CHAPTER 8

Be All … There

One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.

—E. M. FORSTER

“All present and accounted for, sir!” It was the roll call response a platoon leader would give the military company commander to signal that no one in the platoon was absent and all soldiers were in formation. As an army platoon leader, I remember it was expected the phrase be spoken loudly and with authority … like a pledge or guarantee. Then I took over an army reconnaissance unit and the phrase had a new meaning.

My 82nd Airborne commander instructed his unit leaders to put an emphasis on the word “present.” It was an emotional roll call that communicated the entire unit was in their most gung ho, “warrior” frame of mind and ready for combat. They were not just “there” as in present, they were “all there.” As a recon unit leader in an airborne command, you were not expected to just round up the troops for formation; you were expected to inspire them to be ready to make something happen. “Be all” as in “the most you could be”; “be there” as in emotionally present.

“Be all … there” is a condition for the kind of learning that attracts imagination and leads to innovation. Co-creation partnerships that are wide awake have an everlasting energy and intensity in every encounter. They are never lazy or indifferent; when they are there, they are all there. In conversations, they are attentive—showing curiosity when they listen, animation when they contribute. My consulting firm has a norm when working with clients: “We don’t do tired.” We might be tired, but the customer would never know it. It is a way to show respect. Done consistently, it attracts your customer to jump off the high dive, so to speak.

Being all … there means personally being an assertive learner. Harvard professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter said, “Leaders are more powerful role models when they learn than when they teach.” It also means assertively helping your customer continually learn. It includes staying on the hunt for obvious and subtle ways to foster informal learning.

Hardwire Learning into Your Partnership

Informal learning is finding nontraditional ways to infuse learning into every fiber of the experience. Here is an example. My business partner and I were working with a company that owned and managed hundreds of shopping malls around the country. The company had asked us to help them determine if creating a great experience in their malls would drive traffic into the retail stores, raising store revenue. The company earned its revenue in two ways—they charged rent to mall retailers, and they took a percentage of the retail sales brought in by the mall stores. So they had a mutual interest in store revenue. They knew they could put a circus in the mall and raise the car count in the parking lot; the challenge was whether the traffic that came into the mall actually went into the stores and spent money.

They smartly realized mining customers’ imaginations would be important to finding a solution that the target market would enjoy. Four pairs of malls were selected for the test. Each pair had very similar metrics. One in each pair would be the control mall at which nothing was done to change the mall experience. The other was the experimental mall at which a unique mall theme and experience was designed to match the target customer group and fashioned to drive increased traffic into the mall stores. The ideation sessions were held at the Catalyst Ranch, an amazing innovation center in Chicago.

Several meetings enabled them to ensure high-energy learning was woven throughout the all-day sessions. There was a fun homework assignment. The session goal was posted, written both in boardroom language and how kids might say it. There were cool sayings on the wall and customer data on giant posters that showed a prism of psychographic and socio-graphic information about the target market (e.g., what customers liked in movies, TV programs, retailers, books, social activities, and so forth). There were giant photos of customers and store personnel interacting. Unique meals and snack breaks were creatively displayed and managed with learning in mind. Distinctive toys, hats, and manipulatives were everywhere. The table was set for discovery. At the end of the long day, a common theme from both company personnel and customers was how much they had learned about each other and how much they looked forward to the follow-up.

Let’s look at this co-creation example up close. Provider and customers learned together. They were clear about the focus from the outset. They worked as equals, not as subjects in an experiment. They combined fact-based data with innovative experiences. They held their ideation session off site at a place designed for R&D-like events. They clothed the entire setting with out-of-the-box artifacts, right down to quirky menu items. They came prepared. They made it fun and exciting, stimulating all the senses in the process. They kept it from becoming a one-and-done experience. Every component was choregraphed to ensure attendees were deeply and completely engaged. And there was amazing discovery as a result.

Grow from a Nothing-Is-Impossible Attitude

Necessity is the mother of invention. And necessity can be real peril at the door or the basis for a firefighter-in-training attitude. Such a stance creates self-assurance that encourages your customer’s imagination to join and engage. Let’s examine a real story.

Harley-Davidson was on the brink of bankruptcy, after years as a cult-like brand. Japanese bike makers Honda, Suzuki, and Kawasaki along with German giant BMW were entering the domestic market in the 1960s, eating deeply into Harley’s market share. The newcomers were giants with deep pockets; Harley had heritage and mystique, features hard to put on a bank deposit slip. AMF bailed them out by purchasing the company. Harley’s quality suffered as AMF pushed the company into aggressive overproduction. Then in the unkindest cut of all, AMF replaced the iconic Harley brand name with its own. Survival of one of the world’s most renowned brands was unlikely.

Harley turned to its customers. Willie G. Davidson, the grandson of one of the founders and the sixty-four-year-old head of the design department, donned a black jacket and beret and took to the road on his Harley to meet with customers across the country to honestly relate Harley’s challenge and plead for their help. Customers wanted the old motorcycle models with the outlaw flourishes that turned Harleys into “choppers.” And they were willing to help promote the brand. Returning from his learning trip, Willie G. designed all new lines, like the Softail, which mimicked the style and classic elegance of the 1940s Hydra Glide.

They also in 1983 established the Harley Owners Group (HOG). Twenty-eight people came to the first bike rally. Today there are over a million members and Harley-Davidson is a success story. And the company continues to push what retired CEO Rich Teerlink called “unfinished finished products,” aftermarket products for owners to customize their bikes.¹

Access to inside your customer’s imagination comes with learning and discovering together, out loud. Harley knew its customers treasured the colorful legacy of their storied brand. So the ambassador they sent was more of a missionary than a corporate spokesperson; he was someone who could relate, rally, and recruit the heart and soul of customers. They also knew customers had to be the centerpiece of their resurrection.

When I was an instructor in their Harley-Davidson University for dealerships, the most sacred closed meeting was between corporate leaders and the Harley dealers’ council. Old-timers referred to this unique gathering as prayer meeting, a forum for the two-way learning of the unvarnished truth. No surprise that Harley-Davidson was a key prototype example in Peter Senge’s book The Fifth Discipline on how to become a learning organization.²

“If you want something to grow, pour champagne on it,” said Carol Lavin Bernick, former chair of skin care manufacturer Alberto-Culver. It means giving more than you think you can to your customer’s challenge. Marketing guru Seth Godin is fond of asking audiences to “hold up your hand in the air as high as you can.” Once the audience complies, he says, “Now, hold it up a little bit higher.” Everyone in the audience complies with the bit more they were holding back. “What’s up with that?” asks Godin. “What kept you from giving it all you had on the first request?”³

Be all … there means starting with a champagne effort right out of the blocks. It means assuming you can do the impossible. It entails holding your hand as high as you can right out of the gate. Remember, you’ll still wind up in the stars.

Tune into the Discovery Channel

Pretend you are the head of marketing for a small chain of funeral homes. A group of ministers, key customers who refer families to your funeral homes, are concerned that a growing number of families are abandoning the church as the site for funerals and instead using local restaurants or country clubs. Many families design and conduct their own services without a minister. The ministers have scheduled a meeting with you to voice their concerns and discover solutions that benefit the churches as well as your business. Here are a few questions to organize your meeting.

Look up: What is a grander, nobler vision for your customer’s need or aspiration?

Look back: What has history taught you about this type of need?

Look around: How are winners in similar circumstances dealing with this type of challenge?

Look out: What are potential potholes you need to avoid as you consider wild ideas?

Look in: What is your role and opportunity to transform your customer’s dream into a dream come true?

If you had the capacity to put a QR code anywhere you wanted, linked to any learning resource you wanted, where would you put it and what would be the resource? If you could invite any expert on the planet to help your partnership learn something new related to your customer’s challenge, who would it be?

Practice Never-Give-Up Tenacity

Pitney Bowes Global Mailing Solutions was transforming from commodity-based to solution-based sales. It required sales VPs to think, act, and lead like general managers. My friend Dave Basarab, education director at that time, decided to hold a two-day event called The Executive Challenge. The goal was to jump-start the change initiative by having the target audience understand and embrace the new business strategy and develop a “general manager mindset.”

Dave chose to use a business simulation to train all 120 people at the same time. His boss hated simulations, but Dave convinced him this one would be different; it would be customized to the population, teach the new strategy, and develop the necessary leadership skills. His boss reluctantly agreed; Dave realized he was betting his job on this one event. But there was another hurdle.

The technology to simultaneously run 120 students through an online business simulation customized to their needs did not exist. Dave needed a partner to create one and help run a world-class experience. He chose Enspire Learning, a boutique start-up firm from Austin, Texas. No one had ever done this before, including Enspire. Dave soon realized Enspire was betting their company on the project. For months the two teams worked, not as customer and vendor, but as a partnership. There were moments when thought was given to “sitting this one out.” But their tenacity to hang in there to the end kept them going.

When the day came to run The Executive Challenge, they had twelve classrooms, one for each division, running the simulation jointly facilitated by one of Dave’s team members, a member from Enspire, and the sales VP. Enspire wired the classrooms to their server housed in Dave’s facility staffed by half a dozen programmers. Each division competed against the other divisions. They could see in real time how they performed to target and against the other divisions. The Executive Challenge was a huge success—end-of-event ratings were the highest they had ever achieved, and the twelve-month ROI was 220 percent. Dave Basarab got to keep his job and earned the admiration of his boss, the event won an award for best use of innovation, Dave’s company was listed in Training magazine’s Top 100, and Enspire Learning went on to become a very successful company.

Be All … There: The Partnering Crib Notes

Show up for meetings ten minutes early. Take notes, even if you don’t plan to read or keep them. Just the notetaking process will increase what you learn, remember, and have available to use. Include in your customer innovation sessions a mini-lesson on an interesting topic. Be the instructor; let your customer be the instructor. Post clever sayings related to the customer challenge on the walls in your meeting room. Add cartoons to your exploration. Invite your customer to a business conference related to your focus. Search related articles and blogs and share them. Together volunteer for an important cause you both value. Add a “what’d we learn” component to all debriefs and postmortems. Add a learning metric to assess your collective performance.

Texas Bix Bender, the author of Don’t Squat with Yer Spurs On!, wrote in that book, “A body can pretend to care, but they can’t pretend to be there.”⁴ When Bender wrote the line, the message was about the opposite of absent. But true caring is not about “present and accounted for.” It does not mean making a meeting, or attending a function, or occupying a chair. It means the army recon version—bringing your heart, soul, and every ounce of your “very best.” Get up, dress up, show up, and never give up!