Assurance of what exactly?
Marina was a work colleague of mine in the early 90s and she bought a new Hyundai Excel. It looked like this.
I drove it once, and thought, “If a Toyota Corolla had a child with a Land Rover, it would be this”. Not pleasant to look at, nor to drive, but it only cost about $5000 new.
But Hyundai was onto something.
Apart from pricing, they knew something that customers wanted more than looks and drive quality. They offered a 100,000km, 5-year warranty, unheard of at the time. And, then, during the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, they offered “Hyundai Assurance”: if you lost your job while paying off a car, they’d stop your payments until you got back on your feet, or take it back without penalty. Hyundai gained sales during that time, while all the Big 3 US car companies (Ford, GM, Chrysler) faced insolvency.
Hyundai knew that, ultimately, a purchase decision is made on more than just looks, however over the years, they’ve worked out that it’s possible to include it in a total package. If you take a look at the brand new (electric) grandchild of Marina’s Excel you’ll see what I mean.
Question: How well do you understand what your customers really value?
Non-truths
Here are headlines of three posts from my favourite social media platform Quora. See if you can work out which one of these is a non-truth:
One Ronaldo Instagram post consumes as much power as ten households do in a year (11,000 upvotes).
“Famed Japanese martial artist, Kanō Jigoro, chose to be buried not in a black (master’s) belt but a white (learner’s) belt” (5000 upvotes).
15 of the world's biggest ships emit as much pollution as all the world's 760 million cars (not many upvotes).
In fact, it’s a trick question. None of them are true. They’re all great stories. Click bait, certainly (well, they worked for me). And, they also triggered the cynic reflex in me sufficiently to make me check their veracity independently. And, they are all partially true, but not absolutely.
But it got me wondering: what facts are just persuasive enough for us to believe unquestioningly? And, how many of these come up in our day to day work? Here are some that I’ve heard just in the past month or two from my clients.
“Diversity increases productivity”.
“Personal values should be aligned with organisational culture”.
“Discussing failures openly weakens morale”.
“Problems should be analysed by breaking them down into smaller problems”.
In each case, the person who announced these believed them to be fact — and had numerous people nod knowingly. But, are any of them true? And, how would you know? I think that for ALL of the above statements, if we put the word ‘some’ or ‘sometimes’ into the statement, they’d be true.
In a world where we have more information than ever, we need more than the skill of knowing whether something is or isn’t true in an absolute sense, but where a claim is plausible, we need ways to determine the limits of its validity.
Question: What ‘facts’ in your corporate life do you (or others) accept unquestionably, but shouldn’t?
Minimum systems
What materials would you use to create a building that weighed almost nothing? What about if it also had to be very strong, could be built very quickly, and offered maximum protection?
Buckminster Fuller was the famed polymath who invented the geodesic dome. You’ve probably seen these used for radar stations, military shelters, and even tents, all of them very specific situations that require the characteristics above.
Fuller’s genius was his ability to probe fundamental questions, in this case, “What’s the greatest unused potential of the properties of available materials?”
He realised that conventional buildings made of wood, stone and metal had, for thousands of years, relied on compression to carry loads. Instead, Fuller saw that a light geodesic frame, made to very specific curves and angles, could be stretched with any fabric, and its tensile strength would be enormous. (Side note: I like the fact that Fuller was not interested in being un-conventional; rather, he was a-conventional: he didn’t care whether his invention was unusual, but simply whether it was the single best solution.) Fuller’s patent attorney tell us that his talent was to “strike from mental consciousness every shred of prior analysis, so as to create a vacuum into which might flow the perceptiveness of new natural thought”.
Fuller repeated this process with many innovations over a long career — vehicles, storage, mapping, tidal barriers — and even 40 years after his death, he remains an inspiration for designers, cartographers, technicians and even philosophers of science.
Question: What in your organisation could benefit from a-conventional minimum systems thinking?
Thanks for a great 2021
I’d love it if you clicked the little heart to let me know you’ve read this week’s 5MSM.
Also, let me know how you use these questions in your leadership team meetings — many people do, I know, and I always enjoy hearing how you do that.
This is the last 5MSM for 2021. I’m taking a longer break than usual after a very intensive couple of years. I’ll put together some ‘holiday reading’ in the form of my most popular posts over the past two years, so your inbox won’t feel neglected, but I’ll be back ‘in person’ at the very end of January 2022.
Until then, have an enjoyable season of festivities (and summertime, if you’re Southern Hemisphere) and return energised to a productive and prosperous new year.
I look forward to sharing the fruits of my downtime with you then too.
Andrew
Thanks Andrew for some wonderful insights over the year. So well written. Your blog for me, nails the right amount of content and topic depth - they are never a chore to read. Enjoy a great break with your family.
Thanks for the wonderful brain food every Friday. Enjoy your break 🎄