas. The reason is that Zappos works hard to get orders shipped as quickly as possible. Rather than waiting for a batch of orders to come in and be filled from the warehouse, which is more efficient, Zappos fills the orders immediately. The goal is to get the order into UPS’s hands as quickly as possible. So, theoretically, a person could order from Zappo’s at 10 pm and find the parcel on their door the next morning. One would hope that would elicit a “Wow!”

But once it happens, our expectations get reset. The standard expectation for Wow is now overnight delivery. If Zappos does it again, it’s not a Wow, it’s simply meeting expectations. And, if the planets aren’t perfectly aligned and the parcel isn’t delivered in 8 hours, suddenly the outcome is disappointment. In the equation of “Wow”, the higher the expectation, the more chance you’ll end up with a negative result.

I’m not downplaying the importance of a good customer experience. I’m simply letting you know that always aiming for “Wow” can lead to a never ending escalation of customer expectations. There are, however, some very interesting things at play here that I would like to explore further in the next several posts. I’m fascinated by how customer psychology has shifted now that technology has transformed the marketplace. For example, Tony Hsieh found that for Zappos, the secret of keeping “Wow” scalable lies in something pretty elemental – how you treat people. But that’s a topic for tomorrow.

What’s a Marketer’s Biggest Problem? So Much Technology – so Little Time!

pprogtechmstitleIn the past year or so, I’ve been at a number of technology platform user summits and at some point on the agenda, there is always the product feature enhancement announcements. With much fanfare I listen as they roll out enhancement after enhancement, and I can’t  help thinking: do people really use all these features?

Functional Dysfunction

I suspect every platform, whether it be sales automation, marketing automation, paid search management, website analytics or testing and optimization platforms all suffer from the same under utilization. When it comes to technology, there always seems to be an arms race between the product development people and the users…and at first glance, the user always loses. They always have far more functionality thrown at them than they can possibly use. Function turns into performance dysfunction. But ultimately, the users will have the last word. Stuff that doesn’t get used eventually doesn’t get renewed. It becomes fat that gets trimmed from the operational budget.

At Enquiro, we’re going through this right now. Several months ago, we decided we needed some new project management infrastructure software, so we compiled our list of wants and started shopping. We made our choice, based largely on the fact that the winner seemed to be able to do everything we wanted and some stuff we hadn’t even thought of. But all this functionality came at a price. We have been struggling to implement and even with our limited implementation, our team members are finding the overly complex interface a pain-in-the-ass to use. The technical assessment gave our final choice flying colors. The real world assessment is much less rosy.

Tools that Don’t Get Used Aren’t Tools, They’re Ballast

It’s like I’ve said before: technology is simply a tool. And a tool only has value if it’s used. It has to feel comfortable, familiar and useful. It has to match the way we work. And often, too many features jam up the interface, getting in the way of the user. Elegance is sacrificed for a grocery list of customer wishes.

Part of the blame lies with the developers, but honestly, most of it lies with the users. We ask for the stuff, so they give it to us. With our project management platform, they simply gave us everything we were asking for. Granted, they could have made it easier to use and integrated functionality a little more holistically, but developers have every right to defend themselves by saying, “hey, we’re just responding to our customer’s requests”.

So, where does the blame ultimately lie? Well, I think we marketers are focused on exactly the wrong thing. We keep looking at technology and asking for features without really understanding how we’ll use those features. There is no integrated strategic flow for us to follow, so there is no way for developers to build elegance into their interface. They have to give us access to every lever and button, bloating the user experience hopelessly, because we want everything but we’re not exactly sure what we want to do with it.

We fall into this trap because we’re focused on technology, not on end goals. We got mired in the minutiae without knowing our ultimate destination.

Objectives First, Strategy Second…then Technology

Let me give you an example. Let’s say a business objective of yours is to convince sales managers of mid sized companies selling to other businesses that your solution will allow each of their sales reps to sell 20 to 30% more. That’s a pretty simple objective. If you start by understanding what it would take to reach that objective, you begin to understand all the steps along the way. You begin to identify the desired inputs and outputs on the persuasion path and how they relate to each other. You map the journey your prospects have to take. And then, finally, you can see how tools can help you maximize your potential at each step of that journey. Suddenly, you’ve put your objective first, your strategy second and only then do you worry about the technology. Prospect behavior drives technical requirements and dictates the features you’ll used. In the optimal situation, you would come out of it with a buyer-centric strategy that pieces of technology can plug into seamlessly, with no wasted functionality.

Well, you say, that’s exactly what we do! Hooey, I say. I’ve yet to see a company pull that off successfully or consistently. First of all, ownership of that prospect path is brutally sliced up and scattered across your corporate org chart. No one owns it from start to finish. So, you look at your slice, along with your accompanying success metrics (which are at least 2 or 3 steps removed from the ultimate business objective) and you start looking for the tool to optimize that slice. There’s no one to connect all the technical pieces.

Meet the MT

Enter the Marketing Technologist. This is a brilliant concept from my friend Scott Brinker (who is the Chief Marketing Technologist) at ion Interactive. This is someone who can bridge the gap between marketing objectives, at a very high level, and the technology needed to execute against those objectives in a more integrated way. They own the entire process, beginning to end, and understand the end goals. They stitch together the distributed pieces of the campaign with the right features and the right tools, determined not by isolated wish lists but rather real marketing objectives and a deep understanding of prospect behavior.

Everybody Wins

If we keep people at the front of the process, where they belong, and technology at the end, everyone benefits. We can give clearer direction to tool developers about what we really need. If they understand ultimate requirements, rather than proximate ones, they can start to streamline the interface by building intelligence into it, doing some steps in the background and simplifying the interface by only including controls we really need to change. The customers benefit because our wooing of them becomes more integrated, smoother and much less irritating. And the marketers can focus on what they need to focus on, persuading people rather than trying to wade through complex technology.

10 Things I Learned from Disney – #9: Never Underestimate Your Customer’s Imagination

marypoppins45-06Perhaps one of the greatest rewards for any company is when they can unleash the power of their customer’s imaginations. Our imagination is a supremely powerful human gift. Imagination drives everything that is wonderful about human culture. Every achievement we’ve made, every piece of art ever created, every book written, all comes from the same wellspring – our imagination. We are never more completely, uniquely, wonderfully human than when we are imagining.

When we imagine, we create an inner reality that lives apart from the world around us. It is a world of our making, envisioned in our minds eye. But we can also use our imaginations to share the vision of another, drawing it into our inner world and ensure that it resonates with our own beliefs and views. This sharing of a vision was the special gift that Disney shared with us. From the imaginations of the Walt Disney company came spectacular visions and make believe worlds, and the door was always open to welcome us inside. Like the sidewalk chalk drawings of Mary Poppin’s Bert, these were richly imagined worlds that we could share in. We could fly and stay young forever. We could find our Prince (or Princess) and live happily ever after. We could each have our own Fairy Godmother. If we were in a darker mood, we could experience the terror of a Night on Bald Mountain, or of being transformed into a donkey on Pleasure Island.

Disney never underestimated the power of imagination. It was a corporation fuelled by imagination. But even with all the imagination that could be found within Disney, it would have all been meaningless if we did not have the imagination to share in their vision. Works of imagination are like seeds..they need to land in fertile ground to germinate and bloom. Someone without imagination can find no magic in a Beethoven symphony, a tale by Dickens or a Disney movie.

Of course, you can package entertainment in easily digestible, bit sized pieces. And certainly Disney turned out their share of mindless entertainment. It took no prodigious intellectual effort to find the meaning in a Silly Symphony cartoon short, Herbie the Love Bug or The Shaggy D.A. But Disney also asked us to flex the muscles of our imagination with works like Fantasia, Mary Poppins or even Bambi. He believed animation could be high art and he didn’t offer mental short cuts as entry points.

The more important the work of art, the more the creator asks from the audience in terms of sheer imagining horsepower. Those that underestimate that power pander to the lowest common denominator. The easy path is to rely on our animal responses. But the path that challenges us as humans raises us to a different level. It requires us to appreciate with our minds. Imagination is one of those things that pay you back for the effort you put in. If you take the easy path, you’ll be rewarded with fleeting pleasure. But if you mine the depths of your imagination, you’ll discover entire new worlds as well as new ways of looking at the world around you. When Disney was at it’s best, it offered us rich imaginary offerings that resonated at a deep and fundamental level.

Lesson #9: If imagination is your stock and trade, don’t underestimate the imagination machinery of your audience. Push the limits and both you and they will be rewarded.

10 Things I Learned from Disney – #8: Adversity is the Sharpening Stone of Success

evil-queen_lIn a previous post, I cataloged the many challenges of Walt Disney’s career. It seemed to everyone, including his brother Roy, that just when things were going smoothly, Walt would find a way to court disaster yet again. Adversity became a way of life for Disney studio’s. It they weren’t struggling, they (and I use the collective team advisedly – I actually mean Walt) weren’t happy.

This is not exclusive to the Disney organization. Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s, used to say: “As long as you’re green, you’re growing. As soon as you’re ripe, you start to rot”. Kroc also said, “If you’re not a risk taker, you should get the hell out of business”. And as any good Darwinist would tell you, there’s nothing like environmental adversity to speed up the pace of evolution. Adversity brokers no maybes. Almost good enough isn’t nearly good enough to succeed when the chips are down. You either win or you lose. You either succeed or you fail. Judgment is swift and ruthlessly accurate.

What this means, in the hands of a nimble and bold leader, is an incredible opportunity to hone the edge of a successful company. Employees can rally against a common challenge, and the bigger the challenge, the faster and more effectively they’ll rally. Great accomplishments come in the face of great adversity.

I suspect Walt knew this at a fundamental level. This is probably why he assiduously avoided comfort and complacency, seeking instead to lead his company balanced on the ragged edge of disaster. He embraced challenge and courted adversity. He thrived on it.

So Lesson # 8 is this – Don’t be afraid of adversity. Find the opportunities that lie within. And, in the words of Rahm Emanuel, never let a serious crisis go to waste. Those that live their entire lives in their comfort zones live very small lives indeed. Those that flaunt boundaries and incite challenge live big and leave huge footprints.

Google and Microsoft: Signs of Hubris, Signs of Humility

GoogleVsMicrosoftFrom my admittedly limited vantage point, I’ve noticed a subtle but significant shift in what’s coming out of the respective campuses of Microsoft and Google. And it’s not so much the innovations, although it certainly resonates there. This has to do with attitude and culture. This is the touchy-feely stuff that I chalk up to gut instinct, with no empirical backing. So, take it for what it’s worth, but I will say that my gut has a pretty good track record.

The Age of Cockiness Returns

Google has come full circle. They started with a cockiness that was understandable, given their immediate success. Google was everyone’s online Golden Child. The founders (from which the brash attitude was inherited) surrounded themselves with an equally cocky, equally audacious group of young geniuses. The collective culture was bold, arrogant and had little patience for the mediocre or mundane. They also had little respect for anything beyond the bounds of “Google-world.” If it wasn’t part of Google, it somehow was less relevant, less valuable and less interesting. This was a company that fully intended to conquer the world, and it seemed that world conquest was within reach. Google was getting their fingers into everything, and it seemed that everything they touched would turn to gold.

Then, four or five years ago, Google’s attitude changed. They started reaching outside the walls of “Google-world,” sincerely looking to forge relationships with partners. Googlers developed a quieter confidence: less bold, less brash.  They actually sought others’ opinions. Now, it appeared that Google might be accepting the fact that conquering the world might be, at a minimum, a collaborative effort.

But in the last year, I’ve seen a return to Google’s original attitude. The humility is disappearing and hubris again rules the day. It’s almost as if, now that Google is the king of the hill and is drawing more than their fair share of scrutiny, much of it negative, they’ve gone into defensive mode. They’ve circled the wagons and drawn more inside. As I said, the changes are subtle, but noticeable. I believe they’ve grown up as a company and have had to face some harsh business realities. But in the process, they have responded by becoming defiantly self-confident and dismissive of dissenting views. They seem to once again be retreating into the safe and welcoming arms of “Google-world.” Somehow, though, this time the cockiness rings a little hollow.

We Really Want You to Like Us

Contrast this with Microsoft. Microsoft was the company everybody loved to hate. For years, it was the brunt of jokes in the search marketing world. The only question with Microsoft, it seemed, was which foot were they going to shoot themselves in next? Miserable failure after miserable failure exasperated everyone, both inside and outside of the Redmond mother ship. If Mack Sennett (or the Three Stooges, or Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen — pick your cultural context) ever ran a software company, surely this would be it.

But in the last year (roughly about the same time Google started circling the wagon) I’ve seen a different Microsoft. It’s humble, but it’s also ready to deliver. They’ve knocked the chip off their shoulder and seemed to have put the bumbling behind them. They’re executing and cranking out some pretty decent stuff. Somehow, they’ve pulled back from the brink of irrelevance and are now ready to be a contender. I’ve had varying shades of criticism of Bing, but I’ve never said it wasn’t a much-needed step forward in their search offering. It’s miles ahead of anything Microsoft had done in search previously. But it’s not this battle that interests me. It’s the next fight that Microsoft chooses to pick. Given the change in attitude, I’m not sure I would be betting against them. As one Microsofter confided to me, “We’re at our best when we’ve had the crap kicked out of us.”

I have no idea what this means in the big picture, but I do know that the tone and temper of an organization is a pretty reliable indicator of future success. Perhaps I can sum it up best in this way. It’s almost as if Google is already prepared to defend themselves against future criticism. Microsoft, on the other hand, is doing everything in their power to rebuild a broken relationship by impressing the hell out of you.