Sometimes you need a disguise…

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Image by Nancy Sticke from Pixabay
I know, we’re a day early. But since many of you are already eating the candy, and I thought I could use one more pumpkin-and-costume graphic, with puppies, we’re posting a day early. This week I had a lovely time with connections and colleagues from the Toronto Product Management Association, where I was sharing a facilitator’s-eye view of meetings and how to make them work for you. My first rule: treat your colleagues like you would treat your customers – give them and their ideas the same level of respect and consideration.  No one likes meetings, for sure, but there are some key things that make them run more smoothly:
  1. Curate who needs to be in the room.
  2. Make sure you hold only one kind of meeting, per meeting (status update/info sharing, decision making/problem solving, ideation/creation, team building). 
  3. Set an agenda and communicate the 5Ws of the meeting in advance.
  4. Respect people’s time and contribution by ensuring they are heard, using their time wisely, and doing what you promised (and only that). 
  5. Make space for what doesn’t fit by using a parking lot.
  6. Use a tool like the Ivory Taboo Tower* to let people mention the unmentionable.
  7. Leave with actions.
  8. Follow up with notes that parallel the agenda, summarize discoveries, and give a who, when, what to the actions.

I was thrilled with the enthusiastic response, and I really empathized with some of the questions afterward. These included:

  1. How do I keep from getting stuck always being the one taking notes at the meeting? Note that this question almost always comes from women. (Check this out). 
  2. What if my boss brings someone along who isn’t on my curated list of who should be in the room?  (Give them an assignment like managing the parking lot or taking notes – another reason not to always be the person above). 
  3. How do I get someone to do a task that really is their responsibility, but I’m getting measured for it? (This is where those attractive costumed pups come in at the top of the page – disguise it as something they want to do. And also, if you’re being measured on the actions of people who don’t work for you…that’s a whole nother discussion).
  4. What can you do about a boardroom bully? (We talked about that here). 

What meeting challenges do you have? Steve and I are happy to try and address those in future posts. Let us know in the comments below, or email us with your questions. Product management (brand management, marketing management, roadmap management)…is people management. People are our specialty.

*The Ivory Taboo Tower is a “secret parking lot” out of the room, or on a discreet wall, where people can note topics that are taboo to talk about, and yet are having an impact on getting things done, agreeing, or moving forward. 

I’m Megann Willson and I’m one of the partners here at PANOPTIKA, along with Steve Willson. We help you and your company to see everything you need to know to make better decisions, so you can find, understand, and keep customers. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook, and if you’d like more news you can use, delivered straight to your inbox, click the handy button below to sign up. 

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Sort Yourself Out!

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Image by congerdesign from Pixabay
 
“We don’t have enough information to make a decision!”

“Everything is so unclear!”

“We need more research, but we don’t know where to start.”

“Of course we have a research objective. In fact, we’ve got five or six of them.”

Often when we hear clients expressing these things, we work with them to discover that it isn’t a lack of information, but a lack of clarity about what they know, and don’t know, about the problem. If you’re dealing with this in your organization, and you have limited resources, the last thing you should do is invest in more research (yet). First, you’ve got to wade through the complexity and ambiguity and sort out exactly what you need. And a sorting activity is an excellent first step. Here’s how you can get started:

  1. Gather all the data, research, articles, information, and relevant people, that are connected in any way with the problem(s) you are trying to solve. (Things written about the product? Check. About the right customer group? Yes. Sales data? Uh-huh. Customer service logs. Absolutely. Articles from experts in the field? Yup. Vision boards or prototypes? Positively.) Divide up the work amongst the people, by volume. Don’t invest time in who knows more, who did the research, or who found the article. Just sort it, and divvy it up. Quickly. 
  2. Next, ask each person to go through whatever artefact they have (article? research report? dataset?) as rapidly as possible, and assign it a label, or a category that represents what it mainly can answer or illuminate. Don’t debate. Let each do their work on their own. Set a time limit. Max, a couple of hours. 
  3. Now, get together in a room and share the labels. You might hate sticky notes, but they are useful for this. Look at the box of tea in the photo. If you wanted a certain type of tea, could you find it in a messy drawer, randomly mixed together? Not easily. But here, whether you organize it by fruit tea, or herbal infusion, black tea, or by brand, it will be easier to see what you’ve got. Group them, if there are commonalities. As a group, identify patterns. Express what you have a lot of. Now, what’s missing? Why is that important to the problem you’re trying to solve? 
  4. List the missing things. Prioritize them. Ask, “What do all of these point to, collectively, as the concept we need the most, to move forward?” Then ask, “Which of these, if we don’t figure it out, could kill our business/product/project?” Now you’re on to something. 

Sorting exercises may seem simplistic, but there’s a reason these are one of the first things we teach to babies, and then to kids learning to read, and later, to people who are programming, filing, organizing, or creating an information architecture. They help us get to the gist of what we need to know, to make sense of the world. And they can help you do better research, more efficiently, and for less time and money. I’m sure of it.

My name is Megann Willson, and with my partner, Steve Willson, we run PANOPTIKA, where we help our clients see everything they need to know to find, understand, and keep customers. You can also find us on LinkedIn, on Twitter, or Facebook. If you’d like more news you can use to grow your business, subscribe to our weekly updates, and the occasional offer, using the link below.

 
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Pull The Emergency Brake. Or Don’t.

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Photo thanks to Gerd Altmann via Pixabay
“Make a u-turn as soon as possible!”

Was she really shrieking at us, the GPS woman? It started to sound that way when we toured Lyon, in the middle of a city-wide tram-track upgrade. Every direction was the wrong direction. Or was it? One day out of a magical vacation a few years ago, we found ourselves in GPS hell. The GPS was not helping, since every one of her directions led us to another detour, or blocked road, or “no exit” sign. Finally, Steve suggested we just shut her off and stop listening. (Perhaps not as gently as that sounds). 

We did it. And what happened? Nothing. We took a few twists and turns, saw parts of the old city, Vieux-Lyon, not meant to be on our route, and eventually, we took a beautiful waterside walk. Then we went on our way. Drove to Beaune. Bought some wine. Went back to our rented maison. Made dinner.

What’s the point of all this? It’s that few things are as urgent as they seem. It is rarely too late. Any direction can end up being the right direction. So the next time someone is barking directions and contradicting them in short order, switch it off. Step back. Think about the outcome you are really trying to achieve, and head in the direction that experience, understanding, instinct and any material fact (like a compass heading, the sun, or data) tells you is right. 

I’m Megann Willson and I’m one of the partners here at PANOPTIKA. Steve Willson and I work every day with clients to help them get answers and to see everything they need to know to make better decisions. And sometimes our advice is to stop asking for more answers, and trust what you’ve already learned, including the data that’s right in front of you. You can also find us on Twitter, on LinkedIn, and occasionally on Facebook. 

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It’s All (Not) Going According to Plan

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“Plans don’t work out.”
“No business plan survives first contact with the customer.”
“If you want to hear God laugh, tell her your plans.”

Have you heard these? We know we have. Usually from people who don’t want to invest the time in putting their plans to paper. Here’s what we also know: committing to a direction in writing, clarifies and solidifies your thinking. It lets you get clarity on:

1. Where you want your business or product to go
2. What actions you believe it will take to get there
3. How you want your customers or stakeholders to react
4. A set of benchmarks you can use to measure, adapt, and adjust as you implement

That last part is usually the part that gets forgotten. The plan isn’t a stone tablet. Just like the blueprint for a new house is only the beginning of what that place will need to become a home, the plan is a starting place. When you have a bias for action (as I do), it can feel slow, cumbersome, and frustrating sometimes. But it can also provide great clarity as you work through it. Used right, it lets you document your learning as you go. It becomes a body of evidence of your experiments, hypotheses, and assumptions, and it can help build critical thinking and the ability to “see around corners” – keeping you in business for a long time.

I’m Megann Willson and I’m one of the partners here at PANOPTIKA. We work with clients to help them see everything they need to do to make better decisions for their business, so they can find, understand, and keep their best customers. Since 2001 we’ve helped hundreds of companies with thousands of business challenges, and we can help you, too. What are we seeing? Follow us on Twitter, on LinkedIn, or set an appointment for a no-obligation conversation about what you’re trying to solve in your business.  

Every week, we share news, ideas, links to this blog, books we’re reading (and recommending), and our speaking schedule, direct to inboxes around the world. You can sign up with the handy button, below:

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Let’s Ask This, Just Because We Can…

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This week I was reading The Magic of Thinking Big, by David J. Schwartz. It’s not a new book; in fact it was written in 1959. And although the tone may seem a bit old-timey, much of the advice is as valid today, as when it was new. Schwartz is a big believer in goal-setting, and in the importance of setting out with a plan. He also alluded to a problem we see in the research and consulting business, which is the gathering of data for data’s sake, and an over-emphasis on keeping vast repositories of information in our heads or at our fingertips, as a way to “add value” to ourselves. But machines can do that. Here’s what Dr. Schwartz said: “More and more we rely on books, files, and machines to warehouse information. If we can only do what a machine can do, we’re in a real fix.”

It’s not the data (however big) that helps us make better sense of the world, understand our customers better, find new markets, sell more, or grow our businesses. It’s the synthesis of the data – what we do with it, how we shape it, where we find connections – and our “knowledge goals”, that make a difference. Knowing what we want to do with the answers, how we want to use them, and why they’re important to us, will help us have a richer understanding of the people we’re investigating in our research. Before adding yet another question to an overly-long survey, or jumping in like Columbo with a “just one more thing” query, ask yourself these things:

  1. What will I do with this answer if I get it? 
  2. What decision will I be able to make? 
  3. What action will I be able to take?  
  4. Will it harm the relationship with the respondent in any way (abusing their time, being irrelevant, or being invasive for a purpose which we haven’t been transparent about)? 

If you have good answers for those, and you’re still comfortable asking, by all means, go for it. Then use what you’ve learned wisely and do something excellent for the person responding. That is why you’re asking, isn’t it?

I’m Megann Willson, and with my partner, Steve Willson, we’ve been helping PANOPTIKA’s customers see everything they need to know to make better decisions for richer customer relationships, for over 18 years. You can also follow us on Twitter or connect on Facebook or LinkedIn. And if you’d like to join our community to have the conversation come right to your inbox, there’s a button below that will do the trick. 

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Price Your Product So that What They Pay is What It’s Worth

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What you believe your product is worth, isn’t always what the customer wants to pay, and especially if they’re a multinational corporation, and you’re…not. 

 

It’s often tempting for service businesses to think of their pricing as simple units of money by time, for example, and that’s what the purchasing people would like to believe. It makes it easy for them. And to be sure, someone will always price their services that way. But in a knowledge-based business, clients are also paying for your experience – your ability to understand the situation from a specific perspective, or as Steve Pulver, the speaker at last night’s #Medventions session at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre described it, your ability to “see around corners”. That’s why you need to build a value story that they can understand. You need to avoid the price spiral. It’s the same thing if you are building a complex new technology, or a medication. “Cost plus” is not the right model for either of those things.

So how do you decide how to set your price? There are a few simple rules of thumb. You do still need to start with costs. What does it cost to produce the product or service (raw materials, manufacturing, time researching, meeting, writing reports)? What are your overheads or fixed costs (rent, salaries, keeping the lights on)? Beyond that, you will need to look at competitors. Their pricing will give you a good idea of what the market will bear, unless your aim is to be much cheaper (because you’ve found a way to do that) or faster (there should be a premium for that) or higher quality (maybe, just maybe the customer will pay for that). Those are all good places to start, if there’s a known benchmark. What if there’s not? What if you’re doing (or you’ve invented or discovered) something completely new? 

Then you need to start with the costs, above, and begin to think more abstractly about your value proposition, what the product is worth, and what levers you can work with. If you have a medical device, for example, start by thinking about other similar medical problems that are addressed in terms of the incidence and prevalence of the issue, the number of patients impacted, the cost of not treating (the “opportunity cost”). You’ll need to use some triangulation if there isn’t readily available data. Then the real work begins.

Consider these questions when you’re setting your price, and thinking about what customers will pay…

How serious is the pain? Is it more like an annoying itch, or is it a raging migraine? Thinking about how serious the pain is, will allow you to think about how much the customer will pay to solve it. 

 

What is the consequence of not solving the problem? (How big is the risk to the customer? If it’s a medical problem, can it be fatal, or permanently disabling?)

How far in the future will the consequence occur? (It’s really hard to get someone young to understand why they might want to pay for life insurance)

And lastly, how often do they have the pain? If it’s episodic, occurring at regular intervals, but never really going away, they may not pay as much (in between, they can live with it). If it’s chronic and severe at the same time, they’ll keep paying and paying for relief (in which case, maybe a subscription model is a good idea). And if it might only occur once – but the risks of not solving it are extreme, you need to make all your money at once, and they just may be willing to pay a premium. 

It’s not always dollars by time. Pricing is a much more complex story than that. But it’s worth spending time to figure out. In fact, your business depends on it. 

I’m Megann Willson and I’m one of the Partners here at PANOPTIKA. We help our customers in complex businesses to see everything they need to know to make better decisions, so they can build and grow. You can also find us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Or you can sign up for regular news you can use, with the handy button below. 

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Three Must-Have Steps for Your Next Big Change

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Over the decades we’ve been in the management consulting business, we’ve been part of many change and transformation exercises. We’ve also been incredibly fortunate to have benefited from that old “your network is your net worth” adage. Once again this week, a friend’s post begat another post. Here’s what happened:

Our longtime friend, mentor, and collaborator Luke Hohmann (SAFe® Fellow and Principal Consultant) reposted a post from Em Campbell-Pretty, about making sure you have baseline metrics before you start an Agile Transformation. Now we don’t know Em personally, but if she’s in Luke’s trusted circle, she’s in ours. While some of our clients are Agile, some are not (although most are reasonably flexible). So this got me thinking about what metrics are needed for any kind of change or transformation. Steve and I have helped many organizations do that – ensuring that their teams were all on the same page, and running toward the same goals, if not always in the same direction. We also try to avoid having them run with scissors. 

The fact of the matter is this: no matter what type of change or transformation you are trying to make, whether it’s in your organizational structure, your product process, or your own personal career, there are three key questions you need to ask. If you don’t, you might never get to your destination – or worse, you might arrive at “destination unknown”. These are the questions: 

  1. Where are you now?
  2. Where do you plan to go?
  3. How will you know you’ve arrived?

No matter what system you’re using, or how you measure, if you can find a way to measure each of these things, before you begin, it’s much more likely you’ll have a pleasant journey. 

I’m Megann Willson and I’m one of the Partners at PANOPTIKA. We work with our clients to help them see everything they need to make better decisions – using better data, a better approach, or better metrics. If you need help deciding which metrics will work best for you and your team, so that you can find, serve, and keep more customers, we can help. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.  For more news you can use to help you or your team to make better decisions, click the handy button, below.

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Kindness is a gift that gives back

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Image by skeeze from Pixabay
A very short post today as it’s been a long week with simultaneous projects, deadlines, meetings and family.  The stress of all these converging commitments can have a negative impact on you, so it’s nice to get a little reminder of the important things.

We’ve been attending the Medventions program run by the Sunnybrook Research Institute.  It’s a multi-session program for those interested in creating MedTech start-ups, particularly medical devices.  As we support those people and companies, we like to go and learn along side and help focus the discussions on the importance of finding a real problem to solve and developing customer understanding.

The topic of the evening was Medtech Entrepreneurship & Clinical Needs Finding, and it featured two speakers sharing their experience, Chris O’Connor from Think Research and Kieran Murphy, a UHN physician and serial inventor.

There were great stories and insightful questions but it was the wrap-up that hit me.  When asked what was the most valuable lesson he has learned during his many years as an inventor and entrepreneur, Dr Murphy’s reply was: kindness.  No-one saw that coming in the cut-throat world of medical invention!

His experience in both giving and receiving kindness has made up for all the failures, long nights, lost capital and all the risks inherent in making change happen.

So just remember, it doesn’t take any additional effort to treat those around you with respect and kindness.  But it does pay dividends in how you and others will evaluate your legacy.

I’m Steve Willson, and I’m one of the Partners here at PANOPTIKA. We work with clients to help them use customer-centricity to focus their efforts and their strategy where they can make the most difference. You can also find us on Twitter and on Facebook, and for ongoing news about topics like this one, click the button below.

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When you can’t buy information, triangulate it.

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Image by 95C from Pixabay.
In highly-competitive industries with lots of players, there is often a surfeit of data. Marketers’ big challenge is to decide which data to use or to purchase, because their budgets are rarely, if ever, unlimited. If you’re in a B2B business, though, publicly available data sets are often less available. Add a science or STEM focus, and data may be nigh-on non-existent. Money can’t buy you out of this problem. What do you do? How can you forecast your market, figure out your next move, or measure your impact?

The answer is to triangulate. In social sciences, triangulation is used to improve the validity of the findings. This can take the form of combining different data, different viewpoints, or different approaches. Similarly, in navigation, if you are trying to find out your position, finding landmarks that you can validate, will help you figure out where you really are.

When you get your team around the table, and they each bring data that doesn’t show the whole picture, but shows part of it, you’re triangulating. Every finding that relates to the problem you’re trying to solve, can help you become more accurate in your estimate of the “true picture”. That’s why design sprints start with getting your experts in the room to define the problem clearly and share what they know. Getting that clear problem definition or challenge to address is key – much like our discussion in last week’s blog post about narrowing your scope if you want to go deep.

I’m Megann Willson and I’m one of the Partners at PANOPTIKA. We work with our clients to help them see everything they need to make better decisions – using better data, a better approach, or a better frame of reference. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.  For more news you can use to help you or your team to make better decisions, click the handy button, below.

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Put your problems into perspective

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This post has been updated since its original publication.
 
Everywhere we turned this week we encountered problems.  That’s not a bad thing, because if there weren’t problems the world wouldn’t need problem solvers like us.

There are, however, a couple of problems with problems; the first is that we often feel compelled to try and solve problems which aren’t ours to solve. The second is that we offer solutions before we really understand what the true nature of the problem.

Two people we respect deeply talked about problems, among other things, this week.

Steve Johnson, a highly experienced Product Management expert, started his article by wondering whether Product Managers should be called Problem Managers in an interview he did with Revulytics. I suggest you read it.

His belief, which we share, is that Product Managers need to focus on the customer problem and not the problems faced by others in the organization.  He also states that you should allow others to develop the solutions. There are many other big brains in the building who can offer solutions that you couldn’t even dream of, but they need you to define the problem to be solved and the outcome the customer is expecting.  Once you do that, step back and go find more problems that your customers need you to address.

“Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines.” Robert Schuller

The second article that reinforced this was from Ash Maurya, one of the sparks for the Lean Startup movement.  First he reminded us that it’s been 10 years since he and Eric Ries started blogging about a better way to look at start-ups. You can read it on Medium

The point which struck me is his focus on developing the right mindset to successfully navigate the Lean Startup process.  Unless you and your team are ready to jump in with both feet, you’ll wind up with some other outcome.  One of those key articles of faith is to Love the Problem and spend quality time with your potential customers to develop a deep understanding of their problems, from their perspective.

Like Steve Johnson, Ash Maurya reminds us that it is vital for us to become Problem Managers in order to develop products and services which customers will adopt.
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When you are ready to take the leap and become a Problem Manager, PANOPTIKA is here to lend a hand.

I’m Steve Willson, and I’m one of the Partners here at PANOPTIKA. We work with clients to help them use customer-centricity to focus their efforts and their strategy where they can make the most difference. You can also find us on Twitter and on Facebook, and for ongoing news about topics like this one, click the button below.

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