I had the opportunity recently to attend Audible's Customer Appreciation Day at their headquarters in Newark, NJ. They hold this event occasionally to thank their loyal customers. The session consisted of meet and greet, a tour of their facility and dinner. One thing that became apparent was that the Audible Customer Care team that hosted the event had no agenda but just to thank the customers who attended. At the end of the evening, you feel like you are part of their customer care team. The interesting thing about the event was that the Customer Appreciation Day initiative was led by their customer care team. It was not a brainchild of some executive at Audible. This shows how much Audible management empowers its employees to be highly customer-centric. We spent close to six hours with Audible Customer Care team. After spending that much time at Audible and their customer care team, I was left with the following impressions: 1) Audible has an outstanding culture. The people we met during the visit seemed highly motivated, happy, and passionate about their work. 2) Audible is playing an integral part in Newark. An excellent example of this is the major restoration work of the church where they turned an old, dilapidated church into a modern office environment for developers while retaining the architectural beauty of the church. It's amazing what they have done by blending the old with the new. Audible embarked on a four-year project to turn a church into a monastery for developers. Though I am not an architect, even I was left impressed by what they have done to this place. You can bet that Audible developers are going to be producing "blessed" code for a long time. 3) Audible has a lot to teach with the audiobooks they create. But I was surprised by how much they have to teach in how seriously they take customer care. 4) Last impression has to do with the conversations that companies need to have with their customers to know them better. There were three levels of conversations that took place at the Audible Customer Appreciation Day. Level 1 -- Meet and Greet Talk where you talk about the kinds of audiobooks you like to read. There is not much depth to the conversation at this level but to get to know the people. Level 2 -- Tour Talk where you talk more about what kind of genres, books, and narrators you like. This is all about the kind of experience you have with their product. Level 3 -- Dinner Talk where you get to talk about how their product is enriching your life. It is at level 3 that you find out things since dinner is an intimate setting where you know the people and your guards are down. So in my case, I said it is the classics audiobooks that I like to listen to. I added that I would not read classics if I could not also listen to them. Reading and listening to classics has made me smarter, wiser, and happier. Now there is a lot I provided that I could only provide during a dinner. Time allows you to get to know each other better. Today a lot of companies do not give this amount of time to their customers, let alone even their most loyal customers. Audible knew me before as a customer data before the Customer Appreciation Day. Now they know me as a person. That is something a lot of companies can learn from Audible that you don't know your customers unless you are willing to spend time with them with no agenda. Audible certainly knows that if you really care about your customers, it is not a bad idea to bring the loyal ones to your headquarters and spend some time with them. Audible has a very bright future since they understand that you can't succeed in business today if you don't focus on three important things: employees, customers, and community. Audible gets high marks on all three. ##### Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach. He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or an important speech. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. Please download the speech checklist and the speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. Please contact him if you would like to attend his workshop or invite him to have it at your site or have him give a talk on Interviewing or High-Stakes Speaking. You can reach him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com or 732-847-9877.
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Five Questions for Alberto Savoia, A Man On A Mission To Prevent Failures Among Entrepreneurs7/7/2019 Suppose you come up with an idea and fall in love with it so much that you decide to create a business around it, and then discover that there is no market for your product or service. You will have wasted a lot of time and money. So what could have done to prevent this from happening? You could have prototyped it or—even better--pretotyped it. Pretotype is a virtual prototype, meaning that you first test your idea to determine if there is a market for your product or service before you make an effort to develop it. This concept was popularized by Alberto Savoia, and he teaches this in his excellent book Right It: Why So Many Ideas Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeed in which he teaches how anyone can pretotype a product, service or just about anything. Alberto taught the power of pretotyping to students at Stanford and also made the ideas available as a free book. In fact, he practices what he preaches. He wrote in his pretotype book that "I wrote and 'edited' it in days instead of months, just to test the level of interest in such a book." After seeing the success of his free book, he enhanced the book and published it. I highly recommend you read this book and start using the ideas taught in the book. Pretotyping, as Alberto likes to say, will allow you to “test ideas fast like a Lamborghini and cheap like a Fiat.” And he is right. I used pretotyping to see if it was worth spending time developing a workshop. I sent a flyer to those who had attended talks I had given on job interviewing. Soon I discovered that only a handful of attendees were willing to pay for the workshop. Based on that information, I converted the workshop into two coaching sessions for those who signed up to attend the workshop. Pretotyping saved me a lot of time and money in developing a workshop when there were not enough customers willing to pay for it. I became a believer in this powerful concept and wanted to get this message out about pretotype, and I was happy that Alberto took time to answer five questions I posed to him. I want to thank Alberto for his mission to reduce failures among entrepreneurs with the talks he gives, videos he posts on YouTube and the book he published. It is one of the most practical books you will ever read and most importantly become a believer like me in this concept. If you would like to learn more about Alberto Savoia, please check out his website albertosavoia.com. Here are two talks that Alberto gave that you will find very useful: The talk he gave at Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders -- eCorner https://ecorner.stanford.edu/video/build-the-right-it-entire-talk/ The talk he gave at the Lean Product & Lean UX Silicon Valley MeetUp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPUu8_EXiNg Alberto is an outstanding speaker since he knows how to present actionable information in an entertaining way. Alberto also has made excellent video lessons related to his book Right It that is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzgbutZja0Vs-U7NcrDj42g Question 1: Aren’t some things hard to pretotype since customers may lack the imagination on how it can make their life better? I am specifically thinking about the famous quote by Henry Ford that “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” This admittedly famous quote is just that, a famous quote. Let me tell you a few of the things that are wrong about it: 1) Ford said, “If I had asked people ...” so he never actually asked. He never collected the data and just assumed. I don’t need to tell you why that is bad. 2) He would have asked a question. Not only that but a hypothetical one. If you’ve read the book, you know how much trust one should put in such questions. 3) There is no skin in the game involved, so all Ford would get back (if he bothered to ask) would be opinions. See my book for my opinion on opinions. 4) The quote implies a universal quantifier (i.e., people == ALL people). What do you think are the odds of EVERY SINGLE PERSON answering the same way? I’d say 0%. I bet some people fed up with horses would have welcomed the idea of a horseless carriage. I could go on, but you get the drift. I discuss all this in detail in the chapters about Thoughtland and Hocus Pocus Focus Groups. Some people lack imagination. Some have a surplus of imagination—those are the ones who come up with crazy ideas. That’s why you PRETOTYPE, you take your idea down from Thoughtland and don’t ask people what they want, show them something you’ve thought up to see if they are interested enough to put in some skin in the game. Like Elon Musk did with the initial Tesla Roadster. Ford got lucky with the car, but how many such stories of visionary ideas end up in failure? Most of them. So it’s not smart to cherry-pick your examples and decide based on them. Question 2: Who should do pretotyping? People inside the company or outside the company? And if inside, who is best skilled to do this? Marketing? Sales? Engineering? It depends on the organizations. Some companies want to do it in-house. Others hire external help (e.g., www.exponentially.com) to help them stay objective. There’s no right answer—or wrong answer. Pretotyping is a set of tools (imagine a toolbox with hammers, screwdrivers, levels, etc.), the tools simply work, what you do with them and who uses them is up to you. Question 3: Can pretotyping provide the wrong information in that it will tell you that there is a potential market, but not big enough for it to ever become a successful business? No market research tool can accurately predict the size of future markets. That’s why the XYZ Hypothesis is phrased as “At least X% of Y will do Z.” Most companies that become giants are themselves surprised by their own success. But pretotyping can give you, with better confidence and accuracy than most other Thoughtland approaches an estimate of the current market size. Question 4: Have you ever run into a situation where pretotyping prevented one from building a product that later became successful by somebody else? How do you prevent this from happening? You are asking if pretotyping can give you a false negative. It has never happened to me or my teams/clients. But I suppose it could happen in some rare cases—especially if you don’t practice pretotyping correctly. Even the quadratic formula will give you the wrong result if you mess it up. But think about this: How many products expected to succeed actually fail? This should be your primary concern. Further, no two products or teams or situations are the same. There are always differences, big and small. People who said, “I had that idea” or “they stole my idea” are often crying sour grapes. And those ideas are similar to theirs but not the same ... and the actual products built and marketed by one team is never the same as the actual product built and marketed from a different team. Question 5: Isn’t sometimes the only way to really know whether your product is a “wrong it” is by getting it to the market? For example, you point out that New Coke was the “wrong it.” But Coke did what you would call pretotyping before they released the New Coke. According to my understanding, Coke was losing market share to Pepsi, especially to the younger generation since they liked its sweet cola taste. The only way Coke could fail was by getting the New Coke into the market. When people started buying it, they didn’t want the Coke to change since they could get a sweeter cola in Pepsi. Coca Cola (and most such companies) based their decision on focus groups and taste tests. It was mostly hypothetical and in Thoughtland. Coke’s big mistake was to go big (i.e., national campaign, big launch all over the US, taking old Coke off the shelves, etc.) They should have tested it on a much, much, MUCH smaller scale. They should have hypozoomed first and expanded later. Bonus Question: I see a lot of people taking courses to get a better job. But do you think before they do that, they should create a pretotype resume to determine what skills will make them marketable before they spend a lot of time and money taking courses or getting certifications? That’s VERY funny because I was discussing this very topic with a friend. He was planning to pay a few $K for a data science course to add to his resume, and I told him he should do an A/B experiment. Beginning with a (modified) XYZ Hypothesis: If I add “Data Science Certification” to my resume, I will get 10% more interview opportunities. Then, say, send out two copies of his resume (one with the certification and one without) to a bunch of companies and see which one gets more responses/requests for interviews, etc. Of course, you need to find a way to do this ethically, but it can be done. Five Book Recommendations Skin In The Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life, by Naseem Taleb Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Naseem Taleb Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Naseem Taleb Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases and Transform Industries by Safi Bahcall ##### Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach. He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or an important speech. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. Please download the speech checklist and the speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. Please contact him if you would like to attend his workshop or invite him to have it at your site or have him give a talk on Interviewing or High-Stakes Speaking. You can reach him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com or 732-847-9877. We all know that writing well is critical to get ahead in your career, but has anyone ever told you that what you are writing is not working since it is filled with bullshit? Josh Bernoff has made it a mission to get people to write well, and a simple way to do this is by writing without bullshit. He felt so strongly about this that he wrote a book “Writing Without Bullshit: Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean.” I turn to this book often to make sure my writing is short, simple, and direct. There are a lot of books on improving your writing, but if you are in business, you want to make this your go-to book if you want to be gainfully employed and get ahead. Also, please check out excellent blog posts Josh has written over the years at his website withoutbullshit.com. For example, I have sent the link to this blog post on using a fat outline to quite a few people since it will save you a lot of time when you are writing something, including a book. I would have saved a lot of time if I had come across this when I was writing a book. I believe I would have saved a lot of time. In this post, I pose five questions to Josh about writing and also get his five book recommendations that have influenced his thinking. I want to thank Josh for taking time to answer these questions and providing his book recommendations. Question 1: Companies use all kinds of analytics at work to improve productivity, but do they use any analytics on how much it costs companies as a result of poorly written communication? >> I've never seen a company analyze this. My research shows that 81% of business writers think that poorly written material wastes a lot of their time. My own estimate based on an analysis of job descriptions in the Bureau of Labor Statistics is that America wastes $396 billion in wages on poorly written material -- 6% of all wages paid in the U.S. -- but companies seem to think of that as a cost of doing business. Sad but true. Question 2: Aren’t people writing with so much bullshit because that is how they speak? Don’t you think that one needs to talk without bullshit first before they can write without bullshit? >> I don't think so. Speaking includes nonverbal cues which makes it more efficient, even if it seems informal. Written material lacks those cues. People write dreadful, jargon-laden things that they would never say out loud. Speech has its own problems, but I think writing clearly is a bigger problem. Those who write clearly think clearly. Those who think clearly speak clearly. So the path to clear speech follows from clear writing in any case. Question 3: Are schools not doing a good job teaching students how to write without BS? If you think schools are doing a good job, then how are people developing this bad habit of writing? >> Schools do a terrible job. In high school, a single teacher may be grading 160 essays. Obviously, they can't spend time on developing individual students' creativity, so they have everyone try to write the same way -- the famous "five-paragraph theme." But no one writes five-paragraph themes at work. As for college, people are learning writing from English majors, who are informed by stilted, passively written literary criticism. At my previous research firm, we found we had to retrain bright students from excellent schools in how to write without BS. Our educational system is failing to teach the skills that business writers need. Question 4: Should people record their writing either on audio or video and listen to it to edit it before sending it or publish it? Do you think this can help improve one’s writing? >> Reading your writing out loud is a good way to catch errors, stilted language, and twisted reasoning. The act of reading out loud is what reveals the problem -- recording it is incidental. Question 5: Do you think Twitter is making us better writers since you have to be short, direct, and clear? >> Have you been on Twitter lately? It's short, but it's also full of bad grammar, terrible spelling, invalid reasoning, logical shortcuts, and appeals to emotion. A great tweet is an excellent condensation of a great idea -- but great tweets are as rare as clear and powerful writing. Bonus Question: You are a great writer, so what do you do to improve your writing? >> Practice, practice, practice. I write a blog post every weekday at bernoff.com. I edit other people's writing, which reveals habits that I can correct and learn to avoid. I immerse myself in writing every day. And I seek editors for the things I think are most important and learn from what they observe about my writing. I will stop improving when I stop writing -- which will be when I am dead, blind, or senile. Five Books That Influenced You "Everybody Writes" by Ann Handley -- a terrific business writing guide that complements my own. "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker -- a classical thinker's guide to writing; I like his explanation of "The Curse of Knowledge." "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond -- a masterful demonstration of the use of logic in proving a grand thesis "The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe -- stretches your idea of what effective nonfiction sounds like. "Talk Triggers" by Jay Baer and Daniel Lemin -- practically a template for how to write a successful business book. ##### Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach. He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or an important speech. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. Please download the speech checklist and the speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. Please contact him if you would like to attend his workshop or invite him to have it at your site or have him give a talk on Interviewing or High-Stakes Speaking. You can reach him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com or 732-847-9877. Five Questions for Elizabeth C. Haynes on How Perserverance Pays Off When You Are Looking For a Job7/1/2019 I coach people get good jobs, so I am always interested in learning from people who found good jobs. In this blog, I pose five questions to Elizabeth Haynes, who blogged about her struggles to get a good job that went viral. Evidently, her being open about her struggles and what she was doing to overcome helped many who found themselves in a similar situation. In this blog, I pose five questions to Elizabeth to understand what it is like when one is out of a job for some time. As you will see, you just can’t give up and learn. I hope this blog helps you if you are looking for a job. I want to thank Elizabeth for taking time out of her busy schedule to offer her insights that will motivate others to perservere like she did. If you would like to learn more about Elizabeth, you can check her out on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/elizabethchaynes and her website at www.elizabethchaynes.com where you will find her excellent blogs. One blog that has helped a lot of people who are unemployed is "Terror of Unemployment" in which she describes vividly what she was going through while being out of a full-time job and how she learned to re-frame her thinking to learn to cope with her situation that helped her turn things around. It's a short piece and I recommend you read it if you are terrified of your situation of being out of a job. Lastly, Elizabeth will be releasing her book on finding happiness amidst life's challenges. The preorders of the book begin August 1. Question 1: Can you outline the steps you used to get a good job and perhaps provide one or two tips for each step that you think can help someone who is looking for a job? Why was it so hard for you to get a good job when you have a proven track record of delivering excellence as you have shown on your website whiteoceanconsulting.com? Finding a good job took years. I would recommend the following:
Question 2: What do you recommend someone does to keep one’s spirits up while she is trying to land a good full-time job, especially when one is out of a job for a while? This is hard. I recommend good self-care and to do things that you enjoy, such as taking baths, taking walks, reading books, etc. Also, I recommend that you talk to supportive people when you feel stressed out or sad. The thing that helped me the most was learning to stay in the present. I used to feel anxious and drown in the “what ifs,” but then I realized, doing that wouldn’t change the outcome in any way. It would just change the present. So I decided to only look at the current day, every day. Do I have food today? Do I have shelter today? If so, that’s enough for today. Things can change in only a day (and they usually do), so try to allow yourself just to be present. It could all be different tomorrow. When it’s time for you to work, the job will come as long as you keep trying everything you know to try. Question 3: What did you find that proved to be effective and ineffective when you were looking for a job? I will refer to my answer in Question 1 for things that I found effective. As far as what I feel is ineffective, I would say just applying to online applications and doing nothing else. Don’t do that. You want to do some of it but do other things too. Question 4: What are some key interviewing skills you feel one must develop and even master to not only get a good job but to have a good career? How did you prepare for your face to face interview that landed you the job you currently have? My best interviewing tip is to approach it as a conversation. Turn your interview into a conversation. The main reason for this is that an interview is often one-sided, whereas a conversation is two-sided. You are interviewing the interviewers as much as they are interviewing you. I prepare for interviews by researching the company and researching the people I’m interviewing. I want to know their backgrounds and their roles, and I want to be able to ask intelligent questions. I also make sure to review the job description again before the interview so I can match my qualifications to the job requirements. Question 5: How did you deal with rejections when you were looking for a job? Rejections always hurt. There’s no way around it. The best way I dealt with them was just to tell myself that the job wasn’t meant for me, and perhaps I dodged a bullet anyway. A job that is meant for me is the one I will get. Let it go and move on. Please recommend 5 books that have influenced your thinking. Codependent No More by Melody Beattie The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron On Writing by Stephen King The Best Women’s Travel Writing (various volumes) by Lavinia Spalding The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz ##### Jay Oza is a writer, speaker, executive coach. He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or an important speech. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. Please download the speech checklist and the speech workbook to help you with your next high stakes speech. Please contact him if you would like to attend his workshop or invite him to have it at your site or have him give a talk on Interviewing or High-Stakes Speaking. You can reach him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com or 732-847-9877. |
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