The Participation Age

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Are you?

We’re out of the Information Age and well into the Participation Age. It’s your time – are you participating?

In 2006 two of us were flown out to Silicon Valley to accept an award by Sun Microsystems for branding, messaging and design work. At this conference some Sun leaders and outside consultants were talking about the new “Age”, called the Participation Age. Quite a few other leaders and publications have used it as well, and I found it to be a compelling description for the new Age in which we find ourselves. The hallmark of the Participation Age is “sharing.”

You First. No, I Insist, You First.
The Participation Age has seen the organic and viral growth of a dizzying array of sharing systems; from weekend software projects tackled by people all over the world who don’t know each other, to co-creation of products and services by companies interacting directly with their customers, to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and a myriad of other sharing platforms.

Linux, an open-source software operating system, owned by no one, runs the fastest computers in the world and tens of millions of cell phones. The development of Web 2.0 was based on sharing of information, services, products, knowledge and opinions to the point that companies don’t own their brand anymore; those who participate in sharing about it on the internet are the owners.

Small Is Now Big
United Airlines discovered this painfully when Dave Carroll wrote a song called “United Breaks Guitars” (they broke his) and posted it on the internet. Within a four days of the posting, it had received millions of hits and United’s stock value plunged $180 million. Before the Participation Age, companies like United regularly wrote off one badly treated customer at a time, knowing they had a limited reach. But now, one person’s shared view of the world has a power that it never had before. The Participation Age has made your small voice more powerful than any time in history.

We’ve also seen sharing create massed responses to a single person’s plight from all over the world, and the proliferation of crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding companies that help people in ways they could have never imagined.

Participating Through Work
The Participation Age has changed the way people relate to each other, but most importantly it is changing the way we relate to work, allowing us to go back to a more natural relationship to work that was dominant for thousands of years before the strange and interruptive blip in history we call the Industrial Age.

Past generations that grew up in the intimidating shadow of the Industrial Age were taught to react, respond and at times even to contribute, but not to participate and share. Participation demands that we be proactive and creative, which is our basic human nature. The Industrial Age did not want us being proactive and creative; it wanted us to be extensions of machines and loyal and almost indentured servants to the company (via the golden handcuffs of in-house retirement plans).

I Double-Dog Dare You
At our core, we are not made to be extensions of machines. We are made to Make Meaning, not just money, and the Participation Age, more than any time in human history is daring each and everyone of us to find our voice, be uniquely you or me, and encourage the world to participate in what each of us is building. Get after it; create, innovate, bring something unique to the world around you; share it and let others participate in making you and it better. How much fun is the Participation Age? It kicks the Industrial Age’s ass, for sure.

My next book will share a lot about our move to the Participation Age, and how too many companies are still stuck in the Industrial Age.

Share with us – what are you building?

What is Your Offer – Really?

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It’s not your product or your service.

When people ask us “What do you do?”, one of the biggest mistakes we make is to actually tell them. Your offer should NEVER include what you do; they don’t want to know. Stop telling people what you do; you’ll make a lot more money.

What we’re selling is almost never what the customer is buying. NOBODY is buying vacuum cleaners, iPhone apps, houses, insurance, financial planning, or computer services; we just think they are.

When people ask you “What do you do?”, they’re just being polite. What they’re really asking is “What can you do FOR ME?” Nobody is buying your product or service. They are buying what it will do for them. We think we’re selling a product or a service, but if we get it right, we’ll stop selling all that junk and start selling an OUTCOME.

Sell an Outcome, Not a Product
Good offers focus solely on the OUTCOME you will get your potential customer. An OUTCOME is “result expressed emotionally”. It tells them the result, using words that connect with their deepest felt needs in that area. Charles Revson (founder of Revlon), said, “In our factory we make soap, but in the store we sell hope.” Charles Revson knows nobody wants to buy soap. He is not selling his craft (soap making). He is selling an outcome, hope that you will be more attractive.

You’re a Craftsperson; Get Over It
Most of us are craftspeople. We love what we do, and can’t help talking about it. Since we’re so infatuated with our craft, we actually think other people would want to know about it. The sooner you get over that, the better. As intriguing as it may be to you, nobody wants to buy computer repairs. They want computers that never break down. Don’t ever say, “We repair computers”. If they ask, “What do you do?”, tell them “We make sure your company can use computers without ever thinking about them.” Or “We keep computers running and ensure your information will never be lost.” I don’t want to buy computer repairs, but I’ll buy someone telling me my computers will never be in the way of me doing business.

You’re not a real estate agent – nobody cares. Instead, you sell a place to build dreams, an oasis for future memories, a safe haven. You’re not an insurance agent or a financial planner – nobody cares. You both sell security, peace of mind, financial stability, etc.

Sell Skiing, Not Marketing
Your offer is not your product or your service, it is the result you express emotionally – your OUTCOME. Everybody buys emotionally, even giant corporations. We once landed a $7 million contract because the two finalists were dead even in their products and services, but the other company was in Detroit and we were in Denver. It was a lot more enticing to the marketing folks to be traveling to Denver a number of times a year, so we got the contract. We were selling marketing services, and they were buying skiing. Going forward we always made sure we included some pics of skiing, hiking, mountain biking and fishing in our presentations.

What do you provide your customer that no one else provides? 30 minute pizza delivery? Domino’s didn’t make a pizza that was any better than anyone else’s, but went from one store to a national chain selling that outcome. Guaranteed arrival time for a plumber? One guy built a 40-truck plumbing business, not on saying he was a great plumber (who would say they are lousy?), but on giving guaranteed arrival times within 10 minutes or $50 off your bill.

One mortgage person figured out that they could absolutely guarantee that people would close on a certain date or 50% off their closing costs. They knew that 25% of those dates would be missed (he had very little control over the closing dates). The result was a 100% increase in business and a 75% increase in revenues. He figured out he wasn’t selling mortgages, but sold reliability instead.

Math + Emotion = Outcome
Sometimes all you have to do is a little math to be able to make an emotional offer that everyone else thinks is crazy. Dominos knew that a certain percentage would be past the 30 minute mark and they would not get paid. The mortgage broker did the math as well. We did the math in a call center we owned and decided to do all calls for $1.35 per call when the rest of the industry charged “$.22 per minute”. Clients loved it because they knew just about how many calls their customer’s made each month and could budget very closely for that. We didn’t sell call center services, we sold that you’ll know before hand what your call center costs will be every month.

Good offers are OUTCOMES – results expressed emotionally. Stop telling people what you do; they don’t care. Tell them what you will do FOR THEM, and in terms that connect to their deepest felt needs.

Outcome First, Then Product
So what do we at Crankset do? I always answer this way – “We provide tools for business owners to make more money in less time, get off the treadmill, and get back to the passion that brought them into business in the first place.” There are three emotional results in that – 1) making more money in LESS time, 2) getting OFF the treadmill, and 3) making this fun and meaningful again. They still don’t know what I do, but if they like the outcomes we’ve presented, they’ll ask, “So how do you do that?” Now you can get all geeky about your craft, but not until you give them their OUTCOME.

Your Product is Just a Tool
Find an offer that answers “What will you do for me?” Know what they are really looking for from you. It is not your widget or your promise to fix widgets, or your ability to sell them a house, computers, insurance, etc. It’s your ability to meet deep felt needs. Your product or your service is just a tool for doing that.

Outcomes – results, expressed emotionally.

Take the Test; Are you an Employee or a Stakeholder?

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(hint: employees drool)

We believe employees are always a bad idea, and that people at work should all be Stakeholders instead. Read through the side by side comparisons and see how see how you stack up as a Stakeholder or as an employee.

If you look at the above and say, “I can’t trust my company to compensate me like a stakeholder”, you’re in the wrong company. Leave and find one that rewards performance and results, not growing mold sitting in your chair. You’ll have a lot more fun.

If you’re an employer and you think it would be great to do have Stakeholders but most people aren’t like that, take a look at your own leadership style and/or your belief system. Most people actually want to make a contribution to the world around them and be adults. Are you letting them be, or are you assuming they can’t be adults? If you believe people are most likely to be employees, you’ll treat them that way and they will respond that way.

The Industrial Age is over. Stakeholders rule. Employees drool.

Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer Is Officially An Industrialist

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Home Alone.

After I wrote my last post on why working 9-5 is a bad idea, I found out Yahoo’s CEO Mayer was killing telecommuting. It’s a classic failure of leadership and will get her the opposite result than she hopes.

This last week, Marissa Mayer ended telecommuting for all Yahoo employees. The few retro voices in the archaic wilderness trumpeting this move as “good”, say it will make Yahoo more “innovative” and “collaborative”. Uh…cubes. They’re being stuffed back into cubes.

More Productive?…No.
This definitely won’t make them more productive. All the data old and new confirms this. Until after 1850, the majority of all manufacturing and other productivity was done at home. Salary.com research shows people waste an average of 25% of their day in the office doing nothing. Other research shows that people in an office waste up to 50% of their time “managing up” (brown nosing). Telecommuting is proven to increase productivity.

More Innovative and Collaborative?…No.
And there is no data that suggests that putting people back in cubes makes them more innovative or collaborative. Mayer’s decision was lazy and lacked any innovation on her own part. There are a hundred better ways to make sure telecommuters are touching base in an innovative and collaborative way with each other and the company, but that would have taken some energy to figure out. Reintroducing the brass steam whistle and the time clock was much easier, but is a short-sighted decision.

Yahoo Employees Are Now Stupid and Lazy
But the worst reason for doing this is that it reinforces the traditional understanding of the “employee”. In 1903, Frederick Winslow Taylor wrote his views of work that became the foundation for Scientific Management theory, which governs our view of work today. He said there are two basic assumptions you must make about employees, 1) they are lazy (he called it soldiering – doing as little as possible to keep from being fired), and 2) they are stupid “the average employee is so stupid that they more nearly resemble the ox than any other type.”

If employees are stupid and lazy (a view not common until well after the 1850s and convenient for Industrialists to believe as they treated them like indentured servants), than you need smart and motivated people to manage them – thus the modern separation between “employees” (stupid and lazy), and “management” (smart and motivated).

Mayer Is An Industrialist
Mayer’s move is a confirmation that she is a modern Industrialist (click to see my post defining this), and believes her people are definitely lazy, and almost certainly stupid (can’t figure out how to be productive on their own). But the problem isn’t with her employees; it’s with her leadership. Great leaders inspire and motivate people to be owners or “Stakeholders”; self-managed and proactive adults who take ownership of their jobs and the company’s future, and are consistently creative and innovative, always working to make the whole “system” better.

Mayer lacks leadership. She can’t inspire and motivate adults, so she has gone to the fetal position of Industrialism, requiring that all the stupid and lazy children now check themselves into the day care center that is the office so that managers can keep them from running into the street or messing on the carpets.

The Opposite Result
Yahoo needs engaged Stakeholders – adults who can work with her to pull Yahoo out of the morass. Instead she is creating employees – children who will be managed and told what to do. Innovative and collaborative, my eye.

A classic failure of leadership, made worse because her actions blame the Stakeholders for her own lack of vision. This is nothing more than calling all the elephants to the graveyard for Yahoo’s last rites.

9-5; A Business Disease of the Industrial Age

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Get done. Go home.

Work is good. It adds meaning to our lives. But work that is done from 9am-5pm is almost antithetical to our natural understanding of work.

Dear Father,
I received your letter on Thursday the 14th with much pleasure. I am well, which is one comfort. My life and health are spared while others are cut off. Last Thursday one girl fell down and broke her neck, which caused instant death. She was going in or coming out of the mill and slipped down, it being very icy. The same day a man was killed by the [railroad] cars. Another had nearly all of his ribs broken. Another was nearly killed by falling down and having a bale of cotton fall on him. Last Tuesday we were paid. In all I had six dollars and sixty cents. I paid $4.68 of it for board. With the rest I got me a pair of rubbers and a pair of 50 cent shoes. Next payment I am to have a dollar a week beside my board… I think that the factory is the best place for me and if any girl wants employment, I advise them to come to Lowell.

-Excerpt from a Letter by Mary Paul, Lowell, Massachusetts “mill girl”, Age 16, December 21, 1845.

As with all the business diseases of the Industrial Age, working with ceaseless regularity and rigid hours is a very new thing in the history of man. It first got started in textile mills in the 1790s. In 1845, Mary Paul had to report at 5am, got thirty minutes each for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and got off at 7pm. She didn’t have to work Sundays. She had the good deal – the English textile mills indentured thousands of orphan children for no pay, from 1784 to 1847.

A Very New Thing
But even as late as 1850, the majority of manufacturing and other work was being done at home, not at places of business. However, when machines started to take over parts of the production, they needed people to run them and it was easier to move the people to where the machines were than to move the machines – the workplace was born.

And the machines wanted to run 24 hours a day, but weren’t very good at adapting to human biorhythms and cycles, either. So the humans adapted to the machine’s need to run 24 hours a day, and started showing up at the workplace in shifts to take turns running the machine – the rigid workday schedule with a whistle on both ends was born – a Time-Based system of work.

Results vs. Time
In the preindustrial world, the most important factor was the individual’s dedication to accomplishing the task, or a Results-Based system of work. The modern system, with it’s roots in the Industrial Age, simply rewards being in a certain place and doing minimal work until the clock runs out – Time-Based.

This all came from what Max Weber coined as “the Protestant Work Ethic” which laid a nice foundation for creating the Factory System in the 1800s, because two of its four foundational beliefs were 1) punctuality and 2) the primacy of the workplace in life.

But what the Industrialists conveniently forgot is that the Protestant work ethic also taught that by hard work the individual could be master of their own fate. When we worked for ourselves on farms, in workshops and stores, this was true. But the Factory System violated this tenet of the Protestant ethic and demanded harder work for even less freedom. In the Factory System you were no longer master of your fate no matter how productive you were. That shows up in today’s workforce.

Work Less, Accomplish More
In a 2008 survey called Wasting Time at Work, Salary.com showed that the average employee wastes more than 25% of their workday, or 2.09 hours a day, excluding lunch and scheduled breaks, doing nothing. Why? Because we set up a system that grades them on time spent in the office, not on productivity. It’s a system of mistrust based on management’s belief that employees are lazy. And this research shows they are living up to our worst expectations of them.

Management makes people lazy. Expect more of them as Stakeholders and they will raise their game or leave. The Nine to Five “car in the parking lot” mindset is the root of many of the dumbest practices in business.

Time is the New Money
The lesson here is simple – give people clear deadlines for when things should be done, with the incentive that if they can get it done without you looking over their shoulder, they can have a much more flexible work life for achieving it. If someone gets their work done by 2pm, they should go home and play with their kids. If they are Stakeholders, they will be even more productive going forward. If they are employees, they will abuse this a couple times and you will move them along to find a day care center where they can be children. And doing so will ensure that everyone gets the message they have to be self-managed adults.

The Industrial Age was an interruption in our age-old commitment to accomplishing the task in the shortest time possible, and instead promoted the idea that people are inherently lazy and need to be clocked. The faster we get back to our preindustrial Results-Based system of work, the more productive we will be as a society.

Get your work done and go home.