How to Build Innovation Resilience in Uncertainty

Reality Strikes Back

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

“This time feels different.” I’ve been hearing this from innovation practitioners and partners for months We’ve seen innovation resilience tested in times of economic uncertainty and geopolitical volatility. We’ve seen it flourish when markets soar and capital is abundant. We’ve seen it all, but this time feels different.

In fact, we feel a great disturbance in the innovation force.

Disturbances aren’t always bad. They’re often the spark that ignites innovation. But understand the disturbance you must, before work with it you can.

So, to help us understand and navigate a time that feels, and likely is, different, I present “The Corporate Innovator’s Saga.”

Episode I: The R&D Men (are) Aces

(Sorry, that’s the most tortured one. The titles get better, I promise)

A long time ago (1876), in a place not so far away (New Jersey), one man established what many consider the first R&D Lab. A year later, Thomas Edison and his Menlo Park colleagues debuted the phonograph.

In the 20^th century, as technology became more complex, invention shifted from individual inventors to corporate R&D labs. By the late 1960s, Bell Labs employed 15,000 people, including 1,200 PhDs. In 1970, Xerox’s famed Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) opened.

Episode II: Attack of the Disruptors

For most of the twentieth century, R&D labs were the heroes or villains of executives’ innovation stories. Then, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen published, The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail.

He revealed that executives’ myopic focus on serving their best (most profitable) customers caused them to miss new waves of innovation. In example after example, he showed that R&D often worked on disruptive (cheaper, good enough) technologies only to have their efforts shut down by executives worried about cannibalizing their existing businesses.

C-suites listened, and innovation went from an R&D problem to a business one.

Episode III: Revenge of the Designers

Design Thinking’s origins date back to the 1940s, its application to business gained prominence with l Tim Brown’s 2009 book, Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation.

This book introduced frameworks still used today’s: desirability, feasibility, and viability; divergent and convergent thinking; and the process of empathy, problem definition, ideation, prototyping, and testing.

Innovation now required business people to become designers, question the status quo, and operate untethered from the short-termism of business,

Episode IV: A New Hope (Startups)

The early 2000s were a dizzying time for corporate innovation. Executives feared disruption and poured resources into internal innovation teams and trainings. Meanwhile, a movement was gaining steam in Silicon Valley.

Y Combinator, the first seed accelerator, launched in 2005 and was followed a year later by TechStars. When Eric Ries published The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses in 2011, the US was home to nearly 100 startup accelerators.

Now, businesspeople needed to become entrepreneurs capable of building, and scaling startups in environments purpose-built to kill risk and change.

In response, companies spun up internal accelerators, established corporate venture capital teams, and partnered with startup studios.

Episode V: Reality Strikes Back

Today, the combination of a global pandemic, regional wars, and a single year in which elections will affect 49% of the world’s population has everyone reeling.

Naturally, this uncertainty triggered out need for a sense of control. The first cut were “hobbies” like innovation and DEI. Then, “non-essentials” like “extra” people and perks. For losses continued into the “need to haves,” like operational investments and business expansion.

Recently, the idea of “growth at all costs” has come under scrutiny with advocates for more thoughtful growth strategies emerging There is still room for innovation IF it produces meaningful, measurable value.

Episode VI: Return of the Innovator (?)

I don’t know what’s next, but I hope this is the title. And, if not, I hope whatever is next has Ewoks.

What do you hope for in the next episode?

Image credit: Pexels

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Three Reasons Nobody Cares About Your Ideas

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Three Reasons Nobody Cares About Your Ideas

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

“Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door,” Ralph Waldo Emerson is said to have written (he didn’t) and since that time thousands of mousetraps have been patented. Still, despite all that creative energy and all those ideas, the original “snap trap,” invented by William Hooker in 1894, remains the most popular.

We’ve come to glorify ideas, thinking that more of them will lead to better results. This cult of ideas has led to a large cottage industry of consultants that offer workshops to exercise our creative capabilities with tools like brainstorming and SWOT analysis. We are, to a large extent, still chasing better mousetraps.

Still, one thing I constantly hear from executives I work with is that no one wants to hear about their ideas. The truth is that, just like all those mousetrap patents, most ideas are useless, very few are original and many have been tried before. So if you’re frustrated that nobody listens to your ideas, here’s why that happens and what you can do to fix it.

1. Your Ideas Aren’t Original

Having a new idea is thrilling, because it takes us to new places. Once we get an idea, it leads to other ideas and, as we follow the logical chain, we can see important real-world implications. The process of connecting the dots is so exhilarating — and so personal — that it seems unlikely, impossible even, that someone else had the same thoughts at the same time.

Yet history clearly shows that’s exactly what happens. Newton and Leibniz simultaneously invented calculus. Darwin and Wallace discovered the principles of evolution at about the same time. Alexander Graham Bell just narrowly beat Elisha Gray to the patent office to receive credit for inventing the telephone. Einstein beat David Hilbert to general relativity by a matter of weeks.

In fact, in a landmark study published in 1922, sociologists William Ogburn and Dorothy Thomas identified 148 major inventions or discoveries that at least two different people, working independently, arrived at the same time. And those are historic successes that are well documented. Just imagine how often it happens with normal, everyday ideas.

The truth is that ideas don’t simply arise out of some mysterious ether. We get them by making connections between existing ideas and new things we observe ourselves. So it shouldn’t be surprising that others have seen similar things and drawn the same conclusions that we have.

2. Others Had The Same Idea — And Failed

Jim Allison spent most of his life as a fairly ordinary bench scientist and that’s all he really wanted to be. He told me once that he “just liked figuring things out” and by doing so, he gained some level of prominence in the field of immunology, making discoveries that were primarily of interest to other immunologists.

His path diverged when he began to research the ability of our immune system to fight cancer. Using a novel approach, he was able to show amazing results in mice. “The tumors just melted away,” he told me. Excited, he ran to go tell pharmaceutical companies about his idea and get them to invest in his research.

Unfortunately, they were not impressed. The problem wasn’t that they didn’t understand Jim’s idea, but that they had already invested — and squandered — billions of dollars on similar ideas. Hundreds of trials had been undertaken on immunological approaches to cancer and there hadn’t been one real success.

Nonetheless, Jim persevered and today, cancer immunotherapy has emerged as major field of its own. Today, hundreds, if not thousands, of scientists are combining their ideas with Jim’s to create amazing breakthroughs in cancer treatment and tens of thousands of people are alive today because of it.

3. You Can’t Make An Idea Work By Yourself

One of the most famous stories about innovation is that of Alexander Fleming. Returning to his lab after a summer vacation, he found that a mysterious mold had contaminated his petri dishes, which was eradicating the bacteria colonies he was working to grow. He decided to study the mold and discovered penicillin.

It’s one of those stories that’s told and retold because it encapsulates so much of what we love about innovation — the power of a single “Eureka! moment” to change the world. The problem is that innovation never really happens that way, not generally and certainly not in the case of penicillin.

The real story is decidedly different. When Alexander Fleming published his findings, no one really noticed because it had little, if any, medical value. It was just a secretion from a mold that could kill bacteria in a petri dish. The compound was unstable and you couldn’t store it. It couldn’t be injected or ingested. You also couldn’t make enough of it to cure anyone.

Ten years later, a completely different team of scientists led by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain rediscovered Fleming’s work and began adding their own ideas. Then they traveled to America to work with US labs and improved the process. Finally, pharmaceutical companies worked feverishly to mass produce penicillin.

So it wasn’t just a single person or a single “Eureka! moment,” but a number of different teams of people, working on different aspects of the problem and it took nearly 20 years to make penicillin the miracle cure we know today.

The Fundamental Difference Between Ideation and Creation

While most ideas lead to nothing, some create enormous value. Calculus, the theory of evolution and the telephone made our lives better no matter who came up with them first. That’s not because of the idea itself, but what was built on top of it. Ideas only create a better future when they mix with other ideas. Innovation, to a large degree, is combination.

The stories of Alexander Fleming and Jim Allison are instructive. In Fleming’s case it was scientists at another lab that picked up the initial idea and did the work to make it into a useful cure. Then they went to America to work with other labs and, eventually, pharmaceutical companies to do the work needed to go from milliliters in the lab to metric tons in the real world.

One thing that struck me in talking to Jim Allison was how he described having the idea for cancer immunotherapy. He didn’t talk about a flash of brilliance, but said he slowly began to piece things together, combining the work of others with what he saw in his own lab. His breakthrough discovery was the culmination of a life’s work.

That was in 1995. It then took him three more years to find the small biotech company to back his idea. Clinical trials didn’t begin until 2004. FDA approval came through in 2011. Today, 20 years after the initial idea, he still goes to the lab every day, to combine his ideas with others and enhance the initial concept.

Kevin Ashton, who himself first came up with the idea for RFID chips, wrote in his book, How to Fly A Horse, “Creation is a long journey, where most turns are wrong and most ends are dead. The most important thing creators do is work. The most important thing they don’t do is quit.”

A good idea is not a mere moment of epiphany, but a call to action. It proves its value not by its elegance or through the brilliance of its conception, but in its ability to solve problems in the real world. So if you want people to start listening to your ideas, focus less on the fact that you have them and more on what value they can deliver to others.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog and previously appeared on Inc.com
— Image credits: Pexels

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Six Key Habits of Great Leaders

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Six Key Habits of Great Leaders

GUEST POST from David Burkus

In a world of growing complexity and seemingly constant crisis, we need great leaders more than ever. But when you look at the stories in the press or check the staggering numbers of burnout and disengagement in surveys, it seems like fewer and fewer leaders are rising to the challenge. It starts to seem like becoming a great leader is too complicated and nearly impossible.

But when you survey people on what makes them appreciate and follow leaders, it turns out there are just a few simple habits that set great leaders apart. Simple, but not necessarily easy.

In this article, we will explore what great leaders do across six key habits that make them influential and their teams successful.

1. Promote Purpose

The first habit great leaders do is to promote purpose. Great leaders understand the importance of connecting the larger organizational purpose to specific projects and tasks. They are able to do more than regurgitate the mission statement of the organization. They can draw a connection between the organizational purpose and the work of their specific team. In doing so, they inspire their team members to see the bigger picture and understand how their contributions align with the overall goals. Furthermore, great leaders shift the conversation towards “who” benefits from the work and promote pro-social purpose. This helps team members feel a sense of fulfillment and motivation in their work, knowing that they are making a positive impact.

2. Clarify Vision

The second habit great leaders do is to clarify vision. A clear vision is crucial for the success of any organization, and great leaders excel at explaining what success looks like and where the organization is heading. They are able to paint a vivid picture of the world or the specific people the organization serves and what it will look like when the vision is achieved. Even when plans change, great leaders provide a clear vision of what a good job looks like. They use the concept of “commander’s intent” to communicate the vision of a successful mission, ensuring that even in constant turmoil, everyone understands the desired outcome and can align their efforts accordingly.

3. Create Accountability

The third habit great leaders do is to create accountability. Great leaders understand the importance of holding people accountable to their jobs and calling them up to a higher standard. They ensure that individuals are held accountable to the result, not just the tasks. By providing the necessary resources for individuals to achieve their goals, great leaders empower their team members to take ownership of their work and deliver exceptional results. Leaders provide autonomy to team members, allowing them to decide how the work gets done. But they’re also reminding everyone on the team that autonomy means greater accountability to the team, not less. They are leaders who hold their team to a higher standard and encourage them to perform even greater.

4. Provide Fair Feedback

The fourth habit great leaders do is provide fair feedback. Feedback is a crucial tool for growth and development, and great leaders excel at providing fair feedback. They tailor their feedback to the individual’s situation, skills, resources, and accountability goals. Great leaders give feedback that is in equal proportion of positive to negative, focusing on building upon the great things. Poor leaders often spend most of their coaching time on constructive criticism—which can be demotivating and decrease performance. Instead, great leaders create a balance between appreciation and constructive criticism to motivate and improve performance, ensuring that team members feel valued and supported in their professional growth.

5. Build Safety

The fifth habit great leaders do is to build safety, as in psychological safety. A psychologically safe environment is essential for fostering innovation and growth, and great leaders understand this. They provide feedback in a way that does not blame individuals for things outside of their control, encouraging transparent and honest conversations about failures to extract lessons and improve. By establishing a culture of safety, great leaders create an atmosphere where team members feel comfortable taking risks and learning from their mistakes. This leads to increased creativity, collaboration, and ultimately, success.

6. Develop Oneself

The final habit great leaders do is to develop themselves. Great leaders recognize the importance of continuous learning and self-improvement. They take responsibility for developing themselves as well as others. With a growth mindset, they actively seek out new information and skills, constantly striving to become better leaders. Great leaders understand that they need to develop themselves in the areas that their team needs in order to be better leaders. By investing in their own growth, they set an example for their team members and inspire them to also pursue personal and professional development.

The habits discussed in this article are what make great leaders worth following. They’re simple, but not necessarily easy. And they need to be done on a regular basis. But great leaders understand the importance of these habits and strive to incorporate them into their leadership style. By promoting purpose, clarifying vision, creating accountability, providing fair feedback, building safety, and developing oneself, leaders can inspire their teams to do their best work ever.

Image credit: Pixabay

Originally published on DavidBurkus.com on August 21, 2023

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Innovation or Not – Snacks Made from Watermelon Seeds

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Innovation or Not - Snacks Made from Watermelon Seeds

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

When we talk about sustainability and innovation, the food industry often comes up short—despite being a fertile ground for both creativity and ecological advancement. One emerging trend is the development of snacks made from watermelon seeds, a seemingly simple idea that could have far-reaching impacts on our food systems and environmental footprint. But is it truly innovative? Let’s explore this concept through the lens of three compelling case studies that revolve around sustainability and the potent use of waste products for creating value.

Case Study 1: Eco Snacks Co.

Eco Snacks Co., a startup based in California, has carved a niche in the sustainable snacks market by turning watermelon seeds—typically a waste product—into nutrient-dense snacks. They source these seeds from local farms that would otherwise discard them. The seeds are cleaned, roasted, and seasoned to create a range of flavors, from chili lime to smoky BBQ.

But it’s not just about offering a tasty, healthy snack. By transforming what was once considered waste into a valuable product, Eco Snacks Co. addresses two major sustainability concerns: food waste and resource efficiency. The company also implements eco-friendly packaging made from biodegradable materials, reinforcing their commitment to the environment.

Eco Snacks Co. has experienced significant growth, with their products now available in major supermarkets and health food stores. They have managed to not only capture a segment of the snack market but also educate consumers on the benefits of upcycling food waste.

Case Study 2: Seed-to-Snack Innovators

Seed-to-Snack Innovators, based in the heart of Texas, have taken a different approach to watermelon seed snacks. Their business model centers on a cooperative relationship with watermelon farmers, offering them a way to monetize the by-products of their harvests. In essence, this is a farm-to-snack initiative.

After collecting the seeds, the company employs a proprietary method to dehydrate and flavor them, creating a product that fits well within the growing demand for plant-based snacks. The use of these seeds not only reduces agricultural waste but also provides an additional revenue stream for farmers.

The innovation doesn’t stop there; Seed-to-Snack Innovators have partnered with local gardens and schools to promote sustainable farming and waste reduction practices. Their educational programs aim to create a new generation of eco-conscious consumers who understand the importance of reducing waste and supporting sustainable food systems.

Case Study 3: Simple Mills

Simple Mills, a leader in the clean-food movement, has integrated the concept of sustainability into their business model by focusing on real ingredients and minimal processing. While they are predominantly known for their almond flour-based products, Simple Mills has also explored the use of other seed types, including watermelon seeds, in their innovative snacks.

Their approach is multifaceted: they aim to improve ingredient sourcing by working directly with farmers to ensure that every part of the plant is utilized, thus reducing waste. By incorporating watermelon seeds into their product line, Simple Mills highlights the versatility and nutritious value of these often-overlooked seeds.

Simple Mills is also committed to transparent supply chains and sustainable packaging solutions. Their packaging features clear information about their sustainability practices and is designed to minimize environmental impact, using recyclable and compostable materials whenever possible.

The company has not only expanded their product range but has also established themselves as educators and advocates for sustainable eating practices. Through community programs and partnerships, Simple Mills promotes a holistic approach to food that emphasizes health, sustainability, and waste reduction.

Conclusion

Both Eco Snacks Co., Seed-to-Snack Innovators, and Simple Mills exemplify how seemingly small innovations can lead to significant sustainability benefits. By taking what is traditionally seen as waste and converting it into a valuable product, these companies are not just making great snacks; they are reshaping our understanding of resource efficiency and waste reduction.

Finally, while snacks made from watermelon seeds might seem like a simple idea on the surface, the underlying innovation lies in the holistic approach to sustainability. These companies prove that it’s possible to create delicious, nutritious products while also making a positive impact on the environment.

So, innovation or not? I say it’s a resounding yes. It’s a perfect example of how true innovation often lies in reimagining the everyday, turning challenges into opportunities, and always keeping sustainability front and center.

Image credit: Simple Mills

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Can Leaders Defy Gravity?

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Can Leaders Defy Gravity?

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

If you pull hard on your team, what will they do? Will they rebel? Will they push back? Will they disagree? Will they debate? And after all that, will they pull with you? Will the pull for three weeks straight? Will they pull with their whole selves? How do you feel about that?

If you pull hard on your peers, what will they do? Will they engage? Will they even listen? Will they dismiss? And if they dismiss, will you persist? Will you pull harder? And when you pull harder, do they think more of you? And when you pull harder still, do they think even more of you? Do you know what they’ll do? And how do you feel about that?

If you push hard on your leadership, what will they do? Will they listen or dismiss? And if they dismiss, will you push harder? When you push like hell, do they like that or do they become uncomfortable, what will you do? Will they dislike it and they become comfortable and thankful you pushed? Whatever they feel, that’s on them. Do you believe that? If not, how do you feel about that?

When you say something heretical, does your team cheer or pelt you with fruit? Do they hang their heads or do they hope you do it again? Whatever they do, they’ve watched your behavior for several years and will influence their actions.

When you openly disagree with the company line, do your peers cringe or ask why you disagree? Do they dismiss your position or do they engage in a discussion? Do they want this from you? Do they expect this from you? Do they hope you’ll disagree when you think it’s time? Whatever they do, will you persist? And how do you feel about that?

When you object to the new strategy, does your leadership listen? Or do they un-invite you to the next strategy session? And if they do, do you show up anyway? Or do they think you’re trying to sharpen the strategy? Do they think you want the best for the company? Do they know you’re objecting because everyone else in the room is afraid to? What they think of your dissent doesn’t matter. What matters is your principled behavior over the last decade.

If there’s a fire, does your team hope you’ll run toward the flames? Or, do they know you will?

If there’s a huge problem that everyone is afraid to talk about, do your peers expect you get right to the heart of it? Or, do they hope you will? Or, do they know you will?

If it’s time to defy gravity, do they know you’re the person to call?

And how do you feel about that?

Image credit: Pexels

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Creating an Unforgettable Customer Service Experience

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Creating an Unforgettable Customer Service Experience

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

There are two reasons your customer service is unforgettable: either it’s really good or it’s really bad.

Welcome to modern-day customer service, where, according to our annual customer service research (sponsored by RingCentral), 43% of customers would rather clean a toilet than call customer support.

Customers don’t want to call customer support. Perhaps something like this has happened to you. You make the call, wait on hold for an unreasonable amount of time, tell your story to a customer support rep who doesn’t have the expertise needed and transfers you to someone else, and in the process, accidentally disconnects you (UGH!), and when you call back, after another unreasonable hold time, you end up repeating your question to someone worse than the last rep. I can continue, but you get the idea. This is what customers fear will happen on their next call because, unfortunately, it’s happened to them too many times.

Of course, it’s not always like this. But you can’t ignore that customers’ expectations are higher than ever, which raises the bar for customer support. They have experienced what great service looks like from customer-focused organizations. They like it and become frustrated when they don’t get it from other companies.

I’m fortunate to be part of the board of advisors for CCW (Contact Center Week), the largest contact center organization in the world. The members of the board are the who’s who of customer experience (CX) leaders from recognizable brands you’ve done business with. The board’s conversations center around creating the best experience for customers. AI and other technologies are driving a better experience, but only for those companies willing to invest in them. The costs have come down, making it affordable for almost any size organization.

Many industries are improving, yet even with the best companies, there is always room for improvement. A key is to understand how customers think. For our research, we surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. consumers to understand what they think of today’s customer service and CX, including specific questions about their experiences with contact centers.

First, some general findings that should cause concern:

In 2024, 91% of U.S. consumers think companies should put more emphasis on customer service than they have in the past.
In the past year, 43% of customers say they have had more bad customer service experiences than in previous years.
When calling customer support, 61% of customers feel that the company does not value their time.

Let’s drill down where customer service seems to matter most: the contact center. To begin, there is a shift to self-service support, often fueled by AI. With all the hype around AI and customer service, you think it would be better than it is, but it’s not, and for the simple reason that not all companies and brands have invested in newer technology. For those that have, they are reaping the benefits of great ratings. And some customers love self-service so much they won’t do business with a company that doesn’t offer it. We asked about self-service versus making a phone call to a company for support and found that:

A phone call is still the No. 1 communication channel. Seventy percent of customers prefer to call a company to solve a problem versus through a digital self-service experience.
Some companies have chosen to eliminate the phone, only offering self-service solutions. There’s a risk to this, as 67% of customers would not feel comfortable doing business with a company that doesn’t offer live support.
However, there is a small group of customers, 26%, who have stopped doing business with a company because self-service options weren’t offered. Many of these customers are younger Gen-Z and Millennials.
Even if you have older customers, don’t let these numbers cause you to abandon self-service support. Over half (60%) of customers always try a company’s Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section on its website or other digital self-service options before calling for help. Typically, a customer goes to the company’s website to get the phone number. If there is an obvious way for them to try to get their question answered or problem resolved, a majority of customers will give it a try.

And once the customer does connect with a customer support agent, if the experience starts to “go south,” the result is an angry customer who won’t come back. The reasons are as follows:

81% of customers said rudeness or apathy would likely cause them to switch companies or leave a brand.
72% said being transferred to different people would cause them to not come back.
68% said having to repeat the same story again and again would cause them to leave.
51% said waiting on hold for too long would give them a reason to move on.

This sounds like the scenario toward the top of the article. Sometimes, the agent doesn’t even need to connect with a customer to make them become upset. Eight out of 10 U.S. consumers (79%) have called customer support, gotten an automated menu system, repeatedly yelled “Agent” or “Representative” into the phone and eventually hung up out of frustration.

But it’s not all gloom and doom for the customer service and the contact center world. Even though customers are not always happy to contact customer support, when it’s good they come back, tell their friends and write positive reviews. So, let’s close with some of the more positive findings:

85% of customers are willing to go out of their way to do business with a company that delivers a better service experience.
51% will pay more, indicating that a great service experience makes the price less relevant.
Finally, the top three reasons customers come back are helpful, knowledgeable and friendly employees. (That’s all it takes? How hard is that?)

Well, although it sounds simple it’s not necessarily easy or easy to find. But now that you know the secret, it’s time to set some goals. I’ll add another word to those three for a truly winning combination: consistency. If your customer service reps are consistently helpful, knowledgeable and friendly, you will be unbeatable!

Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons, Shep Hyken

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

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Errors You May Be Making in Your Customer Experience

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Errors You May Be Making in Your Customer Experience

GUEST POST from Howard Tiersky

Maintaining a website or mobile experience with a high degree of usability is essential to maximize business outcomes, and people who are frustrated often take for granted how easy it is in the digital world to simply click over to a competitor. Even worse are cases where determined customers simply cannot figure out how to proceed to complete a transaction, or otherwise achieve their goals.

At FROM, we regularly conduct both in person and online usability tests for our clients to observe “real” users engaging with their digital experience. This gives us enormous insight into where users are encountering frustration, confusion, or other difficulties, and while we are huge believers in robust usability testing as a tool to identify and prioritize which aspects of a digital touch point should be optimized (and really, it’s not terribly time-consuming or expensive), there is a little-known trick that can start to identify many problems. While not as comprehensive as user testing, it’s generally much faster, and therefore, a great place to start!

What is that place? The server’s error logs.

While it may not sound super sexy, your error logs contain a treasure trove of data.

First, the server will typically log if a page doesn’t load properly, errors occur, or if transactions fail to complete. Naturally, usability is hampered if your customers are receiving errors because the system not functioning properly, and yet it’s amazing how often server logs don’t get looked at. And since error logs can generally be viewed by browser and device, it’s not uncommon to find that a new version of Chrome or Edge is causing errors that previously didn’t exist, so this is something that need regular attention. In addition, many systems rely on external cloud services, increasing the points of failure. By monitoring server errors, you can make sure you are aware if your site is “breaking,” a simple but often overlooked part of managing an effective digital experience.

Second, we have errors of user validation, i.e., a user enters an invalid email or phone number, tries to complete a transaction without checking the “terms and conditions” acceptance box, etc. Now, on the one hand, you might say “That’s not my fault, my site worked. It was the user made a mistake!” Bzzzzt. Wrong answer. Especially if there are a lot of these types of errors, or if the number suddenly spikes.

It’s our job to design a solution that makes it unlikely that users will make errors. If they’re frequently overlooking something, or misunderstanding what they are meant to do, it’s a sign we need to look at that screen or field and consider how to redesign it to reduce confusion. It might be as simple as rewriting the instructions or moving a button.

One nuance we like to look for is circular errors. What’s a circular error? It’s when, during a single session, a user sends the same input multiple times and receives the same error. For example, a user submits a page, and the email is determined to be invalid (a logged error.) Then the user submits again, with the same email (and maybe then a third time, again with the same email.) These types of circular errors usually mean the error messaging system in your application is flawed. Perhaps the error text appears at the top of the screen, and the field itself is below the fold, so the user may not even be seeing the error text.

The third type of error is failed search or out of stock messages. The user wants to rent a car with a pickup at 2 am but that location is closed, or the user wants the pants in a 42 waist, but you don’t have any in stock. Or, the user is searching your site for information on bed wetting, but no articles match that term. These types of errors indicate a missed opportunity to meet a customer need, and you should scour these types of messages to consider what steps can be taken to meet commonly requested unmet needs.

All of this is based on the assumption that your site’s back-end code is logging errors properly. This is a standard coding practice, but just because it’s standard doesn’t mean it can’t get omitted, or that certain errors might not have code that logs them. It’s important to check with your technical team; if your site is not logging most errors, or not logging them with sufficient detail, this code can generally be added.

Additionally, you may include logging at different levels of your system, and therefore have multiple log files. For example, the web server may have one log file, the commerce layer may have a separate log file, and your security/authentication layer may have its own log files, and that’s fine. There are great tools that can combine them together and make them easy to analyze, filter, sort, etc.

The logging I’ve been referring to is generally done on the server. However, with each new generation of digital experiences, we push more and more code (including more and more error checking) to the client. Whether it’s javascript (in the case of web pages), or Java code (in the case of mobile apps.) These types of error events can be logged as well, it just requires a separate effort or technology (but it’s well worth it!) You can use analytics packages like Google Analytics to record “events” when certain things (like error messages) happen in the interface.

A one or two-day analysis of error logs can help you focus in on specific, frequently occurring error states that were previously off your radar. Sometimes, it’s still necessary to do user testing to figure out what the deeper reason for the confusion is, but even still, it’s helpful to know where the errors are occurring, so you can focus your testing there. In other cases, it’s easy to guess what’s tripping your users up, once the errors are there to act as signposts.

This article originally appeared on the Howard Tiersky blog

Image Credits: Pixabay

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Five Keys to Company Longevity

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Five Keys to Company Longevity

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

The quest for immortality is as old as humankind. From King Gilgamesh in 2100 BCE to Jeff Bezos and Larry Page, the only thing that stops our pursuit of longevity is death. So why don’t we apply this same verve and vigor to building things that last forever? Why don’t we invest in corporate longevity?

Consider this—in the last 80 years, human life expectancy increased by almost 30% while corporate life expectancy declined by almost 500%. Other research indicates that the average company’s lifespan on the S&P 500 Index dropped from 60 years in 1960 to just under 15 years in 2024.

We spend billions on products to slow, stop, and even reverse aging. Yet, according to the New York Times, there are just seven keys to living longer.

Could achieving corporate longevity possibly be just as simple?

Yes.

Here are five keys to corporate longevity.

1. Take care of yourself today AND invest for tomorrow

We all know what we should do to stay healthy. But one night, you don’t sleep well, and hearing your 5:00 am alarm is physically painful. What harm is there in skipping just one workout? At work, you had a bad quarter, so cutting the research project or laying off the innovation team seems necessary. After all, if you don’t save today, there won’t be a tomorrow, right?

Right. But skipping workouts becomes a habit that can bring your retirement plans crashing down. Just like cutting investments in R&D, innovation, and next-gen talent makes keeping up with, adapting, and growing in a rapidly changing world impossible.

2. Build and nurture relationships. Inside AND outside your company

According to the Harvard Study of Adult Development, strong relationships lead to happier and healthier lives and are the biggest predictor of well-being. Turns out relationships are also good for business.

Strategic alliances and partnerships directly grow revenue. For example, 95% of Microsoft’s commercial revenue comes from its partner ecosystem. Starbucks’ collaboration with Nestle allowed the coffee chain to expand its presence in people’s lives while Nestle gained access to a growing category without the cost of building its own brand. There’s a reason that Andreessen Horowitz declared partnerships a “need to have” in today’s world.

3. Everything in moderation

Toddlers are the only people more distracted by shiny objects than executives. Total Quality Management. Yes, please. Disruptive Innovation. Absolutely. Agile. Thank you, I’ll take two.

Chasing new ideas isn’t wrong. It’s how you chase them that’s dangerous. Uprooting your existing processes and forcing everyone to immediately adopt Agile is the corporate equivalent of a starvation diet. You’ll see immediate improvements, but long-term, you’ll end up worse off.

4. Eliminate bad habits (and bad people)

“The culture of any organization is shaped by the worse behavior the leader is willing to tolerate.”

Read that again. Slowly.

To live longer, stop engaging in, tolerating, and justifying bad habits. To make your company live longer, stop tolerating and justifying people and behaviors that contradict your company’s culture. Eliminating bad behavior is tough, but it’s the only way to get to your goal. In life and in business.

5. Rest

Getting 7-8 hours of sleep a night adds years to your life. Less than five hours doubles your dementia risk. More sleep also boosts your productivity and creativity at work.

The latest example of rest’s power is the four-day workweek. In 2022, 61 UK companies adopted it without any changes in pay. Two years later, 54 still have the policy, and over 30 made it permanent. Other companies, like Microsoft in Japan, reported productivity increases of more than 40%.

What will you unlock with these keys?

As a leader, you have the power to build a legacy and a company that thrives for generations. But that only happens if you channel the same energy into achieving corporate longevity that you put into pursuing a longer, healthier life.

By embracing the keys of corporate longevity—caring for today while investing in tomorrow, nurturing relationships, practicing moderation, eliminating bad habits, and prioritizing rest—you’ll build businesses that endure.

The journey to corporate immortality starts with a single step. What’s yours?

Image credit: Pixabay

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You Are Probably Not Prepared to Innovate

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You Are Probably Not Prepared to Innovate

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

Becoming a successful executive is a fairly linear path. You start at the bottom and learn to solve basic problems in your field or industry. As you gain experience and improve your skills you are given more responsibility, begin to manage teams and work diligently to set up the practices and processes to help your team succeed.

The best executives make those around them better, by fostering a positive work environment, minimizing drama and providing strategy and direction that will enable the team meet its objectives. That’s how you deliver consistent results and continue to rise up through the ranks to the top of your profession.

At some point, however, you need to do more than just plan and execute strategy, you have to innovate. Every business model is disrupted eventually. Changes in technology, competitive landscape and customer needs make that inevitable and, unfortunately, executive experience doesn’t equip your for it. Here’s four things that will help you make the shift from operations to innovation.

1. Learn How To Be The Dumbest Guy In The Room

Good executives are often the smartest guys in the room. Through years of experience solving tough problems, they learn to be masters of their craft and are able to mentor those around them. A great operational manager is a great coach, guiding others around them to achieve more than they thought they could.

Unfortunately, innovation isn’t about what you know, but what you don’t. It requires you to explore, push boundaries and venture into uncharted areas in which there often are no true experts. You’re basically flying blind, which can be incredibly uncomfortable, especially to those who have had a strong track record of success in a structured environment.

That’s why the first step to making the shift from operations to innovation is to learn how to become the dumbest guy in the room instead of the smartest. Admit to yourself that you don’t know what you need to succeed and begin to explore. Actively seek out those who know and understand things that you don’t.

Being the smartest guy in the room helps you operate smoothly, but being the dumbest guy in the room helps you learn. The best way to start is by seeking out new rooms to spend time in.

2. Create A Bias For Action

Operations thrive on predictability. People need to know what to expect and what’s expected of them so that things can run smoothly. Every great operation needs to coordinate activities between a diverse set of stakeholders, including team members, partners and customers. That level of interoperability doesn’t just happen by itself.

Over the years, a variety of methods, such as Total Quality Management (TQM) and Six Sigma have arisen that use rigorous statistical methods to optimize for established metrics. The idea is to hone processes continuously in order to elevate them to paragons of efficiency.

When you seek to innovate, however, established metrics are often of little use, because you are trying to do something new and change the basis of competition. Again, you are venturing into the unknown, doing things you and your organization have not developed the knowledge and skills to do well. Instead of seeking excellence, you need to dare to be crap.

The key to making this work is not to abandon all sense of restraint and accountability, but to manage risk by reducing scale. In an operational setting you always want to look for the largest addressable market you can find, but when you are trying to do something truly new, you need to find a hair on fire use case — a customer who needs a problem solved so badly that they are willing to work through the inevitable glitches and snafus with you.

3. Solve The Monkey First

Every good operational project has a roadmap, whether that is an ordinary budget, a project plan or a defined strategy. The early stages of a plan are usually the easiest. You want to get everybody on board, build momentum and then begin to tackle tougher problems. When you are trying to do something new and different, however, you often want to do exactly the opposite.

Every significant innovation involves something that’s never been done before, so you can’t be sure how long it will take or even if the core objectives can be achieved at all. So it’s best to get started working on the toughest problems early, because until you resolve those unknowns, the whole project is unworkable.

At Google’s X division, the company’s “moonshot factory,” the mantra is #MonkeyFirst. The idea is that if you want to get a monkey to recite Shakespeare on a pedestal, you’d better start by training the monkey, not building the pedestal, because training the monkey is the hard part. Anyone can build a pedestal.

Operational executives like to build pedestals so that they can show early progress against a timeline. Unfortunately, when you are striking out into the unknown, building a pedestal gets you nowhere. Unless you can actually train the monkey, working on the pedestal is wasted effort. You have to learn how to train monkeys.

4. Move from Metrics To Mission

Good operational executives sweat the numbers. They work within existing frameworks and hone operations to improve performance against established metrics. Yet when you are trying to do something truly new, established metrics often tell you little. The goal isn’t to play the game better, but to change it entirely.

In fact, established businesses often get disrupted precisely because they are focusing on outdated metrics. For example, when digital cameras first came out, they performed poorly by traditional standards of quality. They did, however, perform much better in terms of convenience and, as the quality of the pictures improved, replaced the earlier technology.

In a similar vein, while traditional brokerages focused on service, Charles Schwab offered minimal service at a far lower price. At first, it didn’t seem like a threat to incumbents, but as technology improved, it was able to improve service and keep the low flat fees. The model ended up transforming the industry.

So it’s important to not get blinded by metrics and focus on your mission. True innovation never happens in a straight line or proceeds at a measured pace. That’s why there is a basic tradeoff between innovation and optimization and very few people can do both. The best executives, however, learn how to bridge that gap.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog and previously appeared on Inc.com
— Image credits: Pexels

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SpaceX is a Masterclass in Innovation Simplification

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GUEST POST from Pete Foley

This capture from a recent SpaceX tweet is a stunning visual example of smart innovation and simplification.

While I’m not even close to being a rocket scientist, and so am far from familiar with all of the technical details, I’ve heard that breakthroughs incorporated into this include innovative sensor design that allows for streamlined feedback loops. But this goes beyond just impressive technical innovation. To innovate at this level requires organizational and cultural flexibility as well as technical brilliance. That latter flexibility is probably far more broadly transferable and adoptable than specific advances in rocket science, and hence more useful to the broader innovation community. So let’s dig a little deeper into that space.

Secret Sauce? Organizationally SpaceX is well known for less formal hierarchies, passion, ownership and engineers working on the production floor. This hands on approach creates a different, but important kind of feedback, while passion feeds intrinsic motivation, ownership and engagement, which is so critical to consistent innovation.

Learning from Failure – An Innovation Superpower? But perhaps most important of all is the innovation culture. Within SpaceX there is a very clear willingness to experiment and learn from failure. Not lip service, or the sometimes half-hearted embrace of failure often found in large, bureaucratic organizations, where rewards and career progression often doesn’t reflect the mantra of learning by failing. This is an authentic willingness to publicly treat productive failure of individual launches as a learning success for the program, and to reward productive failure and appropriate risk taking. Of course, it’s not always easy to walk the talk of celebrating failure, especially in spacecraft design, where failures are often spectacular, public, and visual gold for the media. And no doubt this is compounded by Musk’s controversial public profile, where media and social media are often only too keen to highlight failures. But the visual of Raptor 3 is for me a compelling advertisement for authentically embedding learning by failure deeply into the DNA of an innovative organization.

Stretch Goals: Musk is famous for, and sometimes ridiculed for setting ambitious stretch goals, and for not always achieving them. But in a culture where failure is tolerated, or if done right, celebrated, missing a stretch goal is not a problem, especially if it propelled innovation along at a pace that goes beyond conventional expectation.

Challenging Legacy and ‘Givens’: Culturally, this kind of radical simplification requires the systematic challenge of givens that were part of previous iterations. You cannot make these kind of innovation leaps unless you are both willing and able to discard legacy technical and organizational structures.

At risk of kicking Boeing while it is down, it is hard not to contrast SpaceX with Boeing, whose space (and commercial aviation) program is very publicly floundering, and facing the potentially humiliating prospect of needing rescue from the more agile SpaceX program.

Innovation Plaque: But in the spirit of learning from failure, if we look a bit deeper, perhaps it should not be a surprise that Boeing are struggling to keep up. They have a long, storied, and successful history as a leader in aerospace. But history and leadership can be a blessing and a curse, as I know from P&G. It brings experience, but also bureaucracy, rigid systems, and deeply rooted culture that may or may not be optimum for managing change. Deep institutional knowledge can be a similar mixed blessing. It of course allows easy access to in-domain experience, and is key to not repeating past mistakes, or making naïve errors. But is also comes with an inherent bias towards traditional solutions, and technologies. Perhaps even more important is the organizationally remembered pain of past failures, especially if a ‘learn by failure’ culture isn’t fully embraced. Failure is good at telling us what didn’t work, and plays an important role in putting processes in place that help us to avoid repeating errors. But over time these ‘defensive’ processes can build up like plaque in an artery, making it difficult to push cutting edge technologies or radical changes through the system.

Balance is everything. Nobody wants to be the Space Cowboy. Space exploration is expensive, and risks the lives of some extraordinarily brave people. Getting the balance between risk taking and the right kind of failure is even more critical than in most other contexts. But SpaceX are doing it right, certainly until now. Whatever the technical details, the impact on speed, efficiency and $$ behind the simplification of Raptor 3 is stunning. I suspect that ultimately reliability and efficiency will also likely helped by increased simplicity. But it’s a delicate line. The aforementioned ‘plaque’ does slow the process, but done right, it can also prevent unnecessary failure. It’s important to be lean, but not ‘slice the salami’ too thin. Great innovation teams mix diverse experience, backgrounds and personalities for this reason. We need the cynic as well as the gung-ho risk taker. For SpaceX, so far, so good, but it’s important that they don’t become over confident.

The Elon Musk Factor: For anyone who hasn’t noticed. Musk has become a somewhat controversial figure of late. But even if you dislike him, you can still learn from him, and as innovators, I don’t think we can afford not to. He is the most effective innovator, or at least innovation leader for at least a generation. The teams he puts together are brilliant at challenging ‘givens’, and breaking out of legacy constraints and the ‘ghosts of evolution’. We see it across the SpaceX design, not just the engine, but also the launch systems, recycling of parts, etc. We also see an analogous innovation strategy in the way Tesla cars so dramatically challenged so many givens in the auto industry, or the ‘Boring company in my hometown of Las Vegas.

Ghosts of Evolution I’d mentioned the challenges of legacy designs and legacy constraints. I think this is central to SpaceX’s success, and so I think it’s worth going a little deeper on this topic. Every technology, and every living thing on our planet comes with its own ghosts. They are why humans have a literal blind-spot in our vision, why our bodies pleasure centers are co-located with our effluent outlets, and why the close proximity of our air and liquid/solid intakes lead to thousands of choking deaths every year. Nature is largely stuck with incrementally building on top of past designs, often leading to the types of inefficiency described above. Another example is the Pronghorn antelope that lives in my adopted American West. It can achieve speeds of close to 90 mph. This is impressive, but vastly over-designed and inefficient for it’s current environment. But it is a legacy design, evolved at a time when it was predated upon by long extinct North American Cheetah. It cannot simply undo that capability now that it’s no longer useful. So far, it’s survived this disadvantage, but it is vulnerable to both competition and changing environment simply because it is over-designed.

Bio-Inspiration: I’ve long believed we can learn a great deal from nature and bio-inspired design, but sometimes learning what not to do is as useful as ‘stealing’ usable insights. It’s OK to love nature, but also acknowledge that evolution has far more failures than successes. There are far, far more extinct species than living ones. And virtually every one was either too specialized, or lacked the ability to pivot and adapt in the face of changing context.

As innovators, we have unique option of creating totally new 2.0 designs, and challenging the often unarticulated givens that are held within a category. And we have the option of changing our culture and organizational structures too. But often we fail do so because we are individually or organizationally blind to legacy elements that are implicitly part of our assumptions for a category or a company. The fish doesn’t see the water, or at least not until it’s dangling from a hook. By then it’s too late. Whatever you think of Musk, he’s taught us it is possible to create innovation cultures that challenge legacy designs extremely effectively. It’s a lesson worth learning

Image credits: Twitter (via SpaceX)

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