Andrew Mann

Stay in Touch with Your Friends.

Stay in touch with your friends

Leadership Tip of the week #90

Adapted from HBR

Many people let their personal relationships fall by the wayside as they focus on their careers and start a family.

Yet research shows that we are more successful in our careers when we’re supported by a foundation of strong, stable friendships.

Don’t run the risk of losing touch with your closest social connections. Career and friendships can reinforce each other — friends can share big-picture career insights and even inspire your passion for professional growth.

Counteract the natural drift away, and make the effort to maintain your friendships. Call a close friend instead of just clicking on their Facebook page. Make plans to see them (and don’t cancel!). It’s OK to set ambitious career goals, but don’t sacrifice close ties in the process.

Adapted from “Being Too Busy for Friends Won’t Help Your Career,” by Neal J. Roese

Deliberately Encourage & Reward Collaboration

Leadership Tip of Week #89

adapted from HBR

There are a lot of reasons why someone might refuse help from a colleague.

Some employees prefer to be self-reliant, others don’t want to feel obligated to return the favor, and still others don’t trust their coworkers’ motives. But these attitudes can increase employees’ risk of burnout and hinder social connections at work.

As a leader, you can encourage and recognize collaborative efforts by calling attention to them and explaining how they contribute to the organization’s goals and mission. Be sure to demonstrate your willingness to accept help when you need it; employees are more likely to do it if they see their leaders doing it.

And be careful not to send mixed messages: If employees who go it alone advance more quickly than those who give and receive support, people will pick up on that discrepancy — and they’ll go back to looking out for number one.

Adapted from “Why We Don’t Let Coworkers Help Us, Even When We Need It,” by Mark C. Bolino and Phillip S. Thompson

How to get buy-in…

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4 Steps to Get Buy-in for Your Next Innovation

Leadership Tip of week #88

adapted from HBR

Everyone wants innovation in their organisation, but getting a new idea implemented can be a challenge, especially when office politics are in play. When you’re trying to get approval for your latest innovation, follow these four steps.

1. anticipate resistance. If you know what people might object to, you can plan how you’ll address those concerns.

2. understand what objections are truly about. For example, someone might say they object because of a publicly acceptable reason — say, the project is too costly — when their real concern is political, like they’re afraid their team will lose influence.

3. find a champion for the project. This should be a senior executive whose clout and expertise can help you move the project forward.

4. gather a critical mass of supporters. If you have a group of people who believe in the innovation enough to try it, you’ll have social proof that the idea is a good one.

Adapted from “How to Navigate the Politics of an Innovation Project,” by Brian Uzzi

Reduce distractions in your life

Reduce Distractions by Figuring Out What’s Causing Them

Leadership Tip of week #87

adapted from HBR

Stress and distraction can form a dangerous cycle.

When we can’t focus at work, we often feel stressed about not being productive — which causes us to focus even less.

You can break this cycle by using self-awareness.

Pay attention to what’s going on the next time you get distracted: Are you bored by what you’re doing? Pulled away by a ringing phone?

Also, notice how you feel: Are you anxious because you can’t remember an important detail during a high-stakes presentation? Do you feel tense because you’re trying to find just the right words for an important email?

Your answers to these questions will help you pinpoint the source of your distractions. Before you can take steps to reduce your stress, you have to understand the underlying cause of the problems.

Adapted from “Break the Cycle of Stress and Distraction by Using Your Emotional Intelligence,” by Kandi Wiens

Queen of Internet Predictions 2018

Mary Meeker:Queen of the Internet Speaks in 2018

Once a year everyone in Tech looks to one woman- Mary Meeker. The internet oracle spent two decades at Morgan Stanley, working on things like Google IPO, before joining the VC fund Kleiner Perkins in 2014. Every year she delivers an Internet trends report to the world and her predictions are scarily often right….. ( check her out on Wiki if you want to know more: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/mary_meeker )

She called email as being the internet’s killer application in 1995, predicted browsing through information services to be the next big breakthrough and foresaw Amazon’s rise to the top. This year she had a 294 page presentation in 30 minutes covering everything from smart phones to education and property and tech competition.

Full copy of presentation Link here: http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends

My key take outs:

Discovery vs Digital : consumers are using social media for discovery more and more, and then going onto shop. Retailers are focusing on Amazon but the Facebook threat is under the radar. Discovery is less in store now. 80% people report Facebook as the platform to see a new product (with 60% Instagram) and 55% people claim to end up buying a product online after discovering on social.
Shopping & Entertainment blending together. entertainment is becoming a big part of the shopping experience. Owning the pre-&-post transaction keeps the transaction
Discovery sites developing commerce. Commerce sites developing discovery (Amazon has higher search levels that Google in US now) and discovery sites are developing Commerce ( Facebook & Google shop)
Consumers want location based personalisation: Google searches that include the phrase near me ( eg restaurants near me ) skyrocketed 900% in last 2 years. This tells us that consumers actually do want location based personalisation so retailers and restaurants have a clear directive to step up.
Personalisation = higher customer satisfaction . Brand that personalise score higher customer satisfaction levels. Customers are beginning to expect it.
Subscription drives Sales: users are increasingly willing to pay a monthly fee for easy access to content, using an ad-supported limited access tiers to upsell subscriptions
China is coming: Alibaba + Amazon have similar focus areas, Amazon may have higher revenue but Alibaba has higher volume and is aggressively expanding into countries like India and Indonesia. Both are bundling services with a breadth and price that competitors can’t match. China now hosts 9/20 top global internet companies while US hosts 9/20. all are poised to collide as they all seek to invade developing nations to find growth.
Just Teach yourself: Opportunity and growth of cheaper online learning: YouTube saw 1 billion hours of educational viewing: Opportunity for Open University in UK and global market for UK education after Brexit!
AI is sexy but don’t miss the simple & obvious low hanging fruit. better utilisation of Wifi and Networks can connect consumers’ offline and online shopping and preferences to drive short term growth but AI if developed well will help drive longer growth
Privacy Paradox. Organisations are caught between using their data to provide a better Customer Experience & violating customer privacy. GDPR is taking a lead, but consumers in China are more relaxed about how their data is used : 38% China citizens willing to share data for better services , compared to 25% in US and 16% in UK. That means China could gain a data advantage that lets it more rapidly develop technologies & service

for a full view of presentation ( all 294 pages ) http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends

Invest in Positive Relationships

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Leadership Tip of the week #86

adapted from HBR

Conflict is a normal, healthy part of working with other people.

And yet many of us avoid it at all costs — often because it feels personal.

To get more comfortable with disagreements, and to reap the benefits of productive conflict, let go of the idea that it’s all about you.

If you model that you’re comfortable with productive conflict, you’ll show your team that it’s OK to disagree, encouraging people to raise their ideas.

To move a work conflict away from the personal, think about the bigger picture and the business’s needs. Disagreements often arise over objectives and processes, for example.

When you and a colleague have different views about something, ask yourself two questions

1. Why is this difference of opinion an important debate to have?

2. How will it help the organization or the project you’re working on?

The more you can keep a conflict focused on the business, the better chance you have of resolving it in a way that benefits everyone.

Adapted from “Why We Should Be Disagreeing More at Work,” by Amy Gallo

Does your Body Language Convey Confidence?

Leadship Tip of the Week #85

ADAPTED FROM HBR

If you want people at work to trust and respect you, regardless of your title or authority, pay attention to your body language.

How you stand, sit, and speak all affect whether people are open to being influenced by you. For example, standing up straight with your shoulders back helps you come across as confident and commanding, while slouching and looking down at your feet have the opposite effect.

When meeting with someone you don’t know well, keep your arms uncrossed, your hands by your sides, and your torso open and pointed at the other person. This sends the message that you are open and trustworthy.

And try pitching your voice a little lower than you normally would, to connote power. This can counteract the effect of nervousness, which tends to push the tone of your voice higher.

Adapted from “How to Increase Your Influence at Work,” by Rebecca Knight

Uber focused on data

JUMP

Uber use data to deliver against their core purpose: Travel & Logistics.

What’s Uber’s next move? Planes? Rockets? Hovercrafts? Nope, it’s bikes.

Uber has just paid $200m for Jump, a dockless bike share service that charges just $2 for a 30 min ride. The bikes are integrated with GPS, locks & a payment system so you just find one and pedal. Boris Bikes I hear you say ?

The bike-sharing market is only going one way: Up. It’s growing at 20% a year and set to be worth up to £4.6bn in 2020. Jump’s stats mirror this, with customers using their bikes 6-7 times a day and travelling 2.6 miles each trip.

With this, Uber’s bike stock rockets up to 12,000 across 40 cities and 6 countries. Their cash can help grow Jump worldwide, and quickly, but their poor reputation may also bring scrutiny to an industry which has had a few problems in the past…

Less than a decade after launching, Uber is no longer just cars. Recently they’ve launched a shipping service, food delivery, and now bikes. They’re also trialing car rental and the ability to buy public transport tickets. This appears to mark a new strategy: to own every part of the urban transport system.

Why now? 3 reasons:

Uber has changed how people think about sharing
Smartphone GPS services have made it easier than ever to get around
Uber has the cash, brand & user base to make it happen

Uber envision a world where mum bikes to work, dad rents a van to pick up a new TV, the teenager gets her food delivered, and the family books their train tickets to see their cousins. We could even see an Amazon Prime-like model whereby you pay a blanket fee for unlimited usage.

But what if you don’t like cycling:

Don’t you worry, here’s a couple ways startups are reinventing travel:

Citymapper: They’re using years of travel data from their app to create a ‘social hyper-local multi-passenger pooled vehicle’ i.e. a bus. It serves an optimised route, has USB chargers & you even get a ‘Busmoji’ when you get on
Touriocity: Bespoke walking guides given by experts
Kompas : using AI recomendations based on who you are and where you are to provide travel recommendations
Bird: Taking it even further, by making dock-less electric Scooters

bird scooters

4 ways to build an Innovative Team

Leadership Tip of the Week #84

Adapted from HBR

I have lead and worked in many innovative teams and found there are four pillars to creating and sustaining an innovative team:

Hire for a Mission: The biggest misconception about innovation is that it’s about ideas. It’s not. It’s about solving problems. So the first step to building an innovative team is to hire people interested in the problems you need to solve. If there is a true commitment to a shared mission, the ideas will come.
Promote psychological safety. In 2012 Google embarked on an enormouse research project. Code-named “Project Aristotle,” the aim was to see what made successful teams tick. The company combed through every conceivable aspect of how teams worked together — how they were led, how frequently they met outside of work, the personality types of the team members — and no stone was left unturned.However, despite Google’s nearly unparalleled ability to find patterns in complex data, none of the conventional criteria seemed to predict performance. In fact, what it found that mattered most to team performance was psychological safety, or the ability of each team member to be able to give voice to their ideas without fear of reprisal or rebuke.
Create diversity. Many managers hire with a specific “type” in mind, usually people who seem most like themselves. This may be great for creating camaraderie and comfort, but it is not the best environment for solving problems. In fact, a variety of studies have shown that diverse teams are smarter, more creative, and examine facts more thoroughly.
Value teamwork. superior innovators are friendly, gracious, and showed a genuine interest and desire to help me. Their behavior was so consistent that it couldn’t have been an accident. So I did some further research and found that, when it comes to innovation, generosity can be a competitive advantage. The truth is you don’t need the best people — you need the best teams.

http://www.hbr.org/2018/02/4-ways-t-build-an-innovative-team

Eight Paradoxical Habits of Wildly Successful People

leaders4 You know what they say about opinions—everybody has one. If you want to see that truth in action, just Google “characteristics of successful people.” Some of the results will undoubtedly point to the famous Marshmallow Study at Stanford, which demonstrated that the ability to delay gratification is a key component of success.

But that’s far from the only theory:

According to Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, it all comes down to mindset. She conducted a series of experiments that demonstrated that, while the average person sees their abilities as fixed assets, successful people have, what she calls, a “growth mindset.” In other words, successful people focus on self-improvement and overcoming challenges rather than seeing their mistakes as the products of insurmountable personal flaws.
In another study conducted by Penn State and Duke, researchers assessed the social skills of 700 kindergartners. Twenty years later, they followed up and discovered a strong correlation between social skills and success. The children with the best social skills were more likely to have earned a college degree and to hold a full-time job, while the kids who struggled with social skills in kindergarten were more likely to get arrested, binge drink, and apply for public housing.

And the list goes on and on. So, what is happening here? Why are there so many different theories, complete with the science to back them up, about the traits that contribute to success? I think it’s because most wildly successful people are complex—so complex that many of their defining qualities are paradoxical.

Rather than an “either/or” set of static characteristics, they’re more likely to demonstrate both. This is a key to their success. Here are some examples of what I’m referring to.

They’re polite, yet completely unafraid to rock the boat. Successful people are, what I like to call, “graciously disruptive.” They’re never satisfied with the status quo. They’re the ones who constantly ask, “What if?” and “Why not?” They’re not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom, yet they don’t disrupt things for the sake of being disruptive; they do it to make things better. Still, they’re polite and considerate, and they don’t draw attention to other people’s mistakes just to humiliate them. However, that doesn’t mean they sit back and let people wander off in the wrong direction. They won’t hesitate to speak up when it’s time to change course.
They’re deeply passionate, yet rational and objective about their work. Successful people are passionate about their work, but they don’t let it skew their thinking. They have the ability to step back and look at their work with a critical eye and to accept their mistakes. If it’s a disaster, they’ll admit it, because they realize that it’s better to try something different than to put out something sub-par with their name on it. That sense of detachment also allows them to accept feedback from others without taking it personally.
They’re convergent and divergent thinkers. Convergent thinking is what’s measured by IQ tests: rational thinking that typically results in a single right answer. Divergent thinking, on the other hand, is less precise. It’s about generating ideas and asking questions that have no solid right or wrong answers. Both are important. No matter how high your IQ is, you’re not going to be successful if you can’t think outside of the proverbial box. On the other hand, you need rational thinking skills to correctly judge whether your ideas have merit. That’s why this particular paradox is so important.
They’re both energetic and calm. Successful people seem to have limitless energy when it comes to doing the things they’re passionate about, but they aren’t frantic. They can keep that energy under control. They work hard and focus on the task at hand with devoted concentration, but they’re so smooth that they make it look both easy and fun. Some people are so energetic that they’re hyperactive and unfocused and constantly bouncing from one thing to another. Successful people know how to harness their energy so that it works in the service of progress and doesn’t undermine it.
They like to work and play. Successful people personify the often-repeated quote, “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Because they love what they do, they find brainstorming, problem-solving, and grinding out tough projects thought-provoking, engaging, and deeply satisfying. And though they take their work very seriously, the enjoyment and gratification they derive from it blurs the common demarcation between work and play.
They’re ambiverts. Successful people are comfortable acting in ways that amplify their introversion and extraversion, depending on what the situation calls for. They can sit in the back of a conference room and silently listen to what’s going on, or they can go up on stage, grab a microphone, and engage a huge crowd—and they look just as comfortable doing one as they do the other.
They’re naïve and smart. No one would argue that intelligence isn’t an important part of success, but many successful people also have a childlike lack of awareness (or maybe it’s a lack of respect) for the type of constraints that other people blindly accept. They’re not limited by what other people tell them is possible.
They’re both humble and proud. Taking pride in your work is absolutely essential for success, but successful people know they wouldn’t be where they are without the people who came before them and those they’ve worked with along the way. They know that they didn’t achieve their success all on their own, and because they’re OK with that, they don’t have anything to prove. That’s why so many incredibly successful people end up coming across as grounded and humble when you meet them in person.

Bringing It All Together

The reason that there are so many different opinions on what traits are necessary for success—and the reason that so many of them contradict each other—is that successful people are complex. They have a wide variety of paradoxical skills that they call upon as needed, like a mechanic with a well-stocked toolbox.

Never Stop Listening

Never stop Listening

As she’s scanning organic bananas or buckwheat kernels at the checkout the assistant at local health food store strikes up a conversation. She’s curious to know if the bananas are just for making smoothies and what the customer uses the buckwheat for. These seemingly insignificant interactions are hardly worth remembering and yet over time they spark ideas for new menu items to be introduced at the in-store cafe and give rise to opportunities to better serve her community of customers.

Good marketing starts with the customer’s needs and wants, not with the company’s emergency.

A great marketing strategy is geared towards creating lasting connections instead of simply being focused on reaching short term targets.

The gifted marketer doesn’t simply try to sell what’s in stock today. She strives to understand what her customer will want tomorrow and then creates the culture and momentum to deliver that.

If your success and profits are by-product of satisfied customers, it stands to reason that your priority is to matter, not simply to make and sell.

The challenge that many organisations have is understanding what matters to customers, and rapidly transferring that understanding into developing products and services that matter to customers. Don’t get me wrong, being on the shop floor and interacting with customers is a critical part of marketers and leaders’ role. Good retailers still spend a day or two a week out in shops, and Terry Leahey in Tesco formalized this with every leader spending a week in store: TWIST, Tesco Week In Store Together, starting with himself.

Using Data-driven technology can harness the power of your colleagues and customers to listen intensively to customers and anticipate their needs at even more scale.

At Coop we starting a Listen Act and Fix programme where we gathered ideas from colleagues and used these to understand and prioritise problems to fix.

At Sainsbury’s “Tell Justin” was a colleague crowdsourced ideas generation programme where 150,000 colleagues could write to Justin King the CEO with ideas. He saw every idea and they were passed to senior managers to review. Every Idea earned a certificate for the colleagues and a simple thank you from Justin. The best ideas when they were implemented were celebrated through the company.

At Starbucks in USA they have taken this idea further to crowdsource ideas from customers. My Starbucks Idea created a digital portal and crowdsources suggestions to improve service/experience and lets users vote for their favourite ideas. Every idea is responded to by management and customers are kept involved in development, through digital media or you-tube style updates. Ideas such as writing name on the cup, or even suggesting baristas taught the basics in sign language are being seriously reviewed.

Aligning Organisations around Transformation

data world Digital mastery in an ever increasingly digital world is one of the key priorities of an organisation. The road to travel on the journey to making your organisation more customer focused in a digital world is challenging and one that requires alignment and commitment from the CEO, the Board and Shareholders down.

There are 5 priorities for a chief customer officer / chief digital officer

1) Build a clear vision of a radically different future state and align it with Shareholders Board, CEO and Exec. ensure that they are involved in co-creating the vision and understand the elements of how it works. If you need to train them on Twitter, facebook, what’s app or programming, do it so they understand a digital world.

2) Engage Colleagues in a 18m-36m Goal and develop a clear action plan. Ensure that you have a detailed and well managed transformation programme with agreed outcomes. Engaging colleagues in building this will be critical. It’s amazing how digitally literate teens and twenty somethings in a retail organisation are!

3) Breakdown fear of data and digital across the organisation. Board-> Senior managers-> middle managers -> Colleagues. Communicate widely and use storytelling to engage at all levels. Be very pragmatic and engage people in learning by doing rather than telling ( run Twittter workshops, small projects designed to deliver quick wins, training by doing.) Focus on small wins early and let people tell these stories across the organisation themselves as their wins. Align objectives and remuneration to deliver the goal from Exec down to all colleagues.

4) Foster stronger bonds between technical and business people. This is a two way process to ensure the technical teams understand the commercial imperatives, and customer solutions you would like to build, and the business teams learn to trust the expertise of technical IT teams. It will also allow you to improve data quality through showing the business impact.develop a data strategy aligned to business goals , build tools as required to deliver commercial goals.

5) Steer the course through strong Governance. Digital Transformation should be governed through the EXEC as well as relevant touchpoints to ensure continual alignment.

These 5 priorities along won’t drive the transformation but applying them is a start that many organisations who are now Digital Masters followed.

Make Sure you take Holidays

Leadership Tip of the week #83

It’s important to encourage your colleagues to take time off.

Make it clear to them that this is a business issue — not just a personal one.

Use a few minutes in a team meeting to share some of the research on the benefits of holidayies, such as higher productivity and less stress. Then keep track of how many holiday days colleagues have taken, and periodically update the team so that they know this issue matters to you.

When people do take time off, tell them that you don’t want them checking email or voicemail, and that you’ll keep a list of things that come up for when they’re back.

And if someone on your team isn’t taking their vacation time, bring it up during their next development discussion.

Most important of all, be a good role model: Take full, disconnected holidays so that your team will, too.

Have a great Easter break….

Adapted from “How to Get Your Team to Use Their Vacation Time,” by Liane Davey

Clever Cars

clever cars 2

What can your driving habits tell us? A lot is the answer. In fact, where people drive can reveal a lot more than Google searches and this is what advertisers, startups, and car-makers are quickly realising.

For years car companies have been installing software and sensors that collect driving behaviour and location data from our cars. This is invaluable to advertisers & car companies alike.

Car companies argue this data will enhance the driving experience CX. It could help to predict flat tires, find parking spaces or charging spots, alert authorities to dangerous crossings & even track criminals fleeing from crime-scenes.

Advertisers are even more excited. Israeli startup, Otonomo, cleans up and organises data for carmakers. They let drivers select the information they’re willing to share with companies in exchange for rewards & discounts – imagine leaving work late and a £5 Dominos discount coming up on your display 🍕

This is only the start. Ford estimates that by 2020 their vehicles will have 100m lines of code and Gartner estimates 98% of new cars in the US & Europe will have an embedded cyber connection.

clever cars

What about BIG data?

The real interesting part is when all this data is aggregated. With all this data, companies can see trends that are linked to other events. For instance:

Hedge funds could use boot sensor data to see how much people bought when they went shopping which would show consumer spending
Banks could see how many people had stopped driving to work, thus suggesting they’ve lost their jobs, and if this number began to rise they could anticipate an economic downturn
3rd parties could track trips to the police station, domestic violence shelters, STI/HIV testing centres and infer sensitive information about drivers’ health and relationships.

Autonomous cars won’t stop us…

One of the most important big-picture outcomes here is that car manufacturers are not only hardware companies now, they’re also software companies. It’s often been suggested that traditional companies will die off with the coming of autonomous cars, but this shows they’re using tech themselves to find new sources of revenue.

People need to be aware of the level of privacy they’ll be giving away. Soon your car could know more about you than your family…

How to get through to a Bad Listener

How to Get Through to a Bad Listener

Leadership Tip of the week# 82

adapted from HBR

It’s frustrating to work with someone who doesn’t listen.

Whether your colleague interrupts you, rambles on, or seems distracted, the impact is the same: You feel ignored, and the chances of misunderstandings increase.

But you can encourage your colleague to listen better by emphasizing the importance of your message up front.

Before starting a conversation, say: “I have to talk to you about something important, and I need your help.”

This sends a signal to your colleague that they need to pay attention.

As frustrating as it may be, you may also need to make your point multiple times, in multiple ways. Be transparent about what you’re doing.

You might say: “I want to repeat this, because I want to make sure it’s understood.”

Then follow up with: “Does that make sense?”

That way you can know your message has been heard.

Adapted from “How to Work with a Bad Listener,” by Rebecca Knight

Data driven fitness community

data pulse #43

sweaty betty tamara

Now I’m not one into female fashion ( just ask my wife) , nor do I hang around the shops but I do love how Tamara Hill-Norton has used data to create a passionate community with Sweaty Betty since she set up the first boutique in Notting Hill in 1998 . Initially targeting “yummy Mummies” but now broadened out to connect fitness and fashion.

Sweaty Betty is a British retailer specialising in active wear for women, featuring in 50 from London to San Fancisco and selling significantly digitally. Sweaty Betty aims to ‘inspire women to find empowerment through fitness’.

sweaty betty 2

Sweaty Betty has a real distinctive difference to its potential competitor Amazon : It distinctively moves beyond traditional retail practices with added value services as well as great clothing and builds an active community. This is achieved through regular Sweaty Betty fitness classes that are actively promoted to its customers. These classes range from yoga, run clubs and boot camps right through to Pilates, and are held in Sweaty Betty stores around the world. For those who can’t attend in person, there are also online fitness classes.

Sweaty Betty Live was a event where 3000 Sweaty Bettys came to sweat learn shop eat & get pampered:

sweaty betty carnaby

sweaty betty 1

Sweaty Betty was very clear on their purpose and had a very clear story that was developed starting inside the organisation, and building out into their community. A data driven approach to brand building and creating community, loyalty and interaction meant people starting telling the Sweaty Betty story themselves.

checkout Tamara story:

http://www.sweatybetty.com/meet-tamara/

Sweaty Betty leverages a broad range of data-driven social tools – Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest are all used. They also created ‘brand ambassadors’ and allowed customers to have a conversation, helping to underline the sense that Sweaty Betty is a ‘fitness community rather than just a sportswear retailer

Get Team Help to solve Difficult Problems

Leadership Tip of Week # 81

adapted from HBR

If you and your team are facing a chronic challenge, you might be tempted to take control and vehemently argue for the solution you think will work, or to offer ideas indirectly and let your team take ownership of the issue.

Neither of these extremes is optimal.

Instead, try an approach that combines conviction and openness — that way others can come up with solutions that build on your best thinking.

With your team, talk about the persistence of the issue, what solutions have failed, and why.
Explain that you want them to choose the solution with you.
Make it clear that you are looking for new ideas, not a defense of failed solutions or rehashed versions of what you’ve already tried.
Build a set of measurable criteria with which you can evaluate options.
Admit any biases you have for particular solutions, and ask the team to treat those ideas no differently than their own.
Rate all ideas, including yours, against the established criteria
Most important, be open about the assumptions underlying your views.

Adapted from “Stress Leads to Bad Decisions. Here’s How to Avoid Them,” by Ron Carucci

Starbucks data driven coffee

starbucks cup

Starbucks have adopted a data driven mobile first approach to making the customer journey simpler and easier in its coffee shops world-wide.

Innovating and transforming the Customer experience by leveraging data-driven analytics and technology is critical for success in a 21st Century convenient foodservice retailer. 21% of Starbucks transactions are now completed via mobile … in store at the till using Apple Pay via app or using Starbucks Mobile Order and Pay . What’s more is Starbucks processes more than 6million Mobile Order and Pay transactions a month globally.

Mobile Order & Pay is available on iOS and Android . It’s an established of the popular Starbucks mobile app that allows customers to place and pay for an order in advance of their visits and pick it up at a participating Starbucks location. Mobile ordering is emerging as the fastest and easiest way for Starbucks customers to order ahead , then pay and pick up their purchases, providing on-the-go customers a simple and quick alternative to get their favourite coffee.

The Mobile Order and Pay feature allows customers to choose a store from a (Google) map view , browse , select and customise drinks, view the estimated time the order will be ready and pre-pay the order. All within the Starbucks app, and integrated into the existing Starbucks app, and my-Starbucks Rewards loyalty programme. A simple easy way to sign up and earn Stars

PROBLEM: It’s Too popular….

The Mobile Order & pay is creating some problems, that Starbucks are working hard to fix. Customers expect not to wait at all, but at busy times the queue is building up and customers are waiting and creating a headache. Starbucks being Starbucks though is working it through operationally and using data driven technology ahead of its rivals to improve the customer experience

They have launched an AI driven Starbucks Barista where customers can text through their orders: Check out below

Starbucks are leading the way as Tech leaders in convenience foodservice, using data and technology in a way that McDonald’s , are starting to respond but need to respond rapidly if they want to meet customer needs.

Ask these Questions to foster your colleagues Sense of Purpose

Leadership Tip of the week # 80

adapted from HBR

We all want to find meaning in what we do. As a manager, you can help your team members foster this inner sense of purpose by asking them a few simple questions:

What are you good at? What do you take on because you believe you’re the best person to do it? What have you gotten noticed for throughout your career? The idea here is to help people identify their strengths.
What do you enjoy? In a typical workweek, what do you look forward to doing? These questions help people find or rediscover what they love about work.
What feels most useful? Which work outcomes make you proudest? Which of your tasks are most critical to the team or organization? The answers can highlight the inherent value of certain work.
What creates a sense of forward momentum?How is your work today getting you closer to what you want? The point here is to show people how their current role helps them advance toward future goals.

It’s not always easy to guide others toward purpose, but these questions can help.

Adapted from “5 Questions to Help Your Employees Find Their Inner Purpose,” by Kristi Hedges

Be a better you….

Be a better you rather than worse them

As vulnerable humans, we’re brilliant at paying attention to threats in our midst. We are experts at mitigating against failure, which we trick ourselves into believing is the way to optimising for success. This tendency might explain our willingness to devote our resources to averting risk, solving problems and fixing mistakes.

When we focus on getting a near perfect score we sometimes overlook the opportunity to do more of what we already do well.

It’s possible that regularly amplifying delight can produce better results than trying to avoid the random missteps that inevitably happen.

It’s just as important to pay attention to what makes your customers happy as it is to get to the bottom of complaints.

What do you customers thank you for?

Make a list. Then do more of that.

Rolling back Prices at Asda
Good Food at Sainsbury’s
Community stores at Coop

When leading a turnaround , focus on the future

When Leading a Turnaround,

Focus on the Future, Not the Past

Leadership Tip of Week #79

When you’re brought in to turn around a team or business unit, the deck might feel as if it’s stacked against you.

If your predecessor failed, how will you succeed?

First off, to effectively lead a turnaround, resist the temptation to emotionally distance yourself from the situation — you are part of this team, so embrace it. And minimize references to your past successes; while you should draw on what’s worked for you before, no one in a struggling organization likes to hear “This is how we did it at my old company.”

To help keep your colleagues’ anxiety down, be transparent about how you’ll make changes and on what kind of timeline.

But don’t be afraid to push back if they offer ideas that you don’t believe will lead to positive change. You want to clean up the mess, not create another one.

Cashless Starbucks

starbucks shop

Starbucks is experimenting with cashless restaurants at a posh location in downtown Seattle. Since January, your money is no good at the cafe inside the Russell Investments Center unless it’s in the form of plastic.

There is no sign announcing the policy, but a barista on Wednesday declined to take a $20 bill in payment for a short latte and a piece of lemon cake, explaining that the store is not accepting cash.

The test will help Starbucks understand how cashless forms of payment may impact our customer experience,

Starbucks says its mobile payment and ordering app is a fast-growing success — to the point that last year it blamed slow sales growth a stores on crowding by people who had ordered from their phones.

The second-floor Russell Center cafe, dominated by armchairs, couches and at least one chaise longue, is reached from the lobby of the 42-story building, which is the corporate home of the online real-estate company Zillow as well as Russell, an international financial firm.

The cashless test is an opportunity to make Starbucks Better Simpler Cheaper, by removing the need to keep Cash in the Till, speeding up transactions, removing a hygiene issue and removing the need to go to the bank to cash & change.

Employee theft is also less of a concern in a cashless system, And the move may help in “positioning themselves as a very innovative company.”

“If we can shave another 10 seconds per order, over a day or over a year, that’s a lot of savings.

A box at the sales register made clear, however, that tips are still accepted in cash.

starbucks tip jat

Talk about skills to develop colleagues

Talk About Skills When Talking About Promotions

Leadership Tip of the week #78

adapted from HBR

Conversations about promotions can be tense — both for the person asking and for you, the manager.

Your first instinct might be to consider whether the employee is a “good fit” for the new role, but it’s better to focus on their skills.

Ask yourself, What will the person need to do the job well? Then communicate the answer to your employee. For example, you might say: “You would need to develop expertise with Tableau,” or Excel, or giving presentations.

That is a far simpler message to deliver than “I don’t know if you’re equipped to be a manager yet.”

By breaking down the role into the required skills, you’ll demystify the promotion and make it more attainable for the employee.

Plus, a request to learn new skills is much easier, and quicker, for you to grant.

Adapted from “How to Support Employees’ Learning Goals While Getting Day-to-Day Stuff Done,” Nick Gidwani

Amazon Go-Go

amazon go

In January in Seattle, queues formed around the block for the first glimpse inside Amazon’s latest retail offering – Amazon Go.

Luckily, I had a colleague in Seattle checkout what it looked like on launch day to see what the future of retail (might) look like; overall impression was that it was remarkable at how unremarkable it was…

Inside, the atmosphere was calm – erring on the “good side” of downright boring, in fact, given the ease of the experience.

Before entering, everyone is required to download the Amazon Go app, the digital counterpart to the physical shopping experience. Downloaded over a phone network on the walk to the store, the app provides a short animation on how to navigate Amazon Go, followed by a QR code to identify yourself at the entrance. For a digital-first company such as Amazon, it was curious to see the digital elements function largely as invisible enablers of the physical experience.

There is no interaction with the app required while you shop, and a fully itemised receipt appeared as a push notification upon departure several minutes after leaving.

There is a “Discover” section on the app, where you can browse products by category, but this is the extent of its intersection with the physical experience.

The store itself was small, reflective of the limited selection of products – largely a curated, premium selection of pre-prepared healthy fare, perfectly placed to meet the needs of time-poor Seattle office workers. Interesting to see how that can be scaled….

However, the limited space posed a problem for the few store employees tasked with re-stocking; the crates were unwieldy and large enough to block some of the shelves and were a noticeable inconvenience. This though may have been due to the anticipation of higher demand on the first day or the fact that amazon don’t ( YET) understand retail operations

Purchases are tracked by an impressive, dense array of cameras mounted on the ceiling that follow your journey around the store. While the cameras don’t use facial recognition, there were rumours that the original launch was delayed as the tech couldn’t distinguish between shoppers with similar body shapes – suggesting there’s a certain level of personal, visual data that customers are handing over.

It seems likely they’ll be comfortable doing so, however, as it’s this “computer vision” which enables customers to ‘Just Walk Out’, without having to go through a traditional check-out.

It’s savvy too – despite various attempts by my colleague to fool the system, it was able to correctly identify who should pay for what.

This was the case when comparing products as well; while in the store, I tested it by continually picking up and replacing two different products and was pleasantly surprised to find my final choice was indeed the one on my receipt.

Known online for its relevant and contextual suggestions, Amazon’s Go has rudimentarily translated this digital capability into the offline world with signs in the wine section with suggestions based on your previous purchases (“If you bought X, you’ll like Y”).

It’s easy to see how they could quickly expand this using their wider digital infrastructure, perhaps with decisions or indecisions in Amazon Go showing up on Amazon next time you log into your account.

The “computer vision” element of the cameras is another indication of how Amazon could potentially layer this real-world data onto the digital profiles of customers. In the near future, we’ll see the computers in these cameras not just process information but also react to the world around them.

With facial recognition software in a retail context approaching, it’s not a stretch to imagine that soon these cameras could react to our disappointment at limited stock, for example, and serve us a prompt to purchase the missing item through Amazon Fresh.

It feels unquestionably odd to simply walk out with the items you’ve picked up – it truly felt like shoplifting.

Once outside though, this feeling swiftly fades into the realisation that this store has undoubtedly set a new bar for consumer expectations at retail.

As we now jump out of Lyfts and Ubers without paying, or giving it a second thought, it’s quite easy to see this retail model becoming the norm as well.

Amazon Go is certainly a glimpse into the future of retail, and the focus on eliminating queues does not do justice to the scope of change this store could usher in.

More than convenience, the store has fundamentally altered the emotional experience of shopping. For retail incumbents, it’s a look at a new way of doing things – and they’ll have to quickly decide whether their service should adapt, or remain differentiated to survive.

Check Out the Amazon Go YouTube Film :

H2 solve problems :wrong think

Solve a Problem: Think About Worst Possible Solution

Leadership Tip of the Week #77

Adapapted from HBR

If you need to come up with a new idea, stop trying to think of the best one.

Instead, imagine the worst idea possible:

What would be the wrong way to solve this problem?
What do our customers absolutely not want?
How could we make all of our stakeholders angry?

Try to come up with ideas that would get you laughed at (or maybe even fired), and then work backward from there to find new ways of solving the problem.

This process, called “wrong thinking” or “reverse thinking,” isn’t always easy to do. You can start by trying to see the problem as a beginner would. What would someone who knows nothing about the context suggest?

When you give yourself permission to have bad ideas, you often come up with the best ones.

Adapted from “To Come Up with a Good Idea, Start by Imagining the Worst Idea Possible,” by Ayse Birsel