Experience: Friend of Foe to Innovation?

At the heart of innovation lies a difficult paradox. The greatest obstacle to innovation is experience. At the same time, experience is essential to make innovation happen.

When someone has experienced a process, a market and product – and understands what works, what doesn’t, what is reasonable and what is impossible, it is rational to view any new approach with a great deal of skepticism. If something worked before, it is only logical that it will work in the future. And it is reasonable to then avoid or even dismiss innovation. A lot of crazy and wasteful ideas are avoided when experienced people are in charge.

And yet… before recent times, it was foolish to believe that people could fly. If someone managed to fly, it would never be economically viable. Given such a tangible reality, the more reasonable course of action would be to ignore any new developments in aviation and concentrate on building faster trains or ships.

Going to the moon, of course, was ridiculous and obscenely expensive to consider, and satellite-based navigational systems were the stuff of dreams, not serious business plans.

At one time, offering free education to all children was seen as an unnecessary expense with little meaningful return and perhaps even a corruption of working class values.

Segregation was an accepted practice in the U.S., and only the most radical would consider that an African-American would ever be able to eat a sandwich at the same lunch counter as a Caucasian, much less become president.

Of course, for every innovation like flight, or desegregation, there are any number of ideas, good and bad, that never become meaningful innovations, usually because experienced people are certain that they are impossible, impractical, or even irrelevant. Experience can stop innovation with the most solid arguments:

• It hasn’t worked before, it’s not worth trying it again.
• We’ve always done it this way before, why risk making things difficult?
• Why change, technology doesn’t fundamentally change things, it just improves or complicates them, why not just add on to what we already have?
• Let’s not cannibalize what we already have – our customers don’t really want that much change.
• People will never really change, why even try?

And for a while, the experts can be right. Quite often the same practice can and should be repeated while new ones ignored or put off. After all, most companies only start to make money after they’ve repeated a process or sold a product many times. If everything were always changing, modern capitalism could not create anywhere near the wealth it does today.

But nothing lasts forever. Change always happens – eventually. The short-sighted arrogance created by experience can trick people into believing that change can’t happen. The challenge is to perceive opportunities for improvement, imagine a different world, understand that no one has all the answers, then make something happen – even when most experienced peopleknow that it’s impossible. A couple of currently evolving examples include:

• Electric cars? The are too expensive, too strange and GM found it to be impossible to make a practical electric car that could be sold for less than $50,000….
  and yet at least 5 models of electric cars are expected to be broadly marketed in the next two years while a $23,000 electric gas hybrid, thePrius was in the top ten list of cars sold in July of 2009 in the US.
• Solar Power? Too expensive and impractical….and yet the market for solar power grew by about 40% a year between 2000 and 2005, reaching about $11 billion. (source: the Economist)
• Web based social networking? Just a kids’ toy – no one will use such things for serious business…and yet 95% of companies use LinkedIn as a primary tool for find employees (source: Jobvite Social Recruitment Survey ), and the fastest growing segment of Facebook users is women between the ages of 55 and 65. (source: Inside Facebook Blog)

In each case, the experienced view that these innovations can’t work is being revealed as invalid. Does that mean, then, that only non-experienced people can innovate?

Actually, experience is essential for innovation – but the arrogance that can come from experience is not. Beginners can be very good at understanding how something might be innovated – but without a deep appreciation for how things work, it is very difficult for them to actually implement something useful. Innovators aren’t beginners but they behave as if they are. Usually, they have or acquire in-depth experience – and at the same time always look at their products, their organizations and their customers as if for the first time.

They have what is called Shoshin in Zen Buddhism, or “Beginner’s Mind”. This state of consciousness occurs once a certain level of mastery has been achieved, when it is possible to be open to possibilities without preconceptions, to be humble, and to see things as they truly are – not as we assume or want them to be.

Beginner’s Mind is experience without arrogance.

So how does someone with experience acquire a “Beginner’s Mind”? There are any number of ways to get there. Consultants and advisors can help give teams a new perspective. Studying other industries where one does not have experience can help bring new perspective. Talking to customers, partners and suppliers and trying to understand how they perceive the process is also a popular method for getting beyond the biases of experience.

Sometimes, Beginner’s Mind can emerge from crabbiness. As my colleague Buckley Brinkman recently put it, “In order to change things, I have to be irritated – not miserable, not in a good mood – but almost cranky.” If one is too unhappy, one is resigned to the way things are. If one is too happy, there’s no reason to change. If someone is tetchy enough, they can see things for what they truly are, recognize the imperative for change, then do something about it.

Innovators are experienced people who are able to defy the arrogance of experience. They may be irritated, but they are certainly willing to change something when it makes sense. To innovate is to see things for the first time.

Beware the Cover Art

Change is really hard.

Whenever one considers changing a system, even if it's to innovate and improve that system, there are always a number of good reasons to avoid the change altogether and keep things as they are. Is it worth the effort, the risk and the cost to change something that works now? Will the old way be missed? Will something valuable be lost if there is change? These are all legitimate and often used questions that can and occasionally should stop innovation.

My favorite reason - often persistent, often misunderstood and always ultimately wrong - is the cover art.

In the 1940's and 1950's record companies began to illustrate the covers of records to help sell their products, differentiate performers, and catalogue collections. In the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's, record companies increasingly referred to the cover illustration as "art". In many cases, the cover art seemed to transcend the record album itself. Anyone listening to music in those decades remembers certain album covers in detail and with fond reverence - in many cases, part of the experience of listening to music was related to the imagery on the cover.

A stand out example would be The Beatles' Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, designed byRobert Fraser, Peter Blake and Jann Haworth with a complex and expensive collage of celebrities past and present (the cover cost 100 times as much as the average cover of the time).

The Cover Art became so important to performers and their record labels that some designers and visual artists became known predominantly for their Cover Art, such as the design team Hipgnosis (Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon) and Roger Dean's work for Yes and Asia. It almost seemed as if cover art had become a separate form of art, collected and in many cases even framed by enthusiastic music fans.

Despite it's value as a branding device and marketing tool, the art on the cover of the record was ultimately of secondary importance. People bought records so that they could easily listen to the music inside – not because of the wrapper. The cover art may have helped encourage them to buy, but it was never the primary reason they did so.

When Compact Discs supplanted vinyl LP's in the mid 1980's, many skeptics of the new format pointed out that a smaller disc size did not allow for the same quality of cover art. In addition to concerns about replacing an existing library and a loss of some sound characteristics of vinyl recordings, music buyers wouldn't accept the format in some part because they wouldn't be able to enjoy the art they loved.

And yet, by the mid-nineties, vinyl records had become a niche product revered mostly by nostalgic collectors, but not a serious part of the music industry. In the beginning of the 21st century, when MP3 players such as the iPod came along with digital music downloads and almost no room for Cover Art, it only took a couple of years for mainstream consumers to throw away their love of cover art and buy songs without it. It turns out that none of the reasons for staying the same, including the cover art, are compelling enough to stop change.

The record companies were selling the vinyl records wrapped in cover art. The "art" was a powerful tool from marketing but at the end of the day, their customers were buying music - not records or art. The instant someone offered them a significantly better delivery device for the music, they would switch.

How important was Cover Art to the buyers? They liked it. They put it on their walls, they collected it. But they didn’t really ask for it; they never bought it.

Cover Art occurs in almost every mature system, whether it’s the record industry, a government, a car company or a bank, "Cover Art" can be identified by the following factors:

• It is something offered that is incidental or even immaterial to the problem a customer is try to solve. In the case of records, the customer was trying to fulfill their desire to hear music – not look at art.
• It is mostly decorative – a way to make something more palatable, more slick, more exciting – but it does not significantly contribute to the problem a buyer wants to solve.
• It is mostly used to differentiate, sell or brand a commodity product. (Branding and advertising can be very important for selling something, but when presented with an alternative to a sales pitch, buyers almost always go with that alternative, even if it costs them more money. As an example, consider television advertising. Most people enjoy well produced commercials, and yet will pay extra to skip commercials through DVR’s and premium cable channels.)
• It is expensive, time consuming and requires specialized skills to produce/deliver.
• The customer will not pay extra for it and won’t go out of their way to get it independently of the primary offering.

Cover Art occurs in all sorts of companies. For example, up until the 1990’s airlines tried to differentiate themselves based on the quality of their hot meals served during flights. Serving a hot meal on a moving airplane is a very difficult and expensive thing to do – even when the food is less than good. Initially, in-flight meal service helped airline passengers feal safe and pampered during flights - as if flying was just like taking the train. But as air travel became a common part of life, that assurance became unnecesary. The meal is incidental to the main need of a passenger – to safely and quickly get to their destination. When someone offered a more attractive alternative without meals, they were willing to switch.

While most airlines continued to spend money on their hot food programs, Southwest Airlines offered peanuts for food and a less expensive ticket price. Despite their lack of “Cover Art” hot meals, today they are the most profitable airline in the history of aviation.

Computer software and hardware makers have recently been surprised by the market’s embrace of small, less powerful computers that rely on Internet based applications and data storage. They have long thought that their customers wouldn’t give up the Cover Art of abundant features, massive hard drives and large numbers of applications. But customers don’t buy massive hard drives – they buy a way to send e-mails, type up a letter, handle their bank account and surf the Internet. As soon as someone offers them a way to avoid buying a massive hard drive, they embrace it.

Where else is there cover art? Credit card companies have been offering elite gold, platinum, and black plastic cards for years. Although people love the status of the different colors, it is incidental to what they are buying – a cash flow management system. That status is very important, and it has been a very successful marketing strategy for the commoditized offering of credit. However, if someone offers a better cash flow management device that does not include the status Cover Art, will the platinum card be as endangered as an LP or in-flight meal? Are there other places that platinum card users will look for their status symbols in the future?

There are numerous examples of Cover Art throughout industries and organizations. Valuable to any company contemplating change, an assessment of the potential Cover Art can reveal significant opportunities for innovation. Customers don't buy marketing (cover art) or delivery devices (records), they buy a solution to something (music). Even though marketing and delivery devices are essential for a successful business to sell to their constituents, they should never be confused with products and can always be trumped by a better solution.

And therefore, robust and mature Cover Art is a leading indicator that innovation and change is possible and even likely. Does your company offer the best Cover Art in your industry? Are your customers open to better delivery options?

Is it time you innovated?

A Few New Rules for Persuasion

Sales, marketing, leadership...all require that we get someone to do something they don't want to do - to change what their doing - to transform some aspect of their work or their life. There are a plethora of books, management training and consultant practices designed to help you manage, or lead change - and yet most people and organizations aren't very good at it.

Soren Kierkegaard once wrote, "...in order to save men's souls, one must first seduce them." Perhaps we need to improve our ability to "seduce" or "persuade" others?

But we have entire disciplines and industries dedicated to persuasion. Marketing is supposed to work magic - to persuade the masses to buy something they don't want. But how is it that companies can spend millions of dollars on award-winning advertising, but not sell more products? US auto manufactures are spending more on advertising today than they did when they had a commanding market share. The best ads from the best advertising firms only seem to work some of the time, even though advertisers are well trained, are following all the rules of good advertising, and have produced some of the best design, drama, music and humour in our culture today. Insurance ads can make me cry pretty reliably, but I still won't buy their annuities.

Why do public speakers, when they follow all the rules given to them in public speaking courses, still bore their audiences? It's difficult to stay awake when a speaker actually follows the template that we all had to learn in our high school and college public speaking courses.

How can a salesman, trained in the art of closing a sale, still be ineffective? When I was a salesman, I remember a sales manager giving up on explaining how to close in any scientific way. Most of the time he attributed it to "magic" when someone pulled it off.

The best professionals all follow the rules that they were given for persuading others...but so few pull it off. Could it be that they are following the wrong rules?

I think so.

Allow me here to map out a few rules that I have discovered that are very useful for "seducing men's souls". This is by no means comprehensive...and I find myself discoving new "rules" all the time - whether from my clients or from observation.

These rules can help a clumsy speaker persuade more effectively than a slick, polished orator. These rules can help a company create a powerful brand identity and grow sales without spending millions of dollars on advertising. And most important, these rules can help a leader persuade people to follow, to change, to transform - even if the leader doesn’t look or sound like a charismatic leader.

Seven New Rules of Persuasion

1. Be what you are.
   Pretending you’re something that you are not is not only dishonest; it undermines your ability to persuade. A speaker with a poor vocabulary that tries to impress with “big words” will appear less intelligent. A speaker that says, “I’m not that bright, but here’s what I know,” creates credibility. A company that promotes itself with impossibly grand or superlative statements can seem disingenuous, while a direct, honest, and simple statement can become far more inspirational – if it’s real.
   
   But it’s difficult to communicate what you are if you don’t know what that is. Much of my time as a consultant is spent helping companies and individuals understand their strengths, weaknesses and differentiators. Understand - then be what you are.
   
   Persuade authentically.
2. Tell the truth
   One should be honest, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because it is more persuasive. Few believe a person who only talks about how great they are; everyone believes someone who can communicate their own limitations.
   
   And the limitations can usually demonstrate an attractive strength. For example, “Our airline only serves peanuts, but the flight will be inexpensive.”
   
   Persuade honestly.
3. Differentiation Means Different
   It’s generally understood that differentiation helps clarify value; that customers need to know how you, your product or vision is different and perhaps better than the alternatives. In practice, however, most communicate how similar they are to others. This often happens when a company or person doesn’t understand what makes them different, or when say what they think their audience wants to hear. That’s why, just as in rule #1, it’s essential to understand who you are and what makes you different.
   
   Differences are persuasive because they stand out, because they draw attention, because when making a choice between similar options, only the differences are important.
   
   Persuade differently.
4. One Thing
   A speech, an advertisement, a sales pitch – should always be about One Thing, because that is all your potential listener can act on or remember at any one time. Multiple themes diffuse the communication and its effect.
   
   The temptation “to educate” or to communicate every detail of a subject must be avoided at all costs. Instead, select the most persuasive thesis, and then support that thesis with three of the most persuasive facts.
   
   Persuade single-mindedly.
5. “The good, if brief, twice good; the bad, if little, less bad.”
   The above rule was actually formulated by the seventeenth century Jesuit priest and philosopher, Baltasar Gracian. It speaks for itself.
   
   Persuade briefly.
6. Lather, Rinse, Repeat…as Needed
   This rule was lifted from the back of a shampoo bottle, but also applies to persuasion. The greater a change one asks people to make, the more often they will have to be exposed to and reflect upon the persuasive argument. But don’t just say the same thing over and over again. If someone hears an idea from multiple perspectives, in different contexts, and at different times, they are more likely to take that idea on as their own.
   
   Persuade repeatedly.
7. Give credit away
   The most persuasive idea is the one we come up with ourselves. If that is the case, the most effective persuader will work to make everyone believe it is their own idea. Holding on to credit for a great idea is not as important as getting people to do what you want them to do.
   
   Persuade humbly.