Did Innovation Kill Wow!

Mont Saint Michel

When was the last time you said “wow?”  Had to think about it didn’t you.

I often ask this question to audiences – and a strange thing is happening.  Fewer and fewer people have a good answer.  In fact, there is a demarcation by age.  Experienced people enjoy the question and have fun with it; the younger crowd looks around quizzically or takes a brief time out to peak at their phone.

What’s going on here?  Well I’m not sure but I have an idea.  I think we have become so inundated with amazing innovations that we have lost the ability to be wowed.  Let me explain.

Not too long ago I was in the Customer Loyalty business.  As consultants our aiming point was to get customers to say: “wow!”  We believed this correlated to loyalty.  Not anymore.  Wow is simply the expected norm in our culture of constant stimulation and immediate gratification.

I think this has been caused by our quest for Innovation facilitated by the Internet.  We are all working from the same database of winners as selected by the Internet.  The Internet has narrowed our base for Innovation, not widened it.  In addition, the Internet alerts us of Ideas and Innovations in the pipeline.  Who is surprised that Google is working on driverless cars?

Is this a tragedy?  Should we stop Innovating?  Of course not!  I still like the wow I get from my new car because I never have to take the key out of my pocket.  But a car key in your pocket will never wow my grand daughter.  She doesn’t even relate to phones; here preferred style is video chat.

I think that’s the sadness of our hyper-innovation society.  We’re losing our ability to be excited.  But wait, maybe there’s an answer.  Maybe we need to start spending time with the younger people in the audience to show them how to access ideas at the source rather than through RSS feeds.  Maybe it’s time to spend time in nature and museums to see what is truly remarkable.  And maybe it’s time to stand in awe of some of the great achievement of humans – I just visited Le Mont Saint Michel where no one was looking at their smartphone.

Maybe there is an answer in “retro.”  Maybe returning to diversity in experience and thought will bring us some new ideas.  Ones that will make us go WOW!

Converging The 3 Biggest Management Issues of 2013

The 2013 economic indicators don’t look great!  We’re heading over a “fiscal cliff” in the US while we wait for “European contagion” as the economic engines in BRIC slow down.  

What’s a business to do?  Is this a perfect storm, or a perfect opportunity?  Will businesses sit on the sidelines and hoard cash or will they get back in the game and take risks?  We’ll know the answer in a year.

In the interim whether organizations decide to sit this one out or move forward they cannot protect themselves from three major issues:

Employee Engagement
You pick the number, but employee engagement is at all time lows and there is no reason to reverse the trend. 

Customer Loyalty
This is on the same path as employee engagement. Technology has put customers in charge of brands. 

Innovation 
Ideas are the lifeblood of an organization’s health and relevance, but “survival management” has stifled the free flow of new ideas.

These three issues are not separate; they cannot be addressed individually; they must be addressed as one.

In my consulting over recent years I have learned that: 

... employees don’t work for their organizations anymore; they work for their customers.  

It is folly to admonish employees with pleas of profitability, bonuses, and shareholder value.  It is equal folly to believe that cosmetic changes and better communication will overcome the engagement malaise.  We have demonstrated to employees that the business doesn’t want to make a commitment to them.  Employees are now reciprocating. 

When I talk with employees they show their passion and energy when they talk about “their” customers.  When left alone (I’m avoiding the overused, yet appropriate word “empowerment”) employees will work diligently to provide the best experience for their customers.  Similarly, when I talk with customers they often harbor dislike for the amorphous organizational entity but lasting admiration for the employee who made things right.

Innovation is the nexus of employee engagement and customer loyalty; however, 

we don’t build organizations for innovation, we build them for efficiency and consistency of delivery.  

In effect organizations work hard to prevent the natural alliance between employees and customers.  

Now I’m not naïve, I recognize that some times employees are bad (and should be dismissed) and sometimes we don’t want employees to think (for example when they must comply with laws and regulations).  Employees understand this.  What they don’t understand is the organization’s orthodoxies and internal controls that prevent the application of common sense in a customer situation.  

Equally, when I talk with CEO’s they want the same thing.  They want employees to act reasonably in serving their customers.  They want employees to offer up ideas that will change orthodoxies and bend internal controls in the service of customers.

So why don’t CEO’s and employees get their way?  Well because there are well meaning layers of management, systems, and procedures that get in the way.  No one is malicious, but the result is disastrous.  The opportunity for a virtuous cycle of: employee->innovation->customer turns into a death spiral of: employee disengagement -> customer defection.

It doesn’t need to be like this.  Human Resources, Customer Experience, and Innovation functions need to look at this problem from the customer point of view.  They need to ask the question:

... how do we unleash ideas from all employees so we can provide our best customer experience?

In 2013 organizations need to build hope into their workforce and “wow” into their customers.