Risk! A Bored Game
A riddle: What one word scares more corporate heads than Mike Wallace with a camera crew? Hint: it has only four letters and when spoken in a corporate meeting causes the same reaction as yelling “Bullshit!” Final hint: presidents Lincoln, Taft, Roosevelt and George W. Bush all used it in their inaugural addresses.
Give up?
“Risk.”
Risk to most corporations is like sunlight to a vampire, sending execs cowering weakly back into the darkness, comforted by the sameness of their decades-old ideas and well-oiled processes. What they fail to realize, however, is that risk is the inseparable, albeit sometimes ugly, twin to leadership. How can you lead if you’re waiting for someone else to go first?
Many executives who are afraid to take risks mask that fear by mocking unsuccessful attempts by their competitors to do things differently. They’ll often go to great lengths to find data or surveys that reinforce their belief that the concept failed, because that way, they can feel good about going back to the safety of their coffins and settling in for a long daytime nap.
Focus Groups Kill
The number one weapon risk-adverse executives use to kill ideas is called a focus group. Much like the famed Raid bug spray, focus groups Kill … Ideas… Dead. It’s amazing how a total of 50 to 100 people in separate focus groups across the country can serve as irrefutable spokespersons for 300 million people, dictating what they should watch, wear, use or refuse. Can you imagine going to one doctor who recommends having both your legs removed and agreeing to do it without any further study or consideration? For most companies, “It didn’t test well in focus groups,” is the ultimate a cappella funeral dirge.
Unfortunately, focus-groups are running rampant, forcing homogenized changes in everything from the movies we see to the products we buy. I once sat in a
Hollywood movie-screening where the facilitator asked how the ending of a movie made us feel. I could clearly detect his concern when the majority of us at the screening replied “Sad.” Helloooo? It was a drama, you moron, and the hero dies in the end. You’re supposed to feel sad!
I pulled this interesting posting from a blog I was reading the other day. It’s a quote from writer Jane Austin regarding a test-screening for her move Pride and Prejudice:
‘…They changed it [the ending] because 90 percent of American test audiences didn’t like it. Yes, well done
Hollywood focus groups, but your results are skewed. It was 90 percent of test audiences who didn’t like the ending, but, by definition, it was therefore 90 percent of the sort of Americans who go to test screenings who didn’t like the ending. And the sort of Americans who go to test screenings are the sort of Americans who only go to test screenings because, in return for their obese worthless opinion, they are promised a skid- full of free oil-butter fat corn and three buckets of all you can drink fizzy lard.’”
While it may sound like the final bell for fresh ideas in corporate
America, there are a few mavericks out there: Ted Turner. Turner said he never bothered to test the idea of CNN, the first all-news network, he just “saw and need and filled it.” And then there are some PR and ad agencies who serve as a creative version of the Horse Whisperer to clients [insert shameless plug for Cohn & Wolfe], constantly pushing them toward newer, edgier ideas and programs – that is, if they can just pass the focus group test.
I think every client should be required to read this quote from Henry Ford before each focus group: “If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” As Virgin Atlantic CEO Steve Ridgway said in a recent interview during which he was explaining the new innovations Virgin Atlantic had introduced despite poor focus group testing, “Sometimes customers don’t know what they don’t know.”
While my wish is for more brand-marketing heads to think like Turner, Ridgway and Ford, a recent brainstorm exercise I conducted with a client might suggest otherwise. I offered several examples of dare-to-be-great moments, including such moments as JFK’s powerful “we will put man on the moon by the end of the decade” speech. I then asked each brainstorm participant in the room to write down what they wanted to make their dare-to-be-great moment for the company by the end of the year. I then asked them to pass their responses forward to me. The first one I looked at read, “Be more positive.”
Hmmmm…. Now where did I put that wooden stake…
– Jeremy