Tag: entrepreneurship

Assumptions

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If you want to get an idea of how dangerous (for a business) assumptions and groupthink are, have a look at the two graphs below (research by Profitwell).

What 1,200 product leaders think of the last 5,000 features they released.
What 1.2M customers think of those features (in terms of Willingness to Pay and Preference).

We think we are building products and services that deliver high value and for which customers are willing to pay premium price. In reality, customers perceive those products and services as average and not particularly worth of their money.

The executives and leaders at a company are rarely the ideal audience for what they are buiilding. This is true when the company is young, and it is even more true once the company gets traction and grows.

You ought to free your decision-making process of assumptions and start looking at qualitative and quantitative data that come from customers. You should have done that yesterday. You can still make it happen today and have a huge competitive advantage nonetheless.

Culture is alive

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Culture is not a statement.

It’s not a nice quote on the wall, a deck, or the list of principles on your website. It is not something you can decide in a meeting. It is not something you can survey. It is not something you can benchmark.

Culture lives in what you do. In the habits of the day to day, in what your leadership says, in the things that get rewarded. It’s in all the meetings, in the 1-1s, in the informal chats by the coffee machine. It’s in what you communicate, what you focus your attention on every time you stand in front of the camera and broadcast to the whole company. It’s in the details. It is there when nobody is watching.

Crisis

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When crisis hits, make sure you have an answer to these three questions and share that with all those involved.

Who is in charge? This is about establishing who has the responsibility to take us out of the crisis. It does not mean they will do everything, make all decisions, come up with all ideas. It means they are in charge.

How often will people hear from who is in charge? Make a calendar, ensure communication is constant, better if it happens every week, at the same time, on the same channel. If there’s nothing new, share there is nothing new and take the chance to gather thoughts, feelings, ideas, opinions.

What is expected of people involved? This is arguably the most difficult, because asking us to wait is not really an option. Establish clear roles to enable change, make us feel that we are part of the solution, give us a specific purpose. Tell us we matter with facts.

If you tackle the crisis before having answers to these three questions, your efforts will probably do more damage than good.

What else?

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There is no company in the world that does not want to increase their revenue.

So, if that is the main message you are giving your people, both internally and externally, be aware that your company is no different from any other company in the world.

What else do you stand for?

When coffee and kale compete

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Every person wants progress, and when we design or market products and services we should focus on the progress we are enabling customers to make.

This is the foundation of Jobs To Be Done (JTBD).

With this approach, two things happen.

First, value is no longer seen as a transaction. It does not run out the moment a purchase is done or a service is delivered. Progress extends over time. The best way for a company to serve their customers is to understand the system of progress they are in – a good example being Weber, that does not stop at producing high-quality grills, and completes the offer with tools and resources to make the customer the grill master they want to be.

Design your product to deliver customers an ongoing feeling of progress – Alan Klement

Second, competition is no longer restricted to products or services that have a similar functionality or physical appearance. Anything that helps the customer achieve the progress they have envisioned (or might envision) for themselves is competition.

A Job To Be Done is the process a consumer goes through whenever she aims to transform her existing life-situation into a preferred one, but cannot because there are constraints that stop her

Alan Klement, When Coffee and Kale Compete
When Coffee and Kale Compete – Book Cover