One step closer to the motor cycle ash tray...

In 1850, we held a Great Exhibition.  Historians go on that it was a big deal. Far from it.  Nothing showed the rest of the world how badly we misunderstood design than a greenhouse in Hyde Park full of shit. Social designers laughed at our purposely made decoration and from that point on the adage of 'form follows function' became a core aspect of good design lectures.

It would appear 150ish years later, we break the rules at last!

Saw this jacket in a shop this week.  Reflective Camouflage.  I’m trying to work out what part gets compromised.

Is it the reflective part and in wearing the jacket on a dark night along a stretch of highway, you’re feeling safe in the knowledge that the surface reflects the headlights of an oncoming truck OR is it the camouflage which, had it not been for it’s easy-to-spot qualities, this jacket would be standard issue for all Navy Seals...

Black ring necked, ipad holding, latte drinking south banker designer types take note: a good idea, it appears, need not obey the rule form to follow funtion.  This jacket is just over £700.00.  If you want one, follow the link:  http://www.tessuti.co.uk/brands/q-z/stone-island/stone-island-reflective-camouflage-jacket-blue?gclid=CNXPqqGEn7MCFcrItAodKHkARw 

have a good weekend - it gets dark soon.

STOP using Apple as an example of innovation - BORING!!!!!!!

Can we STOP using Apple, Steve Jobs or Google as examples of great business and leaders and think of something more original please.

I have lost count of the number of times those companies and that individual has been cited in presentations.

I am SO BORED.

It’s now got to the point that if unfortunately someone is presenting to me and one of the two subjects I’ve just mentioned come up, I tend to just drift off and think about something else.

Especially when people quote SJ or his philosophy – like they met at a dinner party once...

If I were interviewing folk for a job and asked them to give examples of creative companies or innovative products and they mentioned Apple or an ipod, I wouldn’t give them a job. I’d show them the door.

Citing Apple shows:

Lack of imagination and research on your part. Has there been nothing in the last few decades that isn’t as astonishing, clever, brutal, brilliant, or elegant as that company?

Laziness. No-one’s going to disagree with your point of view as you’ve plenty of advocates to support your observations and opinion. In fact some witty journalist has done all the hard work for you, all you need do is take a screen shot and a quote and away you go.

Lack of creative thinking. If innovation is all about technical stuff – fine, there’s more to life than battery powered handhelds... if innovation is about commercial profit, think laterally people! Consider the utter genius who put ‘rinse and repeat’ on the side of a shampoo bottle and doubled sales over night without changing product, packaging, production line or distribution channels. How about the guy who took the second strike strip off the Bryant and May matchbox and reduced the cost of box production and thus increased profitability. that ain't neat?

A very limited ability to synthesise material. Say you work in plastics manufacture, pharmaceutical or logistics. You’ve a tough job right? You’ve enough on your plate to manage. Then your boss (or a latte drinking consultant in jeans – like me) turns up and says “we need to think a bit more like google around here. I’ve got some stories...” please!

Don’t try and be any other business but your own.

Do it brilliantly and love what you do and THAT will be the thing that your customers and clients love about you.

Disagree and think I’m talking bunk – good for you. Join the masses who talk a good game and focus on definitions and descriptions.

Meanwhile the team and I will continue to have ideas with our clients.

That’s what we do and there’s no pictures or posters of Steve Jobs on our wall when we do it.

Kylie Minogue and the genius of lost time.

There is a rumour/urban myth within the music industry (and I’ve checked on this with the folk I know in said circles) that Kylie Minogue’s  first UK hit “I should be so lucky” was written very fast – we’re talking somewhere between 10 to 30mins...

The story goes that Stock, Aitken + Waterman, had completely forgotten about Kylie’s first visit to the UK and on arrival at their studio, she sat in their foyer whilst they quickly dug out the keyboards and the sampling machine and threw together the song. Kylie admits herself that coming from the world of t.v., she treated the lyrics like a script and sang into the mike as directed. The song was recorded in a few takes and off she flew from Heathrow at the end of the day. It happened that fast.

I love the story. I know you’ll have a few anecdotes yourself.

Learning here is this: Having little time IS NOT an issue when it comes to solving problems; it can sometimes be a blessing.

When time is tight your brain doesn’t move any faster. It’s always moving fast.  Normally however you’ve got time to consciously judge stuff. When time is tight, there is no room for conscious processing; that’ll waste what moments you do have. It’s time to relax and allow your subconscious processing to surface. All the time it’s moving super fast and making decisions without your awareness. It knows EXACTLY what’s’ going on. It’s the greatest resource you have so the trick is to allow it to show you...

Let’s look at Kylie’s song. Stock, Aitken + Waterman had written songs by the dozen. They had a strong back catalogue of successes and thousands of hours between them crafting lyrics and melodies. The collective and individual power of their mind when it came to ‘writing a song’ was without question. Whether you like their style isn’t the issue here. They could write and had got something that worked for them just as well as Lennon and McCartney – it was just on this occasion they cut out the crap and nailed a song in 20mins.

Time is always going to pass. So it’s up to you on how you feel about it.

“Not having enough time” is a judgement. It programmes your brain into thinking about what it can’t do. And guess what -  you can’t do it!

Try “we’ve got this amount of time and let’s make the best of it”. It’s a simple shift in perspective but it’s worth keeping in mind. A shorter amount of time gets your subconscious surfacing and as a result you:

·         Cut out the crap – you’ll go for what matters. They’ll be lots of that 80/20 rule kicking in but you’ll also experience genius moments of insight and idea creation as your subconscious brings forth the wonderment of your mind in seconds rather than hours.

·         You’ll make decisions better – see above

·         You’ll experiment better and try things out for the first time. Let’s face it, if there isn’t enough time for the ‘normal’ way of doing things, then a new approach will have more of a chance. For example – ever thought about NOT typing up a proposal and simply binding your notes together along with all the roughs? Alec Issigonis designed the mini on a napkin –what’s good enough for him...

·         You’ll have way more fun. If you want to kill a project, do it slowly!

Don’t however GIVE YOURSELF less time. An engineered false deadline isn’t the same energetically as having a real deadline. I’ve seen lots of bad advice being given framed as ‘create a sense of urgency’ to get the best out of people.  Seriously, don’t do that.

I write this with a few important pitches to prepare for the next few weeks. Only I haven’t that luxury of time as I’m committed to other projects. Thus my weekend and evenings are the only time I have – so I take all of my own advice.

I also remind myself to have fun with it.

So you do the same when the ‘time’ issue comes up again.

Sorry it was a long blog.

I hadn’t time for a shorter one.

the trouble with Einstein...

Einstein said:

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

I love this quote as it neatly sums up a three day workshop on having ideas. That all said, reading the quote doesn’t give you the capability to execute its message.  Only trial and error, reflection, feedback will grow your confidence to do so time and again.

3 days out of the office won’t necessarily tick all the boxes.

But then we don’t need 3 days either.

The best learning is visceral. That’s why I remember the wise words from Grandparents and favorite teachers etc. they stuck with me and made a deep emotional connection.

The visceral stuff sticks.  It’s the stuff of ‘Swans break your arms if you get too close”.*

But we can’t design business development to be visceral all the time. It’s okay for intellect to do a great deal of work for us. Intellectually I don’t have to work hard to know that jumping in a bath and then throwing in a electric toaster is perhaps not the best way to start my day. Having said that, if a trainer uses such an example to land a point in the classroom – it’s a creative stretch too far!

Good design comes from finding the right blend of visceral, cerebral and indeed practical. The best practical is the real problem there and then that needs to be challenged.

Send me on a workshop where we solve pretend issues: ill come back with pretend answers. The trouble with quoting Einstein is all his answers are pretend unless we do it ourselves.Only then do we make the connections he did and only then have we truly learned.

*despite decades of scare mongering children along our river banks, there have been no known cases of anyone’s arm ever being broken by a Swan.

Why BIG companies will never, EVER be able to do customer service.

 There is no such thing

Everyone bangs on about a brilliant customer experience but there is no such thing. What works for me (someone talking honestly about what’s going on and being frank but with a decent dose of humour, pace and provocation) isn’t going to work for the next person in the queue. The poor bastard behind the till can’t adopt his style for everyone and match it perfectly as we’re all human beings and as a result, put more than two in a room and they’ll be friction at some point. Concentrate that into short time experiences (buying a dress in a shop you’ll visit once) is not enough to create an intense bond with anything genuine; unless you’re a spiritual healer. Big businesses forget that all their systems involve people. As soon as you call it a process it’s broken.

Companies make the mistake of appointing a head of customer experience

The head of customer experience should be the CEO. If not you’re basically telling the whole business it’s someone else’s responsibility and not yours.

You can’t scale personal sensitivity

We all have an example of our favourite butcher, garage owner, builder, gym instructor etc. He or she goes out of the way to help you, remember your favourite colours, bands, nicknames, where you went on holiday and what you love and hate.  It’s called ‘giving a shit’ and you can’t scale it.

Case studies are not the answer

Anyone who quotes Southwest Airlines as a model of customer service should be yelled at or laughed at for being un-original. There’s little point in trying to scale an outrageous service at BA or Virgin etc. as I’m unlikely to ever fly the same airline to the same destination and meet the same crew again. What I get in return for consistency is the same health and safety briefings (no-one ever listens to) and the same flaccid, insipid half hearted welcome-on-board-to-our-one-world-alliance-and-partners-do-you-want-to-give-to-our-charity-duty-free-complimentary-pilot-talking-shit-about-weather-condtions speech instead.  Have you seen the laminates they have to read out? (often stuck to wall by the toilet door). This says to the employee from the business that they’re not trusted enough to think intuitively and sensitively about the job they do daily and that some over paranoid executive in tight shoes has to tell you what to say...  Occasionally we hero stories of cabin crew saving lives with breadsticks and coat hangers but as an employee, I can’t suffocate my passengers and bring them back to life to show I’m living the values.  As a result, I can only serve tea 1000 times a day and be asked to smile.

You can only train who applies.

No matter what training you provide, laminates you produce, videos you show, you’re only EVER going to be as good as the combination of employee who applies and the HR folk who explain the customer experience/brand promise.  Whilst waiting for a meeting in a London HQ of a retail chain, I overheard ‘HR Madam’ explain to ‘employee Miss’ that she didn’t need to worry about what the customer thinks as it’s just about getting ‘our message across’...  couldn’t help but think she had done just that perfectly.

Businesses forget that customers, partners, agencies and clients are equals not supplicants.

I was asked by the Head of Customer experience of a large international organisation to prepare some thinking on what the future of that business could look like.  How flattered and delighted I thought. Instead of sending in PowerPoints and emails, our business takes time on bespoke responses and physical material to provoke the discussions. It’s part of our brand. It’s part of our promise. It’s evidence that we deliver genius.  All this costs time, money and effort. BUT it’s what we want to do and live for so off we went.

You can imagine how we feel when we receive NOTHING in reply. Not a single acknowledgement.  Personally, I’d prefer “thanks Andy, but your thinking sucks” as it completes the conversation and I know where we stand. We didn’t get anything. Not a jot. Not a text. Not an email. Not even a ‘got it’ message. Nada. Zilch.

And now I’m telling the whole world about it J

Right now you’re reading a passive aggressive paragraph about someone who for whatever reason has forgot that being the Head of Customer Experience creates and expectation. If s/he can’t keep that context in mind and wont respond, what hope is there for the rest of the employees and business? I'd suggest NONE!

Think also about the international lens on this business (and it is an international business). I smile inside about the whole thing but if this were China – s/he’s PROPERLY insulted me and risked the loss of the relationship. To think these senior people are invested in too is the additional sadness as its evidence again that learning transfer happens less the higher the manager you become.

A customer experience is inevitable whether I like it or not and the more you remind your staff on what to do and how to do it, the worse things get.

Not being looked at in the eye by the cashier at Zara is inevitable if the cashier is made to feel the customer is always right. Employees are the most important part of the business. If they are given the freedom, responsibility, and belief from the higher ups that they can be themselves and as a result – as by product of good intentions - help others, then the business will flourish.  Managers who think otherwise, just take it away.

Having said all that – I missed an appointment today.

BAD CUSTOMER EXERIENCE! Caused by me. 100% my fault. No-one else’s.

I’m off right now to make amends.

Now, you go do the same.

Ignore the obvious at your (and clients') peril.

Too many project proposals left agencies this week that over complicated the client issue and sold them something they didn't need. Sometimes the obvious gives us the answer.

Lot’s of the time we jump to an answer and then dismiss it simply because we’ve arrived at it too quickly.  It’s as if we don’t trust our own judgement or creative powers in a short time.

We ought to re-consider this.

Our unconscious brain is processing material faster than we realise (hence it’s NOT conscious). The under currents of our fast flowing mind can indeed short cut a great deal of distraction and hard work.

Consider this story an old college tutor passed on to us years ago...

In the late 80’s the University Sports dept opened up a gym with clever machines to measure heart rates and respirations.  You can imagine large beige BBC computers and dot matrix printers buzzing and humming whilst professors and psychologists tip toed over the wires and running machines plotting graphs as the students ran new personal bests.

One evening the dept opened up its new physio-lab to the greater good of the community and held a wine’n’cheese style evening. Junior students would serve the cava whilst ‘clever’ academic folk and ‘specialists’ in athletic performance would take other faculty heads around the facilities.

Both male and female students were jogging on the machines and it was noticed that the female chest/expansion/heart rate/oxygen-capacity/pulse/thingy graph had flat lined whilst the male graph continued to rise.  Both students were clearly working hard, but it was interpreted that the female chest ‘was at ease with itself’ whilst the male athlete struggled.

For an hour or so several theories bounced around the room and formed the start of some dangerous looking research papers that could soon become scientific fact.

Eventually a female undergraduate student who had been serving cheese on sticks all evening suggested that the graph looked different as the girl runner was wearing a sports bra.  Her chest couldn’t expand as much as the bra was doing exactly what it was designed to do.

The bra was removed.

Both graphs read the same.

Sometimes the most sophisticated people and the most sophisticated tools can’t do what we pick up at an intuitive level.

The key is to spot it in ourselves when it happens.

Another reason brainstorming won’t work

 Following my hugely popular encomium on the myth of brainstorming, I’m following up with another dear reader.

One of the inherited rules of a brainstorm, is the expectation you’ll arrive at ‘the answer’ having been handed out bags of toys, marker pens, post-it notes, squeezy balls and water pistols. After 5 minutes of coaching on how to think ‘big’ and ‘like a child’ you’ll be given the freedom to dick about for an hour or so and arrive at the perfect solution.

You won’t.

There seems to be a fashion with the creative gurus that we were all once like children (cue joke about being born 30 if we weren’t once a child) and that we’ve grown up and out of child like thinking.  Stats (yawn) tell us children smile 1000 times a day and adults but 10 (or whatever it is) and of course let’s not forget the beautiful, ubiquitous and now a little over done TED Talk from Sir Ken Robinson.

I get it.

Now move on.

It’s too simple an argument and without any difference to what other people say.

Actually, kids are brilliant at having thoughts and not ideas.  Granted you don’t have to tell a 6 year old how to play or have fun, make up games and play dragons, fight wizards, draw monsters, imagine castles, pixies and flying fish.

They’d be shit at solving a behaviour change programme for an investment bank though wouldn’t they.

We ask adults to think not like a child, but to adopt the childlike approach of ‘anything is possible’ and ‘without boundaries we can challenge the norms’ etc. I get all that, I really do. I was also a teacher for 7 years so I don’t need the lecture.

What children can’t do is the other way around bit.They can’t think ,like adults my considering all the challenges, rules, regulations, permissions, politics, norms, cultural sensitivities, costs, time constraints and logistics.  They can’t do this as their experience isn’t that of an adult.  Children are brilliant at being children and doing what they do best – having time to think extraordinarily.

The whole we knock creativity out of them piece is wrong, we just layer learning the way it falls over time through a curriculum. The joy of going on a adult learning creative course is we can look back on all that experience and then judge it and turn it on it’s head.

We can’t do that from the start – much to the disappointment of Sir Ken – as it wouldn’t work. You can’t creatively break rules unless you’ve got some rules to break in the first place!

The best help in any problem IS the problem.  It comes with all you need to solve it – if you listen carefully said one ex-boss to me, you’ll hear the answer. Wise words. His business became MORE profitable and successful in the recent recession...

If you’re having a brainstorm. You don’t need the bean bags and fairy lights.

You need the problem.  Explain it, explain it again and again and again.

Then have discussions.

Then allow the thoughts to muse.

Then go home.

Have a bath.

Take some notes and doddle.

Watch Discovery Channel.

Play with some blu tac.

Go to bed and sleep on it and back at work the next morning have another honest discussion about the project.

But don’t’ whatever you do force yourself and the team to solve a crisis in 30mins.