Bowl haircuts, clear results & frictionlessness
Frictionlessness
Last year, I bought one of these1. It’s called a Remarkable 2 and it’s touted as the most realistic digital equivalent to paper. I love it so much that my wife, who’s a designer, bought one too. But why?
All my life, I’ve used old-fashioned notebooks, the Moleskine type of thing. Problem is that you can’t reorder or edit, and I could never find anything. So, when Apple released the iPad Pro, I was smitten. Wonderful, except it doesn’t feel like writing on paper. And I had to charge it every day.
The Remarkable is a single-use device (it only takes notes). It goes for a week on a single charge. And, it feels superb. But best of all, there is no lag. It’s as quick as taking a sheet of paper out, and starting to write.
We’re accustomed to ease, immediacy, and seamlessness, and the iPad, for me, wasn’t that: I had to open its cover, press the power button, enter a password, load the app, and get to the right page. Yes, it’s a first world problem to be sure, but the Remarkable solves even that minimal amount of friction.
And, there are legions of success stories that show I’m not alone. Anything that’s frictionless we’re inordinately attracted to: Uber for transport, Apple Pay to buy coffees (or anything). Dollar Shave Club deliver me razors and shaving cream quarterly, Who Gives a Crap automatically fill up my loo paper, paper towels and tissues (and give profits to those without toilets).
Question: What service offerings, or interfaces, can you convert to more frictionless methods?
What matters the most
I’m working with a household name client now that runs a complex business with thousands of staff, and hundreds of millions of revenues. My experience is that large organisations often ‘complexify’ things, so I was pleasantly surprised this week about how they responded to my deceptively simple question: “What would success look like for you in 3 years time?”
They unhesitatingly answered. “We want four things: our customers love us, they love our services, we work faster and better, and we remain economically viable”.
Rapidly, we agreed metrics for each of these so they became Key Result Areas (KRAs). They want to double customer reach. Work three times faster to onboard customers. Triple the number of service types each customer uses in a year. Increase customer recommendations to other customers by 50%. And, achieve an operating result of at least 2% (yes, they’re a not-for-profit).
Of course, there are dozens of more operational metrics, but seven headline KRAs are the most vital assurances their board wants, and that their CEO is hired to demonstrate. We can now work backwards from these, to identify the foundations, and additional investments, in time, money and effort required to deliver.
Question: What does success look like for your organisation in 3 years time? How simply can you explain this?
Dilution
My son, who’s 11, loves looking at photos of me in my heyday . . . 70s hair, wide collars and flares, plenty of awkwardness and acne. I showed him this photo of my Year 8 class and he was shocked. And, not by the bowl haircuts, or the hand-knits.
He said, “Dad, how many classes are in this photo?”
“Just one”, I replied.
But I realised why he was surprised. I had 39 kids in this, my Year 8 class, and 40 in Year 7. And, we were not an underprivileged school. We were solidly middle-class, getting a diluted education, courtesy of the Marist Brothers.
Our expectation today is that ‘nobody misses out’ and that we ‘bridge gaps’. There was no such thing back then. Half of these boys had ‘individual needs’, and what they got was a standard offering, with liberal corporal punishment if those needs warranted it. Of course, there are still plenty of kids today who don’t get what they need, but we’ve come an awfully long way in almost half a century.
Question: What are you doing to reduce dilution, or increase personalisation of service to your customers?
Please drop me a line if you use the questions above to stimulate insights of your colleagues or teams.
And, of course, referral is better than flattery, so please tell others about 5MSM and encourage them to read, just with a click of the ‘share’ button below.
See you next Friday,
Andrew
I’ve had a LOT of people contact me about this product, even though it’s not my intention to spruik for them! But, if you want to buy one and get $68 off, click this link.