View from a Vistage Speaker: The Times they are Changing

9:22 pm | Andrea Simon | Be the first to comment

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For the past several years, I have been doing talks and workshops for Vistage International, (check it out at www.vistage.com) a wonderful organization of CEOs and their key managers. If you are a CEO of a mid-market company you should really take a look at what they do and how they do it. What I would like to share with you today are some of the new thinking, maybe even the trends that I see happening, as I do these talks all over the country. My topic is, of course, Change, and how do you change when your company is not doing well or, as so many are facing today, when the business they are in has to respond to very different economic times. The range of emotions is wide and the depth of pain is all over the place. But as I have been doing these I am struck by the way in which these CEO’s are beginning to change themselves. Their typical reactions, “No, but you don’t understand…,” was turning into “Yes, and let me show you….”  I thought you might like to read about what I am seeing. They really are the business trends going on in the industries like yours.  I am going to do this in two posts. The first is about what I saw three years ago and the second I will put up next week on what I see happening today. Let me know your thoughts please (stories2share@simonassociates.net). First when I began to give these talks I seemed to be or needed to be entertaining and informative. Much of the room at a Vistage meeting is filled with 15 or 20 individuals, all non-competitors from different industries. The Vistage chairs have each built their own groups usually into terrific teams of folks who help each other deal with the problems of business. The day they meet each month is their day where they don’t have to know all the answers. It is their day to learn, share and be colleagues to each other. At the time I began these talks in 2007, my own clients were typically CEOs who had experienced several years, usually three, of bad or no growth. Or they were clients who had lost three RFP’s.  Three “events” were often the catalyst to find someone to help them figure out what was going wrong. With my clients we often had to help them re-think their business from the customers they had today or those they wanted for tomorrow, to their services or products or even their business model, as well as their pricing, fees and costs and eventually their overall strategy. I became a fan quickly of the thinking behind “Blue Ocean Strategy” (www.blueoceanstrategy.com) and where possible I would use some or all of the tools to re-build a client’s approach to their markets.  As a result, I tied “Blue Ocean Strategy” to my anthropological perspective to create a 3 or 4 hours of exploration for them. What I was fascinated by was how they responded. My talks began as a way to help them “see, feel and think” differently about their business, their customers and about who could be their customers. And they would be told upfront as I began that they were going to feel incompetent and uncomfortable since, by and large, most people do not like change, have not been taught to change and would be most comfortable if they could just ride the wave of what they had been. Change is literally pain.

As I would take them through the process of discovering how to think like a Blue Ocean Strategist, I began to watch who would tune out, who would start to work hard at learning a new way to think about their business, and who really caught onto an entirely new way to do business—where you are going to create demand not meet it, forget the competition not benchmark yourself against them, and open up an entirely new market space not simply try to get your market share in the one you have today. During the downturn of the past two years I began to see some very different thinking in these groups of CEOs. But let me save this for the next blog.

Blue Ocean Strategies are Really Happening: Eco-friendly Conway is a case in point

9:18 pm | Andrea Simon | Be the first to comment

We are all trying to better our planet. Conway, Korea’s primary company for eco-friendly green goods hopes to establish a new market leaving high tech brands such as Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics behind by opening up a new market. Conway is looking beyond conveniences and shifting towards wellness. Green home appliances include water purifiers, air filtration systems, electric bidets, food waste treatment devices and water softeners. These are especially popular in European countries. People have to wait an average of three days to get rid of food. The food-waste treatment device break food down making it easier to dispose of, breaking it down to one-tenth of its original size.  In addition, many companies sell appliances that are eco-friendly.   ``By contrast, few players have waded into the green goods market. Samsung, LG, Siemens and Whirlpool have yet to take the fledgling market seriously. We are looking to make a noise with a “blue ocean strategy,'' Senior Vice President Lee In-chan said, referring to the strategy of creating new market space in an area that is virtually untouched. Conway is designing its products to not only be eco-friendly, but interesting to look at as well. They have attention grabbing air purifiers and water filtration systems. In many countries these are necessities and no one has thought to make them exciting, new and eco-friendly. This thought process seems to be working for Lee. Conway has doubled profits every year since 2006. During the IFA trade show in Berlin, around 22,000 of the 220,000 attendees visited Conway’s booth, showing tremendous interest in their eco-friendly green goods.

THE NET GENERATION-- TIME TO RE-THINK THOSE NEW EMPLOYEES

6:38 pm | Andrea Simon | Be the first to comment

With the Net Generation Grown Up and getting jobs, or trying to get jobs in the workplace, we have had a number of clients wondering about how to manage the new hires with their different values and behavior into their work place. How is the Net Generation going to impact your business--your employees, your customers and your product line? 

The challenges are many. Net Gener's seem to be texting to friends while they are in the middle of meetings; gaming in the middle of work; reading blogs and looking at Facebook--these are all happening around us and changing the way we live, work and play. And it doesn't seem to matter what type of business it is--from physician offices to pharmaceutical companies to customer care call centers. 

What is happening? How do we manage with a new generation entering the work force?Let’s see some of the implications this has for your business, particularly in terms of workplace customs. Whatever happened to the water cooler hang-out?

First, you are going to find that these Net Generation employees work differently. They collaborate differently. They value different things.

Second, these new hires seem have different motivations and don’t have the same concept of a career. They approach work as they played soccer—as a team. Team efforts are the basis of how they want to work.

Third, they have different work ethics, are collapsing old hierarchies and challenging prevailing assumptions about much of everything. They enjoy breaking up the day with things of importance to them—from an online search to a video game.Where do we see it?

• We saw it in the hospitals that we have worked with. Boomer physicians have a hard time dealing with the new physicians who simply have a completely different set of values and expectations and behavior patterns.  And in one physician practice the folks in the middle—the GenXer’s were the translators making sense of the different culture, values, beliefs and behavior of the young doctors who came to work to make a living and the boomer doctors who came looking to make a killing.
• Some of the same is happening in law firms that I speak to. My friend recently told me how she, as managing partner, hired a number of young lawyers and find that they want very different life styles. Their values are so fundamentally different from their predecessors that they are changing their work habits and billing practices. Value billing, for example, is replacing billable hours. That is very fundamental.
• One business owner in a workshop I was doing was completely frustrated that her last two hires didn’t work out at all. They just had such different work styles and attitudes that they couldn’t fit into the team she had—almost all of who were GenXer’s or Boomers.

There is no shortage of discussion going on. In the recent Chronicle of Higher Education there was a great article on why all of this generational nomenclature is wrong-that it really creates stereotypes out of individuals and we should forget the pressure to pigeon whole people into categories. Rather, we should really start to look at each individual, be they a student or an employee, or even the boss, and set a standard and hold them to it. It doesn't help that student if they text a professor at 3 in the morning and expect an answer--then. Or if that employee wants a different team type of activity in an environment that expects individual performance who shall change? Maybe both the employee and the culture.

At the foundation of it all is the question of how do we get our work, life and play done--what is the cultural values, beliefs and behavior that make us vital and vibrant? The Net Generation is going to change things but our things still need to get done. And those Boomers are still part of the defining cultural mores that set the stage for the Net Generation to perform.  

Tweeting Much? What's Going On with the Net Generation?

1:18 pm | Andrea Simon | Be the first to comment

A very common question arising in the last few months is what do I see happening in our culture from the perspective of a corporate anthropologist and an observer of American life?  

Apart from the economic transformation we are going through, there are clearly other changes taking place in our society---related and unrelated to the busted bubble. How do we make sense of all that is happening as consumers blog away, discover Twitter, enjoy Facebook and really build social media communities in entirely new ways? And for how long will what last? My Space is hot, then cool.  Are these trends that emerge, surge and purge? Passing fads?  Or are they important trends that are going to stick for awhile. So Inc readers, the big quesiton is should a business pay attention? Or is it mostly noise that is irrelevant?How do we make sense of this new world? We tend to see blogging or Twitter out of a context of how young people today have grown up and come of age. I was recently at a Tim O’Reilly’s Twitter boot camp sitting next to folks from traditional advertising agencies. They had sent their new creative talent to help them survive in a new age where the old media was clearly not the same if not truly gone. The new was changing quickly.  How were they going to tweet, re-tweet and thrive? For this posting, let me begin by setting the stage with some insights about the Net Generation—a good deal of which comes from research about this group of 11-31 year olds from Don Tapscott’s work, Grown Up Digital.  I don’t know if you might have read his Growing Up Digital published in 1997. Grown Up Digital is a new $4 million research project done on 6,000 Net Geners and is well worth digging into.The research is very important if we are to get beyond what might seem like the "fad of the moment." These fads reflect some very important changes taking place in our society as a generation of young people enter the consumer space having grown up in an entirely new world. Their world is one in which computers, iPods and video games aren’t new technology.  It is more like the air they breathe — stuff that is part of everyday life. From a cultural perspective, this is at the core of their existence.  Not much different than refrigerators or television sets.  It isn’t New Media—it is the media. And the old stuff, like TVs and newspapers are simply no longer as relevant for the Net Generation.

Just think about it:

• The rest of us shop online, use our Blackberries and read those blogs. But the Net Generation multitasks five activities at once, watch movies on their little iPod screens and text incessantly. Some tell me they read 50 blogs a month.
• You talk on the phone and check your emails. Email for the Net Geners is for business, and a bit passed its utility curve.
• They use the phone to surf the web, find directions, take pictures, make videos and collaborate. You can’t even imagine what they have created on Facebook. They IM and their Skype webcam is always running and they often play multiuser video games for hours.
• You watch TV news; they have RSS feeds to their favorite sources. You sometimes listen to music; they have their iPods going all the time.
• You consume content on the web. They create it.
• You visit YouTube occasionally to see a video that was recommended. They go to YouTube all day long to see what’s new, and they make videos to show you how they put Chapstick on with their toes, in the car going to Arizona.

We think it is just kids growing up. But it is not their age that is so important. It is their culture.

They see, feel and think and ultimately behave differently. Enough for now. Give it some thought and we’ll be back this week with the next observations on our changing culture to share with you. 

Having Trouble Adapting to These Tough Times? It Could be Your Culture!

7:54 am | Andrea Simon | Be the first to comment

I have been watching companies, often those I am introduced to through my workshops and lectures  that are trying to find new market space or adapt their current products and services. They are struggling with what their current company and their management team already know and did in the past. It seemed to work then. Why not now?

 As they are trying to change to reduce costs, usually by downsizing or “reengineering” their processes, once again, that they are cutting costs but not necessarily opening new markets. In fact they are really not changing much at all. Just trying to hang on and stay viable.

Then I heard it again. At a recent, think tank session that I belong to, another strategic consultant and I were talking about the work he was doing with his clients to keep them financially profitable during this downturn. Changing them, he commented, was not easy. While they didn’t seem to miss the work done by people who had left, except as good people, jobs were still getting done and they were more productive. Financial profits were often better even at lower revenues.

But few were really thinking about the post-recession world. Indeed, they aren’t at all focused on a different future. They talk about the cycles as if the housing bubble is going to come back or the credit system will be easily restored. They were more concerned with when things were going to get back to the way they were—in part because they had done so well then and in part because that is what they know.

And in part, they weren’t changing because their corporate culture reinforced the “way it was and will be” structure for them. So their values, beliefs and behaviors seemed rather “stuck” in the old.

I am going to use this blog to keep sharing with you how companies are beginning to see that the old is not coming back and this is really less a cycle than a restart, as Tom Brokaw wrote last week in the Times.  But I also believe that if you “change your thoughts, you can change the world.” Old Chinese fortune cookie I kept. Maybe it is a good time to see how your company can help change and in the process change the world.

Please share your stories and your thoughts. Enjoy the pain of change. Could be fun.

Time to Find New Customers--Those "Bluswimmers" are Right In Front of You

8:54 am | Andrea Simon | Be the first to comment

This is a great time to find new customers. Maybe she is crazy. But i think you are missing a great opportunity. During change things are up for grabs and you can capitalize on it if you change your mind about what is possible.  There are folks ready to be found. I call them "Bluswimmers." But who are they and how do you find your “Bluswimmers ?

Maybe or maybe not--either way, this may be a great time to capitalize on the confusion and find new ways to build your business that can open entirely new markets for you. Indeed, this maybe a great time to re-think your business and even build demand among new types of customers -- those that never previously thought of you as a solution. We call these new markets and new users --“bluswimmers”™ --a concept that emerged out of the work by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne in their book “Blue Ocean Strategy.” A Blue Ocean Strategy gets you to re-think your business, step outside the market space in which you have been playing, and stop focusing on your competitors. Rather, a Blue Ocean Strategy gets you out of that “red ocean” of bloody competition. This is maybe the perfect time to re-invent what you do, how you do it and for what types of customers. Those “bluswimers™” provide interesting opportunities just waiting for you to find them. They could use you, but had chosen to solve their problems in alternative ways, not even with a competitor. Your solution just wasn’t on their radar screen. “Sounds like an idea with some possibilities”, you say, “but who is a “bluswimmer”?” We have been working with clients to help them open up new markets in their blue ocean of possibilities. They find their “bluswimmers”™, often right in front of them. They just  were not able see these opportunities before because of how they defined their business, organized their company and thought about the value proposition they provided in the past.Who is “bluswimmer”™?  A non-user, and they come in at least three flavors:

1. The first group minimally use an industry’s offering out of necessity.  But reluctantly.
2. The second group refuses to use your industry’s offerings.  They have found alternative solutions.
3. The third has never thought of your industry’s offerings as an option. This is a very big opportunity!

We had opportunities to work in various industries with companies that re-thought their business, their products and the solutions they provide to open up entirely new markets that were non-users in the past. You might recognize them as the “non-wine drinkers” that (Yellow Tail) wine went after so successfully that it became the largest wine importer in the United States, or the “non-gamers” that Wii has captured as avid fans, or the “non-bike riders” that Shimano targeted with their new Coasting bicycles with Raleigh and Trek.We are fortunate to have worked with many clients who found entirely new markets filled with “bluswimmers” just waiting to be approached  with a better alternative solution. So where are they? How do you find these “bluswimmers”? Well I can tell you it’s not “business as usual”.  You have to get out of your office and go exploring— see, feel and think about your business and what it could do for “bluswimmers.” It is hard to see it from the office and you cannot ask your customers. They will ask for more of the same only cheaper. Henry Ford was fond of saying; “Had I asked my customers what they wanted, they would have answered “a faster horse””.  But there are great opportunities out there just waiting for you to discover. The same way you found them when you first started your business.

Coping with Changing Times: Can an Anthroplogist Help?

3:19 pm | Andrea Simon | Be the first to comment

This is our first post. As we worked with entrepreneurs and small businesses we realized that many people do not know how to cope with changing times. We use to say that if you want to change have a crisis or create one. For so many, that crisis is here today.

Can an anthroplogist help you change? The tools are not hard to understand or apply, even on your own. So let me start to share and if you have good stories to tell others we can do that as well. 

 What is corporate anthropology?   

Anthropologists are social scientists who study culture and society-- people’s values, beliefs and behavior-- through systematic observation which is called ethnographic research. Ethnographic research is heavily dependent on observation and participation in such a way that anthropologists can better “see, feel and think” what people actually do.  We have learned that it is difficult for people to tell us what they really think and feel, much less what they are actually doing. So an anthropologist’s job in studying consumers or businesses or the corporate work place itself is to help us learn what is really happening and why.   How does this apply to entrepreneurs and small business owners?  The essence of good anthropological research is to help you cast aside your biases and listen and observe with truly wide open minds.  For entrepreneurs and small business owners, the trick is to find a way to get past your own assumptions and certainties and go “exploring” into the field with, or perhaps without, an ethnographer to help you see in new ways.   You will find that if you video tape customers using your website you might find things that you had not expected at all. Perhaps you might watch them actually use your service or product.  Do a thought walk among non-users and see if you can listen and learn about their problems. If you listen to personal stories you will learn the implicit values and beliefs, problems and opportunities come through. Or do some “deep hanging out” to see how they get a job done, and the “work go-around’s” they don’t even notice, you will find needs you might be able to solve with your products and service.  And if you take a day to watch your own company in action, be a customer, get a problem solved, all sorts of “aha’s” will become more apparent,  We will be sharing stories as our blog evolves. Please send us yours or your questions and we’ll see if we can help you go “exploring” to “see, feel and think” in new ways about your business.