Are you being creative enough to think outside the box? Do you think outside the box to come up with new solutions to solve today’s challenges? Are you focusing on the needs of your customers or just the products you are selling? As a leader, it is important to think outside the box so you can focus on your customers’ needs and adapt your products accordingly. In order to successfully satisfy your customers, it is important to think outside the box to meet their needs. This requires creativity to develop new products.
In the early part of the 1900’s, passenger trains were the biggest and most used form of transportation across the country. Some of the major locomotive companies were so dominant that they thought they would never go out of business. They forgot that they weren’t really in the business of running locomotives, but were actually in the business of transporting customers from one location to the next. Because they lost sight of their real purpose, many of the companies went out of business and lost large amounts of wealth.
Think outside the box
Today, it is just as important to think outside the box as it was in the early 1900’s. Companies are evolving everyday. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal titled, Dish Chief: TV Needs to Shift by Shalini Ramachandran that focused on some major changes happening at Dish Network. Charlie Ergen, CEO of Dish Network Corp., recently made a move to think outside the box. He introduced a new DVR that allows customers to skip over commercial breaks which is more time-saving than simply fast forwarding. The advertisers and networks are very upset because they feel it will decrease their ad revenue and cause them to lose customers. “Three of the networks filed suit […], claiming the service is a breach of copyright.” They claim that the copyright infringement comes about because they are changing what people have to see and what is contained in the shows that comes from the networks.
Dish Network approaches the situation with a completely different viewpoint. They feel they have been able to think outside the box to satisfy their customer needs. In recent times, internet viewing has become very popular. People wait a day or two for their favorite shows to pop up online, and then they watch them. They watch them on websites that either have a significantly lower number of commercials or no commercials at all. By watching TV in this fashion, consumers bypass close to all, if not all, the commercials. This saves time and allows them to have more entertainment with less interruptions. Dish has taken the approach that they are satisfying the needs of the customers so they can retain their customer base. They fear that if they don’t use the new DVR, they will lose their customers to the internet streaming websites. They are trying to address the customer needs rather than just sell a product.
“If the ad is skipped, the consumer likes it, but it’s not necessarily good for me and it’s not necessarily good for the broadcaster because I’m in the same ecosystem as him,” Mr. Ergen said. “So we have to figure out how the broadcaster benefits, we benefit and the consumer continues to feel like he gets a fair deal. So maybe [the consumer] pays a little bit less for ‘retrans,’ his bill doesn’t go up by double digits every year…. That’s an interesting conversation to have.”
As leaders, it is important to think outside the box to identify and meet the needs of your customers in whatever industry you are in so you remain relevant. This requires adaptability to effectively help your customers.
How do you think outside the box in your leadership? What do you do in your leadership to ensure that you continuously meet the needs of your customers? What benefits do you see as you think outside the box? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below!
Very true. It is definitely important if not essential to think out of the box effectively, and often, as a high performance leader. However, it is equally important to make sure your peers and staff are also thinking in this way and providing input.
The key is collecting and guiding this unique intuitive thought patterns down a path reaches an effective outcome that all the stakeholders buy into.
I use many collaborative thinking techniques to achieve this.
Welcome Andrew!
I really like the point you made about the importance of directing intuition and thinking outside the box. It is important to let the ideas flow but there always comes a point when you must make a decision and move forward on that decision. It is very important to do both to be successful.