YOU = FOUNDER, CEO, PRESIDENT, DISRUPTOR-IN-CHIEF

Judging by our current obsession with US political news, it seems like we’re living in an age when leadership as a personal and professional skill, is as critical, and as mysterious, as ever.

I still remember my first day as new manager, suddenly in charge of about 30 people. On the way into work, I literally had a panic attack, I found myself overwhelmed by an intense, adolescent feeling of self-doubt which continued over the days that followed. It was a shock because, romantic disasters notwithstanding, I’d thought of myself as having overcome any teenage insecurities years before. I’d worked all over the world, presented to large audiences, even run a club at university. The reality was, in that professional, ‘adult’ work-world leadership moment, I had no answer to a suddenly critical question: ‘how do I act like a leader?’

I eventually found a groove in that role, and went on to manage other teams in many other places, even becoming a ‘C’-suite senior executive on the way. I was lucky – I had some great role models to emulate. But if I was honest, all my leadership skills were ‘instinctive’: not easily transferred to others, not truly scaleable. Also, I secretly worried that I was ‘acting like a leader’, rather than ‘being a leader’.

One day not too long ago, I started working in a new business with an unusual, inspirational CEO. The business was growing fast, and to help the senior executives cope with rapid change, he taught us two simple, interlocking behavioural frames. These frames have fundamentally changed how I lead people, how I manage my relationships, and indeed how I am as a human being.

 

THE VICTIM-PLAYER FRAME

“The basic difference between an
ordinary man and a warrior is that a
warrior takes everything as a challenge,
while an ordinary man takes everything
as a curse”
– Don Juan

Have you ever heard yourself – or someone else – say:

“I’m sorry I’m late, the traffic was terrible!”

rather than what you (or they) should have said:

“I’m sorry I’m late. I didn’t leave enough time to get here.”

Yes? I’m 100% certain I must have said this many, many times.

Let’s break it down: the first statement essentially takes no responsibility for the situation. In fact, it says that I am a VICTIM of circumstance, powerless against the world outside myself. Turn up the volume and you can hear me screaming “Its not my fault! It was the traffic’s fault!” (So don’t punish me).

The second statement? Full responsibility. It was in my power to anticipate the problem, to make allowances, and whether for lack of skill, or will, I didn’t take the action I could have. I’m truly sorry, and next time I’ll I’ll do better. This is the statement of a PLAYER who believes that they have strength inside them that is powerful in the world.

Here’s some more language from the Victim-Player frame:

You’ll be surprised when you start listening to yourself and others, and hearing the different phrases above,  how prevalent the self-sabotaging, powerless mindset of the Victim is, and how rare the Player is.

Leadership within the Victim-Player frame also means being mindful of which focus is in play within you in any given moment:

When it comes to leadership, the difference between the Player’s “inside-out” mindset, versus the Victim’s “outside-in” mindset is night + day.

LEAD FROM WITHIN

Of course – as any politician will tell you, there are always factors beyond our control – other people’s decisions, accidents, random events – sh*t that happens. Does it make me a victim if I blame those for creating problems that affect me and others?

Well, no. From a leadership perspective, it’s the difference in behavior, in what you’re concentrating on in response to those things, which marks your victim/player spectrum:

Author and psychologist Kendra Cherry has listed some of these biases, which include the following, scarily familiar examples:

• The Player focuses on factors that are within your control, especially oneself
• The Victim focuses on factors that are beyond your control, especially external ones.

The difference between the Player’s “inside-out” focus, versus the Victim’s “outside-in” focus is night + day. Leadership within the Victim-Player frame means being mindful of which focus is in play within you in any given moment… you’ll be surprised when you start listening to yourself and others how prevalent the self-sabotaging mindset of the Victim is.

Now we’re going to look at an interlocking frame – one which complements Victim-Player powerfully.

THE KNOWER-LEARNER FRAME

“When you talk,
You are only repeating what you already know;
But when you listen,
You may learn something new.”
– Dali Lama

In your work or home life, do you ever feel a lot of pressure to know all the answers – and be right too? Are you afraid that you’ll look weak if you change your mind? Do you believe there is always a ‘right answer’?

Have you ever heard yourself say “Well everybody knows that…” or “Its obvious that…”? “I knew this was going to happen…” or “They should just do X if only they weren’t stupid.”

Watch out – you might be a KNOWER.

The knower mindset is particularly tough for people with a strong technical bent, the highly-educated, or those who strongly identify with a particular culture or identity. We’re hearing it a lot in politics right now in fact:

“If you disagree with me, you must be wrong. Fake news. Sad !”

I’m going to sound like a Knower when I say this, but its no fun to have a knower as a leader: they’re defensive in the face of feedback, they are preoccupied with preserving the appearance of their own competency, get easily frustrated, experience setbacks as frustrating failures rather than opportunities to learn.

THE LEARNER

In contrast, the LEARNER starts out from the premise that they don’t know everything, but they can learn it if they put the effort in.

Where a Knower says “We should do X”, the Learner will ask “What will happen if we do X?” (even if they’re pretty confident that X is the right thing to do). Where a Knower says “I know this will work because I’ve got 10 years of experience”, the Learner says “This may have worked in the past, let’s see what happens this time”.

Let’s check the language differences between the Knower and the Learner:

The Knower-Learner Leadership mindsets are just as brutally different as Victim-Player:

Being a leader is tough – and we make it a lot tougher on ourselves when we act like a Knower.

 

LEAD TOGETHER

Have you ever been in this scenario?

Your CEO/Manager tells your team you have to make your quarterly numbers, and to do so you must follow the plan that’s been developed by management. And if you don’t achieve the numbers, then positions may be cut (punishment). If you do achieve the numbers, there will be a small bonus (reward).

How did you feel? Did it sound like an exciting invitation to collaborate on a tough problem? No, not really. Sounded like hard graft with little prospect of reward, and potential a penalty. I’d start planning to quit before the end of the meeting.

What if the CEO/Manager had presented the following?

“I’ll be 100% honest and say that this graph shows us struggling to break even. The most valuable questions we need to answer together are what’s the right goal for the quarter, what are some things we can try to improve our performance, and what might a reward look like if we do better than break-even?”

I think you’ll agree that the second statement is an invitation to collaborate on a shared problem, makes it clear that the leader doesn’t have all the answers, and empowers the team to chart its own path.

Which firm would you rather work for? Long-term, who is more likely to out-perform the market?

 

THE ULTIMATE LEADER

The classic Tech Startup Founder character archetype – socially progressive, but perhaps awkward; entrepreneurial, but perhaps lacking in empathy; innovative, creative, risk-taking – collides somewhat uncomfortably with a similar cultural trope, that of the corporate or self-made CEO – decisive, commanding, feared, powerful.

Let’s bin these tired tropes and come up with a shiny new one: the Player-Learner:

I call this the ‘ultimate leader’. Radical responsibility. Shared resilience. Openness to experiment and learn. Powerful and compassionate. A human being, a leader.

ARE YOU THE REASON YOU’RE STRUGGLING TO LEAD?

Let’s run an experiment together: listen out for the language of VICTIM-PLAYER, and LEARNER-KNOWER in your work and home life. Are you more of a Victim when you’re tired? Are you more of a Knower when you’re with your family – your children especially, and are you more of a Learner when at work – with your colleagues? Or the other way around?

Its powerful, confronting stuff. And it continues to change my life every day. Let me know how you go in the comments below.

Hack, hustle and flearn!

STARTUP SCIENCE, I.E. EVIDENCE-DRIVEN

Those of you who are regular readers of Pollenizer’s blog will recognise our belief in evidence-driven business model discovery – something we call “Startup Science”.

Startup Science uses hypotheses about customer problems to run experiments, building a base of evidence to reduce risk, identify unique value propositions, reveal underserved market niches, and – in the ideal case – discover entirely new business models. We’ve come to believe in running experiments so much, we even do it to help find balance and growth in our professional and personal lives ! 

Going back to first, philosophical principles, we are of course using the scientific method here – famously described by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918-1988):

“In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.

Paraphrasing Feynman, we:

Hypothesize: Make a guess about what we believe is true.
Expected Behaviour: What we expect to see happen if our hypothesis is correct.
Experiment: How we will observe a real situation.
Result: What actually happened.
Conclusion: Our hypothesis was right or wrong.

The scientific method – and its reliance on the principle of an underlying, provable, objective reality – is so simple, so self-evidently logical – you can be forgiven for thinking its a widely accepted way of thinking.

In fact, recent political events have provided the worrying spectacle of political leaders winning office by doing the exact opposite: literally questioning the very notion of objective reality.

“ALTERNATIVE FACTS”, I.E. COGNITIVE BIAS

When US Presidential counsellor Kellyanne Conway uttered the oxymoron “Alternative Facts” in defence of her colleague Sean Spicer’s demonstrably false claim that “…the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration” was in Washington for President Trump’s swearing in, she set off a firestorm of controversy in the press and online.  Pundits and opponents alike claimed it as proof the incoming administration would prefer to lie about and/or ignore verifiable facts that do not conform to their world view, literally ignoring objective reality.

Unconsciously denying facts because they go against your own strongly held beliefs is known as self-delusion, or Confirmation Bias, perhaps the best known of a family of cognitive & behavioural biases that – if we’re not careful – can distort our ability to objectively analyse information and use it to make decisions. (Consciously denying facts falls into another realm: “Public Relations”.)

Author and psychologist Kendra Cherry has listed some of these biases, which include the following, scarily familiar examples:

• The Anchoring Bias – being overly influenced by the first piece of information that we hear;
• The False Consensus Effect – overestimating how much other people agree with your beliefs, behaviours, attitudes, values;
• The Availability Heuristic – our tendency to estimate probabilities based on our own experiences.

Can you think of people you know who might exhibit the above biases? Welcome to the Actor-Observer Bias, i.e. that in our role as observers, we don’t believe we are personally susceptible to these biases, but we can definitely think of others who are!

How do we not delude ourselves about the results of our experiments when they disagree with our innate biases ?

FEYNMAN TO THE RESCUE

Our guide to the scientific method, Richard Feynman, understood cognitive and behavioural bias. He warned us about hubris, so:

“It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is – if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.”

He warned about both the Anchoring Bias and the Availability Heuristic :

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.”

And – in his conclusion to the report on the Challenger Shuttle disaster – he called out Confirmation Bias, which led unqualified managers to ignore the objections of engineers who knew that the Shuttle solid-rocket booster O-rings would leak at the low-temperatures forecast for the next morning’s launch:

“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”

BE LIKE A SCIENTIST

Dealing with biases is hard – which is why real scientific progress requires extensive – and adversarial – peer review.

As founders and intrepreneurs using Startup Science methods, we need to be mindful about how we form hypotheses, design experiments, interpret the results, and derive new hypothesis and experiments from those. We need to critically examine the data we collect, and review with our co-founders, peers, coaches and mentors to ensure we’re seeing and interpreting results clearly.

Confirmation Bias is particularly insidious, manifesting itself as a tendency to seek information that confirms our pet beliefs.

We need to be as self-aware as we can be – equally curious and brutal – so we can mitigate our in-built cognitive and behavioural biases, making it more likely that we realise the benefits of the scientific method in our professional entrepreneurship practice.

Hack, hustle and flearn!

Welcome to your new role as Minister for Innovation. I am a big believer in your mission and hope you can keep it for longer than those that came before. You will need to convince your colleagues that innovation takes time. Explain to them it is a cliche that startups make things quickly and we need time for our programs to dig in their toes and pull us into a new world.

But we’re not going to talk about that here. I want to talk with you about regional Australia for a couple of minutes.

 

Are you familiar with Birdsnest? It is my wife’s favourite website, a great fashion site for women. I love that it is based in Cooma in regional NSW. We pay homage to it when we drive through on our way to skiing. It employs 100 people in a town of about 6,000 people. It is a great example of how where we live no longer throttles our ability to start a business.

When I think about businesses like Envato in Melbourne, there is no reason why this multi billion dollar company could not have started in Bathurst.

Late last year we at Pollenizer were worried about what was happening in Geelong with the closure of Ford. Not in itself that Ford was closing, to me that is reality. Industries don’t last forever. In fact, they are churning faster than we have ever seen. But you know that right? Our worry is around the track record of events like this creating changes to towns and people’s lives in a terminal way.

How does this happen? Those of us in startups find this hard to imagine. In our world, nothing is certain and yet the world is a bounty of opportunity. When something ends, start something new. Right? Not everyone thinks that way of course. It is scary.

We took action and we are proud and delighted to be supporting Runway Geelong to help the city re-invent itself. What a great initiative Runway is. Because I do what I do, I know something that a Ford worker doesn’t know yet. Those that encounter Runway will discover how wonderful it is to get up one morning and decide to start something new. Quickly, new entrepreneurs realise how good they are at this and, suddenly, they are making something new that they love and customers pay for.

This is how we will see new Envatos and Birdsnests appear across regional Australia. As more and more people realise they can just start. They don’t need to risk everything. They don’t need to quit their current jobs. They don’t need to throw their redundancy pay into a new venture. There is so much they can do to start sooner. Programs like Runway will show them that.

Not everyone wants to start a business, but I believe the mindset will become infectious for those around those that do, growing local economies at the same rapid rate of change.

I’d like to be part of a movement that makes this happen quicker.

One of my proudest moments was seeing an amazing new payments business emerge for Coca Cola with founders who were a truck driver, a call centre operator and a designer. Anyone can do this stuff. They just need to decide to start.

As coal fired power stations close in regions over the next couple of decades, how will the next generation of renewable entrepreneurs emerge? There are thousands of new companies that we will need that people haven’t invented yet. As car companies close, what new businesses will be required in a driverless, electric powered new industry that we have barely scratched the surface of? There are experienced, talented people who know this stuff and can make it happen. They just need to start.

Let’s do more to catalyse the regions.

 

Our lives are one big experiment that we are continually running. For the majority however, we most likely never think about this in a deliberate way. Well, maybe scientists do…

Over the last 10 years, I’ve grown to think differently. I’ve become much more of a learner, continually practicing and evolving a beginner’s mindset. My work at Pollenizer feeds this practice everyday.

We set goals and then run experiments that help us continually learn through a build, measure and learn discipline. This assists in providing evidence and clarity to remove risks when making decisions.

Here’s a few experiments that I’ve been running in Pollenizer over the last 9 months, since I returned full time in my role as COO. Whether you’re consolidating your startup’s culture, working in a corporate team or managing people from either environment, these following experiments will help you balance, grow and adapt your culture to be more resilient and better in 2017.

Before I begin, let me share our simple experiment designer wording. You can also grab the tool from our Startup Science tool stack for future use:

Related Goal: Link to personal or company goals
Hypothesis: What we believe is true.
Test: How we will observe a real situation.
Expected Behaviour: What we expect to see happen if hypothesis is correct.

Experiment 1. The 80/20 rule

I talk a lot with our team about their 80/20. It’s really important to me to know that everyone who works at Pollenizer loves at least 80% of what they do in their work. Every role has a bunch of stuff that simply comes with the job, that, given a choice we’d prefer not to do. We have to accept this. But this shouldn’t exceed more than 20%. If it does then people start underperform and in turn become miserable. If the scale tips too far for too long, it can lead to burnout and serious impact on people’s health.

As a leader, it’s our responsibility to be mindful and to observe and assist when we see someone in our team struggling. More importantly, we can all help ourselves stay balanced by regularly checking in with ourselves to monitor our performance against the forces pulling or pushing us out of balance. When we find ourselves out of balance, how can we find our way back? As a leader, are you creating a safe environment for your team?

The expected behaviour from this experiment is starting to emerge. We’re implementing changes for better alignment and commencing new experiments to help us learn as we transition to new ways of operating as a business. As we adapt, we are closely monitoring remaining balanced in our 80/20.

Experiment 2. Candid Conversation

One of my core personal values is honesty. I believe in candid conversation even though it can be incredibly confronting most of the time, for everyone involved. If we don’t talk about what we’re feeling, frustration begins to set in. Resentment left untended to, or even anger, might start to bubble. By experimenting and getting comfortable with vulnerability, I’m finding this a little easier. I encourage the team to challenge my decisions, ask lots of questions, tell me their fears. This works both ways. Being naturally curious, I continually ask lots of questions until I have clarity. I’m learning to talk more openly about my fears and I challenge decisions when I don’t understand the reasoning.  If we don’t have clarity then we become blocked.

We’re starting to see results. Feedback from one team member is;

“I’m now confident to take on projects OR say no. This has given me a lot of mental assurance and peace, which means I’m able to work more effectively.”

Experiment 3. 200% accountability

This is the latest of my experiments. I was first introduced to this concept by Michael Bunting, an incredible coach in Mindful Leadership, as Michael explains in this article, we are all guilty of self-sabotaging behavior and generally have no idea that is what we actually are doing. Taking ownership of how we act in frustrating situations is quite a profound learning journey.

I started to practice paying attention to how I was responding to some situations and switching the focus to looking at myself first.  I’m finding it incredibly valuable. I’ll share more insights as this experiment unfolds.

___________

Running experiments in a deliberate way doesn’t come naturally to everyone. This is something that I’ve needed to learn. I’m still practicing forming this habit and often need to work hard at ensuring I record results and analyze my findings.

Of course the experiments above will never be finished, we must revisit them regularly, revise and re run them to stay ahead in our fast paced world. By using experiments like these to build-measure-learn, we can balance, grow and adapt our internal culture to be better and resilient.

Let us know if you use experiments. If you have a process, how do you track your learning? Feel free to post your responses in the comments – I look forward to hearing from you.

 

The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else – Eric Ries

As we embark on a new year, new goals are set. Startups are retrieving focus from the year passed and gaining momentum for big ambitions in 2017. The emphasis is on optimization, performance improvement, and continued growth. All strong measures for success, but without time on your side, the most important question we should ask ourselves is, What are we learning?

The process of learning, is what drives you competitively. The faster you adopt new knowledge and feed this into action, the easier you can evaluate progress. And so often in the mechanics of startup discovery, channeling new learnings can change your thought process for what’s ahead.

At Pollenizer, we ask ourselves this every morning and commit it to the wider team. It is the ultimate driver of action, and accountability. Forcing yourself to get into this habit changes how you prioritise and leads to focusing on the things that matter.

Whether you’re operating solely, on a small startup team, here’s some ways you can adopt this into your routine for the new year;

Be accountable

What are you working on today, that will assist you on your mission tomorrow and beyond. Make every moment count. Work on the things that matter and are more likely to drive the outcomes you require for growth. Stay committed to the process and measure the change.

Experiment & Implement

Operating in a state of uncertainty requires you to try something new. Experimenting drives a conversation and helps you communicate your thinking. The process of documenting, moves you closer to an answer. Once it’s clearer in your mind, implement on a small scale. Try again.

Share

Shared learning consistently empowers collaboration and forces us to take responsibility for contribution to the business growth. Culturally this is a creative way to make new discoveries, unlock new opportunities and connect the people on your team. If you’re working solo, find a co-working space. Many co-working spaces operate on a community focused model that promotes this amongst their value system.

These are just small steps that contribute to your or your company becoming a learning organisation. Not only supporting growth, but gives you the fuel you need to survive. Without the right foundation in place, what I’ve described is possible, but it’s hard. Read how our COO, Clare Hallam operates her own experiments to drive cultural change. A consistent effort to learn, maintains a level of control that minimises risk and helps performance overall.

Yes, you read right – sexy. How can Customer Experience (CX) be sexy?

If you are a startup providing B2B or B2C products or services, CX can be sexy when you implement a simple framework enabling you to “build-measure-learn” from your customers. Taking an “outside-in approach” to how you design and enhance your service offering will not only retain your customer base, but through the power of “voice of the customer” – word of mouth referrals – means your company’s customer base will grow.

You may be thinking, “How can I do CX? I am a startup. I am not a large corporate company that has a dedicated CX insights and design team”! If you have the courage to ask for customer feedback and do something about it, then you can do CX. Here are some basic principles and tips that can assist you.

How do I get customer feedback?

You can get feedback in a variety of ways. It depends on what you want to know and what works best for your type of product/service. Remember, you don’t have to stick to one method. Pick at least 1-2 methods and incorporate them at different points of your customer’s lifecycle, as each method has its benefits and limitations.

Also, the other bonus is that you don’t have to spend much $$$ at all to get feedback from using the methods below. Most of it is time 🙂

Some methods I use are:

• Surveys (e.g. Typeform, SurveyMonkey)
• Interviews (informal or structured)
• Round table discussions (with a few customers)
• Observational (watching customers interact with the product or service)

Surveys are good, especially if you want to ask questions with quantitative answers. Some examples include “Overall, how satisfied are you with X?”, asking people to rate something or questions that prompt Yes/No answers. Typeform’s section on surveys this explains in more detail – you can read more at https://www.typeform.com/examples/surveys.

In an interview, try not to ask metric related questions in an interview.  People tend be overly nice, or might be shy to tell you the truth, which may lead to an inflated rating.

I do find surveys a little restrictive when you are seeking deeper commentary or explanations – making it difficult to understand context or the “WHY” behind the rating. Therefore I try to mix up surveys with a few qualitative questions (see below). Another way to get around this restriction is to contact the customer in the survey if you need to do a “deep-dive” on some of their responses. Remember, people are time-poor and don’t have time to elaborate much in surveys, so try keep the survey no longer than 5 minutes.

Personally, I like to talk to customers. I either give them a call or I invite them out to a coffee (a small investment for a great return). I have a few questions I ask and let these flow organically in the conversation. Sometimes you find the customer will just tell you everything without much probing, and all you have to do is listen. You can get many rich insights by just talking to customers in a non-threatening casual environment. The downside to this is sometimes you can get information overload and time is needed to digest, uncover and work through all the feedback.

This is also the case with round table discussions. It helps to have a scribe or record the conversation as listening, questioning and writing at the same time is challenging!  Observational methods work best when you are looking to get feedback on things like website UX or seeing how customers undertake a transaction on a platform or app. There is a temptation here to “want” the customer to use it in a certain way (especially if you’re the same person who built it). You need to take a step back. Just observe or give them a scenario to work through. After this, then you can ask questions like WHY they clicked where they did.

What CX metrics should you use?

1. Customer Satisfaction

Regardless of the method you use to get feedback, there are a few different metrics you can use. It all depends on what you want to measure and why.  At minimum, you should be measuring customer satisfaction “C-SAT”.

For example: “On a scale of 1-10, overall how satisfied are you with ….“  Then follow it up with a question like “Can you explain WHY you gave this score”.

2. Net Promoter Score

Another metric is net promoter score (NPS). You have probably been asked a question like “On on a scale of 1-10 how likely are you to recommend —- to family or a friend”. NPS measures how much customer are advocates for your brand. This is indicative of customer loyalty. If you think about it, how often do you speak about a brand or experience at a mate’s BBQ?

To build loyalty, you first have to have trust. Trust is build over time and through the customer having a consistent positive experience when interacting with your business. Therefore, I would only use NPS if you have been delivering a product/service consistently to a customer for a minimum of three months.

3. Net Easy Score

Another metric is the Net Easy Score (calculated similarly to Net Promoter Score). NES measures how easy it is for a customer to interact with a business. A sample question could be “on a scale of 1 to 7 (1 being extremely easy and 7 being extremely difficult), how easy was it to get the help you wanted today?”. As most startups do not have a contact centre (yet), I like to tweak this question and apply to more of a UX based question. For example, “How easy was it for you to enter experiments in our Startup Science App?”.

4. Qualitative Insights

The last metric is qualitative insights. Whether it’s a survey or a customer interview, open ended qualitative questions enable you to dig deeper and uncover some hidden truths – they may be pleasant or ugly!

Here are some questions you can use:

“What do you like most about ….”

“What could we do differently”

“How does this add value to you”

“What should we do more of”

“What should we do less of”

“What features do you like and why”

“Why features don’t you use and why”

“What was your biggest learning today”

“What would you like to learn more of”

To make CX even more sexy – keep these things in mind:

• Only get feedback on things you can directly influence
• Don’t ask for customer feedback if you are not going to do anything about it (build-measure-learn is a continuous cycle)
• Always get feedback from a sample mix of customers to ensure your feedback is balanced and unbiased (i.e. the challenging ones, the passive ones and the ones that are happy with you)
• Be aware that customer feedback is a give and take relationship. you can consider a give. Consider something like a discount on next purchase, a period of free subscription, a downloadable guide on a relevant topic or some kind of added value to delight your customer. This can also help boost your response rates!

Last tip – share your customer insights with everyone in your business – no matter what their role is. Creating a great experience is the responsibility of everyone in the business, as they all impact the customer either directly or indirectly. Good luck!

The great privilege of my job is the opportunity to pattern-match across multiple industries and organisations, all trying to invent the future. Here’s some personal lessons learned from 2016.

1. It takes more than tools. We spent years developing Startup Science as a toolset but at the start of this year it hit home that we had taken a bunch of stuff for granted because startups do them naturally. When we made a big list of elements to look at in an ‘innovation system’ we realised that we were missing elements to measure. We came up with our Innovation Capability Profile and now we look at things like Psychological Safety and DMZs that allow a different approach to risk and experimentation.
2. It IS rocket science. And voodoo magic… if I hear someone else say venture building “is not rocket science” one more time I am going to blow. I have heard it a few times this year and it is generally from people who have had zero experience as a founder starting a company. It is easy enough to read a book and do the same moves described in its pages. But DOING IT…. that is difficult. FEELING WHAT IS RIGHT… that is difficult. Looking like a startup is easy. Being one that succeeds… that is difficult.
3. We can’t ignore hard. I have looked around myself this year and seen lot’s of people struggling. Founding a startup is brutal. Not the choice if you want an easy life. As a leader in this space, it is easy, but reckless, to push through while people are struggling inside. And there is so much to gain from emotional honesty in a team. If you lead a team, can they tell you they are struggling? If you are struggling yourself, have you shared that with someone?
4. Australia is amazing.  In 2015 I was asked to present a seminar on why entrepreneurs should come to Australia at the Tech in Asia conference. It was hard to find good reasons. While we always rate highly in terms of mindset, we still have limited sources of funding, it is super expensive to live here and talent is really hard to find as our tiny population is fully employed. Then I started working with the research community and looked inside the cookie jar. Our universities, the CSIRO and various other government agencies are creating marvellous inventions. As this community finds their entrepreneurial mojo, great things are starting to happen.
5. Innovation is surprising and hidden. I learn this fresh every year. The best ideas and talent are not in TechCrunch. They are hidden and surface when I am not noticing. I first learned this looking at the warehouses in Eastern Creek talking to truck drivers at Coca-Cola. This year my favourite was meeting Rob Kinley, a scientist and founder of Future Feed. So quiet and understated, Rob told me how he worked on a farm in Canada and observed that cows on one side of the farm were producing significantly less methane (through belching when digesting grass). These cows were on the ocean side and it turns out they were eating seaweed. He has now developed a food supplement that reduced greenhouse gas emissions in cattle by 80%+ and cattle create more greenhouse gas than cars!
6. We don’t do enough with our superpowers. We are so busy disrupting, we are not paying attention to our wake. As we disrupt jobs and industries, there is more we can do to help those that are affected. We at Pollenizer got very worried about this when Ford closed their factories in Victoria this year and ended 1,000 jobs with thousands more to fall in the ecosystem around them.
7. Still no acqui-hires happening. Small acquisitions, usually done to acquire a talented team, are still rare in Australia. Each year I hope to see them increase because they make a small army of entrepreneurs slightly wealthy and able to re-invest in the next wave of companies and talent. It is an important element of Silicon Valley that we need.
8. Still not enough investors. This is the point where investors wade in and tell me there is plenty of money for ‘good startups’. Certainly there is more money than ever but it is largely controlled by a handful of large funds with a few individuals investment theses driving what is investable. I’d like to see more diversity and more risk taking.
9. EVERYONE is scared of customers. It is amazing how much can be learned from open conversations with customers. And yet I still hear every excuse under the sun about why that is not possible for founders. We all make excuses because we are scared. Scared they will ignore us. Scared they will tell us we are wrong. Scared they will complain. I do this shit every week and still catch myself coming up with excuses. EVERYONE is scared of customers. Get over it and go and talk to them.
10. If there is nothing at stake, is is easy to fail. If it doesn’t hurt when it fails and there is nothing to gain if it succeeds, why bother? Why make it amazing? Sometimes people just don’t give a shit in the end. So things quietly die.
11. Show us! Demo. I have seen so many moments this year where founders have delayed showing how their product works and people have not understood what it is. Even when a product is very early and just a mockup, I now look to show it so that people understand it. I still see people trying to explain things with words and failing to get impact. It should be possible to show a product and people go ‘Oooooh… I love that….’
12. Growth Hacking is evil. Well…. Sometimes. Brexit, the US elections, Australian politics, terrorism hysteria, compassion fatigue… we’re starting to realise how the social media driven world we are all part of creating is creating shallow bubbles of knowledge that we can’t be bothered escaping from because it is harder than pressing the LIKE button without reading. Those of us that read everything there is on ‘growth hacking’ know everyone is doing those same hacks – click baiting, building in easy defaults, creating addictive habit loops. None of these things promote depth of thought, diversity, compassion, hard things. They just keep us clicking the things which give us those little blasts of rewarding dopamine. Like billions of rats in a lab.
13. What is the transaction? No one does anything for nothing. If they say they do, they are not being honest. I have started to ask “What is the transaction?” to get clarity on a give and get that might make something work? Why are you a mentor? Why would someone come to an event? Why buy my product?
14. Knower/Learner. Tim Parsons joined Pollenizer this year and introduced the idea of Knower/Learner. It has changed how I work fundamentally. The idea is, that we do better if we are a ‘Learner’ rather than a ‘Knower’. Knowers say “That’s not how it works” and shut down curiosity, evidence and insight. Learners say “How can we find out how to do this better?” and open up possibilities and the pursuit of impact. I am often a knower, and I value the framework when I catch myself.