Process can be a pain at times but if the process is good enough, mistakes caused by carelessness and incorrect decisions are greatly reduced. That’s a broad statement but the concept holds true. We review technology companies, both startups and established corporations, in order to advise our clients, the fortune 500 behemoths of this world. While I much prefer a very loosely structured conversation where I ask question to satisfy my curiosity, the outcome of those conversations can either be a treasure trove of intelligence or lacking in basic information.

The treasure trove will have nuggets of insight that we can use to guide our clients on their purchasing journey. They are extremely important. However, without the basic information we tend to struggle to explain what company actually does. Without a process the benefits and lack thereof, of doing the activity are extreme. And in the business/startup world, what we are aiming for is consistent growth, not a knee-jerk growth pattern.

As a result, I’m thinking about process more and more. I’ve started to read a book called Bulletproof Problem Solving which discusses how to approach problems with a disciplined, robust process. We went through slow, somewhat painful and very thorough user identification, user needs exploration, and usability testing processes with Olas. The benefits are self-evident although my primary urge is to forget all about process and just do the thing.

Note to self – slow down, think about process and how to approach the challenge in a methodical manner, rather than just brute forcing the answer.

On Monday and Tuesday we ran a Design Thinking workshop on the 52nd floor of One Liberty Plaza. We invited our clients, senior Talent Acquisition professionals from large Fortune 500 organizations in North America. I want to discuss some of my personal learnings from that session, and some wider thoughts.

1. Every connection needs to be personal. Businesspeople tend to think in 1’s and 0’s sometimes and the fact is that people make up businesses. While automation is the on-coming storm that promises to shake up the status-quo, business will ultimately always be done between people.
2. Corporate challenges run the gambit in terms of difficulty and impact. The size of the org really makes a huge difference, with small shops struggling to get noticed and big players struggling to deal with the sheer amount of attention they receive. Both are legitimate challenges and technology providers claim to have solved these challenges in the past. As we unpacked those claims it became evident that some technologies inadvertently actually contributed to those challenges.
3. Design Thinking is new, but it’s not really. The principles have been around for years and years, essentially think about the problem from the person who has the problems’ perspective and solve from there. At least, that’s what I had understood it to be prior to this session. After going through one of these workshops its clear that there is much more to it than meets the eye. It’s essentially a really well choreographed dance with changes in pitch and tempo dictated by the dance master. More on this in a separate blog.
4. People like being involved in creating the solution. It’s not enough to say “hey guys, I have a solution for you to use, now use it and shut up.” There is an emotional and psychological connection to a certain solution if people are invited to co-create that solution together. With enough foresight and practice, you should be able to guide them to the solution that you wanted in the first place, but with much more buy-in from those involved.
5. Wouldn’t it be great if you knew what you were signing yourself up to before you actually signed up to it. We have this with restaurants (yelp) and transactional purchases like cars or hotels, and with experiences to a certain extent (trip advisor) and yet everyday people come out of secondary and tertiary education and stumble headfirst into a job. The incentives are misaligned, jobseekers need a job immediately while employers generally have the luxury of time to pick and choose. I think one outcome of this is wealthier people feeling more freedom to take their time to find their passion which results in them ultimately succeeding and becoming wealthier while those who are more cash-strapped rush to get some job to pay the bills and end up in a cycle of mediocrity. A little pessimistic perhaps but more and more I see this as a human and societal problem.

So I was thinking about perceived value recently. This idea that people attach value to something depending on how it’s presented. It’s why, while I keep this blog on the free & ill designed wordpress site, there will be an automatic reduction in the value attached to these words. And why someone will pay double or triple the price for the same product in different packaging.

Let’s compare two relatively similar products – the Casper Glow Lamp and an amazon comparable. The Casper product has brightness controls, a timed wake-up feature utilized through the Casper app, a charging stand and a 6 month warranty. The amazon competitor has brightness controls, is bigger and lighter. It does not have an app, nor is it clear what the warranty length is.

Casper’s product retails at $129 while the amazon product retails at $19.99. That’s a 6x price difference, without a 6x product quality or benefits difference. The explanation for Casper’s ability to sell at a premium = Perceived Value.

Due to Casper’s extensive, clever marketing campaigns, they have positioned themselves as providers of premium, high-quality products. They cement that image with a high quality website (which is very sleek) and use of buzzwords and marketing strategies like social proof. But ultimately they provide a product not dis-similar to others on the market.

This can be seen time and time again when you look across different industries. What it means for entrepreneurs and businesspeople, is a decision needs to be made about product positioning and pricing.

Unless your perceived value is greater than your cost, your product will be perceived as expensive.