Edward de Bono, I think it was, who captured the difference as follows. Presumably, in general, we do things because we can see the benefit of doing them. A problem exists when we can see the benefit of doing something, but we do not yet know how to do it. An opportunity exists in the opposite situation: when there are things that we know how to do, but we have not yet seen the benefit of doing them.

Seth Godin’s post Sell the problem describes a neat shift in thinking which is potentially useful to many people in many fields. His point is that there is no sense in trying to sell a solution to someone who does not know that they have a problem; so he suggests concentrating on making them aware that they have a problem!

His approach has a lot of merit, however maybe the change in the framing of this situation can be taken one step further. If they do not have a problem, then they do not have a problem! And who wants to pay for, i.e. buy, problems? So why try to sell them problems?

Surely, in fact, Seth Godin is not recommending that we “sell the problem” at all? He is recommending that we “sell the opportunity”!

Concentrating on describing their opportunities which can be addressed by our capabilities, rather than on describing our solutions for their problems, is surely the way to have conversations with those people who do not have problems … and, frankly, do not want any!

But they do want opportunities, and they might be prepared to buy them!

When you think of very poor customer service, which business sector comes to mind?

For me, far and away the worst are car dealerships! I have limited experience of buying cars from them, it is their servicing business which stands out as being awful, sometimes ridiculously so!

Don’t judge a book by its cover!

If their business premises were a mess and their people scruffy, then one might expect poor service; but their premises are extremely clean and well-designed and their people are smartly dressed (if you excuse the proliferation of extreme hair styles on the salesmen).

So, it is partly the contrast that makes it so jarring.

Should I?

Perhaps I should recount the saga which lasted several weeks and included:
– their inability to find a fault despite the cause being suggested to them and, much later, finding it satisfactorily themselves
– their attempt to charge for an incorrect solution
– their reluctance to accept the results of tests by a specialist
– their attempts to charge for unnecessary work
– their creation of a new fault
– their attempt to avoid responsibility for that
– their grudging acceptance of my explanation of its symptoms
– and, finally and funniest of all, their expressed delight at their success in using their diagnosis manuals to trace the fault that they had created, based on my explanation of its symptoms!

But let’s leave that one for another day!

For now, a simpler story:

One memorable incident began when I was making arrangements with the main dealer for my car to undergo routine maintenance; I also arranged to take advantage of their collection and delivery service. They were to collect the car early on the morning of the chosen day.

However I knew that, as one of their staff lives nearby, it is sometimes more convenient for them if they collect the car the evening before; this also allows them to start work on the car earlier on the day itself. So I offered them this option on the basis that, if they wanted to do this, they would need to make contact with me to change the arrangements.

No such change was made, so the original arrangement stood.

Late in the afternoon on the day before the allotted day, I was driving elsewhere when I received a call from the car dealer asking where I was? They had sent someone to collect my car and I was not at home!

I informed them that I was more than 50 miles away and the arrangement was that they collect the car the next morning. Well, they told me, someone is at your house in Topsham and is expecting to collect the car. Well, I told them, I am sorry about that, but wait … why Topsham (Devon, UK)? I had lived in Topsham up to about five years earlier and, since then, had lived in Sidbury (Devon, UK) some 15 miles away and, on several previous occasions they had collected the car from, and delivered it to, Sidbury.

No, I was told, the only address that they have for me is in Topsham. This was ridiculous because I had printed documents relating to work done by them with the Sidbury address on them. After several interchanges, it transpires that some other information was also not available because – they let slip – their computer system had crashed recently and they had lost some data.

Aha: so they had lost some data and reloaded their system with customer addresses which were at least five years out of date! Presumably they knew that they had reloaded the data and it is difficult to believe that mine was the only address that had changed in five years.

Even when I pointed this out to them, they were not accepting any responsibility and implying that it was my fault because I had not kept them informed of my change of address!

Why do we trust them?

They are hopeless and, in their view, everything is someone else’s fault; yet we trust them!

When thinking about my possible need to tread hard, at motorway speeds, on the brakes that they have maintained, I nevertheless fully expect that those brakes, complete with their fancy combination of electronics and hydraulics which provide their ABS capabilities, will function correctly and bring me safely to a standstill!

Maybe it is me who is at fault after all; maybe I need to lower my expectations even further!

It makes you think

It is a neat double entendre. Not surprisingly, “safety is no accident” is a slogan that is widely used to convey the importance of taking a positive approach to safety, along the lines of: “our record of no accident did not happen on its own, you know!”. While this makes us smile, it also carries a serious message.

It keeps you awake

In areas of operation where safety is taken particularly seriously, it provides a useful focus on the need for continuous vigilance, effort and development. “Safety is no accident” is perhaps best known in the field of aviation. Writing this just before boarding a transatlantic flight, with “the world’s favourite airline”, makes me particularly mindful of this!

It shares responsibility

One of the most important requirements in the field of safety relates to the need to depersonalise everything, although this might at first seem counter-intuitive. It is important to focus on “what is right” rather than “who is right”, because it is important to pursue information and facts; and this requires us to avoid blaming people.
The objective is to improve safety but, of course, “safety is no accident”. So, when any incident has occurred, the pursuit of blame is counter-productive. A cost has been incurred, so the objective is to maximise the benefit available. This involves learning as much as possible, with the purpose of reducing as far as possible the chance of a similar incident happening again. If there is any suspicion among those involved in an incident that blame is likely to be apportioned, then those people will naturally tend to react by withholding information, by fabricating information and by deflecting blame onto others. All of these behaviours are extremely counter-productive in the pursuit of knowledge of what actually happened.

…and another thing!

“Safety is no accident” carries a broader message: this applies not only to dangerous situations, but also to any outcome that we would prefer to avoid!

“We are not a cruise ship. We are an explorer ship!”

This is one of the key messages in the passenger briefing on the ships of the Hurtigruten service which runs daily northbound and southbound along the coast of Norway. For nearly 500 passengers recently boarded at Bergen, almost all of them on a cruise going well north of the Arctic Circle and many of them cruising back again, over a total of 12 days, this message is an interesting form of: “I have bad news and I have good news”!

Good news

The term “explorer ship” is an excellent choice. It alludes to ice breakers and scientific expeditions. It captures the spirit of adventure in seeing the midnight sun and the Northern Lights. Many of the passengers will be taking excursions, over the next week or two, to see animals and visit glaciers and waterfalls. That is the good news.

Bad news

Then the briefing went on to describe how the service runs every day of the year carrying people and goods up and down the coast in all weathers including temperatures which are, for many months of the year, as low as minus 30 degrees Celcius (about minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit). The Hurtigruten service is a lifeline for the coastal population of Norway. It docks at many places along the coast throughout the day and night, often stopping only for short periods. It is delivering supplies and equipment, and carrying people to hospital or to make connections with other boats and with flights. This emphasises that this is, in fact, a ferry.

The first part of the punchline is: “so we must be on time”. This was backed up by a story of an elderly gentleman who went ashore and became separated from the ship. As this is one of the few parts of the world where travel by boat is faster than by car or by train, it took several days and the efforts of many people, including attempted flights in bad weather, before he was able to catch up with and rejoin the ship. One can imagine that they have had many of these incidents over the years. Then comes the second part of the punchline: “so we will not wait for you”. For the vast majority of the passengers, on their adventurous cruise, this is the bad news.

Better together?

I found this combination interesting for two reasons. Firstly, I was not on a cruise, but was using the Hurtigruten to travel along the coast, a trip of about 14 hours. So I felt that I was using it for its intended purpose and felt a slight connection with the local population which was probably not felt by most of the other passengers.

Secondly, it emphasised that the ferry service is the main purpose of the Hurtigruten; yet the cruise service is its main activity. The size and standard of these ships is far greater than is required for the ferry service; and the local population are generally not customers for excursions. This is all to cater for the cruise passengers. Yet, without knowing the facts, it seems likely that the ferry service would have great difficulty in operating a service with this capacity, frequency and reliability, if it were not for the business from the cruise passengers.

Getting what you want

If I have understood this correctly, it seems to be an application of the principle, expounded by Zig Ziglar, that “you can have what you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want”. By providing a service for considerable numbers of visitors to experience the quite extraordinarily beautiful scenery and natural phenomena in Norway, the local population get their ferry service.

More:

On Hurtigruten

The Hurtigruten operates fourteen ships, almost all of which are around 10-16,000 tonnes and are very well appointed. Information about the eleven operating at any one time is available in real time, including: their location, current course and speed as well as webcam images from each ship.

Other information is available about the development and challenges for the service and the company.

Other thoughts

One cannot help wondering whether there might be opportunities of this type elsewhere at, for example, Caledonian MacBrayne in Scotland, which has a different story.

Choosing to be an “innovator”

When we think of finding innovative solutions we tend to think of “innovators”, also known as “technology enthusiasts” who invent new techniques or approaches in their search for new or enhanced capabilities in some desired area. It usually turns out that a very small proportion of these inventions are potential solutions; in other words, they fail most of the time. This behaviour occurs at the extremely early stages of the lifecycle of an innovation.

Another approach

In “Follow The Black Sheep …” David Lowe describes an effective approach to seeking advantages, not by seeking to invent innovative solutions, but by watching others who have found innovative solutions.

This is a great variation on the usual advice not to follow the crowd. That advice is, to relate to the theme of an earlier post from David, difficult to execute. We have all heard that: if we follow the crowd, we end up eating a lot of dust; or if we follow the sheep, we end up in the s**t. The difficulty with executing that advice is that, in being advised not to follow the majority, we are not being guided to do anything specific; where do we start? Any unusual action would seem to fit the bill!

His approach is much smarter because it gives us something to do. The advice is to look out for and to follow someone else who is already doing something unusual and apparently advantageous. Rather than performing a new action which might be completely worthless and to perform a lot of those in search of an advantage, his approach is to look out for a better approach which is already working. In this way, we increase our range of options and might even discover new combinations along the way.

Be an “early adopter”

As an approach to innovation, his approach is analogous to the “Fast Second” strategy. Rather than attempting to be the first to do anything, the approach is to watch other first movers and to emulate, and then surpass, those who have found advantages. It is the approach of the more effective “early adopter” (also known as “visionary”) rather than the ground breaking “innovator” (also known as “technology enthusiast”).

Rather than performing actions which are completely new and which might, but probably will not, turn out to be advantageous, his approach is to emulate the unusual, but apparently advantageous, behaviour of others so as to identify the advantages for ourselves. Rather than continually trying to initiate new behaviours, his approach is to focus on spreading effective behaviours which are already in use, albeit by a very small minority.

…and so on!

This then allows us to take the next step of discovering whether we can turn those advantages into benefits in the context in which we and others can apply the newly learned techniques. In this way, some of the new behaviours can, in time, be further adopted by the “early majority” and become new norms … and so the ball rolls on!

Thank you, David, for writing your post.

With increasing effectiveness of activities on the input side, the pressure to resolve the shortcomings further downstream will inevitably increase. We are seeing increases in tactical activity to generate and manage larger numbers of ideas and related innovations. This is occurring both internally within organizations and externally through open innovation. At least in part, this increase in capacity is facilitated by the availability of new and improved processes and tools. Consequently, many organizations are likely to be able to handle larger numbers of innovation opportunities than in the past.

An important part of the process, however, is the selection of these opportunities for further development. Among organizations which are enhancing their management of innovation, it is in this selection aspect of this process that there appear to be significant opportunities for improvement.

Customers are the ultimate recipients of the value generated by these innovation processes and are, ultimately the only providers of resources for their continuation. So, an understanding of the value attributed to products by customers might be expected to be the basis for some important guidance, at the very least, for the selection of development activities.

As far as I can tell: “it ain’t necessarily so”! It is not clear that many organizations apply a strategic approach to understanding the ways in which innovations are selected, or that this selection is based on an understanding of the ways in which value is attributed by customers.

As our understanding of the management of the overall process increases, hopefully our meta-innovation will provide solutions more rapidly in this area.

We’d already conversed briefly by electronic means, and so we arranged to meet IRL (In Real Life), as others have termed it. Ann had already tweeted, although at the time I had not seen her message, that drinking coffee at the Innovation Centre, Exeter University, was an important ancillary benefit of meeting me there! So we know one source of fuel for her thinking; and our meeting place was one element of the “innovation” theme.

As I understand it, Ann’s main thesis is that business, in general, and marketing, in particular, have changed significantly over the last year or less due largely to the advent of new communication channels, notably social media.

An important aspect of her approach relates to the building of communities. She has strong views on the kind of people and organizations with and for whom she likes to work. So it is not surprising that her preference for clients is, in part at least, based on their ability to recognise the need to grasp the opportunities and to generate benefits from building communities.

I learnt that those communities might be around an organization, within an organization or even be the entire organization. More specifically, the development of communities in which people self-select their role is closely related to the avoidance of hierarchical organization structures; so organizations which cling to hierarchies are unlikely to hold Ann’s attention for long!

Such a forward thinking approach to the consequences of novel social media is itself innovative.

So, as “innovation is the key” is a theme of mine these days, it was great to share some innovative thinking at the Innovation Centre.

The post “Why the New Normal Could Kill IT” captures it well.

Thomas Wailgum provides an insightful description of the challenges facing the important operational aspects of IT in many organizations. Many of the symptoms and some of the causes that he describes are undoubtedly true and have been adversely affecting the performance of many people for a long time!

But, who really cares?

I suggest that the people who really care are the people who are trying to serve the customers of the business. Consequently they will decide what they do and how they do it, including what services and products they use, including those that involve IT (almost all of them these days).

It seems to me interesting to describe this, as he has done, from the perspective of IT and IT people (of whom I am also, broadly, one!) .. but it is only interesting to IT people.

The people who require services are getting them from wherever they can and wherever they like and will continue, increasingly, to do so.

Many of the points that he makes are valid and accurate, including his list of  ”recent shocks”. Two of those struck me as particularly poignant and relevant.

One is “the unstoppable broadband and mobile explosion”, which seems to be a strange way to describe it. My reading of this is that IT people would like to “stop” it; but why? The availability of communication services with increasing bandwidth and location-independence is enabling greater sharing of information and understanding; many people, especially those in the “third world”, are benefitting enormously from this. I hope that I have understood his meaning incorrectly because, surely, the task of people who understand IT is to help others to take full advantage of the opportunities, not to try to stop them!

The other is “the consumerization of IT”, which is one way of looking at it but, again, seems to carry a subtextual bias. I detect a sense that this is seen to be the use, in business applications, of lower quality facilities intended for individuals who do not know the implications. There is some truth in this, but this has been a trend for decades and, so far, the roof has not fallen in! I suggest that this is misunderstanding of the bigger picture and, in a sense, does not go far enough

This is not simply consumerization, this is the commoditization of IT. This happens in every industry as bespoke products become more generally available, the nature of the competition changes. What was custom becomes standard and the action moves up a layer!

Much of Thomas Wailgum’s account of the situation is accurate and, potentially, very useful; but, by viewing it from the perspective of the providers of IT services rather than that of the consumers of IT services, the nature of the solutions seems to be pointing in the wrong direction!

We can carry on doing the same old things!

Along the way, we can improve, sell more, and cut costs.

But in end, sooner or later, we need to do something different.

That is why we innovate.

Now we know “how?”

Nowadays, everyone is talking about innovation!

Many things seem mysterious for a long time, and then we get them under control.

It happened in “sales”, then in “quality”, now it is the turn of “innovation”.

In the past, a few people knew that they could manage innovation; now everyone knows.

There are processes for managing innovation using “ideation”, “co-creation” and, even, “open innovation”.

That is how we innovate.

But do we know “what?”

Do we understand what to innovate?

Now there is a question!

The expensive consequences for computer systems, airlines, railways and many other systems and organisations having to mess about with times and schedules are completely unnecessary. And I have lost count of the number of times I have heard of people missing calls or online meetings due to misinterpretations of time zones and distortions in the name of “daylight saving”.

One would have thought that people who spend the most time involved with nature would find it the most ludicrous and that among those would be farmers. However, it seems that this is not the case as there is a discussion about introducing permanent BST or even “double BST” on the NFU website.

The news article is titled “Should we change the clocks?”. My answer is a simple “no”. In case the answer is unclear, I mean “no”! That is “do not change the clocks”! That is “leave the clocks alone”! That is “stop messing with the clocks”! In the UK that means “leave the clocks on GMT, the correct time”!

Does no one else understand this? Well, thankfully, many people do. For example, the whole of the aviation industry uses Zulu time (UTC) worldwide. Let’s be clear what that means. When pilots get a weather reports from any airport in the world (whether it is Heathrow or Los Angeles airport), the times are in Zulu time which is UTC/GMT. Yes everyone uses UTC.

The really funny part is that the NFU news article even states “analysts have claimed an extra hour’s daylight could be worth £3.5 billion a year to the economy”. This is the ultimate fallacy.

Let us be clear about something, in case you had not noticed: THERE IS NO EXTRA DAYLIGHT!! Where, on earth, did farmers get the idea that there is?!