Demand Satisfaction!

Sarah Nelson from my other favorite company Adaptive Path recently posted an interview she conducted with author Scott Berkun about his upcoming book, The Myths of Innovation. Now, before you run for the hills (or at least close your web browser): yes, I realize that “innovation” has become one of those words, so overused by the biznerati that it’s been effectively leeched of any real meaning. But unlike almost ever other person who has tackled the subject, Scott has an elegantly simple and practical answer to the question of what makes for an innovative organization:

I think that you can create an [innovative] environment, and it’s very simple. I think that whoever has power over a budget, and whoever has power over what features are included in a product or go up on the website, they enable innovation by saying “yes.” That’s really the fundamental thing that they have to be willing to do. When someone shows up with an idea — “Hey, why don’t we change the navigation system from this older design to this new design I’ve been thinking of? Can I get some money to go and prototype this?”— all that has to happen is the person with power says, “Yes, I will give you a week to go and prototype that and we will review it when you have the prototype, and then we’ll consider actually making those changes.” And once everyone witnesses the person in power saying “yes” to a new idea, then they’ll be comfortable bringing another idea, or a third idea. And then all of a sudden, you have an environment that is very receptive to new ideas and innovations, as opposed to the more common complaints about environments, where new ideas are like wanted men: They’re shot down pretty quickly.

So much of what drew me to the Web when I first started working on it over a decade ago was the culture of the place. The companies I worked for, just like the Internet itself, were thoroughly and genuinely bottom-up. Good ideas could and did come from the top or the bottom of the hierarchy. Iconoclastic thinking was encouraged, not repressed. Failure was openly acknowledged, even espoused as a goal, not because the people in charge wanted to see you fail but because because being told it was ok to fail made it ok to try.

When I was younger, I didn’t think much about why this was the case. I just loved that my contributions were valued, and that sometimes the company president would stop by my cubicle to ask my advice. Since then I’ve come to recognize this approach as a deliberate management strategy; the creation of a bottom-up culture always begin at the top.

What does this have to do with customer service, you ask? Well, reading that interview got me thinking about another article I’d read about Southwest Airlines, entitled “To Provide the Best Customer Service, Put Customers Second, Says Southwest President Colleen Barrett:”

…[A]t Southwest, to ensure the best customer service, you have to put the customers second. With the “Southwest Model for Leadership,” [Barrett] said, employees are the company’s No. 1 customer.

Barrett, who set up Southwest’s public relations department, spends about 90 percent of her day dealing with employee issues. Her theory, following Southwest’s iconoclastic founder, Herb Kelleher, is that if she can effectively make employees feel good about what they’re doing on a daily basis, satisfied employees will deliver the same sense of friendliness and care to Southwest passengers.

A culture of innovation takes many forms beyond just creating clever new gadgets — turns out this approach makes for better customer service, too. Let your employees live and think the way they want to, let them deal with problems in a way that makes sense to them and to the context of the situation, give them the freedom, the encouragement, and the environment to be themselves — in other words, say “yes” a whole lot — and then watch as that freedom to be themselves is reflected in the way they act and treat others. And in the way that your company succeeds — Southwest has been the most consistently profitable airline in the industry since they launched in 1973.

Another great quote from Barrett:

I don’t understand why an employee should have one personality at work and another outside of work. We do offer you the ability and encourage you to come into the business world as who you are. We hire you for your individuality, and we aren’t going to try to spend six months molding you into corporate culture.

Bottom-up (and out) is a quality I’ve always associated with Silicon Valley and the Internet industry, but we certainly recognize that those kinds of companies don’t always come from the west coast. A big Texas welcome to Southwest Airlines: our 3rd Hall of Famer.

Some useful additional reading: a Businessweek article about Southwest entitled “Customer Service Champs;” Nuts! Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success; and Southwest’s own weblog, which is how I learned that turbulence isn’t as bad as it seems (though it still freaks me out.)