CONNIE POST: Transforming power of 'newness' as way to achieve personal and business success

Worth reading: All around design diva Connie Post delivered the following thought-provoking remarks at a well-attended WithIt breakfast during last month’s Furniture Market in High Point.

Embedded in her remarks below are slides Connie presented. Click on them to enlarge.

Most of you know I grew up in West Virginia.

North Carolina is known for its furniture.

West Virginia is known for coal.

I say this, because I recently heard a man named Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Coal, the largest coal company in West Virginia talk about his industry. He said there is a need in the coal industry for fundamental change, but that everyone is playing around the edges.

Sound familiar?

I’ve been working in the furniture industry since I was 19-years-old. What I’ve come to believe is that we have an industry where small changes are acceptable. We tinker around with things, but I see little radical change, the sort of change that will sustain us in the future. In fact, I am alarmed at our lack of ability to reach beyond what we are comfortable with. I am alarmed about our industry’s lack of innovation.

It seems to me that too much energy is continually expended on the wrong things. Take the Las Vegas Market for example. For months and months, years actually, the industry was abuzz about the new Market, the impending demise of San Francisco, and what the impact would be on High Point.

 To me, any new showroom offers a manufacturer near limitless possibilities. You can use a new space to change the perception of your company in the eyes of both your existing customers, and those you hope to attract. You can use a new space to literally reinvent your brand. 

You can use a new space to create a buzz that no amount of trade advertising can create. In fact, you can use such a moment to change the very course of your business.

So what happened? Manufacturers are essentially duplicating their High Point showrooms in Las Vegas with all the incredible expense that entails. Not one looked up and said, “Maybe we should try something different.”

How about taking a look at what they do in Paris? The showrooms are open for all to see, tiny in comparison to the square footage we devote to showing buyers every single stick of furniture we’ve ever produced, and in Paris, they only focus on the new.

When it comes to surviving and thriving in a changing world innovation is the key. I’m here to talk with you this morning because I believe the lack of innovation is one of the most critical issues facing our industry today.

Unfortunately, we’re faced with an industry full of people who are just barely surviving and getting through the day. They are not thinking about anything other than getting out. The genetic pool has been tainted. A lot of businesses have been handed down to people who are doing little more than maintaining them. They are not reinventing. They are not innovating.

Late last summer, Business Week published an article entitled “Get Creative.” It said: “The Knowledge Economy as we know it is being eclipsed by something new—call it the Creativity Economy.”

The gist of the article was that “what was once central to corporations—price, quality and much of the left-brain, analytical work associated with knowledge”—is fast being shipped off to lower-paid workers in China and India. We know all about that in the furniture industry, don’t we?

“Increasingly,” the article said, “the new core competence is creativity—the right-brain stuff that smart companies are now harnessing to generate top-line growth. The game is changing. It isn’t about math and science anymore. It’s about creativity, imagination, and above all, innovation.”

At the National Retail Federation Conference inNew York this winter, I had the opportunity to hear Larry Keeley speak. Keely is an innovation strategist and has worked with a variety of pioneers like Apple, Motorola, Steelcase and Hallmark. His book, The Taming of the New, will be published by Harvard Business School press later this summer, and I highly recommend that you get your hands on it. In the meantime, I’m going to give you some highlights so that you’re ahead of the game in your next meeting.

Keeley believes most people want to innovate today. Yet, in interviews with leaders around the world, what he has discovered is that people are afraid of innovation. They are fearful. That said, he believes there are “unmet opportunities for stretches, changes and new directions that consumers will love and that the competitors have not already started to do in overwhelming numbers.”

This was last week’s BusinessWeek cover by the way. Clearly innovation is the hot topic now across all industries.

Essentially, Keely says there are ten types of innovation. In overwhelming numbers, when it comes to innovation, the concentration is on designing new products. Retailers often think of themselves as the place where new products come to market. But that misses opportunities to radically reinvent what they do.

For example, you can innovate a business model, or how your enterprise makes money.

You can innovate your enterprise’s structure or value chain.

You can innovate through process, either by purchasing an enabling process like a software program, or through some kind of proprietary process that is unique to you and that adds value.

You can innovate through product performance.

Or via an extended system that surrounds an offering.

You can be innovative in how you service your customers.

You can innovate a channel of distribution.

You can innovate via branding.

Or through customer experience.

I love this example. Who would have thought you could innovate a teabag? These silk tea infusers are topped with a hand-wrapped wire and leaf for a handle. The design takes the tea drinker beyond a simple cup of tea into the realm of tea ceremony. A tea experience, if you will.

Revered management guru C.K. Prahalad has said, “You’ve got to come up with a rockin’ great new customer experience and you’ve got to get paid for it in some powerful new way.”

Well, a package of two Tea Forte tea bags retailers for about $4.95. Specialty teas—pricey pure-blend imports—are the fastest expanding segment of the tea market. These silken tea bags are now such a hit that Lipton will start using nylon bags for six premium teas later this spring.

Have we got any tea drinkers here this morning? (Hands raise and Connie presents  a Tea Forte gift)

This is an example of an experience breakthrough. I believe the greatest opportunity for innovation in our industry now actually lays in building experience breakthroughs.

Stephen Heyer, the new chief executive of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, believes that most hotel brands aren’t distinctive enough in the consumer consciousness.

To change that, he’s working on cross-marketing deals with media companies, telecommunication firms, apparel lines and other businesses to help each of Starwood’s nine hotel brands stand out from competitors. He’s driven his executive team to clarify what each brand’s personality should be. Westin, for example, is all about “renewal” now, while you may have seen Sheraton’s new ads, “Belong,” and he is partnering with brands that reflect each experience.

Westin is going for emotion by tugging at the senses and has gone as far as including scented strips with its signature White Tea scent on its ads in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Gourmet. Heyer said in a recent BrandWeek interview: “We are not just in the business of selling beds or guestrooms, but rather experiences and memories.”

This is, I believe most important innovation theme: new branded experiences. Particularly ones that are proprietary to you that cause people to really love coming to your place and doing things with you.

What are you doing, whether you are a supplier trying to reach manufacturers, a manufacturer trying to reach retail customers, or a retailer trying to reach consumers to design your experiences in a powerful, unforgettable way?

As a retail brand strategist, I know that retailers in our industry are presented with one of the hardest innovation challenges of all. Everybody has to figure out how to get people’s attention and keep their attention. And remember, that we have to do that while competing against all other sources of stimuli.

 

We need to develop a “Cirque du Soleil competence.”

I love the mission statement of Cirque: “Invoke, Provoke and Evoke the emotions of people and their senses around the world.” Retailers must embrace the five senses because within that sensory experience lies the heart of the consumer and why they buy, why they shop.

According to a recent article in American Demographics, on an average day, only four in 10 Americans buy something. On average, Americans spend 24 minutes a day shopping: 20 minutes on a weekday; 27 minutes on Sunday; and 42 minutes on Saturday.

That doesn’t give us a lot of time to capture their attention does it? It’s even less than you might think. A new study by researchers at Carleton University in Ottawa found that people are now registering likes and dislikes in as little as 1/20^th of a second. We are hard-wired to make up our minds very quickly,” says Gitte Lindgaard, the psychologist who led the study, in which people watched Web pages for a fleeting instant and were able to form clear opinions about them.

While people have always made snap judgments, as our culture swirls faster and faster, first impressions are being indulged at hyper speed. TV viewers can dispatch 60 unappealing shows in 60 seconds using a remote control. Then there’s speed dating and the concept of “rapid cognition,” the idea that smart decisions can be made in seconds, which was explored in Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller, Blink.

We’ve become a gut-level society, more apt to act on impulse than to think things through. This means if we want to capture anyone’s attention, we’ve got to make one heck of an impression.

The thing I want to point out to you here is that there’s been a lot of talk lately in the trades and the consumer press about marketing to Boomer women. I am a Baby Boomer, and I am the consumer, and I am really concerned about how we are communicating to women like me.

We have to paint a different picture. We have to tell these women how we can improve their lives and make them feel younger. I personally spend more money than I ever have maintaining my youth, from the cars that I drive to the things that I purchase for my home. Tell me how you are going to change my life.

As women, we speak a different language, and frankly, I think it takes a woman to understand the way a woman thinks. I’m not here this morning to incite revolution…well, maybe I am…but I want you to walk away this morning knowing that opportunity awaits every one of the women sitting in this room. The power to change this industry for the better is sitting right here.

But there’s a sign on the door and the sign says, “Push.” How many of you have brought great ideas for innovation to the table in your companies, only to be cut down by somebody saying, “Well it doesn’t fit with our core competencies.”

Have any of your ideas been met with that statement? Well, I’m here this morning to tell you that you can turn that around. Earlier I mentioned the management guru C.K. Prahalad. He’s the guy who gave the world the term: “core competency.” Well, core competencies are important, but when you need something new, that’s important too, because it revitalizes your institution and it gives you something new to be great at.

The fact is, boys and girls, “New Always Wins.” Things are changing and innovation is the name of the game.

The women in this room understand the consumer better than anyone. There is a brain trust here and we can all take advantage of it, but women can be their own worst enemies. It’s easier to complain, and to point fingers and whisper behind our hands saying, “Can you believe what she did this time?” than it is to get out there and wear a target.

And for you men sitting in the audience this morning, I know I’m preaching to the choir, because you’re smart enough to be here in the first place. Even so, I urge you to tap into the jewels that you have within your organization, to mine the gold that is right there in front of you.

Look around this room. There are women here who are very good at strategy. There are women who are very good at accounting and business process. And there are many, many creatives. It’s time to bring these forces together, because together we can revolutionize this industry.

Put those innovative ideas down on paper and strategize it out. No idea is too crazy or too radical. There are no wrong thoughts. And if you can’t get the hierarchy to listen, then send it to me or to a WithIt mentor and we’ll figure out how to make it happen and how to get you in front of the right people. There is no excuse. Go out there and

The bottom line is this: It takes guts, tenacity, a loud voice and a big worth ethic to make it in this world and I’m here to tell you that each of you can do it, just like I did. I bought a business and I lost a million dollars.

My business burned to the ground. I lost another million dollars. I’m lousy when it comes to picking men. I have a history of all the wrong choices. But I’m not willing to give up. I am clear about what my purpose is.

Two years ago I read Rick Warren’s best-selling book: The Purpose Driven Life. It helped me focus on where I was and where I was going.

If you haven’t yet read it, I highly recommend that you do, because I really believe that if you expect to be happy and successful in this life, you have to be very clear about your purpose.

Our industry needs warriors. Warriors get up every morning and ask, “What can I do different today than I did yesterday?”

I know my purpose is not to accept things as they are. I know my purpose is to continually question the status quo and look for better ways to do things. So, like Kim said earlier, every morning I’m going to get out of bed and ask the question: Does it have to be a light bulb?

I’m telling you this because I want to challenge you about what you are willing to do to make it. What are you willing to give up? How far are you willing to step beyond your comfort zone? What will you change? What innovation will you bring to the table?

Think hard, because I believe in my soul that the future of our industry depends on your answers.

Thank you.