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Stop The Plane, I Want To Get Off

May 19, 2014

by:

Joe Patti

I apologize for the lack of posts last week. I learned about a death in the family the Friday before last and I didn’t have an opportunity to schedule posts to cover my absence.

On my flight back I missed a connection and spent the night sleeping on the floor in O’Hare airport. The initial cause was a weather delay, but it was exacerbated by some other incidents. When we were queued up to take off, we pulled out of line because of weather over Chicago. Shortly thereafter, a guy in front of me started mouthing off to the flight attendants. As a result, we rolled back to the gate and he was put off the plane. The captain announced anyone else who wanted to get off could.

Then we rolled back to the holding area and after 10-15 minutes, the captain comes on and says someone else wants to get off the plane. We roll back to the gate and this time a number of people choose to get off. Finding the luggage for everyone who had left took a long time. As soon as we were done (and watched the safety video for the 3rd time) we basically rolled right from the gate to the runway and took off.

Even though my connecting flight had been delayed in taking off, I still arrived a half hour after it left and ended up sleeping in the airport due to a lack of available hotel rooms and rental cars.

The question I pondered as I eyed my name inching up on the standby queue was what this willingness to go back to the gate twice portends for customer expectations and demands in the future. I understand the security concerns associated a hostile passenger that had us return to the gate the first time, the second return seemed to be motivated more by a simple request.

I wonder at the calculus that made returning to the gate a second time and potentially adding to the mass of people stranded at an airport and the ill will that would generate seem preferable to getting in the air at the first possibility.

Worse, I wondered about what sort of precedent this would set for future flights I might take if people felt they had license to request a return to the gate when they got tired of waiting for the plane to take off.

What is the possible impact of airlines making these decisions upon the changing expectations of our audiences?

One statement I heard at a seminar on customer service that always made sense to me was that no customer really wants their money back. That is just the easiest and most assumed option thanks to repeated claims of “satisfaction guaranteed, or your money back.”

But who spends time and money driving/flying somewhere, renting a hotel, getting a babysitter, paying for meals and making whatever other arrangements are required to reach a destination or purchase a product, assured by the knowledge that they can always get their money back if they are dissatisfied?

They go to all this trouble because they expect to have a problem free experience. Giving them their money back doesn’t really compensate for all the other expenses and effort that was required. So if you are the source of disappointment, you should work to make the situation better and hold the refund for later when other options have been exhausted.

In some respects, the returning to the gate is a better solution than giving money back. But my feeling is that if they made being on the plane a more comfortable, positive situation to start with, people would be less interested in getting off. It is a sorry state of affairs when getting off and going nowhere is viewed as the preferred option.

The same is likely true of attendance at performing and visual arts events.

But this is where buying things online and receiving your entertainment in your house is so attractive. You don’t have to make the time and financial investment required for a destination based product or experience. If you are not satisfied, you can ask for your money back. You may not be entirely happy, but at least you don’t feel the bad experience has cost you in other areas.

My concern about the impact of this “go back to the gate” practice is less about people thinking they can get up and leave whenever they want to if they are dissatisfied. That practice is decades old. My worry is that this advances the idea of individual desires over the good of the collective group and will manifest in ways worse than people talking and texting on phones during a performance.

Audience Relations, Management Philosophy, State of the Arts

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Do You Underestimate The Customer’s Journey?

May 7, 2014

by:

Joe Patti

Inc Magazine recently had an article of 100 Great Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Ask. As you might imagine, there was a lot in the list that have relevance to non-profit organizations.

Some deal with topics that continually arise in conversations about the arts like relevance; allowing a pursuit of funding to divert the organization from its mission; and what metrics are being used to define success.

1 How can we become the company that would put us out of business? -Danny Meyer, CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group

2 Are we relevant? Will we be relevant five years from now? Ten? -Debra Kaye, innovation consultant and author

52. If our company went out of business tomorrow, would anyone who doesn’t get a paycheck here care? -Dan Pink

6. What trophy do we want on our mantle? – Marcy Massura, a digital marketer and brand strategist at MSL Group
Massura explains, “Not every business determines success the same way.Is growth most important to you? Profitability? Stability?”

7. Do we have bad profits? -Jonathan L. Byrnes, author and senior lecturer at MIT
Byrnes explains, “Some investments look attractive, but they also take the company’s capital and focus away from its main line of business.”

8. What counts that we are not counting? -Chip Conley, founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality and head of global hospitality for Airbnb
Conley explains, “In any business, we measure cash flow, profitability, and a few other key metrics. But what are the tangible and intangible assets that we have no means of measuring, but that truly differentiate our business? These may be things like the company’s reputation, employee engagement, and the brand’s emotional resonance with people inside and outside the business.”

Others focus on customers/audiences.

10. Are we paying enough attention to the partners our company depends on to succeed? -Ron Adner, author and professor at Tuck School of Business
Adner explains, “Even companies that execute well themselves are vulnerable to the missteps of suppliers, distributors, and others.”

17. Which customers can’t participate in our market because they lack skills, wealth, or convenient access to existing solutions? -Clayton Christensen, author, Harvard Business School professor, and co-founder of Innosight

21. Who, on the executive team or the board, has spoken to a customer recently? -James Champy, author and management expert

32. Do we underestimate the customer’s journey? -Matt Dixon, author and executive director of research at CEB
Dixon explains, “Often, companies don’t understand the entirety of the customer’s experience and how many channels may have already failed them. They don’t understand that the customer goes to the website first, pokes around but can’t find the answer to their question, and then tries to start up a chat with an agent, only to get frustrated by the delayed response. Only then do they go to the Contact Us tab and call. From the company’s perspective, the call is square one. The customer sees it as, you’ve already wasted 15 minutes of my time.”

62. Do we say “no” to customers for no reason? -Matt Dixon
You may have created your customer policies at a time when you lacked resources, technology wasn’t up-to-snuff, or low service levels were the industry norm. Have those circumstances changed? If so, your customer policies should change to

Number 17 needs no explanation. I actually was somewhat reassured by the fact that for-profit business faced the same challenges about education/skills, access and wealth that non-profit arts organizations do.

I was drawn to #32 because it is so easy to be unaware of all the hurdles a customer faces when dealing with you.

Number 62 also strongly grabbed my attention because it emphasizes the need to constantly revisit and revise your policy. It had particular significance to me because I recently discovered that a practice I assumed was due to technical limitations was erroneous, and was in fact just a matter of history and habit. As a result, we will be selling new subscriptions two weeks earlier this year than in the past.

Number 10 I read both as not giving customers what they need to have a successful experience, but related to partners and colleagues as well. Are you paying attention to the health of businesses you depend on as well as that of other arts organizations in the community? Even if they are doing fine, could more clearly communicating your needs to them lead to a more efficient outcome for both of you? Could mutually beneficial partnerships result, strengthening both organizations?

Some of the question were focused on strengthening your company internally in terms of thinking, planning and self/employee development.

3. If energy were free, what would we do differently? -Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos
Hsieh explains, “This is a thought experiment to see how you would reconfigure the business if you had different resources available or knew that different resources would one day become available. Another question might be, what if storage was free? Or what if labor costs half as much or twice as much?”

9. In the past few months, what is the smallest change we have made that has had the biggest positive result? What was it about that small change that produced the large return? -Robert Cialdini, author and professor emeritus of marketing and psychology at Arizona State University

16. If no one would ever find out about my accomplishments, how would I lead differently? -Adam Grant, author and professor at Wharton

22. Did my employees make progress today? -Teresa Amabile, author and Harvard Business School professor
Amabile explains, “Forward momentum in employees’ work has the greatest positive impact on their motivation.”

37. Am I failing differently each time? -David Kelley, founder, IDEO

The last one about embracing failure is a familiar topic of discussion even in the arts community today.

These last few (though there are many like them in the article) remind business leaders to be introspective of themselves and their companies. It is easy to overlook things like the change that made the biggest impact, or even attribute the impact to something else unless you stop and think about the true source. Certainly paying attention to progress of employees is one way small changes can manifest as big impacts over the course of a few months.

Perhaps the toughest of these last handful of questions is #16 because it challenges you set aside your ego in order to be a more effective leader.

Business Models, Info You Can Use, Leadership, Management Philosophy

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The Tao of Data

May 6, 2014

by:

Joe Patti

Following a little on the theme of my post last week about being well-rounded, The Drucker Exchange recently had a post about balancing quantitative and qualitative mindsets.

Because there is such a focus on the quantitative these days with people encouraged to enter STEM fields and schools’ value being judged on the basis of test results, the arts community has been pushing back by touting the value of the arts. Though often it is in the context of these same quantitative measures: test scores, economic impact and earnings.

The Drucker Exchange post, as well as the Wall Street Journal column by Thomas Davenport that inspired it, note that like the peanut butter and chocolate of a Reese’s cup (my metaphor), quantitative and qualitative are most effective together.

Despite years of work at providing both knowledge and quantitative analysis to decision-makers, there is scant evidence that we have really improved decisions—so we have our work cut out for us.

At heart I think the historical separation of knowledge and numbers people is a “Two Culture” problem, made famous by C.P. Snow. Knowledge management people are humanities/liberal arts types, and analytics people are math/science types. We need to get them together, however. Almost all key domains of business–including customer insights, understanding the broader business and economic climate, and various approaches to performance improvement—involve both qualitative and quantitative content. The best decisions and the best organizations will make effective use of both.

In my post last week, I suggested that the scientists quoted in the Salon article felt their scientific investigations were enhance by their artistic pursuits. Peter Drucker apparently said much the same thing, but observed the same is true for someone in the humanities in relation to science.

“We will have to demand of the scientifically trained man that he again become a humanist; otherwise he will lack the knowledge and perception needed to make his science effective, indeed to make it truly scientific,” Drucker warned. “We will have to demand of the humanist that he acquire an understanding of science, or else his humanities will be irrelevant and ineffectual.”

From time to time, I also write about what value arts organizations might bring to businesses. Thomas Davenport talks about how people with the qualitative mindset can help the analytically minded tell a clearer story about their data.

Knowledge people are good at dealing with text, and some would probably be able to extend their skills into text mining and analytics. Knowledge management practitioners are also good at capturing insights, and there are many analytical assumptions and results that are never recorded. It’s also likely that some good knowledge analysts could help quants “tell a story with data,” which is something almost every organization is looking for these days.

The companies Davenport is talking about would employ such people full time so it wouldn’t be an opportunity an arts organization could do on the side. Though it certainly points to possible career opportunities for those with a liberal or fine arts background.

Something along these lines could provide a coaching/advisory opportunity on a smaller scale for arts organizations. Ultimately, thinking about how you can help a business tell the story of their data will probably help a non-profit organization do a better job telling the story of their own data on grant applications and marketing materials.

Arts organizations are probably all too close to their own data and tend to see grant reports as a chore. Helping a company in an unrelated field tell their story for an entirely different purpose could cause a shift in perspective that increases their effectiveness in talking about themselves.

Business Models, Marketing/PR, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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Impressive Debut (a.k.a Draft #250)

May 5, 2014

by:

Joe Patti

Seth Godin had a post today about origin stories, noting that each of the successes he cites has a different origin story. They didn’t follow the same path as someone else to achieve wide spread recognition.

That reminded me of a similar passage in one of Joseph Campbell’s books where he recalls a particular story about King Arthur and his knights setting out on their Grail Quest.

“‘They thought it would be a disgrace to go forth in a group. Each entered the forest at the point that he himself had chosen, where it was darkest, and there was no way or path.’

“No way or path! Because where there is a way or path, it is someone else’s path.”

I have actually used this quote before, but it has been about 7 years. It is far overdue to be mentioned again.

One of the toughest things about running a business of any sort is being able to balance between embracing best practices and slavishly replicating case studies in success.

Following best practices prevents you from wasting valuable time and energy developing processes and repeating the mistakes someone else has already encountered and overcome.

On the other hand, attempting to replicate someone else’s wild success by imposing their apparent development framework/pathway upon your own company will probably have the same uncomfortable, non-productive results as trying to wedge your feet into their custom built shoes.

Part of the problem is that even when the founders of the wildly successful company talk about their path to prosperity, they aren’t telling you the full story of all the dynamics at play. They may not be entirely aware of all the factors that fed into their success, or they are ignoring and omitting some details that don’t make for a good founding mythology.

In the opening segment of a This American Life episode titled, Origin Story, they discuss the “started in a garage” mythology for companies like Hewlett-Packard (whose origin Godin cites) and Apple.

Ira Glass
This is from a promotional video that Hewlett-Packard put together after it spent millions to buy and restore the original garage where its two founders started what is now the largest technology firm in the world.

Dan Heath
In 1938, in a garage in Palo Alto, California, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard set to work to start a new company. They had a few hand-operated punches, a used Sears Roebuck drill press that had just made the trip west in the back of one of their cars, and they had a rented flat with a garage.

[…]

Ira Glass
Even Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard weren’t exactly outsiders. They studied electrical engineering at MIT and at Stanford. Packard had worked at General Electric. A former professor of theirs from Stanford gave them leads and hooked them up, for example, with a firm called Litton Engineering. He let them use equipment that they didn’t own themselves yet. Just as, decades later, the founders of Apple Computer, 21-year-old Steve Jobs, was already working at Atari, and 25-year-old old Steve Wozniak was at Hewlett-Packard when they started Apple in Job’s garage.

Pino Audia
And, for example, in the case of Steve Jobs, he benefited greatly from the support that he got from the Atari people, because they introduced him to investors.

If you listen to those first few minutes of the episode or read the transcript, you’ll see that a bit of romance gets injected into the founding stories of a lot of companies.

This is not to say that there wasn’t a lot of sweat and creativity invested in getting these companies off the ground. Just like the hot new artist that explodes on the scene, no one really talks about the years of testing, revision, hustle and lucky breaks that went into the impressive debut (a.k.a Draft #250).

There is a lot of valuable advice you can take by paying attention to someone else’s process- performing due diligence, avoiding undesireable contract stipulations, generating appropriate plans and budgets and being bold with marketing plans.

Just don’t expect to achieve the same results by following exactly the same steps as someone else. You have no idea who or what conditions may have been helping mount those steps. Ultimately, you might be better off carving your own steps or even rappelling down an entirely different mountain instead of trying to climb behind someone else. (Or simply ignore vague metaphors about achieving things altogether.)

creativity, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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