November 2020 - EMERGENT ELEMENT

Show Your Gratitude

When I came to the United States, Thanksgiving was a new holiday for me. Although I could not identify with the history, the essence of the celebration resonated with me. Every year we got together with family and friends to prepare a mix of Mexican, Peruvian, and American dishes. A time to relax, eat, joke, drink, and be grateful for what we have.

Like many holidays, we tend to highlight one day to express it and celebrate. And then we go with our daily life and miss many opportunities to be grateful. A recent survey of the John Temple Foundation found that we are not very good at expressing gratitude and that America’s gratitude is declining.

Showing gratitude is an act of generosity. And one day a year, we get together to celebrate and show our appreciation to others. I invite you to celebrate it fifty-two times a year, one day per week.

Sharing is Caring

One day per week, share your gratitude to people who have to help you on your journey. Reach out and let them know how they have influenced you, help you grow, get unstuck, and or supported you.

Seven Ways to Show Gratitude

There are many ways to show you care. Here are seven ways to get you going.

Act without rewards
Give something to someone for no reason at all.
Be present
Show them they are in your mind.
Be generous with your knowledge, time, and experience.
Use your power

A Thought About Power

Power isn’t a function of status or hierarchy. Power isn’t a tool for self-enhancement or for forcing compliance. Power is how you show up and how you play in someone else’s story.

Be grateful for what you have. And generous enough to use your power to help others.

May the goods in life be yours in abundance that stays with you year long.

Do You Have The Courage to Make Things Simple?

The other day I got frustrated with the process of an online conference with a new platform. It required many steps to access the online presentation. First, it required me to sign in to the conference platform. Then look for the room and topic I wanted to attend. After that, sign in again as an attendee to the presentation, go Zoom platform, sign in, and access the webinar. In all the processes, I have forgotten my password and email I have used to registered, which require me to ask for it, wait and start the process. So, it took an extra effort to access the already running presentation, which added to my frustration.

I’m sure the organizers were well-intended. And I assume part of the registration process focused on capturing the number of attendees to the conference and how many participants each topic attracted. All valid measures; however, they forgot the customer experience in their planning. And I wonder how many people quit based on time and frustration. By the time I listened to the speakers, my mood had changed from positive to negative.

People’s needs are not so complicated, but we tend to make simple things more complex. And the more complicated things are, the less likely they are to going to act. Make things simple.

Good enough can be scary. But quality is relative.

We strive to produce a great experience, a high-quality product, or service. These are ideal performance measures, and most likely, their definition is based on our own point of view. However, your opinion of performance rarely matches the people you serve view of performance. In fact, it is most likely that you overshoot when you project your own idea of performance.

Three basic performance lenses people use to choose between products or services.

Functional refers to performance and reliability. How does it work as I expected? Did it take me too long to sing in?

Emotional is about how people feel. What is the story they tell themselves about the product or service? I only buy the best. How does it make me feel? I got a good value.

Social focus on the tribe, how they perceive others feel about them, and their signals to the group. What will they tell others? She is environmentally conscious; this reflects who I am.

Simplicity is the key to brilliance.

Bruce Lee

What would happen if you intentionally lowered the performance in one area and increased to good enough in another in the name of simplicity?

Three ways to make the complex more simple:

Focus on the human experience. Understand which performance is more important to the people you serve and what tradeoff they are willing to make.

Eliminate the non-essential. Do less, but better. Focus on what matters most, and decrease performance where it does not.

Make the complex more simple. Look through the peoples’ eyes. Create experiences that require less time, physical or mental effort.

Simplicity is key. Make things easy to do.

Innovate, Don’t Force

Trying to force people to consume when they don’t want to is not a good growth strategy. Instead, innovate to remove the barriers to action.

Be wary of the mantra: If we build it, they will come.

Have you ever felt pushed or trying to be influenced to do something, and the more they insist, the more you resist or entirely ignore it? Your reaction could be for many reasons. Maybe you are not interested because you had more pressing problems, you are solving the issue in another way, or because it is not that important to you. Are you being seen?

As marketers, strategies, and designers, we have to learn to see. Learning to see involves empathy and respect for the people we seek to serve. Learn to see their dreams, desires, and the culture they belong to or want to be part of.

Our job is to help them get where they want to go next.

In our eagerness to solve a problem and go to market, we tend to ignore two crucial assumptions and four barriers that can derail us from helping the people we seek to serve.

The first mistake is to assume that someone that does not consume wants to consume. Maybe the people you are serving are not interested, or your offer does apply to them in their current circumstances. It is a nice have but not a priority for them.
The second mistake is assuming that people that don’t consume our product are not consuming any products. Maybe they have found a way to work around what they want to get done. Have you ever used a knife as a screwdriver?

Innovate and Remove Four barriers to Action:

A third mistake is not understanding the barriers to consumption. If they are interested in the offer and are using a way to a surrogate to help them, then the question is, why are they not consuming?

Skills:

Do they have the ability to do so?

Recently I was working with a non-profit organization that serves first-generation Latino parents. LEAF helps them understand how to navigate the US school system. Coaching and workshops were in-person meetings. And then, Covid changed everything. And we had to pivot to an online session. The interest was still there, but no one was signing up and showing up. Although parents knew how to use their smartphones, they didn’t know how to subscribe and access the online meeting platform. So, LEAF focused on educating parents on registering for workshops, seminars, and using the online meeting platform.

Access:

They have the desire, but is the product or service accessible?

In 1993, I was working in a startup marketing agency. Little Caesars Pizza was losing market share to its competitors. The franchisee group approached us to help them with the Hispanic consumer. Hispanics love to eat pizza, and first-generation Latinos ate pizza as a celebration and a get-together party. But the celebratory occasion needed to happen at a seating down restaurant. And Little Caesars has no chairs or tables. It is a food pick up parlor. We needed to help Latinos change their perspective that a celebration could take place anywhere, and Littel Ceasar could be with them.

Wealth:

Do people have the financial assets to be able to afford the services?

Part of Latino students learning to navigate the US school system is taking the SAT and ACT, but how can they do that when parents have limited resources and are concern about more pressing things? LEAF partnered with the SAT Board to provide vouchers to low-income Latino parents enabling young students to take the test.

Time:

Is it too cumbersome or time-consuming?

During the H1N1 crisis, we worked to increase vaccination among Latinos and African Americans. The population at risk was ambivalent about getting vaccinated and didn’t have the time to go to a determined place when they work two jobs and needed to take care of the family. Thus, we brought the vaccine to them. We set at a tent in a convenient community location and partnered with a pharmacy to provide the vaccines.

If the people you serve have a desire for your offering and are non-consuming, don’t try to persuade them. Work on removing the consumption barriers. Don’t force, innovate.