A More Beautiful Question (23 page)

In the mid-1990s, the premium cable channel HBO was in a creative rut when, according to
Fast Company
, then-chief programmer Chris Albrecht sat down with other HBO executives and asked the question above. Albrecht wanted his colleagues to step back and take a hard look at the channel’s creative output—and consider whether it actually lived up to the high-quality image HBO was projecting. The consensus answer to Albrecht’s question: “We’re not quite there yet.” The group then proceeded to apply a set of additional questions to each of its shows, asking,
Is it distinctive? Is it good?
They focused in on the central idea behind each show:
Was it an original and worthwhile idea? And was this show the very best realization of that idea?
Subsequently, the results of that rigorous inquiry materialized in the form of groundbreaking series like
Sex and the City
and
The Sopranos
.

But getting to the How of this was another matter; Nike was a sneaker company, not a digital-device maker. The company figured that the only way to pull off something as audacious as this was through a partnership with a tech company. Striking a collaborative deal with Steve Jobs and Apple wasn’t easy. (According to a press report, Jobs initially berated Nike chief executive
⁹
Mark Parker for trying to expand into digital;
stick to the sneakers
was Jobs’s message, with a profanity or two thrown in.) But eventually, Nike won over Jobs and produced a hybrid product, Nike+, which wirelessly connected a Nike running shoe to an Apple iPod device, which was in turn connected to a website. A classic “smart recombination,” it enabled the runner to program music, track running and health data, communicate with other runners, find running partners, share tips, and so forth.

But it did something more important for Nike—it helped them begin to think outside the shoebox. Nike now has a line of digital products, including its highly successful FuelBand wrist tracker. It is gradually becoming a digital company as much as it is a shoe company. So if you ask,
What business is Nike really in?
, the answer is constantly changing—though it’s grounded in the core purpose of serving an athlete’s lifestyle needs, in whatever form they might take.

Nike isn’t the only company going through these kinds of core changes of late. A recent article in
Fast Company
pointed out that a
¹¹
number of today’s leading companies—Nike, Apple, Netflix—have increasingly been finding success by moving outside their primary area of expertise. The article, with the provocative headline “Death to Core Competency,” suggests that whatever a company’s specialty product or service might be—whatever got you to where you are today—might
not
be the thing that gets you to the next level. Even newer companies must make these kinds of major shifts:
¹²
In 2008, Facebook—having already achieved remarkable early growth in terms of attracting nearly 100 million users—brought in a new executive, Sheryl Sandberg, who reportedly posed a fundamental question to the company’s leaders and employees:
What business was Facebook in?
With all of its rapid subscriber growth, the company had yet to settle on a model for making money. Sandberg’s question prompted internal debate—and resulted in a new strategy that was much more advertising-focused.

It’s a sobering realization for many businesses: They can’t rest on what they’ve already done, or what they know. The need to bring a “beginner’s mind” to business may make it necessary to—if only temporarily—set aside all history, and all notions of what has worked in the past, in order to ask questions from a fresh perspective.

What if our company didn’t exist?

Early in its history, the microprocessor
¹³
company Intel found itself facing a difficult decision. The company had started out making computer memory chips, and its success with that product established Intel. But as the memory-chip business began to slow down, Intel’s cofounders, Andrew Grove and Gordon Moore, had to decide whether to shift the company’s focus into more promising areas. Yet they were torn: Chips were central to their identity—and Intel wouldn’t have gotten to where it was without them.

Then Grove posed an interesting question to his partner:

If we were kicked out of the company, what do you think the new CEO would do?

Grove and Moore reasoned that a new leader would feel no emotional attachment to the declining memory-chip business and would probably leave it behind. So they did likewise, shifting Intel’s focus to microprocessors—which set the stage for remarkable growth in the years to follow.

When companies are facing disruptive change (and these days, what company isn’t?), old habits and traditions can sometimes get in the way of progress. One of the things hypothetical What If questioning can do is remove those constraints, if only briefly, to allow for more fresh thinking.

You could ask, as Grove and Moore did,
What if different leaders were brought in?
, but Clay Christensen suggests a bolder version of this question:
What if the company didn’t exist?
That question allows you to take a clean-slate approach in thinking about the industry and your place in it. Christensen points out that thinking about your company as if there were no history enables leaders to stop focusing on preexisting beliefs and structures—“the stuff they’ve already invested in”—and consider new possibilities. That’s particularly useful “if, at any point in the future, you see the possibility that the core business might slow down,” Christensen says. (While contemplating a world in which your company did not exist, another question worth considering is
Who would miss us?
The answer to that can help clarify who your most important customers are and what your real purpose is.)

It’s not easy for a company to move away from what it has done in the past. The consultant Jack Bergstrand of Brand Velocity thinks
¹⁴
one of the most important questions companies should ask regularly is
What should we
stop
doing?
Company leaders naturally tend to focus on what they should
start
doing. Bergstrand notes that coming to terms with what you’re willing to eliminate is always harder. Yet if you can’t answer that question, he maintains, “it lessens your chances of being successful at what you want to do next—because you’ll be sucking up resources doing what’s no longer needed and taking those resources away from what should be a top priority.” Moreover, if you can’t figure out what you should stop doing, it might be an early warning sign that you don’t know what your strategy is.

Bergstrand explains that it’s difficult for most companies to stop doing things—especially putting an end to programs or products that were once successful—because “we don’t like to kill our babies.” In addition, corporate politics can get in the way; individuals or groups within a company are naturally inclined to protect their own projects. “Even asking the question about ‘what should we stop’ makes people inside a company uncomfortable,” Bergstrand says. For that reason, it may be necessary to adopt the
What if the company didn’t exist?
mind-set—so that you can then be willing to cut ties with old programs, products, and practices.

History and routine aren’t the only things that can impede a company’s forward movement. Various real-world constraints can also inhibit a company’s ability to adapt and innovate; for example, being overly concerned with practical issues such as costs and budgets tends to limit the scope of creative thinking. That’s why some business leaders (including Steve Jobs when he headed Apple) have been known to use What If hypothetical questioning to temporarily remove practical constraints. One such approach is to encourage teams working on projects to ask themselves,
What if money were no object? How might we approach
the project differently?

By temporarily removing these restrictions, people’s imaginations are freed up to find the best idea, cost notwithstanding. You might end up with a groundbreaking possibility that can then be scaled back to make it more affordable.

What if we were to compete against ourselves?
¹⁶

In 2007, the 150-year-old
Atlantic Monthly
was suffering along with many other advertising-starved magazines. Publisher David G. Bradley brought in new editorial and business teams and,
the New York Times
reports, they brainstormed as if they were launching a Silicon Valley startup whose mission was to attack the magazine, asking:
What would we do if the goal was to aggressively cannibalize ourselves?
Answer: they’d launch an assault on the digital front. Knowing that news aggregation was killing magazines, they started their own “killers,” TheAtlantic Wire.com, TheAtlanticCities.com, and Quartz. They gradually merged the previously separate digital and print staffs, ended the paywall for Atlantic.com readers, and even officially dropped “monthly” from their name. By late 2012, traffic to web properties was up 2500 percent and revenue doubled; the company was profitable for the first time in decades. They essentially ate their own lunch, and now are dining out on that great decision.

Conversely, using What If questions to
impose
constraints can also be effective. By challenging people to think about creating or achieving something within extreme limits—
What if we could only charge ten bucks for our hundred-dollar service?
—
it forces a rethinking of real-world practicalities and assumptions. Sometimes the fantasy becomes reality. As the business consultant and Dartmouth University professor Vijay Govindarajan notes, hospitals in India
¹⁵
have developed incredibly inexpensive (yet still safe and reliable) surgical approaches to provide operations for a fraction of their cost in other countries—in part because they were forced by market pressures to question the prevailing assumptions about surgical costs.

What if we could become a cause and not just a company?

As businesses throw off constraints and imagine bold What If possibilities, some may consider an ultra-ambitious one: Can a company transform itself into a cause? And why would it want to do so?

The answer to the second question partly has to do with a new dynamic in the relationship between consumers and business. Because of the Internet and social media, people know more about companies and brands than ever before. And they care more than ever about how companies are behaving, what a company’s values are, what that company stands for.

Employees feel this even more strongly. Younger workers, in particular, have shown they want to align themselves with companies that support principles and values similar to their own, and companies that are contributing to a greater good. “The modern worker is not the salary
¹⁷
worker of old,” says Tim Ogilvie of the consulting firm Peer Insight. “Increasingly, they’re saying, ‘I want to do something I really believe in.’” So to the extent a company can stand for something more than just what it sells or creates, it can develop a deeper relationship with both consumers and employees.

Keith Yamashita says companies can try to find their cause by asking,
What does the world hunger for?
This may require some contextual inquiry—venturing beyond the corporate bubble to spend time with the people who are your customers—to figure out what they care about or feel passionate about. The next step is to identify what may be standing in their way—an obstacle, a problem. To the extent you can alleviate that problem, your company can be seen as more than just a business out to make money.

A case in point is Panera Bread, the growing U.S.-based chain of bakery/restaurants. Panera CEO Ron Shaich recalls that
¹⁸
as the company sought to find a more meaningful role in communities, it looked for a problem that matched up well with its capabilities and resources. At one point, Shaich had a conversation that questioned:

What does the world need most . . . that we are uniquely able to provide?

Shaich says he wrestled with that question for a while, then worked his way to an answer with the launch of Panera Cares—an initiative to open a number of pay-what-you-can cafés that are identical to the chain’s other restaurants, except customers pay what they wish or can afford (based on suggested donation amounts).

How can we drive more ounces into more bodies, more often?
¹⁹

During the years Jeffrey Dunn was a top executive at Coca-Cola, the “unbeautiful question” above was central to the marketing of Coke’s sugary soft drinks. Coke wasn’t alone, of course: Author Michael Moss has revealed that companies throughout the snack food industry have been similarly focused on ingenious questions and methods aimed at increasing consumption of products loaded with salt, sugar, and fat—even as America’s obesity epidemic has steadily worsened. Today, Dunn has moved on to a more healthful product, as the head of the carrot company Bolthouse Farms (which pioneered the marketing of “baby carrots” after a local grower, tired of throwing away misshapen or gnarly carrots, wondered,
What if I peel off the skin and cut them into perfect mini-carrots?
). At Bolthouse, Dunn has been promoting baby carrots as crunchy treats available in snack-packs—an endeavor to answer his new question,
What if we marketed baby carrots like junk food?