What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20

by Tina Seelig

  Chip explains that the typical first day of a new job involves the following scenario: You show up, and the person at the reception desk is really happy to see you but thought you were coming in next week. The monitor for your computer is there, but the CPU isn’t hooked up. The person you are scheduled to meet is late, so they grab an employee manual that is sitting in the cubicle from the last owner and tell you to look through it for a while. So, you spend your morning reading expense reimbursement policy and assorted other technical things. Finally, right before lunch, somebody takes pity on you and whisks you around the office to meet twenty-three people who are late for a meeting, and so you feel guilty for interrupting them. It’s certainly not an optimal experience for a first day at work.

  Does this sound familiar? He goes on to describe how John Deere addresses these issues. First, they assign each new employee a texting buddy at the company to help with anything they need, from finding a room to how to dress the first day of work. When a new employee shows up the first day, someone hands them their favorite drink, whether it’s a can of soda or a low-fat latte. The monitor in the reception area has their name on it, welcoming them to their first day of work at the company. In addition, there’s a banner at their cubicle that allows others to see that there is a new person in the group, and they can then stop by at their leisure to say hello. A computer is set up on their desk, and their first email is in their inbox, from the CEO. He shares the company’s 175-year history and its mission to help the world produce more food and shelter. He says, “Welcome to the most important work that you’ll ever do, and we hope you will have a long history with John Deere.”3

  The experience goes on and on, including lunch with peers at work and the gift of a model tractor. The new employee ends the day elated, knowing that the work they are doing is important and feeling connected to those with whom they will be working. Yes, this takes thought and effort, but the payoff is huge. We can each take time to consider ways we can go beyond the expected to the exceptional in all aspects of the things we do.

  * * *

  Being fabulous also shifts the way you engage with others. We often assume that successful people are highly competitive and accomplished their goals at the expense of others. But this certainly isn’t the case. There’s a significant difference between being competitive and being driven. Being competitive implies a zero-sum game in which you succeed at someone else’s expense. Being driven involves tapping into your own passion to make things happen.

  I designed an exercise to highlight the point that to be successful in an entrepreneurial environment, it’s often more productive to be driven than to be competitive. In the exercise I divide a group into six teams and then unveil five completed jigsaw puzzles, each with a hundred pieces.4 Participants are allowed to see the puzzles for a minute or so, and then all the pieces from the five puzzles are dumped into a pillowcase and mixed up. All but a few pieces—which I secretly hold back and auction off later—are then randomly distributed to the six teams. Each team is also given twenty poker chips to use as currency. The teams are responsible for completing a puzzle within an hour. When the time is up, points are calculated. Each team counts the number of pieces in the largest completed section of the puzzle and receives one point for each piece. They then count the number of pieces in small islands of connected pieces and receive half a point for each piece. Each team that completes an entire jigsaw puzzle in an hour earns a twenty-five-point bonus.

  Since there are fewer puzzles than there are teams, participants have to decide if they’re going to compete, collaborate, or both to collect the necessary puzzle pieces. This situation is meant to mimic the real world: participants know all the pieces exist to complete the task, but no one team controls them all. Teams have to find ways to get the resources they need to be successful. Additionally, since there aren’t enough puzzles for every team, some teams have to find an alternative way to create value. As in the real world, there are many different roles to be played within an ecosystem. Also, the world is not static. After the game begins, every ten minutes or so something happens. I sell photos of the completed puzzles, require one person from each team to move to another team, taking a few puzzle pieces with him or her, and auction off the remaining puzzle pieces. The changing environment requires both creativity and flexibility.

  In order to be successful, the teams must work together. They start the game by trading and bartering, trying to figure out how to maximize their own benefits without giving away too much. This requires balancing strategy with action, figuring out how to divide the labor among team members and how to walk the line between competition and collaboration, all in an ever-changing environment. Since they know there are fewer puzzles than there are teams, at least one team has to decide to not build a puzzle and to instead take on a different role. Sometimes one team chooses to divide up and join other teams. Sometimes two or three teams merge. At other times a team may take on the role of broker, buying and selling puzzle pieces from the other teams. And sometimes all of the teams merge into one huge team and work on all of the puzzles together. I like to do this exercise with larger groups that I can divide into two or more ecosystems, each with six teams and five puzzles. Doing so allows different strategies to evolve in parallel, which makes for interesting comparisons afterward.

  The very worst outcome results when all of the teams decide to compete against one another. They hold back puzzle pieces and refuse to trade pieces needed by other teams. These groups become so focused on winning that they all lose. Some teams acknowledge that they knew they would have done better if they had collaborated but decided to compete anyway.

  Competition is so built into our culture that it becomes the natural response. Additionally, those teams that work hard to make other teams lose end up losing themselves. For example, the first time I ran this simulation, one team decided to hold on to a handful of pieces that other teams needed. Toward the end of the hour they planned to sell them to the other teams. This backfired. When the time was up, the teams had spent so much time competing with one another that they weren’t even close to completing a puzzle. This meant the final pieces didn’t offer any additional value.

  This exercise offers a strong reminder that in environments where there are limited resources, being driven to make yourself and others successful is often a much more productive strategy than being purely competitive. Those who do this are better able to leverage the skills and tools that others bring to the table, and to celebrate other people’s successes along with their own. This happens in sports as well as in business settings, which are both often thought to be purely competitive environments. For example, competitors in the Tour de France work together over the course of the twenty-one-day race in order to make everyone successful. They know that in order to continue racing in the future with professional endorsements, riders need to win at least one stage of the race. Therefore, they let different riders win over the course of the race, providing them with the credibility they need to continue riding. Similarly, many competitive companies embrace the concept of “coopetition” by finding creative ways to work together, leveraging each business’s strengths and letting them each win.

  When it comes to being fabulous, many businesses select one area in which they really shine. BMW focuses on top-notch engineering, Walmart promises the lowest prices, Disneyland strives to be the happiest place on earth, and Nordstrom works hard to deliver a world-class customer experience. If you ask people familiar with the store what they think about Nordstrom, most will offer at least one story about the incredible service they received.

  I had an opportunity to meet with two of the three Nordstrom brothers, Erik and Blake, and learned how they instill their employees with customer-centric values. Surprisingly, there are no specific rules or secret recipes for providing an outstanding customer experience at Nordstrom. Essentially, after only a short orientation, salespeople are charged with using their best judgment in solving the problems that c
ome their way and are empowered to act on their customers’ behalf. Because each salesperson is different, they deal with their customers in unique ways, leading to a wide array of approaches to similar challenges. There’s also a culture of telling stories at Nordstrom, and great customer-service stories serve as lessons and inspiration. By empowering employees to be inventive in solving problems, Nordstrom also gives them the freedom to make mistakes. Blake and Erik both pointed out that if an error is made in an effort to serve the customer, it’s quickly forgiven—and the same mistake is rarely repeated.

  At Nordstrom, all incentives are aligned to create a terrific customer experience. Each manager works to make his or her own team successful, and all employees view their customers as the ultimate “boss.” The senior managers of the company spend half their time visiting stores, where they walk the sales floor, interact with customers, and talk with the sales personnel—including the Nordstrom brothers. They were very familiar with this environment, each having started his career working in the Nordstrom stockroom, selling shoes, managing shoe departments, serving as buyers, managing individual stores, and then acting as regional managers. As leaders of this multibillion-dollar business, they have always been looking for ways to improve. They watched and listened carefully, with great humility, and then, based on the information they gathered, acted with confidence and conviction. So intent on continuing to enhance customer satisfaction, they made it remarkably easy for any customer to reach each of them. They have always answered their own phones, read their own email, and responded to messages personally.

  The idea that the customer comes first is so embedded in the culture of Nordstrom that the brothers described the organization as an upside-down pyramid, with the customer at the top and the senior management at the bottom. When an employee advances in the company, he or she literally moves down the corporate ladder. There’s also no chief executive officer at the bottom. They work as a very tight team, each brother playing to his own strengths. They share a vision for the business and work in a concerted and collaborative manner.

  My favorite customer-service story from Nordstrom is of a customer who asked the men’s department for two blue button-down shirts with white collars. The salesperson helping him couldn’t find these in stock or at any of the other Nordstrom stores. But instead of telling the customer they couldn’t meet his request, she took two white shirts and two blue shirts to the store tailor and asked to have the collars switched so there were two blue shirts with white collars and two white shirts with blue collars. She presented the blue shirts to the customer and told him that if he wanted the reverse, that was now available, too!

  When we met, both Blake and Erik pointed out that every experience with each customer is like a fresh chance at bat. Each interaction is another opportunity to deliver a great experience for the customer and to enhance the salesperson’s reputation. Even if their actions don’t lead to a specific sale, the investment eventually pays off.

  Being fabulous comes in many flavors, but it all starts with removing the cap and being willing to reach for your true potential. This means going beyond minimum expectations and acknowledging that you are ultimately responsible for your actions and the resulting outcomes. Doing just 1 percent better each day leads to enormous positive results. Life isn’t a dress rehearsal, and you won’t always get a second chance to do your best.

  Chapter 12

  Experimental Artifacts

  I have a confession to make—I easily could have titled all of the previous chapters “Give Yourself Permission.” By that I mean, give yourself permission to challenge assumptions, to look at the world with fresh eyes, to experiment, to fail, to plot your own course, and to test the limits of your abilities. In fact, that’s exactly what I wish I had known when I was twenty, and thirty, and forty—and what I need to constantly remind myself at sixty.

  It’s incredibly easy to get locked into traditional ways of thinking and to block out possible alternatives. For most of us, there are crowds of people standing on the sidelines, encouraging each of us to stay on the prescribed path, to color inside the lines, and to follow the same directions they followed. This is comforting to them and might be for you. It reinforces the choices they made and provides you with a recipe that’s easy to follow. But it can also be severely limiting.

  Not only do others feel comforted if you follow their path, but they are sometimes relieved that you are not surpassing them. In Latin America there is actually a phrase that translates into “jacket puller” to describe people who try to pull others down—presumably by the tails of their jackets—to prevent others from rising higher than they have. People in other parts of the world call this the “tall poppy” syndrome, in which those who stand up taller than the people around them are cut down to size. Staying with the pack is the norm, and those who get ahead risk being dragged backward by their community. Worse still, there are also regions of the world where those who do things differently are literally viewed as criminals. In Brazil, for instance, the traditional word for “entrepreneur,” empresário, translates loosely into “thief.” Historically, there are not many local role models for successful entrepreneurs, and others assume you’ve done something illegal if you’ve successfully broken the mold.

  This was a significant problem for Endeavor, the organization whose goal is to enhance entrepreneurship in the developing world. When they launched in Latin America, Endeavor told people they wanted to stimulate entrepreneurship, and they were met with great resistance. In response, they literally coined a brand-new word, emprendedor, to capture the true essence of innovation and entrepreneurial spirit. It took several years, but eventually emprendedor entered the lexicon. Endeavor faced a similar challenge in Egypt, where they needed to create and promote a new word for entrepreneur.

  Within our programs at Stanford much of our work focuses on giving students permission to challenge assumptions and to stretch their imaginations by breaking free from traditional ways of thinking. Most assignments my colleagues and I give in our classes require students to leave their comfort zones and engage anew with the world around them. The faculty poses the challenges, but we don’t have the answers.

  Additionally, at the Stanford d.school our classroom space invites experimentation. All of the furniture is on wheels and moves about easily to create different workspaces. Each time students arrive, the space is configured differently. Bins of paper, wood, plastic, paper clips, rubber bands, colored pens, pipe cleaners, and tape encourage them to build prototypes to bring their ideas to life. The rooms are filled with movable whiteboards covered with colored stickies for brainstorming. The walls are peppered with photos and artifacts from past projects that serve as inspiration for creative thinking.

  Our students are given real, open-ended challenges. For example, they might be asked to figure out how to improve bike safety on campus or to find a way to entice kids to eat healthier food. Besides these local projects, d.school students in the Design for Extreme Affordability class work with partners in developing countries to identify problems and determine how to solve them in cost-effective ways. This project has led to a number of exciting products that are now on the market. For example, one team designed a brand-new baby incubator, Embrace, after visiting hospitals in Nepal and finding that traditional Western baby incubators, whose original price tag was $20,000, were not well suited to the local environment. Many were broken or in need of unavailable parts. The operating instructions and warning labels were in a language foreign to the nursing staff. Most important, the majority of births occur in villages far from city hospitals with incubators. Therefore, premature babies who need to be kept warm with an incubator rarely get access to the help they need.

  The team identified the need for a low-cost, low-technology incubator that could be used outside a hospital. Over the course of a few months they designed a tiny sleeping bag with a pouch-insert containing a special wax. The melting temperature of the wax is 37 degrees centigrade, the tempe
rature needed to keep a newborn baby warm.1 For just $20, as opposed to $20,000, parents or local clinics can now take care of a premature baby on-site, in transit, or at home. They remove the insert and place it in hot water to melt the wax. The insert is then put into the insulated sleeping bag, where it stays warm for hours. When it eventually cools down, the wax can easily be warmed up again. No technical training is needed, no electricity is required, and the design is inexpensive enough to be deployed in underserved communities without access to urban hospitals.

  The students leave these courses changed forever. They have a new appreciation for the power of paying attention to the problems in the world around them, and they learn that they’re empowered to fix them. As David Kelley, the founding director of the d.school, would say, “They are leaving with creative confidence.”2 They know they have permission—both explicit and implicit—to experiment, to fail, and to try again. What we must all recognize is that every one of us has the same permission—we just need to recognize that it’s ours to grant ourselves and not something extended from outside.

  It’s important to remember that we are each responsible for crafting our own personal story, and for understanding how our story both empowers and limits us. This message was driven home to me in an unexpected way. A few years ago I took a creative writing class in which the professor asked us to describe the same scene twice, the first time from the perspective of someone who has just fallen in love, the second from the point of view of someone who has just lost a child to war. We were not allowed to mention falling in love or the war. This simple assignment revealed how completely different the world looks depending on our emotional state. When I imagined walking through a crowded city in a state of bliss, my mind was focused on the colors and sounds, and my view was expansive. When strolling through a similar scene in a depressed state, everything looked gray, and all the imperfections, such as cracks in the sidewalk, jumped into focus. I couldn’t see beyond my own feet, and the city seemed daunting, as opposed to stimulating. I dug up what I wrote for that assignment: