Smart Growth (continued) – the Hacker

 

Pascal Dennis, co-author of Harnessing Digital Disruption

Innovation requires engaging & aligning three very different personalities – the Hipster, Hustler and Hacker.  Laurent Simon

Smart Growth takes root when three very different personality types - the Hipster, Hustler and Hacker - are present & in full flow. This may help explain why startup Failure Rates are so high. If one or more are absent, our innovations are likely to be flat, or worse yet, over-complicated & irritating.

Each of these characters correspond to a fundamental question or test each innovation must pass:

1.     Does it wow?  Hipster

2.     Can we make money? Hustler

3.     Does it work? Hacker

The sequence of questions reflects hard-won wisdom:

·       If the idea doesn’t wow the customer, why bother?

·       If you can’t make money, why build it?

·       The ‘better mousetrap’ metaphor is flat out wrong!  Nobody cares about our mousetrap.

Last time, I talked about the Hipster. Today…

The Hacker is the engineer, coder, scientist, doctor, actuary, accountant…the one who is deeply engaged in the technology underlying the offering.  Think Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Elon Musk or other famous Tech founders. Hackers are often noteworthy for having a flat, abstract or seemingly disengaged affect.  It’s not surprising. Technology is often so utterly engrossing, that it’s easy to disappear into it.

Hackers tend to be very smart. I’ve mentored many accomplished ‘Hackers’ including COOs, CFOs, CIOs, Chief Medical Officers, and Chief Risk Officers. Their domain knowledge is profound and attaining it requires years of focus, often to the exclusion of everything else. Ironically, being very smart can be limiting!

Mentoring ‘Hackers’, therefore, entails sharing tacit wisdom from other fields & utterly different perspectives. Chief Medical Officers, for example, readily absorb OpEx/Lean concepts like Visual Management & Standardized Work in contexts as varied as:

·       Surgery – (How do we ensure a quick, effective changeover between surgeries?)

·       Surgical Instrument Decontamination – (How do we know if a tray full of instruments has been disinfected?)

·       Infection Control – (How do we ensure a NICU waiting room is not contaminated?)

·       Emergency Department – (How do we know when we need another triage nurse, or doctor?)

Medical professionals readily absorb these methods. (Where the methods fail, the culprit is usually organization culture).

I was privileged to mentor an extraordinary CEO & Hacker, who recognized his blind spots – and asked for help to overcome them!  Before major meetings, he’d often whisper, ‘Help me understand’ the room…’ In other words, help me understand body language, tone of voice, and the overall vibe -  essential inputs that were opaque to him, despite his acute intelligence.

In the same way, during innovation sprints, we help Hackers see the world through the eyes of the Hipster. In Discovery interviews, for example, we are looking for often unconscious customer signals of delight or discomfort. Hipsters pick these signals up naturally.  “Did you notice how her body language changes every time you mention her elderly parents?”

These signals are usually invisible to Hackers, and to Hustlers, for that matter. But when we follow a clear validation process, we introduce them to an otherwise invisible world. It’s like introducing a color-blind person to the color theory. The Hacker may never become a Leonardo but will learn to appreciate the power of Design and develop a deeper understanding of reality.

Each of us sees a little bit of reality, which is why ‘radical collaboration’ is so powerful. A diverse team helps us we see what’s actually there – and what we need to do. But it’s a classic ‘Catch 22’: decision-makers can’t see what they can’t see!

Best wishes,

Pascal Dennis         E: pascal.dennis@leansystems.org

PS For more on the 3H model, check out our book, Harnessing Digital Disruption.

#StartupFailure #HockeyStickGrowth #FailFastFailForward #InnovationStrategy #LeanExperimentation #ExecutiveAirCover

 

Innovation Follies - Turning a Cup of Joe into a Nightmare

 

‘I just wanted a cup of coffee…’

 

Why are new product failure rates so high? Could it be that our design process ignores a critical voice?

Innovation thrives when three personality types - the Hipster, Hustler and Hacker - are present & in full flow. If one or more are absent, our innovations are likely to be flat, or even worse, over-complicated & irritating.

Each of these characters correspond to a fundamental question or test each innovation must pass. If our idea fails to pass the test – Stop!  And decide, do we persevere, pivot, or kill the idea? Here are the three questions & corresponding personality:

1.     Does it wow?  Hipster

2.     Can we make money? Hustler

3.     Does it work? Hacker

The sequence of questions reflects hard-won wisdom: If it doesn’t wow, why build the damn thing?

The Hipster understands customers – their nature, history, needs, aches & pains, and jobs to be done. The best Hipsters can intuit the entire customer journey from ‘I think I need something…’ to ‘Wow, I really loved that experience. I’m going to tell all my friends about it’.  We ignore the Hipster at our peril…

Our family was gifted a new coffee maker recently, a top tier model with ‘smart connectivity’ and ‘advanced convenience improvements’ including:

• Remote brewing: Start your coffee from bed or another room, or schedule it to be ready when you wake up or return home
• Automated routines: Set daily or weekly schedules, so your coffee is always ready at your preferred time
• Voice control: Use simple voice commands to brew coffee or adjust settings, hands-free
• Maintenance alerts: Receive notifications for cleaning, descaling, or other maintenance needs, reducing the guesswork in machine upkeep

‘Customization enhancements’ included:

• Personalized profiles: Save individual preferences for temperature, strength, grind size, and cup size, ensuring each user gets their ideal cup every time
• Detailed adjustments: Use the app to fine-tune brewing parameters such as water temperature, brew strength, and even espresso pressure
• Recipe libraries: Access digital libraries of international coffee recipes and specialty drinks, with step-by-step guidance and the ability to send custom recipes directly to the machine
• Multi-order management: Use apps to create a “coffee playlist” for guests

The device’s stated goal was to ‘transform the coffee-making experience by automating routines, enabling remote and voice control, and offering deep personalization options—making it easier than ever to enjoy a perfect, customized cup of coffee with minimal effort’.

How does that compare with the customer’s needs?  Here’s my wife, Pamela, ‘I just want to press a button & get a good cup of coffee.’  You can see where this is going, no? In fact, the damned thing did everything, except what we wanted.  It proved impossible to press a button & get a good cup of coffee. The instructions were opaque, the Blue Tooth & other electronics didn’t work, and when we finally squeezed a coffee out of it, it tasted awful.

The climax to our comic opera came when Pam dropped the coffee maker into the garbage bin, muttering ‘I hate this machine!’ Pam left a review on line and found other reviews that were just as scathing.  “I hate this machine…” was a common refrain.

I don’t want to be misunderstood.  I imagine the Design team was smart, capable and committed. But not only did they fail to create Value, but they also destroyed Value. My guess is that Hackers dominated the design process, ignoring, or even excluding Hipsters.  The Hackers convinced the Hustlers to go with the new-fangled design, likely using buzzwords & invoking AI voodoo. And they engaged electronics suppliers without confirming customer need or supplier capability.

Post script: We just bought a new coffee maker.  It’s a classic Italian model with simple & robust design, a half-page instruction manual, and no electronics.  The coffee tastes great.

Best wishes

Pascal Dennis         E: pascal.dennis@leansystems.org

PS For more on Hipsters and 3H teams, check out our book.

 

#InnovationFails #DesignThinking #ProductDesign #CustomerExperience #TechGoneWrong #KeepItSimple