Customers are talking: is a customer-service dialogue a story?

Some of my work recently has been applying narrative-sensemaking techniques to customer service dialogues (typically recorded phone calls), which is a fancy way of saying helping companies find patterns in what customers are saying about their products and services, and to use these patterns to drive changes that will help them sell more products and/or make their existing customers more satisfied.

This is a little different from the more traditional approach of eliciting stories via interviews, anecdote circles or web forms. In those circumstances, carefully-crafted questions help generate stories ("this happened, then this, and then this"). Customer-service calls are not elicited--they are spontaneous expressions--and don't follow the story format. They are simply two people talking.

So a question is, I guess, can you get useful stories out of mere dialogue?

In thinking about this question, I've been reflecting on the novels of William Gaddis, an American writer who published only a handful of books from the 1950's to the 1990's. I've read two of them, "JR" and "A Frolic of His Own," and both have barely any exposition at all. 90+% of the text is dialogue, barely puncutated, overlapping, and often confusing.

"JR" is a very forward-looking book about a junior-high-school student who speculates his way into a multi-million dollar fortune (on paper). Given that it takes place in the mid-70's, JR does his trading via the payphone in the school hallway. Today, he'd be on TD Ameritrade.

"A Frolic of His Own," written in the 1990's, takes issue with the (again very present-day) issues of litigiousness and intellectual property. In addition to dialogue, hilariously-deadpan legal briefs help move the story along.

Reading Gaddis' books is a lot like listening to those customer service calls. A bit disorienting or hard to understand, often touching, sometimes funny. Always humanizing. And always stories.

Customers are talking: turning points in telephone sales calls

I'm working on a project to listen to telephone sales calls and help the client find patterns explaining why some calls end up in a sale and others don't. Each call is a story, complete with emotion, conflict, and turning points. Listening to dozens of these, pictures begin to emerge of how people buy, and how, even when they like the product and may want to buy, don't. And it has nothing to do with logic.

One turning point I've experienced is the moment when a call turns from being headed to a close, to not. On the calls, it's very subtle: a pause, a change of subject, perhaps an additional question from the prospect. But afterward, a call that seemed to be heading toward a sale instead is, at best, a promise to call back.

The best way to explain it is to relate a personal story.

I've been a customer of Verizon Wireless for more than five years. I got a telemarketing call from them today, offering inducements to renew my service contract early. I've been evaluating this for a while now (this is a subtext of my posts on the Blackberry Storm), and after discussing it at some length with my wife, we're headed toward renewal.

This call, then, could have been Verizon's way of closing the deal. I was pretty ready, although I was thinking of doing this in March. If the deal was good enough, perhaps I would pull the trigger today. The call went something like this:

"Mr. Caddell," the rep said, "we are offering some extras today if you want to renew your contract early. You might be able to get a discount on a new phone."

"When does my contract expire?"

"The end of July."

"I thought it was the end of March."

(turning point 1) "That's the time when you are eligible for an early equipment upgrade. Your contract expires in July."

"OK, what are you offering?"

(turning point 2) "100 extra minutes per month." (This wasn't attractive to me at all. We don't use the minutes we have now.)

"How much off the phone?"

(turning point 3) "Well, you'll be eligible for that at the end of March."

"Earlier you said I could get a discount off a phone." (I didn't tell her that Verizon had already sent me two mailings offering me phone discounts for renewing now.)

"I said you might be."

There was no way was I going to renew then. At each turning point, in fact, I became farther from renewing than I had been before the call. Instead of feeling happy, encouraged, eager to get a new phone, I felt frustrated, annoyed, and that I had wasted time even picking up the phone.

It wasn't the rep's fault. She was given a difficult product to sell (competing, in fact, with the company's own mailings). When I began to ask pointed questions, the pitch fell apart. There was probably no rep on earth who could have closed me with that offer.

Which is a significant learning from this project for me. Selecting and training reps is only a part of the formula for success in telesales. The product must be useful, and the offer must be made attractive. And that work happens far outside the call center.

"Underground" as an example of narrative sensemaking

Over the last couple of years, I've gotten more involved with collecting and sorting through multiple narratives to help businesses understand and deal with difficult problems. (Difficult, meaning the normal tools such as numerical analysis, process mapping, etc., are insufficient to understanding the issue.) This has become a cornerstone of my professional life, and it's been a rewarding and at times thrilling undertaking.

Shawn Callahan at Anecdote introduced me to this area, and then I learned about the work of Dave Snowden at Cognitive Edge. I met Cynthia Kurtz, who was an early collaborator with Dave Snowden, and have learned a lot from her as well. To the extent that the work I do is valuable to my clients, these folks deserve much credit.

Yet one of the best teachers I have had here (and I'm still a rank beginner) is the book "Underground" by Haruki Murakami. He's one of my favorite novelists, and this is one of his few nonfiction books. I read it years ago, long before I'd learned the terms "story listening," "mass narrative capture," or "sensemaking." But when I began learning from Shawn, Dave, Cynthia and others, it immediately came to mind.

In "Underground" Murakami seeks to understand and to help readers understand one of the most terrifying episodes in recent history--the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system perpetrated by members of the Aum Shinrikyo movement in 1995.

Except for a brief author's preface, the book consists of the stories of survivors of the attack. Murakami interviewed everyone he could find from the list of victims, and presented their stories, unadorned, one after the other. He then interviewed a number of members of Aum Shinrikyo, and presented their stories, as well (a decision that is aligned with goals of narrative learning to take in multiple perspectives of a situation).

The result is a chilling, relentless book, that nonetheless does what no news report, CNN story or even historical chronicle could do--shows the impact of the attack and its aftermath on the real people who were caught up in it; and illuminates the puzzling (to outsiders) behavior of the Aum Shinrikyo members. It's a fully-realized, three-dimensional picture of a disaster, and goes a long way to explaining the unexplainable. In this way it's like an extended version of John Hersey's great "Hiroshima," though shorn of the authorial voice.

When you read this book, the stories layer and layer; you see the event from a deeper and deeper perspective, till you almost feel like you're there, inside the attack, experiencing it with the victims. And then you read the Aum Shinrikyo stories, and somehow you see that their world has its own internal logic. You finish the book, and you're exhausted, but you know deeply about this terrible event, how it happened and what it did to people. Your brain is working hard throughout--you're sensemaking.

If you're interested in narrative sensemaking, or you just want to learn the full story of a human disaster, you must read "Underground."

(Here's a much earlier reference to "Underground" and the subject of story-listening.)

Customers are talking: The Eureka Button

I was talking to Cynthia Kurtz once and she mentioned, "If I were developing a piece of software I would always want to put a Eureka Button on every page."

A Eureka button is this: if while using the system a user just figured something out that others might benefit from, he/she would click the button and be presented with a page where she could enter:

What Happened?

Where does this apply?

When should people read this story?

This input and information about where they were in the system (page & data) would be uploaded to a database. The database can be searched for patterns or browsed periodically, looking for bugs or unexpected uses of the system.

It's easiest for me to think about the Eureka Button in the context of enterprise software. Having worked a lot with CRM systems for telephony, I know that these systems have hundreds of user pages, with a virtually infinite number of paths through the system.

In these environments, product managers may know in theory how people should use the system. But their knowledge is quickly overtaken by experienced users, who learn how to apply the system to their jobs, often finding tricks or shortcuts to make the system work better for them. ("Eureka! I just figured out that if I dummy out some data items, I can capture information & save information from a prospect before they decide to make a product purchase. If they call back, I can look them up by their phone # and I don't have to start all over again.")

In this situation, a Eureka Button has great value for the product manager and the users. Product managers can learn about difficulties users have and how they overcome them. The tricks can be incorporated into the product, or deficiencies addressed. Users can learn from each other--perhaps Eureka Button entries can be blogged automatically and read by other users, dispersing tips and tricks and encouraging others to share their stories.

I can't even begin to catalog how a Eureka Button could benefit consumer sites, where (especially recent) products follow an emergent, iterative development approach and patterns of usage can affect the entire purpose of the product (e.g., Twitter). There are people much better suited than I to discuss some of these implications. If you're one of them, please let us know in the comments how the Eureka button could be used with these products.

(In searching for prior references to a "Eureka Button," I discovered this NY Times article from 2004. The article mentions that "'It's amazing how many people there are who find pleasure in sharing the little discoveries they make.'" The article focuses on undocumented features in PC software and in consumer electronics. The article references a site that publishes user stories of hidden Windows features.)

Customers are talking: using reverse logistics to improve products

As part of our regular Tuesday series on finding and acting on customer use stories, let's talk about reverse logistics. This is the process by which retailers and manufacturers deal with customer returns.

This article (hat tip Colin Shaw) discusses how companies can examine and make changes to their reverse logistics procedures to reduce costs and streamline the process. This is good advice as far as it goes.

But like many "customers are talking" topics, companies need to take an additional step in order to really utilize the reverse logistics process to its utmost.

Each customer return is a story. Capturing and collecting those stories, and regularly examining them for patterns, can yield important information about how the product is designed, communicated and supported. For example, consumer electronics are notorious for their returns frequency, and the reason for these returns often is that the product is difficult to use or its documentation is poorly written or inadequate (multi-language manuals introduce another set of obstacles for customers).

A company can work with its retailers, as part of the overall design of the reverse logistics process, to capture important information about why the product was returned. Ideally, the verbatim customer story is captured--which is easy to do with online returns.

The collection, of course, is the simple part of the equation. The more complex task is the sensemaking of the numerous narratives captured. This sensemaking, more of a collaborative thinking process than an analytical one, can be accomplished with training and skilled mentoring.

The potential payoff is large: marketing managers who are made of aware of why returns happen can make (often simple) changes to packaging, design, channel strategy or documentation to improve initial customer satisfaction. Not only does this reduce returns, it also increases the likelihood that more people buy the product in the first place.

A friend owns a company that manages reverse logistics for name-brand consumer electronics manufacturers. I asked him if he knew why a certain product was often returned and he said, "Yes, always." I asked him if he had a way of letting the marketing folks at his client know these reasons. And he shook his head.

Given that many companies are outsourcing their reverse logistics operations to third parties, they need to take care that they keep the channel of communication open to learn why items are returned, and what can be changed about the product, its support documentation or its point of sale in order to make more initial purchases successful ones.

Customers Are Talking: Reading Between The Lines

One of the important insights in looking for meaningful stories in customer interactions is the following: you can't read a story by looking at metrics. That is to say, how long someone talked, what time of day it occurred, etc., has no relationship to the content itself. In my work, I listen to lots and lots of customer stories, and I have experienced this very thing. If you want to understand the story, you have to read, or listen to, the whole thing.

It's unfortunate that this is so, because the quickest way to absorb information is to read it in summary. It's also the easiest way for computers to process information. Computers are excellent at counting, measuring, etc., but terrible at reading and interpreting.

I hear you already: what about semantic analysis? Good: doable by computers. Bad: doesn't provide much insight. Here's an example: evaluate all customer service calls longer than 8 minutes and containing the word "unhappy." Let the computer pull out two sentences before and after that word. Won't that sort out all the unhappy customer calls and allow us to analyze a manageable data set? [If you think this is difficult to do, I can point you to a slew of vendors who are dying to talk to you about their products.]

The problem is, "unhappy" is context-dependent. The caller may be unhappy with the quality of her service. She may also be unhappy she forgot to pack her son's lunch that morning, Someone else may be unhappy for a completely unrelated event.

[As an experiment, I've been monitoring Tweets referring to the Blackberry Storm using the happy :) or unhappy :( emoticons--easy to do with Twitter Search. With more than 100 tweets examined, very few of the emoticons represented satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the device itself--they were related to wanting the device and not getting it, or hoping to get it, for example.]

In a recent discussion, a friend talked about word clouds as very useful summaries of social media data. I pointed out to him that the appearance of a word in a story doesn't create significance. Similarly, the absence of a word doesn't mean that word is insignificant. (What's unsaid may, in fact, be the most important words in the entire dialogue. Harold Pinter won a Nobel Prize for his mastery of this truism.)

In sum, at present, the intervention of a person close to the customer interaction at the time it occurs is the best way to determine if a communication is significant or not. If it's someone looking at it after the fact, that person will have to read the entire story, not a summary. I wish there were a shortcut, but there's not.

Are keyword searches or word clouds useless? No. If you are a cable company, searching for specific, unambiguous words like "DVR" in your customer communication is likely to be useful. Searching for context-dependent items like "unhappy" or "delighted" is not.

Learn from your predecessors--the only way, if you're a CEO or President

Imagine that you have a job that's so exclusive that not only could you not find a book teaching you how to do it, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in your town, or state, who could give you much help.

The job of corporate CEO is like that. So is President of the United States. In each of these positions, learning on the fly seems costly. Is there an alternative?

Yes there is. If only it were used more often.

This question was taken up in two recent articles. In the January Harvard Business Review, Thomas Friel and Robert Duboff discuss "The Last Act of a Great CEO." The last act being an outgoing CEO's sharing knowledge, experience, and perspectives on the job with her successor.

And an opinion piece by Sheryl Gay Stolberg in yesterday's New York Times remarked on the rarity of gatherings like Pres-elect Obama's recent lunch with four other living presidents ("The Very Elite Club that Never Meets").

Friel and Duboff write this about new CEOs learning from their predecessors:

It is difficult to imagine a richer source of information and advice for a new CEO, even on a purely personal level. Being successful as the chief executive of a major enterprise is hardly a straightforward matter; the right combination of style, skill, and focus can vary dramatically depending on the context. One CEO we interviewed put it simply: “You can’t really understand this position until you’re in it.” At the very least, the departing executive has a unique and relevant point of view on the dynamics of the board of directors and the executive team. Often he or she has the most strategic and current understanding of the issues the company faces.

Stolberg's article hits the same theme:

“One thing historians have talked about for years is that there should be a better way for sitting presidents to use the experience of former presidents, and it doesn’t happen enough,” said the presidential historian Michael Beschloss. “The reasons are varied: sometimes personal antagonisms, shyness, the feeling that the former president is too removed from today’s politics to know very much. The result is that there is a reservoir of wisdom and experience that is not relied upon.”

I have an idea that might help. Or, rather, my wife Maura had the idea and she let me borrow it. Companies, and the executive branch, need to create narrative repositories like The Mistake Bank. A repository would be a place for presidents or CEOs to recount events. (Especially mistakes, since we learn very well from mistakes.) and what they learned from them. The repository would be available only to successors. New CEOs and presidents, or experienced ones, could dip into the repository when they had a question or issue they wanted some perspective on.

I've done this, and I know how to set them up, and how to make use of them. CEOs, Pres.-elect Obama, it's time to put this into action. You know where to reach me.

Is 2009 "the end of analytic science"?

Getting my head around the ideas of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is more difficult even than spelling his name correctly, but I think that this statement has real ramifications for the work I and others are doing in applying mass customer narrative to marketing and business issues (from edge.org via TEDBlog):

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi predicts:

The End of Analytic Science: The idea that will change the game of knowledge is the realization that it is more important to understand events, objects, and processes in their relationship with each other than in their singular structure. Western science has achieved wonders with its analytic focus, but it is now time to take synthesis seriously.

Customers are talking: you can't listen to customers if you hate them

Every Tuesday, this space will cover "Customers Are Talking... Are You Listening?"

"Customers Are Talking" builds on the work I've been doing for the last fifteen years in product management, sales & account management, & specifically on the story-listening work I've embarked upon in the past year. (I cheated a little by sneaking in two posts on this subject yesterday.)

It was great to read a recent interview with one of the quietest great thinkers I know, Cynthia Kurtz.

While discussing some things she had learned in her work helping companies and governments gather and work with stories from customers and employees, she said this:

Several times now [in these projects] I have seen people viewing their clients or customer or employees or constituents with contempt, for example equating weakness, confusion or ignorance with insignificance, low status/value/worth or even wrongdoing.

As I read this I was surprised and shocked, yet at the same time I nodded my head and said to myself, "Oh, yeah, I've seen this lots of times." No company would admit that it hates its customers, but if the leadership looks deep into their hearts they may recognize the behavior that Cynthia mentions.

And for marketers this is a big concern. Because marketers, more and more these days, need to listen to and act on customer feedback. People don't listen to those they hate. They disregard, dismiss or rationalize their statements. Even when marketing believes in its customers, if the organization's culture is a customer-hating one, the messages won't get acted on. [It may go without saying that customer-hating companies will be punished first in a difficult economic environment.]

So, if you're instituting a voice of the customer program, or if you've already got one, answer these questions first: do I think my customers have something valuable to say? Will I listen to it and try to act on it?

Because if you're one of those companies that holds their customers in contempt, asking them what they think won't do you any good.

[By way of equal time, I should probably refer to this earlier post where I talked about companies who are hated by their customers.]

Why you should listen to customers even if they're wrong

Even companies who believe "the customer is always right," if there are very many of them left, don't mean it literally. They mean something like, "We try to accomodate the customer, even when they are wrong." But beyond addressing the immediate symptom (the heart of "the customer is always right" philosophy), there are valid reasons why you shouldn't dismiss (or disregard) customer stories that you don't consider accurate:

1. There is truth in their perceptions, even if the facts don't add up. Customer outcry is emotional, not logical, in nature. If they complain, they are feeling pain, and even if they can't articulate the reasons to your satisfaction, the root issue is very likely significant to you.

2. Customers have more credibility than companies. Recently, in my town, there's been a conflict between the private water provider and the town government over a proposal to raise water pressure and whether that might be causing an increase in water main breaks. In an "open letter" to customers, the regional president of the utility tried to dismiss criticism of the program. Who was more credible to town residents: the elected town representatives, or a water company regional president?

3. Being factually correct is overrated. In marketing, perception is reality. Brand is an accumulation of perceptions. Jochum Stienstra discussed in a recent post how those perceptions create a profound, cognitive reality for customers. So, in focusing on the data and dismissing the perceptions, you may be missing the point.

4. They may, in fact, be right :)

DARPA seeks algorithms to create stories from info fragments

One of the nicest aspects of blogging is when a reader points you to an interesting article you hadn't seen. I'd like to thank reader S.E. August for this reference.

Wired's Danger Zone blog reported last week that DARPA is looking to sensemake various forms of data by combining them into stories.

The Cognitive Edge training I took last week discussed (among many other topics) gathering narrative fragments into composite stories as a way to make sense of a situation and convey that information to others. Similar thus far. A possibly reality-defying assumption follows, though. According the Danger Zone post:

The author of this tale, however, would be a series of intelligent algorithms that can pull all of this information together, tease out its underlying meanings, and put it in a narrative that's easy to follow.

In the Cog Edge method the sensemaking is done by a group of humans, not a computer. The assumption is that distributed cognition of a group of people can elicit meaning where a single person, or a computer, cannot. I'm not up on the latest in artificial intelligence, but I'm doubtful that an entirely computerized approach can yield anything of use.

Perhaps a partially-computerized method, where fragments were gathered (sampled?) by machine and sensemade by humans, would work better. Or if the fragments could be human-coded as they were captured the significant or related ones might be easier to isolate. I don't know. Can any readers weigh in who are more optimistic that a totally-computerized approach might work?

A link to the DARPA RFI is here.

(Photo by cote via Flickr creative commons)

sensemaking, narrative, stories, DARPA, communication

A Personal Story

I woke up early Saturday morning. As I lay in bed trying to fall back to sleep, it occurred to me that the work for my biggest client was slowing down and I wasn't sure what I could do to ensure it continued. A prospect had emailed me earlier this week with some ideas to scale back the work I had proposed to do for him. And a couple of other prospects I was hoping to close hadn't returned some emails I'd sent over the past couple of weeks.

Despite enjoying one of the busiest months since I went out on my own, I allowed that morning's sleep to be ruined by thoughts and worries over the future. Such is the life of an independent contractor, and given the current economic climate, these worries are affecting many others as well.

Thankfully, an article in the Sunday New York Times pointed out that this fear is a natural process of our brain when confronted with uncertainty and threat. "When Fear Takes Over Our Brains," by Gregory Berns of Emory University, furthermore, reminds us that "when the fear system of the brain is active, exploratory activity and risktaking are turned off."

And this is the problem with recession or whatever you want to call it--people and businesses stop exploring and taking risks. Other people read in the newspaper (every single day) about the hunkering down of these groups, become afraid, and hunker down themselves.

Berns talks about what he is doing during this time to get himself and his brain thinking again, moving past the fear. Sharing his own fears and plans is a gift and helps me focus on what I should be doing. This week, I'll be working hard on all my current projects. I'll be calling prospects back who I haven't heard from. I'l be thinking of new things I can do with may big client and proposing them. And I'll be reflecting on other actions I can start and other opportunities I can pursue.

Because I won't get paralyzed thinking about the bad things that could happen. And if we all can put the fear aside, and start exploring and taking risks--even small ones--we will begin to shape the next era, beyond this recession.

career, narrative, recession, neurology, risk, New York Times

Example of a blog attracting user stories

Sorry for this somewhat awkward syntax of this post. I am composing it on my Blackberry 8830. This is significant because the post concerns David Pogue's eviscerating review of the new touchscreen Blackberry Storm mobile phone.

In response to the review, Pogue received more than 100 stories of people who also hated their newly-bought Storm. There were also dozens of defenses of the Storm and RIM, its maker. And many more comments in response to the post.

Pogue's post served as an attractor, stimulating all sorts of vibrant customer feedback. As a product manager and someone interested in innovation, this example is fascinating and illustrative of how social computing is revolutionizing market & customer intelligence.

What does all the feedback mean? Probably lots of things: the Storm has serious issues; RIM has committed, passionate users; Apple is a hard act to follow, etc.

Whatever it means, let's hope that RIM is listening, sensemaking, and acting. If they want some guidance, tell them to shoot me an email.

By the way, composing this post on the 8830's thumb keyboard & tiny screen has been agonizing. I was hoping the Storm might be my next step. Now I'm not so sure.

market research, narrative, product management, sensemaking, wireless, social media

Public health story database needs your contributions

Cognitive Edge and a nonprofit called Innovation Health are launching a narrative database focused on public health issues, including child vaccinations and obesity. It needs your stories of encounters with the medical industry.

Health care is one of the preeminent issues of our time and will be front and center in our consciousness when the financial crisis is long past. The health-care infrastructure is a complex system with lots of actors, and so narrative analysis offers a better way of evaluating it than surveys or metrics.

Please consider sharing your experiences. The link is here and the password is HEALTH.

Note the following:

By participating in the survey, you acknowledge, accept and approve the use of the information provided by Innovation Health and the Cognitive Edge practitioner network. Innovation Health will use the information to observe patterns that the stories may reveal. The Cognitive Edge practitioner network may use the information collected as a demonstration data set to illustrate the applicability of sense-making to health and wellness.

Related post:
Is there a health-care crisis? The stories say yes

Tags:
healthcare, narrative, innovation, reform

"Public relations firm took too long to change to home-based business"

From The Mistake Bank:

Reporter Marcia Pledger of The Cleveland Plain Dealer has been collecting and publishing great small-business mistake stories for a while. Here's a nice one about the cost of worrying too much about what others' perceptions might be:

A manufacturing company told me that if I started a public relations firm, I had its business. My next move was to find a location. Relationships are one thing, but I needed credibility for prospects.

Starting a business from my home 22 years ago was not even a thought. Back then, home-based businesses were not considered "real" businesses, so I leased an office....

read the rest of the story at the Plain Dealer site here.

Mistake Bank, mistakes, narrative, location, perception, entrepreneurism

From The Mistake Bank: Sue Pera on the downside of expansion

From The Mistake Bank:

This is the first of a series of interviews with businesspeople about mistakes they've made in their careers. If you'd like to be part of this series, email me at john (at) caddellinsightgroup (dot) com.


Find more videos like this on The Mistake Bank



Sue Pera is the owner of the Cornerstone Coffeehouse in Camp Hill, PA. Visit them on the web at http://thecornerstonecoffeehouse.com. (Disclosure: I usually hang out here on Friday mornings, when the cleaners come to do my office. It's a great place; if you happen to find yourself in Camp Hill, you must stop by.)

Tags:
Mistake Bank, mistakes, narrative, customer relationships, expansion, growth, entrepreneurism

Comparing two customer research approaches

I had two remarkable experiences today.

First, I interviewed a marketing manager about some software he uses. He spent thirty-five minutes describing why the company chose the software, how he used it, how he learned to use the features over time and thereby developed proficiency in an area of marketing he hadn't known well before, how the supplier had given him very responsive support, how the user's group had helped him... and, by the way, three or four features that, if they existed, could really help him. I recorded everything and will review this and a number of other interviews with the client using narrative sensemaking approaches. In the end, they'll get a deep, detailed picture of how they're viewed by their customers. They'll know features that customers will value. And they'll know some things that bother their clients.

Later in the day, I got a survey to fill out. It looked like this:

Rate each question on a scale of 1-5, with 1 being Poor and 5 being Excellent.

* Trainer communicated in a clear, concise, and easily understood manner.

Comments:

* Demonstrated that he is knowledgeable in [...].

Comments:

* Displays pride, enthusiasm, and a positive attitude in his work.

Comments:

* Demonstrates a professional attitude and supports the [client].

Comments:

* Practice topics are clear and correct for [skill and experience].

Comments:

* Trainers were timely and approachable with problems and concerns.

Comments:

It's unfair, I know, to compare the two approaches. The first is more expensive and time-consuming. There is more at stake for the software company than for the second group, a nonprofit.

But, really, what can one possibly learn from the second approach? Isn't the interview method better in about 1,000 ways?

Tags:
market research, narrative, interviews, surveys

The voices say: time to read "War and Peace"

Sometimes something tiny can influence us, such as a Tweet--this one:

Increasingly amazed (and worried) at the number of people I know and respect who do not read novels.

Then today I read this blog post: "Tolstoi's Guide to Complexity," about "War and Peace." The post's author, Jochum Stienstra, writes eloquently about how the book has influenced his thinking since he read it fourteen years ago.

Okay, I said. This is a message to me. Time to put aside the stack of unread business books and spend a little sabbatical reading an old classic. I've picked up and put down "War and Peace" perhaps ten times. Never read it.

Now it's time. I dug my old Signet Classic edition out of the box and cracked it open. Again.

complexity, narrative, novels

Your voices needed to help a worthy project

Can the sharing of stories bring a community together?

It worked in the olden days, but has become a lost art in the age of television, internet, and videogames. Robert Putnam's book "Bowling Alone" described a society where isolation reigns and communities are frayed.

My friend and colleague Cynthia Kurtz has applied for a Knight News Challenge grant to develop web2.0 software precisely to facilitate the gathering, sharing and passing on of stories that used to go on around the campfire or village square. The Knight folks want the public (that means you) to review and comment on the applications. It would be doing a great service if you would visit the site here and weigh in on Cynthia's application.

Here's how she describes the project:

Long ago, story caretakers tended the diverse stories of the community: eliciting, understanding, maintaining. But those traditions have declined as commercial storytelling rose and community coherence fell. The physical-digital split means that today older people tell stories in community centers while younger people tell them on Facebook. People still tell stories, but no one is bringing all of the stories together into community-wide patterns, making sense of those patterns, and helping the stories get to where they need to be in times of need. We are building a free and open source software package called Rakontu ("tell a story" in Esperanto) that will help communities share and work with raw stories of personal experience for mutual understanding, conflict resolution and decision support. By supporting and bridging online and offline storytelling, Rakontu will help communities regenerate the sustaining functions of story caretakers so that they can take better care of their stories again.

An important part of the project is how this would bring benefit to communities. Cynthia explains it this way:

Rakontu will help communities tell, annotate and connect stories; discover insight-creating patterns in them; and use stories to resolve conflicts and make decisions together. This degree of support is only available today through the help of experienced narrative practitioners. Rakontu will embody understandings about narrative in communities so that people will not have to know anything about narrative to benefit from its use. Some possible outcomes are better understandings of opposing perspectives, a greater diversity of voices being heard, better consensus on tough choices, more problems dealt with before they get worse, safer streets, fewer footholds for extremism and paranoia, and greater common strength in times of crisis.

I've written in this blog, over and over, about the use of stories for knowledge sharing, learning, and creating insight. You're probably tired of reading about it. But think about this: we should be using every tool at our disposal to help bring our communities together, to combat the "bowling alone" syndrome, and make our neighborhoods a better place to live. That's what Rakontu can do, and I hope you'll visit the Knight News Challenge site and support Cynthia's application.

(Disclosure: I have worked with Cynthia on this grant and will be conducting community trials of the software if the grant is awarded. Therefore I have a vested interest in getting the grant approved.)

Tags:
community, narrative, virtual communities, sensemaking, storytelling

AG Lafley on P&G's innovation culture: "The consumer is boss"

In the newest issue of Booz & Co's "Strategy + Business," A.G. Lafley describes the innovation culture at his company, Procter & Gamble.

Hearing insights from Lafley and P&G about innovation is becoming a cliche, but this quote struck me as apt:

So we expanded our mission to in­clude the idea that “the consumer is boss.” In other words, the people who buy and use P&G products are valued not just for their money, but as a rich source of in­formation and direction. If we can develop better ways of learning from them — by listening to them, observing them in their daily lives, and even living with them — then our mission is more likely to succeed.

This what I'm thinking about much of the time now. How to help companies listen to, and learn from, "the bosses."

narrative, sensemaking, innovation, product management