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We are the ultimate paradox. There are only two things we want—we want to hide and we want to be seen.
Every day counts.
The two most important things we can do are to allow ourselves to be seen AND to really see others. The greatest gift you can give a person is to see who she is and to reflect that back to her. When we help people to be who they want to be, to take back some of the permission they deny themselves, we are doing our best, most meaningful work.
it would have been much easier if they hadn’t begun with the idea at all, but had started with the customer’s story instead.
Understanding who their customers were—those customers’ needs and their hopes and dreams—became the jumping-off point for both product innovation and marketing.
If marketing is about making people aware of the value you create, to do that, you have to unlock the value in your story. If innovation is about creating value, to do that well, you must unlock the value in the stories of the people you hope to serve.
What companies and entrepreneurs sometimes forget is that the purpose of innovation is not simply to make new, improved products and services; it is to make things that are meaningful to the people who use them.
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive and Ron Johnson didn’t start with the idea for a product; they began by thinking about whom it was for and what mattered to them.
That customer’s story changes because the business exists. There is a before-the-product story and an after-the-product story.
Before [your product], people did. After [your product], people do.
On their own, the features and benefits of your products and services, no matter how good they are, cannot sustain your business. It’s only when they affect customers in the marketplace that meaning is derived from them. Success is not what you make, but the difference that it makes in people’s lives.
Our purpose is not to make the best planes with the perfect wings; it’s to make things that enable people to be better versions of themselves—and to show them their wings. The best products and services in the world don’t simply invite people to say ‘this is awesome’; they remind people how great they themselves are.
When I return to the same hotel for the third time in eighteen months, the people at the reception desk ask me again if this is my first stay with them. How is it possible in 2015 that the receptionist doesn’t know? She tells me, with a smile, not to forget the ‘wine hour’. Free wine for an hour every night before dinner is obviously the highlight of many a trip. So why am I expecting her to know that I don’t drink wine and to understand that her comment is completely irrelevant to me?
The value isn’t just in the data that businesses collect. What counts is how they use it to make our lives better.
Every business today, no matter its size or legacy, faces four massive challenges. They are: Clutter Competition Commoditisation
Consumer consciousness
Their advantage isn’t necessarily being faster or cheaper, bigger or better; it is that they take time to understand their customer before making what she wants.
affinity
The nearness advantage is now open to anyone who cares to leverage it.
but better is not defined by you; it’s defined by your customers. And just because they saw your Facebook ad, sponsored update or promoted tweet doesn’t mean they cared about it. Just because you reached them doesn’t mean you have affected them. Just because they heard you doesn’t mean they’re listening.
Digital gives us opportunities to see our customers and to be more responsive to their wants.
What the company viewed as a generous gift was seen by many customers as an intrusion. People questioned Apple’s right to upload something to their phones without their permission. When Apple did give users the instructions for removing the album, journalists were quick to encourage people to remove it in order to send a signal to Apple about respect. A signal that said, ‘You may own the platform, but you don’t get to decide what’s relevant to me or what becomes part of my story.’
What’s more valuable to your business than attention now is the ability to understand what your customers want.
It has to start with understanding the expectations of the people who will use the product. And what people value most isn’t what some companies are focused on delivering.
When we encourage people to believe that something matters, we attract the kind of people who care about that something. Soon buying from us becomes part of their identity—their story. The experience—our posture and products, and the story the business owner is inviting the customer to buy into—is what creates the customer.
The stories our customers believe in shape our ideas, and our ideas shape our customers.
We win by finding wins for the people we serve.
Our job is not to simply obsess about the features and benefits of what we are making; it is to wonder and care about the difference it could make to, or the change it could bring about in, people.
PERSUASION vs UNDERSTANDING
We got very good at telling customers what we wanted them to know, and we forgot to consider what they wanted us to understand.
LOOKING vs SEEING
A good haircut isn’t just technically good. It doesn’t happen just by paying close attention to each section of hair or the angle of every cut; it’s made possible by the stylist’s skill in translating what he sees into a style that is not only good but that works for this particular client. The best stylists in the world understand that the tools and the cut are only part of the story.
ATTENTION vs TRUST
The kind of attention I think you’re after, though, isn’t this meaningless, fleeting interaction. It’s based on mutual respect and trust—the kind of interaction that’s wished for, welcomed and wanted. It’s earned and given, not taken; anticipated, not simply tolerated. The best way to get attention, then, is to give it unconditionally first. To really understand the worldview of your customers and colleagues. To anticipate what people need and want. To do
things without considering what the payback might be down the line.
To start whispering ‘I see you’ instead of screeching ‘LOOK AT ME’.
We don’t need better marketing. We need better products, made by trustworthy companies, led by brave leaders, who can look us in the eye and say, hand on heart, ‘This really will make your life better because we put you first.’
THE MEANING BUSINESS
Don’t compete for the moment. Compete for meaning.
Without meaning, products and services are just commodities and nobody wants to be in the commodities business.
The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind—creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers.
The people are the architecture—they are the foundation and framework for everything we build. The people will shape the character of the building. Without them, there is no reason for walls or windows to exist, no need to think about when the sun rises, where the light will fall or what the orientation of a certain room should be. If we are to build anything useful or significant—a place where people feel like they belong—we have to spend twice as much time thinking about them as we do in front of our CAD drawings. It’s why we build, not what we build, that matters.
Success doesn’t come from simply making things that work—it is born from changing the story of the user or customer for the better.
SHIFTS DON’T HAPPEN BY ACCIDENT
We design the future by interpreting how today’s story might unfold tomorrow.
The revolution in the music industry was about more than the need to find a way to make people pay for music, which was becoming easier to illegally download and own for free. It was about giving people what they had wanted all along: the songs that mattered to them.
Shopping is no longer about getting what we need and want; it’s about instant gratification.
Making our environments respond to the rhythm of our lives makes perfect sense. Even if they live in identical houses, no two families are alike; it seems reasonable, then, that our environments should adapt to what happens around and within them.
KNOWING vs UNDERSTANDING
Clearly, watching what people do is not the same as paying attention to how they feel.
