Chapter Eleven
Where Are You Going?
There are no guarantees about how any of life's ventures will turn out; there are simply ideas worth pursuing. The ZoD process offers a certain amount of due diligence into the rightness of an idea, supported by a scan of the four forces. The ZoD serves to answer the two questions essential to strategy: Who are you? and Where are you going? The first question—and it must be the first, as you cannot know where you are going until, one way or another, you understand deeply and completely who you are—is essentially an inward examination, as we learned in the previous chapter. But understanding where you are going is a different proposition, one that requires you to sally forth into the world, redirecting your curious gaze outward in an attempt to see, if you were to achieve the ultimate fulfillment of your purpose, what it would look like.
Two side notes before we begin our journey alongside one company's “Where are you going?” ZoD. First, because of the nature of the “Who are you?” journey, the pilgrim must do all her own work, putting one foot in front of the other, carrying all her own baggage, on the path to self-awareness; she can get herself a guide, as Cooks' Karl and Marie did when they came to me, but only to lead, not to offer even a quick piggyback ride. Not so on the “Where are you going?” trek, where even the most honest traveler can hitch a ride without cheating. That is where I often come in, a Sherpa in a suit and heels leading the way—and also carrying the bags. Because in this ZoD inquiry, you cannot even start the left brain–right brain–left brain (L-R-L) exercises we examined in our “Who are you?” discussion until you first conduct a graduate student's load of research, and you may find you want to hire your own guide for that first leg of the journey. Clients often engage me to do this research before they get too involved in ZoD activities. The object of the research: using the four forces as guideposts, to identify the possible future scenarios that will have an impact on your particular future, five, ten, fifteen years out. Of course, the hard core among you are welcome to take full part in the four forces trek. But you're not a sissy if you don't.
Second, the “Where are you going?” work I do with clients really does tell them where they are going. Sometimes, companies are happy to share their visions as a part of their brand marketing. Playboy hired futurists to help develop a model for an outer-space Playboy Club—just a hop, skip, and a few light years away on Virgin's privately owned space shuttles—and wrote all about its long-term strategy in its March 2012 issue (including a discussion of topics related to zero gravity in the pursuit of all forms of adult entertainment). But for most companies, the “Where are you going?” process provides valuable insights and proprietary information that give them a competitive edge in the future—information they don't want their competition knowing about. So whereas the “Who are you?” inquiry Marie and Karl experienced was presented exactly as it happened, edited only to conserve space, the “Where are you going?” case study we will follow in this chapter is an amalgam, a combination of several past clients whose identifying features and ZoD exercises have been massaged for identity protection; the amalgamated journey nevertheless remains authentic and instructive.
So without further ado, allow me to introduce Clicks, a multibillion-dollar electronics conglomerate with a desire to refresh its perspective about its business, to step back to see whether its current answers to “Who are you?” and “Where are you going?” were still relevant—for itself, its customers and, most important, for its future. This long-term approach to planning means asking, “What will life be like in [5, 10, 20, 50] years?” and then zeroing in on what that scenario will mean for the company. As always with such projects, Clicks began with a scan of the four forces—and yes, the company totally hitched the first part of the ride. Before we work on where Clicks is going, however, let's look at where Clicks has been.
Clicks's History
As a personal electronics superstore founded in the 1980s, Clicks was ahead of the curve from the beginning. Its founder, Max Bailey, recognized that every communications gizmo that had been introduced since Thomas Edison invented the electric typewriter and phonograph had eventually reached a tipping point when everybody just had to have it. Telephones, radios, and TV had infiltrated our lives to such a degree that they had become modern-day necessities. Personal home computers first appeared in 1975, though it wasn't until the 1980s, when the Apple Macintosh computer, Microsoft software, and the CD-ROM came to market, that it became clear that computers would be the next must-have device. Max saw the demand for consumer electronics going in only one direction—up—and decided to get in on a sure thing.
Max opened his first store in 1983 in San Diego, near a military base, where computers were issued to any family that requested one. This meant two things: there was a steady supply of computer-literate consumers, and they were on limited budgets, so they were always looking for a good deal. Max believed that he might also have access to the wholesalers that supplied the government, so selling discounted electronics in the area looked like a smart move.
It was a brilliant move. Not only was he able to forge relationships with the wholesalers, but they appreciated that when they needed to make room for new products, Max would buy large quantities at a discount. He'd then turn around and sell them in big blowout sales that he'd stage in the parking lot on the weekends.
A variety of consumer electronics, at the best prices, all available at one store—this was the Clicks business model from the beginning, and it worked. Within five years, it was the leading retail electronics store in the region; and, ten years later, with its new superstore format, it had grown into a publicly traded, multibillion-dollar company.
Without knowing exactly what the devices of the future would be, Max was certain that new ones were coming along, and when they did, he wanted to be there, selling them. When everyone just had to have a fax machine and an email address, Clicks was there, as it has been for every generation of electronic “must-have” since, helping people find the right cell phone; VCR; CD, DVD, and MP3 players; digital camera; TiVo, Xbox, Wi-Fi; and tablet computer.
But the same forces that pushed new gadgets into the market at shorter and shorter intervals have also been reshaping business itself. Online stores, such as Amazon, have shifted the retail model from bricks to clicks. Ironically, Clicks was heavily invested in the bricks of its retail stores, now all across the United States and beyond, and paying the high costs of real estate and the employees that go with it. This kind of overhead made it impossible to compete with online stores.
Just as more and more sales were being diverted to online “e-tailers,” the 2008 recession delivered a second punch to Clicks. The fallout—household budgets and spending in decline, rising unemployment, foreclosures, and economic uncertainty—meant that consumers would scrutinize every cent they spent. Still at the helm, Max realized that if Clicks didn't reinvent its role as a retailer, it might not be around when 3-D printers, the kind described at the opening of this book, become the next must-have.
Although the concept of the big-box electronics store was an innovative model when Clicks was founded, it was no longer the winning formula. Max could see the problem, but not the solution. He wondered, with some real concern about his company's viability, what the next generation of stores would look like.
This is a classic “Where are you going?” question for a large, mature company. Clicks had been established at a time when the notion of purpose had nothing to do with business. The calculus for a company in 1980 was far simpler: young families would need TVs and computers in good times and bad, so selling them cheap seemed like a good, recession-proof idea. But competition got stiffer. Today it's not enough to give people a good deal on good products; stores have to be experiences that capture people's own sense of possibility. Clicks, like nearly every other business, has had to respond to these trends nimbly and creatively. But for larger, older companies like Clicks, being nimble and creative is not so easy. The culture, systems, and leadership tend to be set, so changing—and responding to change—is a much harder proposition.
Max wanted to make sure that Clicks was ready for change, that the company had looked ahead and anticipated the forces and influences that would affect the health of its business in both the near and far future. To do that, he posed a very simple question: “What is the future of retail?”
Define
Max had opened his first store because he saw a number of trends which suggested that more and more people were going to use more electronics in more areas of their lives. It was a good business opportunity. There was something else under the surface, however, and that was the implied purpose of Clicks: Max believed that the transformative power of many electronics to make life better (as technology has always done) should be easily accessible, and that included helping customers choose the product that balanced their aspirations with their budgets. This point of view would be essential to forming the Best Question for Clicks.
First, though, we had to establish two parameters for the project: how far into the future we'd focus our research (this is called the time horizon), and how the final outcomes of the ZoD would be used.
Define: Scope
Whether you're planning for next year or twenty years from now, your investigation is focused on two elements: environmental conditions and human needs The future environment is shaped by changes in the four forces that, in turn, shape what our work, home, family, and social lives will be like. Once you consider how lifestyles will be different (within the selected timeframe for the project), you need to investigate what people's needs and desire will be, then imagine how to deliver what innovation has always promised: a way to make life better.
Time horizon. For businesses that are close to the source of the four forces, such as those in technology, energy, agriculture, or social services such as education and health care, the time horizon is naturally long, ten years or so. It also takes a long time for companies in any industry to reinvent themselves, as was true for Clicks; in these cases, the horizon hovers in the five- to ten-year range. (For businesses interested in a specific line of product invention, in contrast, the timeframe is generally eighteen months to five years.)
Expectations. Knowing what a company wants to do with the information resulting from a ZoD project is critical. Just as critical is gauging the company's readiness for action; if it's in crisis, is it motivated or paralyzed? If the ZoD project is intended as a reconnaissance mission to see what the future holds or to inform corporate strategy, it's important to know whether the resulting ZoD report will be used only to stimulate further discussion or whether there's an appetite for a bold move, now.
In the Cooks example, the final report was their performance. Their goal had been to capture and articulate and answer the question “Who are you?” For their purposes, a theatrical expression of their discovery—their Kitchen Ballet—became a powerful communication tool. It wasn't the only one, but for the key audience, their employees, for whom they performed it at a company retreat, it was the right form.
For a “Where are you going?” ZoD, the final report is, generally, a major call for action. Depending on your intended audience—a board of trustees, brand teams, customers, or employees—your final report could be a physical 3-D model, animated short, theatrical event, or coffee-table book, delivered in a presentation with a written report.
Define: Subject of Investigation
The future is determined by the interplay of changing conditions and the choices people make (behaviors). Therefore, to think like a futurist, you must consider the drivers of each of these elements: for conditions, the four forces are the drivers; for behaviors, it's the brain. Research efforts are divided so as to focus on the drivers of these two domains, conditions and behaviors.
Conditions
A four forces scan is your first activity, the goal of which is to find ideas, people, and technologies that are “pushing the future in new directions.” This is a research activity that includes combing through industry journals, published papers, conference proceedings, online blogs and reports, interviews with experts, and ethnographic studies. The only criterion for selecting data is that the collected facts, findings, and phenomena seem likely to influence the future. By way of example, let's take a look at the thinking that guided our four forces scan for Clicks:
Behaviors
A common adage in business is the statement “People don't want a quarter-inch drill; they want quarter-inch holes!” In other words, people buy things for the results they provide, whether physical, emotional, or environmental. There are many ways to look at consumer behavior, but I like to start here: In what ways are people's lives better as a result of a particular product or service?
For Clicks, we wanted to investigate the ways in which personal electronics transformed people's lives. What are the material ways that technology allows us to meet needs, values, and aspirations related to our lives at home, at work, and in our relationships?
This investigation would dive into such social sciences as sociology and psychology, as well as the effect of technology on the following: economics; cognitive and social development; the artistic process; and factors for success in school, in relationships, at work, and at play. We were looking for the kinds of settings and interactions in which technology enhanced happiness and success. This kind of inquiry generally results in a mishmash of scientific studies, anecdotal evidence, trends, and inferences that seem to be expressing the same essential truth about human needs and drives. Because the goal is to generate insights, it helps to look at a variety of sources that, when put together, cause the brain to make associative leaps in perception.
Define: Best Question
Now, with boundaries drawn for the project, and the scope of inquiry defined in terms of future conditions and behaviors, we could form an intelligent Best Question for Clicks: What will be the circumstances that motivate people to use and purchase personal electronics ten years from now, and how will Clicks make it easier for people to do so?
Discover
Because Clicks had hired my associates and me as Sherpas in this journey, we were part of a core team that went through the ZoD together; we were guides rather than participants, but were along for every step of the journey. Remember that for the purpose of sharing knowledge without sharing proprietary information, I have created Clicks as a composite, drawing from several client experiences to create essential meaning by tampering with nonessential details. With that caveat, allow me to introduce the four members of my team: two designers, an ethnographer, and myself. The five participants from Clicks who took part in the ZoD workshops were one director from each of the following departments: emerging platforms, business relationship management for emerging technologies, store design, marketing, and corporate strategy. Attending portions of the workshop were also invited guests, including a museum director, a cognitive neuroscientist, a creative director from Disney, a smart-home architect, and an expert on social media and youth culture.
Pour and Stir
For a “Where are you going?” inquiry, Pour and Stir begins with a scan of the four forces, conducted by my team and me. Our research was divided into two parts: the first was a scan of the four forces to consider changing conditions; the second focused on the impact of technology on people's happiness and success. Our findings, which became inputs for the workshop, included themes and insights that appeared consistently through the research, as well as “sore thumb” ideas and data that stuck out to us because they were either inconsistent or especially compelling.
The following overview of our research methods and findings was presented to the group:
Part One—Conditions
These were our methods for gathering information:
- We dived deep into the four forces (resources, technology, demographics, and governance) and latest journals.
- We interviewed experts, looking at work that studied the intersection of technology and economics, globalization, health care, education, cognitive development, social interactions, and business.
- We organized and participated in informal ethnographies: schools that incorporate online learning, retirement communities, college campuses, families, and professionals.
We asked participants to keep in mind this question as we shared the learning we had accumulated:
How will America change in the next ten years, and how will it affect our experience of home, work, and family?
Part Two—Behaviors
As in part one, we shared our information, which we had gathered as follows:
- We interviewed experts who study the use of technology in a variety of therapeutic and educational settings.
- We conducted a comprehensive market scan for Like that! examples of retail experiences that create connectedness.
For this part of the process, we asked Clicks team members to consider several questions as they listened:
- What factors lead to the feeling of connectedness?
- Is connectedness different from belonging?
- What is unique about the ways that technology promotes happiness and success?
- Are there specific practices that are especially gratifying?
Play and Make
Now it was time to take all the information that the group had immersed itself in, consolidate themes and points of view and begin to make mental connections as we poured and stirred, and move into a workshop environment. At this point, just as we did in the “Who are you?” workshop I described in Chapter Ten, we began to Play with material, uncover insights to support the strategy, and Make the form of the best solution.
In the case of Clicks, participants took two days away from their usual routines and responsibilities at work to focus on the ZoD activities. The break this kind of workshop requires is a necessary luxury when working on projects that will have big impact. It's important not to shortchange that opportunity, because it's in this time that everything comes together. It's here where, after having been immersed in all there is to Know, the right brain has the space to do its thing: get the big picture, make New connections, allow insights to unfold, imagine possibilities and consequences, take the time to think a complex scenario all the way through, and play with ideas long enough to really understand how everything fits together.
Preparation
When a group of people tackles a big visioning project like this, there's the core team managing it and an extended team that is brought in on occasion to add their talents and perspective. This is particularly valuable in workshop experiences, where you want to have people who are familiar with the problem you're trying to solve, as well as “outsiders” who still have enough distance to help you see what you may have missed.
Ahead of a ZoD workshop, all materials created to date—videos, photos, interviews, artifacts, and research briefs—are shared with the extended team. It's important that they're briefed on what they've learned and how they're starting to put ideas together before they come into the workshop. Just as important is giving them the opportunity to contribute to the process and to adopt some accountability for its success. For the Clicks project, we had recorded more than a dozen one-hour interviews with subject matter experts. Everyone who was going to participate in the workshop was assigned an interview that he or she would have to summarize for the group.
This approach creates an opportunity for all the good, thought-provoking content to be shared within the group, so that the ownership of the knowledge isn't confined only to those who've conducted the interviews or been directly involved with the project. It also infuses some fun and anticipation into the group; each person has a chance to be an expert and to assume some leadership for that portion of the workshop.
Another advantage of this approach is that every participant gets a taste of the learning excursions conducted in the Pour and Stir step. It's not every day that you get to go deep with a thought leader in cognitive development, economics, sociology, neuroscience, computer science, design, cultural semiotics, retail experience, or demography, so participants come to the workshop excited by what they have learned from listening to the assigned interviews, and poised to go deeper.
A ready-to-go and ready-to-share state lends itself well to what Stuart Brown described as attunement play. At PUSH, Stuart defined attunement as a “spontaneous surge of emotion—joy” that comes from connecting with others, and said it is “the grounding base of the state of play.” But there was something more that I wanted to achieve at the beginning of this ZoD workshop, and that was to make the transformative power of technology palpable and real. If Clicks's objective was to address how technology enhances happiness and success, our participants would have to feel it for themselves, then, in that emotional state, and imagine ways for the Clicks store of the future to pop with transformative moments such as they'd had.
Workshop
To create that feeling, I opened the workshop with a six-minute video made by a “born again” student. He had never earned more than a C average in high school and college, but returned to earn a second bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at Temple University. He made the video at the end of his first year to celebrate the fact that he'd carried a 4.0 GPA for the entire year, including perfect scores on his calculus and chemistry final exams. He owed it all, he said, to the Khan Academy, a Web site that offers more than three thousand free video tutorials, posted by teachers, on a full range of educational subjects, at levels that span grade school to the doctoral level. Each lesson has automated exercises, and the Web site supports peer-to-peer coaching as well. The student says, “Coming from a background where my GPA graduating from high school was in the 2.0 range, that never would have happened—getting a 4.0 GPA would never have happened without the help I got from the Khan Academy.” He goes on to say, “It has helped me immensely. The impact for me in my life . . . I see it growing exponentially over the next twenty or thirty years.”
By the time the video was over, the energy and focus in the room had changed completely. The story was so personal, yet deeply moving and uplifting at the same time, that within those six minutes, each one of our participants had made a personal connection, not just to the story, but to the sense of possibility this young man expressed.
The room was silent. When participants emerge from an emotional experience, language feels distant and self-conscious. Rather than open a discussion of the film and what we saw and felt about it, I asked people to simply stand and walk to a spot in the room where they could stand in a wide line. I asked a series of questions that they were to answer with a step forward for yes or a step backward for no.
Please step forward if you've relied on technology as a primary learning tool. Add another step if you've experienced a breakthrough in understanding as a result of technology, or a step backwards if it has hindered your learning. If you have met someone online, and that connection turned into a meaningful relationship, step forward. Take another step if you have used technology to end isolation, or a step back if you feel it has made you more isolated. Take a step for each time that a connection in an online network has been of substantive help in your work life. Move ahead or back to indicate whether the use of technology allows you to be more or less productive. Step forward if there are things you express through digital communications that you do not express anywhere else in your life, in each of the following categories: intimacy; creativity; conceptual thinking; gratitude; hopes; fears. Take a step to indicate whether you think technology makes your life better or worse in each of these areas of your life: home; work; relationships.
By the end of the exercise, we had a human scatter graph of technology's power to make life better. It was a great way to ask about the role of technology in our lives while the feeling of connectedness was still fresh from the film, and to respond without words. This activity established a personal context for the emotional state, but, because it was a group exercise, it also helped participants transition their brains, along with their hearts, back into workshop mode.
Next they captured, on large pieces of paper on the wall, the phrases and scenes from the video that had meant the most to them. What had they just heard and seen that was a Like that! for expressing the transformative power of technology?
The room had been set with three blank pieces of paper, one each for Awe, Aww, and Aha! on which group members could capture meaningful phrases, insights, and experiences during the course of the workshop. This process of gathering relevant, resonant material, without censorship or qualification, is always a part of the ZoD. It's important to stimulate thinking and feeling through a number of different activities, adding Like that! reactions to the list. At the end of the workshop, we reviewed the three lists to identify the themes that represented the role of technology in our lives.
All this powerful material was seasoned with videos that revealed an experience related to the subject we were discussing. Playing videos after breaks reimmersed the group in the inquiry, and, because information was introduced through the senses rather than with words, it was perceived differently. Mixing up perceptual modalities is enormously important for generating the perspective, insights, and ideas that are the main objectives of this process.
The group's grounding in what drives people's attachment to their devices, at this point, was well established. The team had explored, empathized with, and come to understand why so many people feel that the ability to connect to people, ideas, and opportunities that technology allows is critical to their well-being. Next, they had to take that understanding and apply it to scenarios pertaining to the parts of human lives that benefit most from an electronic interface. In doing so, we hoped to discover an answer to the Clicks Best Question: What will be the circumstances that motivate people to use and purchase personal electronics ten years from now, and how will Clicks make it easier for people to do so?
Like the Sensory Circuit, a Scenario Circuit is a series of stations set up to provide direct, right-brain stimulation. In the right-brain Sensory Circuit that Cooks went through, each station represented a different kind of sensory input. With their archetype in mind, participants selected material they found particularly compelling, and they later used it to build a collage.
The stations in a Scenario Circuit have a slightly different objective. Although they are also intended to stimulate right-brain responses, the stations for a “Where are you going?” ZoD, such as Clicks's, are constructed as alternative views of the future. The goal is to posit the conditions of the future, for the time horizon selected, in a variety of possible scenarios. Then, as participants engage with the material at each station, they imagine what life would feel like in those conditions, and consider what their needs, desires, and behaviors would be in that scenario. These scenarios can range from extremely high-tech simulation rooms to low-tech tables in a workshop space. The important thing is that you represent the most salient conditions, as revealed in your scan of the four forces, in a way that participants can imagine what life is like in the future.
Note that scenarios are often used to test hypotheses or to consider best- and worst-case scenarios. But for Clicks, we needed our scenarios to be a little looser. The group was still in discovery mode, so rather than having participants come to a final conclusion, we simply wanted to stimulate insights into the problems that arose in each setting, as well as ideas for solving them.
As is often the case, ours was a low-tech environment, so we used tables and room corners to stage the four situations we wanted to test. From the research and activities participants had completed to this point, they had learned that there were four areas in which communications technology reliably enhanced people's well-being: love, learning, personal development, and performance. We called them “Domains of Self,” a term that was relevant to the group's challenge because, as its findings showed, the benefits that come from using technology to connect to people and ideas are personal and subjective. The stations were staged with furniture, pictures, quotes, video, music, artifacts and, notably, technology that would encourage feelings associated with each Domain of Self.
Naturally, the Domains of Self mean different things to people in different life stages. Because the intended Clicks customer is any person of any age, we needed to see how motivations and behavior varied among age groups. For this exercise, I created eight profiles representing people at various life stages:
One profile was given to each workshop participant, who was to go through each of the scenario stations (love, learning, personal development, and performance) with the mind-set of the assigned persona, answering the questions at each station from that point of view.
One of the quotes from our expert interviews kept coming back to the group members. At the end of the Scenario Circuit, they realized that it was because the words of psychologist Harriet Goldhor Lerner so beautifully captured the role that communications technologies play in each of our Domains of Self: “Only through our connectedness to others can we really know and enhance the self. And only through working on the self can we begin to enhance our connectedness to others.”
All the data pointed to how the fluid connections among people and ideas—connections enhanced by technology—make life richer. Relationships, learning, productivity, collaboration, finance, self-reliance, and self-awareness were all richer for the fluid connectivity that came from the many types of electronic devices in our lives. This was the group's insight, distilled as “The Connected Life Is a Richer Life.”
The tagline would be the backbone of their strategy to reimagine the retail experience for Clicks; it was the lens through which the group and I, acting as a guide, conceived the future during Dream and Scheme.
Dream and Scheme
What the Clicks team had discovered is that people who are comfortable with personal technologies are happier and more optimistic than those who don't use technology. Their research also showed that people who are comfortable using technology actually communicate better, feel more connected to global events, have empathy for people whose lives are very different from their own, and are confident problem solvers and good students. The Clicks team's research also showed that most tech-savvy people feel certain that because they are more connected, they are also more successful professionally and financially. Their findings also indicated that people who use computers regularly, surf the Internet, play games, and frequently use social media to maintain relationships enjoy an additional benefit: associative fluency. Although some people worry that (with an overload of stimuli and information) greater use of technology makes us dumber, all that stimulation, in fact, conditions our brains for a different kind of intelligence: the ability to draw from a variety of diverse ideas to generate new insights.
Dream
The full dream for Clicks's future would include a world where there were no barriers to owning must-have technologies. Electronics would be so user-friendly that a manual wasn't necessary. People would be paired with devices that match their interests, capabilities, and budget. The feelings of anxiety and of being overwhelmed with regard to purchasing and using electronics would be gone. Technology would be used for its best capacities to make people smart, safe, loved, productive, healthy, compassionate, and inspired. Electronics would be viewed as the gateway to possibility and, as such, would enhance our self-esteem, our relationships, our communities, and our physical well-being, and would produce a more empowered society.
To people who are already proficient users of technology, this may be an obvious insight. But it's not for people who have resisted technology, who feel intimidated and anxious in the face of gadgets and gizmos. For them, it was clearly crucial to find a bridge to the group's insight that the Connected Life Is a Richer Life.
This was where Clicks would come in.
If technology is the gateway to a richer life, Clicks is the gateway to that technology. Now that participants had this core insight, they could imagine how Clicks would fulfill its role as matchmaker and guide to a more connected life and how, within that vision, they would find the best solution—the scheme—for reenergizing Clicks as a go-to source for must-have technologies.
Scheme
After more than twenty-five years in business, with stores across the nation and beyond (the company had made small forays into Mexico, Canada, India, and China), Clicks had three significant assets: lots of store space, great name recognition, and partnerships with major electronics manufacturers. These were the building blocks for reimagining Clicks as the gateway to a more connected, richer life.
Meanwhile, in the workshop, Clicks participants had had terrific insight into how technology helps mediate fulfillment within the Domains of Self. Naming love, learning, personal development, and performance helped them identify the kinds of engagement in which people would reap the greatest benefit, for they are the parts of life in which people actively seek enrichment. They also knew that the business of simply selling electronics was a losing proposition. Customers can find what they want, cheaper, through other sources. So the question was “What is Clicks selling?”
Their answer: Clicks is selling gateway experiences to a richer life, with technology as the medium. The next questions were “How can selling gateway experiences be profitable?” and “What is the business model?”
In broad strokes, the scheme we envisioned was this: all that retail space should be thought of as a theatrical setting for staging experiences, organized according to the four Domains of Self. Each domain would occupy a geographical area. Because the domains themselves are constant and unchanging, each stage could retain certain overarching identifying markers while changing smaller details of design to adapt to new trends and forms. This was the core of the Clicks reinvention strategy.
A powerful lever for Clicks is its partnerships that, in this scheme, would also be reinvented by redefining “exclusive promotion,” the tie that binds retailers to manufacturers. In this new scheme, exclusive promotions would be events—not the kind with balloons and wind socks in the parking lot, but events that focus on enrichment. For example, a new film release could be tied to exclusive previews in every Clicks on-site theater. The event would be underwritten by manufacturers of the 3-D monitors on which the film would be screened. Clicks would lock in exclusive distribution of first-generation products for the first-month rollout, during which the events would be held and the monitors available at significant discounts to Clicks's customers. Other partnerships could be brought in, to coordinate tour dates, marketing, ads, product launches, and related licensed games and toys. At the same time, Clicks would feature, in each of its Domains of Self environments, ways to connect to the story's message through love, learning, personal development, and performance, such as educational experiences about nature and the circle of life, and tools that encourage us to “look inside” for wisdom and guidance.
A different kind of gateway experience might be “Exhibit F,” featuring technologies of the future, such as 3-D printers and fabricators, thought-controlled devices, robotic personal assistants and health care attendants, and the like. Similar to the annual Consumer Electronics Show (the world's largest consumer technology trade show), these mini-exhibits would be an opportunity for technology companies to solidify their reputation as innovators to a mass audience, while creating virtual waiting lines for their yet-to-be-released products.
As a gateway to the richer life of love, learning, personal development, and performance that technology promises, Clicks would present the future as an exciting and inviting destination. With a program like Exhibit F, Clicks would be docent to the future of technology, demonstrating its benefits in the most meaningful way: through experience.
Distill
In considering the challenge of reimagining Clicks for a changed retail reality, we discovered that the key to making sure that the store experience is still relevant to customers is to promote the real value of consumer electronics: generating more love, productivity, health, motivation, and compassion in people's lives by keeping them connected to a dynamic flow of relationships and ideas.
A “New” Perspective
This New dream sprang from the Awe, Aww, and Aha! discoveries collected through the ZoD process. For Clicks, all of these discoveries contributed to a core insight, the Connected Life Is a Richer Life. Through research, interviews, and electronic media (videos, photos, comments), participants were awed by the power of connection that technology made possible. It was evidenced by stories of people being rescued from loneliness and danger; of employment and love found through online networks; of coaching, support, humor, entertainment, and inspiration that come from places and people you'd only encounter online; and of the compassion for others that was frequently expressed.
This insight would be the basis of Clicks's strategy to reimagine its role as a discount electronics retailer. True to the different orientations of the left and right brains, the group had had a sense of the insight early on, but struggled to find words for it. The process of finding language to express the insight was incredibly valuable, however, as it gave their vision specific focus. It pointed to what they would be doing in that future, and outlined all the working parts of a project.
Maximum Value Scenario: Clicks' R3OI
To arrive at an MVS for Clicks, then, participants had to test it for proprietary advantage. We posed these questions: How do you design a future that is unique to Clicks's assets and point of view? What gives you the confidence that pursuing this strategy will increase Clicks's R3OI (resilience, relevance, and revenue)? This next step is an opportunity to elaborate on what was produced during Dream and Scheme, evaluating it in terms of its R3OI.
A look at Clicks's history reveals a belief that technology improves the quality of our lives, and the conviction that there should be a very low cost of entry for people to have access to it. This point of view not only makes Clicks's claim as a gateway to enrichment through technology a credible one but also offers a highly differentiated platform—the four Domains of Self—for developing products and services that deliver on the Connected Life Is a Richer Life promise.
Resilience. Because every “Where are you going?” ZoD begins with a scan of the four forces, the consideration of resilience is integrated into the visioning process. Through the research my colleagues and I had initially done, including ethnographic studies and interviews with leading experts in technology, economics, and retail, we observed a number of trends confirming the assumption that electronic devices are being integrated into every part of our private, public, and professional lives. Among the strongest:
Each of these trends is a powerful driver of advancement in consumer technologies over the next ten years.
Relevance. As these drivers suggest, the connectedness of all parts of our lives is only deepening. And, increasingly, each of those parts will be communicating with one another, too: biometric sensors (measuring, for example, heart rate, respiration, sleep, and such) will update our health care records, which will connect with fitness programs and automated grocery lists, and more. So if this is what our lives will look like five to ten years out, what type of electronic devices will we be looking for?
We will be looking for devices that perform all those functions, of course. And just like today, we'll want to find them easily, at a reasonable cost, with a good dollop of sex appeal thrown into the design. Although the needs will be the same, the platforms for engagement of all types—sales, marketing, education, service—will continue to evolve. These are the concerns of the retail industry now, and well into the future.
The gateway concept is an important one—that technology is a gateway to a richer life, but, more important here, that Clicks is the gateway to that technology. Consumers don't need a physical store to compare or buy products anymore; what they do need, however, is a direct experience of the product that demonstrates how it will make their lives better. They want unique, meaningful interactions that they can't get anywhere else—digitally or otherwise. This means that the role of the store has moved to the beginning of the sales process, the start of a journey; its role is to educate, inspire, and entertain consumers. The sale comes as a consequence of that interaction.
What consumers really want is more right-brain engagement! They, too, respond strongly to experiences that inspire moments of Awe, Aww, and Aha! They want to be introduced to New—new brands, new products, and new capabilities. They also want the feeling of exclusivity, of being part of an event that generates buzz.
Interestingly, online retailers are recognizing the value of the physical experience and are starting to create stores. That's what Apple did, and now e-tailers like Amazon are following suit. The point is that in a hyperconnected society, what people want is total integration of online and offline worlds. Retailers, such as Clicks, will need to completely restructure the store experience if they are to remain relevant.
Revenue. In 1962, sociologist Everett M. Rogers introduced the term “early adopter” (as one of five categories of adopters), which has now fully diffused into business parlance.
In his book Diffusion of Innovations, which describes how new technologies and innovations are adopted by society, Rogers presented the five stages of the adoption process (he had a fondness for the number five): knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation. Revenue, for Clicks, would come from structuring the store experience according to this process.
For example, events and exhibits would be considered stage one, knowledge services, introducing consumers to new pathways to enrichment through technology. Related education and consulting partner programs would be engineered to address stages two through four (persuasion, decision, and implementation); stage five, confirmation, would be the final sales transaction.
This process supports the gateway concept that now defines Clicks's new role and relationship to its customers. Each of the five stages would be inspired by and customized for the four Domains of Self, attaching revenue and partnership opportunities wherever appropriate.
Clicks's Now-to-Future Portfolio
The vision for Clicks constituted a deep refinement of who it is and where it is going. Although its purpose is the same as it has always been, that purpose is now an explicit part of the company's strategy and business model. Heretofore, Clicks was known as a big-box discount store; going forward, it would be known as the gateway to a more connected and, therefore, richer life. The transformation would result from the introduction of specific innovations, phased in short-, medium-, and long-term projects. The ideas that populate the three lists are starter projects, to be updated in an annual workshop.
Short-Term Projects
Medium-Term Projects
Long-Term Projects
Plan in Reverse
None of the investment you've made to this point, from coming up with Best Questions to developing the Maximum Value Scenario, is very valuable (or sharable) if you can't bring it home as a plan of action built to the specifications of your current circumstances. This last phase of New is all about reverse-engineering the dream into a concrete project—that is, analyzing the MVS to deduce the steps necessary to produce it, all the way back to its starting point—that you can measure and manage in terms of time, money, and people invested, and results produced. To do that you have to Plan in Reverse.
Time. For Clicks, the time horizon we had decided on at the beginning still seemed pretty accurate at the end. The conditions and behaviors we had forecast were clearly right for a ten-year horizon. The team decided that it would be five years before Clicks was on track for this future, needing years six to ten to fulfill the vision of Clicks as a gateway to enrichment.
People. Because partnerships would be central to the business model, there needed to be a sophisticated team to negotiate and manage partnerships. There would also need to be two teams to manage educational programs—one for exhibits, one focused on event production.
Money. What would it cost Clicks to fund these teams? Clicks would have to sketch out roles and consider operating costs to get a feel for the scope of the financial investment. And what would be the return? The cost of customer acquisition is generally known in marketing organizations such as Clicks, as is the lifetime value of a customer. We recommended that Clicks start to track new customers in its Connected Life Is a Richer Life program in order to know exactly how much revenue is returned on its investment.
Another simple way to go at it is to “solve for x”: given the total amount needed to fund and operate this new function, how many new attendees at gateway events would it take to break even? When we did this calculation and compared it with Clicks's current cost of customer acquisition, the Connected Life Is a Richer Life program was, by far, the big winner.
By now you have the understanding and the tools you need to think like a futurist. In Part One I introduced you to a predictive model for the future, the four forces of change.
In Part Two, integrating the foundational questions of strategy—“Who are you?” and “Where are you going?”—is embedded in a creative problem-solving methodology. Based on the science of insight, the ZoD methodology is designed to maximize creative outcomes by following an L-R-L sequence.
There remains one problem left to solve: how to find space for this way of thinking in the busy, high-pressured world of business. Part Three will show you how to do just that.
