Strategy. Innovation. Brand.
Aristotle, HBR, and Me
Excellence is a habit.
I love it when the Harvard Business Review agrees with me. A recent HBR blog post by Scott Edinger focuses on, “Three Elements of Great Communication, According to Aristotle“. The three are: ethos, logos, and pathos.
Ethos answers the questions: Are you credible? Why should I trust your recommendations? Logos is the logic of your argument. Is it factual? Do you have the evidence to back it up? (Interestingly, the more ethos you have,the less evidence you need to back up your logos. People will trust that you’re credible). Pathos is your ability to connect emotionally with your audience. If you have high credibility and impeccable logic, your audience might conclude that you could take advantage of them. Pathos reassures them that you won’t — your audience knows that you’re a good citizen.
When I teach people the arts of public speaking, I generally recommend that they start by establishing their credibility (ethos). The trick is to do this without overdoing it. If you come across as a braggart, you reduce your credibility rather than burnishing it. A good tip to remember is to use the word, “we” rather than “I”. “We” implies teamwork; “I” implies an egocentric psychopath.
After establishing your credibility, you proceed to the logic (logos) of your argument. What is it that you’re recommending and why do you think it’s a good solution for the audience’s needs? It’s often a good idea to start by defining the audience’s needs. Then you can fit the recommendation to the need. Keep it simple and use stories. Nobody remembers abstract logic and difficult technical concepts. They do remember stories.
Think about pathos both before the speech and in the conclusion. Ideally, you can meet the audience before your speech, ask insightful questions, and make personal connections. The more you can talk to members of the audience before the speech, the better off you’ll be. Look for anecdotes that you can use in your speech — that also builds your credibility. If nothing else, spend the last few minutes before your speech shaking hands with audience members and thanking them for coming to your speech. At the end of your speech, you can return to similar themes and express your appreciation. It’s also appropriate (usually) to point out how your recommendation will affect members of the audience personally. For instance, “We believe that our solution will help your company be more efficient. It will also help you build your career.”
Those of you who have followed my website for a while may remember my videos on ethos, logos, and pathos. I made them when I worked at Lawson Software and was teaching communication skills internally. Again, I’d like to thank Lawson for allowing me to use these videos on this website as I build my own practice.
By the way, all these suggestions apply to deliberative speeches. You present a logical argument and ask your audience to deliberate on it. On the other hand, you can also give a demonstrative speech where you throw the logic out altogether. They’re often called barn burners or stem winders. You can learn more here.
Circuses and Oceans
Red Circus or Blue Ocean?
The first time we went to Cirque de Soleil, we took Elliot and a bunch of his 12-year-old buddies. After all, circuses are for kids, right? As it turned out, Suellen and I enjoyed the show just as much — maybe more — than the kids did. I didn’t expect that.
Cirque de Soleil is an excellent example of a mashup innovation. Traditional circuses were for kids. I remember going to Ringling Brothers with my folks. I was dazzled by Uno — the man who could do a handstand on one finger. My parents were troupers but I don’t think they were dazzled. They took me because … well, circuses are for kids.
On the other hand, Broadway musicals are from grownups. They have a bit of a story to follow, they have some conflict, perhaps some mushy stuff, and a resolution. Most of all they have singing. This is where young kids start squirming. I mean, really … how many seven-year-olds want to know that when you’re a Jet, you’re Jet all the way?
The genius of Cirque de Soleil is that it mashes up the traditional circus — get the kids — with Broadway musicals — bring the grownups, too. There’s enough of a story to appeal to Mom and Dad and enough cool (and weird) stuff to appeal to seven-year-olds. It’s family entertainment for modern city dwellers.
While Cirque is a great mashup story, it may be more than that. According to W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, it’s also a great example of a Blue Ocean Strategy. For Kim and Mauborgne, there are red oceans and blue oceans. A red ocean is full of the blood of competitive strife — it’s red in tooth and claw. The red ocean represents a market of a given size. It’s not going to get any bigger so the only way for one company to grow is to make another company shrink. Strategy is all about defeating the competition rather than winning the customer. As Kim and Mauborgne point out, the market for traditional circuses was very much a red ocean.
A blue ocean, on the other hand, allows you to jump beyond the competition. You create something new and, in doing so, you create a new market where your traditional competitors are irrelevant. The authors offer some great examples of blue ocean strategies and some intriguing and very instructive tips for how to develop one. For Kim and Mauborgne, the genius of Cirque de Soleil is that they have leapt out of the red ocean and into a blue ocean where they rule the waves. Indeed, they’re the only ship in sight.
I’ll report on more blue ocean examples in future posts. At the same time, however, I have a nagging feeling that a blue ocean is not that different from the classic marketing strategy of creating a new category. Once upon a time, for instance, sedans were practical but not much fun to drive. (For my British readers, what Americans call a sedan, you call a saloon). On the other hand, sports cars were fun to drive but not very practical. Then BMW mashed up the two categories and created a sports sedan — practical yet fun to drive. Was the BMW sports sedan a new category or a blue ocean? I’ll report more on that in the future. No matter what you call it, however, mashups are a great way to get there.
If Crowdsourcing Is So Cool, Why Doesn’t Apple Do It?
Will you grade my papers?
I’m intrigued by crowdsourcing, the idea that you can send a complex task to an “undefined public” and get your work done quickly and efficiently. For instance, I enjoy teaching but I don’t like grading papers. So I’m thinking about crowdsourcing the task through a service like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. In theory, I could send my grading guidelines and student papers to the “undefined public” that contracts with the Mechanical Turk, have them graded and returned in a few days all for a few bucks. I’ll let you know how it goes.
I’m also on the board of Beanstalk, a charitable organization that supports charitable organizations in Colorado. We have lots of grassroots leaders here who do amazing things in their local communities — like urban agriculture, food justice, childhood education, etc. — but don’t know much about the arts of fundraising or managing a non-profit. They’re dynamic individuals leading small-scale projects. They don’t have a national organization behind them. We back them up in multiple ways, including a crowdfunding website. In the past 18 months, the site has raised well over $300,000. (Check it out and give some money to your favorite projects).
Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding are important in my own daily activities. I’m a fan. I’m also a fan of Apple Computer and have been for almost 30 years. In all that time, Apple has never once asked me my opinion about their products. When Steve Jobs was asked how much market research went into the iPhone, he famously replied, “None. It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want.”
So how does Apple stay ahead of the innovation curve and build products that we didn’t know we wanted? There are any number of accounts of how Apple works. (See for instance, Inside Apple or Insanely Simple or The Apple Experience). For today’s post, however, I’m going to stick to Steven Johnson’s account as found in Where Good Ideas Come From.
Johnson’s analysis revolves around the “coffeehouse” concept of innovation — very similar to the mashup concept that I’ve discussed on this website from time to time. In a coffeehouse, people and ideas connect, disconnect, and re-connect in “liquid networks.” Random connections supply ideas that then get mashed up — creating new ideas, concepts, and categories. Apple, on the other hand, has “adopted a fortress mentality toward the outside world.” As Johnson notes, “You won’t see Steve Jobs or Jonathan Ive crowdsourcing development of the next-generation iPhone.”
So how does Apple do it? Johnson writes that Apple’s “internal development process is explicitly structured to facilitate clash and connection between different perspectives. … [the] development cycle looks more like a coffeehouse than an assembly line.” Johnson describes most development cycles as linear processes where functionality is removed at each step. The designers come up with great ideas. The engineers who receive those ideas can deliver some of the functionality but not all of it. Manufacturing planners who receive the product plans can produce some of what’s wanted but not all of it. And so on in a declining circle.
Johnson suggests that Apple’s concurrent planning is “messier and more chaotic” but ensures that good ideas don’t get hollowed out. Instead, all the groups involved in creating products, “… meet continuously through the product-development cycle, brainstorming, trading ideas and solutions… and generally keeping the conversation open to a diverse group of perspectives.”
It’s messy but it’s creative. And, it’s a form of crowdsourcing. Rather than crowdsourcing outside the company, Apple does it inside the company. It sounds insane but it delivers insanely great products.
Illogical Excuses (That Work)
May I cut in line because … well, just because.
I’ve read Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion at least three times over the years. Every now and then I go back and re-read a chapter at random. Each time I do, I learn (or re-learn) something useful. Here’s an interesting study that I re-discovered on my last excursion.
The study goes back to the days when students stood in long lines at college libraries to use photocopy machines. (Yes, we actually copied physical pages rather than saving electronic pages to our hard drives). On particularly busy days — just before the end of a term, say — you might stand in line for well over an hour.
Some researchers decided to study a fairly basic question — under what conditions would students allow another student to cut into the line? Using the terminology of communication, persuasion, and compliance, the research question might be phrased: What communication techniques are most effective in persuading students to comply with a request to cut into the line?
The researchers sent students to the head of the line to test out three different messages. The students randomly asked:
A) May I please cut in line ahead of you?
B) May I please cut in line ahead of you because I have a doctor’s appointment and I’m really in a hurry.
C) May I please cut in line ahead of you because I really need to cut in line.
Being good researchers, you might create three hypotheses:
1) Message A will generate the lowest compliance rate — the message contains no reason for cutting in.
2) Message B will generate the highest compliance rate — the message contains a compelling reason to cut in.
3) Message C’s compliance rate will fall somewhere between A and B — the message contains a reason but it’s illogical.
As it happens, you would be right on Hypothesis 1. Students in the line were much less likely to comply with the request when the would-be cutter offered no reason.
On Hypothesis 2, you would be partially right. A compelling reason — the need to visit a doctor — does generate much higher compliance rates.
But does Message B generate the highest compliance rate? Well, … no… and here’s the surprise: the compliance rate for Message C was just as high as that for Message B. It appears that the logic behind the reason is not so important. The mere fact that you give a reason seems to be the important point.
Look a bit more closely at the three messages. Messages B and C contain the word because. Message A doesn’t. It seems that the students in the line responded to that specific word. If they heard because, they knew that a reason would follow. The nature of the reason didn’t seem to matter much. Just stating a reason — no matter how illogical — was sufficient to gain greater compliance. With Message A, students didn’t hear the word that introduces a reason and, therefore, were less compliant.
So the word because can be an important persuader in and of itself. If the person you’re speaking with hears the key word, they expect that a reason will follow … and they may not inspect it very closely. It’s sufficient that a reason is stated.
Of course, this doesn’t work on all occasions. If you come home with lipstick on your collar and reeking of whiskey, you better have a much better reason. In more mundane situations, however, remember the power of because. Why should you remember it? Well, just because.
A Joke About Your Mind’s Eye
You should see my internal movies.
Here’s a cute little joke:
The receptionist at the doctor’s office goes running down the hallway and says, “Doctor, Doctor, there’s an invisible man in the waiting room.” The Doctor considers this information for a moment, pauses, and then says, “Tell him I can’t see him”.
It’s a cute play on a situation we’ve all faced at one time or another. We need to see a doctor but we don’t have an appointment and the doc just has no time to see us. We know how it feels. That’s part of the reason the joke is funny.
Now let’s talk about the movie playing in your head. Whenever we hear or read a story, we create a little movie in our heads to illustrate it. This is one of the reasons I like to read novels — I get to invent the pictures. I “know” what the scene should look like. When I read a line of dialogue, I imagine how the character would “sell” the line. The novel’s descriptions stimulate my internal movie-making machinery. (I often wonder what the interior movies of movie directors look like. Do Tim Burton’s internal movies look like his external movies? Wow.)
We create our internal movies without much thought. They’re good examples of our System 1 at work. The pictures arise based on our experiences and habits. We don’t inspect them for accuracy — that would be a System 2 task. (For more on our two thinking systems, click here). Though we don’t think much about the pictures, we may take action on them. If our pictures are inaccurate, our decisions are likely to be erroneous. Our internal movies could get us in trouble.
Consider the joke … and be honest. In the movie in your head, did you see the receptionist as a woman and the doctor as a man? Now go back and re-read the joke. I was careful not to give any gender clues. If you saw the receptionist as a woman and the doctor as a man (or vice-versa), it’s because of what you believe, not because of what I said. You’re reading into the situation and your interpretation may just be erroneous. Yet again, your System 1 is leading you astray.
What does this have to do with business? I’m convinced that many of our disagreements and misunderstandings in the business world stem from our pictures. Your pictures are different from mine. Diversity in an organization promotes innovation. But it also promotes what we might call “differential picture syndrome”.
So what to do? Simple. Ask people about the pictures in their heads. When you hear the term strategic reorganization, what pictures do you see in your mind’s eye? When you hear team-building exercise, what movie plays in your head? It’s a fairly simple and effective way to understand our conceptual differences and find common definitions for the terms we use. It’s simple. Just go to the movies together.
My Social Media
