Carman Pirie's Blog

The reinvention imperative

Yesterday’s innovative business model is today’s millstone. Continuously reinvent or die.

It seems there is no shortage of folks who like to bash Wal-Mart. I guess that’s good since now I don’t have to. All I know is that I never go there. I just don’t. So when Dell announced a few days ago that they were going to start selling through Wal-Mart, my initial reaction wasn’t exactly positive. I’m not sure why, exactly. I guess I just don’t see myself as a Wal-Mart customer, so they really do not fit into my worldview whatsoever.

I bought a Dell PC back in 1998. While it currently serves as a dust collector in my basement, I remember it being a rather decent piece of gear for its time. I recall when it arrived at my door – my first experience with Dell’s celebrated direct business model. Everything was colour-coded, etc. and dead simple to put together. It just worked. And I was pleasantly surprised.

But now it’s come to this. Selling Dell’s at Wal-Mart. It might be that Dell is going to be the supplier that finally changes the way Wal-Mart does business, or it may be that they just don’t know what they’re getting into. Your guess is as good as mine. But, this doesn’t feel right to me. It might be good in the short term, but I can’t imagine this is going to be particularly healthy for Dell in the long run.

Is Wal-Mart the last resort when you’ve waited too long to reinvent?

Conversation with customers

It seems this idea of actually being in conversation with customers is starting to take off! Here's a presentation by James Murdoch at Zeitgeist Europe 2007. Around the half-way point in the vid is likely the best place to start. Enjoy.

Finding it's all about price?

Every time I talk to an entrepreneur that complains about the commoditization of his or her business, I cringe. Now, I'll simply direct them here. Concise and brilliant. Thanks, Seth.

Naked business

Care to test drive a Camry or Accord? Just go to a Saturn dealership.

Spectacular.

BTW - One way to gloriously screw this idea up: Put a option-free Accord or Camry model in the showroom juxtaposed against a fully loaded Aura and then watch the eye-rolling begin.

I'm sorry

It occurs to me that most advertisers are really just focused on apologies. They invest a lot of time, money and energy into finding the best mechanism through which to interrupt you and then the creative department goes to work in an effort to make the interruption some how worth your time. They try to entertain you, make you laugh, raise a smile - all in the span of 30 seconds or less - in hopes that you'll donate some of your increasingly scarce attention to them. Can’t you just hear the cocktail party conversation: “What do you do?” she asked. “Oh, I’m in the apology business.”

Visual news

Stumbled across this site while making the daily rounds. WOW. Couple of thoughts:

It strikes me that this has an interesting parallel to the Art of Harvesting – capturing the ever-evolving information patterns of a population. In this case, the population being the world of news outlets across the globe as aggregated by Google News. I love how it gives increased visual prominence to those items that are most relevant and current.

It is also a wonderful illustration of the media clutter that exists today. And the amount of clutter is only going to go up, folks. I suppose you could approach this clutter by pursuing a strategy to always have your organization’s stories in the biggest blocks on this site. After all, it is these stories that get noticed and talked about in our world. Or, you could ignite a conversation that creates meaningful relationships between you, your organization, your brand, those you serve, and the world we all share. That seems to make more sense to me.

The importance of chaos

Chaordic Design teaches that the innovation and creativity that moves organizations forward rests in the intersection between chaos and order. Seems Google is thinking the same way...

"I think chaos is important in the right proportions... We have always run our company with about 20% chaos." - Google co-founder Sergey Brin

Practice vs Theory

It has been said, “The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work.” The same might be said for what we’re up to with Colour 2.0.

When juxtaposed against a more traditional view of business, the idea of entering into a co-creative conversation with those you serve in an open, authentic way can seem a little odd. The suggestion that you can sit in Circle with customers, strip away the bull-shit and posturing, and get down to the heart of what really matters to each of you is more than a little scary to some.

It seems we have an overwhelming urge to create winners and losers – a black and white world where grey area is written off as indecisiveness. We ‘talk’ to customers at certain points in the business cycle... we go ‘into the field’ with research on a new product, or in the planning phases of our marketing campaigns. We ‘deal with customers’ when they call our contact centre or ask a question at the service counter. The pattern is rather predictable – plan, execute, evaluate, repeat. This makes the scorecard pretty easy to read, and at the end of the day you’ve either won or lost. Your planning either worked or it sucked. You either executed well or you didn’t. Fail in any of the categories, and the shelves at your local bookstore overflow with experts having no shortage of prescriptions to cure your organizational illness. In marketing, your campaign either ‘broke through’ or it didn’t. In PR, your communications plan either delivered the right messages or missed the mark. Winners and losers abound. It all creates a wonderful illusion of accountability where you can fire the losers and promote the winners.

I think there is another way. I think we can be in constant conversation with our customers around what matters to both of us. I think we can build products and services that make a difference in the lives of those we serve, delivered in a very human way such that employees actually want to come to work in the morning. But it can only happen when we’re in conversation with one another. As humans, we crave conversation. Within it, we’ll join together to co-create brilliance.

Products and services that make a difference.

Products and services worth talking about.

An organization worth being a part of - for employees and customers too.

Yeah, seems pretty nice… in theory.

Closer to the Customer gets its own Squidoo Lens!

Just finished version 1.0 of the Closer to the Customer Squidoo Lens. I'd love for you to take a look by clicking here. Enjoy - let me know whatcha think.