Innovation is usually the result of connections of past experience. But if you have the same experiences as everybody else, you’re unlikely to look in a different direction.Steve Jobs in Roger von Oech’s A Whack on the Side of the Head
Highly creative people don’t have special abilities. But, many of them naturally do what others have to train to do.
And, training to be creative begins with constant learning.
Make purpose your bouncer.Priya Parker1
If you had 100% clarity, every decision would be obvious. How great would that be?
Although 100% clarity isn’t possible—none of us are oracles that can predict the future—it is possible to achieve much greater levels of clarity than your competitors because if your competitors are like most businesses, they’re operating in a light fog instead of clear air.
It seems obvious that you should hire managers that want to make the organization better. Yet, few organizations evaluate people based on their desire to serve the organization’s purpose.
This often results in a broken leadership system that is about self-promotion rather than the betterment of the organization and everyone the organization affects.
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.Marilyn Strathern, “Improving Ratings” in European Review
In the face of the current complex business environment, most businesses strive to seek the simplified so that they can gain clarity and make effective decisions quickly.
It’s this desire that has produced flawed metrics like the Net Promoter Score (NPS)—a single measure that supposedly predicts business growth.1 Despite the desire, there is no holy grail metric: The original NPS study only verified past behavior, despite claims of being able to predict future behavior; and, there is enough evidence that should make any company hesitant to use it as an indicator.234
Your memories are not created through your experiences, rather they are created through the stories you tell yourself and others about those experiences.
Joshua Medcalf, Chop Wood Carry Water
Inherent in a brand is the promise to solve a need.
Customers try brands because they believe they have the potential to consistently solve a problem they face: they have the potential to make life easier.
And he [Carl Jung] pretended, or told it in a way, as if she really had been on the moon and it had happened. And I was very rationalistically trained from school so I said indignantly, “But she imagined to be on the moon, or she dreamt it, but she wasn’t on the moon.” And he looked at me earnestly and said, “Yes she was on the moon.” Marie Louise von Franz, Matter of Heart
What we call something has more power than we realize.
It’s because words are more than just a group of symbols that just signify an object or idea: They go further than that to the point that they act as a stand in for that object or idea. In other words, they are a symbolic representation of the object or idea. And, symbols have great power because they act as a host of multiple meanings and layers of meanings within a single structure.
The symbolic power of words is why we choose the term Brand Lovers to refer to a company’s most passionate—and highest spending—customers.
As long as I can remember, I’ve had an interest in esoteric subcultures. Early on it was comic book collecting, then Magic: The Gathering, then sleight of hand, and then cocktails and bartender culture.
All of these subcultures share a common feature: they have conventions to bring like-minded people together.
The events at these conventions usually aren’t the big draw. Instead, it’s meeting friends new and old over drinks at the newest bar that opened or a late night fourth-meal in the back of a Denny’s.
Humans have an innate desire to come together—it is one of our basic needs. And, breaking bread together is one of the strongest ways to form bonds.
Customers are people; consumers are statistics.
Stanley Marcus, Quest for the Best
On a recent trip overseas, I was struck at the difference in attitude between airport security in Japan and the US.
In Japan, the conveyor belts had a curved design that took up little space and returned the bins automatically, there were only a few employees, and all of the employees were trying to help the customers get through security as pain-free as possible.
In the US, there was a new and confusing conveyor belt system that kept backing up, there were more employees at each scanner than I wanted to count, and the TSA employee instructing people how to use the new system kept talking down to customers that didn’t understand what they were supposed to do.
The difference between these two experiences, like all customer service experiences, comes down to cultural differences—the culture of the society or the organization.
The purpose of business—creating a customer—and your customers—at a human level—aren’t changing.
But for many businesses, it’s time to make a change toward having a deep understanding of their true purpose and their customers.
