Are you simply imitating your competitors or only seeking an incremental advantage over them? Why not sidestep them altogether, by focusing on what customers really want? By understanding and maximizing how your offering creates lifestyle or workstyle enrichment, you can do just that.

Consider an example from the world of sports. In the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games a swimmer from Equatorial Guinea qualified for competition not by meeting the minimum time standard, but by winning a wild card entry.  Such cards are randomly allocated to athletes from small, third world countries who otherwise would have no chance to meet the competitive standards.  The intent is to make the Olympics a truly world-encompassing event. 

This particular athlete gained instant celebrity status by flailing and splashing his way through the race in over twice the time of the other swimmers.  Being exposed to a full size swimming pool for the first time, and uninitiated in the ways of a diving start, he still somehow managed to finish the 100-meter heat to the spectators’ uproarious reception.  

Such a display of courageous dilettantism made him one of the most talked about athletes of the games, winning him worldwide fame, celebrity invitations and attractive promotional opportunities.  Why such raving success for the worst swimmer in Olympic history? Because he unintentionally sidestepped head-on competition with his infinitely more qualified rivals, and instead gave spectators what they really wanted most of all: inspirational entertainment.

#leadership #disruption #smartstrategy #transformation #innovation

This year’s Nobel Prizes are being currently awarded, and you rightfully may consider them to be a serious affair. However, there is a much more humorous, purposely irreverent, and arguably no less important version of these awards: The Ig Nobel Prizes.

The 2024 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded at a wild and wacky ceremony on September 12, 2024, at MIT university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The 34th annual awards, given out by the editors of the humorous scientific publication ‘Annals of Improbable Research’ to achievements that “first make people laugh and then make them think”.

This year’s ceremony had the theme of Murphy’s Law, and featured Murphy’s Law song contest opera, ‘24/7’ lectures in which experts first explained their subject in 24 seconds, then in seven words, silly costumes and paper-plane throwing.

The much heralded, 2024 winners included:

• Demonstrating and explaining the swimming abilities of a dead trout.

• Studying if the direction people’s hair swirls in the southern hemisphere matches that of people in the northern hemisphere.

• Finding evidence that some real plants imitate the shapes of neighboring artificial plastic plants.

You can watch the entire, outlandish ceremony here: https://improbable.com/ig/archive/2024-ceremony/

Fun fact: Sir Andre Geim has the distinct honor of bagging both the Nobel Prize (in 2010 in physics for his work on graphene research) and the Ig Nobel Prize (in 2000 for the magnetic levitation of frogs). Such direct connection between highly valuable and highly ridiculous should not be the least surprising. As Albert Einstein famously said: “If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.”

#humor #Nobelprize #leadership @creativity @futurism

One of the most endearing, timeless pastimes rooted in our childhood is stone skipping or skimming.  It is also a fun, cross-generational activity that immerses us in nature and fosters bonding mindfulness.  Which is why I have incorporated stone skipping into my leadership events and recommend it as a great way to reconnect with your childhood sense of adventure, creativity, and curiosity. 

So, I was very pleased to learn of the World Stone Skimming Championships, which takes place on Easdale Island in Scotland every September since 1997. This year’s contest saw competitors from five continents and 27 countries, with the contestant limit of 350 selling out in less than 30 minutes.

Spectators and judges watched as challengers took turns at the "Skim of Destiny", the platform from which they unleashed their stones into a water-filled quarry. See more fun details about this seminal sporting event in the BBC article: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240905-scotlands-offbeat-world-championship-of-stone-skimming

Why not seize the moment, and start training this weekend for next year’s competition?

#selfimprovement #mindfulness #creativity #culture #outdoors

It's pretty simple. You need to take care of your customers, especially your most valued ones. Long accumulated goodwill can be eroded quickly by mistreating them, and then failing to rectify the situation.

Here is a perfect example.

The incident

1. A few weeks ago I received a terse email from Progressive announcing that my home insurance policy had been suddenly terminated. No explanation, nor any prior warning or courtesy alert.

2. Incredulous and upset, I called their customer service center the next day for an explanation. The representative who answered could not have been less empathetic to my situation, as further worrying details emerged. Apparently, there was an internal miscalculation or miscommunication that resulted in a negative discrepancy between my payment amount vs. the policy premium for the grand sum of $1.50.

3. When I asked how it is possible that a discrepancy of just $1.50 can terminate the policy of a longstanding Progressive customer who pays thousands in combined annual premiums, moreover that I received no prior warning or opportunity to rectify, the only response was 'These things happen'.

4. The representative then proceeded to put me on hold, saying it was necessary for me to wait because once the issue is finally resolved internally, I will have to make the (ridiculous and demeaning) payment of $1.50 over the phone in order to reactivate my policy. After over an hour of waiting, I finally hung up in indignation without any seeming resolution.

5. After another 24 hours of anxiety, I called again and received news that my policy has in fact been reinstated and a letter was issued stating" "Please disregard any previous cancellation notices we've sent related to Underwriting reasons -- we'll continue providing you coverage without any interruption."

6. In light of my disturbing saga, I wrote an email to Lori Niederst, Customer Relationship President at Progressive. This set in motion of flurry of correspondence by numerous agents. However, these served only to magnify the lack of transparency in the company’s customer interface and negligence in providing a clear and consistent understanding of my account status.

7. And when I asked what they planned to do to make me feel better and to compensate me for all my wasted time and anxiety, a hollow apology was provided, along with the excuse that industry regulations don’t allow for any compensation. In essence, Progressive is acknowledging customer mistreatment, then hiding behind external factors to do nothing about it.

Of course, I understand that hiccups can happen in the treatment of customers. What really defines the fabric of a company is how it handles such situations, whether it makes the impacted customer feel cared for and treated right. If handled well, such incidents can actually strengthen customer attachment.

Regretfully, this was not the case here. Nowhere during the post-incident interaction was I made to feel better. And as a result, a valuable,

long-standing customer relationship is needlessly broken.

#progressive #customerexperience #leadership #businesslesson #customercare

It is not often that you associate a McDonald's restaurant with such architectural beauty and opulence that it becomes a top tourist attraction in its own right.

But this is exactly what the newly renovated McDonald's at the Western Train Station in Budapest has achieved. The NY Post hails it a '5-star hotel restaurant' and the most beautiful McDonald's in the world.

https://nypost.com/2024/09/03/lifestyle/worlds-most-beautiful-mcdonalds-reopens-inside-old-train-station/

The restaurant is situated within the grand structure designed in 1877 by The Eiffel Company (founded by Gustave Eiffel, designer of the Eiffel Tower), and became a beacon of freedom when it first opened shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990.

The renovation placed special emphasis on incorporating natural materials, preserving the building's historic integrity, and creating a highly enjoyable customer environment.

Re-Imagining the customer experience by blending together seemingly incongruous components - in this case historic, elegant architecture with cutting-edge, tech-based order placement and comfortable, sustainability-driven eating space - is very smart application of the Innovation Shortcut.

In what way are you taking advantage of the shortcut to combine previously separate or seemingly incompatible components in order to unlock new customer value?

#innovation #smartstrategy #leadership #mcdonalds #transformation #customerexperience #architecture