Shipulski On Design

Archive for the ‘Clarity’ Category

There’s a special type of confusion that has blocked many good ideas from seeing the light of day.  The confusion happens early in the life of a new technology when it is up and running in the lab but not yet incorporated in a product.  Since the new technology provides a new flavor of customer goodness, it has the chance to create incremental sales for the company.  But, since there are no products in the market that provide the novel goodness, by definition there can be no sales from these products because they don’t yet exist.  And here’s the confusion.  Organizations equate “no sales” with “no market”.

There’s a lot of risk with launching new products with new value propositions to new customers.  You invest resources to create the new technologies and products, create the sales tools, train the sales teams, and roll it out well. And with all this hard work and investment, there’s a chance no one will buy it.  Launching a product that improves on an existing product with an existing market is far less risky – customers know what to expect and the company knows they’ll buy it.  The status quo when stable if all the players launch similar products, right up until it isn’t.  When an upstart enters the market with a product that offers new customer goodness (value proposition) the same-old-same-old market-customer dynamic is changed forever.

A market-busting product is usually launched by an outsider – either a big player moves into a new space or a startup launches its first product.  Both the new-to-market big boy and the startup have a far different risk profile than the market leader, not because their costs to develop and launch a new product are different, but because they have not market share.  For them, they have no market share to protect any new sales are incremental.  But for the established players, most of their resources are allocated to protecting their existing business and any resources diverted toward a new-to-market product is viewed as a loss of protective power and a risk to their market share and profitability.   And on top of that, the incumbent sees sales of the new product as a threat to sales of the existing products.  There’s a good chance that their some of their existing customers will prefer the new goodness and buy the new-to-market product instead of the tried-and-true product.  In that way, sales growth of their own new product is seen as an attack no their own market share.

Business leaders are smart.  Theoretically, they know when a new product is proposed, because it hasn’t launched yet, there can be no sales.  Yet, practically, because their prime directive to protect market share is so all-encompassing and important, their vision is colored by it and they confound “no sales” with “no market”.  To move forward, it’s helpful to talk about their growth objectives and time horizon.

With a short time horizon, the best use of resources is to build on what works – to launch a product that builds on the last one.  But when the discussion is moved further out in time, with a longer time horizon it’s a high risk decision to hold on tightly to what you have as the market changes around you.  Eventually, all recipes run out of gas like Henry Ford’s Model T.  And the best leading indicator of running low on fuel is when the same old recipe cannot deliver on medium-term growth objectives.  Short term growth is still there, but further out they are not.  Market forces are squeezing the juice out of your past success.

Ultimately, out of desperation, the used-to-be market leader will launch a new-to-market product.  But it’s not a good idea to do this work only when it’s the only option left.  Before they’re launched, new products that offer new value to customers will, by definition, have no sales.  Try to hold back the fear-based declaration that there is no market.  Instead, do the forward-looking marketing work to see if there is a market.  Assume there is a market and build some low cost learning prototypes and put them in front of customers.  These prototypes don’t yet have to be functional; they just have to communicate the idea behind the new value proposition.

Before there is a market, there is an idea that a market could exist.  And before that could-be market is served, there must be prototype-based verification that the market does in fact exist.  Define the new value proposition, build inexpensive prototypes and put them in front of customers.  Listen to their feedback, modify the prototypes and repeat.

Instead of arguing whether the market exists, spend all your energy proving that it does.

Image credit — lensletter

If you’re all sad or anxious, you’re not operating at full potential.

If you’re sad, you’re thinking about the past.  You’re remembering what happened and wishing it went differently.  You’re compromising the present by spending emotional energy on something that cannot change.  The past is gone, never to return.  Can’t unwind it, can’t undo it. Let it go.  Bring your mind back to your body.  It’s time to realize your potential, and the only way to do that is to live in the present.

If you’re anxious or afraid, you’re thinking about the future.  You’re thinking about what may happen and imagining that it’s not going to go your way.  You’re practicing failure in the future.  It’s not possible to control the future, so don’t try.  And don’t worry about problems that haven’t happened yet because they may not happen at all. Grab your mind and reattach it to your body because the future is not made in the future, it’s made in the present.  And that’s just where you’ll find your full potential.

You operate at your full potential when you apply your full attention to the present.  In the present, all your internal resources are applied to the situation at hand.  If you are in a conversation with a friend, you are fully engaged and practicing full-body listening.  If you are working on a problem, each hemisphere sees it from its own perspective all-the-while discussing it with its better half.  Point is, you’re all-in. Point is, all of you is in the present.

When you find your mind wandering in the past, take a breath and bring it back to the present so you can get back to living at your potential.  When you find your mind worrying in the future, take two breaths and head back to the home of your full potential.

Whether you find it in the past or future, just bring your mind back to the present.  There’s nothing wrong with a mind that wanders.  Minds wander.  That’s their nature.  That’s what they do. Don’t be sad and don’t worry.  Just bring it back.

Image credit – TEDxPioneerValley2012

When the mainstream products become tired, there’s incentive to replace it, but while sales are good there’s no compelling reason to obsolete your best work.  Things that matter start from things that no longer matter.

The gestation period for a novel idea to transition to viable technology then to a winning product and the processes to bring it market is longer than anyone wants to admit.  If you haven’t done it before it takes twice as long as you think and three times longer than you want.  If you stomp on the accelerator once there’s consensus you should, you waited too long.

There’s a simple way to tell it’s time to accelerate. When the status quo sets the cruise control to “coast”, it’s time.  When new there’s no time to work on new concepts, that’s coasting.  When ROI analyses are required for most everything, that’s coasting.  When forward-looking work is cut and cost reduction work is accelerated, that’s a sure sign of coasting.

As soon as you recognize coasting, it’s time to circle the wagons and create an acceleration plan. It’s not across-the-board acceleration, nor is it founded on people working harder or taking on more projects.  The plan starts with a business objective and a commitment to add resources to speed things up.  If the plan isn’t tied tightly to an important business objective it will miss the mark, and if incremental resources are not applied to the work, it won’t accelerate.

Here’s a rule – if projects and resources don’t change, you haven’t changed anything.

When you can feel the low pressure system in your body and can smell the storm brewing over the horizon, you have an obligation to do something about it.  But moving resources and starting projects at the expense of stopping others is emotionally charged work, and the successful organization will reject these changes at every turn.  And everyone will think there’s no need to change, but they’ll be wrong.

It’s will be tough going, but your instincts are good and intuition is on-the-mark – there is a storm brewing over the horizon. Push through the discomfort, push through the fear, push through the self-doubt.

It’s time to believe in yourself.  It’s the only thing powerful enough to make a difference.

Image credit – Chris Kim

You’re never really sure how your new project will turn out, unless you don’t try.  Not trying is the only way to guarantee certainty – certainty that nothing good will come of it.

There’s been a lot of talk about creating a culture where failure is accepted.  But, failure will never be accepted, and nor should it be.  Even the failing forward flavor won’t be tolerated.  There’s a skunk-like stink to the word that cannot be cleansed. Failure, as a word, should be struck from the vernacular.

If you have a good plan and you execute it well, there can be no failure.  The plan can deliver unanticipated results, but that’s not failure, that’s called learning.  If the team runs the same experiment three times in a row, that, too, is not failure.  That’s “not learning”.  The not learning is a result of something, and that something should be pursued until you learn its name and address.  And once named, made to go away.

When the proposed plan is reviewed and improved before it’s carried out, that’s not failure.  That’s good process that creates good learning.  If the plan is not reviewed, executed well and generates results less than anticipated, it’s not failure.  You learned your process needs to change. Now it’s time to improve it.

When a good plan is executed poorly, there is no failure. You learned that one of your teams executed in a way that was different than your expectations.  It’s time to learn why it went down as it did and why your expectations were the way they were.  Learning on all fronts, failing on none.

Nothing good can come of using the f word, so don’t use it.  Use “learn” instead.  Don’t embrace failure, embrace learning. Don’t fail early and often, learn early and often. Don’t fail forward (whatever that is), just learn.

With failure there is fear of repercussion and a puckering on all fronts.  With learning there is openness and opportunity.  You choose the words, so choose wisely.

Image credit –  IZATRINI.com

Supply and demand have been joined at the hip since the beginning.  When demand is high, the deck is shuffled so supply seems low.  The fabricated scarcity drives up prices and shareholders are happy.  When demand is low, the competition pushes each other on price.  The abundance creates a commodity, and it’s a race to the bottom.

But this is old thinking.

Scarcity isn’t a lever to jack up prices or manipulate relationships, it’s an opportunity to spend your limited resources on the most important work and to build relationships.  When you tell a potential partner you want work with them and you are willing to spend your finite resources to make it happen, it’s a huge compliment.  Voting with your feet makes a powerful statement that you’re serious about working with them because you think they’re special.  You are telling them that you will say no to others so you can say yes to them.  Both know they’re part of something important and the free-flowing positivity results in something otherwise impossible.

Scarcity is limiting only if your mental framework thinks it is.  If you hoard and hold tightly, scarcity breeds win-lose relationships governed by power dynamics.  But if you choose the anti-framework, scarcity creates trust.

Played differently, abundance does not create commodity, it’s opportunity to show others you have enough to spare.  In personal relationships, when you share some of your work for free your relationships blossom.  When you give it away you are signaling that you have plenty to spare.  It’s clear to everyone you are a geyser of new thinking.  Here – take this.  I’ll make more.  These simple words create a foundation of trust which bolsters your personal brand.  And because all business relationships are personal relationships, it does the same thing for your company’s brand.

Make it a commodity or give it away – how you see abundance is your choice.  The old way breeds bare-knuckled competition.  The new way creates a brand steeped in trust.

If you have scarcity, be thankful for it.  Allocate your precious resources thoughtfully and with love.  Spend your time with the people and causes that matter.  It will feel good to everyone, including you.  And if you have abundance, be thankful.  Choose to develop closer relationships based on trust. Choose to give it away.

Happy Thanksgiving.

image credit — GloriaGarcia

Today marks six years of blog posts published every Wednesday evening.  300 weeks in a row and I haven’t skipped, forgot, or repeated.  All written without an editor, though you knew that by the typos and grammar stumbles.

It’s a challenge to write every week, but it’s worth it.  Writing demands thinking things through, which can be difficult especially if you want to write clearly, but thinking things through creates knowledge.  Deep knowledge.

Over the last year I wrote a lot about self-awareness, mindfulness and intentions.  I’m better for my meditations, and through osmosis, so are some of the people closest to me. I expect you’ll hear more on these themes over the next year.

I’ve put myself out there with my writing.  With some posts I’m afraid to hit the publish key, and those are the posts that matter.  My fear is the signal there’s something important in the post.  I hope to write more of those.

I strive to write clearly and densely and avoid buzzwords.  Innovation is the buzzword that trips me up.  But like He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, I’ll see if I can avoid calling it by name. (And never three times in the same post.)  And my call-to-arms will be clearer, plainer, denser.

I’m not sure what next year will bring, but I hope it will be 52 more posts.

Thanks for reading.

Mike

Image credit – Bart.

Immediately after there’s an elegant solution to a previously intractable problem, the solution is obvious to others.  But, just before the solution those same folks said it was impossible to solve.  I don’t know if there’s a name for this phenomenon, but it certainly causes hart burn for those brave enough to take on the toughest problems.

Intractable problems are so fundamental they are no longer seen as problems.  Over the years experts simply accept these problems as constraints that must be complied with.   Just as the laws of physics can’t be broken, experts behave as if these self-made constraints are iron-clad and believe these self-build walls define the viable design space.  To experts, there is only viable design space or bust.

A long time ago these problems were intractable, but now they are not.  Today there are new materials, new analysis techniques, new understanding of physics, new measurement systems and new business models.. But, they won’t be solved.  When problems go unchallenged and constrain design space they weave themselves into the fabric of how things are done and they disappear.   No one will solve them until they are seen for what they are.

It takes time to slow down and look deeply at what’s really going on.  But, today’s frantic pace, unnatural fascination with productivity and confusion of activity with progress make it almost impossible to slow down enough to see things as they are.  It takes a calm, centered person to spot a fundamental problem masquerading as standard work and best practice.  And once seen for what they are it takes a courageous person to call things as they are.  It’s a steep emotional battle to convince others their butts have been wet all these years because they’ve been sitting in a mud puddle.

Once they see the mud puddle for what it is, they must then believe it’s actually possible to stand up and walk out of the puddle toward previously non-viable design space where there are dry towels and a change of clothes.  But when your butt has always been wet, it’s difficult to imagine having a dry one.

It’s difficult to slow down to see things as they are and it’s difficult to re-map the territory.   But it’s important.  As continuous improvement reaches the limit of diminishing returns, there are no other options.  It’s time to solve the intractable problems.

Image credit – Steven Depolo

Hands-on versus hands-off – as a leader it’s a fundamental choice.  And for me the single most important guiding principle is – do what it takes to maintain or strengthen the team’s personal ownership of the work.

If things are going well, keep your hands off.  This reinforces the team’s ownership and your trust in them.  But it’s not hands-off in and ignore them sense; it’s hands-off in a don’t tell them what to do sense. Walk around, touch base and check in to show interest in the work and avoid interrogation-based methods that undermine your confidence in them.  This is not to say a hands-off leader only superficially knows what’s going on, it should only look like the leader has a superficial understanding.

The hands-off approach requires a deep understanding of the work and the people doing it.  The hands-off leader must make the time to know the GPS coordinates of the project and then do reconnaissance work to identify the positions of the quagmires and quicksand that lay ahead.  The hands-off leader waits patiently just in front of the obstacles and makes no course correction if the team can successfully navigate the gauntlet.  But when the team is about to sink to their waists, leader gently nudges so they skirt the dangerous territory.

Unless, of course, the team needs some learning.  And in that case, the leader lets the team march it’s project into the mud.  If they need just a bit of learning the leader lets them get a little muddy; and if the team needs deep learning, the leader lets them sink to their necks.  Either way, the leader is waiting under cover as they approach the impending snafu and is right beside them to pull them out.  But to the team, the hands-off leader is not out in front scouting the new territory.  To them, the hands-off leader doesn’t pay all that much attention.  To the team, it’s just a coincidence the leader happens to attend the project meeting at a pivotal time and they don’t even recognize when the leader subtly plants the idea that lets the team pull themselves out of the mud.

If after three or four near-drowning incidents the team does not learn or change it’s behavior, it’s time for the hands-off approach to look and feel more hands-on.  The leader calls a special meeting where the team presents the status of the project and grounds the project in the now.  Then, with everyone on the same page the leader facilitates a process where the next bit of work is defined in excruciating detail.  What is the next learning objective? What is the test plan?  What will be measured? How will it be measured?  How will the data be presented?  If the tests go as planned, what will you know?  What won’t you know?  How will you use the knowledge to inform the next experiments? When will we get together to review the test results and your go-forward recommendations?

By intent, this tightening down does not go unnoticed.  The next bit of work is well defined and everyone is clear how and when the work will be completed and when the team will report back with the results.  The leader reverts back to hands-off until the band gets back together to review the results where it’s back to hands-on.  It’s the leader’s judgement on how many rounds of hands-on roulette the team needs, but the fun continues until the team’s behavior changes or the project ends in success.

For me, leadership is always hands-on, but it’s hands-on that looks like hands-off.  This way the team gets the right guidance and maintains ownership.  And as long as things are going well this is a good way to go.  But sometimes the team needs to know you are right there in the trenches with them, and then it’s time for hands-on to look like hands-on.  Either way, its vital the team knows they own the project.

There are no schools that teach this.  The only way to learn is to jump in with both feet and take an active role in the most important projects.

Image credit – Kerri Lee Smith

“It’s a fact.” is a powerful statement.  It’s far stronger than a simple description of what happened.  It doesn’t stop at describing a sequence of events that occurred in the past, rather it tacks on an implication of what to think about those events.  When “it’s a fact” there’s objective evidence to justify one way of thinking over another.  No one can deny what happened, no one can deny there’s only one way to see things and no one can deny there’s only one way to think.  When it’s a fact, it’s indisputable.

Facts aren’t indisputable, they’re contextual.  Even when an event happens right in front of two people, they don’t see it the same way.  There are actually two events that occurred – one for each viewer.  Two viewers, two viewing angles, two contexts, two facts.  Right at the birth of the event there are multiple interpretations of what happened.  Everyone has their own indisputable fact, and then, as time passes, the indisputables diverge.

On their own there’s no problem with multiple diverging paths of indisputable facts.  The problem arises when we use indisputable facts of the past to predict the future.  Cause and effect are not transferrable from one context to another, even if based on indisputable facts.  The physics of the past (in the true sense of physics) are the same as the physics of today, but the emotional, political, organizational and cultural physics are different.   And these differences make for different contexts.   When the governing dynamics of the past are assumed to be applicable today, it’s easy to assume the indisputable facts of today are the same as yesterday.  Our static view of the world is the underlying problem, and it’s an invisible problem.

We don’t naturally question if the context is different.  Mostly, we assume contexts are the same and mostly we’re blind to those assumptions.  What if we went the other way and assumed contexts are always different?  What would it feel like to live in a culture that always questions the context around the facts?  Maybe it would be healthy to justify why the learning from one situation applies to another.

As the pace of change accelerates, it’s more likely today’s context is different and yesterday’s no longer applies.  Whether we want to or not, we’ll have to get better at letting go of indisputable facts.  Instead of assuming things are the same, it’s time to look for what’s different.

Image credit — Joris Leermakers

Things are no longer predictable, and it’s time to start behaving that way.

In the olden days (the early 2000s) the pace of change was slow enough that for most the next big thing was the same old thing, just twisted and massaged to look like the next big thing.  But that’s not the case today.  Today’s pace is exponential, and it’s time to behave that way.  The next big thing has yet to be imagined, but with unimaginable computing power, smart phones, sensors on everything and a couple billion new innovators joining the web, it should be available on Alibaba and Amazon a week from next Thursday.  And in three weeks, you’ll be able to buy a 3D printer for $199 and go into business making the next big thing out of your garage.  Or, you can grasp tightly onto your success and ride it into the ground.

To move things forward, the first thing to do is to blow up the strategic planning process and sweep the pieces into the trash bin of a bygone era.  And, the next thing to do is make sure the scythe of continuous improvement  is busy cutting waste out of the manufacturing process so it cannot be misapplied to the process of re-imagining the strategic planning process.  (Contrary to believe, fundamental problems of ineffectiveness cannot be solved with waste reduction.)

First, the process must be renamed.  I’m not sure what to call it, but I am sure it should not have “planning” in the name – the rate of change is too steep for planning.  “Strategic  adapting” is a better name, but the actual behavior is more akin to probe, sense, respond.   The logical question then – what to probe?

[First, for the risk minimization community, probing is not looking back at the problems of the past and mitigating risks that no longer apply.]

Probing is forward looking, and it’s most valuable to probe (purposefully investigate) fertile territory.  And the most fertile ground is defined by your success.  Here’s why.  Though the future cannot be predicted, what can be predicted is your most profitable business will attract the most attention from the billion, or so, new innovators looking to disrupt things.  They will probe your business model and take it apart piece-by-piece, so that’s exactly what you must do.  You must probe-sense-respond until you obsolete your best work.  If that’s uncomfortable, it should be.  What should be more uncomfortable is the certainty that your cash cow will be dismantled.   If someone will do it, it might as well be you that does it on your own terms.

Over the next year the most important work you can do is to create the new technology that will cause your most profitable business to collapse under its own weight.  It doesn’t matter what you call it – strategic planning, strategic adapting, securing the future profitability of the company – what matters is you do it.

Today’s biggest risk is our blindness to the immense risk of keeping things as they are.  Everything changes, everything’s impermanent – especially the things that create huge profits.  Your most profitable businesses are magnates to the iron filings of disruption.  And it’s best to behave that way.

Image credit – woodleywonderworks

It all starts and ends with clarity.  There’s not much to it, really.  You strip away all the talk and get right to the work you’re actually doing.  Not the work you should do, want to do, or could do.  The only thing that matters is the work you are doing right now.  And when you get down to it, it’s a short list.

There’s a strong desire to claim there’s a ton of projects happening all at once, but projects aren’t like that.  Projects happen serially.  Start one, finish one is the best way.  Sure it’s sexy to talk about doing projects in parallel, but when the rubber meets the road, it’s “one at time” until you’re done.

The thing to remember about projects is there’s no partial credit.  If a project is half done, the realized value is zero, and if a project is 95% done, the realized value is still zero (but a bit more frustrating).  But to rationalize that we’ve been working hard and that should count for something, we allocate partial credit where credit isn’t due.  This binary thinking may be cold, but it’s on-the-mark.  If your new product is 90% done, you can’t sell it – there is no realized value.  Right up until it’s launched it’s work in process inventory that has a short shelf like – kind of like ripe tomatoes you can’t sell.  If your competitor launches a winner, your yet-to-see-day light product over-ripens.

Get a pencil and paper and make the list of the active projects that are fully staffed, the ones that, come hell or high water, you’re going to deliver.  Short list, isn’t it?  Those are the projects you track and report on regularly.  That’s clarity. And don’t talk about the project you’re not yet working on because that’s clarity, too.

Are those the right projects?  You can slice them, categorize them, and estimate the profits, but with such a short list, you don’t need to.  Because there are only a few active projects, all you have to do is look at the list and decide if they fit with company expectations.  If you have the right projects, it will be clear.  If you don’t, that will be clear as well.  Nothing fancy – a list of projects and a decision if the list is good enough.  Clarity.

How will you know when the projects are done?  That’s easy – when the resources start work on the next project.  Usually we think the project ends when the product launches, but that’s not how projects are.  After the launch there’s a huge amount of work to finish the stuff that wasn’t done and to fix the stuff that was done wrong.  For some reason, we don’t want to admit that, so we hide it.  For clarity’s sake, the project doesn’t end until the resources start full-time work on the next project.

How will you know if the project was successful?  Before the project starts, define the launch date and using that launch data, set a monthly profit target.  Don’t use units sold, units shipped, or some other anti-clarity metric, use profit.  And profit is defined by the amount of money received from the customer minus the cost to make the product.  If the project launches late, the profit targets don’t move with it.  And if the customer doesn’t pay, there’s no profit.  The money is in the bank, or it isn’t.  Clarity.

Clarity is good for everyone, but we don’t behave that way.  For some reason, we want to claim we’re doing more work than we actually are which results in mis-set expectations.  We all know it’s matter of time before the truth comes out, so why not be clear?  With clarity from the start, company leaders will be upset sooner rather than later and will have enough time to remedy the situation.

Be clear with yourself that you’re highly capable and that you know your work better than anyone.  And be clear with others about what you’re working on and what you’re not.  Be clear about your test results and the problems you know about (and acknowledge there are likely some you don’t know about).

I think it all comes down to confidence and self-worth.  Have the courage wear clarity like a badge of honor.  You and your work are worth it.

Image credit – Greg Foster