5 Key Questions to Move Your Marketing/Branding Conversation Forward

Posted on August 3, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-08-02 at 9.50.35 PMExcerpted from Francis Cholle’s The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass

Marketing and Branding can no longer be a one-way conversation in which companies dictate to consumers.  To achieve top-of-mind status with the new consumers–who are behaving more and more like community members, prosumers (professional consumers), and influencers–companies have to get into two-way conversations that begin with a mutual understanding and the delivery of a valuable service, and then move naturally to profitability and strong brand equity.

Interaction via social networks and codevelopment of products are two innovative ways the forward-thinking companies are revitalizing their marketing and branding strategies.  Answering the following questions can help you understand how your company truly sees its customers.

  • Do you focus on consumer simply as profit centers or as valued members of your community?
  • Do you approach profit as a function of the value you bring to your community members, or do you relate profit to shareholders’ return on investment, or both?
  • Are you only following trends, or are you truly innovating–are you able to be disruptively innovative?
  • Are you able to create retail experiences in which your employees/sales people are evangelists rather than paid mouthpieces?
  • Do you involve the consumer enough in the innovation and value creation of your company?

Answering these questions will guide you to review your relationship with your customers–what it is founded on and how it is facilitated.  Once you know how your organization views its customers, it will be easier to find ways to improve the relationship you have with them and succeed further in the new economic environment.

3 Key Steps You Can Take Now to Deal with Disruption

Posted on July 25, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-07-25 at 6.32.28 PMAccording to a 2013 Oxford Martin School study, nearly 50% of jobs in the US today will have disappeared by 2025 due to artificial intelligence and automation.

Many middle management positions will disappear as a consequence.

This is the new reality.

Disruption, which we define as a problem of such amplitude that it interrupts an activity or process, seems to be everywhere:

  • Radical evolution of business models. Netflix, Uber, Airbnb.
  • Digital hacking. A July 2015 Fortune magazine article documents the debacle hackers created for Sony at all levels of the organization.
  • Regulatory changes. In an interview with Charlie Rose this past June, GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt talks about having to be really paranoid in the face of change. In the case of GE, he refers to regulatory changes being an even greater source of disruption than business competition.
  • Technological failure. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011 was deemed “manmade” by an independent investigation commission. According to the results of the investigation all of its direct causes were foreseeable because the plant was fundamentally incapable of withstanding the 9.0 magnitude Tōhoku earthquake and resulting tsunami.

So what should we do?

20 years ago former Intel CEO Andrew Grove wrote Only the Paranoid Survive. He wrestled with one of the business world’s great challenges in 1994 when a flaw in his company’s new cornerstone product — the Pentium processor — grew into a front-page controversy that seriously threatened its future.

More than ever we need to be hyper-cautious and invest and monitor closely business intelligence, as well as carefully and regularly do scenario planning.

But in a volatile and complex world that’s not enough. These are chess player’s strategies when we need GO* player’s responses, i.e. constant interaction with a moving environment when the pace of change is such that analytical thinking is no longer enough

In his book “How Google Works” Chairman Eric Schmidt says the same thing in another way. He explains that if you want to deal efficiently with disruption, don’t ask your senior strategist to join the brainstorming sessions, invite your smart creative.

Today we need to tap into another form of intelligence that bridges the gap between the rational mind of the strategist and the instinct of the creative. It is called Intuitive Intelligence.

That’s what soldiers and officers have to master for the battlefield, what the greatest performers have to learn to move audiences of thousands, and what athletes need in order to break Olympic records. High performance professionals are required to do both a lot of analysis and minute study as well as to grow their ability to respond instinctually to unforeseen circumstances through continuous practice and exploration. They all have to develop Intuitive Intelligence to be able to perform at their best in a very unpredictable environment: a war zone, a performance stage or a stadium.

Business life today is very similar.

Today it is no longer as much about strategy as it is about quick adaptation and constant experimentation.

I would recommend making disruptive change the new normal and the instinct of the creative the necessary attribute of today leadership, both in your own way of thinking and throughout your organization. To apply this effectively my three recommendations are:

–          Explore with your team what this means for your business model, marketing strategies, organizational design, management culture and leadership style.

–          Describe in detail what all of these changes will look like: what are the competencies needed, behaviors to adopt, industries or competitors you can learn from, new products and services likely to appeal to consumers, and new distribution models to leapfrog competition.

–          Apply these changes in increments. You will not be able to apply them all at once. Start somewhere, and crack open the new code of business within a limited area of your company.

And if you cannot implement it internally because your current way of doing things is too essential to your existing business, create a sister company, experiment in it with new ways of doing business, keep the link with the parent company tight and learn from it.

I have helped leaders apply all of the above in a number of organizations, of varied sizes and in different industries and continents. It works and delivers results. Contact us if you struggle with these ideas.

*An ancient Chinese board game that is the most popular game in the world today.

How to Create a Work Culture that Maximizes Creativity and Agility

Posted on July 20, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Excerpted from Francis Cholle’s The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-BassScreen Shot 2015-07-19 at 11.59.51 PM

To get the most out of employees in terms of creativity and agility, you need to create a work culture that enables them to explore new ideas freely and fail without fear of reprisal.  A work culture that is open to new ideas is key to success over the long term.  A work culture that honors autonomy generates unexpected–and often lucrative–new products.  A fluid, vibrant work culture resonates with and balances the complexity and unpredictability of today’s business landscape.  The following are some questions that can reveal the state of your work culture as it stands currently.

  • Is your work culture about anticipating your employees’ deeper need for meaning?
  • Is your work culture hierarchical only?  If not, do you have systems in place for informal gatherings, informal exchanges of information, informal participation?
  • Do you really care about people being happy, or do you just give it lip service?
  • Do you make it explicitly safe for people to try new things and to fail?
  • Do you encourage diversity in age, ethnicity, professional background, gender, and sociocultural styles?  If so, how?
  • Do you allow for and promote play?  If so, how?
  • How do you inspire employees’ creativity?
  • How do you create among employees a natural sense of belonging to your organization?

 Each question represents one key aspect of a work culture relevant to the new economic environment.  Answering these questions should help you understand your current work culture and see ways that you can improve it.

 

7 Questions to See if Your Leadership Mindset Meets Today’s Challenges

Posted on July 13, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-07-12 at 10.52.47 PMExcerpted from Francis Cholle’s The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass

In the new leadership mindset, the conventional view of hierarchical power is replaced by a web of interconnected relationships.  It requires a deeper understanding of human nature and takes into account instinct and play.  This mindset recognizes the power and promise of intuition and the unconscious.  It’s important that you have a reasonably objective understanding of your own leadership style before you can effectively change the way you lead your organization.  The following questions will help you get a sense of how you lead.

  • Is your leadership style about control or influence?  Does it embrace the nonlinear aspect of life, or is it more conventional?
  • How do you influence your team members’ work?  What systems do you have in place?
  • Is your leadership style addressing the instinctual and emotional dimension of every relationship, or is it more intellectual?
  • Is your leadership really about bringing value to all people around you or simply about getting people to do what you want them to do?
  • Do you, as a leader, understand the power of symbols and stage powerful business rituals?
  • Do you seek adulation or ego-reinforcing behaviors from your employees, or are you more likely to encourage your employees to be honest and forthright with you, even if their feedback is not positive?
  • Do you allow yourself to notice the unusual in order to innovate and stay ahead of the curve in all areas of your business?

Asking yourself these questions will help you get a stronger understanding of your leadership style, where it lies on the Intuitive Compass, and which aspects of intuitive intelligence is embodies as well as which aspects of intuitive intelligence it is not tapping into.

For more information about The Intuitive Compass™, check out last week’s blog post here.

And to learn more about intuitive intelligence, click here. 

The Intuitive Compass™: a model for creativity and agility

Posted on July 6, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-07-05 at 11.28.55 PMExcerpted from Francis Cholle’s The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass

The business world has been turned upside down by the rapid adoption of technological innovations and the globalization of many industries.  Today, the creativity of corporate executives is increasingly called for in all areas of business, and courageous behavior is needed as much as creative thinking.  Increasingly complex market scenarios laden with erratic disruptors require executives to have the confidence to step into the unknown and make decisions even in the face of confusion.  Although traditional business thinking typically focuses on three- to five-year strategies created with sophisticated analytical processes and logical reasoning, this approach is no longer ideal.  Because the future is uncertain expert systems software or scenario planning methodologies are at best limited tools. Today’s fast-emerging, often unpredictable scenarios call for an agile imagination to seize emerging opportunities, and a new model that allows for such.

The Intuitive Compass™ was designed to help us develop new behaviors and new ways to make decisions.  It is a tool to help us access our instinct and leverage play in order to innovate, develop disruptive ideas, imagine new sustainable business solutions, and reinvent the way we approach value creation.  The Intuitive Compass™ was invented to help organizations thrive in the new economy while enhancing the sustainability of our practices.

We’ve already begun to look at the influence of play in our approaches to innovation, the role of instinct in leadership and value creation and the tension that each faces:  play lives in tension with our need for results, and instinct lives in tension with our cultural inclinations toward reason and logic.  Play and instinct are the roots of creative imagination, and they both influence our behaviors at their core.  We are instinctual beings by nature and logical beings by culture.  The Intuitive Compass™ simply shows that linear efficiency and logic do not have to dominate our approaches to life and work, and it provides alternative ways to conduct business.   It indicates how to balance and integrate the best of what both logic and instinct have to offer.

The Compass is organized around the usual four cardinal point one finds in a navigation compass: north, east, south, and west.

In the north you find reason (our capacity to conceive ideas and analyze data) and opposite, in the south, you find instinct (our capacity to survive and adapt).  In the east you find results, representing the outcome of linear efficiency, and opposite, in the west, you find play, which represents an erratic process comparable to the creative process.  This diagram shows play and instinct coming together in the southwest quadrant, where creativity can be unleashed.  The Intuitive Compass™ is designed to help people better understand where creative ideas come from and how to access their own genius and uncover meaningful ideas.  It make the complexity of the creative process simple to see and it provides a clear roadmap to creative problem solving.

Leadership by Influence, Rather Than Control, Can Yield Better Results

Posted on June 29, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-06-27 at 2.28.03 PMExcerpted from Francis Cholle’s The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass

Leading by influence is about relinquishing control and allowing the natural creative process of evolution.  This may seem paradoxical, but in other cultures it is not.  In Zen Buddhism the master leads his disciples in their apprenticeship through question (Kohan), not commands.  When chiefs of Native American villages were asked what decision to make (going to war, leaving the village in case of an attack, and so on), the chief would answer with a question, not an order.  Exerting power and control is not necessarily the best form of leadership, especially not when you wish to develop autonomy and creativity among your team members.  Although conventional wisdom regarding leadership is about aligning objectives, strategies, and people, leadership by influence recognizes that dissonance and tension, ambiguity and complexity, chaos, and the unknown are equally and necessary aspects of business.  This is why this type of leadership cannot seek control: chaos cannot be controlled, and complexity makes it hard to determine the outcome of one’s strategy, so influence is more effective than control.  To lead by influence means to guide without control over the outcome.  In a complex global economy in which creativity is rated the top business skill, a keen understanding of this new way of leadership is mandatory to innovate, reinvent, motivate, change, and make an organization successful.

 

Stop Thinking and Start Feeling to Gain Key Customer Insights

Posted on June 22, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Excerpted from Francis Cholle’s The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass

Screen Shot 2015-06-21 at 11.44.33 PMCreativity and innovative thinking are great, but the ability to notice the one pivotal piece of information in a creative brainstorming session is key to transforming an organization or making a project truly innovative.  This is why we need to carefully pay attention and notice with our senses, open to the unusual or the irrational, but at the same time analyze and evaluate that information.  Just because something does not make sense from the point of view of logic does not mean that it lacks value.  A simple example:  when Isaac Newton saw an apple fall from a tree, he did not simply see a usual phenomenon of nature.  He was inspired to start thinking about a particular type of motion–gravity–which then revolutionized our perception of the universe.  If he had not been open to his inner feeling of puzzlement, he would have simply seen an apple falling from a tree, and he would not have developed his novel understanding of the workings of the universe through mathematics.

This is why I advise clients to stop thinking and start feeling.  If all we did was to think and only think, we would not allow the sensorial perception and emotions that come along with thoughts to feed our creative imagination.  When we are anchored in our conscious mind, we know only what it knows.  Now ideas–ideas we don’t yet about –cannot be found in our conscious mind, because we already necessarily know everything that is conscious to us!  So the ability of move beyond our conscious thinking an access our unconscious is key to creativity.

And excellent example of the business value of the skill of noticing the unusual can be found in the commercial airline industry.  Many of us have probably wondered how air travel ever became so unpleasant.  What began three generations ago as one of the most luxurious of consumer experiences, an event that people dressed up for and looked forward to, has degenerated to the point that the average consumer approaches it as if preparing for battle.  Today it is an experience marked by bad food (or no food), a smelly environment, narrow seats, poor service, delayed flights, stern-faced flight attendants, shabby cabins, and outdated design.  For frequent business travelers on tight schedules it’s often challenging in both economy and business class alike.  However, one company has been able to provide it clientele with quite a different experience:  Virgin America.

Virgin America, a company that first put its planes in service in 2007, didn’t become an award-winning airline in an industry-wide financial crisis by slashing costs or slashing ticket prices; they did it by raising the bar on design, service and customer experience.  Beautiful design, uplifting colors, clean cabins, warm and personable service, short waiting time to check in, and easy upgrades are among the many ways Virgin America has attempted to make passenger’ experience easier and more enjoyable.  But more important Virgin understand our unconscious needs.  The planes have a mood-enhancing lighting system on board that is reassuring because it relaxes the body and, by doing so appeases our discomfort or fear of flying.  Virgin America also gives all passengers on board the opportunity to order their own food from their seats through a personal digital screen, allowing them to eat on their own schedule.  this last detail is genius because control of one’s own eating schedule is key on an instinctual level. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, managing our hunger at our own will is reassuring.

Both relaxing lights and food on your own time touch the passengers at an instinctual level.  Many will say that they choose an airline based on cost or, for people who can afford it, comfort, and they’ll most likely be sincere.  What they don’t realize, though, is that when they get on board, their reptilian brain is unavoidably evaluating whether they’re safe or not.  And when an airline caters to this basic need, passengers at some level eventually feel it and this positively influences their relationship to the airlines.

So how did Virgin America come to think of these great ideas for the comfort of their passengers?  They put themselves in the shoes of a passenger and truly tried to see and understand the way passengers feel rather than focusing first and foremost on the profitability generated by every ticket sold.  They opened themselves up to their creative imagination by paying attention to two unusual aspects of traveling:  lighting and food service. Two things that were never contemplated before.  Virgin America has been voted the best North American airline multiple times by readers of Condé Nast Traveler, a luxury travel magazine, showing that the ability to notice the unusual is a powerful aptitude, one that can put a company ahead of its competition. 

 

Why You Should Revisit Google’s Interior Design Strategy If You Want Your Employees to be More Creative

Posted on June 15, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-06-14 at 11.33.49 PMExcerpted from Francis Cholle’s The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass

Thinking paradoxically is an exercise in setting linear and logical patterns aside for a while and opening ourselves up to the possibility that solutions and new ideas can come from places that challenge common sense.  To wit, Einstein once said:  “Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.”  The question that follows, then, is this: what happens if a company departs from the traditional business approach, where executives focus on reason and results and where everything that count can and must be counted?  Could this company still be successful with a business approach that reaches beyond conventional logic?

The best example is a company that designed the most playful and instinctual work environment we’ve probably ever known.  This company is Google.

Google’s European headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, offers a slide to take employees to a gourmet company restaurant, swing chairs hanging from the ceiling in study rooms, bathtubs to lie in and relax in front of lit fish tanks in rooms with low light, massage tables and masseurs available for employees’ breaks, and igloo-shaped meeting rooms with penguins and snow as background  It looks like a kindergarten playground, not like the offices of a serious company.  Yet it probably has one of the most analytical and efficient work culture if judged by the number of patents it register every year and its exceptionally high profitability.  This is because Google fully embraces paradoxical business thinking.

First, let’s remember that research shows human productivity does not follow a linear continuum with time.  Specifically, according to Pareto’s principle, people produce 80 percent of what really matters in approximately 20 percent of the time they spend at work.  So when I hear clients complain about summer hours, coffee breaks, or employees’ short days, I always remind them of the result of the study. Timesheets for employees are a relic of the past.  They made sense in the industrial era when the scientific management of labor was implemented to organize work in assembly lines.  But in today’s global economy more and more companies rely on their employees’ creativity for their success.   Because creativity does not follow a linear relationship with time, time management for creative employees shouldn’t either.  For instance, great advertising copy can take weeks or even months to be worked and reworked to final edit, whereas, conversely, a brilliant slogan may come to mind in just a few seconds.  Time spent on copywriting is not a guarantee of success.  So when Google provides employees with space and resources for a break, relaxation, or a massage they actually are managing the 80/20 rule of human productivity very well.  They know that at some point in the day it inevitably becomes useless to require employees to sit at their desk.  Google embraces the paradox of creative time management.  In my work I regularly hear executives in creative firms stating along the lines of conventional wisdom that summer Fridays off are unnecessary and counterproductive and the employees sitting at their desk all day long is their ideal representation of productivity.  They do not recognize the paradoxical nature of creativity management and have a hard time thinking paradoxically when it comes to managing employees’ time.

And what about the slide to get to the restaurant?  What does it do to people? What would it do to you? Do you remember the last time you went down a slide? It’s a physical experience for many of us, it’s fun, but, for others, it may feel risky. In all cases, it involves our body and therefore engages us in our guts and puts us in play mode.  Simply put, it sends people to a place where they can best access their genius.

Similarly, the swing chairs get us literally off of our feet and off of the ground, and take us away from verticality, Language first developed in human beings when we moved from a horizontal position (resting on our hands and knees) to a vertical position (standing on our two feet).  So when we’re sitting back in a swing chair we’re away from the axis of language, which is the instrument of logic.  Therefore sitting in a swing chair takes us away from our rational mind and opens us to our imagination.  Here’s the paradox:  Google is extremely analytical and specific in the steps they take to engage their employees’ creativity and commitment in a playful and instinctive way.  Google is probably the greatest financial success in the history of capitalism.  It’s work reflecting on the face that Google handles the paradox of relying on hardcore brainpower and intellect very well while simultaneously offering headquarters that look more like a school playground than a studious and orderly library.  It obviously understands something that would very likely benefit many other companies seeking higher levels of innovation.  If you wish to have creative and agile employees you need to embrace paradoxical thinking, because creativity does not follow any predictable rule, but rather demands specific ingredients: flexible time management, proper play, physical engagement, and some element of random collaborations, among other things.  In the same fashion, if you wish to tap into more personal creativity you need to embrace paradoxical thinking, because new ideas will not come from common assumptions.

Build Holistic Thinking Into the DNA of Your Brand For Outstanding Results

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-06-07 at 9.23.46 PMWhen it comes to business, too often we expect profitability to be the driver of satisfaction, and therefore of motivation.  But this isn’t actually how it works.  When we want people to be creative or to change, adapt, and innovate, profitability alone won’t motivate them to do that.  These activities require a deep commitment, and if any part of us is not engaged, we won’t make that commitment.

This is why the first tenet of Intuitive Intelligence is the ability to think holistically; in other words, the ability to focus on value that goes beyond dollars and cents to include thing like integrity, honor, and meaning.  The legendary retailer Hermès Paris is a case in point, Hermès is a luxury goods house specializing in leather, ready-to-wear apparel, lifestyle accessories, perfumery, and fashion.  Its undisputed reputation as one of the most prestigious luxury companies in the world comes from a tradition of impeccable craftsmanship and a holistic approach to business.  Established in 1837 by Thierry Hermès as a saddle shop in Paris, Hermès today has fourteen product divisions, employs seven thousand people, and owns stores all around the world.  Hermès reports a total billing of approximately two billion euros and a next profit margin of roughly 10 percent.  The is a spectacular success.  But what’s even more remarkable is that Jean-Louis Dumas, who was CEO of Hermès for twenty-eight year until 2006, always looked at Hermès in a holistic way.  His vision for Hermès was inseparable from the three core pillars that define the brand.

First, using strategic skills, he envisioned Hermès as always ahead of consumer and market trends.  Second, he called on Hermès’ creative skills to invent luxury goods of exceptional value that exceeded users’ expectations.  Third, using keen management skills, he always stressed the fact that it was equally important to make sure that all Hermès products could feasibly be manufactured according to consistently outstanding quality standards.  And fourth, emphasizing saleability, he determined that all goods produced had to be marketable, because Hermès is not about is not about objects of art for museums and galleries;  it sells consumer good for the enjoyment of customers.  This holistic approach, which was first articulated by Dumas for Hermès, has been enforced ever since because it has consistently ensured the integrity of the Hermès reputation.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011. 

Intuitive Intelligence: The New Key to Problem Solving and Decision Making (part 2)

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-06-07 at 9.39.29 PMLast week we began a discussion of Intuitive Intelligence as a way to make use of our inherent abilities and aptitudes in the task of creative problem solving and optimum decision making.  The four tenets of Intuitive Intelligence are thinking holistically, thinking paradoxically, noticing the unusual, and leading by influence. We continue by exploring tenet number three.

3. Noticing the Unusual

The third tenet is the ability to look beyond what’s usual, to notice the odd and unfamiliar, and to embrace the paradoxical and mysterious nature of life, beyond what we know or what we’re used to perceiving.  To notice is to pay attention, and for this we use our senses.  We can pay attention outwardly by seeing what’s around us, or we can pay attention inwardly by feeling what’s inside of us.  When we notice things we can receive information in two ways; one is paying attention to what make logical sense, the other is paying attention beyond the logical sense of what we contemplate.  In the second case we have to open up to our feelings, our emotions, our sensations, and our intuition.  We get closer to our instinctual nature, and our creative imagination gets triggered.  We connect with our unconscious; we gain access to, and nourish, our imagination and creativity.

4.  Leading by Influence

There is at the heart of any living system a self-organizing principle.  The less we try to control it, the more we can reap its power and creatively engage with it.  The worst way to deal with The same is true for the creative process.  Any creative process is experimental and chaotic due to its unpredictability.  Successfully leading disruptive innovation calls for someone who can lead by influence and leverage the self-organizing principle present at the heart of the chaotic process of creativity to facilitate transformation and guide the process towards effective change.

This following simple anecdote illustrates the practical application of the four tenets of Intuitive Intelligence.  A student I met while teaching at the graduate program of Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC) drove every day to the business school campus, which is in the countryside close to Versailles, approximately twelve miles away from where he lived.  Because he is from Chile, he had been relying on his car’s GPS to find his way each day.  But one day, after a seminar on Intuitive Intelligence, he decided not to switch on his GPS and to instead rely on his gut instincts to find his way.  He had a big smile on his face when he told the entire class that driving to the campus without the help of his GPS actually worked perfectly and more easily!

So, this is how intuitive intelligence was manifested for my student:

–Thinking Holistically:  Finding his way to the campus was transformed into a richer experience, one colored with emotional, intellectual, instinctual, and almost spiritual aspects; it ultimately both a task and a game.  It was about a journey of self discovery and adventure as much as it was about achieving a goal.

–Thinking Paradoxically:  He managed to get to campus more easily while taking a paradoxical problem-solving approach: relying on less factual information.

–Noticing the Unusual: To make choice at any given crossroads, he had to pay attention and be receptive to his inner perceptions, even if they were unusual (not reading instructions on a screen or taking visual cues on a digital map).

–Leading by Influence:  He accepted giving up logical control over the situation and letting other seemingly random possibilities emerge to help him find his way as he kept focused on his goal:  getting to the campus on time.