(Yes, design is everything!)
(As to the epigraph to #127, Farson says I said it first, I say he said it first—no matter.)
128. Is It “Lickable”?
Steve Jobs says that the definition of a superbly designed product is one you … “want to lick.” (I took a chance during a speech and pulled out my sleek, black, compact WD/Western Digital external hard drive in front of over 1,000 people and licked it, and fortunately got a good response; I never would have done it outside the United States—God knows what sin it might have amounted to somewhere.)
BMW advertised a new model car as … Radically Thrilling.
Economists agree that inducing people to … open their wallets … is the cure to the recession.
And I claim it all boils down to the right kind of hammer.
A hammer you … want to lick.
A hammer that is … radically thrilling.
And a hammer that … induces you to make an expenditure that you hadn’t intended to make.
Answer: My Tuf-E-Nuf hammer. This gorgeous little hammer, actually the … Tuf-E-Nuf Mini Striker Stubby Claw Hammer … is a true innovation, even an earth-shattering innovation. (By my lights.) The head looks like and has the heft of a regular heavy hammer. But the full-diameter handle is only five inches long, half the normal length. And the grip is great, up to the standard of the easy-to-hold OXO kitchen tool line. The net result is the ability to maneuver in tight spots while retaining almost all the power of a full-size hammer—and, as a bonus, owning a piece of sculptural art! I ended up buying six of the bloody things for Christmas presents in 2008—including, Christmas spirit be damned, one as a present to myself, which I use as a paperweight or bookend when not whacking nails!
Great design rules!
Innovation is king!
Functionality scores!
Lickability and Radically Thrilling are the standards worth shooting for!
Excellence knows no bounds!
(And … there is more to design—and life—than iPods and iPhones!)
129. Design Sign: Can You Get There from Here?
The closest I’ve come to being late to a speech was attributable to … lousy directions, from the Client no less. This was at a big (!!) convention center—it ran for blocks and blocks. And I was running a little late. (Normally I give myself huge pads, but I was in a frenzy to make late changes, and …) The driver and I puzzled at the directions—and the Client’s cell phone was not receiving. I finally picked a place, got out, and started hunting. Literally 25 minutes later, fit to be tied, I made it to my destination—by which time everyone was panicked, from Washington, D.C. (my speakers’ agency), to Vermont (my home office) to the Client. All because of incomplete-imprecise-confusing directions and then signage.
It got me thinking: Directions, signs, manuals are life’s blood, in this case and more or less in general. And most directions-signs-manuals are, well …
pathetic.
They confuse.
They frustrate.
They … suck.
They are decidedly unprofessional—my ultimate epithet in this book, even below “sucks.”
But these guides (directions-signs-manuals) ought to be … Works of Art (damn it) … Pluses rather than Minuses … Full-scale Members of the “Value-added” Package. They should top the charts on dimensions such as these:
Clear!
Simple!
Engaging!
Beautiful!
And: Breathtaking! (Why not?)
I command you (or would if I could) to spend—in terms of Time & Money & Care—like the proverbial drunken sailor on Directions-Signs-Manuals.
Make your manuals (signs/directions) … works of art!(They are an incredibly important part of the Experience you provide—remember my riffs on Great Beginnings!)
The generic lesson? Check every bit of instructional material in the joint—internal as well as that with which customers and vendors interact:
Clear?
Beautiful? (!!!!)
Simple? (Yet complete?)
EXCELLENT?
Odds are VERY high that you don’t put in enough effort on internal and external material. (Especially concerning “simple stuff”—ain’t no such thing.)
Work on it as a group. Test it with strangers. Test it with your spouse. Test it with your kids. Test it with the guy at the auto body shop.
Mimic the Golden Gate Bridge painters who never stop, finish one paint job, then immediately start over. Likewise, pick off some single item of instructional material and evaluate it—continue on a measured basis, forever.
This is a very big deal. Here I go again adding more bureaucracy: You need a very senior person, perhaps a VP, who is titled something like Chief of User-friendly Instructional Design of Every-Bloody-Thing.
PRACTICE (PEN) MAKES PERFECT
At 6:00 P.M. one summer evening, while I was out following my brush-cutting passion on the farm, I apparently woke up a yellow-jacket neighborhood buried in the mud. In short order, I was stung perhaps a dozen times—one YJ got stuck under my shirt. Luckily, I didn’t go into anaphylactic shock. But in a few hours the reaction was body-wide. I went to an ER the next morning after a truly crappy night. (The doc was very pissed off that I hadn’t come earlier.)
The good news was that I was on the mend in 12 hours, courtesy of an elephant-sized Benadryl injection and prednisone—thanks to the latter, I would have definitely tested positive on an Olympic doping test. The bad news: Once stung so badly, my predilection for full-blast anaphylaxis in the future soared. The additional good news: If prepared, one can handle the bad stuff with an EpiPen. (The EpiPen, to be carried with you at all appropriate times, lets you self-administer a blast of epinephrine, usually adequate protection-against-disaster until you can hustle to an ER.)
That’s all prelude to my design story. (I’ve always got a “design story.”) The EpiPen, upon being wanged into your thigh (through clothing, if necessary), ejects a needle that in turn injects that epinephrine. The package includes two locked-and-loaded doses. Now the instructive part: There is a third dispenser—for practice administration. Upon being yellow-jacketed again, God help me, there is no time to read the directions! So the practice pen, sans needle and epinephrine, lets you pull the pin as you actually would, and if you smack your thigh hard enough, it indicates that you’ve passed the practice test—the practice pen is infinitely reusable.
As all of us know, manuals are almost always (99+ percent of the time) infuriating. (The better term is “pieces of shit.” Sorry to the übersensitive. Tough.) This was the exception, to say the least. There was a mini-manual, but the practice injector went above and beyond. Trust me, I have a couple of testers for this and that (e.g., blood sugar measurement), and the directions merit the standard D grade … if I’m in a generous mood.
So hats off to the EpiPen designers—winner of my User-friendly-Design Gold Medal.
(Indicator of the enormity of the opportunity here: When you do come across even a single good example, it stands way out from the herd. The herd sets a very low hurdle!)
130. Love + Hate = Design Power.
Design is all about … emotion.
Moreover, it’s not about “liking” something—or “disliking” it.
Design’s … awesome power … comes precisely from the fact that it is about unvarnished emotion.
About … love.
About … hate.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE my Ziplocs—literally a million uses, I never leave home without a box or two.
I HATE HATE HATE my Cuisinart Filter Brew coffeemaker—it is nigh on impossible to pour the water in without spilling!
(I really “hate” to use “hate” to refer to a given company’s product—but my defense in this case is that I really do hate it. You might love it. That’s the point of this item—it’s personal and emotional.)
I LOVE LOVE LOVE the simplicity of the controls on my Black & Decker coffeemaker. One switch: On. Or: Off. (
!!)
I HATE HATE HATE (HATE) the three (!!) devices it takes to control my satellite TV and DVD player.
That’s design.
What a (power) tool!
Handle with care!
And remember: “Design mindfulness” is a “cultural” trait. It is not the product of a “program.” Nor is it the product of a “superstar designer”—whose services are purchased for some staggering sum.
(I am wholly in favor of superstar designers, if merited. My point here is that simply purchasing a designer does not likely alter company culture.)
First steps: Raise awareness, learn the generic language of design. Launch a widespread discussion about design in our everyday life. (Involve everyone—this is not “for artists only”; it’s a 100-percent-of-us game.) Talk about “stuff you love.” And … “stuff you hate.” Not particularly related to the company’s or your department’s products or services—in fact, it’s best to focus on ordinary things, like restaurant experiences or cooking tools or websites. This should help heighten the awareness of the Strong Emotions that, subjectively, good and bad designs evoke. Let this ubiquitous discussion slowly merge into evaluating things closer to home—Web stuff, business processes, the quality of customer contacts, the quality of staff facilities, the quality of the flowers on the reception desk.
Details
131. The Case of the Two-Cent Candy.
Years ago, I wrote about a retail store in the Palo Alto environs, a good one, which had a box of two-cent candies at the checkout. I subsequently remember that “little” parting gesture of the two-cent candy as a symbol of all that is Excellent at that store. Dozens of people—from retailers to bankers to plumbing supply house owners—who have attended seminars of mine have come up to remind me, sometimes 15 or 20 years later, of “the two-cent candy story,” and to tell me how it had a sizable impact on how they did business, metaphorically and in fact.
Well, the Two-Cent Candy Phenomenon has struck again—with oomph and in the most unlikely of places.
For years Singapore’s “brand” has more or less been Southeast Asia’s “place that works.” Its legendary operational efficiency in all it does has attracted businesses of all sorts to set up shop there. But as “the rest” in the geographic neighborhood closed the efficiency gap, and China continued to rise-race-soar, Singapore decided a couple of years ago to “rebrand” itself as not only a place that works but also as an exciting “with it” city. (I was a participant in an early rebranding conference that also featured the likes of the late Anita Roddick, Deepak Chopra, and Infosys founder and superman Narayana Murthy.)
Singapore’s fabled operating efficiency starts, as indeed it should, at ports of entry—the airport being a prime example. From immigration to baggage claim to transportation downtown, the services are unmatched anywhere in the world for speed and efficiency.
Saga …
Immigration services in Thailand, three days before a trip to Singapore, were a pain. (“Memorable.”) And entering Russia some months ago was hardly a walk in the park, either. To be sure, and especially after 9/11, entry to the United States has not been a process you’d mistake for arriving at Disneyland, nor marked by an attitude that shouted “Welcome, honored guest.”
Singapore immigration services, on the other hand:
The entry form was a marvel of simplicity.
The lines were short, very short, with more than adequate staffing.
The process was simple and unobtrusive.
And:
The Immigration Officer could have easily gotten work at Starbucks; she was all smiles and courtesy.
And:
Yes!
Yes!
And … yes!
There was a little candy jar at each Immigration portal!!!
The “candy jar message” in a dozen ways:
“Welcome to Singapore, Tom!! We are absolutely beside ourselves with delight that you have decided to come here!”
Wow!
Wow!
Wow!
And …
Ask yourself … NOW:
What is my (personal, department, project, restaurant, law firm) “Two-Cent Candy”???
Does every part of the process of working with us/me include two-cent candies?
Do we, as a group, “think two-cent candies”?
Operationalizing: Make “two-centing it” part and parcel of “the way we do business around here.” Don’t go light on the so-called substance—but do remember that … perception is reality … and perception is shaped by two-cent candies as much as by that so-called hard substance.
Start: Have your staff collect “two-cent candy stories” for the next two weeks in their routine “life” transactions. Share those stories. Translate into “our world.” And implement.
Repeat regularly.
Forever.
(Recession or no recession—you can afford two cents.)
(In fact, it is a particularly brilliant “on the cheap” idea for a recession—you doubtless don’t maximize Two-Cent Opportunities. And what opportunities they are.)
THE “ RIGHT” IDEA
Minimizing TGWs/Things Gone Wrong is a (very) good thing!
(“TGW” was originally one of the car manufacturers’ quality measures—you enumerated for the dealer your problems in the first 100 days or so of ownership.)
Maximizing TGRs/ThingS Gone Right is a (very) good thing, too!
Focus on both.
Don’t shortchange TGWs.
But don’t shortchange TGRs, either.
(In an era when most things—e.g., cars—work amazingly well, TGR maximization often has more impact than a tiny, marginal reduction in TGWs.)
So: Map and measure TGRs!
It ain’t a “soft” variable!
To proceed: Examine an external or internal customer’s experience with, say, calling the company. Assume, for the moment, that in terms of operational excellence, all goes well. Now: Find 5 “TGRs”… “little,” positive, memorable “things gone right” that mark this experience.
132. If the Envelope Doesn’t Fit, Forget It!
A few adventures in customer service:
My local Starbucks stayed open a few minutes late—and the barista fetched something he had already put away—to fill my order.
When I handed the barista at my other local Starbucks my thermos, she filled it up without question, even though at the time it was a nonstandard order. (I think they undercharged me—a two large-cups price for what doubtless was three large cups in quantity. Oh, and they thoroughly … washed the thermos before filling it, without my asking—or even imagining!)
My local Whole Foods usually opens at 8:00 A.M. But because several of us were waiting, they opened at about 7:45 A.M. And their folks define helpful—I got a full-bore dissertation on various cuts of beef, among other things.
The Stanford Graduate School of Business, my beloved (and I mean it) Stanford GSB, sent me a snail-mail questionnaire in prep for my MBA reunion. I took some pains to fill it out. When I got ready to mail it, I discovered that it didn’t fit into the envelope they’d enclosed—I tore the questionnaire up and tossed it in the recycle bin. (Ever wonder what’s wrong with MBA programs? Lack of attention to envelopes! Think I’m kidding?)
Do you bend over backwards to go “a little” “beyond the book” to help customers? Do you authorize-encourage everyone (100 percent) to break the rules “a little bit” so as to stretch for the customer? Do you solicit examples of serious stretch behavior—and celebrate it wildly? Do you open “a little” earlier than advertised? Are your envelopes the right size? Note that to give positive answers to all these queries requires, perhaps paradoxically, obeisance to tightly controlled operational Excellence—and at the same time openness to breaking the rules in order to be especially helpful to one’s clientele or one’s mates. (Creating a culture in a large corporation that’s “loose” and “tight” simultaneously is no walk in the park. In fact, dealing with, rat
her than avoiding, this paradox is one of management’s greatest challenges. One can say, with some certainty, that if you avoid it, there will be a dangerous drift toward more “safe” rule-following and less expressed initiative; thence the paradox must be addressed proactively.)
The 25 companies that made BusinessWeek’s first “Customer Service Champs” list in 2007 are very, very, very, very, very serious about the “little things” and the frontline service providers who make or break a Little Things Movement.
And you?
Personally?
Your team?
Your company?
How do you know?
For sure?
What are you doing about it?
To encourage more of it?
To … reward it … when it happens?
Today?
Now?
“Big aims” (I believe in them religiously!) are terrific!
Bravo!
But, people being people (see the epigraph from Henry Clay that launches this book), it’s often, usually in fact, the wee things that are the basis for the remembrance of the activity; the beauty of the Dalmatian Coast of Croatia, where I hiked for a week in 2008, dims—but I’ll remember for eons the Croatian along the way who, unbidden, invited me in for a cup of tea.
133. It’s All About the Mud.
It’s “mud season” in Vermont as I write and as we all too appropriately call it. Cars, and trucks in particular, look like flying mud balls.
While on a (muddy!) speed walk, I passed through the Equinox Hotel parking lot—Manchester Village, Vermont. They were undergoing a massive renovation. The primary contractor was Bread Loaf Construction, probably Vermont’s best (in fact, tops by any standard), out of Middlebury.
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