Your Customers Don’t Care about Strategy
The word “business” is always associated with various strategy terms and definitions. For each management process, whether it’s done at a pre-stage startup or a high-end corporate, executives tend to believe in the importance of having a well-defined structure. For example, strategic planning is always concerned with growth and internal structure. Founders work hard on executing an eye-catching strategy to attract investors. Consultants and business owners are arguing over terms and processes that makes little sense except for them. It looks like the business arena is mainly concerned with internal operations while not paying much attention to what makes up the most important part of the outer world: customers.
Strategy is important and it came here to stay: one cannot radically iterate something was in place for hundreds of years. However, the fast-paced market seems to be indifferent about big companies that fail and emergent startups that don’t stand up for competition. The first used to have a good product that attracted a wide base of customers and enthusiasts, but as business cycles pass by, the product became outdated and undesired. The latter group, represented in ambitious small businesses, had a very clear idea of what constitutes a “revolutionary” product, but they fell a prey to their egoism and false assumptions: they thought customers would be devoted fans to what they made.
Both groups didn’t spend much of their time asking these questions: Does my product actually work? Does the service I’m offering make any sense?
Amateurs and business professionals commit the same mistake: they fall in love with what they make, and they wholeheartedly believe that people will perceive their product the same way them makers did. Makers often like their dialectic in articulating the features they are going to include and unconsciously ignore influential buyers. While businesses should trust their guts while launching new products, they should also bear in mind the importance of listening to what customers desire. Moreover, they often forget about the need to perform solid predictions on which products have high potential on responding to people’s current problems.
A bold analysis to this problem invites us to disregard structure for developing innovative solutions that can create a high-impact market presence. An example of this argument is Apple - which is arguably the most innovative company in the world - at two different strategy periods.
When Apple’s Board fired Steve Jobs, company’s founder and source of inspiration, a shift in strategy took place. Apple adopted a routinely-static approach at product development stage. Don Norman, who served as vice president of advanced technology at Apple from 1993 to 1998, reports the following:
“There were three evaluations required at the inception of a product idea: a marketing requirement document, an engineering requirement document, and a user-experience document… . These [three documents] would be reviewed by a committee of executives, and if approved, the design group would get a budget, and a team leader… . [T]he team would work on expanding the documents, inserting plans on how they hoped to meet the marketing engineering, and user-experience needs—figures for the release date, ad cycle, pricing details, and the like. It was a consultative process, [but it led] to a lack of cohesion in the product.” (1)
If we let ourselves imagine how the process described by Don Norman took place, we will certainly fail to see the connection among these three evaluations and how we currently perceive Apple as a brand. There’s no wonder that such traditional strategy was an essential part of the reasons behind Apple losing competition and nearly exhausting all its financial resources at these tough times.
With the return of Steve Jobs in 1997, Apple began to rebuild what the company stood for in the early beginnings of the company’s existence: building insanely great products as described by Jobs.
The following statement is an excerpt of Steve’s vision regarding product development, which is apparently the opposite of what was taking place in the 1990s:
“The system is that there is no system. That doesn’t mean we don’t have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that’s not what it’s about. Process makes you more efficient. But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem. It’s ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea. And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.” (2)
One lesson we can draw from this comparison is the importance of thinking about an existing problem instead of putting enormous weight on strategy and internal operations. Writing a business plan may require you to set on your desk and think of something innovative, but leaving the workplace and running around the block while searching for inspiration can be an effective process as well. The message here is to be less self-centered when it comes to product development and execution. What matters most in innovation is listening to people. The rest will follow up.
References and links for further read:
- Daniel Turner, “The Secret of Apple Design,” Technology Review, May 2007.
Direct Link: http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/407782/the-secret-of-apple-design/
- Peter Burrows, “The Seed of Apple’s Innovation,” Business Week, December 12, 2004.
Direct Link: http://www.businessweek.com/print/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2004/nf20041012_4018_db083.htm?chan=gl