Know thy costumer and you’ll stuck

29 06 2009
Know thy costumer and you’ll stuck
Sound like I went insane? Hell yes I am! I am tired of trying to bite my own tail every once in a while. We have heard the imperious call to know our costumer, the need of understanding the why and then when they use our products, the continuous quests to define what are their needs, their goals and how we can acknowledge and cover them.
All of the above is good if you want your preach to captivate your audience; you better understand them as well as you know thyself if you want to cross the chasm.  Without doubt, creating persona profiles or needs and goal maps will help you up this road; yet, in the end you’ll end up staring at your own navel –or your competition’s for that matter-. Your whole strategy will be aimed at keeping an intact user base (i.e. minimizing churn rate) and capturing as much audience as you could form your competition (i.e. maximizing competition migration).
Let’s read that again: you’ll MINIMIZE churn rate and MAXIMZE turn around. Hmmm, it sounds like you’ll sooner or later end up with an audience ceiling, a point by which you will not grow –or as aggressively as in the past- since you’ll have eaten up the whole cake and there is nothing left. I am not against using costumer identification techniques to adapt your product and your message to a loyal base, but what about those who are not yet users of your products, your industry? What if you want to keep your base growing?*
Lessons from the past: What were the things you did before launching your product?
Chances are some of you might have just dipped into the water without understanding the whole context, but that will be another post: when to dip your body or your pinky-, but if it was an opportunity with a bit of risk involved, you will have understood what you were jumping into: who were the current costumers of the product and who might be the future ones, and correctly aimed your message toward them.
By knowing your prospects as well as your rapt regulars you are buying tickets for growth, your strategy will be laddered instead of chain based:
- Bring new people into the wagon: those who are users but not costumers as well as those who are neither users nor costumers but whom our proposal will help. Understand how to bridge the gap between “we are not interested” and “I’ll give you a chance”.
- Keep your costumers spellbound:  don’t let your audience down; their needs change over time, competitors quickly match up your so called differentiators. Continuously understand what needs to be changed to accommodate their goals and desires.
* Arguably you could also keep your base growing if your adoption rate is greater than your churn rate and some lines of business might need just this, it all depends.

Sound like I went insane? Hell yes I am! I am tired of trying to bite my own tail every once in a while. We have heard the imperious call to know our costumer, the need of understanding the why and then when they use our products, the continuous quests to define what are their needs, their goals and how we can acknowledge and cover them.

All of the above is good if you want your preach to captivate your audience; you better understand them as well as you know thyself if you want to cross the chasm.  Without doubt, creating persona profiles or needs and goal maps will help you up this road; yet, in the end you’ll end up staring at your own navel –or your competition’s for that matter-. Your whole strategy will be aimed at keeping an intact user base (i.e. minimizing churn rate) and capturing as much audience as you could form your competition (i.e. maximizing competition migration).

Let’s read that again: you’ll MINIMIZE churn rate and MAXIMZE turn around. Hmmm, it sounds like you’ll sooner or later end up with an audience ceiling, a point by which you will not grow –or as aggressively as in the past- since you’ll have eaten up the whole cake and there is nothing left. I am not against using costumer identification techniques to adapt your product and your message to a loyal base, but what about those who are not yet users of your products, your industry? What if you want to keep your base growing?*

Lessons from the past
What were the things you did before launching your product?

Chances are some of you might have just dipped into the water without understanding the whole context, but that will be another post: when to dip your body or your pinky-, but if it was an opportunity with a bit of risk involved, you will have understood what you were jumping into: who were the current costumers of the product and who might be the future ones, and correctly aimed your message toward them.

By knowing your prospects as well as your rapt regulars you are buying tickets for growth, your strategy will be laddered instead of chain based:

- Bring new people into the wagon: those who are users but not costumers as well as those who are neither users nor costumers but whom our proposal will help. Understand how to bridge the gap between “we are not interested” and “I’ll give you a chance”.

- Keep your costumers spellbound:  don’t let your audience down; their needs change over time, competitors quickly match up your so called differentiators. Continuously understand what needs to be changed to accommodate their goals and desires.

* Arguably you could also keep your base growing if your adoption rate is greater than your churn rate and some lines of business might need just this, it all depends, but it will be an expensive venue.


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Categories : Internet, Product Development

What did I learned from a mere pair of pants?

22 05 2009

The fearful costumers’ unspoken expectations

Well is known the fact that we learn easier from lived experiences than from academic rhetoric. Several months ago, actually on my new job early days, I decided my attire required some intervention so it could match up the expected standard of a corporate environment. Don’t get me wrong, I do not think a specific brand would make me look hipster or worthier of professional admiration; it is just that usual clothes were a little over worn and by investing more than usual on my new attire I would not only pimp my look but would also get a new extended period for them (value for money anyone?). After reviewing my modest knowledge about clothing brands, I decided Lacoste was my best bet: it projects comfort, capability, quality, and status without being out of my league.

So there was I shopping all by myself and trying out a hodgepodge of different clothing until I came up with the combination I wanted: two pair of pants and a nice collar shirt. Fast-forward 60 days. Picture me entering my boss office with a huge smile, feeling secure about what I was going to talk about and suddenly feeling a cool gentle nice autumn breeze on my hip. While smiling, I looked down to see what was the divine source of this gift and dreadfully found out my pants were totally worn out right beneath where my belt went! Geeh! Sorry boss, I would need to talk in a while since I need to grab something to wear over my pants and stop scandalizing the cubicles!

Inspiration: Lintmachine by Evil Erin

Inspiration: Lintmachine by Evil Erin

Enter unspoken expectation number 1.

Somewhere during my assessment on Lacoste’s brand promise I came to grip it pledged quality on their produce, or was I wrong? I thought they deserved a second chance, after all the other pair was still as snug as it was the first day I worn it, haven’t shown any signs of deformation whatsoever and we all make some mistakes from time to time don’t we?My dear wife offered herself to go back to the shop and ask for an immediate replacement. And as you might have already guessed she was told a substitution was indeed called for but …. Oh no, there it was again, that apprehensive word that lurks at the corners for its victims! We had to wash the pants BEFORE we could get the replacement.

Does anyone see the mistake here? Say what again madam? You actually showed surprise when you saw the bad torn on the fabric and the evident way it showed the shabby state of the pants was not caused by misuse. Yet you ask us to wash them –they weren’t that dirty if you ask me- before we receive what we are entitled for? Why? Why do some brands, companies and certain human beings when found in the wrong tend to acknowledge their mistake but at the same time have the guts to make you feel some how guilty? Yeez! Back came SWMBO* with the mix feeling of having succeeded but with the opinion she was cheated.


Enter unspoken expectation number 2.

After two full wash cycles (hey don’t blame us we didn’t wanted the dirty police to turn us down a second time), Marina went back to Lacoste’s shop only to find out she was actually being unashamedly cheated! She was gaily told by the same woman she would have to expect a call from Lacoste telling her if they were actually given us the replacement or not. She told her it was standard procedure and in no way she could have ever suggested the replacement could be made instantaneous since a fabric expert must do some forensic analysis on the torn and state its real cause.

Why do some brands, companies and certain human beings after promising something to their costumer back up and completely change their stance? Where is their trustfulness? Are they playing with the odds someone actually commits to their weird requirements?

Dear Lacoste,

Once I fell in love with you. I came to dream of me wearing your brand in those astonishing landscapes you portray at your tv ads and even thought the crocodile was not only cool but a great mascot to summarize your claims as a brand. But you know what? I learned the hard way you were only an array of shiny mirrors covering  your bad manners and misguided promises.

Thank you for opening up my eyes and letting me learn something new about claims and unspoken promises, I would try to do my best not to fall into your same mistakes. It was good flirting with you for a while, but hey … at close sight you look shabby and even smell bad!

I’ll go back to my usual brand, after all they don’t produce promises they will unmet. They might not be as pricy, don’t have a tv ad or a mascot of sorts; but, their products will endure common use for some few years and the brand and their stakeholders would acknowledge their mistake right on the stop without play or hushes behind my back.

Zara I am sorry, here I am back again.

*SWMBO: She who most be obeyed


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Categories : Life, Product Development

Hi Creativity, pleased to meet you.

9 05 2009

Say what creativity? We have been friends all along? Thank God, I was starting to think you were platonic :)

It has been a long time since my last post! Regrettably, my new responsibilities not only required but also deserved my full attention, yet thanks to them I have had the chance to acquire new knowledge –mainly air transport industry- and refresh some. Today’s post wanders around creativity, a subject briefly touched upon on our Annual Sales Meeting.

I am sure there has been times when most of you all believed you are not the creative type and had voice some of the following: “I would never come up with something as beautiful as that!”, “I dearly thank you, but what I did here with this work is far from creative I just played around with what we had and what we could do”, “I do not know how to draw, not even sticks figures, how come you say I am creative”.

Hey! I’ve been there too, always tying creativity with and aesthetics and superpowers blend, I always struggled with others opinions regarding my creativity. What they heck do they meant? Do they want me to draw better or do they think I can deliver a Cannes winner? Nowadays I bet lots of you have been hearing the need for being more creative so we all could find ways to cope with the financial storm and safely arrive our destination.

Time and experience had taught me that creativity or the state of being creative is not directly tied to beautifulness, arts or stickiness. When someone is creative it means she has gone through a mental process that delivered an idea or concept that has never existed before or at least not commonly thought about. When the product of creativity is then applied and provides either an answer to an unresolved problem, evolved a product or transformed a given context, you have met innovation. In other words: when you come up with something not thought before you’re being creative; and, when that thought is in turn applied and produces a benefit, innovation occurs.

Lias Colors by laurenatclemsons

Lia's Colors by laurenatclemson's

Our creativity speaker at the annual sale event gave us our fast track tour to what it means to be creative and what kind of habitudes could nurture this trend, and I would love to share my notes with you.

Fluidity: you cannot be creative if every time you think of a new idea you stop dead on your tracks and think of ways that idea cannot be applied. Sit back and think of the times your own Jiminy Cricket has played against you: “Oh God! This is so simple someone else must have thought it before and found out it didn’t work”, “there must be a rule somewhere I am forgetting about”, “plain stupid”, etc. In order to be creative you must hush down your consciousness, demolish your self-imposed restrictions and just play along with whatever idea burst, in the end it might prove the right one.

Flexibility: As the result of a well known human trait (once you’ve found something works or feel like it might stick with it Joe) there have been times when every single idea I come with has common elements with the ones I’ve thought of before. Is this creative? I don’t think so, the storm of ideas might seem alluring but once you end the creative phase and start reviewing which ideas might work you’ll find that you’ve wasted precious time biting your own tail, hence ending with a handful of ideas instead of lots of them.

Or from another point of view: think of how much more chances you’ll have to nail something if the ideas you came up with have origins in different contexts (eg. Think out of the box, oblique strategies, woods vs trees) and how less probable you’ll find an answer if you stick with the same elements.

Goal oriented: to be creative does not gives you license to ramble of your goal. If you are trying to solve airspace travel it won’t help you at all if your ideas are of different ways dogs could take themselves for a walk. You are not being ingenious, you are just being rebellious.

Last, the guy who spoke at our event also mentioned originality as a trait to work upon if you are working on your creativity. In my opinion originality is not a trait to work upon creativity since coming with an idea not thought before is what you are aiming at, hence being original at your context.

In a future post I’ll ramble around the concept of innovation and what guides I believe most be applied through creative process so their product is actionable and could produce innovation. If you squint your eyes and read again what defines and describes creativity processes, you will see a triggered trap there: you could generate unviable new ideas forever and ever.

– Speaker name and bio will be linked during the week as well as some links to books/techniques that might help you with cretivity, fluidity and/or or flexibility

The above mentioned speaker: Mr. Eduardo Kastika (spanish)

Interesting books:
The Ten Faces of Innovation by Thomas Kelly
Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun
Ignore everybody by Hugh Macleod 

Techniques:
Oblique Strategies


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Categories : Creativity, Life, Ramblings, Work

So you want to be a superhero

27 02 2009

How to face your new job part II

Allrighty then, your first X weeks at your new surroundings –be them work, country, family, etc- have come and gone. You have somehow managed to walk thru the valley of anguish and now you proudly display your war marks –hey, they were hard to get in the first place-.

Now that you know there are others that can either help you cope with mammoth quantities of new information and eventual frustration; or that there are even some generous individuals who will take your hand in theirs and walk you by the obstacles while at the same time you learn how to do it, you can almost smell comfort in the air. Having lost the primal fear, due to your childhood’s weekends full with super hero cartoons you begin to think of your coworkers as poor souls in desperate need: naïve beings that have done things ignorant of better ways. Rolling up your sleeves you let your mighty body fall point blank into the chaos….

You fool! Stop before you get yourself into trouble and make your still weak office ties crumble because of your heroism. Grab a seat and listen. Show of hands: how many of you have first pitied and then hated someone who while be new to a job has being heard saying things like “this is not how we did things at XX, let me show you better…”? Get my point?

Chances are you are currently on an established business, hence your need to change its wrong ways around, how then, if most of the choices made by its employees were wrong or badly executed, has it managed to survive all this years? If it is an established business most of its choices must have been the correct ones and even though superficially they must seem the wrong ones, with time and hands on experience you will learn to see the context that drove the organization to do things the way it did.

Its not easy to be a superhero by Esparta

It's not easy to be a superhero by Esparta

Sure, there most be some that are wide of the mark, others where there is a chance of improvement and even some with which the company might be better off. But won’t it be better if you first let your ego at the front door and with humility dive into the context of your new company? You have a choice here: either brawl and step over everyone’s toes and eventually produce little improvement if any, loosing any chance of empathy, rapport and bonding on the way; or, you could just step into your coworkers shoes, deeply understand the context behind the decisions that were done which might have an impact on your responsibilities and then understand what part of your previous experience and skills might help everyone better things around and what things are what the context provided them to be.

It is a matter of balance: first give others the chances of showing you where they come from, where they are and where they heading; and then, step in and pitch how your previous experience and skills could help everyone arrive to the intended destination with less effort and better earnings.

I’ve learned this the hard way on a previous job, and it took me almost 3 years to rebuild my bonds and get an opportunity to help.


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Categories : Life, Project Management, Ramblings, Work

Valley of Anguish. The express tour

18 02 2009

How to face your new job part I.

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past month, it has been almost two weeks since I started at my new workplace. As it is customary I would like to share some impressions and feelings I’ve struggled with, hoping these can help others while facing a similar situation.

Before we get down to the bare bones, black and white, details of my experience I feel a little background is needed. Having fortune played a major role on my life it didn’t let me down and again touched me: while preparing the road for my personal venue I was reached and asked to participate on an interview process.  Knowing sometimes interesting challenges and professional opportunities knock at your door in unexpected ways I went to the meeting. Four interviews, three psychological tests, one medical check and lots of paper signing later I am now writing this while getting used to my new role: SubManager for LAN Airlines Argentina’s Internet Channel –mouthful-.

So what kind of feelings I have had while entering a whole new unexpected venue? As far as I am concerned I’ve been thru three major phases during my introduction to the new surroundings: Anguish, delusion, serenity. It is about the first phase I would write in this post: the valley of anguish a.k.a. SMOG* I am a recruiting blunder.

 

Una lectura de Edvard Munch by Eneas

Una lectura de Edvard Munch by Eneas

 

Day 1, introduction 1

After filling out the regular paper work required for every new employee, I walked into my first introductory meeting with my new boss. After the expected greetings and still wielding a million dollar smile I opened my moleskin and started writing down what ever information I found was either new to me or sounded as if it was a core issue I must handle in the near future. There was some talk about the hierarchical structure (“you are here”), the matrix relationship with the holding structure, who were the individuals and the roles of my direct team and the service teams I would be working with, etc.

Suddenly, I felt as if I had just opened a submarine hatch while under the deep sea: my moleskin was being scribbled all over the place, I wasn’t able to discern whether the numbers I was being introduced to were positive numbers or were things I needed to fix, and on top of all that I had a starry page covered with acronyms I needed to check later in order to understand +80% of what I was being talked about. And then is when anxiety kicked in: “OMG would I ever be able to match head and tail of all this? Who was the moron who hired me believing I would be able to handle all this? Who am I kidding?”

The other introductory meetings ran more or less by the same script and I ended my first two days with a major headache and a bashed ego.

Day 3, meeting 1

Once I hit 80+% of my introduction to this whole new crazy travel industry, my boss kindly suggested I went to an operational steering committee so I can get a sense of the things I  would be doing on a daily basis. It goes without saying, I had already lost my smile and had instead a Bert look (don’t we all frown when we are concentrating?) with which I entered meeting room number 2028.

Routine introductions made we jumped in into what might be my worst meeting ever. I couldn’t help myself raising my hand every 5 minutes or so to ask something: “Would you please explain to me what PRK stands for?” “Would you kindly remind me the cost structure we use?” and so on. Thankfully instead of being the target for condescending smiles, general sighing and other kinds of boredom and disapproval manifestations, all of my fellow coworkers kindly answered all my questions.

Day 5, meeting 3

Anguish was gone and I was experiencing a Nirvana of sorts, where I started to understand more of what I was being told and even risked offering my opinion. The Nirvana was the calm before the storm, but that will be the subject of a future post: “So you want to be a hero?”.

So, what happened during day 3 and 4 that helped me conquer my anguish? How would my experience help you cope with a similarly scary situation?

 Believe others know what they do

 While reviewing my posts and talking with my friends about my anguishing circumstances I came to realize this: If you were the candidate who was hired it means human resources saw in you the competence to not only match the corporate culture, the industry needs but also the potential to ride your role to new positive places. Hey, human resources is for sure responsible for hiring the other 1k+ employees and the company didn’t disappeared because of them!

Prepare yourself to adaptation

Let’s get real: every place has its own rules and you need to adapt to them if you want to survive. I am not only talking about a whole industry change, as it is my case, organizations are made up by individuals and as such they gather different traits and thus produce different environments. If you think you could survive a whole new culture by sticking to the conducts you might have had at your past job prepare for a mighty struggle.

Check your ego at the door

Some might have an uncalled need to expose themselves as an expert on every single subject. Why play as if you were not in a team if you could tap into others to obtain knowledge? Everyone else have been in your same situation before and if they are not un interestingly offering their help it is still in their best interests to help you get up and operational as fast as possible. Forget about how you would look and keep asking until you feel you can understand what others are talking about. Ignorance is not a bad trait if you are working to correct it.  


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Categories : Life, Ramblings, Work

How not to fall in the cliché of the web 2.0 site.

8 01 2009

Don't fall in the cliché... stand out!Many companies feel they’ve got the need to go viral. They want to take their product and create an online revolution. Some people like Blendtech’s CEO made it possible. He took an ordinary household appliance like a blender and transformed it into Internet’s WOM for quite a while. What did he do? He started making videos of himself blending different kinds of stuff with his products. See willitblend.com for further reference.

This guy a several others pulled it off; it does not mean, however that you will. Ok, ok. Before you start calling me a buble-popper, give me a chance to explain myself. What I really mean is that if you want to pull it off, you have to know what to do and what NOT to do.

Now a days people are talking a lot social networks, web 2.0, bla, bla, bla. The truth of the matter is that most of them are an obvious attempt of driving traffic to a site without promoting them thorougly enough. Ok, ok, I know what you’re thinking. You could be talking about a mini site like Quilmes Verano or a promotional site. Sure, those are ok. The thing is that more and more I keep hearing about those wanna-be networks that never pull it off.

Ok, so how do I get one of them to work, you ask? First of all, you can’t be obvious. In most cases, these type of sites are made for promotional purposes only. That’s fine, just don’t let the user see that at first glance. An easy way to spot this type of network is when you don’t really need a network for your newly released product but you’re launching one anyway.

A good example of a properly launched network is Adagio Tea’s tea forum called Tea Chat. I don’t know why they named a forum a chatroom, but they sure seem to know their stuff. What types of tea are good for losing weight, upload photos of your teacups, etc., etc. You’ll always find good ideas, and if you don’t, your users will probably find them for you and post them.

Break the cliché!
Bring fresh not default templates into your site’s look & feel. If you have to, pay someone to design a wordpress or joomla theme that no other site has. Put some effort into your designs and break the a-dime-a-dozen type site.

Another good way of avoiding the cliché of the web 2.0 site is with some kind of extra advantage for the user. For instance, some sites obstaculize the posting procedure with logins, post pre-moderations, etc. Those aren’t particularly bad ideas, but they can play against you. If your site is completly new and not really different from other more established ones in the same niche, then you probably shouldn’t give the user a reason not to post. Avoid putting obstacles in the posting path at least at the beggining until your site’s a little more established and you should do just fine.

More on how to not fall in the cliché of the web 2.0 site on upcoming guest posts.

Dario Manoukian


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Categories : Internet

Excessively searching for inner harmony?

6 01 2009

 

Dwelling in insipidness.

Most of us run shy from the battle meetings that some times burst out at the office. We lament the moment someone steps into someone else’s toes and hell breaks loose; that is, when someone finds a pitched product lacks and offers an unbiased critic. Though the intention might have been good, we all know most people tend to take things personally, so what was an impartial argument was really a “my idea is better” fire cracker. 

... fight off the Furry trio of foxes by jillallyn

... fight off the Furry trio of foxes by jillallyn

In this kind of meetings -generally product or functionality definition reunions- arguments are rapidly fired back and forth, escalating in tone and reducing in value, swiftly reaching the screaming point. And suddenly magic happens! Tones go down to a civilized volume, arguments are organized and the meeting ends with an action plan. Time for joy?

Why then, is everyone who was in that room leaving it with contorted faces and the pitcher is mumbling incoherently?  Chances are someone at the meeting with a leadership position suffering from reunion-battle aversion stood up and tried hard to tone down the meeting thru several maneuvers that will end dismissing and superseding research findings and crafting a false sense of participation.

Why invent the wheel?

When you hear this or something by the lines it means your managers or the leaders of your organization are giving up, are growing very tired of facing every argument and prefer to find an easier route out of the problem. I am not talking about time proven procedures here, what I am thinking of are the times when you having understood your audience needs and aligned them to your business goals have produced a new feature design and someone else says: I prefer to copy cat. 

Oh sure, copying what others have done in your industry will help you reduce design time, and it might even produce something useful for your audience but then you’ll be just one more grain of sand at the beach. You might have rationalized why your competitors have developed such a feature; yet, what you’re copying today might be aimed to a similar audience with similar needs to your own but otherwise it is another set of people and will soon leave you clueless as to what might have gone wrong.

Democratize the process

Maybe the arguments, the shouts and the screams were because someone felt like they were left out of the decision process? Asking everyone to cast their vote would help them feel part of the process, wouldn’t it? Perhaps some of your employees and coworkers will fall for this stunt, but sooner or later they would realize it was a vain attempt, something that neither establishes a culture for participation nor adds value to the processes by itself. Voting on functionalities or priorities gives everyone a chance to have their say and will produce a warm feeling of order; however, the final product will be a produce of everyone’s gut feelings, a blend of what Tom from accounting thinks is important with what Alice from operations thinks her costumers need. 

Instead of wildly gathering votes unexpectedly, organizations should institute ways by which the people designing their products/features leave their ivory towers and aside from hearing the costumer voice, mingle with their coworkers, understand their needs and assess their great ideas. As for how to settle priorities and defining what to work, organizations could introduce a method by which every feature and product could be evaluated against business indicators (how they will be affected), brand stance and audience needs –easier to say than to follow-.

Even though these methods, and others, might prove useful from time to time when the hordes are running wild, I believe if they are used frequently you are playing for consensus instead of giving people on decision making roles the chance to proof their worth. Don’t get me wrong, I do understand a harmonized office environment works marvels for everyone involved and it is part of managers’ role to keep a close watch on it, but when the priority is on making everyone comfortable at work instead of producing kick ass products something is really unbalanced out there.

Continuously struggling to bring consensus to the decision table will cut the sharp edges from your produces, eliminate their singularities and with time make them just something anyone else can offer. You will end with a very harmonic working environment but with an undifferentiated product. Why wait for a final meeting to find the stressing points, instead work on serializing the decision process (establish check points during the design phase) in which people who must have a saying could have it in an organized way thus producing a product in which everyone who had to collaborate did and ingrained it with sharp edges.


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Categories : Creativity, Internet, Product Development

The office bully, how to retort

29 12 2008

How to kill a coworker and get away with it. Part II.

I’ve had my days when just after awakening I wanted to scream at top of my lungs: “I am sick, I do not want to go to school today!” But why in heavens sake will I do that? Well, it happens I used this phrase on my early teenage years; whenever I passed part of the night replaying the occurrences of the day and fantasizing about the many ways I could have snapped back at the young man who either routinely stole my lunch money or made a loud remark about anything I was wearing or doing and left me amidst piercing general laughter. The positive thing about this, is that I learned how to recoup bad experiences, learn about what went wrong in order to not misstep again in the future, the bad aspect is that it took me some years to act upon the acquired knowledge.

Don’t think I am once again wandering, truth is most of the environments we live by have their own bully; whether this archenemy uses physical force or psychological punishment what matters is that everywhere you find people fighting for the alpha dog coup and think that by intimidating others they would achieve it. Bullies at the office wear several masks, and I would love to share my own categorization and what are the ways I’ve found out work to retort their actions.

Superman Superboy Super trouble by hyperscholar

Superman Superboy Super trouble by hyperscholar

The Devil’s Advocate

Who hasn’t heard the phrase “let me be the devil’s advocate for a minute”? If you have ever been in an organization; someone, if not yourself, has without doubt used this invocation to play this horny little role in the past while in an all hands meeting. This phrase is the bullies’ war cry. Think about it for a minute and you will see these seemingly benevolent words are a polite introduction to an unabashed critic without the least intent of adding value to your idea or project.

What most do is take a defensive stance and eventually start attacking the devil’s advocate using the very same techniques: long-winded descriptions accompanied by superficial argumentation. It is easy to see that this kind of reply ends resting value to the parts involved and might eventually escalate to a domestic brawl.

What I’ve decided to do when confronting this mighty warrior is to get the most value as possible from the situation. Negative criticism is not necessarily something bad if gathered carefully it might even shade some light into unattended problems and its possible solutions. How to do this? Simply adopt a quizzical role with two intentions: gather background information around what you are being told and try to find a way of bringing the contender to your side.

Set of questions to gather background information: How is that a problem? To what type of costumers will that be an inconvenience? How our competitors faced this trouble?

Examples of questions to build rapport and eventually befriend the devil: How do you think we can work this out? Is there something in your area of expertise we might have overlooked?

The Ninja

Have you ever came back home thinking you might have just delivered the best ever pitch or that you have killed the Goliath of turn? And then waked up and arrived at the office to find people glancing at you just like you were a zombie. Fired up your station to find a single message which, far from being the pompous praise you was expecting, was a single courteous line asking you to get to your manager box first thing in the morning?

What have I done? What happened from 6 pm to 9 am, Armageddon? Chances are you did nothing to change the waters while something extraneous did. It might be that your manager found out a major fallacy in your estimations, but that won’t explain the weird looks you keep getting from others, would it? Besides, this time you doubled and tripled checked the deliverable, reviewed the plan with your manager on an almost daily basis, pitched it against your peers; so, if there was something bluntly wrong you would have found out earlier. Then what? Don’t wind up it might be that there is a ninja in your organization. Someone who surreptitiously works lurking in anxiety for the time in which someone makes a mistake and no one else notices it. Ninjas are people with enough knowledge and intelligence to find slip-ups no one else identified have direct access to powers that be and have faith that if they point to others flaws they will gain recognition and power.

Cosplay - AWA14 - Ninja stalking by mikemol

Cosplay - AWA14 - Ninja stalking by mikemol

In a balanced world managers who receive notice of a mistake thru a ninja should aim to eradicate the practice and then correct the mistake. Why? Because, this kind of practices do not build value. If the intention was to help, the ninja should have gone to you and tell you about the problem once it was spotted, creating the opportunity to correct it before delivery.

Nevertheless a mistake was committed and it most be corrected. Don’t invest time on trying to find out who was or the intentions behind the attack. This turn time is not on your side buddy. If you wander off road you’ll be not only helping the ninja but will also hamper any value created by work done up to this instant. Instead of falling into espionage mode, bravely gather your shredded feelings, face the crowd and approach your manager. Hear what he has to say, asses if an oversight did exist and if so acknowledge it and find a resolution as soon as possible.

If by chance you gather up who was behind, my advice will be to confront show her up how much more value for all will have been created if the mistake was uprooted when sighted instead of waiting to creep into the project and go bombastic after delivery. Explain to your ninja coworker how much better he will have looked if instead of waiting,  you were told about this from the start and that now that the bully waited it just looks less like a team player.

The eternal bully

Some people  cannot grow out the character they once played as little boys and they keep at it their whole life. Ever heard the phrase “you’ll do it because I said so?” on a corporate environment? There is a bully in the wild, someone who has neither tools nor methods to face debate, explain to others why a certain path must be followed or recognize an erroneous position and correct.

What to do? Well, this is something I do and applies to every other bully type: don’t take it personal. If you take it personal the bully will know a button has been pushed and will keep at it until its goal is reached; besides, since you actually acted berserk everyone else at the scene might think he could have a point and you are covering something.

If everything else fails, don’t take it personal ignore the wise remark, the gesture, the attack, at least your bully won’t know what buttons to push. Be more like batman.


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Categories : Life, Work

A foal giving Web 2.0 lessons? :)

19 12 2008

in your face Mr. Ed!

You still don’t get why all the noise around web 2.0? Wondering how you can follow along this beta companies? Still banging your head against the wall? Let Kathy’s foal show you how to apply Web 2.0 principles for startups:

I totally loved it, still the castration part was unasked for :)


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Categories : Creativity, Life

Hawk or peacock? – The relationship between product aesthetics and usefulness

17 12 2008

Having some leisure time of my own, err, I am kidding myself again, let us start over again… Having more time to spend on reading, analyzing and pondering over anything related to my line of work and passion -product development-, I’ve found myself meditating around several situations I had been in while performing my duty, trying to understand what was going behind the mind of the people on scene and whether this circumstances are common events on the product development arena.

My apple by .p a n e.

My apple by .p a n e.

One of such situations is when your product receives the unexpected “I do not like it” statement. Whether it comes from a manager, costumer or a peer, it is still an infamous phrase to hear. Yet again, in the age of the iPod and the value of aesthetics it is something you will surely face on a frequent basis. If you haven’t heard it, don’t over joy; you will my friend, sooner than what you expect. The need of classifying something on sight is embedded in the human being, a natural reaction to encountering something new. It is the mechanism that has helped us survive: is that hairy multi-eyed spider something I would want to touch?

I am digressing here, back to the subject at hand. Is it so terrible to produce something someone else doesn’t found compelling? I really don’t think so; a negative commentary might be an opportunity to better your product. Before committing into a discussion, asses the person who is delivering the critic. Is she someone who recurrently plays the devil advocate or says whatever comes to her mind first? Or is she someone who delivers new insights and adds value to your work? Done? Ok now you know what you are in for. Let us assume the person stating her no appreciation of your work is someone who adds value, we will deal with the other kind of people in a future post.

Prior to doing a defensive stance let she state her motives but, give hand her a helping hand: reintroduce what are the business and user goals your product is trying to attain, what are the users’ expected mindsets when using your product, the different scenarios it might be used, etc. Hmm, we should have done this before, don’t we? Yes we should have. A way of working around the “I don’t like it” lance is to prepare the terrain earlier; we are not delivering work of arts here where interpretation is left to the eyes of the beholder. We are talking about delivering products of use to our costumers, people; hence we need to clearly understand, and be able to put in plain words, not only the business motivations but also who these poor souls are and what are they trying to conquer by using our product.

If you all of the aboveis cleared and you have done a correct introduction prior to exhibit your prototype or final product you will then have more chances of understanding what the “I don’t like it” meant. Try to understand if what your critic is rejecting is the way your product solves the needs of your costumers or is it the way it presents itself. It might be something in between: the way it presents itself works against what the users are trying to achieve.

All this doesn’t mean you have to completely left aesthetics to rot aside. Emotion has come to be known as an important and valuable factor to take into account when people evaluate the possibility of purchasing or using something; and, aesthetics recall emotions that in turn trigger actions. A cluttered page, an appliance with button labels with an ugly typeface, might pose as unreliable to your users. While, a clear interface, a page with well placed elements and the just quantity of attention attraction on the correct objects, would prove even inviting and delicious to be used.

Aesthetics are a matter of balance and of understanding the context your products will be used in and what your users are reaching for. An over decoration might prove a futile addition to the end of an emergency door. While an over boxed item page or a results page with lack of critical information might scare costumers off. Hawk or peackock indeed.

Words are very unnecessary... by lepiaf.geo

Words are very unnecessary... by lepiaf.geo

To wrap things up, I support and rally the idea that products and services should be designed to go as unnoticed as possible by the people who use them. In other words, you should design your products with one goal in mind: be useful to your costumers. How can your product be not useful? Run the functionality race: products that overwhelm their users with either a myriad of functions just because the competition has them, put too much effort on the looks that costumers instead of pursuing their objectives sat back and watch your work of art. Or simply stab yourself and play the vanity queen, stubbornly shut yourself from the outside world and decide by yourself (or within the organization) who the users are, what they are trying to reach and what is the best for them without ever contacting those weird people we call costumers. As in the aesthetics and usefulness pulse, the need of innovating within in contrast with innovating with the help of the outside world is a matter of balance.


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