Archive for the ‘Listening’ Category

8 July 2010

Climbing the Great Wall of China: Version 2.0

by Christina Belsito

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There is something romantic about writing a blog. One shares his or her thoughts, stories, art and experiences with the world simply by clicking a mouse. Blogs have redefined what it is to be a writer or a journalist simply because “works” are published instantaneously. Whether or not the blog is actually read by anyone else but the blogger, the writer feels a sense of accomplishment and pride – he or she is, to a certain extent, an international superstar.

There is something romantic about writing a blog. One shares his or her thoughts, stories, art and experiences with the world simply by clicking a mouse. Blogs have redefined what it is to be a writer or a journalist simply because “works” are published instantaneously. Whether or not the blog is actually read by anyone else but the blogger, the writer feels a sense of accomplishment and pride – he or she is, to a certain extent, an international superstar.

But what about in a place where such stardom can be seen as a threat? Enter: China.

To some, the expansion of the Internet in China was a surprise. How would a country that encourages censorship incorporate the World Wide Web – the epitome of freedom of speech – without chaos? Naturally, regulations were put in place (the second Great Wall of China), and many websites were blocked. These include Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube, and most importantly for the purpose of this blog entry, Blogspot and Blogger.*

Despite the limitations, there are millions of bloggers in China (an estimated 30 million in 2005). Some are political; others are, well, unusual, but the majority of China-based bloggers use blogs to talk about themselves – the type of self-expression that would be seen as ludicrous 50 years ago. And no doubt, Chinese bloggers take their “right to blog” quite seriously.

In 2008, in order to outsmart Chinese government censors, bloggers began to use software that would allow them to write backwards. Others attempted to write in the ancient vertical form to confuse the technology. Today, bloggers are playing a game of cat and mouse with Internet police by creating multiple accounts under pseudonyms or by purchasing software that allows them to climb over the firewall. Another trick? Modifying the blog content to avoid being caught using one of the 1,083 characters that are filtered by security forces, which is not quite as simple as misspelling a word or adding an extra number or letter to the end. (When using characters, this blogger assumes that Chinese bloggers use either a similar character or an entirely different character with the same pronunciation as the intended word. Confusing as it may be, readers can still gather the sentiment behind the code.)

Of the 136 jailed journalists worldwide, 24 are imprisoned in China. Clearly, the government means business.

It makes you wonder… what drives Chinese bloggers to keep writing when the risks are so high? What are your thoughts?

*It should be mentioned that despite these regulations, certain people are allowed access to these websites, and many more have found ways around the “Wall.”

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2 July 2010

Please Mr. Postman

by Rocky Prozeller

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Communispace is a company fundamentally founded on listening, and if I’ve heard it right, active listening requires reacting to what’s been said. So this week the bullhorn is being put down in favor of recapping a few of the righteous reads friends of Verbatim have been kind enough to kick over to me. Allow me if you will, to mail in this week’s post.

Communispace is a company fundamentally founded on listening, and if I’ve heard it right, active listening requires reacting to what’s been said. So this week the bullhorn is being put down in favor of recapping a few of the righteous reads friends of Verbatim have been kind enough to kick over to me. Allow me if you will, to mail in this week’s post. 

  • Think you’re familiar with the phrase: ‘if you think that,  you’ve got another thing coming’? Think again. It turns out ‘thing’ is actually ‘think’, as in you’ll have to re-think your original thought. This pondering was provided by Grady Ruster’s Dad – thanks for giving us something to think about.  
  • Vuvuzela’s stormed South Africa, but that was just the beginning of the buzz. The Florida Marlins tried a marketing gimmick in bringing them to baseball, and BP is about to be blasted by a picketing posse, but the most bizarre (and arguably best) use of the mighty musical instrument goes to YouTube for their introduction of the Vuvuzela button, a fancy functionality allowing viewers to add the call of the crowd to any clip. Cheers to Peter Chapin for providing the sound idea.
  • Why should Pampers consider promoting themselves roughly nine months after the World Cup? According to a little fertility factiva, Germany’s success in the 2006 World Cup led to a lot of scoring … and a baby boom. Thanks to D-Rom for delivering that little ditty. 

The fun exists beyond a few facts –  an encyclopedia is loaded with little bits, but it’s not necessarily entertainment – rather the real story is the sharing. People prompt conversation by piping info that inspires interaction. The ‘what’ is rarely as revealing as the ‘who.’ Learn to listen and you may just understand why.

The spirit of sharing continues in the form of this week’s fireworks designated by dame Fitz-Gerald; enjoy the fourth (and fifth) everyone.

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22 June 2010

Tune In, Turn On

by Guest Blogger: Ted Nelson from Mechanica

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Someone recently forwarded me a list of important leadership characteristics, from the U.S. Air Force of all places, as part of their program to identify “emerging leaders.” The list resulted from a comprehensive review of knowledge on the subject of leadership, and results in eight concise characteristics:

Someone recently forwarded me a list of important leadership characteristics, from the U.S. Air Force of all places, as part of their program to identify “emerging leaders.”  The list resulted from a comprehensive review of knowledge on the subject of leadership, and results in eight concise characteristics:

1. Is willing to assume responsibility. 2. Motivates and encourages others. 3.  Demonstrates creativity. 4. Is innovative. 5. Searches for new ideas and different ways of doing things. 6. Seeks opportunities for self-development. 7. Actively listens to others. 8. Expresses ideas in a clear and concise manner.  

While characteristics such as “assuming responsibility” and “motivating others” are certainly familiar from the “leadership greatest hits list,” some, such as “demonstrating creativity,” “searching for new ideas,” and “actively listening to others” are a bit surprising coming from the Air Force.  When the military, the ultimate top-down, command-and-control organization (by design and out of necessity) cites both creativity and innovation as important, it’s probably safe to assume we civilians should also be able to observe these characteristics in our corporate leaders.  Those folks who are paid princely sums to help the companies we invest in successfully navigate through the thick and thin. Unfortunately, when I do a mental tally, I must admit that identifying corporate leaders demonstrating those traits is the exception, rather than the rule. (Come to think of it, certain leaders of large financial services firms leap to mind as potentially just a tad bit too innovative. But that’s for another blog post.) 

The notion of “actively listening to others” grabbed my attention.  Mostly because that’s probably my personal greatest weakness in the leadership department.  Being creative, innovative, and motivating well, I find that to be the easy part.  Or at least those characteristics come relatively easy to any marginally successful entrepreneur.  It’s putting one’s own ideas aside just long enough to really hear what someone else is saying that’s the challenge.  And I suspect I’m not the only one deficient in this area.

I found six principles that form the core of “active listening” on the management website, BNet: “Encourage people to express opinions; clarify perceptions of what is said; restate essential points and ideas; reflect the speaker’s feeling and opinions; summarize the content of the message to check validity; and acknowledge the opinion and contribution of the speaker.”  Hmm, useful tips for leaders.  Also, sounds like a highly relevant set of guiding principles for anyone leading a company’s product development process.  Specifically with respect to how consumers should be brought into the process, but also, of course, in relation to managing the process internally and between partners.

Let’s do a quick review of each of the six principles.  “Encourage people to express opinions.”  This is the obvious one, but unfortunately this is where most research starts and stops.  “Clarify perceptions of what is said.”  Okay, a focus group, when well done, provides this first round of vital feedback.  “Restate essential points and ideas.”  This typically happens, but usually only after the input has been over thought by the product development team and their partners, certainly not in real time with the same consumers who provided the initial input.  The rest of the guidelines?  Forget about it.

The more I think about it, the more I become convinced that various forms of active listening are at the heart of most new product development breakthroughs — whether as part of a well-run corporate process, or the seed that first sparked an idea in the mind of an inventor.  The notion of observation, followed by a series of dialog-driven iterations, is perhaps one of the most powerful tools at our disposal. Both for driving innovation, but also for making sense of the world. 

Few of us are smart enough to figure it all out on our own.  When we do listen to input, it tends to be selective and episodic at best.  Usually we’re able to discern one small piece of the puzzle through observation. This initial conjecture then gets refined through measured internal reflection or expediency into a half-baked idea, rarely with the luxury of the user, partner or employee iterations required to really get something right.  So let’s all give active listening a try: drop your guard; open your mind; stay focused; repeat back what you thought you heard; now do it again.  Eventually we’ll figure it out, but probably not on our own, and probably not the first time.  Come on, admit it, you don’t know it all.  And your first reaction, well, hate to break it to you, it’s probably the wrong one.

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11 June 2010

Expired Insight: Gwyneth’s Goop

by Karen Barone

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All posts by Karen Barone

There’s a reason we advocate for longitudinal studies, going back into communities to test and retest hypotheses. Insights have variable shelf lives and we need to keep checking the expiration date to see if they’ve grown stale. Sadly, I recently discovered the insight in a previous blog post is now the strategic equivalent of a liquefied carrot in the back of my fridge.

There’s a reason we advocate for longitudinal studies, going back into communities to test and retest hypotheses.  Insights have variable shelf lives and we need to keep checking the expiration date to see if they’ve grown stale.  Sadly, I recently discovered the insight in a previous blog post is now the strategic equivalent of a liquefied carrot in the back of my fridge.

In March 2009, I wrote my first blog post on Gwyneth Paltrow’s newsletter, “Goop”.  At that time, I praised Gwyneth for “simply being Gwyneth.”  I loved that the newsletter seemed aspirational, without actually trying to sell a luxury lifestyle.  It was Gwyneth letting us into her world, without apology.  I found this brave, and snickered at critics who faulted her for being out of touch. 

Silly critics, that’s exactly why reading “Goop” was so enjoyable.  It was Gwyneth sharing news from the world of Gwyneth.  That was it.  Readers were voyeurs and it was fun.  But something changed.  Gwyneth decided to share and … (gulp) … advise. 

“Goop” started advising me on how to be healthy ($350/week vegetable cleanse you can only get in Manhattan!), where to vacation (luxury hotel in Morocco!), how to be green (buy from the Stella McCartney Eco Collection $435-$1535!).  I had joked in my original post that Gwyn thinks, “I might want to be her, and she’s right.”  But what I’ve realized is Gwyn assumes I am her.  It’s made “Goop” painful to read and Gwyneth look like a fool. 

A good insight is like the mythical phoenix.  You can kill it with the fires of new evidence, but a new one emerges stronger and more actionable.  In my first blog post, I encouraged luxury brands to take a page from “Goop” and sell aspiration without shame.  The new insight provided by “Goop” is much more useful and powerful:  Don’t overstep.  Don’t confuse author with audience.  It’s a short trip from out-of-touch to completely delusional.

4 Responses to “Expired Insight: Gwyneth’s Goop”

  1. Renee Piazza says:
    June 14, 2010 at 12:52 pm

    Karen – this is a brilliant post, and so true! I find myself saying “yea right” lately when I read her newsletter. Nice post.

  2. Charlotte says:
    June 15, 2010 at 11:44 am

    AND, did you notice that her last “newsletter” (about sprituality) was basically a repeat of one she’d done before? Same sources and everything. Come on Gwen!

  3. Sho says:
    June 21, 2010 at 8:59 am

    Agreed! I love her, but bring back the OG Gweneth… please!

    And good point – “Don’t confuse author with audience” is key to what makes good journalism- well, good!

  4. marla aaron says:
    June 28, 2010 at 2:35 pm

    I too, started out luvin’ Goop–and all that Gwyneth stuff…Karen you absolutely pinpointed the moment she lost me….the CLEANSE! I loved her recipes, the tone…it all felt right and then came the cleanse and the seemingly constant doses of spirituality from a string of expert “lifestyle gurus” interspersed with hotel recommendations that seemed so utterly out of touch.
    You pegged it perfectly!
    Great post.

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17 May 2010

Listening Lessons

by Debi Kleiman

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All posts by Debi Kleiman

At Communispace, we get asked a lot about lessons learned and best practices for online communities. Since we’ve been doing this for over ten years, we have plenty of experience about what works and what doesn’t. I wrote a blog post for the Harvard Business Review blog network that covers some of the Mistakes to Avoid if you want to be successful with your customer community. Please check it out and let us know…do you agree? What did we miss?

At Communispace, we get asked a lot about lessons learned and best practices for online communities.  Since we’ve been doing this for over ten years, we have plenty of experience about what works and what doesn’t.  I wrote a blog post for the Harvard Business Review blog network that covers some of the Mistakes to Avoid if you want to be successful with your customer community.  Please check it out and let us know…do you agree? What did we miss?

My co-author is Professor Anat Keinan from Harvard Business School. She’s an incredible marketing professor who recently published a case study on Communispace for use in the first-year MBA marketing curriculum.  It’s great that the top business schools are teaching MBAs about “social business” and the power of listening.  For this new generation of business leaders, engaging in conversations with customers online will be second nature.  Interesting, eh?

2 Responses to “Listening Lessons”

  1. Lois Kelly says:
    May 19, 2010 at 5:00 pm

    Debi:
    Great piece. Hearing a lot of interest from marketers about the roles, competencies and activities of highly effective community managers. Would love to hear your views on this.
    Lois

  2. Debi Kleiman says:
    May 24, 2010 at 5:52 pm

    Great to hear from you Lois! I think that community managers need to have a multitude of skills in order to be effective. For the members, they need to be warm hosts in the community, with a sense of how their members would interact in the “real” world and be able to make that come alive and feel authentic online. It’s their job to create an inviting, personal space to get members to participate. Encouraging conversation, building on ideas, making connections, giving members many creative ways to express themselves – all are important.

    For the community stakeholders, the community managers need to be great communicators internally to help align the work of the community to the most important issues at the company. They also need to be “connectors” within the organization, knowing the business goals and priorities of all the different stakeholders of the community and how to make the work of the community relevant to them. The best community managers are also passionate about their business or mission – this makes the whole thing really hum! What else? I could go on and on… maybe I’ll save it for another post. Stay tuned. :)

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7 May 2010

Awesome.

by Rocky Prozeller

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Think Chocolate is better than Sunlight or Ninjas? You better vote, because it’s well behind in the rankings on The Most Awesomest Thing Ever, a website which pits unrelated objects, celebrities and activities against each other and then ranks them based on how many people think they are awesome.

Think Chocolate is better than Sunlight or Ninjas? You better vote, because it’s well behind in the rankings on The Most Awesomest Thing Ever, a website which pits unrelated objects, celebrities and activities against each other and then ranks them based on how many people think they are awesome.

“We had no idea it would take off like this,” says Michael Lebowitz, founder and CEO of Big Spaceship, the digital creative agency behind the website which launched April 15. “People spend hours on it. Someone on Twitter even likened it to ‘heroin-dusted Oreos,’ it’s just that addicting.” After just five days, the site stole a collective 18,000 hours from visitors debating between Nachos and Jazz Hands. 

There’s something uniquely awesome about the site, beyond pitting cheeseburgers against cleavage. Rather than limiting would-be reviewers to a predetermined list, The Most Awesomest Thing Ever allows anyone a chance to add their own awesome ideas to the ever-building bank of battling items. 

As market researchers we often set the context in which consumers can view a given product or brand by forcing our consideration set – what we see as the obvious or correct choices – into the equation, but that leaves little room for the answers we didn’t anticipate. It’s a confined conversation, which makes it more command than collaboration.  

Having the courage to place control in the palms of the people pondering your problem opens up the opportunity to see what consumers actually see – not what we want them to. Do so, and you may just discover something unexpected. Now that would be awesome.  

–

A special shout out to the person I find most awesome, my mom; happy Mother’s Day to my only guaranteed reader and the rest of the moms out there!

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6 May 2010

India: A window and a mirror

by Arjun Chawla

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I had the pleasure of attending the recent India Conference at Harvard Business School, a stimulating event that focused on the opportunities — and obstacles — of conducting business in India. This event provided a great window to the intricacies of the Indian business landscape. I found it especially compelling to see how this window actually mirrors issues that businesses everywhere face, particularly in the realms of CRM and new media. I’d like to present a couple of thoughts on these topics, based on insights from this event and ideas with which they have synergies.

A serious challenge for big retailers in India is competing with the endless tapestry of “mom-and-pop” stores that line every urban street. While not a new theme, I was struck by panelist/marketing guru Suhel Seth’s framing of it: He said this challenge arises because the mom-and-pop stores have mastered customer relationship management

I had the pleasure of attending the recent India Conference at Harvard Business School, a stimulating event that focused on the opportunities — and obstacles — of conducting business in India. This event provided a great window to the intricacies of the Indian business landscape. I found it especially compelling to see how this window actually mirrors issues that businesses everywhere face, particularly in the realms of CRM and new media. I’d like to present a couple of thoughts on these topics, based on insights from this event and ideas with which they have synergies.

A serious challenge for big retailers in India is competing with the endless tapestry of “mom-and-pop” stores that line every urban street. While not a new theme, I was struck by panelist/marketing guru Suhel Seth’s framing of it: He said this challenge arises because the mom-and-pop stores have mastered customer relationship management.

The importance of these “old-school” business dynamics is also conveyed in a Wall Street Journal interview with Pawan Munjal, Managing Director/Chief Executive of motorcycle company Hero Honda. In outlining the firm’s strategy in rural India, he states:

“We are visiting all villages in the country, trying to meet with the village elders, trying to convince them about the company, about its products and about why they should become associated with Hero Honda. Once the lead villager agrees the whole village follows and becomes a fan of Hero Honda.”

Isn’t this a social-media strategy? We have mentions of social networks, marketing messages, possible brand ambassadors/evangelists, leaders and followers. Customer relationship management (and perhaps cultural relationship management) is implied. The customer’s power over sales and brand culture is recognized. Thus, examples like this provide powerful reminders of what new-media strategies can learn from old-school dynamics. After all, in the words of Mr. Seth, India’s first example of social media — complete with user-group and word-of-mouth marketing — was Gandhi.

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29 April 2010

Next Level Listening: Reactive to proactive

by Debi Kleiman

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All posts by Debi Kleiman

I took a Listening class in college (yes for credit!) and I learned there are two kinds of listening: passive and active. The class covered the psychology and behavior of listening to in-person conversations. However, as with most of this social stuff, the underlying principles of how listening works ends up being roughly the same online – after all, we are human in both venues. What I’ve realized, after many years in this “new” listening space that includes socially-empowered customers, is that it’s actually where in the conversation you start listening that distinguishes the value it can bring to your organization.

I took a Listening class in college (yes for credit!) and I learned there are two kinds of listening: passive and active. The class covered the psychology and behavior of listening to in-person conversations. However, as with most of this social stuff, the underlying principles of how listening works ends up being roughly the same online – after all, we are human in both venues. What I’ve realized, after many years in this “new” listening space that includes socially-empowered customers, is that it’s actually where in the conversation you start listening that distinguishes the value it can bring to your organization.

So, here’s an easy way to think about it – reactive and proactive. If you are just doing one, you are missing out on some seriously good stuff. Let me explain a bit …

  • Reactive listening delivers incremental feedback (today)
  • Proactive listening delivers game-changing discovery (tomorrow)

With reactive listening, you’re not really involved in a conversation; you are having ideas come at you with very little in the way of context and underlying needs.  Online, reactive listening (most of the time) takes the form of web monitoring – either for key words, your brand, your competitor’s brand – on Twitter, Facebook, blogs  or using suggestion-box-type online communities, such as  MyStarbucksIdea.com  or Ford’s “your ideas” site. So, you can see when someone’s really mad at you and respond, or get ideas for where things are wrong with your products or services and how you might do it better.  You’re getting feedback and suggestions about things you could improve, or possibly some reaction to new product features. Good stuff and useful, yes, but it’s incremental. It’s about what’s already happened. It’s about what customers already know today.

Proactive listening is totally different. You are out there engaging directly in conversation, even starting the conversation.  You are posing questions, answering questions, creating ideas together, exploring unexplored spaces. You might even be searching for something you haven’t even thought of yet.  What you get is something totally different – we call it ‘discovery’ – and it’s focused on tomorrow –the possibilities of what could be.

But before you can get to discovery, you have to do a lot of work building relationships and earning trust.  We do this for every community we build for our clients – we work on creating ‘social glue’ for each member, a reason for them to be a part of it.  And that reason needs to connect to their lives somehow; they need to get intrinsic value for showing up. So, you don’t create a tampon community to talk about tampons; you create a community of teen girls to talk about their lives, habits and needs with each other; ask them to help you know them – and along the way you are guaranteed to learn something about how to do better with tampons.

Over time, by continuously listening, asking and doing for these customers, you get real relationships.  This conversation becomes the foundation for the relationship. Each time they do something, you need to tell them how it helped you or made you better (even if you didn’t implement it, you should explain why) or build on their thoughts and ideas to demonstrate that what they are sharing is of value to you.

You would not believe the stuff customers will share with you if they truly think you are listening.  Their hopes, fears and dreams can become the inspiration for your next big move.

What’s different here? When you have this relationship with your customers, when they’ll go beyond what you’d imagine any sane person might do to show you their lives, you get insight and understanding about what’s relevant and important to them.  When you are proactively listening, you hear things that you wouldn’t just stumble upon while searching your brand alerts.  You learn what’s next, what’s new with your customers and how they’re changing. 

By purposefully finding ways to walk in their shoes, you get beyond what customers simply tell you they need.  Instead, you’re uncovering latent needs, insights or white space, and then, knowing that, your company can go solve for it.  Right out of the gate, you are relevant, rather than simply reacting once they’ve voiced an opinion.  This doesn’t mean that testing and immediate feedback are unnecessary, but it does mean that equal emphasis needs to be placed on more open-ended discovery to think about the future.

Proactive listening is about getting into the hearts and minds of real people. And weaving this process into the fabric of how you do business. The result of doing this right can be game-changing.  But you’ve got to get out there and ask, wonder and explore…then shut up and listen.

2 Responses to “Next Level Listening: Reactive to proactive”

  1. Alan says:
    April 30, 2010 at 12:30 pm

    Great post Debi — your distinction about listening is an important one. A client recently asked if she could do more proactive listening and if we could focus more on discovery. Luckily, we’ve been building relationships with community members and working on social glue so her customers have already provided plenty of direction for thought starters or conversations we can encourage.

  2. Debi Kleiman says:
    May 24, 2010 at 5:55 pm

    Thanks Alan! Sometimes it can be hard to focus on discovery when there are a million of short term priorities facing you. But as you well know, the investment in truly understanding customers takes time but can have a much bigger ROI! Let me know how it goes.

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16 April 2010

Getting to the Insight: A logic game

by Karen Barone

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All posts by Karen Barone

Have you ever played one of those classic logic games? Here’s a pretty famous one: “Seth couldn’t go home because the man in the mask was waiting for him. Where is Seth?” Depending on the rules you play with, you either get to ask more questions or you just have to guess.

I like to think of that as the difference between what we do at Communispace and more traditional market research. If you come out of a focus group or phone survey with contradictory findings, you’re left to extrapolate and/or ask another group of people to explain the inconsistency. In a community, you can go back and ask questions of the same people to uncover the real basis for their original insights.

Okay, ready to play?

Have you ever played one of those classic logic games?  Here’s a pretty famous one:  “Seth couldn’t go home because the man in the mask was waiting for him.  Where is Seth?”  Depending on the rules you play with, you either get to ask more questions or you just have to guess.

I like to think of that as the difference between what we do at Communispace and more traditional market research.  If you come out of a focus group or phone survey with contradictory findings, you’re left to extrapolate and/or ask another group of people to explain the inconsistency.  In a community, you can go back and ask questions of the same people to uncover the real basis for their original insights.

Okay, ready to play?

Here’s a logic game based on fairly typical research findings.  Oh, and we’re playing with Communispace rules here.  Of course, you can ask more questions.

************************************

Consider these data about a customer of a local food establishment:

  • Susan goes there “several times a week.”
  • She “occasionally” goes there more than once a day.
  • She spends more than $30 there every week.
  • She’s “satisfied” with the food quality.
  • She will “definitely” go there again in the future.
  • They have several menu items that she considers to be “very good” or “good.”
  • When asked how much she likes the food establishment, she reveals: “Not at All.”

Question: How do you explain the individual’s lack of affinity for a place she frequents so often?

7 Responses to “Getting to the Insight: A logic game”

  1. Meghan Anderson says:
    April 16, 2010 at 1:50 pm

    An appropriate post, since I just got back from lunch. It sounds like a good summation the cafes that sit on the first floor of any office building in downtown Boston. Convenient, but largely uninspired. The woman’s relationship with the establishment is purely functional. She doesn’t connect with the brand or the experience outside of the transaction itself. despite visiting frequently and spending a fair amount there.

    The establishment can probably count on her continued business, because of the ease of transaction (It’s “on her way,” amid a very busy schedule, so it’ll do.) but not her loyalty or recommendation to others.

  2. Peter Chapin says:
    April 16, 2010 at 2:38 pm

    What I like is how much room for interpretation there is between the lines. Is Susan going there just because it’s so convenient, or…does her sister run the place, and she feels obligated to go? Are the walls painted a color that gives her a headache? Does her office have a deal with the establishment so that there’s some kind of incentive for her to go? Maybe the food is delicious but the place smells bad?

    All questions that could have a huge impact on understanding why Susan goes there, but if we couldn’t keep asking for more details, we’d never really know.

  3. Diane Hessan says:
    April 16, 2010 at 11:49 pm

    Great post, Karen. There are so many possibilities, right?

    Perhaps it’s a place where she buys food for someone else, like a child or a parent.
    Or, perhaps, it’s one of those “captive” places, like what Meghan describes: a company cafeteria or the like (we have a place like that near our offices, don’t we?)
    Or perhaps she loves the food but thinks the people are surly.

    Time to explore more.

  4. Karen Barone says:
    April 19, 2010 at 11:27 am

    Thanks, Meghan. It’s a great caution for all of us–don’t confuse frequency with loyalty.

    I love these questions, Diane. I’d also want to know more about how she feels about food, in general. What does eating mean for her? What are the emotions behind food? Is she dieting?

  5. Laura Carrillo says:
    April 19, 2010 at 11:36 am

    Hi Karen,
    Cool post! Does she work there?

  6. Jani Fraga says:
    April 20, 2010 at 3:16 pm

    As a current student in a marketing research methods class, I find myself stuck within these open paths during data collection. Diane came to speak with us last week and described Communispace’s drive to shine light on “the 5th P (participation),” allowing not only Susan, but her fellow community members to compare and contrast their thoughts, feelings, and reasoning for liking or disliking the brand. Not only would the 5th P allow Susan to express her concerns, but may permit new ideas and solutions to Susan’s distaste.

  7. Nicole Adriance says:
    April 21, 2010 at 3:27 pm

    Hmmmm … sounds familiar. I would venture to guess that she has no other choice but to frequent this place due to a lack of competition. Normally this place, might be pretty good, but since she goes there so frequently it tips the scale in favor of “Not at All!” Great post Karen … it really goes to show you that at this point we are all just guessing, despite having the data right in front of us. Exactly why the ability to probe further makes Community so valuable!

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7 April 2010

Listen up, Mark Cuban

by Bill Alberti

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All posts by Bill Alberti

Mark Cuban, Internet entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks as well as a number of other businesses, recently authored a blog post titled, “Why you should NEVER listen to your customers.”

While his underlying post makes some interesting points (e.g., “part of every entrepreneur’s job is to invent the future”), the title and overall theme of his editorial sends a harmful message.

Mark Cuban, Internet entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks as well as a number of other businesses, recently authored a blog post titled, “Why you should NEVER listen to your customers.” 

While his underlying post makes some interesting points (e.g., “part of every entrepreneur’s job is to invent the future”), the title and overall theme of his editorial sends a harmful message.

In his post he cites an example from a company he works with – “a company that at one point had a product that was not only best in class, but also technically far ahead of its competition.”

His story continues:

“Then it made a fatal mistake.  It asked its customers what features they wanted to see in the product and they delivered on those features. Unfortunately for this company, its competitors didn’t ask customers what they wanted. Instead, they had a vision of ways that business could be done differently and as a result better.  Customers didn’t really see the value or need, until they saw the product.  When they tried it, they loved it.”

I would suggest that the company was asking the wrong questions, the wrong way.  If customers are asked what they want, they are going to respond with what they know.  And what they know is often what you might expect to hear.  As Henry Ford said, “If I asked my customers what they want, they simply would have said a faster horse.”

But what Ford had – and so many successful business leaders have – is an understanding of customers’ needs, motivations and behaviors.  And this understanding comes from listening.  From empathizing.  From looking past what customers explicitly tell you to uncovering a latent need or insight into their lives.  Then solving for it.  It does not come from simply asking what features they’d like.

As Cuban rightly points out, it’s the company’s job to “create the future roadmap for [a] product or service.”  However, doing this without customers – as Cuban suggests to “NEVER listen to your customers” – is a sure path to failure.  Companies will fall into the trap of designing for themselves without seeing the challenge from the point of view of the customer.  Ultimately, it is that customer who will determine the success or failure of an idea or product.

While I don’t know any more about Mr. Cuban’s company or its competitors than what he shared in his post, I do know that never listening to customers is never the right answer.

8 Responses to “Listen up, Mark Cuban”

  1. Jeff says:
    April 7, 2010 at 9:47 am

    I work for a company that has made it’s mark on the industry by listening to its customers so I was intrigued by Cuban’s post. As I reflected on my own company it came to me that we implement our customer’s wants and needs on a feature/function level but chart our true path independent of their requests.

    Our company believes in the “conversation” above all else and have helped our customers create their own forum for their community conversations; but I was here when we began to chart our current course and customers didn’t get it, didn’t want it, didn’t ask for it. Now they love it.

    I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on whether customer feedback is better served on the less integral feature/function level while staying true to your own vision is best for the overarching strategy of the company.

    Thank you.

  2. Raymond Pirouz says:
    April 7, 2010 at 10:16 am

    Exactly right — this is why ’surveys’ and ‘focus groups’ miss the mark (and give market research a bad name) while those who understand the power of ethnography know that it’s not about literally asking customers “what do you want?” but rather about immersing oneself into the world of the customer in order to understand their perspective on things to know what they truly need. It’s not about asking. It’s about engaging, learning and discovering through a process of empathy and curious observation — and yes, even some listening where appropriate.

    I feel that those who make blanket statements like “don’t ask the customer what they want” but “instead, define the future you see and the sheep will follow” totally miss the point. It’s not an either/or proposition.

  3. Jani Fraga says:
    April 7, 2010 at 10:49 am

    I find it interesting that Steve Jobs is so against market research to determine the next Apple product (granted it has really worked for him). To quote Mr. Jobs:

    “It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do. So you can’t go out and ask people, you know, what’s the next big [thing.] There’s a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, ‘If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘A faster horse.’’’

    Is consumer feedback an accessory to innovation, or is Steve Jobs just on the luckiest streak in history? He does speak of how the developers at Apple focus on their own specific wants or needs for solutions to their current gripes, and he seems to keep hitting the profit mark with his strategy…food for thought. Thank you for this post!

  4. Michael Colombo says:
    April 7, 2010 at 10:51 am

    I don’t think Henry Ford had an understanding of customers’ needs, motivations and behaviors. He was an inventor, not a marketer. He had a vision that changed the world. He invented the future.

    I think Jeff and Mark make good points. There is certainly a line to be drawn in the sand between entrepreneurial vision and instincts and listening to the market. I’d guess that most entrepreneurs are not commissioning large research projects to figure out what kind of company they are going to build. Typically that comes in a eureka moment where the innovator sees a problem and thinks of a new way to solve it. In fact, most successful entrepreneurs face lots of nay-saying from folks (potential customers included) telling them their idea will never work, and yet they find the resolve to carry it through nonetheless. Incidentally, the big companies that behave this way are the ones that continue to innovate.

    Once you are in the market, get some feedback for sure as Jeff mentioned, but never lose your vision or stop trusting your instincts. When you do that, you stop innovating and you stop acting entrepreneurial, which I think is what is at the heart of Mark Cuban’s post and Mark Cuban himself.

  5. Bill Alberti says:
    April 7, 2010 at 11:10 am

    Jeff, on your question of customer feedback being better served on less integral features or functions, I don’t think it’s fair to assign customer thinking to less important things and keep your vision for more important things. Instead, it may be helpful to think through two different lenses: Feedback and Discovery. If you are looking to refine an idea or product, getting customer Feedback is important – i.e., their reactions to concepts, products and idea. If you are looking to innovate a new approach, you are going to want to broaden the lens with Discovery – i.e., look for unmet/latent needs, competitive white spaces and the like. Strategy is probably better served via Discovery and Tactical execution is probably better served with Feedback. I’m oversimplifying, but hopefully you get the idea.

    Raymond, I agree, it’s not an either/or proposition but a question of how…i.e., how you involve your customers in your business. Are they simply the end market or are they participants in your business? Are you just using them downstream to test and validate or tapping into them throughout an idea’s development cycle. The latter approach will help you develop better ideas. The former will probably kill lots of good ideas.

  6. Diane Hessan says:
    April 7, 2010 at 11:42 am

    Great conversation. First of all, there is a ton of controversy about whether Apple listens to its customers or not. Many internal Apple people say that they do, but heck, they might not need to with a Genius like Steve Jobs at the top. The problem that some people miss is that visionaries like Steve Jobs come around once every century. If you don’t have him in your organization, it’s pretty difficult to use Apple as your reason for ignoring customers.

    Re entrepreneurial vision, most entrepreneurs I know started their businesses with a quite different idea and plan than what they ended up with — and sometimes, customers make the initial idea much better. Communispace has this story: we started out in a different space and we actually got the idea for what we do from a client. It was a much better idea than my original vision.

    In general, I agree with you, Bill. Most people who say not to listen to customers have a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of all of what market research can do — especially in 2010. Clearly, if your market research department is just testing and validating what they already know, or asking the wrong questions, your customers will be unhelpful.

    This is a TERRIBLE time to lose touch with customers. Look at Sharper Image or Krispy Kreme or even some unnamed auto companies. As customers of those companies, most of us are pretty sure we could have helped.

  7. Michael Colombo says:
    April 7, 2010 at 5:48 pm

    Thanks for the input Diane. I think you are right on that not every company has a vision (or a visionary) like Apple does, but I am not sure the customer’s perspective brings you that culture of innovation either – which might be why it is so rare. However, maybe you have some examples to the contrary.

    I think the distinction between “launch and learn” versus “learn then launch” could be an important one, meaning the context for which you are receiving the feedback is key. So feedback will help you continuously enhance the value of what you deliver and it can also, in some cases, help you validate a concept (which I think you alluded to in your own Communispace story), but I don’t know how much it helps you “invent the future” – which again I think is the punctum saliens of Cuban’s post.

    So if Henry Ford asked for customer input BEFORE presenting them with the automobile, he might have been lead down a different path. However AFTER inventing the automobile, he could then ask a customer how to improve it.

  8. Raymond Pirouz says:
    April 7, 2010 at 7:22 pm

    In so far as inventing the future goes, is the future invented in a vacuum?

    Is the inventor basing his/her vision of how things should be by looking down at their twiddling thumbs?

    It’s not an either/or proposition of “do you ask or don’t you ask”.

    Observing people, observing patterns of behavior, observing emerging trends, observing problem areas that need addressing, being inspired by an unmet need based on an observed phenomenon, all of these take place in the context of real human and societal behavior, not some imaginary world in an inventor’s (or entrepreneur’s head).

    You don’t literally have to ask…but it would be dishonest to proclaim that the genius is he who creates the fantastic from his dark lair — with the help of bloated ego alone. :)

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