Week 16, 2023—Issue #251
Anticipating Needs, Avoiding Overcommitment, and Giving Feedback
Each week, I share three ideas to help you build better organizations. Here’s one idea on value creation, another on people and fulfillment, and a third on organizational effectiveness:
1. Anticipating customer needs
“Many observers cite Apple as a user-centered company. However, Apple actually pursues innovation by making proposals to people.” That is, they don’t just give people what they want. They anticipate needs and provide customers with what they will want in the future.
From Design-Driven Innovation by Verganti
2. Avoiding over-commitment
“You can use this same rule on yourself if you’re often overcommitted or too scattered: If you’re not saying, ‘Hell yeah!’ about something, say no.” This way, you’ll have to say no to everything that isn’t critical and/or doesn’t get you excited.
From Anything You Want by Sivers
2. Giving cross-cultural feedback
“As with all the dimensions of culture, when it comes to giving feedback internationally everything is relative. The Japanese find the Singaporeans unnecessarily direct. The Americans find the Singaporeans opaque and lacking transparency. The Singaporeans who join Netflix are shocked at their American colleagues’ bluntness. To many a Dutch person, the Americans at Netflix don’t feel particularly direct at all.”
From No Rules Rules by Hastings and Meyer
This week’s ideas:
- Customers: Innovation is as much about anticipation as it is about listening.
- People: Use the “Hell Yeah!” rule to avoid over-commitment.
- Organization: What makes for effective feedback differs between cultures.
Until next time: Make it matter.
/Andreas
How can we build better organizations? That’s the question I’ve been trying to answer for the past 10 years. Each week, I share some of what I’ve learned in a weekly newsletter called WorkMatters. Back-issues are published to Medium after three months. Subscription is free. This article was originally published on Friday, April 21, 2023.
