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The Radical Power of Listening and How to Harness It.

The Radical Power of Listening and How to Harness It.

by | Aug 26, 2020 | Customer Centricity, Tips, Tricks, & Tools

“When you say, ‘uh-huh’ over and over like that, I can tell you’re not listening to me.”

Me, age 7, to my mom

 

It doesn’t take a lot of experience to know when someone isn’t listening.  From a young age, we can tell when someone is listening and when they’re simply responding.

When we’re with the person, we notice the lack of eye contact or the blankness in their eyes showing us where their thoughts are actually at. When we’re on the phone, we hear the repetitive and monotone mumbles that tell us they’re attention is elsewhere.

Yet often, what we want most is simply to be listened to.

This is true in our personal relationships and in our relationships with the businesses and organizations we support.  We want people and businesses to listen to our opinions, to understand them, and to thoughtfully respond to them.

Instead, people and businesses simply “hear” us.

 

There’s a big difference between listening and hearing

According to the Oxford University Press, hearing is “the faculty of perceiving sounds” while listening is “give one’s attention to a sound” and “take notice of and act on what someone says.”

As I explain to my clients, surveys, focus groups, and even in-depth qualitative research is often a Hearing exercise – the company develops a list of questions, asks their customers to answer the questions, then tabulates the answers and passes them along to whoever needs them.

This is a transaction.  An exchange of information.  It is not listening.

Listening requires engagement.  It happens during EPIC conversations, those typified by empathy, perspective, insights, and connection.

Listening accelerates innovation and drives transformation.  When we’re listening, we’re learning new information and discovering new insights, which enables companies to create and act differently, differentiating themselves from the competition and ultimately gaining an advantage.

 

Listening takes practice but here are 5 simple steps to help you get started:
  1. Drop the agenda – Before you have a conversation within someone, identify the 1-3 things you need to learn and leave space for at least 1 surprise. If you go into a conversation with an agenda or a long list of questions, you’re only going to hear what you want to hear because your mind is primed to seek confirmation for your opinions and to reject anything counter to what you’re hoping to hear.
  2. Follow where they lead – During the conversation, don’t worry about trying to steer the conversation or “keep things on track.” If you only need to learn 3 things in the conversation and you have 30 minutes or an hour, you have plenty of time for tangents, stories, and random connections.  This is where the surprises and the insights come from.
  3. Ask Why – Channel your inner two-year-old (or Toyota Production employee) and ask “Why” multiple times. When you ask “Why” you get personal, surprising answers that point to the motivations behind people’s choices and actions.  When you ask “What” you get rational, expected, even obvious answers that you, and your competitors, have heard before.
  4. Say as little as possible – Follow the 80/20 rule and spend 80% of your time listening. When you ask a question, don’t go into a long pre-amble about why you’re asking it or follow it with a long list of options or examples.  Simply ask the question and the answer will come.
  5. Let the silence work for you – After you ask a question, start counting silently in your head. Before you get to 8, the person you’re listening to will start talking.  Silence makes people uncomfortable but it’s also when the brain goes into exploration and discovery mode.  And the longer the silence goes on, the faster the brain works to come up with something to fill it.  So, stay quiet and let the brain work!

 

Whether you’re talking to a customer, a colleague, or a friend, you’re talking to someone who wants you to listen, to hear and understand what they are saying.  These 5 tips will help you do that and, if done well, discover something wonderful and unexpected with the power to transform.

Originally published on April 20, 2020 on Forbes.com

Intuition or Data: Which Leads to Better Innovation Decisions?

Intuition or Data: Which Leads to Better Innovation Decisions?

by | Jul 23, 2020 | Innovation, Tips, Tricks, & Tools

“We need more data.”

How many times have you heard this?  How many times have you rolled your eyes (physically or mentally) and then patiently tried to explain that, when you’re doing something NEW, there is NO DATA.

There are analogous innovations, things that are similar in some ways that can be used as benchmarks, but nothing exactly like what you’re creating because nothing like it has existed before within your company.

As Innovators, we constantly balance our need for and comfort with gut decisions so we can move forward at speed with the broader organization’s need for data and certainty as a way to minimize risk.

But what role should intuition and data play in the early days of innovation?

This is exactly the question that my friend and former colleague, Nick Pineda, sought to answer in his thesis, “Are relevant experience and intuition drivers of success for innovation decision-makers?  An interview-based approach”

 

Robyn: Hi Nick!  Thanks for taking the time to speak with me today.  The topic you explore in your thesis is fascinating and something every innovator struggles with.  I’m curious, what led you to decide to explore it?

Nick: Interestingly, the process of deciding what to write my thesis on actually inspired the topic itself.

For the capstone of my Masters program, we were told to do a consulting project but I had spent so many years in consulting that I wasn’t terribly excited about that prospect.  One day, as I was walking to work, I felt this feeling in my gut that said, “Nick, this is not why you’re in the Masters program.”  I shared this feeling with my professor and faculty advisor, and they were open to a different approach.

As we discussed what I could do, the same topic kept coming up – a lot of what is published about innovation, especially with Agile, is about measurement and that we need to have evidence before we take action.  I don’t disagree with that but viewing things only through that lens kills the wisp of an idea that has the potential of becoming something amazing.  Ultimately, we decided to focus my thesis on what happens on the front-end of the innovation process and whether intuition or evidence and data lead to success.

 

Robyn: And, what did you learn?

Nick: Two things, one that wasn’t surprising and one that was.

First, what wasn’t surprising is that innovation decision-makers have a really clear awareness about the role that gut feel or intuition, knowing without knowing how you know, play in their process.

Second, what was surprising, is that anyone who leans much more heavily in one direction versus another (data vs intuition), had many more failures, and struggled to process what they learned from those experiences and incorporate those learnings into future actions and decisions.  Successful innovators know how to create a dance between their rational processes and their intuitive processes.

 

Robyn: It seems so, well, intuitive that using both intuition and data to make decisions will lead to better outcomes.  However, so many innovators rely on intuition and so many companies require data, how can you encourage that “dance” that’s required for success?

Nick: You need to start small.

First with the person who’s innovating, to help them enter that inner space and recognize all the different ways that intuition can show up.   It can manifest as a sensory experience, a change in temperature, even a color.  It varies by person and by moment and the key is to recognize when it’s happening.

A simple way to create this awareness is to reflect on how you decide whether to trust someone.  Every time you meet someone new, you have to quickly decide whether or not to trust the person.  How do you do that?  What is the feeling or sense that you get that leads to your decision?  How often are you right?

Next, you need to create a language or process within the team to externalize the intuitive sense.  In my research, I found examples of visionary leaders who were constantly able to use their intuitive sense, but their teams were constantly felt left out and wondering why they did all the work when the leader was just going to decide on gut.  More successful teams were much more open about why, when, and how they were using their intuition, even specifically asking other team members to share their intuition in meetings.

Then, as leaders, we need to normalize the fact that we’re not always going to have precise evidence to know what the right call is and that we’re trusting what we’ve learned as leaders in this space to make a decision.

 

Robyn: That last point is really critical, leaders must role model the behavior they want to see and that includes using and communicating their intuition.  Anything else pop up with respect to leaders and decision-making?

Nick: Ideally, leaders will go beyond normalizing the use of intuition to actively working to dismantle the organization’s bias against it.

Most organizations consciously or subconsciously, defer to the highest paid person or the most credentialed person in the room when making decisions.  This is a highly rational behavior, but it doesn’t lead to the best decision.  The reason is that it overlooks the fact that diversity of experience surfaces other data points and intuitive experiences that need to be part of the conversation to get to a better decision.

Innovation is a group experience and when intuition is allowed to show up in groups a group intelligence starts to manifest and the group makes better decisions.

 

Robyn: That’s quite a To-Do list for leaders and decision-makers:

  1. Manage your personal dance between intuition and data
  2. Normalize intuition by creating a language around it
  3. Create ways to tap into diverse experiences and intuition

Thanks so much for sharing these great insights, Nick!

Nick: My pleasure.

 

****

 

To learn more about intuition and innovation, Nick recommends that you:

READ:

WATCH or LISTEN TO:

TAKE ACTION and Conduct an idea retrospective

    1. Anchor on an idea
      • Think back to a memorable innovation success or failure?
      • What was the idea?
      • Where did the initial idea come from?
      • If you had to pick 1-2 of the most important decisions you had to make in the process of bringing this idea to life, what were those decisions?
    2. Did you use intuition?
      • Intuition defined: Intuition is a process of rapidly recognizing things without knowing how we do the recognizing, which results in affectively charged (somatic, sensory, or emotional experience) judgements.
      • To what degree was your process intuitive?
      • To what degree were you aware of what your brain was doing to seek an answer / path forward?
    3. How did your intuition show up?
      • Signals / Cues: What signals or cues did you have about which course of action to take or not to take?
      • Knowing: How did the answer for which path forward to take “show-up” for you? Where were you? What did it feel like?
      • Feeling: What did you feel during this process?
    4. Apply More Broadly
      • In what ways is the way you explored your intuition in this case similar (or not) to other decisions you make in your life?
      • How might you be more intentional about how to bring your personal brand of intuition into your innovation process?
Innovation Starts with EPIC Conversations

Innovation Starts with EPIC Conversations

by | Jun 24, 2020 | Customer Centricity, Innovation, Tips, Tricks, & Tools

Innovation doesn’t start with an idea.  It starts with a problem.  Sometimes those problems are easy to observe and understand but, more often, those problems are multi-layered and nuanced.  As a result, you need a multi-layered and nuanced approach to understanding them.

You need to have EPIC Conversations.

EPIC stands for Empathy, Perspective, Insights, and Connection.  As my clients have experienced, conversations rooted in these elements consistently produce unexpected, actionable, and impactful insights capable of getting to the root of a problem and shining a light on the path to a solution (and meaningful business results).

 

EMPATHY for the people with whom you’re talking

According to Brene Brown, empathy is connecting to the emotion another person is experiencing without requiring us to have experienced the same situation.”

For example, I have a friend who struggles to stay focused and deliver on deadlines.  I can empathize with her because, while I have no problem focusing or delivering on deadlines, I know what it’s like to struggle with something that other people think is easy.

Take the time to connect with people’s emotions, to understand not just what they’re feeling but also why they’re feeling that way and to connect with the experiences in your life and work that led you to feel that way, too.

 

See things from their PERSPECTIVE:

When we’re working on something – a project, a product, even a task – it gets a great deal of our time, attention, and energy.  But it can lead us to over-estimate how important the work is to others.

Instead, ask people about the topic you’re interested in AND all the topics and activities around it.  Take the time to understand where the things you care about fall into your customers’ priority list

For example, when I worked on developing and launching Swiffer, all I thought about was cleaning floors.   One day, we had to decide whether to source the hair for the dirt that would be used in product demos from people, yaks, or wigs.  We obsessed over this decision, debating which hair would “resonate” the most with consumers.  Turns out, consumers didn’t spend a lot of time analyzing the hair in the demo dirt, they only cared that it was picked up immediately by Swiffer.

 

Be open to INSIGHTS

Most people use conversations to get confirmation that their ideas and recommendations are good ones.  They’ll spend time explaining and convincing and very little time listening.  And they definitely don’t like surprises.

This is wrong.  The most successful and impactful conversations as those in which you are surprised, in which you get an unexpected piece of information and has an insight, an “a-ha!” moment.

Years ago, while conducting research with people who self-identified as environmentalists, my team spoke with a woman who had the most sustainable house I’d ever seen.  Everything was reused, recycled, or composted and they generated most of their own power.  But, in the garage was a huge yellow HUM-V.  It would have been easy to dismiss it as an anomaly, until we asked about the contradiction and she explained that the reason she owned a HUM-V was the same reason she and her family lived such a sustainable lifestyle: her highest priority was keeping her kids safe.  At home, that meant doing everything possible to help the planet, but on the roads, that meant driving around in a tank.

 

CONNECT with the person you’re speaking with

It’s tempting to jump right into the conversation, to ask the questions that brought you together.  But that’s like proposing on the first date – you’re not going to get the answer(s) you want.

The best conversations aren’t information transactions, they’re trust building exercises.  Take time to get to know each other.  Make small talk, talk about the traffic and the weather, share a bit about yourself and ask about them.  Throughout the conversation, share a bit about yourself, commiserate over shared frustrations, and laugh at silly stories.

By sharing a bit about yourself, the person you’re talking to will share a bit of themselves, they’ll feel comfortable admitting to things that might not make sense, and to the feelings and rationalizations that drive their behaviors.

 

EPIC Conversations can happen with anyone anywhere from customers in focus group rooms to employees in conference rooms.  You don’t need an executive mandate to have one, so have one today and let me know how it goes!

Originally published on February 10, 2020 on Forbes.com

How Looking at Art Can Make You a Better Thinker, Communicator, and Leader

How Looking at Art Can Make You a Better Thinker, Communicator, and Leader

by | Jun 10, 2020 | Book Club, Innovation, Leadership, Tips, Tricks, & Tools

“It was quite a sight!  A dozen senior executives from a big, conservative financial services firm, all sitting on the floor in front of a painting, talking about what it could mean and why they think that.”

On a typical dreary November day, and Suzi and I were sitting in the café inside Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.  She had just left her job as Head of Design Thinking at Fidelity Investments and I was taking a sabbatical before deciding what would be next for my career.  Introduced by a mutual friend, we decided to swap stories over lunch and a walk through one of the museum’s special exhibitions.

She was describing a Visual Thinking (VTS) session she had recently facilitated and the nearly instant impact it had on the way executives expressed themselves and communicated with each other.  She saw them engage in a level of creative problem-solving and critical thinking that they hadn’t in the past.

Intrigued, I set off to learn more.  What I discovered was a powerful, proven, and gasp fun way to help my clients navigate the ambiguous early days of innovation and embrace their inner curiosity and creativity.

 

Why should you care about VTS?

Imagine someone says to you, “If you and your team spend 1-2 hours with me each month for 9 months, I guarantee an improvement in your abilities to:

  • Quickly gather and synthesize accurate and unique insights by listening deeply and re-phrasing what they heard ensure understanding
  • Think critically and creatively by examining information or an idea from all angles, rethinking it, and deciding whether to keep, revise, or discard it
  • Communicate more clearly, respectfully, and productively with a variety of people inside and outside the organization
  • Work cross-functionally because they can apply critical thinking skills confidently to topics outside of their expertise
  • Innovate and experiment because they have learned how to individually and as a team operate in uncertainty
  • Provide more effective feedback by phrasing criticisms as questions and engaging in collaborative discovery and problem-solving conversations

Would you make the time commitment?

Now, what if they said, “All you have to do each month is sit together in a conference room and take part in a conversation.  No travel.  No additional expenses.  Just turn off your email and your phone for one hour and have a conversation in a room you already pay rent on.”

Would you do it then?

Of course you would.

Because you’ve been to trainings that focus on only one of the items in the list above and those trainings are expensive, time-consuming, and not nearly as effective as they should be.

 

What is Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS)?

According to the book, Visual Thinking Strategies: Using Art to Deepen Learning Across School Disciplines, VTS “uses art to teach visual literacy, thinking, and communication skills – listening an expressing oneself.”

Philip Yenawine was the Director of Education at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York from 1983 – 1993.  During that time, he noticed that despite the museum’s efforts to organize and craft detailed explanations and interpretations for each piece of art, visitors would still ask lots of “Why?” questions and would remember little, if anything, from their visit.

Frustrated but curious, he and his team began studying developmental research and theory and discovered that what MOMA visitors needed wasn’t explanations, details, and facts, it was “permission to be puzzled and to think.  Consent to use their powerful eyes and intelligent minds.  Time to noodle and figure things out.  The go-ahead to use what they already know to reflect on what they don’t; the first steps of learning.”

Philip and his team with MOMA partnered with cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen to develop and test a process now known as Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS).

In the 30 years since their initial experiments, Philip and Abigail’s work has been used in 28 countries and 58 museums, over 12,000 students have engaged in VTS discussions and 1,200 people have become trained facilitators.

 

 

How to do VTS

The secret to VTS’ effectiveness is in the facilitation so if you’re going to do this, invest in an expert facilitator.  An expert facilitator is the only way to get the results listed above.

 

Here’s how a VTS session works:

  • Facilitator shares a piece of art specially selected so that “the subjects are familiar… but they also contain elements of mystery.”
  • Attendees take one minute to silently focus on the art
  • Facilitator asks 3 questions over the hour:
    • What’s going on in this picture?
    • What do you see that makes you say that?
    • What more can you find?
  • As each individual answers a question, the Facilitator:
    • Points at what is being observed
    • Paraphrases what has been said
    • Links what has been said to what others have said
  • Facilitator wraps up the session by thanking everyone and sharing something s/he learned from listening. They do NOT give “the answer” because “this isn’t about right and wrong but about thinking and…that the students singly and together are capable of wonderful, grounded ideas.”

That’s it – 1 piece of art, 3 questions, and at least 5 major benefits if you commit to the process.

 

Seems like something worth sitting on an art gallery floor for, right?

To learn more, read Visual Thinking Strategies: Using Art to Deepen Learning Across School Disciplines by Philip Yenawine and visit the website Visual Thinking Strategies

Back to Basics: What is Design Thinking?

Back to Basics: What is Design Thinking?

by | Jun 3, 2020 | Innovation, Tips, Tricks, & Tools

Last week, I published a post with a very simple goal – define innovation so we can stop debating what it means and start doing it.

The response was amazing.  So, I figured that this week I would tackle another buzzword – Design thinking.

We’ve all heard it and we’ve probably all said it but, like “innovation’ we probably all have a different definition for it.  In fact, in the last few months alone I’ve heard it used as a synonym for brainstorming, for customer interviews, and for sketching while talking.  Those things are all part of Design thinking but they aren’t the entirety of Design thinking.

 

What I tell my clients

When a client asks if we’re “doing Design thinking,” here’s what I say;

“Yes, because Design thinking is a way of solving problems that puts customers and stakeholders, not your organization, at the center of the process and seeks to produce solutions that create, capture, and deliver value to your customers, stakeholders, and your company.”

 

The Basics
  • What: One could consider the official definition of Design thinking to come from Tim Brown, Executive Char of IDEO, who stated that “Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success”
  • Why: Useful in solving “wicked problems,” problems that are ill-defined or tricky and for which pre-existing rules and domain knowledge will be of limited or no help (or potentially detrimental)
  • How:
    • Inspiration: Understand the problem by building empathy with stakeholders (deeply understand their functional, emotional, and social Jobs to be Done) and document that understanding in a brief that outlines goals (ideal end state), bounds (elements to be avoided), and benchmarks against which progress can be measured
    • Ideation: Generate ideas using brainstorming to develop a vast quantity of ideas (divergent thinking) and then home in on the ideas at the intersection of desirability, feasibility, and viability that best fit the brief (convergent thinking)
    • Implementation: Prototype ideas so that they can be tested, evaluated, iterated, and refined in partnership with customers and stakeholders, ensuring that humans remain at the center of the process.
  • When: At the start of any R&D or development process
    • Traditionally, design was involved only in the late stages of development work, primarily to improve a solution’s functionality or aesthetic. Design Thinking’s ability to pull the designer mindset into the earliest phases of development is, perhaps, one of the biggest impacts it has made on business and technical fields
  • Where: Can be done anywhere BUT, because it is a human-centered approach, it must involve multiple human beings through the process
  • Who: Anyone who is willing to adopt a “beginner’s mind,” an attitude of openness to new possibilities, curiosity about the problem and the people with it, and humility to be surprised and even wrong

 

Important Points & Fun Facts
  • Design Thinking IS a human-centered design approach. This means that it seeks to develop solutions to problems by involving the human perspective at every single step of the process
  • Design thinking is NOT synonymous with user-centered design though user-centered design could be considered a subset of Design Thinking because it gives attention to usability goals and the user experience

 

  • Design Thinking was NOT invented by IDEO, but I would argue that they have done more to popularize it and bring it into the mainstream, especially into business management practices, than any other person or firm.
  • Design Thinking IS the product of 50+ years of academic and practical study and application. Here’s some fun facts:
    • 1935: The practice of Design thinking was first established by John Dewey as the melding of aesthetics and engineering principles
    • 1959: The term “Design thinking” was coined by John E. Arnold in his book Creative Engineering
    • 1991: the first symposium on Design Thinking was held at Delft University in the Netherlands
    • 2000s: Design thinking is widely adopted as an innovation approach thanks to books by Richard Florida (2002), Daniel Pink (2006), Roger Martin (2007), Tim Brown (2009), and Thomas Lockwood (2010)
    • 2005: Stanford’s d.school begins teaching Design thinking as a general approach to innovation

 

  • Design Thinking is NOT just for radical/breakthrough/disruptive innovation
  • Design Thinking IS useful for all types of innovation (something different that creates value) resulting from wicked problems. In fact, as far back as 1959, John E. Arnold identified four types of innovation that could benefit from a Design thinking approach:
    1. Novel functionality, i.e. solutions that satisfy a novel need or solutions that satisfy an old need in an entirely new way
    2. Higher performance levels of a solution
    3. Lower production costs
    4. Increased salability

 

If you want to learn more…

As noted above, there are lots of resources available to those who are deeply curious about Design thinking.  I recommend starting with Tim Brown’s 2008 HBR article, Design Thinking, and then diving into IDEO’s extremely helpful and beautifully designed website dedicated entirely to Design thinking.

 

Here’s what I’d like to learn…
  • Was this helpful in clarifying what Design Thinking is?
  • What, if anything, surprised you?
  • What else would you like to know?

 

Drop your thoughts in the comments or shoot me an email at robyn@milezero.io

3 Questions to Figure Out What to Do and Say Now

3 Questions to Figure Out What to Do and Say Now

by | Mar 31, 2020 | Customer Centricity, Leadership, Strategy, Tips, Tricks, & Tools

It started with emails from the airlines letting us know that they’re cleaning the planes and taking precautions when handing out drinks and snacks

Then came the emails from every company you’ve ever given you email to.

Finally came the email with offers, like the one I received from a consulting firm stating that, in these uncertain times, the most important thing you can do is find new revenue streams and they can help, so give them a call.

Yes, it’s important to communicate, to be transparent about what you are doing and what you’re not doing, and to be honest about what you do and don’t know.

But that doesn’t mean that everyone needs to send an email to their customers with news, updates, and offers.

The barrage of emails reminded me of a scene from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, a frothy rom-com with a great cast and endlessly quotable quips. In this scene, the lead character, Peter (played by Jason Segal) decides to take lessons from the resort’s surfing instructor, Koonu (played by Paul Rudd).

Koonu: Okay, when we’re out there, I want you to ignore your instincts. I’m gonna be your instincts. Koonu will be your instincts. Don’t do anything. Don’t try to surf, don’t do it. The less you do, the more you do. Let’s see you pop up. Pop it up.

Peter hops up to standing on the surfboard

Koonu: That’s not it at all. Do less. Get down. Try less. Do it again. Pop up.

Peter starts to slowly do a push-up

Koonu: No, too slow. Do less. Pop up. Pop up.

Peter gets to his knees

Koonu: You’re doing too much. Do less. Pop down. Pop up now.

Peter tries again

Koonu: Stop. Get down. Get down there. Remember, don’t do anything. Nothing. Pop up.

Peter lies motionless on the surfboard

Koonu: Well, you… No, you gotta do more than that, ’cause you’re just laying right out. It looks like you’re boogie-boarding. Just do it. Feel it. Pop up.

Peter does exactly what he did the first time and hops to standing

Koonu: Yeah. That wasn’t quite it, but we’re gonna figure it out, out there.

I imagine this was the conversation that a lot of corporate/crisis communication folks were having with executives in the last two weeks — Do more. Do less. Don’t do anything. That’s not quite it.

In the midst of all of this uncertainty, how can companies know what to do now?

To be very clear, I am not an expert on communication or crisis management BUT I am an expert at understanding your customers, being a customer, and receiving lots of emails. I’m also a business owner who, for a brief moment, wondered if I needed to send a COVID-19 update to my clients and network.

Before making my decision, I asked myself these 3 questions:

Am I in a business that is the focus of a majority of the news stories? These businesses include anything in travel (airlines, cruises, hotels), food and food service (restaurants, fast food, grocery), medical supplies (masks, gowns, gloves, ventilators).

If the answer is YES, send an email because people are thinking about you and wondering what you’re doing to keep them safe.

My answer was NO, so I went to the next question.

Am I a business that is woven into people’s daily lives? These could be essential businesses like banks, medical professionals (dentists, orthodontists, chiropractors), and cleaning services (home cleaners, dry cleaners, laundromats). The list could also include non-essential businesses like personal service providers (hair stylists, nail techs, aestheticians).

If you are a steady part of people’s lives, then YES, you should send them an email to let them know what you’re doing in light of the situation.

I’m a part of most of my clients’ lives during projects which have start and end dates, so I went to the next question.

Am I making fundamental changes to my business that will directly and immediately impact my customers? These changes could include changing your hours of operation (e.g. adding Senior hours), changing how you transact business (e.g. no more curb-side pick-up). Or the changes could be bigger, like closing because of a government order, or delaying or even cancelling shipments because manufacturing and shipping processes are delayed due lack of materials or staff.

If you’re making a fundamental change to how you do business, you should let your customers know and help them reset expectations.

Other than moving all meetings to Zoom and no longer traveling, no element of my business operations changed.

DECISION: Do less.

I did not send a “How MileZero is responding to the Coronavirus” email because, based on the answers to the three questions above, my clients had far more pressing concerns than how often I’m using Clorox wipes to clean my keyboard.

But I didn’t do Nothing.

In the work I do with clients, I get to know them extremely well. We move from the typical consultant-client interaction to a trusting (professional) relationship between two human-beings.

What I did tried to reflect that.

I sent quick personal notes to each individual, wishing them health and safety, asking how they and their families are doing, and offering to hop on the phone for a quick chat, to be a sounding board, or simply a shoulder to lean on. It’s not much but it’s genuine and appropriate for the circumstances.

I did not try to tell them what they should be doing right now. Nor did I try to sell them a new service. I simply offered support and connection because, in a time of social distancing, connection is what we need right now.

What do we do now?

The same thing we should have been doing all along. We think of our customers (i.e. the people at the other end of the email) and what they want and need, and we do our best to serve them.

Sometimes we’ll get it right. Sometimes we’ll get it wrong. But if we think first of our customer, not ourselves or our businesses, we’re gonna figure it out.

Just like Koonu promised.