Memories Shaping Experience - Have a Strong Close

Recently my family traveled to Disneyland and we had a great time.  It was such a great experience...or was it a great memory of the experience?  I gave a talk to our UX team at work about the experiences we had and how well Disney does their job across channels to provide a great experience...or a great memory.

One example that fascinated me was the fireworks at the end of each night.  The crowds gather on Main Street and watch the display, complete with perfectly timed music cues, before they conclude their time in the park.  Basically, Disney knows that waiting in lines for attractions is not a pleasant experience. However, the experience is reframed that night as each major attraction is celebrated in fireworks and music/audio cues. So while you may have been hot, risking sunburn, trying to entertain your kids prior to a major ride, you don't think about it that way when the attraction is celebrated in awe-inspiring sight and sound at the end of evening. You leave the park, happy and almost proud of your small part in that attraction.

As the UX team discussed this, a team member brought up Daniel Kahneman's TED talk.  From a behavioral economics perspective, Kahneman argues that key to experiences is the remembering self, not the experiencing self.  How you remember (or re-interpret and re-remember) your experience defines your experience.  An interesting way to think about the experiences you're designing and delivering. Kahneman also talks about the weight of he ending of an experience shaping how the "remembering self" thinks of the experience as good or bad.   I think it may challenge the adage "you only have one chance to make a first impression" and start thinking about all of the opportunities you have to create a great ending.

Think about a good experience that you've had recently and think about how it ended and how that shapes your attitude towards the experience.

RIP ROWE: Best Buy Changes Course on Results

The end of ROWE?

Yesterday Best Buy, Inc. announced they were discontinuing their ROWE (results only work environment) program. I left Best Buy in 2009 during their “voluntary separation” program.  I took a package, along with many others,  before they may need to  enforce involuntary separation.  At the time, I was an online channel manager.   Taking the package was a great opportunity for me and allowed my family a smooth transition to Iowa City – as smooth as it can be when both spouses are taking new jobs, selling a house in a depressed market, buying a house in a new city, and have two kids under 3 in the process.  I will always think highly of the way Best Buy treated all of the employees during that transition. 

A few current and former colleagues have asked me how I felt or what I thought about it.  Here are some quick thoughts:

1.  ROWE was about results first.  That’s a good thing.  It was a framework that drove, or should drive work, and respects the individual employee.  With the focus on results, all meetings were optional.  Imagine how much better you have to run a meeting so that you have a reputation for good meetings and good projects.
2.  I believe a lack of leadership and discipline had more to do with Best Buy’s downward trend then ROWE. Less than two years after the voluntary separation program, Best Buy had more staff on payroll.  What the what?!?!  You were trimming staff to save money.  Instead, they lost a lot of talent with the separation program, as many left with their package to start other careers.  To the directors and VPs who had 2-4 years’ worth of severance, they basically said “I believe in me more than I believe in Best Buy” and took their talents to their own startups or other organizations.  Best Buy  did the right thing by their employees, but I think they weren’t sure how to deal with the unintended consequences of talent (that had deep organizational knowledge, and current skills) leaving.
3. There were too many uncoordinated initiatives competing for resources.  Leadership needed to focus on channels and desired outcomes.  It seemed easy to label a priority.  It’s a lot harder to prioritize.  Also, during the turmoil and shifts of the marketplace over the past five years, BBY had three CEOs.  One retired, one fired for cause, and their current CEO.  
4. The home office/store (or blue shirt) relationship was strained.  Blue Shirts could never do ROWE.  “Hey, what can you tell me about this Sony Bravia?” I’d  like to sell you on it, but I’m going to a movie for a while.  I’ll be back whenever. Blue Shirts also had crappy access to corporate systems and technology.
5. Best Buy hit the wrong enemy target.  They did a great job targeting and beating Circuit City. But that may have been the wrong target.  Best Buy was late to the game when it came to e-commerce.  It should have been targeting Amazon.  Instead of a good bricks & clicks world, Best Buy became a shopping destination, but not a purchase destination.   The high margin items that helped Best Buy quickly became commodities – GPS Devices, HD TVs, etc.  You can buy a great, reliable flat screen TV at Target,  Wal*Mart, or Costco – why do you need Best Buy.  GPS is a standard party of your smartphone. Don’t have time to get to the store right now – Amazon is always open…and have it shipped to your door…through Prime, which includes free second day shipping and lots of content.
6. Related to the miss on e-commerce.  Many leaders at Best Buy would dismiss projects saying for that $$$ we could open X number of new stores.  Those stores are now an albatross around their neck which exacerbates their lack of nimbleness. It’s the employee costs at the store, the real estate at the store, the physical costs of that footprint, etc.  It’s hard to change when you always see yourself as a big box – a symbolic law of the hammer.  As a big box, they will always try to solve problems in big box ways.  Big box get bigger. BIG BOX SMASH!
7. In the wake of Yahoo & Best Buy’s changing of EE benefits, I think we have two struggling brands that have had leadership issues for the past few years.  The consumer doesn't really know what those brands stand for today or what value those brands generate. 
8. ROWE had results first.  That’s still a pretty good place to start.

Personally, I think BBY was right with ROWE.  Their leadership has failed to produce results for the past few years and are now paying for it…and will pay for it for some time.   

What are your thoughts? 

Augmented Reality in Education

Fred, a friend of mine shared the following video with me.  It highlights the potential for AR in educational settings.  As Fred said, "This technology is only 2-3 years old. Where will it be in 10 years?!"

What uses for AR do you see in education?

Where's All This Technology Taking Us?

Or more importantly where are we taking this technology? Like a Daft Punk song or the Six Million Dollar Man, the technology is getting better, faster, stronger. But what are we doing with it?  Is the technology driving us, or are we using it to enable better experiences?

A few years ago, I wrote about the end of the monitor and mouse era.  We are now starting to see tablets utilized by entire districts.  I see in the near future a combination of BYOD (bring your own device) and subsidies to make sure every student has district approved and imaged mobile devices.

With any endeavor that utilizes technology, we need to make sure we understand our goals and how tools can help us.

How are you using technology to improve your constituents' experiences?

A Communication-Based Approach to Interactive Media

I thought about titling this post “All Media is Social: It’s really not that complicated.” From caveman drawings, to the printing press, through mass media of the 20th century and 21st century, all media is social.  As we work to communicate with each other and negotiate meaning we are interacting in  social processes.    With new technology and the adoption of interactive platforms our lives become noisy leading to the postmodern communication dilemma, right?- the technology that is to make our lives easier seems to make it more complex.  One of the ways to reduce the amount of noise is to take a communication-based approach to interactive media.  Through the lens of communication we can frame interactive media (web, social media, digital communication, online communities, etc.) .  Confusion about adoption patterns, listening, participating, community, etc., can be seen more clearly with the use of a few good communication theories.

There’s nothing more useful than a good theory.

-Kurt Lewin 

There’s nothing more useful than a good communication theory

-John Cragan

Theories, pragmatically, help us understand, predict, and explain phenomena.  In this case, communication phenomena.    While the interactive landscape may seem confusing a few communication theories can help us cut through the noise – to better understand, explain, and hopefully predict what is going on.

I know, you’re thinking “hey, that’s fine in theory, Poindexter, but what about the real world?”  Good point, but the Poindexter thing may have been offsides.  If your theory doesn’t work in the real world, if it doesn’t have utility, then it’s not a good theory. It’s really that simple.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to go into more depth about some particularly useful theories, the importance of listening (think customer centricity, user-centered design, and research), the art & science of interactive media (the zen like nature of human and digital communication), and applications of these concepts as they relate to building a better brand and improving marketing communication performance.  Together, these should provide an organizing framework to  help you meet your business goals, as well as helping your customers with their interaction goals.

The theories or frames that will be covered in the next series are:

1. Information Systems.Claude Shannon’s theory of message integrity.  While initially developed as a mathematical model for machine to machine communication, it provides a solid framework for human communication.
2. Symbolic Convergence Theory  (SCT).  Developed by Ernie Bormann and advance by Cragan and Shields,  SCT helps us understand how meaning, motive, identity, and emotion can chain out from any message or communication episode.  Elements of SCT have been covered earlier in the blog, notably here and  here.
3. Narrative Paradigm Theory (NPT).  We often here that you need to tell a good story.  That’s right.  NPT (advanced by Walt Fisher) focuses on narrative probability and narrative fidelity -- could the story be true and does it ring true, or resonate, with the audience? 
4. Diffusion of Innovation.  From the work of E. Rogers.  From his work we have insights to how an innovation (like a new idea, or technology) is adopted or not through networks and cultures.
5. Dramatism or Burke’s Dramatism Theory (BDT).  Looks at other elements of the dramatic nature of human communication and how we identify with the speaker/message sender.

With each post about the theories, I will provide applications and how those elements need to account for here-and-now phenomena and make current communication elements like  social media less mystical and abstract.

Feel free to send me questions that you may have or communication issues that your organization may be dealing with and I will work to incorporate into future posts.

A Communication-Based Approach to Interactive Media

I thought about titling this post “All Media is Social: It’s really not that complicated.” From caveman drawings, to the printing press, through mass media of the 20th century and 21st century, all media is social.  As we work to communicate with each other and negotiate meaning we are interacting in  social processes.    With new technology and the adoption of interactive platforms our lives become noisy leading to the postmodern communication dilemma, right?- the technology that is to make our lives easier seems to make it more complex.  One of the ways to reduce the amount of noise is to take a communication-based approach to interactive media.  Through the lens of communication we can frame interactive media (web, social media, digital communication, online communities, etc.) .  Confusion about adoption patterns, listening, participating, community, etc., can be seen more clearly with the use of a few good communication theories.

There’s nothing more useful than a good theory.

-Kurt Lewin 

There’s nothing more useful than a good communication theory

-John Cragan

Theories, pragmatically, help us understand, predict, and explain phenomena.  In this case, communication phenomena.    While the interactive landscape may seem confusing a few communication theories can help us cut through the noise – to better understand, explain, and hopefully predict what is going on.

I know, you’re thinking “hey, that’s fine in theory, Poindexter, but what about the real world?”  Good point, but the Poindexter thing may have been offsides.  If your theory doesn’t work in the real world, if it doesn’t have utility, then it’s not a good theory. It’s really that simple.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to go into more depth about some particularly useful theories, the importance of listening (think customer centricity, user-centered design, and research), the art & science of interactive media (the zen like nature of human and digital communication), and applications of these concepts as they relate to building a better brand and improving marketing communication performance.  Together, these should provide an organizing framework to  help you meet your business goals, as well as helping your customers with their interaction goals.

The theories or frames that will be covered in the next series are:

1. Information Systems.Claude Shannon’s theory of message integrity.  While initially developed as a mathematical model for machine to machine communication, it provides a solid framework for human communication.
2. Symbolic Convergence Theory  (SCT).  Developed by Ernie Bormann and advance by Cragan and Shields,  SCT helps us understand how meaning, motive, identity, and emotion can chain out from any message or communication episode.  Elements of SCT have been covered earlier in the blog, notably here and  here.
3. Narrative Paradigm Theory (NPT).  We often here that you need to tell a good story.  That’s right.  NPT, advanced by Walt Fisher).  What does your story, or collection of stories, need to hold true and resonate with your audience.
4. Diffusion of Innovation.  From the work of E. Rogers.  From his work we have insights to how an innovation (like a new idea, or technology) is adopted or not through networks and cultures.
5. Dramatism or Burke’s Dramatism Theory (BDT).  Looks at other elements of the dramatic nature of human communication and how we identify with the speaker/message sender.

With each post about the theories, I will provide applications and how those elements need to account for here-and-now phenomena and make current communication elements like  social media less mystical and abstract.

Feel free to send me questions that you may have or communication issues that your organization may be dealing with and I will work to incorporate into future posts.

Student Lifecycle: Symbolic Identity & Relationship Management

NOTE: This was originally posted in March 2006.  Some friends are working on a new lifecycle management issue and I wanted to make this post easy for them to find. 

I recently attended a software user group conference for the higher education sector. I had breakfast with consultants, sales reps and customers that use CRM (customer relationship management, or constituent relationship management) in higher education. I was impressed with the technology that some institutions are using to support their communication tactics with constituents. However, I was more surprised that they weren’t looking at what motivates their constituents to continue to advance with a particular institution. The technology was/is the driver, rather than the enabler, of strategic processes.

While educational institutions don’t necessarily need to run themselves more like a business, they can take advantage of best practices from a communication and marketing perspective. The key components for creating value (for the institution) are to improve relationship management techniques; building relationship equity with students throughout their lifetime (think: awareness to bequeathing). In grad school, I worked in the development office and my manager said “if there’s a will, we need to be in it.”

Taking a holistic approach to a constituent, you can continue to engage the right students, providing a brand-right experience that benefits both the institution and the students. At all touch points, a college or university needs to make a meaningful connection with students, while they are prospective students and applicants through the rest of their lives.

This preliminary model shows the key stages of a student’s life as it relates to the institution; and demonstrates the other components that support meaning, motive, emotion and identity. College life is a great way to look at symbolic identity, because the connections one makes with an institution can be so dramatic. Many students take on symbolic identity for a lifetime – a Hawkeye, a Badger, a Bulldog, a Gopher. Some even take on an identity associated with their extracurricular or fraternal organizations while in college.

At each stage (prospect, applicant, student, graduate, alum), the institution needs to build relationship equity, by leveraging brand equity, and positively address the value exchange of the relationship – the student needs to feel it is worth the effort to continue. Continuing can mean, responding to marketing materials, applying, persisting, and donating. Value can be driven by righteous (institution or degree reputation for quality), social (reputation as caring or humane institution), or pragmatic (efficiently moves the student towards life goals) reasons.

In the model, the smaller circles should be seen as driving gears that continue to drive the flywheel. At times it may be an arduous task to get the larger, inner circle moving, but when it works well, it moves forward and gains momentum – more applicants become students, more students persist to graduation, more graduates give back to the institution. When this is working well, it is like the breakthrough that Collins talks about in Good to Great.

So, institutions need to better understand the dramas and symbolic realities that help:

• Get the right students in the institution
• Keep those students, persisting towards graduation
• Cultivate long-term relationships with the institution after graduation (donations, volunteering, etc.)

Small improvements can have a major impact on the symbolic and financial equity in the institution. What would a 3% increase in student persistence mean at your institution? What would a 5% increase in donor population mean for your institution?
At all stages, manage the constituent experience.

• Talk with the right “prospects” – understand the goodness of between the student and the institution from a Symbographic perspective.
• Reinforce and amplify your message by providing a surround-sound approach with cue givers and influencers (friends, families, guidance counselors, alumni interviewers, etc.).
• Understand the retention value of your students.
• Have a customer-centric, contextually relevant, approach.
• Engage students for a lifetime; don’t just contact them when you need money for the new library or business building.
• Continue to ground the unique identity of your institution – colleges can become educational commodities, if they’re symbolic identity is ignored.

Innovation and the Importance of Understanding Community

A (somewhat) brief thought about the importance of understanding a desired community when launching a new product, idea or service (an innovation). Everett Rogers work on the subject, in my opinion, is still the best. While Geoffrey Moore or Malcolm Gladwell have repackaged some of the ideas, I think Rogers provides the best framework for the understanding of how innovations may or may not be adopted through communities, which may be symbolic or geographic.

One of the key things to take from Rogers work (and that of Cragan & Shields) is to understand the types of “talk” that occur when an innovation is adopted. Like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, there is a hierarchy of talk, or human communication associated with the diffusion of an innovation. The talk evolves from awareness (hey, look at that a new blank), to utilization (I’m using the new blank); to opinion (this new blank really freakin’ works); to advocacy (hey, have you used blank? Oh you should, it’s the best darn thing since sliced bread). A real life example for me and my wife is Netflix. We’re Netflix evangelists.

So, what does this mean from a communication and branding perspective? Beyond the basic premise that effective brands or symbolic identities can not be all things to all people (I repeat, can not be all things to all people), your campaign surrounding innovations needs to become more sophisticated in its understanding of the communities you serve, or wish to serve. Your communication needs to be aligned with the elements that resonate with the community. That’s why a simple features and benefits discussion my take you through to awareness, but might not help you get your new product, service or idea to the advocacy stage. Additionally, you should be aware of the sociographic and psychographic components of audience groups across a traditional adoption curve (for example, innovation seekers are different than late majority or active resistors).

Implied in my admittedly simple model, is that the population decreases as you move through the hierarchy of innovation. Many may be aware of an innovation, less have used it, and even fewer will become advocates. But, powerful word of mouth advocacy for your innovation can exponentially increase the productivity of your marketing campaign.

In short, when trying to launch an new product, service or idea be prepared to develop your campaign to meet the needs and expectations across the hierarchy (y-axis) and the adoption curve (x-axis). Avoid the commodity-esque campaign of lather, rinse, repeat which erodes brand equity. The campaign needs to be aligned as the message is amplified for current and potential customers.

Sanctioning Agent’s SymbolicID process and Symbographic research can help you understand the drivers, motivations, symbolic identity and emotion associated with your targeted communities. What are the secret handshakes for your target community? Who are the opinion leaders and cue-givers within that community?