CHAPTER 13

Pass-I-On to Your Partnership

The spark of passion ignites the fuel for innovation.

—CRAIG GROESCHEL

You can tell you are about to meet zeal personified when a colleague’s face lights up as he announces, “Let me get David for you.” The coworker’s animated look lodges your eager anticipation somewhere between “you are in for a treat” and “you ain’t gonna believe this!”

Then, it happens. You come face to face with a person who has fallen hopelessly in love with his role!

My business partner and I were staying at a Marriott near Chicago, had finished a late afternoon hotel meeting with one client, and were en route to a nearby restaurant to meet another client for dinner. The restaurant was beyond walking distance but an insultingly short haul for a taxi or Uber driver. But the hotel van was available, and bell stand attendant David was to be our driver.

Now imagine this. You can “feel” David emotionally long before he shakes your hand. His enthusiasm is so apparent that his style and spirit meet you before he does. The first thing you notice is David’s glowing Steinway smile—like he just unexpectedly encountered two long-lost boyhood friends. The second thing you notice is his gait—it’s one of a man extremely eager to connect and raring to serve. Finally, you witness how his gusto infects every single soul within earshot with a robust case of the grins.

“Is it true I get the grand pleasure of being the chauffeur for you gentlemen tonight?” he asks incredulously, as if he were still pinching himself after winning a big prize! We felt like members of an exclusive club as we boarded his chariot of joy.

Our hotel meeting had gone quicker than we anticipated. Rather than abandoning our half-finished drinks, we elected to take them with us, especially since David was to be our designated driver.

“You gentlemen don’t spill your grape juice,” David teased as he made a sharp corner just shy of the restaurant. It was obvious he was crystal clear on the contents of our adult beverage cups and was having a blast accommodating our slight departure from customary van rules.

Depositing us at the restaurant, he gave us each a two-handed shake and his business card. “Would you gentlemen please call me when you finish dinner? I can be here in five minutes! And if you want to bring back a few buddies for a nightcap, we would love to take care of them as well.” We literally wanted to rush through dinner just to get a return visit from the joyful spirit that accompanied David!

Let Your Zeal Invite Your Customer’s Imagination

Inside your customer’s imagination lie cool ideas, novel perspectives, and unique approaches. As provider, you are joining a person already committed to solving a problem, meeting a need, or achieving an aspiration. They invited you to their party. Your role is to convince their imagination you are just as enthused about achieving a result as they are. Your infectious attitude and contagious fervor will invite their imagination to join you. Passion is really three words: “pass-I-on”—passing on to your customer the wide open, high octane, genuine side of who you are. In the process, you are requesting their passion to connect.

So, what does zeal look like up close and personal? It can look like David. People with obvious zeal have countenances brighter than normal, their customer courtship is more confident than usual, and their connection is more captivating than typical. They parade zeal without “charging admission.” When a politician shows you fervor, you put your hand on your wallet. When actors display enthusiasm, you get your money’s worth. But the charm of a provider with zeal is just there for you to enjoy … no strings attached.

Providers with zeal seem liberated from the ties that bind most of us. They are not easily derailed or bothered by people who have turned bitter or cynical by their experiences on the planet. Their freedom is not an expression of rebellion or revolt. They show their joyful spirit because that is who they are, not because they have anything to prove or pitch.

What is it about this special breed of providers that turns them into Pied Pipers of sorts, making customers want to fall in line behind them in hopes that some of the joyful spirit might rub off? David provides us with a ready-made specimen to dissect, explore, and understand. David was having fun with us, not for us or on behalf of us. He was not a performer in pursuit of applause or a server eager to win a gratuity. He was just enjoying his role for the pure, simple pleasure it brought to both the served and the server. David obviously enjoyed the effect he was having. Yet it was clear he likely would have had a great time just “playing by himself.” Watching David in action, you get the distinct impression that his mother forgot to tell him to be quiet.

This unbridled style has a magnetic power on customers. It draws out their higher self. Being in the presence of David-like providers makes customers feel good about themselves. It’s difficult to misbehave or stay cranky in the company of a provider with zeal. Few among us want to drag storm clouds into the perpetually sunny skies of such life-forms.

Take Care of Eccentrics and Mad Scientists

The label “mad scientist” is a catchall phrase for the gifted, unconventional wild ducks that occasionally enter organizations. Remember how the son of Herb Peterson (Mr. Egg McMuffin) described his dad? “When my dad was let loose in a kitchen, he was half creative genius and half mad scientist.” For most organizations, they bring mixed blessings. All mad scientists have common noble traits—they are brilliant, visionary, perfectionists, and passionately driven. They are also very challenging to work with, mercurial, extremely bull-headed, egotistical, irreverent, and once in a while, borderline crazy. Mad scientists ignore tidy rules of corporate civility in pursuit of their bold visions. They poke around in areas outside their sandbox and beyond their pay grades. They try most leaders’ patience and can embarrass their team members who are seeking to make a good impression.

Every progressive organization needs a few mad scientists. They can make us better and more vigorous. Sure, they are complex, challenging, and downright difficult. But they can springboard an organization to greatness. Of course, they can make us wring our hands and shake our head. They can also ensure our advancement and competitiveness. Remember, how you treat these eccentrics can telegraph to the rest of the organization how much you really value the untraditional thinking needed for innovation. And sometimes these mad scientists happen to be your customer. The punch line is acceptance. Read the “remember” part again.

Co-creation partnerships are characterized by complete acceptance. Being effective at demonstrating complete acceptance fosters a spirit of inquiry on a level emotional playing field—a relationship with unrestricted access and involvement. And the byproduct of complete acceptance is the gift of courage—a crucial component for discovery, understanding, and true learning. Become famous for being a guardian of acceptance. Think of the role like protecting a super bright, talented kid brother from insults just because he sometimes acts silly.

I was working with a financial services company seeking to create a new service for their high net worth clients. I suggested they bring in a few of these clients and work with them to ensure it served the company’s revenue goals while meeting a true customer aspiration. Many of these attendees were well-known, prominent leaders. It had the feel of a board meeting. I insisted they select one client famous for his eccentric behavior and style. When he arrived, he was coolly welcomed and the company leaders noticeably barely tolerated his unconventional manner.

About an hour into the two-hour meeting, I asked Mr. Eccentric to change seats with me at the head of the table and I moved to the side. I then asked him, “What have we missed in this discussion, George? What do you see that we may have overlooked?” It was like a reincarnation of Albert Einstein took over. His clear, clever wisdom came pouring out, much to the chagrin and incredulity of the financial services company leaders. With his astute intervention, not only did the group together craft a new solution in a matter of minutes, but the company leaders were asking George to join them for their next innovation session. Don’t judge a person by his or her weirdness; there may be a genius inside.

Innocence Bests Intelligence in the Innovation Arena

This book started by stating that your customer’s imagination is attracted out or is invited out. And we tip the scale by deliberately letting the majority of our five secrets be steered by who we are, not by what we do. When the secrets Curiosity, Trust, and Passion were unpacked, the concepts of authenticity, genuineness, and openness—the features we associate with innocence—were all in the spotlight. Here is a powerful example.

When John Longstreet (remember him as Mr. Harvey Hotel?) was the mayor of Plano, Texas, he and his city council had been wrestling with an issue for several meetings. Neither the council nor the staff could come up with a solution agreeable to the majority of the council members, so they tabled the issue. Not long after that, Mayor John spoke with the third graders at Razor Elementary School, something he periodically did throughout the school district. His subject was how city government was structured, how it worked, and how the citizens fit in as customers. After his presentation the teacher told John she wanted the students to take on a realistic case study having to do with the city. He told her he had just the issue, but requested that they share their outcome with him. And he gave the class the issue that the council had been unable to resolve. A few weeks later, he took the students’ work with him to the city council. I will let John pick up the story from here.

“I told the council that I had a potential solution to the issue we had been wrestling with weeks before. After I reviewed the proposal with the council, they voted unanimously to adopt. I then informed them that the third graders of Razor Elementary had solved a problem that the Plano City Council had been unable to. A key lesson learned from this was to always look for imaginative answers in unusual places. The second lesson was, when you innocently have no biased or preconceived notions you can get better solutions.”

Pass-I-On to Your Partnership: The Partnering Crib Notes

Somber, formal, staid business does not necessitate attitudes and actions that reflect the same characteristics. Your imagination is not jam-packed with numbers, graphs, charts, and formulas; it is laced with colorful pictures and not-of-this-world ideas. Your being in the middle of your imagination turned on is not like a boardroom; it’s like a candy shop. Bring that same inside world to the outside. Think of it like childbirth. Some people choose to have a midwife in their home for baby delivery because it brings an infant into the world without bright operating-room lights and people in stark white uniforms with forceps and rubber gloves. Whether that is the path you would choose for childbirth is not the point; it is the logic behind that choice that points to fruitful imagination in the making. Birthing ideas needs your energy, an exciting context of joy, and a spirit of encouraging acceptance.

Passionate connections provoke passionate responses. And it is magical! Philosopher Goethe called it “boldness” and said, “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin in boldness. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.”