Smart Company

Ask a disruptive question, and you may get a dismissive answer. In a discussion of digital preprint the other day I asked a CEO, “How fast could you process orders if you didn’t have ink in your plant?” He said it didn’t matter, because it wasn’t going to happen. I did not ask the question to annoy him, or to try to be clever, or to persuade him toward digital exclusivity. I asked the question to learn how his company dealt with change in the market. He dismissed the question as theoretical, as if I had asked him what would have happened if Napoleon had had a B-52. He is practical and smart. He knows that the technology is only in the proving stage, and that the adoption of the new technology will take some time, if it happens at all. His mind went directly to the obstacles and unknowns, like ink costs or how variable print would be trimmed on the corrugator. I may have gone too far when I said, “I don’t know, but the person who figures it out may own your plant.”

Disruptive questions challenge the things we hold to be self-evident. They are essential if we are ever to become proactive. When we ask ourselves “what if,” we shift certainties to an uncertain state, and it can be unnerving. But if we are just asking questions about the marketplace, it is essential that we question the answers that were true in the past and make certain they are still viable. So, I will ask you a disruptive question: What are you doing to anticipate customer needs so you can make a profit meeting those needs in the future?

Your company is not naturally inquisitive. The value of learning as an organization must be encouraged with direction, time, and resources.

The answers to this question will probably be found in multiple sources. You will interview customers and study trends in their industries. You will examine the advantages and costs of new technologies in packaging. You will learn from your own company employees how to improve and adapt your best practices. And some portion will be left to chance, but chance favors the prepared mind. Here are some ready sources of the data you’ll need:

1 Question your answers.

A whiteboard or a communal Google document is a good starting place to answer the question: What do we know for sure? Then question your answers—are they still true today? Have some of the obstacles since been removed? Can it be reduced to a math problem? For example, to solve for the ink cost question I posed to my CEO friend, the cost of ink in his current production facility could be determined. In addition, he would consider the cost of printing (time, labor, and shipping). Then he would be in a position to compare projected costs of preprint (including shipping time and cost).

2 Study your customers’ industries.

Customer interviews will provide a wealth of information about the near horizon. They will tell you about the challenges and changing requirements for their industry. Keep in mind that most customers are as reactive as we are, so the long view is suggested here as well. They may be as shortsighted as Henry Ford is attributed to have deemed them: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses.’ ” Study their industry, and see if there are impending changes that are likely. For example, what would you have changed five years ago if you had anticipated the impact that Amazon would have on the marketplace?

3 Become a learning company.

Internal process improvement will prepare you to be more adaptive to a variety of challenges. I am convinced that the smartest companies intentionally grow their company memory. They actively gather information so processes may be improved and root causes eliminated. In short, they listen well, they are proactive problem-solvers, and they keep track of lessons learned. In this way, they avoid solving the same problems repetitively.

Internal sources of this information include corrective action requests and ideas generated by every team member, and well-defined downtime codes that are tracked and lead to timely response. They can include meetings where salespeople discuss innovations and challenges they see on customer visits. As was mentioned in an earlier installment of this column, it could include a formal report from anyone attending a seminar or a trade show. Gathering this information and making it accessible will inform your team in preparing for the future.

Your company is not naturally inquisitive. The value of learning as an organization must be encouraged with direction, time, and resources. The discipline of asking, discussing, and answering disruptive questions will be an important part of this development. They disrupt the unquestionables and free us from comfortable certainty that would have us cruising the freeway on faster horses.

Scott Ellis, Ed.D., is a partner in P-Squared (P 2). He can be reached at 425-985-8505 or scottellis@psquaredusa.com.