| thepowerofpain.com :: the pain papers :: newsletter #15 |
THE PAIN PAPERS:
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——————————————————————————————————- Learn to Use Pain as a Catalyst for Innovation ——————————————————————————————————- The Pain Papers ——————————————————————————————————- SHARE THE WEALTH. FORWARD THIS NEWSLETTER. Any other unauthorized publication, excerpting, or duplication of the contents without the permission of Christopher K. O'Leary is a violation of copyright law. For past issues of The Pain Papers, see... To subscribe to The Pain Papers, please send a message
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——————————————————————————————————- UPDATE ON THE BOOK I have been working like mad on the book. As you know, I managed to get myself laid off, so I have been able to work full-time on the book for the last month. I have made a lot of progress, and have gotten it to the point where I have started shopping it around. One thing I would ask is that, if you plan on buying and/or recommending the book, you simply send me an e-mail indicating that (or just send a blank reply to this e-mail). I will be able to get the book published sooner if I can point to 200+ people who plan on buying and recommending the book. I am also looking for people to read drafts of the book. If you want to be notified when I have completed new drafts of the book, then send a message to... thepowerofpain-subscribe@topica.com I am also still looking for a publisher of the book. While I have some good contacts, I can always use more. Please let me know if you can help with this efforts. Finally, the thought for the week is a chapter from the book entitled "The Purpose of Pain." I hope you find it interesting. I will continue to serialize the book in The Pain Papers if you are interested in my doing so. ——————————————————————————————————- THE PURPOSE OF PAIN At a first glance, a world without pain sounds idyllic. No migraines. No stubbed toes. No ice cream headaches. What could be better? Unfortunately, if you read the story of King Midas, the man who wished for and was granted the golden touch, you will learn that such wishes often result in unanticipated consequences. In the case of pain, people who are inflicted with Leprosy play the role of a modern-day Midas, and the grantor of the wish is played not by an old satyr named Silenus, but by a microscopic organism called Mycobacterium Leprae. The Leprae bacterium renders its victim unable to sense many types of pain not by magic, but by destroying the nerve fibers that detect and transmit pain signals back to the brain. As a result, as the disease progresses, a person infected with Leprosy gradually loses the ability to feel pain in their hands, feet, and other parts of their body. This has a number of serious consequences. When a healthy person touches a hot oven, they feel pain and quickly pull back their hand. When they twist their ankle, they limp for the next few days. However, a person inflicted with Leprosy cannot feel the pain of the hot oven or of the sprained ankle. As a result, they do not pull their hand back. They do not keep their weight off of their ankle for a few days. Instead, they end up making the same mistakes over and over again and experience far more serious injuries than do people who are protected by pain. The lesson of Leprosy points out pain's dual nature. On the one hand, pain is a curse. Go to the Health section of any bookstore and you will find shelves of books that address the topics of chronic pain, pain management, and the problem of pain. On the other hand, pain is a gift. Pain acts as a warning system — as "God's megaphone", in the words of C.S. Lewis. Pain protects us by letting us know when we need to alter our behavior. This call to action gives us the chance to remove ourselves from the source of pain and gives our bodies time to heal. It also teaches us a lesson. Any person who is afflicted with Leprosy, Syphilis, or Diabetes will tell you that a world devoid of pain is one full of unseen dangers and unlearned lessons. The dual nature of pain was first noticed thousands of years ago. In the Hebrew language, there is an etymological link between the word Tsara, which means "sorrow," "anguish," or "trouble" and the word Yatsar, which means "create." It is crucial that innovators understand pain's role as both warning system and call to action because of one thing... Change. Any innovation requires that people change; that they stop using their present solution and start using a new one. Innovations succeed when people change and fail when people do not. It's that simple. Unfortunately, change is hard, and most people resist change. As Darryl Conner said in his book Managing at the Speed of Change... The capacity of the human mind for invention far outstrips its ability to assimilate the changes that inventions produce. Resistance to change is likely wired into our genes. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. In the past, people who experimented too much usually wound up dead. Of course, every now and then someone would succeed and discover a better gadget, or a tasty berry, or a faster trade route, but only rarely did change pay off (Chapter __, The Two Curves and the Chasm, contains a discussion about the difference between people who like change and those who do not). This bias against change still holds true today — most people do not change without a really good reason to do so. The reason for this behavior is that, while things could be better, they could also be worse. In most cases, people will accept a known (but often painful and problematic) present rather than take the risk of moving to an uncertain future. It is also virtually impossible to convince someone to change. Instead, people must convince themselves that they need to change. To understand the truth of this statement, simply talk to someone who has ever loved or been a friend of an alcoholic. They will tell you that nothing can be accomplished until the loved one acknowledges that they have a problem and realizes that they need to change their behavior. The same principle also applies to most other forms of change, including innovations. The interesting thing about change is that not all changes are resisted. Instead, there are exceptions. Many products and services succeed despite this overwhelming bias against change. Every now and then a large group of people breaks out of their habits, adopts an innovation, and absorbs the resulting change. Why does this happen? Research has shown that one of the circumstances in which people will reliably change is when frustration or pain has built up as the result of a problem with a product or service. There are numerous examples of this phenomenon occurring throughout history. Products and services that took advantage of this phenomenon include...
The common thread that ties together all of these examples is that they all solved a significant problem or alleviated a source of pain. Lessons Learned There are several things that you should take away from this chapter. You must remember The Logic of Change...
Or, to put it more simply... Pain triggers change. If you are an entrepreneur or other innovator, you need to understand the purpose of pain because it is the thing that will drive people to change and adopt your innovation. Your efforts will be much more successful if, instead of following the standard practice of building a product or service and then hoping that people will change their behavior and adopt it, you instead explicitly set out to understand and satisfy the needs of a group of people who are feeling pain. Such people will be predisposed to changing and will be more receptive to your messages because they will already be actively looking (consciously or unconsciously) for a solution to their problems. They will also be more likely to evangelize your product to others whom they know are experiencing the same problems and feeling the same frustration and pain. If you run or are a part of an established organization, you need to understand the purpose of pain for several reasons. First, pain is the thing that will drive you customers to start looking elsewhere or that will keep people from becoming your customers. The more pain that your customers feel as a result of using your product or service, the more likely they will be to actively look for alternatives. As a result, you must develop mechanisms that will allow you to understand the pain that is being felt by your customers — both present and past. Second, pain is the thing that will drive your competitor's customers to look for alternatives — including your products. As a result, you need to understand the pain that your competitors are inflicting on their customers. This will allow you to develop communication strategies to target your competition's dissatisfied customers. Finally, by understanding the impact of pain and change on the success of innovations, you will be better able to shape the overall direction of your innovation efforts. You will be able to select between alternatives and allocate resources based on the pain that each solves. This will allow you to select the projects that will offer the greatest levels of customer impact and ROI. ——————————————————————————————————- ULTIMATE ELECTRONICS One of my New Years resolutions is to be more positive - to hold companies up and not tear them down. That said, I have to get something off of my chest. A new chain called Ultimate Electronics has opened 4 new stores in St. Louis. They sell themselves as "A new kind of electronics store." The problem is that I can't tell them apart from the others. What strikes me especially is that Ultimate Electronics seems to be picking up the strategy — cheesy, commissioned salespeople in cheap suits — that Circuit City just abandoned. Other than that, they offer nothing new. This points out the general problem with most retail concepts — they rely on bluster and hype, and not substance. This stands in sharp contrast to a few retailers who really are different. Remember Whole Foods Markets (or REI). They can legitimately say that they are a new kind of grocery store (but don't) because they offer a completely different set of products than is typical. ——————————————————————————————————- EXPO DESIGN CENTERS I was driving around town today and noticed a new store called Expo. What struck me was the sign for the store... EXPO I find several things about this store to be odd. First of all, I have no interest in going into it. Second, this may be due to the fact that the outside of the store gives me no clue of what I will find inside. This gives me no reason to want to stop take the time that is required to go inside. The sign, instead of talking about the problem that the store solves, simply says "Design Center," which is very generic and non-descriptive, and "A Home Depot Company." While I LOVE The Home Depot, the fact that they have created a new concept isn't enough to pull me into the store. I don't care that they have launched a new concept. What's in it for me? The signage of the store doesn't tell me. Contrast this with the signage of a Home Depot. On the outside of the building are large signs that say things like "Indoor Lumberyard" and "Home Improvement Warehouse." This gives me a sense of what I will find in the store. Expo's signage gives me no such hint. What will I find? Furniture — but what does The Home Depot know about furniture? Carpet — no, they have that at the Home Depot. Lighting — no, they have that at the Home Depot. Then what's in that big white box? The problem is that while I am curious about what is in the box, I am not compelled to go inside and see for myself. This is due in large part to the fact that the company seems to be relying on the power of mystery (which is tenuous), not the power of pain. Instead, what Expo should do is, instead of stressing their ties to The Home Depot, simply answer the three questions...
All of the signage should first and foremost answer those questions, because the answers to those questions are what will pull me into the building. ——————————————————————————————————- THE ICE DOZER A reader point me to this link for The Ice Dozer... https://www.innovationfactory.com/ The key selling message of The Ice Dozer is this... "When your kids' lives are at risk, will you be able to see?" I find this to be a highly ineffective tactic for several reasons. First of all, the link between ice and scraping is remote, at best. When I think about ice scrapers, I think about the fact that my hand gets all snowy and cold. I don't think about safety until I get in the car. This points out that selling with fear is not the same as selling with pain. Selling with fear means trying to scare someone into buying the product. Of course, after the fact the person can realize that they were suckered. Few people will tell their friends about this ice scraper that makes their kids safer. That is too great of a leap, and is problematic since your chief goal should be to turn your customers into your sales force. In contrast, selling with pain means solving problems. While the product may not work as advertised, if it does then people will evangelize it to their friends simply because it is the best ice scraper that they have found. ——————————————————————————————————- FORBES MAGAZINE I have to give it up for Forbes magazine. I love this magazine. I like it because it is the most entrepreneurial of the major magazines, yet gives me better stuff than Inc. You should check out the last issue because there are two interesting articles in there. One talks about solutions to the problem of cell phone quality of service. The other talks about medical devices and solutions that grew out of frustrating or painful experiences. Go to... https://www.forbes.com ——————————————————————————————————- REVERSE YELLOW PAGES Here's a product that I need desperately. This Christmas, I got my wife a Lladro figurine. While I eventually found one, I can tell you that it was a total PITA trying to find a store that carried Lladro. What I need is kind of a reverse Yellow Pages. This would be a directory that will let me see which stores carry which brands (and possibly models). This would save me so much time in calling and driving around. ——————————————————————————————————- IN SEARCH OF EXCELLENCE Midi Cox (midic@mac.com) writes "During lunch today, I read the Fast Company article about Tom Peters. I did it just for something to do, and almost immediately noticed that the Creation of In Search of Excellence was mostly about a response to different kinds of pain: the pain of being the out guys at McKinsey; the pain of feeling that existing organizational theory was wrong." Actually, I noticed the connection too. It's a perfect story of how to use frustration to drive the creation of a product - in this case a book. In fact, I capture the essence of the story of the book at... https://www.thepowerofpain.com/stories/in_search_of_excellence.html ——————————————————————————————————- Please send all comments or feedback to chris@thepowerofpain.com SHARE THE WEALTH. FORWARD THIS NEWSLETTER. Any other unauthorized publication, excerpting, or duplication of the contents without the permission of Christopher K. O'Leary is a violation of copyright law. To subscribe to The Pain Papers, please send a message
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