Data + Intuition = Awesomeness

I used to read BusinessWeek religiously. And there are some great people there. But now it’s for sale and Bruce Nussbaum blames culture. He says that they lost touch with their readers. Oh, sure they tried to understand what their readers wanted… with surveys. Don’t get me wrong. Surveys have a place in market research– they’re great for confirming hypotheses. But they only give you answers to the questions you think to ask. And that is not how to be awesome.

All of this reminds me of a question I asked last year: at what point does a company shift from its original entrepreneurial culture to corporate incrementalism?

I think it happens when the company falls out of love with its customers.

Starting a business is hard. Really hard. And most new businesses fail. So, you’d better be really friggin passionate about that need you’re trying to fill in the marketplace, and you’d better understand the hell out of your customers. It’s a romantic comedy of sorts. The first few years are great! Passionate! You understand each other. Then, gradually (naturally) the passion fades. So does the understanding. And when you lose that empathy, that deep understanding, you lose your intuition. Intuition is what helped get your business started. But what got you started won’t keep you going. It won’t take you to the next level of awesome.

How can you avoid taking home the blue ribbon for being mediocre?

1. Understand the hell out of your customer. Talk to them (yikes!) in real life. Pick up the damn phone and call someone. Go where they are. But don’t be a stalker.
2. Take a stand. Be passionate about something. Nobody ever made progress by being well behaved.
3. Be balanced. You need data to inform your intuition. Neither is a valid substitute for the other. You need both. You need data and intuition.

So. Time for a new question: is it possible for Public companies to be truly passionate about their customers? I’m not sure. Ultimately, they serve Wall Street’s relentless, short-sighted demand for growth and profit. Public companies trade integrity for capital. What do you think? Fire away in the comments.

Barack Obama tapped into the Groundswell during his campaign. He recognized that people were connecting with each other to get the things they need, rather than going to traditional institutions. He recognized the power of a bottom-up strategy and how an army of energized campaign partners–not just supporters– is infinitely more effective than the old way. Top down just doesn’t work like it used to!

Now they’ve won the election. What’s next?

Governing.

How will the Obama administration tap into the Groundswell when it comes time to govern? How will we be involved? How will we involve ourselves? What if you got an email or a Tweet or a text message from the President explaining why he needs your support for Project A? Telling you where to find more information, and asking you to act. To call, email, fax, and write to your Senators and Representatives. To go out canvasing, knocking on doors. Think about what that would do to the traditional seats of power in our nation– in the world! Asymetrical competition at its finest. 

So, what lessons can business learn from the Obama victory?

• Trade control for conversation. The idea of control is stupid anyway– you don’t own your brand, your customers do. No matter how big, how strong, how old you are, your customers actually hold the power. And they know it. So listen to them. Talk with them. And listen some more. If you’re authentic, they will embrace you and can become your most valuable marketing stewards.
• Segmentation sucks. We marketing types love to slice and dice the market and tell different stories to the different parts. And that still works. Sort of. Top-down strategy starts broad and progressively segments, targets and positions more and more. It gets so granular that you need a cheesecloth to collect the pieces. Bottom-up starts with the little bits and pieces, finds the common themes and molds all those disparate pieces into something much better, much grander, much more desireable than the pieces on their own. So focus on the common, not the differences. 
• Your competition isn’t who you think it is. Obama wasn’t even an underdog–by all traditional measures of advantage, he didn’t stand a chance against the Clinton political machine. He didn’t have traditional advantages, but he had new ones. He had a clear, compelling and consistent message: yes we can. He wasn’t selling anything; he was supporting us. New strategy isn’t about how well you can sell, or even how well you can market. It’s about how well you support your users. It’s about helping them be the change the wish to see in the world. That’s the company you should be. And that’s the kind of company you should watch out for.
• Block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand. The Obama campaign built a truly vast network of campaign partners, and they did it one conversation at a time, one micro-interaction at a time to spread that clear, compelling, consistent message. When you get people involved and emotionally invested, they’ll take ownership. Ownership = loyal customers.

There are exciting times ahead and I can’t wait.