A shift in perspective
More from the innovation session...
What if we looked at member complaints as the seeds of new products and services?
If members are complaining, they're not happy with the way things are. Are you listening to the patterns in customer/member complaints? What are they telling you? Are there ideas for doing things differently that you can explore?
3M invented "Super-Sticky Post-It notes" because of so many customer complaints about "regular" Sticky Notes always falling off the old big-box computer monitors.
Imagine that.
Comments
Great idea.
In support of that approach, here's a method:
Howard Raiffa, a Harvard professor/expert on decision-making (co-author of Smart Decisions), discovered that people are quicker and smarter at figuring out what they most want - not by writing out a list of "wants" - but by writing out aa list of "don't want"s and "do not like" items, then prioritizing them from what most disliked/don't want to least bothersome.
It seems we are most quick and specific at identifying negative actions and emotions (extension of fight/flight primeval triune part of the brain.)
Then we can consider what the flip side of each negative item could be. I've led groups through this exercise and, especially if they are in an affinity group such as an association they usually agree on 80% of their dislikes - and on most of the priority order.
Thus, when it comes time to flip to the opposite side of each "negative", beginning with the most intensely disliked, they are ready and bonded to get specific about the flip side "Like" word pictures.
And they learn about each other in the process.
As Sue Pelletier noted in her face2face blog, attendees expect quick bursts of fresh ideas, chances to interact, and comfortable ways to get to know each other better.
This approach serves all three.
Posted by: Kare Anderson | August 30, 2006 08:13 PM