Don’t Present What Can Be Pre-Sent

Being a professional speaker on innovation, I attend a lot of conferences and meetings.  And I am always amazed at how poorly most meetings are run.

One things in particular disturbs me…

When meeting time is used to present things that could have been sent via email.

Don’t do it!

Meeting time should be viewed as a huge investment in the attendees.  If you present information, status reports, or anything other static information that could be distributed before the meeting via email, you are wasting everyone’s time.

Next time you are holding a meeting.  Look at the agenda.  Decide what information can be disseminated in advance.  Then use the meeting time for conversation, networking, experiential learning, action planning, and other activities that can not be accomplished easily through electronic means.

When done properly, meetings can provide great value with a limited investment of time.

Tactics For Captivating Your Audience

I just returned from a fantastic weeklong cruise to the Southern Caribbean and noticed that it was structured similarly to others that I have enjoyed in the past.

Immediately upon arrival, there is much fanfare: champagne as you board; a band rocking out tunes on the pool deck; the captain and crew shaking hands and kissing babies. This is proceeded by an evening chock full of parties and gala events, including a black tie dinner. As the week progresses, the nights seem to be more low key. While there are still planned events, there is little in the way of hoopla. As the cruise nears completion, they pull out all the stops: another black tie dinner; a flaming Baked Alaska parade; headliner performances in the theater; numerous parties and celebrations.

The structure of the cruise got me thinking about a motto we have in the speaking profession: start your speech with your second best story and close with your very best.

Regardless of whether you are running a weeklong cruise experience, delivering a 45-minute keynote speech, selling a product or handling a customer service call, this is a great model for engaging customers. Start powerfully and end on a high note.

This process makes sense. By starting powerfully, you draw in your audience quickly, compelling them to listen. You then close in such a memorable way that they are left wanting more and are inspired to tell their friends. Be sure to create an experience—not just another conversation.

How can you accomplish this for all of your interactions?

First, plan your opening remarks. Don’t just wing it. If you are a speaker, have a compelling story crafted that you can deliver flawlessly each and every time. Or better yet, have several so that you can choose from one that will resonate with your audience. Grab their attention immediately by jumping right into the story. Ditch the “Thank you,” “Hello,” or “It is great to be here in Detroit.”

When crafting your opener, engage your audience. Don’t just speak at them. Use the word “you” more often than “I” or “we.” Patricia Fripp starts her opening story by saying, “I wish you could have been there.” This is an inclusionary tactic that increases engagement while reducing any potential creation of an egocentric view of the speaker. Another effective technique is to ask, “What would you have done in this situation?” This shifts the audiences from spectator to participant. These kinds of inquiries cause them to think, and thus engage.

These same techniques are not exclusive to the speaking world. Instead of just welcoming a customer who is browsing in the electronic section, you could start your dialogue with a fact: “Did you know that more customers buy xyz stereo than any other brand?” But use something more personal in nature.

If you are in a call center, what can you say that will engage the customer within the first second? If you are on site assisting a consumer, how can you build rapport with them instantly?

Once you have a strong opening, you can then engage them in appropriate dialogue about the product or service. This will take as long as necessary.

As you near the end of the customer interaction, close with your best material. Skilled speakers don’t end with “Thank you for your time.” They end with a story that leaves the audience on an emotional high. Give them something they will remember forever and will want to share with their friends. Even if they forget the rest of the speech, it is crucial that they remember the last few minutes.

What can you do to create a powerful closing experience? Is there a story you can tell? Can you make your customers feel uniquely special?My favorite story from the book Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive by Goldstein, Martin and Cialdini, is one where waiters were told to give customers mints with the check. This action increased tips slightly. But when the waiter left the check and mints, walked away and returned minutes later giving a few extra mints and saying, “I really like you guys,” the tips went through the roof.

Read the rest of this article on the American Express OPEN Forum

Are You Smarter than a PhD?

“Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?” is an entertaining show.

In the world of innovation, the biggest question is, “Are you smarter than a PhD?”

Here’s what I mean…

In Personality Poker we address four primary innovation styles.  The spades are the ones who are, as we would say in Boston, “wicked smaht.”

We find that spades are analytical, fact-driven, and often quite intelligent.

One of the challenges with driving innovation into organizations is that smart people are often more interested in being right than doing right.  That is, experts want to believe that they can solve every problem under the sun.  Although this isn’t true, this pervasive belief can circumvent your innovation efforts.

Here’s a simple example…

A few years back, an InnoCentive client identified a very complex challenge they wanted solved.  They posted this challenge to the InnoCentive.com website.  Anyone who could solve this problem would get a cash prize.  Dozens of solutions were submitted.

One of the solutions was submitted by an employee of the client.  Let’s call her Sally.

Sally went to the individual who sponsored the challenge and said, “Why did you go outside to find a solution?  I already had the answer.”  She was clearly upset that her company went externally to find a solution.

Interestingly, Sally’s actions were the catalyst which helped this client build the case for open innovation.

When the evaluation team evaluated all of the solutions submitted, Sally’s was not viewed as innovative.  It was the same type of solution the company had been considering for years.  The breakthrough idea came from someone outside of their company and even outside of their industry.

The company now had proof positive of the value of open innovation.

To be clear, the objective of open innovation is not to replace the smarts you already have in your organization.  It is to augment this brilliance.  Most companies don’t have enough time to solve all of the challenges they are working on.  Unfortunately, R&D people often get spread thin working on a lot of different types of challenges, some of which could be better solved by others outside the company.

Here’s a simple model I use to help companies determine which challenges should be solved externally, versus those that can be solved internally. Challenge fall into roughly three broad categories:

Simple: These are challenges that someone else has probably solved.  Although you could solve them internally, this is not the best use of your resources.  The odds are that someone else already has a solution that you could buy or license for less money in less time.  Why waste your highly specialized experts on these types of challenges?

Unsolved: There are some challenges that are exceptionally complex that may have remained unsolved within your organization for years.  Or maybe it is something that is viewed as outside your area of expertise.  A well-worn, but useful example of this is the oil spill recovery in Alaska after the Exxon Valdez accident. For 20 years, oil/gas experts futilely tried to find a way to pump out the almost solidified oil at the bottom of Prince William Sound.  Eventually, through a challenge posted on InnoCentive, they found a solution from the cement industry, not the oil/gas industry.  John Davis, a chemist with expertise in cement, figured that if vibrating cement can keep it from hardening, then a similar concept can be adapted to keep the oil in the tanks from freezing.  It worked and solved a two decade old problem. These challenge are also best solved externally because you can increase the level of diversity in your solver base.

Differentiator: These challenges fall into the sweet-spot of your organization.  These are the challenges that your experts are best equipped to solve.  By “outsourcing” the simple and unsolved challenges, you can allow your team to focus on what they do best.  This will increase your ability to solve the problems that differentiate you from your competition.  For these types of challenges, it is often useful to post challenges internally, using a tool like InnoCentive’s @Work solution.  This allows you to tap into the collective intelligence of every employee, regardless of where they reside organizationally or geographically.

Smart people want to be (and should be) appreciated for their brilliance.  They have dedicated their lives to the pursuit of knowledge. But as the late, great Will Rogers said, “There is nothing so stupid as an educated man, if you get off the thing that he was educated in.”

Everyone can not be educated in everything.  Therefore, figure out what you (and your organization) do best, and find others to help with everything else.

Content is No Longer King….Long Live the King (Part 1)

We often hear that content is king.  But I wonder if this is still true.

Let’s take some very simple examples.

I am sure most of you know that the iPod was not a revolutionary invention.  It was merely a new spin on the already existing MP3 player.  The real innovation was the integration of the iPod with iTunes.  This changed the game.  Using this model, the distribution of content became as important as the creators (the musicians) and the publishers (the record labels).  Apple is now one of the most powerful and profitable players in the music industry.

I now own an Amazon Kindle.  I have to admit, I love it (I’ll blog about that another time).  But what strikes me is that we are seeing the same “content distributor as king” dynamics unfold again.  In the book business, the author’s royalty is a pretty small slice of the pie.  I should know because I just signed a two book deal with Penguin’s Portfolio imprint.

Here are some illustrative figures for a printed book (kept very simple using made up, yet not far fetched numbers) …

• An author can expect about 10% +/- of the retail price of the book.  So if the book retails for $25, the author gets $2.50.
• The retailer expects roughly a 50% discount and then they sell it for whatever they can get.  If they sell it for a 20% discount, they gross approximately 30% of the price of the book (about $7.50).  Their profit is quite a bit less due to overhead costs.
• Finally the publisher gets the remaining 40% or so – about $10 a book.  By the time the publisher has covered all of their costs, books that sell poorly can lose them money because they need to pay the editorial staff, the various designers, the printers, and the shipping companies.

As you can see, the creator of the content (the author) gets a small slice.  The publisher of the content gets a small slice.  And the distributor gets a small slice.  The rest of the money is eaten up in various costs.

Enter in the digital age.

Book on Kindle sell for $9.99 as a rule (we’ll make it $10 to keep it simple).  Let’s look at an illustrative breakdown now.

• The author gets 5% of the retail (eBooks typically get a lower royalty) – $0.50.  As you can see, an author can make 80% less with a Kindle book.
• The publisher and Amazon split the rest in a way I am not privy to.
• The publisher’s costs are lower because they don’t need to pay for shipping and printing.  They still incur the upfront design and editorial costs.
• Amazon’s costs are close to zero.  They only need to pay a small amount to Sprint to provide mobile services.  No overhead (except maybe some computer servers).  No distribution.  No warehouses.

In this model, I want to be Amazon.  Everything sold is nearly pure profit.  The content creator (me) is definitely not the financial king in this model.  The publisher does fine.  But the distributor appears to be the one in charge.

This concept of distribution as king appears in all areas.  I was speaking with a seasoned consultant from the retailing industry.  He indicated that a few years ago, the power shifted from the manufacturers to the retailers.  Wal-Mart has the lion’s share of power in the industry and they now call the shots.

You could argue that Google has a similar position, although their financial model is a bit different (AdWords accounts for most of their profit).  But like other distributors, they don’t create content.  Instead they aggregate content from a variety of sources into one distribution system.

I just read on Friday that Comcast may be buying a 51% stake in NBC from GE.  This shows how the power is moving from the creators of the content (the writers) and the publishers of the content (NBC and their production staff) to the distributors of the content – Comcast.

Are you a content creator or you a content publisher?  Does someone else control distribution?  Or, are there new entrants who might control distribution?  Beware.  The current and future distributors/aggregators of your content could be one of the most serious threats to your business.

More to come…

How To Create a Culture of Innovation

I define innovation as an “organization’s ability to adapt and evolve repeatedly and rapidly to stay one step ahead of the competition.” A culture of innovation, when done right, gives you a competitive edge because it makes you more nimble with an increased ability to sense and respond to change.

A culture of innovation has less to do specifically with new products, new processes, or new ideas. There are of course discrete innovations such as the iPhone or a battery that is powered by viruses (MIT has developed this). These are valuable and necessary in order to create a culture of innovation.

But a culture of innovation is more than new ideas. It needs to be repeatable, predictable, and sustainable.  This only happens when you treat innovation like you treat all other capabilities in your business.  This means having, amongst other things, a defined process.

An organization’s innovation process must achieve three things.  It must:

• focus on the “right” challenges
• find appropriate solutions to those challenges, and
• implement the best solutions.

These translate into three “portfolios” an organization must create:

• A portfolio of challenges
• A portfolio of solutions
• A portfolio of projects

Let’s take each one at a time.

A Portfolio of Challenges

All companies have challenges. They can be technical challenges on how to create a particular chemical compound. They can be marketing challenges on how to best describe your product to increase market share. They can be HR challenges around improving employee engagement.

An organization’s ability to change (i.e., innovate) hinges on its ability to identify and solve challenges. Challenges are sometimes referred to as problems, issues, or opportunities. But at the end of the day, they are all just various forms of challenges. I will use these terms interchangeably here.

Where do you find these challenges? You can find them anywhere – from customers, employees, shareholders, consultants, vendors, competitors, and the list goes on.

Let’s face it, companies have no shortage of challenges.

And guess what, some of the most important challenges to solve are hidden due to organizational blind spots and assumption-making.

The “meta-challenge” for all organizations is to find which challenges, if solved and implemented, will create the greatest value. Given that organizations have limited resources and money, prioritization is critical.

My favorite quote (used many times in this blog) comes from Albert Einstein – “If I had an hour to save the world, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute finding solutions.” Most companies spend 60 minutes of their time finding solutions to problems that just don’t matter.

Therefore, the first step in creating a culture of innovation is to surface, identify, and codify challenges. And then you must become masterful at valuing, prioritizing, and framing these challenges.

Think of your innovation portfolio much like you would handle a financial investment portfolio.  You want some safe bets (incremental innovation) and some riskier investments (radical innovation).  You also want a variety of innovations ranging from technical challenges to marketing challenges, and service challanges to performance improvement challenges.

Once you have the right challenges to solve, the next step is to find solutions.

A Portfolio of Solutions

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