Good morning, so today we're going to talk about how do you move from R&D mode into steady
state mode.
Now R&D is research and development where we kind of think of it as being in the lab.
And when you're in the lab, it's like string and wire, stuff's blowing up, duct tape, you
just make it work because you're experimenting, you're innovating, you're pivoting.
How do you go from that to the front of the office to steady state mode where customers
can actually access and use it?
And making that transition, especially for earlier stage businesses, is actually quite
difficult to do.
Now we've done this a number of times with businesses and I wanted to share with you
some key thoughts.
You know, when we're in R&D mode, you know, it's high innovation mode.
We're in the lab, we drop all the usual routines and processes and structure, there's a lot
of pivoting, experimentation, what will work.
It's exciting, but it's also exhausting.
It's a great place to visit, but a lousy place to live.
Nobody wants to live in a lab.
You know, Peter Drucker famously said, you know, business is 10% product and 90% sales.
Or maybe we could adapt it to say it's 10% product and 90% finding and serving customers.
You know, for many of us, when we see the product sort of leave the lab, we think, great,
we're 80 or 90% done.
It's better to think of that as 10% done, because now the innovation shifts from creating
something in the lab to a different type of innovation.
Sales, marketing innovation, customer service, creating a fantastic experience for the customer.
So both are innovative, but they focus on different modes.
In a steady state mode, now is a great opportunity to update all our processes, to think how
we do customer service, to rethink how we do marketing.
And you know, we can start to deliver and support customers in a whole new way.
So this is sort of the next level of innovation as it comes out of the lab and goes to the
front office and gets ready for sale.
You know, now we start asking core questions like, how will our customers find this?
You know, how does this actually help them?
And how do we help them get the most out of it?
What can we do for them to maximize the benefit of our product or service?
And then how can we make this experience amazing?
Now when we first are going through that, the first few customers coming in often are
the ones who help you figure that out.
It's a great way to disclose, especially if it's a higher ticket item, to disclose to
your customers, look, this is new, you're the first, this is unproven.
I know those sound like terrible sales ideas, but you'll be amazed how many people will
find that a kind of a compliment and like, wow, I'm involved in this, I'm helping them.
People love to be part of something.
So they're not just buying a product or a service, they're really being part of the
experience of taking it to the market.
So why don't you enroll your customers in that way?
Not only is it great transparency, it's honesty, but you build tremendous loyalty when you
do that.
A lot of people, a lot of leaders are afraid that if they tell the customer there's still
problems with it, that the customers will be put off.
And there might be a few that are, but it's well worth the risk.
In my view, telling the customer, enrolling the first customers to help you figure out
how to make it amazing and an amazing experience is absolutely worth the risk.
Okay, so here are three keys to help us as we move out of the lab and into the front
office.
And the first key is focus.
Here's what we want to do is we want to think about simplicity drives speed.
We've done that training before.
Now remember, anything you can do to simplify the product, simplify its access, simplify
the marketing, simplify the customer experience, and I'm not just talking about automation,
I'm also talking about simplification from the customer's viewpoint.
What would make this simple?
You know, fairly recently in our business, we had such a complex array of products and
you could stack them logically in a value stack and show, you know, we started the low
end here at $10 and $20 and it went all the way up to $25,000.
But it was just a lot for customers to understand.
So we reduced and simplified everything down to three things.
You know, so now people can be a member of a movement that has all a lot of the other
products all packaged up as one thing.
Or they can join our school of leadership or they can be part of our business leadership
training.
Whatever it is, we had to make it really simple to understand but also simple to engage.
Secondly, think about
The second key is deliverable.
Think about refinements that matter to the customer.
Start with the customer in mind and work backwards.
What would make this great?
Hey, here's a tip.
I found that mostly it's the tiny things that matter to the customer.
I didn't get the email link or the smallest things.
When you package a product, if you have a physical product, putting in a letter or a
note or something really cool in there, just making those little tiny refinements that
send the customer the message, hey, we had you in mind when we put this product together.
And the third key is to go back over the previous trainings and remember your tools.
Deep work.
Take four hours and go work on this type of innovation.
Were you working on the business, not in it?
Shaping up projects, where you're taking another thin slice at these customer refinements
or simplification.
Don't forget your cue book.
Your cue book is your command and control center.
That's your book where you access all the different things you're doing and keeps you
in complete control.
It's the thing that gives you cognitive control so that you don't get stressed.
We want to, when we switch modes, we have to intentionally move out of the lab mindset.
The lab mindset is very erratic.
Do what needs to experiment, change, pivot.
That's happening.
Now we have to take on a different mindset where we're taking control again of our buckets.
Remember our week has 10 buckets, two per day, where we're trying to group similar tasks
together to reduce that switching cost, that your mind takes 20 to 40 minutes to switch.
You may have moved to the next task, but the switching cost for your mind is actually expensive.
This is what creates cognitive fatigue.
So what we want you to do is now start to group as you move into this new mode.
As you're in steady state mode, go back to all the systems that you had before.
Your deep work, your thin slices, your cue book, bucket management, all the tools you
have.
When you put that together, you have to change the entire mode.
It's almost like you're two different sides to the company.
There's finding a balance, for sure.
Sometimes it's a challenge to know when the company, especially if you have a small company
and most people are working on both modes.
As the company gets bigger, R&D mode connects to steady state mode, but both are innovative.
I just want to bring that point up again.
Three ways you can know if your team is in R&D mode.
1. Frequent pivoting and idea generation.
Your team is constantly brainstorming, they're like what if questions, and it's like rapid
fire testing things.
2. There's minimal formal processes.
All the standard routines and documentation stuff is pretty minimal, if at all.
You notice a lot of ad hoc collaborations and team members, people being pulled in.
3. There's a lot of high energy, but also signs of fatigue.
It's very difficult, as we said before, to go and live in the lab.
We don't want to live in the lab.
We do like to visit it and create cool things and then leave.
Three ways you know your team is in steady state mode.
You've got these established processes and systems, but it's a little bit on the boring
end in the sense that there's nothing new and innovative happening.
All the innovations are very small.
We're sending out invoices a little quicker than we used to, sure, but it's not invigorating.
So it lacks that energy of the lab.
And there are a lot of customer-centric refinements, which is great.
Our customers know how to interact with us.
They know what to do.
And there are very predictable work patterns where people have more cognitive control over
their buckets as they lay out the different parts of their week.
You can see the balance between the two.
Now what happens is if we, and this is why we've learned this, you can drive your team
through an R&D mode for too long and you can end up with a certain exhaustion and you end
up with a poor customer implementation.
So the customer experience is not great.
So that's the balance.
Why don't we have a discussion about which mode are we in and what do we need to do next?
Hope you enjoyed that.