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Good morning, so today we're going to talk about how do you move from R&D mode into steady

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state mode.

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Now R&D is research and development where we kind of think of it as being in the lab.

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And when you're in the lab, it's like string and wire, stuff's blowing up, duct tape, you

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just make it work because you're experimenting, you're innovating, you're pivoting.

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How do you go from that to the front of the office to steady state mode where customers

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can actually access and use it?

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And making that transition, especially for earlier stage businesses, is actually quite

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difficult to do.

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Now we've done this a number of times with businesses and I wanted to share with you

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some key thoughts.

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You know, when we're in R&D mode, you know, it's high innovation mode.

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We're in the lab, we drop all the usual routines and processes and structure, there's a lot

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of pivoting, experimentation, what will work.

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It's exciting, but it's also exhausting.

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It's a great place to visit, but a lousy place to live.

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Nobody wants to live in a lab.

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You know, Peter Drucker famously said, you know, business is 10% product and 90% sales.

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Or maybe we could adapt it to say it's 10% product and 90% finding and serving customers.

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You know, for many of us, when we see the product sort of leave the lab, we think, great,

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we're 80 or 90% done.

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It's better to think of that as 10% done, because now the innovation shifts from creating

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something in the lab to a different type of innovation.

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Sales, marketing innovation, customer service, creating a fantastic experience for the customer.

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So both are innovative, but they focus on different modes.

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In a steady state mode, now is a great opportunity to update all our processes, to think how

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we do customer service, to rethink how we do marketing.

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And you know, we can start to deliver and support customers in a whole new way.

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So this is sort of the next level of innovation as it comes out of the lab and goes to the

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front office and gets ready for sale.

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You know, now we start asking core questions like, how will our customers find this?

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You know, how does this actually help them?

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And how do we help them get the most out of it?

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What can we do for them to maximize the benefit of our product or service?

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And then how can we make this experience amazing?

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Now when we first are going through that, the first few customers coming in often are

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the ones who help you figure that out.

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It's a great way to disclose, especially if it's a higher ticket item, to disclose to

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your customers, look, this is new, you're the first, this is unproven.

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I know those sound like terrible sales ideas, but you'll be amazed how many people will

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find that a kind of a compliment and like, wow, I'm involved in this, I'm helping them.

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People love to be part of something.

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So they're not just buying a product or a service, they're really being part of the

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experience of taking it to the market.

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So why don't you enroll your customers in that way?

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Not only is it great transparency, it's honesty, but you build tremendous loyalty when you

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do that.

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A lot of people, a lot of leaders are afraid that if they tell the customer there's still

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problems with it, that the customers will be put off.

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And there might be a few that are, but it's well worth the risk.

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In my view, telling the customer, enrolling the first customers to help you figure out

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how to make it amazing and an amazing experience is absolutely worth the risk.

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Okay, so here are three keys to help us as we move out of the lab and into the front

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office.

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And the first key is focus.

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Here's what we want to do is we want to think about simplicity drives speed.

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We've done that training before.

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Now remember, anything you can do to simplify the product, simplify its access, simplify

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the marketing, simplify the customer experience, and I'm not just talking about automation,

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I'm also talking about simplification from the customer's viewpoint.

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What would make this simple?

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You know, fairly recently in our business, we had such a complex array of products and

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you could stack them logically in a value stack and show, you know, we started the low

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end here at $10 and $20 and it went all the way up to $25,000.

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But it was just a lot for customers to understand.

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So we reduced and simplified everything down to three things.

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You know, so now people can be a member of a movement that has all a lot of the other

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products all packaged up as one thing.

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Or they can join our school of leadership or they can be part of our business leadership

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training.

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Whatever it is, we had to make it really simple to understand but also simple to engage.

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Secondly, think about

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The second key is deliverable.

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Think about refinements that matter to the customer.

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Start with the customer in mind and work backwards.

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What would make this great?

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Hey, here's a tip.

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I found that mostly it's the tiny things that matter to the customer.

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I didn't get the email link or the smallest things.

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When you package a product, if you have a physical product, putting in a letter or a

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note or something really cool in there, just making those little tiny refinements that

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send the customer the message, hey, we had you in mind when we put this product together.

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And the third key is to go back over the previous trainings and remember your tools.

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Deep work.

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Take four hours and go work on this type of innovation.

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Were you working on the business, not in it?

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Shaping up projects, where you're taking another thin slice at these customer refinements

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or simplification.

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Don't forget your cue book.

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Your cue book is your command and control center.

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That's your book where you access all the different things you're doing and keeps you

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in complete control.

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It's the thing that gives you cognitive control so that you don't get stressed.

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We want to, when we switch modes, we have to intentionally move out of the lab mindset.

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The lab mindset is very erratic.

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Do what needs to experiment, change, pivot.

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That's happening.

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Now we have to take on a different mindset where we're taking control again of our buckets.

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Remember our week has 10 buckets, two per day, where we're trying to group similar tasks

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together to reduce that switching cost, that your mind takes 20 to 40 minutes to switch.

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You may have moved to the next task, but the switching cost for your mind is actually expensive.

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This is what creates cognitive fatigue.

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So what we want you to do is now start to group as you move into this new mode.

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As you're in steady state mode, go back to all the systems that you had before.

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Your deep work, your thin slices, your cue book, bucket management, all the tools you

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have.

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When you put that together, you have to change the entire mode.

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It's almost like you're two different sides to the company.

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There's finding a balance, for sure.

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Sometimes it's a challenge to know when the company, especially if you have a small company

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and most people are working on both modes.

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As the company gets bigger, R&D mode connects to steady state mode, but both are innovative.

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I just want to bring that point up again.

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Three ways you can know if your team is in R&D mode.

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1. Frequent pivoting and idea generation.

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Your team is constantly brainstorming, they're like what if questions, and it's like rapid

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fire testing things.

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2. There's minimal formal processes.

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All the standard routines and documentation stuff is pretty minimal, if at all.

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You notice a lot of ad hoc collaborations and team members, people being pulled in.

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3. There's a lot of high energy, but also signs of fatigue.

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It's very difficult, as we said before, to go and live in the lab.

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We don't want to live in the lab.

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We do like to visit it and create cool things and then leave.

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Three ways you know your team is in steady state mode.

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You've got these established processes and systems, but it's a little bit on the boring

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end in the sense that there's nothing new and innovative happening.

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All the innovations are very small.

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We're sending out invoices a little quicker than we used to, sure, but it's not invigorating.

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So it lacks that energy of the lab.

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And there are a lot of customer-centric refinements, which is great.

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Our customers know how to interact with us.

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They know what to do.

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And there are very predictable work patterns where people have more cognitive control over

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their buckets as they lay out the different parts of their week.

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You can see the balance between the two.

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Now what happens is if we, and this is why we've learned this, you can drive your team

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through an R&D mode for too long and you can end up with a certain exhaustion and you end

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up with a poor customer implementation.

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So the customer experience is not great.

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So that's the balance.

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Why don't we have a discussion about which mode are we in and what do we need to do next?

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Hope you enjoyed that.