Customer experience … and the 10th man.
Dr. Dirk Hanebuth
This post is the English version of an original German version.
The people who brought back Apollo 13, Airbnb (guess what they are selling!), Picasso, top chefs, and even kids who paint blue dogs all had one powerful driver: creativity. It is the source of a long chain of preconditions that create customer experience; it channels the water to nourish the fruit you earn your money with.
We all know creativity; those brainstorming sessions with market research results, flip charts, and colourful pens. Everyone gathers dutifully twice a month from 9-12, thinking out of the box, with brown bags (that’s hip), but brain without the storm.
Readiness
"[…] as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know […]"
Donald Rumsfeld was thus referring to a method of thinking and the ‘readiness’ of the U.S. Department of Defense with respect to change (1). It is a significant element of creativity that helps to widen the view, be aware of blind spots, and not fall prey to survivorship bias (2).
Creativity and Contradictions
Corporate reality is different. Moldaschl describes a ‘contradiction analysis’ that can uncover worlds between aspiration and reality, revealing flaws and potential (3). Let us now dig into creativity and its opponents from just three of many perspectives:
1. People
Creative thinking is based on a grammar, namely bending, blending, and breaking and a vocabulary, namely raw material; that is to say, all the impressions people perceive(d) (4). Some people perceive more and see connections where others do not even see the raw material.
- You recruit experts and put them into a dedicated drawer which is regarded as their field of expertise. Within that they show expertise and fulfil exactly their bonus-relevant KPI (sorry, no time for anything else).
- Your job postings list many requirements, but the ability to think creatively does not appear. How are we supposed to test that?
- Your creative supervisors pick up something somewhere, join a meeting, detonate their creativity bomb, paralysing entire work groups with it, and then disappear without taking further responsibility (5).
- The creativity-destroying powers of narcissists, micromanagers, and Machiavellians are well known, but they still continue.
- Daniel Kahneman illuminatingly describes how impulses strongly determine our thinking and behaviour (6). So, it happens that you (in contrast to da Vinci) give the ‘go’ to the first solution that seems to fit.
2. Routines
Customer experience also means intelligent personnel and organisational development.
- A Harvard study has shown that creativity is under pressure when people are in a rat race or trapped in routines (7). Time pressure is – with one exception – a creativity killer. Only when everyone feels ‘on a mission’, and the team is performing in concert do creative masterpieces such as Apollo 13’s return really happen (8,9).
- Do trainees participate in management board meetings by default? – No! This generation cannot do anything yet. OK, Boomer – that is sheer fear of their worldview and their questions (10).
- How long does it take to explicitly focus on customers (the paying experiencers) in your board meetings? – Does not happen at all? Then all participants must do 50 punishing push-ups because physical activity is good for creative thinking (11).
- How well does one department know what is being done in the others? You can use the film ‘Changing Lanes’ as a popcorn-like personnel development session (12). A test for cognitive and creative abilities in your stuff: what can we learn from it?
- It’s not the future-anticipating idea that gets a hearing, but the one that serves the quarterly figures and the bonus of certain decision-makers – which is a perfidious form of corruption (13).
3. Efficiency
Creativity needs a ‘concerted chaos’ without pressure. Blue Note Records embraced this way of being productive and creative and produced icons such as Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock (14-16); and later, a master chef who also understood this way, amazed experts and customers with it (17,18).
- Gary Starkweather believed in the feasibility of printers with laser technology and participated with his R & D team in an internal competition at Xerox: "One team had 50 people, another had twenty, and I had two". He got research funding despite misgivings (lasers are expensive, big, and dangerous). Other teams were working on conventional techniques. We know the ink-free customer experience. Xerox won the innovation race because they supported diversification of ideas (4, p 200-1).
- At 3M, a CEO blindly pulverised innovation and sales because he imposed efficiency criteria on the research department. As soon the CEO was gone, 3M was back (4, p 204).
- Is your company ready for exnovation (19), the exit from continuous innovation of nonsense, such as fossil-fueled cars?
- I’ll stop efficiently here.
By the way, how much time for reflection do you have right now, before the next deadline? I'll be brief:
Think
Customer Experience needs the driver creativity. It is blocked by fossilised structures and decision-makers, and the hunt for KPIs. Creative potential decides – but not alone (20,21) – whether an organisation prospers or not; like Lancia, Kodak, and Blackberry.
So, you need thinkers to take customer experience to the next level? Watch this with your top management and ask for their conclusions (22); and watch this and check if your HR as gatekeeper of the company culture has leeway in recruiting (23); and watch this and search for the spirit of Building 20 in your work environment (24).
"The most dangerous person is the one with only one theory, because he will fight for it to the death. [...] The better approach is to have many ideas and to reject most of them." (Francis Crick).
Now you are ready for the 10th man. Check it out and ask yourself how many ‘10th man’ your company is able to cope with (25).
Sources and further reading
1. Warburton N. Unexpected change. New Philosopher. 2019;4(26):94–6.
2. Miller B. How ‘survivorship bias’ can cause you to make mistakes [Internet]. 2020 [cited 2021 Feb 25]. Available from: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200827-how-survivorship-bias-can-cause-you-to-make-mistakes
3. Moldaschl M. Das Konzept der Widersprüchlichen Arbeitsanforderungen (WAA). In: Faller G, editor. Lehrbuch betriebliche Gesundheitsförderung. 3., vollständig überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage. Bern: Hogrefe; 2017.
4. Brand A, Eagleman D. The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes The World. New York: Catapult; 2017.
5. Levitt T. Creativity is not enough. hbr. 2002;80:137–44.
6. Kahneman D. Thinking, fast and slow. 1st ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 2011. 499 p.
7. Amabile TM, Hadley CN, Kramer StevenJ. Creativity under the gun. Harvard business review. 2002;80:52–63.
8. King MJ. Apollo 13 Creativity: In-the-Box Innovation. The Journal of Creative Behavior [Internet]. 1997 Dec [cited 2021 Feb 25];31(4):299–308. Available from: http://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/j.2162-6057.1997.tb00801.x
9. Bochsler K. Houston, we have a problem - Apollo 13: Vor 50 Jahren hielt die Welt den Atem an [Internet]. Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF). 2020 [cited 2021 Feb 25]. Available from:
10. CNN GM. A 25-year-old politician got heckled during a climate crisis speech. Her deadpan retort: ‘OK, boomer’ [Internet]. CNN. [cited 2021 Feb 25]. Available from: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/06/asia/new-zealand-ok-boomer-trnd/index.html
11. MacLellan L. ‘Nano transitions’ are the secret to staying productive and avoiding burnout [Internet]. Quartz at Work. [cited 2021 Feb 25]. Available from: https://qz.com/work/1970497/the-secret-to-avoiding-burnout-at-work-during-covid-19/
12. Michell R. Changing Lanes. Paramount Pictures, Scott Rudin Productions; 2002.
13. Rotberg RI. Anticorruption. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press; 2020. (The MIT Press essential knowledge series).
14. Russonello G. A History of Blue Note Records in 15 Albums. The New York Times [Internet]. 2019 Jul 26 [cited 2021 Feb 25]; Available from: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/arts/music/blue-note-records-essential-albums.html
15. Facebook, Twitter, options S more sharing, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, et al. Creative Concepts From Blue Note [Internet]. Los Angeles Times. 1996 [cited 2021 Feb 25]. Available from: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-06-09-ca-13142-story.html
16. Müller A. Unerhört. DUMMY. 2019;(61):74–83.
17. New York chef Daniel Humm’s menu is inspired by jazz legend Miles Davis | South China Morning Post [Internet]. [cited 2021 Feb 25]. Available from: https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-wine/article/1190707/new-york-chef-daniel-humms-menu-inspired-jazz-legend-miles-davis
18. Hoberg D. Miles Davis in der Küche - Daniel Humms Mission Statement [Internet]. New Food City. 2018 [cited 2019 Dec 20]. Available from: https://newfoodcity.de/miles-davis-daniel-humm/
19. Neubauer L. The long goodbye. futurzwei. 2020;(13):19–21.
20. Quanta CW. Survival of the Luckiest [Internet]. The Atlantic. 2020 [cited 2021 Feb 25]. Available from: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/12/neutral-theory-evolution-luck/617375/
21. Robischon M. Blue Tigers, Black Tapirs, & the Pied Raven of the Faroe Islands. The American Biology Teacher [Internet]. 2015 Feb 1 [cited 2021 Feb 25];77(2):108–12. Available from: https://online.ucpress.edu/abt/article/77/2/108/18752/Blue-Tigers-Black-Tapirs-amp-the-Pied-Raven-of-the
22. Hans Brinker Budget Hotel [Internet]. KesselsKramer. [cited 2021 Feb 25]. Available from: https://www.kesselskramer.com/project/hans-brinker-budget-hotel/
23. ARTE Cinema. ‘La méthode Ken Loach’ : quelqu’un qui porte le film - ARTE Cinéma [Internet]. 2016 [cited 2021 Feb 25]. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIcT_H0Sae8
24. InfiniteMIT | MIT’s Building 20: ‘The Magical Incubator’ (1998) [Internet]. [cited 2021 Feb 25]. Available from: https://infinite.mit.edu/video/mits-building-20-magical-incubator
25. 10th man theory, the God of devils advocate [Internet]. [cited 2021 Feb 25]. Available from: https://vimeo.com/97815008