We deliver value when a product becomes an experience. Taking your iPhone out of it’s cover is not about the phone – it’s about the experience. It isn’t just about the packaging, the wait for the phone, or even the phone itself – the experience is more than a sum of the parts. And the best service experiences are frictionless.
To illustrate, Resorts A and B charge about the same amount for a night’s stay. Both resorts are up-scale. When you check into resort A, they take orders for all your meals for the day and you pay for them at checkout. No worrying about signing bills, no calling room service, and no contact required – just go ahead and enjoy the experience.
Contrast this to resort B – every morning at breakfast, you are reminded that while breakfast is free, a cup of coffee is not. The cup of coffee costs $3.50. Instant friction. Would a guest staying mind if $3.50 was pre-included in the bill? Absolutely not. But, somehow, resort B decided it was in its best interest to remind guests about the cost of a cup of coffee. I’m sure they had their reasons and I just hope they were good. At least for me, it was an instant turn off.
Approaching pricing from a cost plus margin lens blinds us to the customer’s need to experience what we offer. It’s not about the money. It’s about the surprise and delight. It’s not about the number. It’s about the feeling. The moment we make our product or service an experience, we deliver value.
I was driving around in a rented car today. I’ve done this few times before in different places and the one learning that stays consistent across is that it takes a day’s worth of driving to get used to a place’s road rules and quirks.
So, as was customary on a 1st day, I paused as I was getting into a freeway unsure as to which direction the GPS was pointing to. In that moment when I slowed down, I could see the driver in the car behind me raise her hands up in frustration mentally asking me to get on with it. A similar gesture happened as I was wondering whether I could take a U turn elsewhere and looking for a sign – only this time the driver behind honked loud and hard to ensure I got the message.
In both these cases, I thought – “Jesus guys, give me a break. I’m still trying to figure it out. How about considering that I might be here on my first day? Where’s my newbie allowance?”
That’s when I was reminded of the fact that I have probably not been considerate myself when faced with such situations. Whether it’s a sarcastic thought, comment if action at some frustration at some unknown person, I’m sure I’ve been inconsiderate to someone in their first day or attempt. I guess we all get caught up in our lives so much that we forget these things. And I guess that’s the beauty of such experiences that have you start all over again. You learn what it is to be a well intentioned but probably error prone newbie. You learn to empathize and make promises that you’ll remember to be balanced in your reactions next time.
That’s at least what I’m promising to myself. I’m sure I’ll struggle with this as I’m a fairly impatient person by nature but life is more about the balancing than being balanced. And now that I’ve written about it here, I intend to work hard on the balancing.
When you first start learning a new skill, a lot of the actual execution is forced. Your coach shows you the recommended way of doing it and you work towards copying it. Over time, however, you learn to develop your own style. You make the switch from forced to natural.
This switch takes time though. If you attempt to find your natural style too quickly, it doesn’t really work – forced execution of the right way to do something is important. That said, having a forced style for too long kills it as well.
This concept came alive in my mind when I thought of my attempts at public speaking. When I started public speaking, I tried very hard to be many things – forceful, funny, inspirational, loud, and impactful. A couple of these attempts worked but most didn’t – yet, this was an important part of the training. Forcing these different personas and styles helped me understand what worked and what didn’t. I’ll never sign up to be the funny guy now – that’s not me. I also know you can’t force inspiration and impact. You just have to stand there, put yourself out there, and just be. If you are inspired yourself, it will show. No need to force it – perfection is overrated while being yourself definitely isn’t.
I was reminded of this shift as I was re-learning swimming. I needed to remind myself to get rid of my not-so-good self-taught “natural” style and force the correct style. I am still going through the process – swimming still feels a bit forced as I seek to make the right way subconscious. But, I’ve learnt to accept this tension between forced and natural – it’s part of a good process… and I’ve learnt to appreciate the importance of a good process more than ever these days.
For a person interested in psychology, human behaviour, and happiness, Prof Mihaly’s work on “flow” is the stuff of legend. It was a real honor interviewing him (it was a very memorable experience too). For all those who are reading about Prof Mihaly for the first time, I’d recommend his wonderful TED talk.
About Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has contributed pioneering work to our understanding of happiness, creativity, human fulfillment and the notion of “flow” — a state of heightened focus and immersion in activities such as art, play and work. Csikszentmihalyi teaches psychology and management at Claremont Graduate University, focusing on human strengths such as optimism, motivation and responsibility. He’s the director of the Quality of Life Research Center there. He has written numerous books and papers about the search for joy and fulfillment.
My favorite bits –
“We published several articles from was the study of internet chess and how people play. We asked people who played against each other to fill out how much flow they had in the game afterwards. In a week we collected over 1000 games and it was a good way to study whether our hypothesis was correct. Our hypothesis was that the greatest enjoyment would come when the two players were exactly matched in terms of their skill level because that means that the challenges and skills were equal for both players. We found that was almost true, but it was even better if the opponent was about 7% better than you were.”
“Junk flow is when you are actually becoming addicted to a superficial experience that may be flow at the beginning, but after a while becomes something that you become addicted to instead of something that makes you grow. You find that even in chess, which I love. I think it’s very difficult to exhaust chess as a source of growth, and yet you find that so many chess masters when they reach the end of their career, even while they’re young in their thirties or forties, can’t go beyond their skill level anymore.”
“The Greek philosopher Plato wrote a thousand years ago that the greatest challenge for teachers and parents is to teach young people to find pleasure in the right things. He called it pleasure, but actually what he meant was enjoyment. The problem is that it’s much easier to find pleasure or enjoyment in things that are not growth-producing but are attractive and seductive. After a while you get trapped by a cycle of short term bursts of excitement, and then it becomes a habit; and now you feel bad if you can’t play, but you don’t feel good when you can play. That’s a problem that goes beyond flow. It goes to the philosophy of life.”
“Usually I find that people who become intrinsically motivated in their job, whether they’re surgeons or cooks in a restaurant, are the people who paid enough attention to what they had to do to discover small differences in performance and small differences in the product and became fascinated with the possibility of improving what they were doing.”
“The activity becomes a form of self-expression. This who I am, this is what I can do, etc. When that happens, the work becomes intrinsically motivating which means that even if you are paid for it, or even if you get other rewards for it, it also very importantly gives you a sense of this is who I am. This is what I can do well, and this is what I am called to do.”
“Twenty years ago I discovered a little passage in Dante Alighieri’s book The Monarchia which was written in 1317 – 700 years ago. He says that every being enjoys most of all expressing itself. We had dogs for a long time, and after I read that I realized that each dog was the happiest when it did what it was bred to do. The hunting dogs liked to hunt; the guard dogs liked to keep people away from the door. The sheepdog loves to chase children around until they get together like a flock of sheep. When they do that they look happy, content, and proud.”
“Happiness is not something that is guaranteed, or that comes with our birth certificates. It’s a possibility that we have to discover how to be happy. Happiness is to do things that are harmonious with who we are, with what we can do, with what we like, and with what we think is right. Do it. Don’t figure that somebody else will do it, or that you don’t have a right to do it. “
Thank you Prof Mihaly for that wonderful interview. The full transcript, as always, is on RealLeaders.tv
Thinking long term is hard – so hard that Jeff Bezos, one of the smartest entrepreneurs on the planet, has invested 42 million dollars into a 10,000 year clock that symbolizes the importance of thinking long term. I think long term thinking is something we do very badly in our own lives. Most thinking horizons rarely exceed a couple of years (at most). For the most part, we are focused on the next few weeks.
This is one area where I like the systems corporations follow – make five year plans, make commitments and review them every quarter. One of the ideas I am thinking about is implementing that in my life. I’ve probably done 5 year planning 2 times (!) over the past few years but I’m not sure I’ve followed up adequately. Thinking long term is extremely powerful and it needs to be made a habit.
The reason corporations don’t make it work so well is because the the pressure on the CEO to deliver short term results (thanks to pressure from stakeholders who generally don’t have much of a clue) messes the system up. But, if we were to implement it on ourselves, we’d be able to execute with the long term in mind. Additionally, I think the exercise of determining our 5 year goals – across dimensions like health, relationships, finances – and then preparing a quarterly review would in itself be a terrific learning experience.
Bill Gates says we overestimate what we can accomplish in a year but underestimate what we can accomplish in a decade. Perhaps it’s time we fixed this.
There is no end to waiting for invitations – from people around you to hand you a drink so you can sing and dance, from the club that won’t have you so you can hang out with people who you think you’d like to be around, or even from the universe to hand you the perfect time to be able to have fun.
I think a new life begins when we stop waiting for invitations – it’s in our hands to sing, to dance, to create our own tribes, and to lighten up and have fun.
There is no right time or age to get started. The best time was yesterday. The next best time is now.
Sometimes the hardest thing while attempting to communicate (by writing or speaking) is to just remember to convey one idea we’d really like to get across. It is always tempting to litter our essays, speeches, blog posts, and conversations with multiple examples, tips, and the like.
I’ve learnt that the best conversations and even the best books contain around one great idea (outstanding ones contain three) – some communicate it clearly while others just make a mess of it by attempting to communicate as many ideas possible and hoping the reader takes one away.
Don’t hope. All we need is to gain clarity around that one idea – let’s ask ourselves what it is and communicate it intentionally and clearly. It may not end up being a “great” idea in our reader’s/listener’s mind as they decide what they want to take from a conversation or passage. That’s part of the process. At least we’d have tried and grown through it…
Folks who constantly interrupt before others complete a sentence to make a point (and I am guilty of this more often than I like to admit) forget a very simple principle – you have to listen to be heard.
And, by listen, I mean really listen. Not just nod fervently and prevent you get it. Real listening involves 3 things –
1. Showing understanding – some folks achieve this by demonstrating rapt attention while a few (wise) others do so by regularly paraphrasing what they heard
2. Letting others finish – they’re not done till they are done.
3. Being open to the possibility of your assumptions and world view being wrong– Now, you can follow points 1 and 2 all you like but if you aren’t open to the fact that the conversation you are having might just change the way you think and feel about something, it’s not listening. Don’t pretend the conversation matters. Just walk away. Or just call it preaching – don’t insult the term “conversation.”
If you, on the other hand, are following 1, 2, and 3 diligently while the folks conversing with you are not, walk away as well. Great conversation is a rare thing and doesn’t come easily. And, at the end of the day, it takes two (listeners) to tango..
Musician John Ondrasik had a very practical answer for my question about his education when I interviewed him – He struck a deal with his parents that he’d be allowed to pursue music as long as he completed a degree from a normal college. So, John completed a degree in Applied Math and Physics from Berkeley and then went onto become a successful musician.
Simple concept. But one that isn’t done often. For instance, for a long time, I’d work very hard only on one plan A. I didn’t believe too much in having other plans as I felt it’d distract me and mess with my commitment to “the” plan. Over time, I’ve learnt that that isn’t too smart. 2 reasons –
1. I got too attached to plan A. Failure was taken very personally. 2. There is hardly ever a right/”the” plan. Well, maybe there is but we don’t generally know it when we see it. Experimentation and openness always opens up more possibilities than we can otherwise think about.
A key part of a successful personal process is relegating failure to a non-event that is great for reflection. And, the way to do that is to make multiple plans and always remember that the universe wholly approves making multiple plans – why else do we have 26 letters in the alphabet?
Here’s an idea – if you’ve never tried something yet, reserve your expert comments.
If you can’t cook – no judgments allowed on someone else’s cooking. If you haven’t started a weekend project in addition to your job – no criticism allowed on someone else’s project.
Your judgments (as well intentioned as they are) aren’t helping. No, really. They aren’t.
Before you pass that comment, try it first.
And, you know what happens? Once you try it and appreciate how difficult it is to just be the person doing things, your comments stop. And, in fact, when you actually get really good at whatever it is you try, you play the role of the wise expert who only offers encouragement and support. After all, there always are more detractors than necessary.
Sarcasm from the stands is easy. Support from the field is tougher.. and better.
A Learning a Day 