3 Ways to Make More Innovative Decisions
Plus thinking about the Expectation-Customer fit after taking my first Amtrak train ride and uncovering your natural abilities.
Hello everyone 👋
This week we are talking about how to make more innovative decisions, the Expectation-Customer fit lesson from my recent Amtrak trip and the tests you can take to determine your natural abilities.
I. Make More Innovative Decisions
I spoke at the World Credit Union Conference last year on how organizations can make more innovative decisions. Most executives are good at making decisions. After all, their entire job is premised on their ability to decide and solve problems.
Making decisions, however, is not the same as making innovative decisions.
We all make thousands of decisions per day. In my second book, Bulletproof Decisions, I came across research that estimates our daily decisions somewhere between 20,000 and 35,000. Some of us may become indecisive in certain situations but by far and large, we can make decisions.
An innovative decision is one that takes an unconventional approach or adopts a surprising solution. Movie theaters adding recliner seats (while charging more) or Stanley Cup positioning their products for women, are two examples of innovative decisions.
Innovative doesn't mean revolutionary or groundbreaking. It simply means doing something different and achieving positive results.
Here are three ways to make more of these innovative decisions.
1) Blind Decision-making
Use anonymous voting during meetings (or outside) to surface different opinions and ideas not being said. Teams are sometimes swayed by the source of ideas e.g. their boss and blind mechanisms for making decisions can be helpful.
2) Devil’s Advocate
Assign someone to take the opposite position to the dominant view in your team. This person will advocate and try to find holes in the ideas. Only use this if you think an idea can be reinforced through better questions.
3) Thinking Partners
Find someone to bounce ideas off and challenge each other’s thinking. This person can be a colleague, a peer outside the company or someone else.
The common thread in all of these approaches is to find ways to challenge your assumptions and explore other ideas that could be ignored otherwise.
Making decisions is great but making innovative ones is even better.
II. Amtrak and the Expectation-Customer Fit
I visited Seattle last week and decided to take the Amtrak Cascades for fun. For those outside North America, Amtrak is a train service that has routes all over the United States and some Canadian cities.
The route from Vancouver to Seattle takes four hours but both of my trains (going there and coming back) were delayed by an hour each time. The issue is that Amtrak doesn’t own the track except for a few locations in the east of the U.S. Amtrak trains constantly stop for freight traffic and even other Amtrak trains (there’s only one lane in some parts).
Amtrak shows us the value of thinking through your Expectation-Customer fit. Your products and services are not a good fit for everybody, which means that you need to match expectations to a specific customer segment.
Business users—my use case—is not a good fit for Amtrak. The trip ends up taking 2 - 3 times longer than an airplane or a car. It is unpredictable and the train wifi is unreliable.
On the other hand, people who are on vacation would likely see the train as a huge adventure. It doesn’t matter if you’re delayed by an hour, there are no deadlines to hit. I also know that some of the Amtrak routes are beautiful and worth riding for fun.
For business travellers, it’s better to stick with the airport and the TFSA.
III. Natural Abilities vs Compensations
I was in Seattle last week to take the Johnson O'Connor aptitude test. The test runs for an entire day and is meant to measure your natural abilities across 20 different tests or puzzles. The founder of this organization argued that we all have natural abilities in certain fields and we would be better off finding jobs that take advantage of them, rather than try and correct weaknesses.
I had a lot of fun going through the different tests. Some were very difficult, for example, I had consistent issues with all the audio elements. I could not tell the difference between high and low audio tones.
Some tests felt very easy, especially anything to do with inductive reasoning. Other tests I could do but I was quickly bored. In one examination, I had to move pins from one side of a board to another, in a test of dexterity.
The test confirmed the skills I considered a strength but it also surfaced weaknesses that I hadn’t considered before. One test measures your ability to think in three dimensions and I couldn’t finish it. I could likely never become a 3D artist or architect.
The test reinforced the idea that we should all strive to identify our strengths and double down on them. The kind of jobs we take, the hobbies we do and the activities we scheduled should take advantage of these strengths. Correcting a weakness may not be worth the time investment.
IV. Drip Pricing, Negative Self Talk and More
I started exploring the large universe of Substack writers recently and I have been amazed at the quality of thinking you come across. Every week, I will share my favorite articles and the authors who wrote them.
wrote a 3-part series on uncertainty and risk. Each piece also contains interesting nuggets around the market and whatever else is going on in the world. wrote an article on the unique aspects of North America from a business strategy perspective. I never considered “drip pricing” unusual until you realize that other parts of the world don’t do it. wrote on practical ways to deal with negative self-talk and how pervasive it can be.pondered if we are now “over-therapized” and how to know if therapy is actually working.
That’s all I have for this week!
Talk next Tuesday,
Ruben
P.S. If you’re interested in helping your team make more innovative decisions, consider exploring a workshop. Here’s why:
It’s a great format to reflect on what is working and what isn’t in your decision-making process
Multiple opportunities to tackle unspoken or longstanding issues
A great facilitator can help your team see ways to make dramatically different decisions.
Lay the groundwork for more growth, revenue, profit and impact
If this sounds interesting, visit my speaking page to look at ideas, testimonials and a way to get in touch.