Making Business Human: Delivering Great Experiences in a Connected Age

Presentation at IA Summit 2012. The thesis is that in order for businesses to succeed in the Connected Age, they need to embrace humanist values that run contrary to the bureaucratic ways of most organizations. Might be hard to follow without hearing the presentation.

Transcript

1. #ias12 Making Business Human: Delivering Great Experiences in a Connected Age Peter Merholz e: peterme@inflection.com, peterme@peterme.com t: @peterme
2. WARNING: There will be very little actionable wisdom. 2
3. Awareness of user experience is at an all-time high 3
4. 4 Apple’s has the largest market cap of any company. Simply Hired lists 4,500 jobs in the United States with “user experience” in it’s description. UX conferences set new attendance records every year. “It’s a magical time to be doing what we’re doing”
5. 362 firms 95% say they are “customer focused” from “Closing the Delivery Gap” by Bain & Company How many of these firms’ customers agree that they deliver a superior experience? 8% 80% say they deliver a “superior experience”
6. Forrester’s 2012 Customer Experience Index 6
7. Why are so many user experiences so bad? 7
8. 8 The technology is more immediate, accessible, distributed. Experience design processes and methods are mature. We’re investing in these practices like never before. But...
9. 9 Do you work in a company with an org chart? Where you have a clear, hierarchical reporting structure? Do job titles determine work responsibilities and salary? Are there policies, procedures, and rules for you to follow? Do people work in cubicles, visually isolated from colleagues? Are meetings primarily about the status of various initiatives? When engaging consultants, do you issue an RFP, and require a list of deliverables that will be delivered within a certain specified time?
10. If you answered “yes” to those questions, then you work in a bureaucracy 10
11. Many assume bureaucracies are just how work is done. But they were created for a purpose. 11
14. 14 http:/ /www.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/2356663850/
16. The “iron cage” of bureaucracy 16
17. 17 Industrial/Information age Connected age Products Services Manufacturing Customer experience Ownership Access Stocks Flows Efficiency Effectiveness Analytical Generative Silos Cross-functional Hierarchical Hyperlinked Algorithmic Heuristic External rewards Intrinsic motivation Individual Social Isolation Relationships
18. What are relationships based on? 18
19. Image Frame
20. 2011 Temkin Trust Ratings 2012 Temkin Experience Ratings
21. “Colleen [Barrett] is primarily responsible for the humanistic culture that we have at Southwest today...One of the really significant things she did was give our people on the front line a lot of flexibility. Basically, she ascertained that we could not anticipate every situation that would evolve in a given station at a passenger terminal. Therefore, she told our employees— and meant it—that as long as you are leaning toward the customer, you are OK... They did not need to ask permission from anybody to do so.” Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines
22. 22 If you trust your employees, your customers are more likely to trust you
23. March 2011 on kottke.org... 23
25. 25 How might we widen the circle of trust?
26. Image Frame
27. Image Frame
28. Image Frame
29. Image Frame
31. Win Win Lose Lose CUSTOMERS BUSINESS YAY!
35. 35 Management Staff Customers Trust
36. A cautionary tale... 36
37. Reed Hasting’s “Culture” Presentation 37
39. From the Netflix Blog “...we have realized that there is still a very large continuing demand for DVDs both from our existing members as well as non-members. Given the long life we think DVDs by mail will have, treating DVDs as a $2 add on to our unlimited streaming plan neither makes great financial sense nor satisfies people who just want DVDs. Creating an unlimited DVDs by mail plan (no streaming) at our lowest price ever, $7.99, does make sense and will ensure a long life for our DVDs by mail offering...” 39
40. Netflix forgot that most people are not like the people who work at Netflix. 40
41. Netflix also hadn’t realized that any relationship, even a business relationship with customers, is an emotional one. 41
43. Foresee Holiday 2011 Retail Satisfaction
44. 44 The value of empathy (roughly $10 billion)
45. What’s with all this talk about “design thinking”? Well, everything I ever needed to know about managing experiences... 45
46. The Marshmallow Challenge 46 http://marshmallowchallenge.com/
47. 47 http://www.flickr.com/photos/copleys/1842011981/
48. 48 http://http://www.flickr.com/photos/copleys/1842854394/ Express visually and tactilely
49. 49 http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/2885861465/ All contributors are equal
50. Kinesthetic engagement 50 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jK-jC2__Fw
52. side note: don’t let Facilities get in your way 52
53. The Connected Age requires business to embrace what makes us human. 53
54. 54 complexification connectedness X = Chaos and unpredictability
55. 55 Industrial/Information age Connected age Products Services Manufacturing Customer experience Ownership Access Stocks Flows Efficiency Effectiveness Analytical Intuitive Silos Cross-functional Hierarchical Hyperlinked Algorithmic Heuristic External rewards Intrinsic motivation Individual Social Isolation Relationships this stuff is messy!
56. 56 Left brain Analytic Rigorous Bottom-up Engineered Evaluative Quantitative Right brain Emotional Visionary Top-down Creative Generative Qualitative Great member experiences fuse left and right brain approaches And this is insufficient We need...
58. My favorite passage from Steve Jobs Jobs did not organize Apple into semiautonomous divisions; he closely controlled all his teams and pushed them to work as one cohesive and flexible company, with one profit-and-loss bottom line. “We don’t have ‘divisions’ with their own P&L,” said Tim Cook. “We run one P&L for the company.” 58
60. Just one more story... 60
62. 62 Instead of the penetration of the organizational systems into the body...we see precisely the reverse, the extension of messy, open-ended techniques of clothing, layering, and stitching from real fabric into organizational fabric as well.
63. How can you make your organizations more human? 63 More social More playful More respectful More emotional More emotional More physical More creative More trusting More interdependent More sensorial
64. How can you make your organizations more human? 64 More social More playful More respectful More emotional More emotional More physical More creative More trusting More interdependent More sensorial Thank you.