Social Selling

One of the biggest jumps for marketing is moving more wholeheartedly into social selling. To start, consider targeting a customer who does not think about office furniture. A small business owner rarely thinks about office spaces in general. They likely don’t know your brand or why your products cost more than IKEA. Focus for a moment on what it means for your social selling and digital marketing strategy (though when we’re back to flying regularly, never underestimate the power of an in-flight magazine).

Do furniture companies need to dive into TickTock? Probably not. Or at least not yet. The channels are not new, but you may use them differently.

Most B2B companies have a poorly-thought-out social strategy, if they have one at all. They haven’t taken the time to think through which channel aligns with their respective target audiences and how that impacts content; how their goals may change from Instagram to LinkedIn to Facebook. Some manufacturers may need to consider how their B2B channel is represented compared with a retail-centric brand – and what it means for these two voices to co-exist.

What are we asking the potential customer to do? Unlike the large corporate clients, retail, small-, and medium-sized businesses have different priorities, fewer resources, and different ways of making decisions. They rarely think about office spaces and buy even less frequently. Furniture companies will need to create marketing systems that favor the long game while inspiring shoppers to act with retail incentives like seasonal promotions.

Competitive Sets

Beyond targeting smaller businesses and individuals, your competitive set just grew exponentially. Manufacturers that lack retail brand awareness are starting from scratch to get their name out there in a meaningful way. The perceived difference between a well-known brand within the industry and a startup may be negligible. It may be more about the retailer than the manufacturer. Should I buy from Amazon? Staples? Costco? Maybe I should work with a local interior designer? What comes up when I search for “office furniture near me,” and who has the highest Google review?

The expectations for quality and service are different in this market. Fast and easy may be more important than product life or durability.

Product Mix

A lot of work goes into commercial furniture products. World-class performance and durability paired with thought leadership result in items that cost significantly more than retail. Corporate clients take advantage of complex discounting approaches, but the difference is difficult to understand to the layman. Why does the ergonomic chair from Staples cost $150 and is ready the next day, while the one from the “major manufacturer” costs $800 and takes three weeks to deliver?

To win in this space, it will take more than offering the same products with different marketing. It will require new offerings and supply chain efficiencies. For comparison, Branch, an office furniture startup, sells an “ergonomic package” that includes an electronic, height-adjustable desk with presets and a mesh ergonomic task chair with 7 points of adjustment for $940 and is ready to ship within 3-5 business days. This offer may be challenging for many commercial manufacturers to match with current offerings.

Customer Experience

There are always new products in this marketplace, but there is also much product parity. Memorable experiences will give both manufacturers and sellers a competitive edge. The experience of the customer may be where your strategy needs to shift the most. If we assume that a furniture brand isn’t known and the buyer may see products as indistinguishable except for the price, CX is an opportunity for differentiation.

As it stands today, many dealers hold relationships as much as the manufacturer. Furniture companies need to consider how they want to approach the market and what this means for their dealers and reps. Do they carve out a section of the market to go directly to buyers, drive all leads to local dealers, or find a solution in the middle? If the goal is to drive business to a local seller, the challenge is twofold. First, the manufacturer needs to help the dealer stand out. Second, the manufacturer will need to strive for McDonald’s-like consistency from one dealer to the next. Online, no business is only local, and buyers will complain or praise both the product and seller. In their minds, there isn’t a distinction. Losing control of the experience means losing control of the brand narrative.

Consider how a focus on experience is bringing change to the auto industry. Not long ago, CarFax changed the game by offering a deeper level of transparency to the market and set a goal to empower consumers. More recently, Carvana upped the ante by buying, selling, delivering, and picking up cars from the consumer's home. Auto manufacturers have started to launch subscription services. From Ford to Porsche, consumers now have the option to subscribe instead of lease or buy.

Fight or Flight

Now that COVID has pushed commercial furniture off the cliff, leaders will take advantage and find new ways to win. There will be some early successes and misfires, but our industry is resilient. A willingness to collaborate and learn from each other and our knowledge on how work truly happens will help us find a way. We may have entered a volatile few years, but the pivot is exciting. Innovation emerging from a crisis will mark a new era.

This idea, attributed to management guru Peter Drucker, has widespread adoption by business leaders and managers. C-Suites and board rooms demand metrics to inform decisions. It’s essential to monitor progress, correct course, and lean into what works. Executives want dashboards, but what numbers are on the dials? What are the levers? What are the outcomes?

The era of big data is upon us. We have more ways to collect information than ever before, and next-gen companies like Facebook and Google are poster children. Google’s name literally means a big number. Discussions about big data often go to insights and visualizations – how the data adds up. We think: If only we could identify the right metrics, the best KPIs, and manage to them, we could change course and accelerate our success.

These things are true, but measurement is tricky. We want things to be simple, but the easiest things to measure are often the least important. We may know that people are on our website, but we don’t know why. We have a bias for numbers because black-and-white answers are easier to understand, but measurements aren’t absolute. Measurement is comparison and categorization. To measure something is to use an instrument and a scale.

Easy things to measure are often the least important.

The instrument of measurement affects your results. If seeing is believing, one kind of instrument is the naked eye. In the early days of seafaring, sailors navigated the oceans using the stars to find their way in the darkness. Telescopes helped. So did compasses and sextants. Nowadays, GPS has replaced the art of celestial navigation. More powerful instruments can be more accurate but also change your perspective or even what you’re measuring.

We enjoy photography from space, but the Hubble Telescope doesn’t take color pictures. Hubble doesn’t take pictures at all in the conventional sense. Its cameras record light with unique electronic detectors that produce one-color data maps. Scientists then use computers to assemble multiple monochromatic layers to compose images with colors used to define and highlight parts of the picture. Hubble images are as much data visualization as photographs.

Back on earth, our smartphones have become our primary cameras. Gone are the days of film technology attempting to “faithfully” capture an image. Dynamic digital post-processing is mainstream, enabling us to capture motion, time-lapse, dark settings, and more. From family photos to selfies destined for social platforms, filters manipulate our likenesses in the best possible light. The instrument affects the outcome.

New data shape understanding.

Our ability to measure things has only increased with technological advances. Radar systems use radio waves and LiDAR uses lasers to track the position of objects, and infrared devices capture heat data. We have instruments that measure motion, proximity, pressure, light, and ultrasonic waves. We rely on x-rays and MRIs to take pictures of our innards, shaping how we diagnose and treat disease. Some people say that AI will replace radiologists as machine learning reads x-rays more reliably than humans. Like photo filters, the instrument is not only measuring but also interpreting data. All these new data interpretations shape how we understand the natural world.

Technology helps us measure more things with greater intensity but also gives us greater access. More data not only increases our knowledge but also changes our understanding. The era of 24-hour news started in 1980 with the launch of CNN, increasing news data for millions of people worldwide. Layer in a decade of social media, and we have all become much more voracious consumers of news data. More news seems to make us more worried about the state of the world, despite any actual progress. According to Harvard professor Steven Pinker, much has improved over the last century. Poverty has decreased, there are fewer wars, lower maternal mortality, lower illiteracy, less crime, higher IQ scores, and we work fewer hours than ever before. Yet today, trouble on the other side of the world creates more anxiety than it did a generation ago simply because the information is available. More data changed our focus and overall outlook.

It matters where we point our camera. Henry Ford famously said that if he asked customers what they wanted, they’d ask for a faster horse. By now we know many business innovations don’t come directly from what customers say they want. Ford helped define a solution for what people needed by identifying different metrics.

Measurement has consequences.

Consider what is measured and the ripple effects. In the early days of Facebook, the social media pioneer famously created the ability to “like” user posts, tag other users in photos, and prompted users with notifications. This formula proved wildly successful in increasing their primary metric – user engagement. The achievement, now duplicated in many platforms, has led to significant controversy about social media addiction. Considering the effect on teens, depression, and attention, when is there too much engagement? What is the impact of putting the finger on the scale of a system, and what are the outcomes?

When it comes to business success, the traditional metrics have been clear. Increasing shareholder value has been the primary objective. Today, even on Wall Street, leaders are starting to look at new metrics. With a different focus and lens, many organizations are beginning to weigh their impact on culture, equity, and the planet.

Measurement itself changes systems. In quantum physics, a concept called the Uncertainty Principle states that you can never simultaneously know the exact position and the exact speed of an object because everything in the universe behaves like both a particle and a wave. Particles are more concrete, more black-and-white. Understanding an object as a wave is more complicated because it suggests movement and frequency. I’m not a physicist, but we can understand that there can be more than one singular truth. How we know something can be a result of measurement itself.

We can only manage what we can measure, so be careful to measure the right thing. Don’t get paralyzed. Research can sound like a headache or a panacea, depending on your perspective, but some data is better than no data. Know what you’re looking for and the limits of what you may find. Be aware of how and where you’re looking and what decisions you make to affect change. Measurements aren’t absolute so much as comparisons. They can offer insights to make decisions and inspire action.

When we look back on this era, I hope big data will be known not merely for its bigness but for our understanding – what we learned in order to inform better decisions.

We tend to think about ourselves as uninvolved observers of experiences, but that’s not how it works. It can seem like events happen to and around us, then we respond. But our responses, and how we think about what’s happening, is quite literally all in our heads. Everything we experience comes from our brains. We get clues about what is happening from our senses, but the evidence of experience comes with memory, anticipation, and perception. These thinking modes both cloud and clarify our understanding about our experiences.

An experience is not separate from other events. We remember what happened before and anticipate what will happen after. If it’s something we’ve done before, we compare our current experience to what we remember from last time. It’s hard to tease these things apart. In his book, Stumbling on Happiness, author and Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert describes that how we think about today – in particular, happiness – is a comparison of how we should feel with how we are feeling. But our perceptions are cloudy. Remembering what happened yesterday isn’t like replaying a movie; rather, it’s punctuated by highs and lows. So we remember the seemingly important bits. Then, our memory of the past is colored by how we feel today. We compare how we feel right now to how we think we should be feeling based on a future projection of how we think we’re supposed to be feeling. Then, our vision of the future often misses the mark. The trouble is, Gilbert argues, we aren’t great at remembering the past or projecting the future, and even have a hard time assessing our current state. Experience is not absolute. Experience is not only subjective, it’s “unobservable to anyone but the person having it.”

Even more confusing is how we think about positive and negative. Psychologists have come to understand that “bad is stronger than good.” We remember negative feedback more than positive feedback, that bad stereotypes are quicker to form and more resilient than good ones. It’s been postulated that the “magic ratio” between good and bad must be at least 5:1, meaning that for every negative encounter, there should be a minimum of five positive ones to counterbalance the effects of the first. This is an important dynamic to consider for personal relationships, customer experiences, social media, and politics. Breaking relationships is easier than building trust.

These psychological phenomena pose challenges for well-intentioned teams aiming to improve experiences. Too many surveys ask customers to rank their emotions with a number. Metric-seeking leaders have a bias toward quantitative over qualitative data because numbers feel more definitive. Asking customers to rate an experience can give you a definitive answer about how people answered a survey question – but that may not reflect their true emotions, perceptions, or ultimately, help us understand their actions. Self-reporting by customers, employees, and learners may not be all that illuminating because quantifying subjective experiences if often unreliable. Even the Net Promoter Score, considered a gold standard by many customer experience professionals, carries similar risks. A balance between data sources including both quantitative and qualitative research can yield better results.

It’s helpful to recognize that while experience is subjective, people are predictable. Gilbert notes that “if you are like most people, then like most people, you don’t know you’re like most people.” We see ourselves as special but we’re all more alike than we are different. Customers can say what they want but they don’t always know what they need. Helping people make better decisions and move forward is the aim of experience design. Evaluating experience isn’t about a single number or point in time. Shaping better experiences means understanding a broader context, knowing what happens before and after, and seeking net positive outcomes.

In our minds, we employ a version of the scientific method: We observe, ask questions, create a theory. We’re not always rigorous about it. The data aren’t incomplete and we don’t always test our hypothesis. We don’t reflect on the evidence. Suspicion about motives leads to conspiracy theories and confirmation bias deepens our resolve. We believe what we believe, and know what we know. If we don’t look up, we can find ourselves in a ditch or at least in a rut. We may not even recognize where we are or how we got there.

The information age promises to be an oracle but risks being a Pandora’s box. In The Death of Expertise, author Tom Nichols suggests that we are “witnessing the death of the ideal of expertise itself, a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laypeople, students and teachers, knowers and wonderers – in other words, between those of any achievement in an area and those with none at all.” Experts can be wrong, but they recognize that trial and error is how we learn. Professionals value progress over perfection. All this was true even before the social media echo chamber, which makes it even harder to understand what’s going on.

Organizations are groups of people. Subject to groupthink, groups have opinions, too.

Companies that feel stuck are most often bound by opinions. Collectively, companies, departments, and work teams have a way of doing things, a culture, a bias. Facts shape team understanding, but a sea of information can make it hard to separate signals from the noise. Business choices should not be personal opinions. Charged with defining a strategy, leaders need to be more scientific with their method. Often, the answer lies with asking the right questions and solving the right problem.

Without a rigorous way to solve problems, opinions take over. People jump to conclusions. Too often, problems are misdiagnosed, leading to what cognitive scientists call a fundamental attribution error – solving the wrong problem. Albert Einstein famously said that “if I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” Einstein knew that asking the right question would lead to the best answer. It’s why problem diagnostics have become an essential part of innovation practice.

Problem framing often involves seeking root motives and causes. Any product or service fulfills a basic need but also a deeper one. Why do you buy food? Sure, you’re hungry, but it’s also because you don’t want to starve. You don’t want to starve because you want to be healthy, perhaps because you must take care of your family. Because you love your family and you’re seeking stability, happiness, and peace. This line of questioning, sometimes known as the Five Whys, is an abstraction ladder. Moving up and down an abstraction ladder can help teams better understand the problem space and how to create more customer value. You don’t need to consider self-actualization every time you go to the grocery store, but identifying deeper customer needs can help teams solve better problems.

We think about problem abstraction on at least three levels - philosophy, principle, and practice. In order to change, practitioners need to understand that best practices may need to give way to new practices. Practice areas should be governed by principles and based on a philosophy. A strong foundation and connecting the dots will make for a more robust and adaptive organization.

You don’t need to be Einstein to see that solving better problems yields better solutions. Problem discovery may sound like a waste of time for those with strongly-held opinions, but as Nichols writes, “when life and death are involved, it’s a lot less funny.” Expertise is relative, but seek to listen and learn. As Ronald Reagan said regarding Russian containment, ironically using the Russian proverb doveryai, no proveryai, “trust, but verify.”

To make a bigger difference, find the right problem. Work to get out of your normal opinions, bias, and culture. Follow a process and look for guides. Your opinion is vital, but you need to know where you are and how you got there in order to map where you’re going.

Want to discuss?

Join Kevin Budelmann and Jake Himmelspach for Office Hours—a live webinar on Thursday, December 18th at 12 pm EST to explore this topic through further conversation.

Register by clicking here

We have many clients in the commercial design industry, mostly focused on physical products and experiences – buildings, architecture, interior design, furniture, textiles, flooring, lighting, materials, and supply chains. These environments support work, education, healthcare, hospitality, retail, and home life.

Today, many human activities are digital. Products and services are delivered virtually, and the emerging world involves app stores, saas work tools, distance learning, telemedicine, and on-demand entertainment, and gaming. The new digital landscape was already taking over when the global pandemic accelerated this trend. As we begin to comprehend these changes, new paradigms for designing for experiences are becoming more mature. Some interaction designers have been exploring how digital design may need to take cues from urban planning – digital placemaking.

For office work, the promise of the IoT of everything is blurring the line between furniture and technology. The emergence of cloud and edge computing is allowing for a new ecosystem. Technology will be woven into our work environments, not just an additional layer like a phone or laptop computer. The new built environment landscape calls for new paradigms designing experiences.

The discussion of work beyond physical environments is robust. We can learn from new thinking about motives, purpose, and productivity, considering the psychology of work. Slack is a software company, but also a digital work environment provider. Its recent State of Work report highlights critical issues for organizations today, emphasizing how modern work is about people, and how people need to be connected and aligned to their organization’s strategic vision.

Maturing concepts in digital design are a helpful source of input. As we better understand user behavior and experience, the fields of UX and interaction design offer a new foundation for the built environment – both physical and virtual. There are many lists of UX principles which can offer new insights for traditional built environments and help build an emerging design vocabulary – the UX of Work.

Aesthetic Usability Effect: Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that’s more usable. Many designers and brands often feel this intuitively. While usability and aesthetics aren’t the same, some product companies take full advantage of the opportunity it creates when they get it right.

Doherty Threshold: Productivity soars when technology and its users interact at a pace that ensures that neither has to wait on the other. How long does it take to adjust or reconfigure your environment? What is the speed of thought?

Fitt's Law: The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target. Signage experts know this well. How might this relate to your wayfinding, branding, or messaging? What is the visual sightline of your physical space? How does that priority translate to a digital experience?

Hick's Law: The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices. The paradox of choice makes it hard for sellers and buyers to meet in the middle and makes it hard to know where to focus in a complex work environment. Narrowing choice means making strategic decisions.

Jakob's Law: Online, users spend most of their time on websites other than yours, so they prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know. Your aim to create unique environments can make user experiences more difficult. Does each product work differently? Does environment novelty inhibit productivity? Newness can fight usability.

Law of Common Region: Elements tend to be perceived into groups if they are sharing an area with a clearly defined boundary. How are you creating boundaries in your work environment? Are the groupings meaningful? Where is the separation or overlap?

Law of Pragnanz: People will perceive and interpret ambiguous or complex images as the simplest form possible because it is the interpretation that requires the least cognitive effort from the user. Is your environment complex or ambiguous, and if so how is it being interpreted? Does your environment help convey or obfuscate information? How is work supported through effective communication?

Law of Proximity: Objects that are near, or proximate to each other, tend to be grouped together. Are work teams nearby by default or convenience, or a deliberate choice? Are like features in close proximity to each other? Is the appropriate distance between unrelated spaces or functions?

Law of Simplicity: The human eye tends to perceive similar elements in a design as a complete picture, shape, or group, even if those elements are separated. Which parts go together? What should stand out? What design vocabulary is established by products, spaces, and features?

Law of Uniform Connectedness: Elements that are visually connected are perceived as more related than elements with no connection. Which parts deserve or require a visual connection? How will you create contrast?

Miller's Law: The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory. How many things are on your to-do list? Project list? How many people are on your work team? How many meetings do you have today? How many actionable emails are in your inbox?

Occam's Razor: Among competing hypotheses that predict equally well, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. This may work much of the time, but will it yield the most innovative results? What hypotheses shape your work environment? Which historical patterns should be disrupted?

Pareto Principle: For many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. How is this affecting your product portfolio? Space allocation? Project priorities? Product features? Meetings and tactics?

Parkinson's Law: Any task will inflate until all of the available time is spent. What is the effect of having default hour blocks for calendar entries? Fixed meeting room sizes? Standard project templates? Standard project teams? 40-hour weeks? Quarterly goals?

Peak-End Rule: People judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak and at its end, rather than the total sum or average of every moment of the experience. In addition, people remember bad experiences over good ones. Given this reality, how are you managing your customer experience? Employee experience? Work process experience? How might this affect project post-evaluation discussion? Institution memory?

Postel's Law: Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send. That is, be robust in seeking input, but be fastidious with your outputs. Is your work environment designed to support a lot of new information? How do you seek new insights? How does your process support careful work products? How do you measure outputs?

Serial Position Effect: Users have a propensity to best remember the first and last items in a series. How are you organizing your space, meetings, and work? Are you mindful of the impact of sequence? What happens in the middle? How do you monitor what is remembered vs what is important?

Tesler's Law: For any system, there is a certain amount of complexity which cannot be reduced. Where is the complexity in your work, or your customer’s experience? What is really needed, and what is wasteful? How are you absorbing necessary complexity from internal partners and customers?

Von Restorff Effect: When multiple similar objects are present, the one that differs from the rest is most likely to be remembered. How are you ensuring that important work stands out? How is your work environment reflective of your priorities? How does the product direct the user to make smart choices?

Zeigarnik Effect: People remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks. How do you show progress? How are you highlighting achievement?

These concepts may seem esoteric to some and groundbreaking to others. We know that built environment innovators will seek new ideas as they explore the new UX of Work.

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This article is part of “The UX of Work” series by Peopledesign, where we explore work, built environments, and user experience. For more information, go to peopledesign.com/ux-of-work.

Education is at a crossroads. Students, parents and everyone else feels it. The rising cost of education has outpaced inflation by at least five times since 1985 and has shown no signs of slowing. It’s a complicated problem. Globalization, cultural shifts, and emerging technology have all contributed to reshaping the higher education landscape.

Whatever the reason, the imbalance between cost and the perceived value was pressuring decision-makers to make hard choices even before COVID-19. Acutely aware of these pressures, many schools are and have been exploring alternative approaches such as online learning, tuition adjustments, and other measures. The pandemic is accelerating these changes.

Education leaders are faced with critical decisions about where to go next. Online learning is a reality but won’t solve all problems. Pricing adjustments can only go so far when budgets are already stretched thin. For many institutions, it will be time to rethink the overall value proposition of education.

Nearly all colleges and universities are derived from a historical archetype like Cambridge or Harvard. Each has a campus, dormitories, a fancy library, a clock tower, perhaps even some ivy on buildings. Updated models include state-of-the-art sports complexes and technology centers, climbing walls, and cafeterias serving lattes. There are clubs, activities, and competitions. In the end, there are commencement addresses and diplomas. Even with the number of grant and loan options, many students will not be able to afford – or choose to invest – in education with a sticker price that includes all these amenities.

Ultimately, price is an expression of value. One way to innovate is to unbundle and repackage offerings into new categories where people derive the most value. It can be hard to think this way given how we typically think about higher education, but it’s already happening in nearly every other industry. Amazon unbundled physical stores from retail, Netflix unbundled movies from theaters, and Spotify unbundled music from ownership. Many schools will be faced with unbundling their services, too.

We can think about education in terms of hard and soft skills, academic and social activities, mentorship, and leadership. For the sake of argument, consider three lenses for education: technical skills, people skills, and thinking skills.

Technical Skills and Certification

The lowest common denominator in education may be technical skills. While many in higher education prefer to focus on the numerous softer benefits of an education, the starting place is often hard skills. More specifically, certification. As Maslow's hierarchy is built on basic human needs, the baseline value for most students is about a degree, employability, and earning potential in the job market.

The pressure to get a return on a student investment has only increased with the dramatic rise in tuition rates. New, non-traditional competitors have crept into the education space including specific industry providers offering lighter-weight technical certifications. Most notably, LinkedIn, having acquired online learning company Lynda.com, has taken steps to achieve its mission to “connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.” LinkedIn Learning builds on its digital matchmaking between job seekers and employers. The connective tissue is skills – matching supply and demand. Certifications are next.

Faced with a much lower cost alternative, some students may opt-out of traditional education. The University of Phoenix and many others are creating a model that focuses on building skills efficiently. Many other schools may forego pieces of the education value proposition to target the core opportunity of skills development.

There are clear leaders already, but there are plenty of opportunities in this space. Technical skills are usually not static – they change with technology and the state of the art. The new digital landscape is creating completely new categories of work. Skills development is not time-boxed to a few years after high school; people will need to brush up on old skills and renew certifications. This is a time of great change, and most people will have several career transitions in their lifetime. Each career and each stage will require a new and growing set of skills.

People and Networking

Another way a traditional college or university adds value is through people. Being on campus with other people creates invaluable connections that help students during and well after their school years. Finding people with common interests, exposure to people unlike you, serendipitous meetings walking to class, forming a relationship with a helpful professor all add up to rich human experiences for learning.

For undergraduates, the traditional campus experience is like a soft landing into adulthood. On-campus living and meal plans create ways for young people to moderate their independence. Upperclassmen and graduates find like-minded cohorts based on a field of study, creating opportunities for collaboration, internships, jobs, and alumni networking.

For all these wonderful attributes, the traditional higher education model is a valuable but expensive experience. The modern college campus offers a high-quality service many people would love to experience their whole lives – healthy meals, exercise facilities, walkable courtyards, sophisticated architecture, impressive libraries. These are wonderful draws for young people and perhaps their parents, but to whoever is taking on student debt, this may not be worth the investment. We can only imagine how this is changing in the minds of young students with the emergence of social media, when digital connections may override physical interactions. This may be a scary thought for the many institutions that have invested millions in their facilities, but surely there are ways forward.

In the small college town where I grew up, the local school was not only a big employer and importer of students from all over, but it was also the central meeting place, intellectual hub, and entertainment heart of the town. The college was where everyone met for coffee, concerts, lectures, plays, and sporting events. The role of the school in the community had little to do with academics or certifications.

There are many people who may wish to have the college campus experience without the need for certification. Large schools with sophisticated sports programs already know this, but perhaps universities can offer their services more explicitly to the community – rather than being an afterthought. Perhaps universities can offer subscriptions or memberships to its facilities for people who live nearby. Surely its athletic facilities can rival many local health clubs, its venues can be available for commercial lectures and entertainment, and its campus store can compete with a local coffee shop. This isn’t to say that a college should seek to compete with the community per se, only to suggest that school has many tremendous assets beyond traditional models for the student-customer, academics, and facility use.

Critical Thinking

For the most high-minded academics, the crown jewel for education is about critical thinking. Beyond degrees, networking, and amenities, the purest motivation for learning is about problem-solving, enlightenment, empowerment, and the true aims of liberal education.

In the last several decades, the humanities have given way to engineering and business degrees have been favored in the C-Suite. Apple may have signaled a change. The business juggernaut was famously spearheaded by Steve Jobs, a college dropout with a flair for marketing and an affinity for design. Apple stands alone, but it’s worth noting that many other companies are following suit, as companies consider how to become a meaningful brand in the eyes of their customers. More blended, humanities-oriented approaches are finding their way into engineering, which is being seen as more of an art today, business, enamored by design thinking.

At Peopledesign, we place great value on the ideals of education in this vein, believing that much apathy, bias, and fear stems from ignorance. Embedded in Aristotle’s famous line that “the more you know, the more you know you don't know” is a measure of humility. Democracy itself is dependent on an educated public, and higher education is essential for a stable and just society.

Creating thinking individuals are at the heart of colleges and universities, despite the fact that they are businesses with increased pressure to perform in terms of employability and amenities. Here, too, schools may find ways to engage local communities and beyond through robust paid class auditing, learning clubs, or mentorship opportunities. If someone is interested in history, how might the history department engage a non-traditional student in a way that benefits both the institution and budding history students? Higher education has an important role to play in society. Colleges and universities might provide an offering that expresses its highest ideals, unburdened by certification or networking.

New Opportunities

In the coming years, or perhaps months, many higher education institutions will be pressured to make important choices about their future. Decreasing enrollment, competition, or other economic pressures may lead administrators to cut staff, professors, and even students in order to “right-size” their school for their current reality. Some of this is necessary. However, there are opportunities for innovators who are willing to view education through a new lens. Education today means a lot of different things. Each way schools add value could be separated from the current bundled model. Leaders will find new patterns of what people really want or need, helping to reframe how we advance our skills, network, and thinking.

Why do we talk about customer experience? Customers have had experiences since there were customers, so why is service design a topic today?

The concept of designing for experience is not new. It’s been around since the 1980s as an extension of product design. In the last several decades, product designers increasingly have considered the user as ideas about ergonomics and usability emerged. Actually, designing products is a bit of a misnomer because all design is about people – a product may be the medium, but user success is the objective. The same is true for architecture and interior design (people who occupy spaces), graphic design (viewers and readers), fashion design (viewers and wearers), and interface design (software users). Considering the user – or customer – experience is inherent to any design endeavor.

Experience as a medium for design started to become more resonant in the late 1990s. Talk of an experience economy as a successor to an agrarian economy and industrial economy started to take root with the communications technology revolution and the emergence of internet-related businesses. These ideas have never been more relevant than today. The aim of designing experiences has led to a more formal practice.

In the last decade in particular, experience design has gotten a lot of attention and it’s easy to understand why. The first generation iPhone was introduced in 2007, less than 15 years ago. Airbnb launched the following year, and Uber the year after that. In a larger sense, the societal impact of smartphones is only starting to be felt. The 2010 iPhone was the first to support video calls and made headlines for “antennagate” because cell service dropped if you held it the wrong way. Changes in the last ten years have been dramatic. What will smartphones be like in 2030?

New technology creates new opportunities for experience. Smartphones blurred the line between hardware and software, breaking conventions for each and leading to emergent practices to take on the user experience even more directly. Enabled by the internet, the SaaS offerings have turned products into services.

UX has caught on as the term de jour among software companies with the aim to make digital products more usable, appealing, and sticky. Digital experiences can be easier to measure than those in the real world. As company leaders recognized the link between customer experience and conversion, sales, and retention, UX has seen explosive growth in recent years.

Some may not see a link between UX and CX. In fact, design practitioners themselves often argue about terms: UI (User Interface design), UX (User Experience design), IxD (Interaction design), CX (Customer Experience design), and Service Design. Surely there is a lot to be said about the differences in these terms. Some emphasize aesthetics versus actions, others focus on customers and sales versus users and functions.

At Peopledesign, we believe that all these experiences – large and small – are on the same continuum. Think about it as layers of experience from macro to micro, like Russian nesting dolls. The challenge is to zoom in and out while managing for usability, continuity, and value.

A macro analysis for customer experience can start with a broad question: Did the value proposition work? Did the experience deliver the intended value? From there we tend to break the experience into phases, which may be sales-oriented (awareness, convince, buy, support) or perhaps product-oriented (unboxing, first experience, troubleshooting, flow, loyalty). User experience or UX is often more focused on the product experience. Did the app work? Can the user accomplish her goal? From there, you can examine more microinteractions. Can users complete the checkout process? Did the button work?

To work in experience as a medium for design is to consider time. Unlike many other design disciplines, experience design takes into account the user’s journey from one state to another. The concept of “liminality” comes into play here – the psychological process of transitioning across boundaries and borders. The term “limen” comes from the Latin for threshold; it is literally the threshold separating one space from another. An easy way to think about this transition is what happens before, during, and after.

Along the way, there are customer touchpoints. Each touchpoint is an interaction – and an opportunity. Marketers often talk about a call to action (or CTA). Product designers consider use cases. Business people seek customer loyalty. In all cases, an interaction can be a positive or negative experience, shaping a customer’s perception. Each exchange can lead to traction or slippage, so make each touchpoint count. You cannot not communicate.

On a deeper level, knowing more about the user or customer – their beliefs, biases, goals, and perceptions – should inform the design of each touchpoint. Borrowing from the psychology of how people make decisions and form habits can increase engagement and nudge them forward.

A different historical trajectory for customer experience work stems from customer service and hospitality. In the previous era, CX may have been limited to specific, defined customer interactions, usually limited to salespeople and customer support lines. Hotels would include the concierge and bellman. For B2B companies, “customer experience” may have been limited to a customer trip on the company jet, a visit to a showroom, and dinner.

Today, these ideas are blending together to a more holistic and modern approach to service design. We’re in the midst of a service revolution – an umbrella under which value is delivered to people. At this point, most product companies would be advised to consider the broader service envelope, and what customers really value. There are strong arguments that we are at a tipping point of a new subscription economy, where CX becomes the lifeblood.

The customer experience discipline continues to grow and change with emerging technology. As with much innovation, it is also mindful of the past. Sharing economy innovator Lyft was founded by John Zimmer, a veteran from the hospitality industry. Past or future, macro or micro, experience innovation will emerge from a better understanding of what is possible and what people really need.

Organizations making the jump exhibit behaviors which are expected and manageable. Change is hard, risky, and easy to resist. Some people want to keep one foot on solid ground. Tried and true processes are not abandoned easily – with good reason. Understanding history often is the starting place for defining the future. However, to remain relevant, organizations must evolve. Others view change as a mandate, aiming for newer, higher ground.

There are those at the top of the S-curve, finishing a growth-cycle in a mature market. They feel locked in with competitive pressure and stress over the need to change. We describe these as “Sad Banana” teams. Sad Bananas need to see the big picture, get over their denial, and take action.

There are others who are making the jump, at the bottom of the S-curve and are looking toward the future. They feel excited but nervous about what’s next. These “Happy Bananas” need ideas about speed, scale, and customer mindshare. Happy Bananas need to be agile, get organized, watch their blind spots.

There are Happy Banana people in Sad Banana companies and vice versa. Each is balancing change in large and small ways. Forward-looking leaders seek to understand these dynamics for sharper focus and better alignment.

This article originally published in our monthly insights newsletter. Click the subscribe button to sign up for more ideas about change.

In his recent commencement address, actor Tom Hanks told graduating seniors that they will have “started in the olden times, in a world back before the Great Pandemic of 2020.” Hanks’ forward-looking vision, framing three months ago as the days of old, allows us to think bigger and look ahead.

From haircuts to concerts, everyone wants to go back to the way things were before the lockdown. Even at the scale of this crisis, it’s tempting to think of it as a blip or an anomaly, but things are not likely to go back to normal. Our new reality is forcing change and accelerating changes already underway.

We need a new frame for the challenges we face today. In the middle of a global pandemic, we find ourselves at home, left to consider what comes next. We are obliged to change our behavior in our personal and business lives. Even more significant change – new patterns, habits, and protocols are likely to emerge.

Change is hard enough. Accelerated change is undoubtedly harder, but it feels different. It may require short-term pain, but ripping the band-aid off may lead to a healthier future.

New Protocols

In the nearly two decades since 9/11, we have seen a global shift in priorities. From airport security to sporting events, scanning technology to personal IDs, immigration to geopolitical conflict, we have adopted new protocols for managing the risk of terrorism. Over time, we accepted these changes as a new normal.

New protocols are coming in the wake of the pandemic. Like global counterterrorism, infection control will be part of our future. Technology will play a role; chemicals for cleaning hands and surfaces, masks and protective gear, expedited temperature checks and testing, hopes of a vaccine. As with digital transformation, it’s also about people – a different mindset, new systems, and training. Technology is only as good as the people who know how to use it.

Even after today’s emergency, we have awakened from an infection management slumber. COVID-19 may not be the only new virus we will see in our lifetime – or even the most dangerous. We will emerge from our homes, but the rules that govern public life will change for generations to come.

New Habits

We are creatures of habit. Sudden stay-at-home orders came as a shock at first, but now it’s been going on for months. For many, staying and working from home will continue for the months ahead.

The longer we stay at home, the more new habits will emerge. Sheltering in place has broken nearly every stage of our collective habit loop, which means we’re all in the process of creating new loops. Our habit cues and rewards are changing as we rethink what we can do from home, see fewer people, and go to fewer places.

Habits are hard to break. If we suddenly had a successful vaccine available at scale, would we go to the store as often or make do with Amazon? Perhaps we like curbside pickups and watching movies at home. Surely, saving money and more family time is an improvement. If any of these things are true today, consider what it will look like in a year or two.

New Patterns

Accelerated change is making new patterns more visible. Organizations with an industrial mindset were already at risk. In recent weeks, well-known retail brands, including JCPenny, Neiman Marcus, J. Crew, Pier One, Art Van Furniture, and Gold’s Gym, have all filed for bankruptcy. It’s a disaster for employees and shareholders. However, in the age of Amazon, or even Peloton, would these companies have survived the long term?

People are working from home. With new habits and protocols on the horizon, we see new dynamics for work. Several technology companies, including Twitter, Facebook, and Shopify, have recently announced that their employees can decide never to come back to a traditional office. Not all companies will follow suit, but many can and will capitalize on the new reality.

Colleges and universities, already faced with the explosive growth of online learning alternatives, are pressured to find new paths for innovation faster than planned. What does a college campus need to be in the future – and what happens when the future is now? Even K-12 education is finding its way forward in this new era. Online resources from Google Classroom to TED Talks are forcing essential discussions about what needs to happen in a physical classroom.

Healthcare, which traditionally requires a lot of hands-on services, is seeing a renaissance of telemedicine. The pressure to decrease costs and risk was already immense. Soon, personal doctor visits may become as rare as house calls in former olden times. Infection control was previously a chief concern for hospitals, resulting in increased remote, outpatient, and federated facility services.

For shopping, working, education, and healthcare, new patterns are becoming evident. Same-time/place interactions were already the most expensive, and in the current crisis, the least manageable. Many are reimagining the customer journey with touchpoints requiring fewer humans. Ironically, to achieve this, we need real people to do the work. Once we forge these new paths, we may not go back.

Change Horizon

No one can predict the future, but if we focus on the horizon, we can see the shape of what’s to come. While the pandemic seemed to come as a surprise, experts saw it coming. Similarly, we can see changes in the economy even before this system shock. Leaders with their eyes on the future will fare better than those rooted in the past.

Most organizations were already in the midst of a digital transformation – or soon would have been. Controlling the spread of infection creates an emphasis on reducing human contact for package and pizza delivery, but would have happened in any case. Organizations further along in their digital transformation (see: Amazon) will survive and thrive in the next chapter of our economy. Modernization of business is coming in the form of automation, with or without COVID-19.

Technology has empowered many of us in our homes, creating new habits, and increasing the need for self-serve digital platforms. The march toward automation now has two incentives – profitability and infection control. New awareness, protocols, and habits will shape our perceptions and public life.

A time of uncertainty creates opportunity. Many are taking this moment to assess patterns for work and life. We have the chance to reconsider commuting, travel, and perhaps create a better rat race. We may think about the time we have and how to spend it. Add to this other macro forces such as generational shifts, climate change, population density, and continued technology innovation. We have the ingredients to capitalize on this period of accelerated change. If we focus on new incentives and outcomes over past assumptions and precedents, we can embrace this moment for the better.

The technology revolution that is rapidly reshaping our lives is very young. Google has only been around for 20 years, Facebook, less than 15. The iPhone has only been around for a decade. Consider what cars were like when they were 20 years old.

We help our clients get different faster, which is to say, change. The radical shifts in our economy are happening faster than many people or organizations can manage. We help companies change by helping them create customer experiences that fulfill a future-focused value proposition.

Company culture often resists change. It can be hard to reframe a business, particularly if you have been on a successful trajectory for decades. Careers have been built on past precedent, and shifting gears mid-stream is scary.

Change doesn't happen overnight, but it starts with asking the right questions. Sometimes, we shamelessly borrow from the 1990s Christian bracelet craze "What Would Jesus Do? (WWJD)" and ask our clients to consider: What Would Amazon Do (WWAD)? How would Amazon solve your business problem? If you prefer, how would Google solve it? Or Apple?

It's a question we've asked for several years, but it's becoming more prescient. Grocery retailers likely did not ask themselves WWAD – until Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market. Now, it's probably the top agenda item on grocery executive boardrooms. There may be no evidence that Amazon or Google are moving directly into your market. Still, we should learn from what is happening around us, and take action before they do.

Scott Galloway, the NYU professor and author who predicted Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods, talks about the oversized impact of tech behemoths. Galloway warns that Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook are gobbling up all the resources and becoming so powerful that they may need to be broken up. While these matters will fall on the shoulders of power brokers, the footprints lefts by these new giants are undeniable.

But the world is changing. Today, the creation of new value does not come from making and moving physical products around. Post-industrial companies focus on capturing and understanding information. It’s a quantum difference. The change may not be news, but industrial processes affect how we think. It shapes our mindset in ways that are not obvious. The iconic assembly line, which was a significant innovation for achieving industrial scale, and has become a metaphor for all forms of work. Too often, we organize our work like a factory.

Most of our organizations, institutions, and infrastructure today – business, education, healthcare, government – were created with an industrial mindset. Hospitals count beds, schools count heads, and companies count customers. Quantitative measures are essential but not always meaningful. Most organizations have goals beyond pushing paper – they seek outcomes. Social outcomes like health, education, desirability, trust, and ethics are harder to measure, so we revert to easy, machine-like terms. 
 

But patients, students, and customers are not parts on an assembly line. They are people. People are not machines. Assembly lines are linear systems with predetermined paths, but assembly-line thinking is not suited for the complex challenges ahead. Solving new problems for people requires a different mindset.

For example, knowledge work depends on information sharing. Industrial processes tend to be top-down, but specialized knowledge work is often bottom-up. This shift is disruptive. Changing the flow of information has an immediate impact on traditional hierarchy and organizational design. It affects skill sets, expectations, work processes, training, language, and metrics.

Business school itself is an industrial idea. Management as a discipline stemmed from assembly line thinking and led to a kind of industrial, centralized command-and-control. In an era of TED Talks, Khan Academy, and crowdsourcing, even the idea of a few years of graduate school being sufficient to become a leader throughout your career seems dated. Yet, the structure of many organizations and the mindset of leaders resemble industrial factories. While much has changed in 100 years, let alone the last decade, many organizations rely on principles from a previous era. 
 

The post-industrial economy has a different character. What lies ahead isn’t certain, but we know it’s not likely to look like the past. The new infrastructure being laid by tech giants is enabling even more significant change. Moving forward, the most robust and sustainable organizations will foster teams that have a new mindset. Winning teams will adopt an agile mindset and stay ready for what’s next.

All organizations begin with a spark. Founders create something new based on a vision or a critical insight. It's not easy. It takes intensity and friction – after all, new ideas rub old thinking the wrong way. Then, as the organization matures, founders need to change their behavior to become managers in order for the business to catch fire. Starting a company is different than growing a company.

Any successful enterprise has lived through this transition. Either the founders learned how to shift, they hired a good team with different skills, or both. Sometimes leaders get stuck between gears because they don't fully appreciate the need for this change. Their teams feel it, however, and company performance reveals it. Founders are rewarded early for moving fast (and "breaking things," notably identified by Facebook), but friction and explosions aren't always what a company needs to grow.

When it comes to catalyzing growth, we have found at least two essential goals: Strategic Focus and Organizational Alignment. These are two sides of a coin; you need a focus to guide alignment, and you need alignment to manifest a focus. Nearly every organization could use more of each, but what happens first can be determined by its stage of growth. If you consider the typical S-curve lifecycle from startup to growth, maturity, and decline, there is alternating urgency between focus and alignment.

In their startup and maturity phases, organizations first need greater focus—either they haven't determined their focus yet, or have perhaps lost focus. Then they can align their activities based on that new or renewed focus. Companies in growth mode don't feel unfocused, but the parts are often out of alignment. Getting ducks in a row can clear the way for a better focus on the next horizon. Organizations in a declining situation should be looking to restart, or jump the S-curve, meaning they too should start with a new focus.

Sparking growth and keeping it lit requires a leader to adapt to the changing needs of their organization. The creative spark that started a company can become its Achilles' heel, so founders need to shift their behavior from creating sparks to managing the burn. A healthy balance of strategic focus and organizational alignment can keep the fire burning.

So what went wrong? Probably a lot of things, but the pacing is often an overlooked component of technology adoption. Culture is often the biggest hurdle in capturing these opportunities. Organizations need to be honest about the role new technologies will play and what level of adoption their culture can tolerate. Doing so can help set an adoption pace that leads to sustainable change, using three key stages of adoption as milestones to chart progress.

Mr. Digital comes in with grand promises, but ultimately needs to get individuals within the organization to think and act differently. This is no small task, and when talk around new technologies arise, the time and resources needed to change habits internally can get shortchanged. It is worth taking time to look across multiple industries and assess where your industry and, more specifically, your organization is on the technology adoption curve. This can help give an honest depiction of where your organization really is while pointing toward truly differentiating approaches to technology by learning from other industries.

Mapping the Bell Curve

On the left side of the bell curve are the true high-risk leaders, constantly pushing the edges of where and how technology can be used. To no surprise, these are often technology-based companies – think FANG companies and startups. The technology these companies are playing with is in an experimental phase, not yet ready for the mass market. Early technologies are "close to the metal" and require committed collaborators to mature them into viable technologies at an industry scale. Only the high-risk leaders who plan to innovate here will take the risk of creating new technologies. Their experiments can reveal the desirability of the new technology, proving out what’s viable and exploring different use cases before going to market.

Low-risk followers are not far behind. These organizations tend to operationalize technologies that the high-risk leaders have proven to be viable opportunities. They are spread across different industries and are often supported by SaaS providers. These providers make the technology more accessible for fast followers, having solved the initial usability problems and making the technology more affordable for the masses in the middle of the bell curve.

On the right end of the bell curve are no-risk newcomers who are also spread across different industries, or could be entire industries in and of themselves. They risk being dismissed by customers and talent if they are not delivering experiences that match the expectations of the broader market. They also, however, have plenty of opportunities. By this time, the technology has been proven out thoroughly. It can be implemented at a low cost and it is easier to find talent that is familiar with it. They can make quick gains in these areas and, if the entire industry is in the same position, it allows them to adopt known technologies and implement as a differentiator. If these organizations can stretch their thinking further up the bell curve, they can put a wider moat between them and the competition and still be utilizing tested and proven technologies.

Three Stages of Technology Adoption

No matter where the organization is on the bell curve, there are three high-level stages of adoption that can be used as milestones to gauge pacing: Intentional Experiences, Ease and Optimization, and Open Spaces.

Intentional Experiences means the organization is using discernment with technology. They have a purpose and a place for it and are clear on where it is useful and where it is not. They are not overbuying enterprise-level software or implementing digital experiences where a physical or personal experience would make more sense. They are becoming increasingly familiar with the technology landscape and how to use different solutions effectively.

Ease and Optimization is the next level. In this stage, organizations are not just being intentional about their use of technology, but are using it in ways that optimize internal workflows and/or brings a greater sense of ease and delight to the customer experience. Rather than adopting processes and experiences that are dictated by tools, organizations are customizing tools to solve for their own UX needs. They are not just keeping up with their industry's standard use of technologies, but implementing it in a way that hits the top and bottom line.

Finally, organizations are using technology to create Open Spaces within their industry. The culture has shifted to think through a digital lens. Although only a select few within the organization may be charged with being technology evangelists and educators, everyone is comfortable with emerging terms and use cases. Technology has a greater impact on the offer and direction of the organization, potentially leading to new markets and open spaces, generating new sources of value for the organization.

These descriptions of technology adoption are more of a rule of thumb than definitive, but are hopefully helpful in giving a general sense of where your organization may be on the bell curve. The more we can understand the gap between where our organizations and industries are, the more we can identify new opportunities for differentiation and growth.

Outsourcing Sales and Service

The dealer model was largely pioneered by the auto industry, starting in 1898, and has been replicated in many ways since then. Manufacturers, increasingly specialized in production, sought alternate ways to sell. It became clear that selling cars directly, by mail order, or through traveling salesmen wouldn’t scale. A model emerged whereby a network of aligned, independently-owned franchises which would sell one maker’s cars.

Creating independent franchises and dealership channels became a convenient way to essentially outsource sales. Manufacturers could focus on efficient production and mitigate risk. They could achieve growth through independent dealers that were already on the ground, closer to customers, and focused on selling.

Over time, a global supply chain and technological advancement increased competition and price pressure. Margins on products became thinner, and dealers began to focus on services. New products were still a driver, but they sometimes lost money on the initial sale. Dealers found opportunities in service repairs and warranty claims, as well as used vehicles and auto auctions.

In the built environments industry, many furniture manufacturers created dealer-based sales channels during its early explosive growth era in the 1960s and 1970s. Like the automotive industry, dealerships were first based on product sales but shifted to services over time.

New Customer Relationships

Furniture dealers have felt many of the pressures by auto dealers. Aligned dealers initially built their brands based on manufacturer's products, since product brands were initially the main sales driver, and manufacturers have aimed to own the marketing message. Manufacturers invest in brand-building, and because manufacturers are typically larger and have more resources than any single dealership, dealers are beholden to manufacturers. On the other hand, manufacturers are dependent on dealers for sales, and they don’t completely own the sales channel. All this creates tension between dealers and manufacturers.

What’s more, the landscape has changed. In 2001, Apple famously made an aggressive move to vertically integrate its sales channel. They cut off its retailers and invested heavily in owned Apple Stores. So long, CompUSA and Circuit City! Apple was by no means the other manufacturer in these computer supply stores, and it was a big bet that paid off. It was a canary in a coal mine for makers and distributors alike. Many strive to replicate Apple’s direct-to-customer success, including Microsoft. Tesla, the Apple-like auto manufacturer, has followed suit by owning its own car stores.

Business furniture is different than computers or cars, but there are parallels. In a mature market like commercial furniture, product features and pricing cycles have hardened. Customer access to information via the internet has changed everything.

In the past, both furniture and auto dealers have had a high rate of employee turnover. In fact, sometimes car salespeople and furniture salespeople have been interchangeable – which is to say, they are not experts. By contrast, Apple Stores feature a Genius Bar, presumably staffed by knowledgeable people.

Aside from Tesla’s experiment, so far, automakers haven’t taken big steps toward Apple-like stores. As with the furniture industry, dealer relationships are deeply rooted and would be harder to unbundle. For auto dealer innovation, consider CarMax.

Founded in 1993, CarMax is the largest used-car retailer in the U.S. and a Fortune 500 company. Unlike the roots of independent dealerships having relationships with large manufacturers, CarMax has taken a “big box” mentality to the dealership model. CarMax dealers are linked together, yielding network benefits including greater scale, access to inventory and better selection. Salespeople are paid on a commission per car, so there is no-haggle pricing. CarMax will buy any car on the spot after a short appraisal, regardless of whether or not the seller intends to buy a car at CarMax. In short, CarMax aims to make it easier to buy a car by removing customer pain.

Aside from its impressive sales growth, it is instructive to note how CarMax views itself through its Annual Reports. The cover of its 2017 report featured these words: Integrity, Value, Selection, and Customer Service. No mention of car brands. The 2018 cover highlighted their expectation of how customers buy today: Mobile phone > Desktop > Showroom > Person.

Better Customer Experiences

Furniture makers and dealers should take note. In the case of both Apple Stores and CarMax, the emphasis was on meaningful customer experiences – not products per se.

The contract furniture market is rife with confused selling procedures that can feel like buying a computer at CompUSA. Customers who are not industry veterans may wonder why things are so complicated. It’s not a distributor, it’s a dealer. No, not a dealer, a rep. Not an individual sales representative, a rep group. Not a rep, a manufacturer salesperson. Shall we discuss aligned vs open-line dealers? Let’s not even talk about A&D.

Dealer-based selling has to modernize. What started as a logical way to scale a hundred years ago has become a liability. Today, customers demand simpler, better experiences. Industry players have to consider all the pieces on the board, their functions, and connections. It could be that “dealer” is the wrong label - what is the connotation of a furniture dealer? What is the customer really trying to do? Are they looking to make a “deal” or solve a problem? What role are you going to play to help them achieve their goal? Here is a tip: The answer is not “furniture” – nor does it have anything to do with a business relationship between sellers and manufacturers.

Whether a manufacturer-driven solution like Apple Stores or a dealer-driven solution like CarMax, the answer is in an integrated whole and intentional brand experience. In case all this sounds like too much to ask, it’s helpful to note that business innovation is alive and well in many segments. After all, the entity behind the formation of CarMax was Circuit City.

In the information economy, quality products and delivery are table stakes. Yesterday, brands were products. Today, brands are meaningful customer experiences.

The coronavirus pandemic is having an enormous impact on the economy and daily life for millions around the world. Most of us are anxious for things to return to normal. Many are starting to think about what comes next, but in higher education, a new reality was already emerging. Today’s crisis may accelerate changes already underway.

In so many ways, higher education has been an enormous success. It’s raised the waterline for society and given many people access to employment and a larger world. Like many institutions created in the last century, colleges and universities became successful businesses and a vehicle to producing a predictable product at scale – in this case, graduates with degrees. Most schools were built for an industrial economy.

There are challenges. Tuition rates have risen much faster than inflation, making college harder to afford. With elaborate mechanisms for grants and scholarships, many students don’t even pay the full price. Still, college debt is a crisis for many people, contributing to a generation of millennials notably poorer than previous generations. Accessibility for underserved populations is a serious problem. Falling graduation rates suggest the difficulty of staying the course and erosion in perceived value. Iconic billionaires like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg are all college drop-outs, adding to a social narrative questioning the overall return on investment. There are many who believe that education was already at a tipping point, from colleges resetting their tuitions to politicians calling for public schools to be tuition-free.

In the meantime, distance learning enhanced by technology has been changing the game. From Khan Academy to MIT Open Courseware, access to education content is being democratized. Education innovators like the University of Phoenix have moved from pariah to case study. Online learning and blended models are emerging all over the world. A notable rise in certification programs, from specialized industry groups to LinkedIn Learning, points to the need for increasingly agile, ad hoc, and adaptive learning approaches. Emerging education platforms like Udemy, Coursera, Skillshare are changing models for content creation and delivery. Education as a whole is jumping the S-curve, whether traditional schools are ready or not.

Change is hard, especially for incumbents. The education ecosystem is mature with fixed dimensions: Administration and staff, faculty and tenure, campus life and facilities, academics and clubs, students and alumni, sports and donations. The boundaries of the box are clearly defined, but the need for change is real. There will be winners and losers. Today’s student has more choices, expectations, and will gravitate to places where they see real value and meaning. Schools with a strong brand and endowment are better equipped to navigate these new waters. In the digital age, being local is not a monopoly. Schools with a weaker position, vision, and lower risk tolerance may simply go away without substantive change. Strong leadership will be necessary.

Managers manage the present, but leaders manage the future. Leaders decide which problems to solve, and the problems ahead require rethinking assumptions about what it means to be a school. The goal, content, and delivery of education need to be reconsidered.

Employability is one goal, so how will future employers think about degrees? Significant employers like Google and Apple have started to drop their degree requirements altogether. The broader aims of liberal education have been de-emphasized in recent years, but are likely to remain relevant as we balance technological achievement with ethics. The focus becomes content – what will students need? In a rapidly changing world, people need academic fundamentals but emergent life skills, too: Agility, grit, balance, resilience. How will those classes be different? As for delivery, how should an institution of higher learning think about technology? Future models won’t just bolt on new platforms to old paradigms. There will be less of an emphasis on buildings with rich donors’ names on them. Students need lifelong learning. Will education be time-boxed to four years? It will require a more wholesale shift in thinking.

All these factors were at play before the pandemic. Now, they’re accelerating. Working from home and social distancing will bring a new context to what we can achieve from a distance. The pressure for learning to evolve is even greater today, having collectively experienced 10 years of change in 10 weeks. The education system, from K-12 through graduate programs and lifelong learning, needs to adapt rapidly to remain relevant and vital. Our economy and society depend on it.

Forging a future vision today requires a focus on values and meaning – for learners, but also educators, employers, and the broader education ecosystem. It means understanding how perceptions lead people to act, and how new experiences and habits can shape behavior. Setting a new course for colleges and universities is an essential next step for education leaders – and of significant consequence for society at large.

Many industry players discuss issues beyond furniture, including ergonomics, productivity, culture, health, and other related topics. However, the conversation always comes back to furniture. Manufacturing is the engine that built the industry and continues to drive profitability today. We all know that the landscape is shifting, but change is hard. People resist change. Today, the coronavirus pandemic has led to mandatory stay-at-home orders from governments worldwide, forcing workers who can work from home to do so. Office furniture has maintained a monopoly on the concept of "work" for decades now. However, this may be a tipping point at which nascent patterns reshape people's thinking about the workplace.

Traditional monopolies have been possible largely due to proximity – think stores, schools, or banks. Digital innovators have been disrupting these patterns by rethinking the model and delivering asynchronous services. Historically, nearly all work happened in an office: same time, same place. Even before recent work-from-home mandates, technology and market innovations were enabling people to think differently about the office. Now we’re being forced to face the reality that a lot of work can happen in different places and at different times.

The monopoly office furniture has had on work continues to erode. If we compare work between the same and different times and places, we can identify four work modes: In-Person work, Individual work, Distance work, and Asynchronous work. A traditional physical office may be required in only one of these four scenarios.

In-Person work

In-person work, or traditional office work, is the most dependent on physical space. Being in the same room can be the best way to facilitate group collaboration or have a one-on-one conversation. Please come in and close the door. Look someone in the eye. Technology is making it more possible to do this remotely, but hardly anyone would argue that a face-to-face meeting isn’t the best way for some types of personal exchanges.

A big question for office furniture makers becomes: What kind of work really needs to be done in this mode? What is the requirement for this work? How much open space? How much privacy? Today, manufacturers celebrate the need for a diverse range of workspaces to accommodate various user preferences and use cases. The idea is to let people choose where they want to work and allow them to float around. This makes sense except that you’re building in excess capacity by design – not all spaces will be fully utilized at any given time. How much couch time will be needed? Cost and space utilization studies will lead to a decrease in the overall footprint, so not everyone will be able to fit in the building at once. Workers who float may drift even farther.

Individual work

Heads-down individual work is what happens when you need to focus on a task without distractions. In an office, you’d close the door. What does it take for someone to really concentrate? It’s more of an issue for psychology than furniture, which is why books about modes for thinking and habits have come to the forefront. While technology has empowered some individuals to work independently, the overwhelming volume of notifications from email, chats, texts, messaging services, phones, wearables, and desktops has led to the emergence of technological snooze buttons on all major platforms.

What furniture is needed for individual work may be less of a mystery than where it’s located. The wobbly rise of WeWork and the broader emergence of shared spaces is shaping the office ownership landscape. It’s also creating new user expectations for an even greater diversity of workspaces, but those places still need furniture. A question for furniture makers will be where people go for individual work. It will be used in offices to some degree, as well as in co-working spaces, coffee shops, airports, hotel rooms, and homes. We might ask ourselves: Where else do we find people in a corner trying to get some work done?

Distance work

Business travelers are accustomed to working remotely already. Road warriors come to rely on office-like necessities – wifi on the airplane, airline clubs, hotels with lobbies that double as collaborative spaces, a desk in the room with power, or a phone charger at the bar.

Technology continues to offer alternatives for communication, sharing, and co-creation. This isn’t new – Microsoft Office is 30 years old. However, as web infrastructure and technology tools have matured, growing players like Zoom and Slack continue to gain traction. The new WFH environment has made video conferencing a reality for millions of worker,s and messaging services have become the lifeblood of many teams. Today’s indispensable smartphone enables instant communication worldwide.

Distance work today is enabled by technology more than furniture. Still, it’s essential to acknowledge that technology is simply what we call something invented since our birth. People under 30 don’t see smartphones or even the internet as technology at all – like a microwave oven, it’s just stuff they use. For many young people, new technology has yet to emerge. If we really aim to support work, not just furniture, how might we innovate differently?

Asynchronous work

The remote work revolution has been underway for several years. Asynchronous work has been championed by technology firms like Automattic (which creates WordPress, the platform that powers a large percentage of all websites) and Basecamp (an early SaaS pioneer and profit leader), but many remain unconvinced. There’s even been a kind of backlash. High-profile organizations, such as IBM, have recalled their remote workers, citing arguments that closer proximity yields better ideas and productivity.

Furniture companies have been targeting home office furniture and remote patterns for decades, but even so, the dust has not yet settled on how to balance the opportunity and challenge of working remotely. Companies may have to pivot. After a month or two at home, even remote work skeptics will have started new habits that may stick. Companies like Asana, which evangelize asynchronous work and build tools to support it, will continue to grow. What work products will people use at home, and where will they get them?

Today’s crisis is disruptive, but it may also be accelerating changes that are already underway. In-person, individual, distance, or asynchronous, it’s likely that among the lasting effects of the coronavirus pandemic will be a change in expectations of how work gets done. Disruption creates opportunity, but that doesn’t make the future any more obvious. If the office furniture industry undergoes a hard reset, there will be winners and losers. What we do know is that managers manage the known; leaders manage the unknown.

Leaders decide which problems to solve. Furniture offers more than just support for work, and work is only partly supported by furniture. The office furniture problem to solve today is how to navigate the changing relationship between furniture and work.

Despite political differences, moving from one country to another is less of a challenge than in previous decades, and is often desirable as people seek new experiences. In fact, 72 percent of Millennials prefer to spend money on experiences over material things. Growing up with a “work anywhere” mentality means they take it seriously.

To meet these new requirements, organizations are exploring telepresence and emerging tech to better support collaboration from a distance. The video conferencing industry is expected to grow 20 percent year over year, moving the industry from $16 billion to $41 billion by 2022 with continued demand. Meanwhile, from Artificial Intelligence (AI) to blockchain, new technologies are adopted in a variety of industries. Top talent will expect new collaboration modes, so companies are facing new challenges in order to stay competitive.

Virtually there

Telepresence tools are not new, but connection speeds and faster computing has made them more viable than ever. These tools exist on a spectrum where, on one end, there is simple video conferencing, and on the opposite end, we get closer to Sci-Fi holographic experiences.

Video conferencing tools are improving, becoming a more socially acceptable and seamless form of workplace communication. Consumer Apps like Apple’s FaceTime have increased consumers’ comfort with video conferencing. As people become more comfortable, businesses are quickly following, with Apps like Slack and Skype becoming go-to tools for video and phone calls.

On the other end of the spectrum are mixed reality platforms, exploring new ways people can use technology—including AR and VR—to collaborate from across the globe. Thrive is a platform which brings people together from all around the world into a shared space and allows them to interact with digital objects. Heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar brought mixed reality into their training program with CAT LIVESHARE – an AR-based live video calling platform targeting members of its dealer network. CAT offers real-time remote support, training, and equipment maintenance. Taking collaboration out of the flat 2D world of video conferencing into a “reality-based” 3D world creates new opportunities for training and customer service.

Next-gen sourcing

The growing trend of dispersed teams and the gig economy leads organizations to need for evolved project sourcing. Ethlance, an open job market platform, connects freelancers and employers through the Ethereum blockchain. Ethlance in turn is governed District0x, a network of decentralized Ethereum markets. Each market brings people together for completing work in a gig economy structure.

With 74 percent of Millennials reporting they are open to and looking for freelance work—compared to 57 percent of Gen Xers and 43 percent of Baby Boomers — solutions like Ethlance are allowing employers to access talent in new ways.

Overcoming the language barrier

In early 2019, Google launched its Interpreter mode for Google Assistant. Google Assistant now can translate the primary user’s words into a different language, then opens the microphone for the secondary user to speak and translate their words back to the primary user’s language. The experience may not be ready to handle fast, complicated business conversations, but as the technology improves this possibility will become more real.

Rather than real-time translation, other companies are focusing on teaching languages, such as the Living First Languages Digital Platform. Driven by The Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation, the platform was the 2019 SXSW winner in the “Innovation in Connecting People” category. Tools for learning new languages is nothing new but what makes this digital platform interesting is its focus on Indigenous First Languages. The goal of the app is to preserve and revitalize First Languages by making learning these languages more interactive, scalable, and accessible. By doing so, it can also open new collaboration opportunities between communities.

Small world

Within a built environment, around the world, or across languages, mobility will be an expectation for employees and an increased reality for employers. As new technologies help us cross these divides, new forms of collaboration are becoming reliable and effective. To remain vital, many organizations will continue to adapt and learn to serve customers and employees in new ways.

The knowledge era has led to the race for not only customers but also talent. Employer branding has become a topic for companies to remain competitive. Investing in facilities is one way to attract and retain high-value workers. Office environments are designed for performance, but now, also to reflect strategic goals of the company and its purpose.

Smaller, open plan offices have led some people to work elsewhere. Mobile work, enabled by new technology, has become a kind of competition for company offices. Some employers have started looking at branded environments as a way to compel people to stay in the office to do work. In a sense, a facility is an expression of company culture. As long-term investments, built environments are lagging indicators of how organizations see themselves.

Not everyone should love your brand.

The path for increasing market share is not self-evident. While many organizations try to appeal to all customers, market share starts with mindshare. Understanding and staying meaningful to customers is critical. However, you can’t target everyone. You have to mean something to somebody, or you’ll mean nothing to everybody.

Leaders want customers to love their brand. If we were to put emotions on a spectrum, conventional wisdom would place love and hate on opposite ends. On a scale between love and hate, organizations want to be loved and avoid being hated.

But that’s not how emotions work. People love brands—and love to hate brands. The enemy of passion is apathy. People not caring about your brand is worse than if they hate it. If some hate it, it’s likely to be loved by others. Disliking a brand is often about unrealized expectations, which is easier to turn around than apathy. When it comes to brand building, strong expectations are better than none at all.

Brands are like magnets. We can measure brand value by the strength of its attraction to the people it serves. Savvy brand builders know what makes people feel passionate and why brands attract some people and push others away.

So it’s partly about defining your customer, but it’s also about their emotions. Appealing to customer emotions is more nuanced than love and hate; building a brand is about tapping into a group, tribe, or mindset. Stand for something, and believers will follow.

This article originally published in our monthly insights newsletter. Click the subscribe button to sign up for more ideas about change.

Another shift in the B2B world is a collapsing value chain. At one end, suppliers seek to avoid commoditization by reaching further downstream. They aim to bypass obstacles like the purchasing group, or RFP processes to sell more with better margins.

At the other end of the value chain, many consumers have become savvy online researchers. They care about where their goods come from and getting a unique, quality product at the right price. End customers expect transparency in the value chain to find the information they want. In the middle, retailers and distributors get squeezed.

Market changes are both threats and opportunities. B2B leaders may need a change in mindset to thrive. Online retailers can offer their customers a wide array of products and brands with "endless" shelf space. This Long Tail can allow consumers to see some B2B brands for the first time.

In the lighting fixtures category, for example, many companies have been focused on selling through B2B showrooms, targeting interior designers, builders, and electricians. Online retailers such as Wayfair and Build.com have put these brands directly in front of consumers. Traditional B2B companies can get caught on their heels as they have to compete as a B2C brand that is more meaningful to the end customer.

B2B businesses are challenged to think and act more like consumer-facing brands. Even if a company's offering never directly reaches the end consumer, there is a new expectation for brand meaning and customer experience. As staying relevant to customers becomes ever more critical, B2B companies need to focus on getting different faster.

Industry-shaping innovation does not happen very often. It requires many different components to come together at just the right time. New technologies, supply chain advancements, manufacturing capabilities, and user preferences all play a significant role. Some competitors will move forward proactively, while others will struggle to merely survive. The contract furniture industry has several indicators suggesting the industry is tipping towards a new wave of innovation – beyond products.

The contract furniture category is mature. Product parody is a sign of market maturity, something we’ve observed and is reflected in our A&D research. Despite recent gains, many expect the industry to have a lower CAGR over the next few years. Competitors will have an increased need to find “blue oceans” (new opportunities). Some companies have already begun exploring.

Unlike internal industry growth, the percentage of sales per channel is shifting dramatically with the biggest increase being online. This is no surprise, but it is important to understand the trend as opening new opportunities for growth. More consumers are buying online, not just from their laptops or tablets at home, but on the go, from their phones, and between tasks. Most B2B companies like to think of their offer being too complex for this kind of purchasing, but this is increasingly not the case.

We like to assign new technology adoption to a younger demographic, but this is not the whole story. It’s true that millennials took the reins as the largest percentage of the workforce in 2016, and that Generation Z are now starting their careers. However, according to Pew Research Center, 85% of Gen X and 67% of Boomers own smartphones. This trend extends to the Silent Generation, 30% of which own a smartphone and 23% are actively engaged with social media.

Emerging tech is wildly imperfect, but is becoming more ubiquitous and easier for everyone.

Emerging tech is wildly imperfect, but is becoming more ubiquitous and easier for everyone. Even a complex buying process is not immune to these changes. People are increasingly comfortable with making mobile purchases, creating a tremendous opportunity for furniture makers. This opportunity is about experiences, not products.

In her book, “Different,” author Youngme Moon warns of placing too much emphasis on benchmarking and the language of direct competitors because it results in inadvertently reflecting your competition (“red oceans”), instead of seeking new spaces for growth. With this in mind, it is healthy to look outside the category for new benchmarks of customer experience. Here are three trends worth considering.

Subscriptions

Subscriptions are not new, but they have been reinvented in the digital age. While unimaginable in the golden age of newspapers, customers are signing up for subscription services today which previously looked like clear product sales from toothbrushes to cars. From a business model perspective, subscriptions can deliver more predictable revenue. It also creates the need for an ever-more customer-centric experience, which in turn creates stickier, more engaging customer relationships, and a wider moat between them and competitors. The paradigm has shifted from caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) to caveat venditor (let the seller beware).

The paradigm has shifted from caveat emptor(let the buyer beware) to caveat venditor (let the seller beware).

New subscription services may evoke companies like Birchbox or Dollar Shave Club, which are both excellent examples. But this is just the beginning. A better way to think of subscriptions is “access” over “ownership.” Millennials, which have been referred to as the “most broke generation ever,” are less motivated to own. This is especially true when it comes to large ticket items like houses or cars. Companies like Ford Motor Company are starting to reframe the business it is in by moving away from the auto manufacturer and towards being a “mobility company.” It has launched initiatives such as its “Transportation Mobility Cloud.” While Ford won’t stop producing cars (and lots of them), its cloud offering will bring them into street lights, parking spots, busses, bicycles, and more according to former Steelcase CEO Jim Hackett in his CES 2018 keynote.

Reframing the category to “mobility” from “cars” creates opportunities for subscription-based transportation services. Ford’s Canvas program allows customers to subscribe to pre-owned cars. It also launched a shuttle service and bicycle sharing service that ties back to its FordPass app. For consumers, the burden of owning a big-ticket depreciating asset is removed, while giving Ford a new source of ongoing revenue that beyond manufacturing, and keeping the company more agile.

What might an evaluation of access versus ownership look like in the contract furniture market? Like cars, furniture is an expensive depreciating asset. The need fluctuates with a company’s headcount expansion and evolution. Office space plays a significant role in talent attraction and retention, too. Buying furniture and systems can lock companies into a brand aesthetic that they may not want in three years, but customers are saddled with a high sunk cost.

Entertainment

Despite all the hype, brick-and-mortar retail is not dying, but it is certainly changing. The traditional approach to retail is going away as consumers have more access to more brands and choices. Competitors need to take the customer relationship more seriously. Purchasing experiences can entertain and delight, rather than feeling like drudgery. “Retailtainment” is not a new term, but while innovators used to benchmark Disney for inspiration, other examples are now right around the corner and often in their own backyard.

Warby Parker started out selling eyewear exclusively online. Then, in 2013, made the shift to include physical stores. In 2018, it set the goal of going from 64 to 100 locations. This is not an isolated case among growing e-commerce players. Amazon is opening stores.

Mattress seller Casper grew from 19 to 200 stores in 2018. In Casper’s “Dreamery” experience in New York City, people can book a 45-minute nap session. Casper’s Sleep Tour builds on the same concept as its “Sleepmobile” experience. The 200 retail spots will be less extravagant, though they will still promote a different brand experience than its competitors (namely, Mattress Firm, which is looking to close 700 storefronts). Casper CEO Philip Krim puts it this way: “Casper stores are the antithesis of the traditional mattress store experience... We are reimagining how people shop for sleep by listening to customers to create an atmosphere where they actually want to visit.”

It’s no longer a choice between e-commerce and brick-and-mortar. The answer is often: Both.

It’s no longer a choice between e-commerce and brick-and-mortar; the answer is often: both. The key is being intentional about what role a physical space plays in the sales cycle. Is it solely to facilitate a transaction, or is it about convincing customers? How does it build the brand? Greater clarity here allows each customer touchpoint to do a better job at fulfilling its purpose, instead of being spread too thin. No matter where physical spaces fall in the sales cycle, entertainment needs to be considered as a way to enhance the experience. For the contract furniture industry, how might this impact showrooms? What about NeoCon?

Transparency

A less obvious but equally important trend has to do with company transparency. Starting with FedEx tracking and related services, customers increasingly expect information that was previously unavailable. Today, many sellers readily share information such as what’s in stock, order status, and more.

Order status and product availability are pretty straightforward, but hard enough for many traditional B2B companies. To use transparency as a point of differentiation, companies need to know a lot about their customer as well as themselves. When do your clients have the most anxiety? What are people really worried about? Turning the lens inwards, what information are you confident enough to expose to your customer? Would it help alleviate the customers' pain points? Are your team members and digital tools organized enough to be transparent in particular areas?

Everlane, a San Francisco-based clothing manufacturer, shares information around the manufacturers it uses as well as production costs and the markup for each individual product. They are using transparency not to create new products, but to create a new experience around products. Many traditional businesses are hesitant to share pricing, but would transparency around production costs gain your organization favor in the eyes of the customer? Transparency can grow trust between company and customer, but it has to be meaningful information that improves the customer experience. To pull it off, companies need their teams and tools aligned.

New Customer Experiences

These experience trends are more common in the consumer world than in B2B. Though some may not be applicable to your company, it is critical to benchmark outside of your industry. Buyer expectations are changing. Like many industries, the next wave of innovation for contract furniture may be about the customer experiences. Adopting an experience mindset, however, puts pressure on your existing business model. It’s a tall order.

Companies cannot be great at everything. Enhancing the customer experience often means internalizing market complexities. This is just about the last thing that most traditional, lean organizations are designed to do. If you follow this logic, it means your organization will have to stop doing some things in order to do much more. Because saying no is much harder than saying yes, a new focus is often required.

The next wave of innovation will require different thinking – and doing.

Images: Bingham Self-Storage/Flickr

Could it be that Carl Jung, the psychologist, was an expert in branding?

Jung's work on personality archetypes (or narratives) is a fascinating lens to use when talking brands. Using a psychologist as the brand manager? Sure. Your brand is living. It connects with your customers. It has a persona. In some sense, it has its own personality.

Why do you need a brand narrative? Isn’t branding ambiguous enough?

Many times companies address brand ambiguity by leading with a list of tangible features, a mission statement, or superlatives like “the best” or “the most”. These approaches provide a sense of alignment, efficiency and clarity. Let’s review the implications of these approaches to a brand:

Tangible Features and Benefits

Today’s new features are tomorrow’s cost of entry. Customers make emotional decisions and with each shift the desired benefits change, too. When change happens where does it leave your brand? To design this change into your brand, you’ll need a platform which can outlast the cycle of change.

Mission Statements

Mission statements are great communication tools for internal focus. Companies who do this have a leg-up on internal alignment. However, messaging built for internal alignment does not make it relevant or meaningful to customers. They will benefit from operational excellence. But if you are an established company in a mature market, having excellent products is expected. Ultimately, you are not your customer.

Hyperbole

The most. The best. The strongest. The toughest. The cheapest. Being first is a key strategic position to have. However, logic says that only one company can authentically hold the top spot. If so, then why are these words so common with companies? Many times companies carefully select qualifiers to reframe the offer so they can claim a top spot – The best chair for mobile electronics; World-class service for the business traveler; The most trusted name in investments. Being specific is helpful. However, it is important to ask what was the motivation? Was it the ability to say “the best” or because it directly addresses your customer’s daily challenge?

When these three approaches are the foundation of your brand narrative, it confines your brand meaning within the transaction. After that transaction is over, what do you have left to talk about with your customer? Dropping out of mind only opens the door for your competition. In order to connect longer and deeper with your customers, you’ll need to authentically tap into a bigger experience with your customer, allowing your brand to stay meaningful even if they are not currently purchasing.

Finding Focus

Jung defined the bigger experience as the collective unconscious expressed through personality archetypes. Jung said these archetypes “power predispositions, which can, when activated, govern human behavior patterns.” While, that sounds a little creepy, people are creatures of habit, and over time they naturally gravitate toward these archetypes. These are woven into our culture and history.

Specifically, he defined 12 archetypes however, the four primary narrative groups are useful for brand narrative building: Self-knowledge (ego), Freedom (change), Social (belonging), and Order (structure). Each archetype comes with a story arc – the motivations, challenges and goals expressed through story. These groups can be defined as follows:

1. Self-knowledge brand narrative fights against ignorance to renew hope and understanding.
2. Social brand narrative fights against isolation to have fun and give love.
3. Freedom brand narratives fight against vulnerability to act fearlessly.
4. Order brand narratives fight against chaos to creating something new and gain control.

So, what narrative is your brand? What is authentic to your company’s history and your future vision?

The exciting thing about this question is that it removes features and benefits, mission statements and superlatives from the discussion. What if you were prohibited from talking about features and benefits for one day? How would you communicate the value of your brand? How would you convince a customer to choose you? Organizations who are successful at this exercise will have another tool when it comes time to sell.

Expressing Meaning

What does this Jung narrative lens look like in the real world of business? The best way to illustrate this concept is to share comparable examples. So, let’s look at the hybrid and electric vehicle niche of the automotive industry. Admittedly, great brands are more complex than one television spot. However, for the sake of illustrating this concept we will compare four individual ads.

Social brand:A Toyota Prius for Everyone. Prius is helping customers fight the boredom of driving. What’s more, everyone is doing it. Join the team. Share the love. Visually rich in color and held together with a friendly song to whistle.

Order brand: The facts about Nissan Leaf. Facts about the car systematically pop on screen. Meanwhile, in the background the couple uses the phone app to control the car. At the end of the commercial, they use the app to control global weather.

Freedom brand: Go further with Ford Fusion. After traveling for miles confined by the road, the car takes a courageous leap into the thin air. It does so, though, only to find out the road is what was holding the car back, limiting its potential boundaries.

Self-knowledge brand: Chevy Volt and the happiest drivers on the planet. The Chevy Volt opened a new world allowing its drivers to achieve happiness. This self-awareness and knowledge can lead the fight against the ignorance of outdated gas stations, saving the planet.

Each ad sells the same thing – a car and the experience of driving. However, they do not let features and benefits confine the meaning of their brand. They use a narrative point of view, tapping into the bigger story arc when talking about their offer. Even if you removed the car from the ads, you still get a sense of the challenges that the product resolves.

So, what bigger brand narratives are you strategically tapping into? Which approach is more authentic to your company’s experience? What is more meaningful to your target customers? What is a bigger opportunity space within your marketplace?

Aligning Experiences

An authentic brand narrative is not about a catchy communication piece, but weaving the narrative throughout all customer touch points. The narrative of your brand provides values that can be transferred from one touchpoint to another touchpoint. Moving a customer along the buying cycle means raising awareness, considering options and building loyalty.

A strong communication piece sets expectations for your company. A significant gap between expectation and reality will be a massive story break for your customer. The brand narrative is only as strong as the weakest touch point. It is not about the biggest story but the authentic story for your company.

Where to start? For one day, view your organization and customer experiences through the brand narrative lens.

• How might customer support speak if a brand is built on group belonging vs. order?
• How might a showroom be structured for a brand built on change vs. self-knowledge?
• How might engineering produce products that support group belonging vs. change?

Using narrative as the starting point for your brand story provides a customer-centered framework for building out the demand side of your business plan. Without tapping into this bigger framework, features and benefits can easily overpower the meaning of your brand. Instead, brand narratives allow for meaningful connections with your customers and a platform lasting longer than product cycles.

Today’s global, technologically interconnected marketplace has prompted many organizations to reconsider themselves and their brand claims. General is no longer enough. Descriptive is no longer enough. Brands have to mean something to somebody, or they’ll end up meaning nothing to everybody. Connection, value, meaning: future-proof brand building begins with these foundational elements.

Brands are ideas, perceptions, promises. They can reflect a specific human need to a depth that products, services, or even the organizations offering them cannot. When an organization invests (both monetarily and emotionally) in discovering these human needs—the things their customers value—then that organization has taken the first step toward a brand claim that can outlive market changes. Future-proof brands reflect the values of the people they serve. After all, values are eminently more meaningful and durable than tin cans.

Platforms over Products

At our firm, Peopledesign, we help clients discover and build on brand platforms. A brand platform is a foundation for identifying and fulfilling a customer-centered value proposition. It encompasses products and services as well as their delivery, use, maintenance, and (ultimately) either renewal and reuse or cancellation and disposal.

Our process for discovering and building on brand platforms begins with research to discover what our clients’ customers – or potential customers – value. Identifying customer insights and market opportunities can prompt tough decisions for our clients as we work through a value proposition. Businesspeople are accustomed to talking about value propositions, but often there’s too much talking and not enough deciding.

Value Proposition + Customer Experience = Brand Platform

Effectively communicating a decisive value proposition involves planning and executing a complete customer experience. An organization’s logo may be the most immediate and visceral expression of the value proposition, but a logo is just a symbol. The total customer experience is made up of a whole sequence of touchpoints. Each customer touchpoint is an interaction that can be designed with an explicit goal—and each touchpoint can be an opportunity to make or break a brand promise.

The total customer experience is made up of a whole sequence of touchpoints.

A clear value proposition with a clear customer experience roadmap for fulfilling that value proposition add up to a brand platform. A brand built on a strong brand platform opens new innovation spaces for the organization it represents. While products and services alone tend to bump into their own limitations, brand platforms can adapt to changing conditions without making conflicting promises. Thus, Apple’s brand can expand beyond computers into communications and entertainment. Amazon’s brand can expand beyond online retail into cloud-based computing services. Zappos’ brand can expand beyond shoes into customer service. With brand platforms, it’s hard to tell the difference between products and services. That distinction is less important than the holistic value the brand platforms deliver.

A Foundation for Brand Identity

For organizations with strong and dynamic brand platforms, brand identity—whom the organization is in the minds of its customers—is less about what the organization is selling and more about how well it can be integrated into people’s lives.

The name of this book is Brand Identity Essentials, but a good portion of it is dedicated to logos. And remember… a logo is a symbol of the brand. It is not the brand. Logos. Identities. Brands. What’s the difference?

The word logo is short for logotype—a simple graphic representation of a brand. So, essentially, a logo is a picture that represents the collection of experiences that forms a perception in the mind of those who encounter an organization.

Identity is often (mistakenly) used interchangeably with logo, but an organization’s identity encompasses much more than its logo. The organization’s name is equally as important as the picture used to represent it. Other elements, such as the color of a company’s mailing envelopes or the music customers hear while on hold on the telephone, are elements of the identity. Most of the logos we admire more often than not are part of a well-designed system. In such a system, the application of the logo (as well as these other elements) has been as carefully considered as the logo itself.

The organization’s name is equally as important as the picture used to represent it.

An exploration of identities without including logos would be like a tour of France without a stop in Paris. Including a discussion of brands and how they relate to identities is like connecting the trip to the culture of Western Europe. It puts it all in context.

It might help to think of it this way: The logo is a picture; the complementary elements and application decisions form a program; and the perception created by the picture and the program form the visual center of the brand.

This article was originally published as an introduction to Brand Identity Essentials.

Like the industrial revolution before it, the knowledge revolution will change our lives in profound and unexpected ways over the next century. Much of the information technology revolution has merely allowed us to do old things in new ways. More change is on the way. It’s helpful to know where we’ve been and where we might be going.

The industrial revolution led society out on era of scarcity to an era of abundance. Companies were built for scale, employing the technologies and strategies of the day to create enough supply to meet a rapidly growing demand. The previous 
revolution took place over many years largely because of slow communications, but we don’t have that problem today. Aside from challenges arising from emerging economies of scarcity conflicting with economies of abundance, which slow progress, we are rapidly coming to the close of the industrial age.

Evidence of Change

Signs of changes are all around us, as technology and globalization 
carve a new landscape. Web era darlings like Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter are easy examples of companies writing a new playbook. Meanwhile, brand leaders like Nike, Apple, Starbucks, and Disney are 
doing something similar – experimenting with new models for creating and delivering value. It starts with selling books or music online, but it ends up transforming publishing and music. The promise of ubiquitous mobile computing and internet-enabled objects, not to mention self-driving cars and mapping the human genome, offer new opportunities for how we live.

While some firms are succeeding, others are languishing. Like a frog in tepid water, these seismic changes can be slow motion system shock to a business. Many companies are experiencing symptoms of stress. They experience stiffer competition, higher customer expectations, and changing market dynamics. Strategic planning has moved from 10 year horizons, to 3 years, to today when many question if strategic planning can actually help. A default mode is to redouble efforts – pedal harder. This may work for a while, but it’s not a sustainable advantage.

Companies that weather changes will understand and leverage new 
patterns of success. Strategic models are useful lenses to enhance understanding, but too often models get confused with reality. The map is not the territory. Strategic planning may be in question because the strategic models are out of date, or need to be adapted for today’s conditions.

New Paradigms

A common denominator is that these firms are not bound by their category. Industry language and measurement often defines – and results in limiting – a company’s perceived ability to change. While not every industry has the fluidity of the tech sector, category boundaries are often self imposed. Indeed, how to reframe one’s category or industry to better contextualize and optimize for today’s customer is a key objective for company leaders today.

When Nike acquired Cole Haan, it thought of itself as a shoe company. Today, it has divested itself from a tangent shoe segment in order to pursue athletics directly. Its 
mission is to bring “inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.” Identifying its user’s terrain (athletics) and marking its territory (inspiration, innovation, global) enabled Nike to move into consumer electronics (Nike+), or even health generally. Customers choose Nike because it’s not just about shoes, it’s about athletics.

Businesses thriving today on new market dynamics, from technology to brand leadership (Apple being a potent mix of both), are paving 
a new strategic path others can follow.

Not all firms are employing the same model, but each are discovering new ways of working. Next generation companies are questioning historical precedents about scale, productivity, centralization, sourcing, and talent. Innovation is emerging as a discipline rather than an exception. New ideas about problem solving, agile prototyping, and socialized innovation are leading to new breakthroughs.

The success of the industrial era is yielding a post-abundance era of choice. Companies built for scale will need new strategies – new ways of seeing and criteria for making decisions.

Design thinking is emerging as a significant approach for finding and building upon new opportunities.

New Lenses

Disruptive change of this sort forces leaders to get back to basics. 
Category and company orthodoxies should not be taken as givens as firms try to answer two fundamental strategic questions: Where are you going to play? and How are you going to win? These two questions sound deceptively simple, but getting to answers requires new a way of seeing.

Deciding where to play involves better understanding the context of your business through the eyes of the customer. Most businesses view themselves as a provider of a product or service, but they might be better served to describe what they do in terms of customer value. What 
companies sell isn’t always what customers buy.

User research can be used to discover what Patrick Whitney calls user "terrains" – a collection of 
motives, priorities and aspirations that comprise a way users think about their goals. Starbucks makes money by selling coffee, but it sells a larger envelope of activities – a place to meet a friend or colleague, to learn about music, browse merchandise, or learn about coffee. Nike sells shoes but focuses on athletics. Disney sells entertainment but focuses on fantasy experiences (“magic”). Identifying user terrains can expand a company’s opportunity area for innovation. Understanding what users value is a step toward creating meaningful value propositions.

After learning about the user goals, a company needs to decide how to identify their "territory" – a focus on how they’re going to win. What else might the company offer to help the customer accomplish her goal? User terrains are what customers do or want, and the company’s territory is how they’re going to help customers succeed. It’s like positioning, except categories are defined by customers rather than similar companies, and the claim is a specific subset of the category rather than a broadly inclusive offering.

Answering the key strategic questions enables system-level planning: 
What are the key customer touchpoints in your company territory? 
What is the exchange of value between people and organizations that 
motivates participation?

Customer touchpoints are parts of your new aligned system – key customer 
interactions, often enhanced by things you can make. Frameworks like “poems” (people, objects, environments, messages, services) can be 
helpful to identify and describe system components.

Understanding how people make decisions, what and how people 
assign value, is at the core of behavioral science. What is clear from this area of study is that much of the value exchanged goes beyond money. 
Mapping these value relationships in a networked fashion can be described as a value web – in contrast to the more linear value chain.

Once a new system is established, consider how to express your value through a customer experience. 
What will your new or evolved offer be like? What needs to be done? When?

A human factors lens is useful for considering what a new experience 
will be like. Considering 5 key human factors – physical, cognitive, social, cultural, and emotional – is helpful for greater coverage.

Mapping a customer life cycle or journey is a way to consider time in your offer. Touchpoints can be mapped as a linear customer experience by business objectives (i.e., awareness, convince, buy, support) or user objectives (consider the “5E’s” – entice, engage, enter, experience, extend).

Activity systems maps activities and dependencies to help plan how it is 
going to happen, and who is going to do it. In a networked knowledge economy, only some of these systems are in the company.

Finally, road maps, starting with envisioning and backcasting to the 
present, can help describe when you expect things to occur.

People: The Hidden Lens

People are the real drivers of change, though company culture is too 
often overlooked. Cultural orthodoxies (unwritten rules everyone follows) can extinguish even the best strategy.

People will support what they help build. Collaboration is critical in an 
era redefining boundaries, but true collaboration is hard. Collaboration – as opposed to merely cooperation – requires that team members admit shortcomings in order to dovetail with others’ strengths. Often teams can get along, but don’t always jointly work toward a common goal.

Innovating in an era of choice often requires a willingness to be lost in the problem – a solution that has no clear path to success. Team members with different backgrounds need collaboration and communication skills in order to effectively solve new kinds of problems.

Organizations with an eye toward the future will create people systems designed with change, motivation, collaboration, and communication 
in mind.

New Skills

Recognizing change, seeking new paradigms, and using new lenses 
require new skills. The emergence of "design thinking" is one of the innovation discipline trajectories in the new era of choice. Design thinking 
is dissecting and describing an ideal design process for the purpose 
of increasing engagement (teams) and making it repeatable (a process).

Great designers exhibit these skills intuitively, but that may not be enough. There is a great need to innovate more reliably. As we seek to understand how Google and Disney innovate in the face of change, we build a vocabulary for the nature of innovation.

Solve the right problem

People often see themselves as problem solvers, but consider: What is problem solving? Problem solving is an emerging discipline. Start by thinking about problems as inputs and outputs. What is going in, what is coming out? Creating something new often involves unbundling and recombining.

Problem framing, and reframing (defining the problem differently) is a powerful tool for making progress. Consider how abstractly or concretely the problem is defined, causes and effects. You may be a "big idea" person, but try to avoid being an ADD reframer. Reframing too late can derail the best project.

Think in systems

Look for, find, create, and leverage patterns. Simple systems are better. The right constraints are productive. Have empathy for project sponsors, understand business goals and historical strategy models, and look for parameters.

Making is thinking

Language is abstract, but physical prototypes encourage decision making. Meaning is co-created. Use prototypes as communication boundary objects – tools for collaboration and failing fast. Language itself is tricky, words and measurement create orthodoxies of thought. After all, communication is not one way – it is shared. Broadcasting is not communicating.

Understand people

People are complicated. They ask for something new but often reject it when they see it. What do you take as a given? What is your bias? Then consider what is genuinely different, and models for generating and communicating the something genuinely new.

Customers will tell you what want, but they often don't know what they need. How many customers asked for the iPhone? People ask for choice but crave simplicity. Consider how people make decisions, behavioral economic theory, and personal motives. Consider organizational orthodoxies and models for change.

Empathy is not a luxury. You are not likely to be your customer or user of your product or service. Seek a deeper understanding of the user context, behaviors, goals, and activities.

New lenses and skills will not solve all problems, but they are new tools to help us chart a course in our an emerging era of choice.

Much credit for this content goes to the smart people at the Institute of Design including Patrick Whitney, Jeremy Alexis, Marty Thaler, Kim Erwin, Hugh Musick, and many others. This is a lot of their thinking, here through my own lens.

If you prescribe transformative changes and commit to implementing them, if conditions spell opportunity for you to gain market share, then perhaps now is the time to change your logo.

Is it absolutely necessary for your survival? Perhaps not. Is it the best way to signal a change? Absolutely. So the question may be: How committed are you to transforming your brand and signaling that change your stakeholders and customers? If there is not a broader commitment to change, then don’t change the logo. If there is, I can’t imagine not changing it.

If you’re contemplating such a change, you may already be in it. Are you embarking on new initiatives or strategies? Is it a new day in your market? Does your logo symbolize the best of what your company offers? Is your current logo becoming more or less valuable with age?

A new logo is the best way to signal to all stakeholders that your company is doing something different: You have been busy, you are worth another look, you mean something different today. Or, if your customer is new or never took notice in the first place, perhaps they will now.

Changing logos isn’t as scary as it used to be. It shouldn’t be a regular affair, but companies who deal in customer perception (which is to say, all companies with an eye toward the future) evolve their identities regularly. Customers are used to this.

It’s a big investment in your future, regarding both time and money. But you’re going to be investing anyway – it’s just a matter of how. Invest in the current course, or in a direction that suggests a new future. It’s a tough time in the market for everyone, but it spells opportunity for someone.

People fear change, but to evolve is to change. Not everyone will agree at first. In fact, it’s practically guaranteed that someone won’t like any new direction. But in my experience, the best people will support progressive steps. It can take time, but good ideas win. What’s common practice today was new at one time.

Leaders lead. Have the courage of your convictions to confidently take a bold step.

Too often, means and ends get mixed up. Keeping them straight is a way forward. Each of your suppliers might suggest tactics, but you don’t have an unlimited budget or clear priorities. When a resource or tactic drives the strategy, it’s easy to miss the big picture.

Your brand is the perception of your company in the minds of your customers. Actions speak louder than words, so that perception is based on a series of interactions with your brand. Each interaction is a customer touchpoint, which should be designed and orchestrated to create a desired effect.

Brand builders need to decide what they’re promising, and to whom they’re promising it. A clear brand position will lead you to an understanding of how you want to be perceived by your target audience – your Perception Goal.

Map your current customer interactions with consideration of how they fit into a larger selling cycle. You can organize these customer touchpoints into a linear sequence, organized by phase:

• Awareness – Key metric is recall, being part of the considered set
• Convince – Key metric is closing, sealing the deal
• Buy (or otherwise commit) – Key metric is sales or your primary desired transaction
• Support – Key metric is customer satisfaction, recommendations, and loyalty

In the big picture, it doesn’t matter whether a customer finds you through a salesperson, on Twitter, or at an event. Each tactic is a means to the same end: building awareness. The same is true for each step in the selling process. From there, it’s easier to develop future-state scenarios with ideal customer interactions, based on your Brand Perception Goal. A gap analysis between your current and future state is a basis for prioritized strategic planning.

You’re busy. If you’re lucky, you’ll stay that way. Having a better understanding of your customer’s experience is a first step toward getting all those ducks in a row.

Moreover, sustainable design has moved from cutting edge to standard practice. Designing from and for nature will only increase as a theme and in substance.

Buying trends have changed in the consumer world and are increasingly impacting B2B models. Organizations need to think differently about how they deliver value in a sales context.

It’s easy to forget how far we’ve come. How companies communicate and conduct business continues to change, and competitors need to position themselves to be ready. Twenty years ago, when the internet was new, people would call on the phone to ask, “Did you get my email?” At that time, people spent 30 minutes listening to forwarded voicemails instead of reading emails. Now people are texting to say, “Did you get my email?”

Before the internet, salespeople could have multiple identities. We remember times when the same person might have a business card saying they’re a healthcare specialist one day and an education specialist the next.

Technology has increased transparency to the point that this is no longer possible. It’s less about your business card than LinkedIn profile or mobile-friendly website. These funny anecdotes about communication preference seem like small things, but they are the canary in the coal mine when it comes to market changes.

The contract furniture industry is no different than many other industries being transformed by new technology and its ripple effect. We may be on the cusp of true reinvention and it will have a major impact on the value chain.

Disruption does not come from within an industry – it usually starts somewhere else. For contract furniture, the seeds of change have been sown in the consumer market and purchasing behaviors. In 2012 U.S. shoppers spent $7.8 billion in retail via smartphones. In 2016, it was $60.2 billion. According to a recent Forrester study, that number is expected to be $93.5 billion this year, then almost doubling to $175.4 billion by 2022. A cursory view of the retail landscape reveals how the speed, convenience, and personalization of ordering online is winning over traditional models – suffice it to say Walmart has noticed Amazon. Offering mobile transactions is no longer about differentiation, it’s an expectation.

For many industries, the main source of value is no longer a product or service, but an experience ecosystem. Consider the subscription economy, with 15% of online shoppers partaking in some sort of subscription service from Amazon to Blue Apron. The new currency is convenience, efficiency, and simplicity. Business-to-business markets can be slower to feel these effects, but the change is real. Where it used to be seen as premium, white-glove experience, B2B selling can seem slow and cumbersome by comparison. Some contract furniture competitors are rethinking how they go-to-market and deliver value.

New entrants like Varidesk have taken a consumer approach to generate awareness and demand for their product, perhaps most famous (or infamous) for its ads in airline magazines. The X-Chair is another example, advertising in the Wall Street Journal instead of industry publications. Going directly to end users creates a level of transparency and access that can challenge dealers and reps. It also creates a demand for products that might not be on the A&D menu, creating a new kind of customer pressure.

With a more unique approach, Netherlands-based furniture company Vrienden is rethinking what a showroom can be through its FRIENDS program. The company believes design can be a tool for connecting people and products in a social setting. FRIENDS is a network of people who have made purchases and allow potential buyers to come and visit their space to check out the product and ask questions. The spaces range from homes to businesses. The FRIEND then gets a 10% fee if the visit leads to a purchase. In this model, Vrienden has leveraged trends from the gig economy and models similar to Airbnb and direct selling organizations. As a result, dealers and reps may be left out of the sale and A&D would have to rethink the way they gain information and interact with the end user and manufacturer.

Increased transparency and access puts end users and manufacturers in direct contact with one another, forcing each member along the value chain to rethink how they go-to-market and the value they provide.

Many manufacturers are caught on their heels as they find themselves in direct connection to end users. As more interactions happen digitally more emphasis is placed on the overall customer experience, something to which everyone contributes but no one is directly responsible. Internal departments have to think and act differently. Marketing, sales, IT, R&D, HR; they all have to collaborate and work together in ways that are unfamiliar, undefined, and sometimes a little uncomfortable.

Emerging technology is creating new challenges and opportunities to find and deliver unique sources of customer value. Value chain players – rep groups, dealers and A&D – occupy what is perhaps the most volatile space within this shift, the middle between the manufacturers and end customers. Although it’s the most volatile, it’s also ripe with opportunity. Those in the middle are often most responsible for the overall experience. While they risk being unseated by the closing relationship gap between manufacturers and end users, they also have the access to reshape the customer experience altogether.

Disruption in the contract furniture market has begun. Frictionless and seamless customer experiences win in this new economy. People aren’t buying products as much as they are buying into experiences.

This post-industrial economy has new rules.

The focus has shifted from transactions to transformation. It’s early in the 21st Century, but new patterns are emerging. There are two critical needs for any business to remain vital today: Customer Meaning and Customer Experience. Too often, these two critical strategic needs are nobody’s job. Some organizations are evolving, but others aren’t changing fast enough. Too often, these critical issues can only be addressed by the CEO — which isn’t enough. It takes a team.

Customer Meaning is about staying relevant in today’s marketplace. It’s a question involving your brand, value propositions, company purpose, and communications. What do you want clients to think? This discussion can be prompted by a brand team, but branding is too often seen as merely a cosmetic exercise, and the brand team isn’t empowered to affect enough change become more relevant to the customer.

Customer Experience is often discussed but usually too narrowly defined. Yes, it includes customer visits and the showroom, and yes, digital delivery and UX, but it’s more than that. It’s also what customer service says, what salespeople do, and how you tell your story. It’s how you answer the phone, design your website and your lobby. Once you’re clear about what you want customers to think, then consider what you need to do differently to fulfill that promise. It’s about physical and digital interactions. It’s about tactics, training, and tools. It’s about planning, measuring, learning, and adapting to create a coherent experience that delivers.

Leaders decide which problems to solve.

At Peopledesign, we help chart the course of transformation in the post-industrial economy. These two critical issues — Customer Meaning and Customer Experience — are among the most important problems for leaders today. We’re building our business to address them.

Prahalad suggests that your offering is not your product alone. Your product creates a community of buyers, it has a beginning-middle-ending, it has emotion and meaning. If your offer is more than a product it begs the question: Who creates the experience – the company or the customer? The answer isn’t simple. It’s both. However, we know that creating a memorable brand experience is about balancing the needs of the two. Choreographing the dance between your offering and your customer's brand experience is The Creator Lever.

Any good leader wants to make informed decisions, and knows that understanding customer motivation is critical. Recently, companies have been hammered with ways of knowing your customer. A quick scan of any average business strategy resources yield many articles and tools built to demystify the customer: Market research, industry trends, technology trends, web analytics, competitive analysis. Too much information can create analysis paralysis. When it gets overwhelming, many companies revert to what they know – product.

Placebo Effect

Many of these tools promise reconnecting the company with the customer: Data, personas, segmentation, and surveys. These analytic maps are helpful and may make you feel like you are drawing closer to you customer. However, sometimes, being overly focused on developing that perfect customer model may remove the urgency of truly knowing how your customer behaves.

Customer Data – Archiving customer data encourages you to average your customer understanding into a homogenous mass, instead of varying groups driven by individual values. The items recorded become your view of the customer. Anything in the margins becomes lost, but innovation often starts at the edges

Customer Personas – Built from customer stereotypes, too often, personas don’t push past universal themes: Faster, cheaper, smarter – Who doesn't want that? Isn't that the cost of entry? You’ll need to push past generalities, move to a authentic view of your customer to create a memorable touchpoint.

Customer Segmentation – Demographics don’t drive behavior, they only correlate after the action. Too often, all players in an industry look for the same patterns and metrics. How might you define a unique segment to carve out a differentiated niche?

Customer Surveys – Surveys collect clean data, but often define a problem too narrowly and strip out the nuance. People are complicated. Understanding how people behave and make decisions is important, and not even well understood by the people themselves! Surveys usually just identify preferences.

Empathy and Experience

Looking a map of Paris and going to Paris are two entirely different experiences. Maps are useful for planning a route, but they don't communicate the culture of a city. Similarly, it's hard to know the culture of your customers from a map. When you “walk the streets” of your customer's journey, you gain a more complete picture of your customer and empathy for their experience.

Empathy for your customer's experience will provide better context, and inspire your work.

Ask yourself: What gift would you buy your customer? It's a simple but illuminating question. What is meaningful to your customer? What is lacking in their world? What does it say about you? What does it say about them? Your brand should be the gift that your customer wants.

Sharing experiences, like traveling to Paris or gift giving, are co-created. Your brand is a sharing experience created when your customer walks the streets of your brand map. What touchpoints do you create? What culture do you encourage?

The Creator Lever is about finding the space where you can tap into existing motives and desires instead of fabricating experiences based on your product. Build experiences where your customer is a creator – experiences based on a personal understanding of your customer, not just a model.

Photos by Roger Wollstadt and Gilles Klein

Warby Parker has created a digital-to-physical sampling process where an entirely physical system had been the conventional wisdom. Other sites like Ditto and Lookmatic followed in the wake of Warby’s success, and today evaluating and purchasing eyewear online have become common practice.

If it can work for prescription eyeglasses, can it work for contract textiles?

We've spoken about this possibility to the vast majority of providers in this space (upholstery, wall covering, and carpet), and are pretty certain most of them think we're crazy.

A few months ago, while explaining to me why our idea may be flawed, a VP from one of the industry’s most widely recognized upholstery brands cited a survey funded by the Association for Contract Textiles (ACT) and conducted by Interior Design. The intent of the survey was to explore how ready designers were to move away from physical samples. We haven’t seen the questions, but can only imagine… “Would your specification of a given textile company’s products decline if that company eliminated their physical samples?” Or, “On a scale from 1-10, how important are physical samples as a part of your specification process?”

Innovators from Henry Ford to Steve Jobs famously scoffed at this type of consumer research. As Ford is purported to have said of his Model T, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

A better question to pose to interior designers would have been, “If a system was created that allowed you to efficiently and accurately evaluate samples, continue to work in a timely, collaborative manner, and communicate your vision to your clients, how happy would you be?”

Framed this way, we'd find a lot more support for rethinking the textile sampling process. For this reason, we're convinced that at some time in the near future, the textile sampling process is going to make a fundamental shift from a mostly physical system to mostly digital system.

Not entirely, but definitely mostly.

A few industry players seem to sense this and consequently have begun experimenting. Designtex recently eliminated physical samples from their binders in favor of printed samples. Tandus has begun using gray scale imagery in conjunction with QR codes for color evaluation. Guilford of Maine’s new website offers significantly higher resolution digital swatches. Interface has begun offering SIMs (or simulated carpet tiles that are actually printed) in place of physical samples on select products.

These initiatives are all commendable. However, none of them seem to be taking hold. Across the A&D landscape, resource libraries are shrinking, but the space allocation for textiles is actually growing. We’ve even heard rumors of one of the biggest brands talking about eliminating the use of the traditional binders (also expensive to produce) and replacing them with a full set of memo samples. Imagine what the size of the resource library would need to be if every provider made a similar decision!

Can textile sampling be different? Should the industry keep experimenting?

Here are six oversights with these and other attempts to rethink the textile sampling process that have been made to date:

1. Textile evaluation is a process, not an event. Only portions of this process are appropriate for digital evaluation. Focus on these portions and provide support with the entire process in mind.
2. Transition points are important. Ideas are developed, put aside, and then picked back up a later date. Work is transitioned from designer to designer. Work is done in the resource library, at the designer’s desk, at home in the evening. The textile evaluation (and sampling) process has to support this reality.
3. Relationships with reps matter. It’s no secret that reps use the opportunity to deliver samples and update resource libraries as a vehicle for finding sales opportunities. If sample volumes reduce without consideration to how reps are kept in the loop, the system will fail.
4. Location matters. Much of the evaluation process happens in the resource library. If digital evaluation is going to take hold, it needs to be made accessible at the point where the work is occurring.
5. Start small, learn, and expand. The technology world uses the idea of soft launches all the time. It’s a great way to learn from the actual behavior of a small number of core users who become actual participants in the system design. It's likely that each rep could find 2-3 loyal customers who would be willing to participate in such an experiment.
6. Stop making the argument that the effort is based on sustainability. Maybe the idea is more sustainable, but the reason for doing it should be to provide better service for designers/specifiers.

So what does this mean at a brand level?

Brands are about meaning and differentiation. Breadth of line, aesthetics, iconic designers, sustainability, performance, price, and the ability to customize each provides a point of differentiation for one or more brands in the contract textiles categories (upholstery, wall covering, and carpet). But what about ease of specification? It seems that specification process support could provide an important point of differentiation, just as it has done for Warby Parker. In this industry, however, no one has truly focused on it… at least not yet.

Furniture makers responded by introducing products with greater attention to human anatomy, variability, and adjustability. New terminology and an understanding of ideal chair proportions and features emerged as furniture makers capitalized on the trend. High-end ergonomic seating products introduced in the 1990s epitomized a desire to support the digital knowledge worker. Since then, furniture manufacturers have continued to launch both premium and more affordable ergonomic seating alternatives.

As ergonomic seating has become commoditized, industry players look to envelope a broader view of human factors and overall employee health. Some employers are increasingly concerned with holistic facility wellness for better productivity and employee retention. Facility providers are looking to address these needs with new product and service offerings. How a company views its facility is increasingly a question not only of performance but values.

Like many industries, contract furniture takes its cues from major markets. Larger cities have the highest concentration of office space, client executives, headquarters, and A&D firms. Shipping and delivery mechanisms are better established and more robust.

Furniture companies invest accordingly. More customers mean more salespeople on the ground, more dealers, and more reps. Many organizations build permanent showrooms to facilitate selling, showcase products, and host sales functions. It means a commitment to a lease, showroom design, and products to fill the space. Then it means a periodic refresh to ensure what’s being promoted matches the latest and greatest products and brand thinking.

Major furniture companies double down in large metro areas to project a sense of dominance. Some smaller companies focus exclusively on major markets. While this makes conventional sense, it’s also a red ocean—a known, crowded market. Nearly 20 million people live in the top five metro areas, but even more are in the next twenty-five largest cities. As furniture companies look to find new ways to grow, secondary and tertiary cities (outside the large metro areas) are an untapped market.

The industrial economy of the last few hundred years has favored geographic concentration. Early industry was even more dependent on physical location, usually on the coast or a river, directed toward the paths of shipping routes. The cities that emerged have become less dependent on waterways, but the 20th century still favored physical proximity. Driven by demand and enabled by technology, buildings got taller. Metropolitan areas today are a concentration of large buildings surrounded by increasingly complex systems to access them. Traffic and tolls create congestion and additional expense. More than ever, existing in a major market requires a clear cost/benefit focus balancing desirability and affordability.

The information economy favors bits over atoms. Looking ahead, would you rather be the company with the tallest building or the most data? If we consider Google or Amazon (and it’s hard not to), as some of the newest, most profitable companies, a new pattern is clear. These organizations are less concerned about physical proximity. They focus on being close to their customers through data, not physically nearby.

Basecamp, the project organization tool, was one of the first and now among the oldest SaaS (software-as-a-service) platforms. The maverick company continues to generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue with a relatively small (50-person) distributed team. Jason Fried, its CEO, says they target not the Fortune 500, rather, Fortune 5,000,000 companies. Basecamp stubbornly refuses to enhance its core product, allowing for customizations driven by large clients (sound familiar?), as most software companies have done in the past. SaaS is much more common today than when Basecamp launched in 2004, but Fried and his colleagues’ insight in part recognized the new pattern of not seeking the largest single target. Instead, they get volume and sales by targeting many more underserved smaller targets. Both their team and their customers are distributed physically, even as they maintain a loyal customer base.

How might the furniture industry learn from this example? Like the Fortune 5,000,000, smaller cities tend to be neglected by major contract furniture providers. Some markets are surely better served than others, and much of this difference falls to the dealer. These markets look different than major metros. The A&D influence is less present, and customers may be slower to adopt new trends. They may be more sensitive to price, and single-sale volumes may be lower.

This pattern is not new for consumer companies. The future of retail shopping malls seems to go in two directions. In the past, anchor stores created the big tent for smaller retailers (sounds like NeoCon). Stores have had a front and a back—a showroom with inventory. Malls are in physical proximity to customers, but they couldn’t be too close because each store was also a warehouse. Online retail, led by Amazon, is changing all that. Many malls are closing as brands get squeezed between diminishing in-store sales and the cost of real estate.

On the other hand, next-generation stores are thriving. When the sales transaction and fulfillment can happen online, stores don’t need inventory. Like a contract furniture showroom, the retail store is just a showcase for products to feel the finish and kick the tires. However, does your showroom have a sophisticated online fulfillment process, or is it like an old-style retail store, but worse because there’s no inventory? Customers today, whether B2B or B2C, have new expectations for how a modern sales transaction looks.

The bridge between physical and digital touch points is a continued challenge for older companies that have dealt primarily with atoms instead of bits. A changing technology landscape further complicates this evolution. Nevertheless, forward-looking organizations must accept and internalize these realities to create a sustainable future.

Amazon has shown us the way. It may be imperfect, but there is no denying that the company has demonstrated what a future-oriented experience might look like, and many are investing and working hard to mimic Amazon’s success. People may see the company primarily as a technology innovator, but in fact, Amazon is striving to be “Earth’s most customer-centric company.”

For furniture companies, investing integrated digital platforms is a start. Too often, however, companies do not see digital platforms (often, increasingly, SaaS) as a strategic investment. They see websites as a marketing expense, which is to say, a necessary evil to do things the way they always have. These firms are missing the point, and may not realize that Amazon lost money for a decade, forging this new territory, before becoming a global powerhouse. Most furniture companies spend more money on one of their metro showrooms than their website, but on any given day, 100 times as many people should have a digital interaction with your company than will ever set foot in your showroom.

Others may recognize and talk about digital transformation, but executives and investors may not be up to the task. New technology is the driver, but the key is transformation—real change. It means doubling down less on physical places and physical proximity, and more on tools and training to make a more customer-focused organization.

Technology is just a means to an end. These new pathways allow Basecamp, Amazon, and others to build new kinds of customer relationships with a customer which are sustainably different from their competitors. Simply investing in the technology will not make you customer-centric. Companies need to focus on the user experience, integrating platforms, and hiding complexity from customers. When using Amazon or Basecamp, you don’t know what’s under the hood.

Furniture companies are not selling software, yet, and the path to creating a modern value chain is not obvious. Physical products need to be seen, felt, shipped, installed, serviced, and recycled. However, it’s clear that innovators will find ways to access and serve second cities in ways that leverage technology and post-industrial-era thinking.

Organizations which seek growth through vertical markets know this already. Serving healthcare and higher education immediately pushes organizations out of large metro areas exclusively. Local institutions that serve local populations will not move to New York. Also, the rise of second cities parallels the increase in access to broader market functions through air travel and the internet. Many entrepreneurs and professionals are happy to relocate to an area with shorter commute time. The rebirth of many smaller metro areas offers an opportunity for furniture makers.

The second city experience will need to be more than a poor copy of a large metro experience. The same tactics may not work, so built environment providers will need to adapt. The principles of universal design—designing for a common denominator which can benefit all—may apply here. If we can solve for an optimal customer experience without being nearby, we can make the nearby experience great, too. The Amazon experience in New York is not markedly different from anywhere else.

Cities are not going away. Physical concentration will remain important for the near future, and perhaps forever for social reasons and pooling talent. Most of Amazon’s customers are not in Seattle, but they’re not adding offices outside New York and D.C. to reach more customers. Rather, that’s a fight for talent. The reasons for physical proximity are changing, so reconsider the industrial-era mindset of proximity as a convenience.

As furniture companies evaluate sales geography, looking outward to become ever more global is one way to grow. Another way is to look inward, leveraging new technology and new thinking to get ever closer to customers, even if you’re far away.

Open offices challenged traditional notions of privacy from the start. Panels replaced walls; cubicles replaced rooms. While corporate managers could realize efficiencies in facility planning, office inhabitants weren’t always so sure. Managers, who felt they earned private offices, moved into a sea of cubes. These changes were justified in financial but also egalitarian terms. Open plans were viewed as being fairer and implying less hierarchy. Still, furniture makers explored increasingly nuanced product features including acoustical and visual privacy to make up for a less holistic definition of privacy. A kind of armchair behavioral science for the office emerged to address user perceptions about space.

The argument for open plan offices today is that worker proximity leads to better teamwork, productivity, and collaboration, and that casual interactions can benefit company culture. This idea is both celebrated and refuted by business leaders and thinkers. While most corporate environments have made a wholesale shift to open plans, private offices remain, and the number of conference rooms has increased. The contemporary industry mindset is that knowledge workers should be able to select their level of privacy. Empowered by mobile technologies, people are encouraged to move from open spaces to closed ones based on their type of work and preferences.

The financial drivers are clear. The high cost of real estate in urban centers will continue to drive for greater occupancy in smaller spaces. Optimal space utilization is a key goal for all furniture buyers. Panels have all but vanished in favor of simpler desk-based solutions, and new arguments about the necessity of worker focus have made privacy an ever more critical issue.

Office privacy — how it’s defined, viewed, and assessed — is among the chief industry issues, and continues today. Innovations in open plan products office design are part of the answer. But, it’s not easy. Employment hierarchy, worker productivity, and company culture are not solved solely through furniture. Designing for people is a challenge. You can ask someone what they want, but they can’t tell you what they need.

Our ability to describe what happens in the process is getting better, as more is known about innovation, creative processes, solving "wicked problems," and the notion of design thinking. It relates to a willingness to get lost in a problem, and possibly the use of abductive reasoning. However, the understanding where a new idea forms and sticks remains elusive and complex as the human brain itself.

We think about and experience creative processes every day, and have developed a visual model for thinking about the process which helps us better understand the process and describe it to others.

First, you might start with how many would like to see problems and solutions: A straight line – the shortest distance from point A (problem) to point B (solution).

When you are busy optimizing known processes, it’s easy to think that perhaps all process look like this. They don’t. If predictable processes are a single uncooked spaghetti noodle, an average actual creative process is more like a box of cooked spaghetti flung onto a wall. It might look more like the human brain itself.

Some “creative” people talk more about creative processes than follow them. To others, the creative processes are a mystery – a black box. While the actual process is cooked spaghetti, it’s hidden behind a veil. It may feel like it’s a straight line even when it’s not.

These processes can be controlled to a degree. Think about it as a controlled fall. You need to explore options, but a gravitational pull should govern the general direction. Prototyping is a key part of any creative process – building to learn. Creators generate ideas based on an informed hypothesis, then they test and course correct. This leads to a kind of deliberate meandering, which is what progress looks like.

You can visualize this controlled fall, this iterative process, as a spiral. View the length of the spiral as a measure of time. The more time you have, the wider the spiral.

If the horizontal axis is duration, the vertical axis can be the number or variability of possible solutions. A taller spiral suggests more varied possible solutions. Tighter spiral loops suggest a smaller solution set.

Framing and re-framing a problem is inherent is good problem solving. One way to think about this is that if we always solve the problem the way we initially view it, rather than adapting to what we learn by prototyping, we end up in a very different place (B2) than what we originally assumed (B1). What we thought we wanted usually doesn’t result in something new. If we knew exactly what it was before we started, it probably wouldn’t really be new

This kind of iterative, creative process can make some people uncomfortable. At times, it may actually feel like loosing traction. While it can feel like you’re off course, you often have to take a step back to take three steps forward.

You can save yourself from complete chaos by being clear about your acceptance criteria. These creative parameters define a kind of funnel, which helps you track progress. These criteria should not be overly prescriptive, or have the solution baked into them. A properly framed problem helps determine which ideas push the effort forward, and which should be left on the cutting room floor.

Each turning point of an iterative creative process is an opportunity to re-frame the problem in tighter terms. We know much more by the third iteration than we did in the first. Be willing to re-frame the problem, informed by learning, to find your way to a better result.

Each loop in the spiral suggests an iteration. Being cognizant of how many iterations you want, can tolerate, or can afford, is a useful lens for managing a creative process. More iterations often yields better results, but there is a point of diminishing return.

Creative processes are predictably unpredictable. A visualization like this can help add structure to an otherwise unwieldy process. It won’t solve every problem, but spirals may be a better framework than waterfalls for creative processes.

Creating something new may never be as simple as going from point A to point B, but recognizing certain levers such as problem framing, re-framing, duration, variability of acceptable solutions, and the number of iterations, are creative problem solving principles which can enrich your vocabulary and understanding and managing what really happens.

As you better understand what goes on in the black box, you’ll have a better shot at actually creating something new.

This rapid rate of change has exposed gaps in organizations internal infrastructure and the way they go to market. Organizations are often too rigid and slow to keep up and anticipate the market demands. For instance, marketing spends more on technology than IT, yet IT can be slow to respond. Consumers are buying products late at night from their bed on their phone, and while the bar is rising for better, differentiated customer experiences which no one at the company manages from end to end.

Companies need to be adaptable and pivot based on their driving philosophy, or value proposition, and not get pigeonholed by their increasingly commoditized offerings. The risk of not changing is high. In the 1950s, the average life expectancy of a Fortune 500 company was 75 years, but today is only 15 years. Only 12% of Fortune 500 companies remain from the original list. Meanwhile, nearly $1 out of every $2 spent online goes through Amazon, an older technology company at the age of 23.

Adaptable companies seek to jump the typical cycle of growth, maturity, and decline to catch new waves of growth by redefining their value proposition. Tightening their strategic focus enables leaders changes to their talent, offer, technology, infrastructure, and go-to-market strategies. IBM today is a far cry from a manufacturer of punchcard tabulators, but built on its history to focus on data innovation.

As we continue to push into this new era of choice and change, both B2B and B2C customers have higher expectations for what brand provide through their offerings, experiences, and purpose. Customers are looking for something to buy – not just something to buy. Organizations will be hard pressed to stumble upon a central focus and need to approach their future with increased intentionality.

We help companies achieve waves of new growth by creating long-term value propositions, building systems for delivering value, then developing tools and artifacts that inspire audiences, whether internal or external, to take action.

FAQs:

How can individuals or organizations effectively determine when it's necessary to "get different" in their approach or strategies?

Determining the necessity to "get different" in approaches or strategies often depends on the specific context and goals. Factors such as market shifts, changing consumer preferences, or internal organizational challenges may signal the need for a different approach. Assessing current performance against desired outcomes can help identify areas where change or innovation is necessary.

What are some common challenges or barriers that people face when trying to embrace a different perspective or approach?

Embracing a different perspective or approach can be challenging due to various factors such as entrenched habits, resistance to change, fear of failure, or organizational inertia. Additionally, cultural or structural barriers within an organization may impede the adoption of new ideas or practices. Overcoming these challenges often requires strong leadership, open communication, and a willingness to experiment and learn from setbacks.

Are there any specific examples or case studies provided in the article to illustrate the benefits or outcomes of embracing diversity in perspectives or strategies?

Real-world examples of organizations that successfully implemented innovative approaches or diversified their strategies could offer valuable insights into the benefits and outcomes of embracing different perspectives. Such examples could showcase how organizations navigated challenges, seized opportunities, and achieved positive results through embracing diversity in their approaches.

How much do you know about what is going on? Is this a new problem or one that’s been around for a while? The answers to these questions will shape your approach to a solution. Consider whether your challenge is focused on maximizing a new opportunity, reacting to new dynamics, or if you need better definition or alignment.

New opportunities are a new, known challenge. Firms that are able to take advantage of a new technology, product, or service can operate from a position of strength. The key here is not to get distracted by near-term trends, but to use the opportunity as a bridge between where your brand is today and where you want it to be in the future.

Known, existing problems often leave people feeling stuck. In this case, brand managers need alignment for better understanding and traction on a clear brand vision. Getting unstuck requires more coherent perception goals, communication, coordination, and standards.

Sooner or later, everyone deals with new dynamics. Internal dynamics like a new company, strategy, or leadership, as well as a recent acquisition, spin-off, or merger, often spurs change. Changing external dynamics, such as responding to a new market or customer behavior, quickly become a new constant. New dynamics often require tweaking or wholesale reinvention of your brand position.

Sometimes brand managers need help defining the problem more broadly. This is often a result of trying to be all things to all people in the face of market confusion or change. Finding focus is here starts with a sound methodology to increase understanding of your customer or category.

Strong brand platforms are sustainable and differentiating. Start by finding focus, which means diagnosing the problem.

There tends to be a gap between completed research and insights that can be applied to a company’s strategy – the Application Gap. This gap exists for a number of reasons, many of which pop up before the research can even get started. The first step in avoiding the Application Gap is to better understand the two types of research – reflective and exploratory – and learn when to apply each.

Most companies are good at reflective research. This method is used when you have an idea or preference that you’d like to test, so you throw together some focus groups or surveys and in the end, you learn that Option A is preferred over Option B by 27%.

Reflective research is best suited for line-extensions and other types of incremental rollouts – situations in which you already know the variables needed to determine the output. It’s great for informing decisions, but will not lead to game-changing insights or significant top-line growth.

When top-line growth is the goal, exploratory research is better suited to the task. It isn’t meant to help you choose between options A and B, but rather uncover and identify the options that exist. Unfortunately, a lot of companies struggle with exploratory research.

One problem is that companies tend to be homogenous with their research. They might do some looking around, but mainly at their competitors or the handful of trends that are impacting their industry now – but now is usually too late. By now, your competitors are already working on the same issues you are. As we continue into a new “economy of choice,” where almost everything is almost always available to almost everyone, getting different will be a key element in helping your brand stand out.

Here are three ingredients for solid exploratory research:

1. Analogous Markets

Some of the best insights come from observing the world around us and applying them to our immediate disciplines. What could Nike’s Fuelband learn from Progressive’s Snapshot tool? By opening up to analogous markets we can begin to identify opportunities for new business models, products, services, packaging, and more.

2. Compensating Behaviors

This is one of the biggest flags for marking innovation opportunities, yet it gets overlooked on a regular basis. That’s because compensating behaviors are rarely articulated. Humans are incredibly adaptive. We alter our behaviors and actions to fit our environment without realizing that we’re doing it. For instance, if asked about shopping habits and how you approach the shelf at your local grocery store, you may not say anything about how many hands you use when shopping. But through observation, we’ve learned that most shopping is done with one hand while the other tends to the cart, the purse, a child, or simply is not being used. This insight can have a significant impact on packaging design.

3. Outliers

Too many times we look at the average for direction instead of learning what we can from those on the fringe. This usually results in cheese pizza syndrome – everyone can agree on it, but does anyone really love it? No. By studying outliers, we can not only identify emerging trends and behaviors, but also understand how people are modifying products and solutions to meet their needs.

While these three ingredients are great for becoming the researcher equivalent of Lewis & Clark, it’s also important to make sure your research stays grounded in fundamental market dynamics and internal capabilities. This ensures that the findings are applicable to your company’s growth strategy both tomorrow and today.

Building relationships will always be a large part of business. Technology, however, is changing how those relationships are formed. Smartphones are an all-in-one sales tool allowing people to email, check LinkedIn, visit websites, and research a client or vendor. As this behavior increases, an organization needs to get more out of its digital tools – namely the website.

Too often B2B organizations neglect their websites, relegating them to online billboards. They are static representations of the organization and do little to nurture leads. More effective websites utilize automated marketing techniques and link to a CRM system. Equipped with targeted content, these websites become a powerful marketing and sales tool. This approach to your website casts a wider net by making it more search-friendly and automating a lot of activities that were formerly done on a one-by-one basis. This frees your sales team to focus on clients who are at more pivotal points in the sales cycle.

Your website is the cornerstone of your digital strategy. Getting it right can give a huge boost to your sales and marketing teams, and this is admittedly no small task. Making this shift can seem daunting at first, but as you gain familiarity, it will become a more and more effective tool. Because it puts an emphasis on content, it requires your marketing and sales team be aligned with a point of view on your industry and what makes your organization unique. Here are a few questions to help get you started:

• What macro and micro trends are impacting your industry?
• Who is your target customer(s)?
• What gets your target customer out of bed in the morning?
• What keeps them up at night?
• How is your company uniquely positioned to respond to your customers’ opportunities?

Implementing a digital strategy is an activity we’ve seen move up on our client’s priority list. It is not without its challenges, but success can help supplement your sales team by increasing knowledge share, attracting and nurturing cold leads, and freeing up their time to focus on key client interactions.

The remedy is in becoming a Challenger brand. A Challenger brand has 4K HD clarity on what they stand for and who their target audience is - not just by age and income brackets, but as human beings. They know what makes their customers tick, what’s important to them outside of their own offer, and how they make decisions. In a previous article on creating authentic brand engagement, we refer to these motivators as attitudinal preferences.

Equipped with this deeper level of understanding, Challenger Brands can insert themselves in the midst of conflict and challenge their audience to make progress towards their aspirational selves. The brand's value proposition becomes much more compelling and as a result, helps them increase brand awareness.

Coca-Cola: B2C Challenger Brand

Originally marketed as a “nerve tonic” in the late 1800s Coca-Cola tapped into societies rapidly growing sense of anxiety that came along with a rapidly growing economy. On a personal level, that “nerve tonic” was meant to help people achieve their fuller selves (of course, in hindsight, cocaine may not have been the best way to do so). Coca-Cola tapped into societal trends again with their “Share a Coke” campaign, which we’ve written about here.

BASF: B2C Challenger Brand

With 150 years of experience, BASF launched the “We create chemistry” campaign. The campaign addresses that today’s solutions are endangering the future. It focuses on quality of life, food and nutrition, and resources, environment, and climate issues. The essence is summed up in the slogan, “How can you make tomorrow love today?” BASF is taking on societal woes and challenging its customers to be part of the solution while BASF takes on a leadership role.

It’s important to note that in both of these examples, the organizations are inserting themselves into challenging societal trends.

Challenging your customers forces them to make a decision, to make an emotional commitment, to buy into your brand vision. The only way a customer will do such a thing is if they see themselves in that vision.

"Yes" Brands only ask for a financial commitment, and then try to create emotional ties by providing strong customer service. While customer service can be helpful in building relationships, it does not lead the customer to aspire to reach a higher level than where they are today. It does not help a company move towards their business goals, and it does not help consumers move towards their aspirational selves. The behavioral cost for Yes Brands is so low that they are easily replaced with competitors.

When organizations have a clear value proposition, their audience’s attitudinal preferences, and the broader social context, they can tap into opportunities that others will miss. What's exciting about Challenger brands is that they are not afraid to insert themselves in the midst of conflict and help close the gap between where companies or people are today and their aspirational state tomorrow. They can better their customer and by doing so increase brand awareness.

A brand is nothing more or less than the perception of your organization in the mind of your audience. That perception is shaped by experiences – a series of touchpoints as they encounter your product or service. Word of mouth, a customer service agent, your friend’s sister-in-law who works for the company, the delivery truck, the sales receipt, and your website are all customer touchpoints that add up to what you know and believe about a company – a brand. The primary touchpoint of course is your company actually delivering – not just broadcasting – value to your customers. The brand promise is the promise you have made to deliver on that value.

Often have we been hired to refresh, repackage, update, or otherwise refine a “brand,” often referred to as “rebranding.” The trouble is, too often there hasn’t been enough attention paid to making the value proposition more compelling. If the graphics have gotten more compelling, but the value proposition has not, we risk false advertising, not to mention wasting a company’s investment in “branding.” Even if you don’t see this alone as a cardinal sin, we now live in a world where customers see through empty promises.

New communications and social networking technologies have made it increasingly difficult to be anything but transparent to your customers. Customers demand it of their commercial providers and politicians alike.

We’ve been following the work of Bruce Temkin (VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research), and we recently participated in a webinar during which he shared some of his latest research on Customer Experience. His findings continue to reinforce the premise of our work. Among the useful pieces that he shared was the following chart, which lays out plainly the difference between communicating and delivering value.

Rebranding should coincide with repositioning, attending to the right side of this diagram. Communicating the value proposition, designing a great experience, is essential but follows the hard decisions required to create a good position. Too often people see branding as only what’s on the left – making promises – or worse, just window dressing, just designing a logo. Don’t get me wrong, I love logos! We live in a world of global ideograms and visual language, and it is critical to understand and capture the essence of your brand and realize its potential in your customer’s experience. But be clear about your strategy first.

Lipstick doesn’t go on pigs, and brand is not a garnish. If you are considering a rebrand, really understand your core value – what you plan to offer to whom. As Tom Koulopoulos noted in a recent seminar, innovation begins with understanding what you’re good at. It sounds easy, but it’s not.

If you’re looking for a brand consultant, throw a rock and you’re bound to hit one. If you want to dig deeper and find new ways to add value for your customer, we can help.

A 2014 social psychology study took a deeper look at what motivates people. The study demonstrated that people are more likely to make decisions based on deeper, internal motivations known as "attitudinal preferences" as opposed to extrinsic motivators or incentives. In other words, incentives do not change behavior. What they can do, and do very well, is lower the customer's behavioral cost for engagement.

How much effort a customer is willing to exert in order to accomplish a goal is considered the behavioral cost. The easiest way to think about it is to ask yourself, "What will you do for a Klondike bar?" Incentives can help remove or lessen the barriers to accomplishing a goal, therefore reducing the behavioral cost.

We sometimes tend to focus too much on incentivizing customers into a particular goal. Incentivizing is great; the problem is that these incentives rarely take into account the company's target audience and what that audience's attitudinal preferences are. As a result, companies are trying to gain traction with a broad swath of audiences that are not aligned with the company's mission and vision, and where the behavioral cost is extremely high (these customers cost way more money to attract and retain). Audiences that are already aligned with the organization's mission and vision will have a lower behavioral cost.

Focusing on a target audience whose preferences are aligned with the organization's, then offering meaningful incentives can encourage authentic brand engagement.

Patagonia provides a great example of what it looks like when first considering your target audience's preferences, then building incentives around those preferences to increase brand engagement.

Patagonia's Worn Wear campaign

Passionate about sustainable business practices and targeting an audience who have the same values, Patagonia launched a "Worn Wear" campaign during Black Friday. The Worn Wear campaign urges Patagonia customers to swap their pre-worn apparel for other pre-worn apparel on a day usually devoted to shopping madness. If customers can't make it to a select location or don't see something they like, they can participate from home or gain credits towards future purchases with Yerdle, a sharing economy app. The initiative is meant to extend the lifecycle of the brand's apparel and, as a result, keeps it out of landfills.

Patagonia was able to tap into its target audience's attitudinal preference of environmental stewardship, and use incentives to promote a desired activity. In this case, the desired customer activity was multifold - encourage environmental stewardship, and encourage using Patagonia apparel.

The behavioral cost is reflected in the monetary cost of new apparel, getting to select locations, and guilt from the impact buying new has on the environment. Patagonia used several incentives to decrease the behavioral cost. It partnered with Yerdle to make exchanges easy no matter the location. Secondly, Patagonia removed the monetary cost of making a purchase by conducting a "swap". Finally, it alleviated consumers' environmental guilt by extending the apparel's lifecycle.

With the Worn Wear campaign, Patagonia was able to make it easy for its target audience to practice environmental stewardship while also promoting the brand.

First-Step Questions

• What is important to your customers – beyond the context of your offer?
• Are your incentives congruent with your customer preferences?
• Is your brand meaning aligned with your customer goals and beliefs?

Incentives can be effective for short-term wins, but do not help create long-term brand loyalty unless done in a meaningful way. It's important to understand your organization's goals through the lens of your customer's behavioral cost and their attitudinal preferences. Creating alignment between your brand, your audience, and your incentives can create strong bonds that will help your organization strengthen its brand engagement.

Most marketing paradigms, tools, and process were first defined in the mid-20th century and grew out of the market conditions of that time. Focus groups provided a safe zone between the producer and consumer. The producer took the consumer out of the context of their daily life and focused their attention — and the discussion — around a product. “Which product do you like better? A or B? Why?” Later, surveys allowed this process to scale. Producers of goods and services could now take these questions to 10,000 people instead of 10, with the results easily translatable into quantifiable percentages.

These tools held value for the companies that employed them — and they still do. However, the cutting edge market research tools of the mid-20th century are now cost-of-entry. Every company basically deals with the same market segmentations, and basically asks the same focus group or survey questions. This limits the potential of these tools to generate real competitive advantages in the marketplace.

If knowledge of consumer preferences was a scarce resource for 20th-century marketers, 21st-century marketers are dealing with a new scarcity: consumer mindshare. Technology has raised expectations among consumers for both control and choice. No longer is the practice of marketing communications a one-way dialog from producer to consumer. More often than not, it is consumer-to-consumer, with social media right there to document these exchanges. This drastically shapes the perception of a brand. Additionally, we live in an era of unprecedented consumer choice. Many companies benchmark one another’s offers, leading to similar choices for the consumer to slough through.

To find shared value with your consumer, you’ll have to understand their value system. The first step is to look past your offer, past the features of your products. Learn what motivates the people you want to reach — when they are not sequestered into a room and prompted by a moderator to think only about you. Only then will you be able to open a personal, meaningful dialog with them based on their motivations and behaviors. Find an authentic way to position your product as a tool to help people achieve their goals. This is your brand platform.

This level of understanding about your customer isn’t meant to be touchy-feely. It’s become essential for businesses looking to generate competitive advantages in the 21st century. Get beyond thinking of consumers only as a marketplace and start integrating their points of view into your offer. Only then will your products or services mean something to them, and it’s that meaning that has the power to cut through the market noise.

WeWork, the workspace startup that shook the contract furniture industry now seems like Icarus, flying too close to the sun. With its descent, some industry players may be reveling in a strong sense of "I told you so." Still, the company which once had a valuation of $47 billion has left a mark on the way people think about and interact with workspaces. There is a lot to dissect in WeWork’s return to earth – here are a few key impressions and questions that may last in the contract furniture industry.

Expecting Flexibility

WeWork has taught us more about what people desire – quality, functioning offices, amenities, support – all things that push toward a better work-life balance, increased flexibility, and a stronger sense of community. People like to be around other people, whether it’s at a coffee shop or a hotel lobby. The impact of providing workplace flexibility differs depending on the company. For startups and small companies, it provides a quieter, more professional workspace, including the assistance of a receptionist and other amenities that you can't find at a coffee shop. Growing and larger companies need more adaptive workspaces that can scale up or down with a smaller investment. For bigger companies, flexibility is needed in and out of the office.

WeWork highlighted these needs for both employees and businesses, which puts pressure on the industry as people will continue to look for even more flexible solutions. Can the office be as flexible for teams that change sizes and have different needs, even on a day-to-day basis?

Managing Capital Investments

Large corporations also saw an opportunity. WeWork isn't the only co-working company, but its rapid expansion and popularity accelerated the growth of the category, cementing the expectation of flexible workspaces for employees. Facility planners have started to view co-working spaces as part of their master plan, allowing them to rethink their capital investments. Some companies are creating new offices that support fewer than their total headcount as they lean on mobile workers and co-working spaces. Others are reducing their employee square footage so they can earn extra income by leasing the extra space.

Having new options for savings and revenue allows them to think differently about the permanent versus flexible space. How might organizations learn from the sharing economy and design for maximum capacity? How might products be designed to flex with growing or shrinking spaces?

New Collaboration

Changes in spaces have an effect on teams. Human resources, facility managers, and CFOs are all trying to better understand how to attract and retain talent while managing costs. Facilities have a big role to play. Like the open office trend, even greater flexibility has also opened new ways of thinking about reserved space. In leased spaces like WeWork, not even the CEO can bump someone from another company. This trend has already moved into owned spaces as well.

Some teams are moving toward a model that uses space less like an office and more like a hotel. How are hospitality designers using space to attract people and create engaging gathering spaces?

Getting Circular

The speed of change is evident in these new models. As furniture becomes more closely tied to fashion, “capsule” pieces are combined with seasonal or trendy collections that change more frequently. Commercial interiors are becoming more like retail. The effect of this shift may be felt in any part of the category and the broader economy. Furniture as fashion runs contrary to the idea of quality standards requiring furniture to last for 30 years. It lowers the barrier of entry and opens the category to more competition. This new pressure will force the industry to think differently about service and supply chain in order to keep up. It also has the potential to create more waste.

Leaders will adopt a circular economy approach in order to maintain relevance with influencers and decision-makers. Some innovators may go so far as to adopt a subscription-based business model. How might manufacturers, dealers, and installers leverage a circular approach to innovate in the category?

What’s Next?

WeWork may have been on the bleeding edge, and its demise may be a product of poor business practices, but the future of the industry is not going back to business as usual. Like Uber, which hasn’t fully proven its business model, the genie is out of the bottle. Uber and Lyft are imperfect businesses but their services are superior to taxis. The category will rebalance and these startups will either stabilize or taxis will evolve. The same is true with commercial interiors.

WeWork’s business model may have to adapt to survive, but the value to customers is clear. The gig economy will open new pathways beyond big contracts with big companies. If office furniture companies claim to do more than just make furniture, leaders will consider their business model. The industry as a whole will adapt to evolving customer needs – or other investors will.

This article originally published in Contract Furnishings News, the daily media record for the contract furnishings industry, and the voice of authority for commercial design professionals.

Cost continues to be an issue. College students in the 1987-1988 school year paid an average of $3,190 in tuition for a four-year public institution (price adjusted to reflect 2017 dollars). Those students’ children are now paying an average of $9,970—a 213 percent increase 1. Students and their parents are thinking deeper about the value of a degree and how to approach higher education.

Meanwhile, educational institutions are facing steeper competition. Universities are increasing their satellite campuses 2, investing in online learning, and students are applying to more schools than ever before—10 to 20 not being uncommon 3. The education landscape has changed. Leading schools are exploring ways of delivering new experiences through technology as a way to engage students and maintain growth. Following are a few examples of how technology is changing pedagogy and increasing engagement.

Mobile and micro

Distance learning is nothing new, and neither is online learning. What’s changing is its legitimacy and proliferation, with more than 6.3 million U.S. students taking at least one online course as of the 2016 fall semester 4. But while higher education institutions are catching up to learning online, education innovators like the Kahn Academy and Coursera have already moved to mobile. Going one step further, the mobile learning app Duolingo is changing how people learn new languages. A big part of Duolingo’s success is thanks to the gamification of content and leveraging the practice of microlearning, breaking content into bite-sized pieces of information.

Gamification and microlearning are the cornerstones of mobile learning. They force institutions to think about how they deliver and develop content, what they want their audiences to learn, and how they’re measuring progress. It increases engagement, builds communities, and can have a major impact on how teaching and learning happen.

Go without leaving

Approximately 60 percent of U.S. schools have purchased connected devices for students as of 2016 5, and the average college student brings seven Internet-connected devices to campus with them 6. Meanwhile, the quality of VR technology is increasing along with its market penetration. Google, combining its Google Cardboard VR viewer and its Google Expeditions team, is bringing immersive field trip experiences into the classroom. While experiences like Google Expeditions are engaging, they also push individual experiences over collaboration. Other companies such as zSpace are using virtual and augmented reality to increase collaboration inside the classroom.

Augmented and virtual reality technologies are as close to Mrs. Frizzle’s Magic School Bus as we’ve been able to get—transporting educational experiences to the surface of Mars or isolating and spinning veins within the human body. The hurdle for VR/AR in schools will not be the hardware, as more schools are adopting one-to-one technology. It will be in content. As content grows, K-12 and higher ed will redevelop the way teaching happens in the classroom, which means the products inside the classroom will change.

Artificial Intelligence

Is asking Google cheating, or smart use of time and resources? When it comes to bringing AI into the classroom, ethical questions arise—and the difference between cheating and leveraging new resources is only the tip of the iceberg. For better or worse, AI is already impacting the classroom and how people teach and learn. A great example of this is Jill Watson, who is the best TA for Georgia Tech’s Ashok Goel. Jill is an AI chatbot—however, students had no idea they were communicating with a bot until after the semester. Until then, Jill served students with timely and helpful answers. This took a load of repetitive tasks off of Goel, allowing the computer science professor to focus on higher level interactions 7.

Jill Watson (powered by IBM’s Watson) isn’t the only educational AI out there. Between 2018 and 2022, the global market for artificial intelligence in the education sector is predicted to grow at a CAGR of 43.36 percent 8. For school and for everyday life, asking Google, Alexa, and Siri for answers is becoming commonplace—making answers more of a commodity. The premium in education starts to shift from memorization to analysis and asking better, and new, questions. This could have a radical impact on the way classes are taught and students learn.

The increasing prevalence of AI also suggests a new medium for learning: voice. Whether asking a direct question or using speech-to-text, students are learning and composing through voice. This can change the dynamics of how a classroom is run and can make learning a more tailored experience.

Access to education is not equal and its cost continues to grow out of reach for many. When this is combined with the questionable value of a degree, educational innovators will look to new technologies for solutions. Whether educators are utilizing AI, mobile apps, or VR/AR tools, the landscape of learning is being reshaped.

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This article originally published in EdTech Digest.

Companies with similar offerings comprise an industry. Contract furniture is no different, where organizations compete in seating, systems, and other office peripherals. An industry name emerges, like "contract furniture," which reflects the products and how they're sold. This process makes sense, but it risks looking back when you should be looking ahead.

Category labels are a lagging indicator of history, not a leading indicator of change. We live in an era of economic and social change and the future begs questions about market fundamentals. Looking ahead, will office furniture be sold on contract? What do we consider furniture?

In the search for resonant brand themes, many in the industry make the jump from furniture to talk about "work" more broadly. Many industry competitors make claims about productivity improvements through workstyle support, employee engagement and brand signaling, work health and ergonomics, and so forth. They make investments in specialists and thought leadership in these areas, employing workstyle consultants and ergonomists, and commissioning primary research to support their claims and knowledge beyond furniture. The industry sandcastle is about work.

As a general rule, it's a good idea to aim higher than your concrete offering for your brand. Many B2B manufacturers think about features and benefits, but finding an aspirational seed beyond products can organize the benefit narrative. At Peopledesign, we overtly encourage our clients to find a meaningful connection with their customers which goes beyond the specific definition of the offering. The evolution from furniture to work is logical and helpful.

Not surprisingly, the theme of work has been the leading industry narrative over the last few decades. Furniture companies talk a lot about workplaces and work styles, but the industry is still pretty rooted in furniture. Most contract furniture companies think more about casters than work. The gap between aspiration (work) and reality (furniture) can be a risk for an industry because competitors can miss the future while being focused on the present.

Stepping back a little, it's clear that the subject of work goes well beyond furniture. It's impossible to ignore how technology innovation is changing the work landscape. Twenty years ago, we might've made a compelling argument that a desk plays an important role in work. Today, if you had to choose between a table or a laptop as your primary work tool, I don't think the furniture would win. Furthermore, much exploration on the nature of work processes, motivation theory, personal meaning, and purpose has entered public business discourse. All these ideas pull work away from furniture.

So, what's next for furniture? The answer lies in defining the right problem.

All business is built on an unmet customer need. For a time, furniture was a big part of the answer to the work problem. If more solutions beyond furniture answer the work problem, the first goal for furniture makers is not to double down on work nor furniture per se. Furniture risks being a solution looking for a problem.

A brand meaning which connects with customers more directly can outlast any specific offering. There is a reason why Apple removed "Computer" from their name, and Nike doesn't promote the brand "Nike Shoes." If Ford had viewed itself as a transportation company (rather than a car company) twenty years ago, how might it have invested differently? Sustainable organizations are on a journey to forever refine their understanding of unmet needs in a marketplace.

Innovative competitors will find a new focus through customer meaning. What do customers need today? Then they will realign their organization and its capabilities to serve these emerging needs.

All this may sound abstract and unrealistic. It can be abstract, and it is hard, but it's also a reality. Consider how photography industry leader Kodak decided to pass on digital technology, opting to double down on lucrative camera film, only to be surpassed by others. Consider how Xerox overlooked its insights about computer graphical user interfaces, choosing to double down on the profitable paper copier business. The business landscape has many examples of companies and whole industries which have been eliminated or transformed by shifts in technology and customer preference. Change doesn't take place overnight, but it can be hard to recognize and can sneak up on you. Kodak and Xerox were unstoppable industry leaders – until they weren't.

Contract furniture is experiencing change. The rise of WeWork, regardless of its future, is one indicator. It suggests a model for supporting work beyond buying furniture on contract. It's pretty clear that their emphasis isn't on furniture at all. Even before WeWork, wifi-enabled coffee shops were emerging as third-place office alternatives. Contract furniture competitors should ask themselves: What unmet customer need is WeWork filling?

Industry roles are shifting. The rise of corporate real estate, dealer designers, and direct-to-consumer plays are changing how we think about the value chain. Many innovative competitors in other industries find new sources of value by deliberately adding or removing pieces on the market chessboard.

As the Internet of Things (IoT) becomes more of a reality, technology innovators will find their way into physical environments. Industry incumbents will seek to stay ahead by finding new value propositions. Honeywell, observing the digital thermostat startup Nest (acquired by Google), recently launched its own home technology brand called Resideo. From powered desks to wireless charging tables at Starbucks, there is little doubt that smart furniture will become part of the work landscape. Who are the new competitors? What is the offering? How will it be sold or leased?

Often, significant changes come from outside an industry. This pattern isn't guaranteed, but industry competitors tend to stay in the rut of past success. Furniture has been around for a long time and is here to stay. However, the future of work may not be furniture as we know it. The future of furniture may not be part of work as we know it. The answer lies in asking the right questions. Innovators will find emerging customer needs and make the hard choices to orient their organizations to serve future customers.

Work will be part of the contract furniture value propositions for years to come, but sandcastles are subject to tides. Trends shape the industry landscape and competitors will need to mind the waves.

What's happening

As the cost of digital tools decreases, there is an opportunity to lower the cost of customer interactions for companies of all sizes. We're living in a world of evolved and increasingly integrated technologies (and acronyms): CMS(Content Management Systems), SEO (Search Engine Optimization), SEM (Search Engine Marketing), CRM (Customer Relationship Management), and MA (Market Automation). Each can play an important new role in your marketing and sales strategy. To get the most out of these new ideas, you need to have a decent understanding of what these tools do, and how the customers travel between your brand’s digital and physical presence.

Today, everybody Googles everything. Business-to-Business brands are not exempt from these trends, as a Google-CEB study determined that B2B buyers are more than half-way through making a purchasing decision before contacting a sales rep. Digital analytics makes it possible to optimize sales and marketing tactics. It's clear that your website should be more than just an online brochure.

We've worked with a lot of different companies. Each has different organizational dynamics between sales, marketing, and IT. In some organizations, marketing leads sales, in others, sales leads marketing. In many cases, IT is underutilized, or more likely no one even knows what IT does.

Today, a greater emphasis on online conversion and purchasing decisions is putting these three groups in the same room more than ever. Today's customer demands a brand experience that blurs sales and marketing and is enabled by new technology.

What's not happening

New digital tools blur the lines between sales, marketing, and IT and creates confusion. Over the last decade, it was hard enough to answer the question: Who owns the website – marketing or IT? Automated lead generation and nurturing connected with CRM systems add sales to the mix. For many organizations, it's not clear who should take the lead.

Historical best practices in each category allow them to operate in parallel. Now these groups have to collaborate truly, not just cooperate - and most companies are not set up for that. Collaboration is a buzzword, but quite difficult to achieve in practice. Pride, ownership, ego, a lack of understanding, your internal culture, and company politics can get in the way of genuine collaboration. Marketing is working on its initiatives, often striving for more consistency and high-minded approaches – but usually behind the eight ball. Sales is looking to meet critical numbers and will use whatever works to get the job done, congruent or not. IT is divided and attempting to serve multiple masters, and feels both liable and not in control. Everyone is moving in different directions at a furious pace, using different metrics and measures of success.

What can help

A first step for team members to get on the same page is to get out your lane. Stop protecting your industry orthodoxies, and step back to view the bigger picture. Gaining this perspective can be difficult, even for organizations with strong leadership. Organizations sometimes need a fresh perspective and a push. There are a few steps that can help.

1. Find Focus

Everyone and every company can benefit from a tighter focus. Just as you can never know too much about your customer, you can always get even more focused. In today's fragmented and changing landscape, this is a vital step for nearly all organizations today. It means getting stakeholders from a variety of levels and departments involved to both level-set and start to look at the better future state. It means better understanding of what's happening on the ground with your customer, how technology can help, and defining your path forward. That path is based on your desired brand meaning.

In addition to asking "What do we do?" Consider: "What are our customers joining?

2. Create Alignment

A greater sense of focus leads to better alignment. In fact, one of the biggest indicators of a lack of focus is a lack of alignment. Organizing your customer-facing initiatives not only improves your brand experience but helps empower internal teams.

Aligning your strategy to tactics seems obvious, but can be hard to do in the wake of new tools. Exploring new approaches – through the lens of your customer, rather than your internal teams – encourages collaboration. Externally, it yields higher quality, more integrated customer interactions, and ultimately moving customers through your sales cycle in a more cohesive way. Achieving a better system demands new collaboration, new tools, and possibly new kinds of teams beyond traditional sales, marketing, and IT.

What are the key customer interactions that will lead them to our desired brand perception? What should be the character of each customer interaction, whether digital, physical or personal?

It’s not easy, but your initiatives can emerge from the Brand Bermuda Triangle. You'll have to overcome historical orthodoxy and consider how your customers are experiencing your brand more holistically with today's new digital reality. Your organization may have to change, building new bridges between sales, marketing, and IT departments. You may need new kinds of teams, language, and metrics.

Start by getting everyone to join the same mission. It'll help teams best use their skills to create a customer experience that generates sales on the short term, positions your brand for the long term, and leverages emerging technology for a competitive advantage.

Penrose triangle from Wikipedia; people icons by Alexander Wiefel on The Noun Project.

To stand out from the pack, employers need to develop a strong value proposition beyond pay and benefits. They also need to think about the candidate journey from start to finish and develop a system that is optimized every step of the way.

Prospective employers first should know the answer to the key candidate question: “Why should I work here?” Too often, this gets answered in generic ways: great pay, good benefits, flex time, great culture, family atmosphere, opportunities for growth, and strong professional development. In the new economy, these answers are table stakes. Transactional HR elements are foundational, but often lack inspiration or emotion. They don’t differentiate one company from the next.

Developing a strong candidate value proposition gives the organization a spearhead—something ownable and unique. It’s a promise the company is making to its customers and its employees alike. Nike epitomizes this sentiment in its mission, "To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world." Most people who use Nike products are not professional athletes. Clearly, Nike defines “athlete” more broadly, as in, if you have a body, you’re an athlete. But, why should you work at Nike? If you have a passion for helping every person, regardless of fitness level, achieve athletic and health goals, Nike’s mission might be parallel to your own. This starts an employment conversation in a very different place than money or logistics. It’s a conversation that inspires. It calls the employee to buy into something bigger. When they do, they’re set up to be more dedicated and loyal.

Next, your candidate value proposition should be reflected in every step of their journey. Successful organizations will think of their talent journey as a system from attraction to advancement.

A human-centered design approach puts the employee at the center of the talent journey—not the company. Consider the well-known storytelling arc of the hero’s journey. Companies often think of themselves as the hero of the story with their employees as aids along the way. The result is a lackluster talent journey, making an individual jump through unnecessary bureaucratic hoops. These types of employee experiences have a big impact on an organization, shaping the internal brand perception of an organization, which ultimately is reflected to the customer. Being intentional about each step in the journey is imperative. The first step is building brand awareness for talent attraction.

The candidate is the hero of the talent journey. Placing the individual in the center changes how an organization connects with prospective talent. Career fairs are a start, but leading organizations are looking beyond these experiences. In 2004, Google posted billboards around Silicon Valley and Harvard Square with math riddles. One read "{first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits of e}.com.” This creative approach led applicants to a website that required them to solve a different riddle before being allowed to apply. For Google, the goal was to curate top talent before getting humans involved.

When Danish creative agency Uncle Grey was looking for talented front-end developers, they placed ads and hired gamers to sponsor them within the online game Fortress 2. These are great examples of knowing the target audience. Both Google and Uncle Grey found talent where they are instead of expecting the talent to come to them.

The talent journey doesn’t stop with getting attention. Leading organizations follow through with speed and personalization. Ubiquitous new technology has made information much more transparent. Consider real-time tracking of a UPS or FedEx package. Once an order has been placed, the buyer is notified at each stage of the shipping process including arrival and departure times as the package stops at each location. We’ve come to expect that if a package takes more than two days to travel across the U.S., it seems slow.

Tracking packages is much more complicated that tracking resumes. Translating the modern-day shipping logistics experience to the employee application process highlights how antiquated processes can improve. When applications are submitted online, applicants may or may not receive a confirmation email. Then, they wait until they either hear back or assume the position has been filled. This is just one area where the talent journey can be modernized and help to fulfill on your employer value proposition.

Your organization is not the only one looking for top talent. Top talent often already have jobs, and have choices. To be competitive, companies need to think beyond conventional messages and experiences. You need to tell a story that inspires and deliver experiences that back it up. The key is looking at the organization through a talent-centered lens, and being honest about how the current experience is perceived. Is your organization the hero, or are you giving your prospective talent a way to align with your mission?

FAQs:

How can organizations effectively measure the success of a "meaningful" talent acquisition process? Are there specific metrics or indicators discussed in the article?

The success of a "meaningful" talent acquisition process can be measured through various metrics, including retention rates, employee satisfaction scores, and the quality of hires. However, specific metrics or indicators mentioned in the article are not provided. Instead, the article emphasizes the importance of aligning recruitment efforts with organizational values and goals, suggesting that a meaningful talent acquisition process should prioritize finding candidates who not only possess the necessary skills but also fit well culturally within the organization.

What are some practical strategies or tips for incorporating diversity and inclusion into the talent acquisition process? Are there any examples or case studies provided to illustrate these strategies?

Practical strategies for incorporating diversity and inclusion into the talent acquisition process are not explicitly outlined in the article. While the importance of diversity in recruitment is acknowledged, the specifics of how organizations can achieve this are not discussed in detail. The article may prompt readers to seek additional resources or insights on implementing diversity and inclusion initiatives in talent acquisition, potentially through case studies or expert advice.

In what ways does the article address the evolving landscape of talent acquisition, particularly in the context of technological advancements or changes in candidate expectations? Are there discussions on leveraging new tools or approaches to enhance the recruitment process?

The article primarily focuses on the importance of building a meaningful talent acquisition process and does not extensively address the evolving landscape of talent acquisition in terms of technological advancements or changing candidate expectations. While it underscores the significance of personalization and authenticity in recruitment efforts, discussions on leveraging new tools or approaches to enhance the recruitment process are not a central theme. Readers may be left curious about how emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence or data analytics, are being utilized in modern talent acquisition practices.

We moved to this part of the country years ago for jobs at Herman Miller, later starting Peopledesign. But it wasn't until we increased our interaction with the local scene that we really began to think more about the place we live. When asked to contribute to a local online journal as a guest blogger, Kevin's first submission was entitled "The West Michigan Brand."

We never anticipated the response that the article would receive. It was direct and visceral, and people from all walks of life surfaced to discuss a topic that had clearly touched a nerve. Everyone from the Chamber of Commerce to the former Mayor wanted to talk more about the idea of the region as a brand. Some disagreed with the premise, others were enthusiastic fans, but most just wanted to hear more.

It could be that we simply hit on a topic that had particular heat locally. West Michigan has been seeking and earning a place on the map for many things including ArtPrize (the world's largest art prize), the Grand Rapids LipDub (also a "world's largest"), the new Grand Rapids Art Museum (the world's first LEED-certified art museum), and more. We've been witnessing the transformation of a sleepy, mid-sized Midwestern town coming into its own.

The blog post also led to the theme of a recent Symposium on Film, Art, and Literature entitled "Hey Michigan, who do you think you are?" They asked Kevin to be their keynote speaker, so we took this opportunity to explore the idea further.

All this led us to wonder: Is it possible to brand a region? Can the branding principles that apply to organizations also apply to place?

We believe so, but it is a challenge. Many efforts have been made in this area, from tourism boards to business development initiatives. We suspect that these efforts become too fragmented to communicate as a whole. It's no surprise really. West Michigan, for example, is comprised of a hundred townships and several counties, each with their own agendas, needs, and priorities. There's no single decision-maker for West Michigan, but it's clearly a single economic region and media market.

The challenge isn't insurmountable, just new. As regions compete with each other for resources and attention from around the globe, we suspect we'll see an emerging era of regional branding. Just as companies are emerging from confusion over brand ownership and management, so, too, will regions find the skills to overcome municipal differences for the greater regional good.

The practice of psychology gives us a better understanding, two research studies illustrate the balance between verbal and nonverbal communications. One study demonstrated that body language accounts for 55% of your communication, 38% tone of voice and actual words spoken only 7%. Meanwhile, another study contrasted facial and vocal components and found the formula to be a 60% to 40% split favoring facial components. Communication is more than what you say, but the context in which you say it.

When developing or refining brands, organizations often see communication efforts being purely “verbal” – a product name, an advertising headline, etc. There are, however, an increasing number of nonverbal queues that your company is being judged upon. This puts pressure on taking a holistic view of your brand and creating tactics that add up to a congruent experience.

When you start to think about all the different touchpoints, your company has with customers your head may start to spin. There are a few steps to help you manage all of these touchpoints.

1. Audit & Organize

Take the time to audit what your company is doing. Organize your company’s initiatives into three categories: Physical, digital, and personal customer interactions. Physical interactions include products, roadmaps, life cycles, environments, print materials. Digital interactions are websites, mobile, apps, and social media. Personal interactions involve talent, training, recruiting, culture, leadership, and structure.

2. Assess & Synthesize

With this audit in hand, ask yourself: What does it all add up to? Do we have a unique claim? Are we substantiating that claim through all of our initiatives? Where are the gaps in the customer experience? All these touchpoints should add up to a desired experience. Begin to consider which are the most essential initiatives, and how they might need to change.

3. Show & Tell

In the past, companies could get on their marketing megaphone and tell customers how great their offer was. To win, companies would buy a bigger megaphone. Today, companies need to be much more transparent – online reviews and social media keep them honest. Customers have a vast amount of choice. Brand claims need to clearly substantiated and speak to something much more meaningful if they want to be more than a commodity.

An interesting example of "showing" your brand can be found in a recent Reebok campaign. Reebok has been reaching out to the CrossFit workout community in a number of ways. With the 2014 Reebok CrossFit Games, the shoe company launched Reebok Bacon, uncured bacon that contains no nitrates, preservatives, MSG, or sweeteners. Reebok Bacon fits the nutritional standards of the Paleo Diet, which is highly adopted by CrossFit athletes. Reebok shipped the bacon packages in dry ice to 74 of the athletes participating before the games began. A Reebok Bacon Box food truck also served a variety of bacon infused foods during the event.

This serves as an example of how a company sought to show their brand’s commitment to its target audience in a meaningful way. In doing so, it made waves through social media, traditional media, and (they hope) the CrossFit community.

Remember that it is not "show" versus "tell", but show and tell. Finding and optimizing a balance is important.

Understanding your verbal and nonverbal communication initiatives can make a big impact on how customers perceive your brand. Being intentional about these initiatives by thinking holistically can help to create long-lasting, meaningful connections with your target customers.

This is a curious point. Is “prestige” what parents really want from their children’s college education? Where does “prestige” rank on students’ own list of priorities when choosing a school? And what does “prestige” even mean anymore in a world where the level of success achieved by an entrepreneurial Ivy League dropout can eclipse that of any Ivy League graduate (cue Gates and Zuckerberg)?

The cost of a college degree is rising at a dramatic rate, yet the value of that same degree is decreasing as the number of degree holders continues to rise, flooding a job market that’s still not fully recovered from recession.

How can your school compete while justifying the cost of a degree even as the ROI argument is weakening? By competing on the vague idea of “prestige”?

Students and parents view “prestige” differently. For a parent, “prestige” may represent future employment opportunities for their child, or bragging rights among their peers (that their kid is on what they think is “the right track”). For students, “prestige” may represent some static, staid, and outdated idea of attainment held by their parents or grandparents that they don’t necessarily agree with anymore.

Chances are your school has something better to say than picking up this over-applied and potentially counteracting term. Not saying it could be stunting your yield rates.

Once you have a strong message, the burden shifts to finding the most appropriate ways to deliver your it in order to break through the white noise buzzing around students and parents as together they make their decisions about college. A lot of the organizations we work with struggle on this front, and for good reason. It’s hard!

For colleges and universities — like other organizations — cutting through the market noise starts with knowing your target audience. Not just an outdated persona based on demographics, but a real, clear understanding of their behaviors and motivations to a degree that almost makes you seem psychic. What makes them tick? How are they making decisions? How are the decision-making processes different for parents and students? What will tomorrow’s students be searching for in a higher education experience?

It’s up to you to reshape your school’s message and deliver it in a compelling, authentic way, but we can help. Competing on the outdated ideal of “prestige” is dead.

Is it that we can't agree on terms, or are we doing things differently? Are we doing different things?

Gary Hamel, author of The Future of Management, likes to point out that we are on a steep incline of rapid change that calls for a different way of working. The reliability of market returns from companions has been declining for 40 years. Not just change, but accelerated change is the new normal.

In his book, Massive Change, Bruce Mau theorized that design could emerge to play an ever more important role in this change. This idea of design as Borg idea has some legs, particularly given the recent success of design-savvy companies like Target, Starbucks, and Apple, but even more so as we extrapolate into business design, culture change, and genetic engineering. Design is gracing the covers of many business journals today and is credited for all kinds of creative transformations. But is this design, or something else? If so, is design growing or changing? What should designers learn in school? What does a successful design career look like?

Enter the superdesigner. Like superheroes and supermodels before them, superdesigners have a Midas touch, gracing products with their brand names. Being wildly talented at design and PR is a potent mix. For some, Mau is a superdesigner, but is that what he meant? Is this one new way of working Hamel talks about? Should all designers strive to be superdesigners?

In perhaps his last public appearance, we saw Paul Rand give a talk at Copper Union in NYC. Among his most memorable remarks came in the Q&A moderated by Stephen Heller, addressing originality in design: "Don't try be original, just try to be good. If you're original, then you're original." Rand's goal was excellence, not world domination.

Design excellence inspires all and sets a high bar for designers. Personally, I'm as intrigued with what famous designers say about their work than the work itself. After all, we want to know: How did they do that? I'm a huge fan of Michael Beirut's work, but it could be that I love his authorship even more. Same with Paul Rand.

The relationship between design and thinking has been a contentious issue of late. Some believe that the recent wave of "design thinking" will propel the field forward. Others think it was B.S. from the start, that good designers have been doing it all along, or that the party's over.

I've had the privilege of working with Herman Miller over the years and had access to some of George Nelson's early letters with the family that launched the company. Nelson is of course well known for the products he designed, but these letters clearly demonstrate the reach of design – design thinking, if you will – in an earlier era. George was not only giving advice about the products he designed or invented, but also about manufacturing, merchandising, branding, and company culture.

Design can affect change, and design itself may be changing. In any case, we should agree on semantics. We should encourage diversity, creativity, and excellence, and as the ground shifts. Whether we believe design thinking is the next big thing, or the latest fad, we shouldn't be afraid to use these words in the same sense. Otherwise our parents and clients don't stand a chance.

These are important questions for working designers today. As Joe Strummer points out, the future is unwritten, that shouldn't stop us from thinking about design.

Most companies anchor themselves in what they offer customers over their people. It’s understandable, but next-generation companies will look for a brand promise which appeals to customers and talent alike. Too much focus on products, for example, risks making an organization and its people rigid and slow to change. If a company believes that its success is only in optimized manufacturing, then all remaining energy will be about sales and distribution. Innovation may come in the form of slight upgrades or pricing strategies, but it won’t open new markets or deliver something truly new. One of the best examples of this is the U.S auto industry during one of its biggest downturns.

U.S. automakers face many challenges, but chief among them in the last decade was that they were struggling to sell cars—not because they didn’t know how to manufacture cars or how to distribute them, but they struggled to understand which cars people wanted to buy. By anchoring itself to a product, instead of a more human brand promise, the industry was blind to new opportunities.

This rigidity affects employees. In this atmosphere, companies emphasize output and employees emphasize titles. If a person wants a promotion, they need to increase their rote productivity. This mental model is reinforced within the office furniture industry. Manufacturers are making incremental improvements to task chairs that will allow employees to stay seated for longer periods of time (i.e. an “8-hour chair” or a “6-hour chair”). The emphasis on optimization becomes a mantra and limits an organization's ability to adapt. For leading companies, this mantra is beginning to change.

Forward-looking furniture manufacturers are beginning to talk about the whole work environment to improve performance, not just products focused on productivity. Auto manufacturers are talking about transportation, not just quality and Six Sigma manufacturing. A system focused on optimization has limits. A new system is emerging which leverages human-centered design.

Taking a human-centered approach for HR may seem counterintuitive to some organizations. These methods put the user at the center and build systems around them. These methods often lead to greater adoption and effectiveness. While HCD may be more familiar to departments focused on customers, these approaches are finding their way into HR.

Human-centered design for employees can free talent from rigid structures and job functions. Sometimes, traditional titles become a list of rote tasks with little room for expansive thinking. Employees focus on optimizing their own system for accomplishing these tasks. As they progress through their career, employees define and cherish the system they’ve built—it’s what they know and they can sometimes be resistant to change. But they are being valued the wrong way. By placing the person at the center, we can better view their value as the experiences they create and the perspectives they bring, rather than the tasks they complete. The best talent looks for such opportunities. Organizations which value this thinking find new ways to deliver on a more aspirational brand promise.

Recently, Ford announced its Transportation Mobility Cloud initiative, a cloud-based system that would allow software developers to help solve transportation problems in the emerging marketplace of IoT automobiles and devices. City infrastructures hold a promise to make transportation safer, more efficient, and more sustainable. This kind of solution takes Ford away from cars—putting people at the center—and lays the foundation for a more aspirational and relevant brand. It will require employees with an agile mindset. HR is a gatekeeper to talent. As organizations look to become more agile, HR teams can also serve as a guiding light to help find new ways to equip organizations with the right people for success.

Across the built environments industry, players in the value chain are looking to create differentiated experiences. There are many different opportunities to satisfy this desire. A next wave of innovation might come to business models, such as services like Ford Canvas or Porsche Passport, allowing consumers to subscribe to the brand without leasing the car. But products still matter – a lot. In fact, product innovation is key to supporting new experiences, such as subscription models, allowing manufacturers to grow revenue from a combination of value propositions.

The Gap Between Technology and Furniture

CES, the gargantuan Consumer Electronics Show, took place earlier this year. As usual, there was a lot of talk about Google, Apple, and Amazon, along with many novel technologies demonstrating where things might go. Google went big with its “Google Assistant Connect” platform, a voice-activated digital assistant. From Apple’s Siri to Amazon’s Alexa or Microsoft’s Cortana, digital assistants are a burgeoning frontier. A strategy for winning in this space may not be about the best hardware for housing the digital assistant, rather embedding the digital assistant into products, hardware, and software created by other companies. The Internet of Things (IoT) does not mean that all smart products will be made by technology leaders themselves. For Google, this can mean integrating Google Assistant with Google Maps and having that exist on your Apple iPhone. For furniture companies, it can mean durable goods with embedded digital platforms take advantage of trends – without necessarily inventing them.

Herman Miller’s Live OS initiative one example of an industry player moving into the digital space. In March 2018, the company announced the inclusion of the Aeron chair into its Live OS family, allowing the desk and chair to communicate with each other through an app. When you sit down, the desk adjusts to your settings and the same thing happens when you stand up. Might Herman Miller start licensing Live OS to other manufacturers of comparable office products, such as adjustable monitor arms?

Herman Miller is not alone. From Steelcase’s Microsoft partnership to Haworth’s Bluescape offering are glimpses into the future of smart furniture. Ultimately, it’s not just about selling furniture or a license. The long game will likely be more about aggregating data and what can be learned about behavior and work.

Looking at CES technologies that are not yet commercially viable and furniture companies dive into tech points to the gap between the two. Silicon Valley companies seek embodiment of their emerging technology. Furniture products are made to support technology, but too often do not embed new technology beyond their own proprietary platforms. The Internet of Things will require closing the gap between technology and furniture, opening new revenue streams including subscriptions and data analytics.

Taking a step back, we can benchmark how other industries adopt new technology. Are furniture companies keeping up?

New Tech in Consumer Appliances

Fingerprint sensors on smartphones were breakthrough a couple of years ago, but are becoming commonplace today. The handles on that 20-year-old treadmill have sensors that can read your heart rate. If these consumer experiences are mainstream, furniture customers will expect the office to work more seamlessly with technology.

The title of “First IoT Device” reportedly goes to a Coca-Cola vending machine at Carnegie Mellon from the 1980s. Students modified the device so they could check from their computers if the machine had any bottles and if they were cold.

We’ve come a long way since then. Home appliances are a good place to look, especially Samsung’s Family Hub. With Family Hub, Samsung is reflecting the kitchen as the center of the home with the refrigerator as the main touchpoint. Technology is embedded into the refrigerator, allowing consumers to use the large screen on the door to see what’s inside without opening, sync calendars, make grocery lists, play music, leave memos, share photos, and use Bixby (Samsung’s version of a voice-activated assistant). Consumers can also interact with all of these features via an app on their phones.

Digital hubs like these can become a place to control your “smart home” – dimming the lights, checking the baby monitor, or start your washer and dryer. You have a personal assistant with Samsung’s Bixby or LG’s version, which connects with Alexa and Google Assistant. However imperfect, the user interaction between the appliance and the technology has become more seamless. Eventually, these products and services will become fused together.

The Digital Office Hub

What is the “hub” of the office? Is it the whiteboard, desk, or chair? Do they all talk to each other? And how does the digital integration create opportunities for built environment providers to offer subscriptions and insights? Where does the data go, and who owns it? Facility managers? HR? Corporate real estate? The individual? Is it a source of collaboration and innovation?

Business model innovation and product innovation go hand-in-hand. Built environments players should keep an eye on new benchmarks from the consumer world and emerging tech. We expect to see more of these initiatives in the next several years, and the winners surely will find ways to add new value by bridging the furniture technology gap.

The other larger-than-life Bauhaus figure to arrive in Chicago in the 1930s was, of course, Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, who was appointed to head the School of Architecture at what became Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). As the story goes, even though they taught together at the Bauhaus in Germany and remain among the select few credited with largely instigating modern design, Moholy-Nagy and Mies didn't really get along. This is why to this day, even though ID eventually merged with IIT, the two schools remain separate.

ID was later led by another well-known designer, Jay Doblin , who co-formed the design-turned-consulting firm Doblin. Jay Doblin became well known for his ability to "reframe" customer problems—a technique that served clients well and added substantially to ID's evolving curriculum. Larry Keeley, Doblin's successor at the firm and thought leader at ID, recounts how it would work: "Allow me to tell you what the real problem is… " (Cue the drum roll and dry ice.)

All of this led to what ID is today: Arguably the leading school for design methods in the United States and the cutting edge of this "design thinking" thing people are talking about. ID became the first institution in the U.S. to offer a Ph.D. in design, and IDEO's famous path from product design firm to innovation powerhouse was first paved by Doblin.

Jeremy Alexis is a current professor at ID following in the footsteps of Keely, Doblin, et al. Among the courses he teaches is one called Problem Framing. According to Alexis, it turns out that "framing" may be one of the innate skills of a designer—and some of us don't even know it.

Problem framing—deciding which problems to solve—is critical. Leaders determine which problems they want to solve, and good designers like Jay Doblin have used the powerful tool of reframing (redefining the problem) for years. As Alexis points out, designers talk a lot about solving problems, but too often we don't really have a way of describing how that happens. Problem framing is Step One.

Framing is not only a class; it's a discipline, a philosophy. Some of the basic framing questions include: Are we sure this is the right problem? Should we first start with a project to determine the problem? Is this a discovery problem, or an optimization problem?

Wicked problems are not deterministic, and have no formula. Sometimes, the more you learn, the less you know.

Understanding the nature of the problem—whether it's something a team is willing to pursue, whether the problem is free of bias and sufficiently abstract, whether we have the right facts, etc.—is the foundation of good problem-solving.


Good designers reframe problems all the time. They may not call it "reframing," but that's what they do. Bad designers either don't know how to reframe problems or don't know how to control it.

Too many designers are ADD reframers. They don't know how to throttle their reframing gene. They often get frustrated when they feel that teams aren't being innovative enough, or tend to throw everyone off by inserting widely new and different ideas too late in the process to be helpful. While it's true that often teams aren't very innovative, and great ideas sometimes come when they come, developing and flexing your reframing muscles can be a tremendous asset.

You say "puh-tey-toh," I a say "puh-tah-toh." Not everyone uses the same terminology, but it's clear that ID is making great strides in framing the contemporary design innovation space the same way Moholy-Nagy and Mies framed modern design in their day. And good designers everywhere skillfully frame problems to create the opportunity for great solutions.

One of the more widely accepted models for relationship stages comes from Mark Knapp in 1998. Knapp’s model contains three integrated phases: Coming Together, Relational Maintenance, and Coming Apart. These phases break into ten stages, which are analogous to brand building. Below is a suggestion on how relationship building and brand building overlap by focusing on the first six stages.

Stage 1. Initiating

Expressing interest in making contact and showing that you are the kind of person worth getting to know.

During the initiation phase, brands are trying to inspire their customers. The brand will put forward its best self. It should tap into the customer’s sense of imagination and aspiration and demonstrate what could be.

Stage 2. Experimenting

The process of getting to know others and to gain more information about them.

Stage 3. Intensifying

An interpersonal relationship is now beginning to emerge. Feelings about the other person are now openly expressed, forms of address become more familiar, commitment is now openly expressed, and the parties begin to see themselves as “we” instead of separate individuals.

During stages 2 and 3, Experimenting and Intensifying trust is being built through a serious of challenges and assurance. As the trust grows so does the user’s willingness to promote the brand. It could be a word-of-mouth recommendation, or it might be as subtle as buying a bag of Starbucks coffee to use at home. Stage 3 demonstrates the beginning of a shift where a brand goes from being a product or service to part of the user’s identity.

Stage 4. Integrating

Identification as a social unit. Social circles merge. Partners develop unique, ritualistic ways of behaving. Obligation to the other person increases. Some personal characteristics are replaced, and we become different people.

When a brand has become a part of the user’s daily routine, it has successfully integrated into the user’s life and has increased its ties to the user’s identity. An example might be going to the YMCA in the morning, or having breakfast on Saturdays at your favorite spot. The brand interaction becomes a habit and can be part of a larger culture (Apple = Creatives, Microsoft = Business).

Stage 5. Bonding

The two people make symbolic public gestures to show society that their relationship exists (rings, friendship bracelets, commitment).

Intensity is the main difference between Stages 4 and 5. While the brand interaction becomes a habit in Stage 4, the commitment may be subconscious and less intentional. Stage 5 represents a very intentional commitment. Users refer to themselves as either Coke or Pepsi people. They get tattoos of the Apple logo or wear necklaces with the Nike swoosh. Wearables use personal health, big data, and style to try and achieve Stage 5 with users. This bond is partially what enables Evernote to move from a digital notebook tool to a physical backpack, printers, wallets, and more. Evernote has a strong understanding of its value proposition that points to their target user. The company has created a strong user experience on the digital front that has led to a heavy Stage 5 Bond, and the opportunity to produce products and services analogous to its core offer.

Stage 6. Differentiating

The need to re-establish separate identities begins to emerge. The key to successful differentiation is maintaining a commitment to the relationship while creating a space for autonomy and individuality.

Stage 6 overlaps between the Relational Maintenance phase and the Coming Apart phase as establishing independence while maintaining a strong bond can be a strong factor in a successful long-term relationship. It feels ironic but goes back to the old cliché, “If you love something set it free…”. When users realize they are not dependent on the brand, but choose them, it allows for a deeper intimacy with a brand. It’s the difference between a new pair of shoes and your favorite shoes. Making a choice is more powerful than satisfying a need. The urge for many companies is to create a stronger sense of need instead of desire. This urge can be a hang up for many companies. Inspire the user to choosing your brand instead.

Thinking about brand building through the lens of relationship building can serve as an evaluation tool to gain understanding on whether or not tactics are helping or hindering your brand. To succeed an organization must have a clear view of its value proposition on a human level, not a corporate level. It also must have a strong understanding of its target audience. These two variables can intertwine the brand with the right audience’s identity.

There are a rising number of applications that mention the impact of alumni as the reason for applying to a particular college. If alumni are increasingly influencing student’s college choices, and are a key in demonstrating the value of a degree why aren’t more schools equipping this population to be evangelists’ for the school rather than simply asking for donations? A brand evangelist can produce more for your institution than a $50 donation.

The reason there is a gap in utilizing alumni in admissions is due to a lack of alignment. In many ways, schools are no different than business organizations in that there are different business units, or departments, that work in silos. This is simply a trait that grows over time. For colleges and universities, admissions, alumni, academics, and athletics are the silos that are typically held together by the marketing team or a single individual. There is simply too much to keep up with on an individual unit level that it makes it hard to see the forest through the trees. As a resulting alignment suffers and the alumni population is left underutilized in the admissions process.

Meanwhile, the number of high school graduates is expected to dwindle, but the diversity among those graduates is expected to grow. This means that colleges and universities have to fight harder for local students, while also marketing on a national or global level to reach a larger pool of students. All this to say the way universities are marketing themselves needs to change and alumni should be a key part.

Alumni provide institutions an opportunity to make personal connections with prospective students who may identify better with the individual alumni than the institution itself.

Guidance counselors, once an important influencer in the yielding process, have experienced a shift in job roles. A study of 806 middle schools and 2,084 high school counselors revealed that roughly 70 percent of high school counselors state being tasked with clerical duties; another 60 percent include test coordination as the main job responsibility. This leaves very little time to help students and their parents navigate through the intricate process of finding, applying, and choosing a school.

Higher Ed institutions will need to think differently about their brand and route to market as competition heats up for a shrinking and changing group of high school graduates. Clever universities will find ways to create alignment among a shifting set of influencers from guidance counselors to alumni.