Improvements and Incentives
By: Nick Riordan
Tags: Incremental, Inertia, Innovation, Incentives, Improvement

Back in the day, there was a group of people who thought the world would be better off if people weren’t allowed to do this one thing. In time, that thing became illegal. Did it stop? Of course not, it went ‘underground’. People had a desire for the product. The desire was so strong, they were willing to do what it took to meet their desire, even if it was ‘illegal’. There were people willing to meet that demand. While there was risk to being the supplier, it paid well.

I’m speaking of alcohol prohibition in the United States. This created an incentive for alcohol to be provided to those who wanted it by people willing to take the risk. Those who imbibed received the payoff of a good time and those who supplied got paid. The incentives worked for this situation all because some other group thought it would be a great disincentive for alcohol to be illegal.

I’m not bringing this up to advocate for making more things illegal or for you to do something illegal (at least according to current laws). Think of this more abstractly. People were in a pickle, I think that’s a phrase from that time, since they wanted to drink but they couldn’t do it like they had before.

If you can solve someone’s problem, they can be incentivized to use your solution and your incentive is getting paid for your product or service. At the moment, there is no shortage of problems. I have a few considerations for you in solving those problems.

Inertia and Resistance

They don’t have to come just because you built it. I can tell you this, because, well, I haven’t been the best at promoting what I have been doing. You ought to be seeing more of me in the future but up to this point I have not been providing people a compelling reason to listen, read, or buy my stuff. Once people are aware of me, that still doesn’t mean they will mosey on over and listen, read, and buy what I have created. I think it’s good stuff but if you don’t know that, there’s no incentive to get it.

You won’t do that because of inertia and resistance. In the last article, I spoke on overcoming inertia through small experiments to start making progress on your goals. Getting someone to use your product requires getting past that resistance and getting them moving toward you.

As an example, I’m always on the lookout for where I can put the cash reserves I have so it will earn the highest interest rate without taking on extra risk. There was a bank offering a higher interest rate but after looking at what you had to do to get that I passed. They overcame the inertia of me going to check out their product. They didn’t overcome the resistance because they had too many hoops to jump through to get that higher rate. They weren’t offering something compelling enough to get me to change.

Aligned Incentives

There’s a different financial company advertising they do better when their clients do better. That’s a great place to be operating from. Yes, you can go out and make a quick buck providing a product that meets some needs but isn’t that great. The chance of repeat business is low. In fact, there are business I will never go to again because of how I was treated, or the product being offered. I see it as a misalignment of incentives that led to the outcome.

If you want people to be advocate for you, your product, and your business, you must delight them. You can’t delight them if you’re not also benefiting from the interaction. They won’t be delighted if you’re not providing them with something valuable. If you’re looking to benefit the customer, they receive the benefit, and then you are also benefiting from this, you have alignment.

Improve It

I believe any product or service can be improved. The difficult part is figuring out what change can be made that will offer a better outcome for the customer and the business. There are varying perspectives and trying to bring the data in from the different sides can be a challenge. Yet, it doesn’t need to be that complicated where you start up focus groups and all the other lengths some organizations go to when making the slightest change.

Is there something that frustrates you or someone you know? How could that service or product be changed to change it from frustration to being neutral at a minimum but striving for delight?

There you go. I just gave you the way to proceed so you can start your own business and make bank. (When you do, toss a few bucks my way and we’ll call it even. I’d be delighted 😊. I’m willing to be a part of getting your business going as I enjoy the product development side provided it works for both of us.) The business providing the products and services today are improvements on prior products and services.

You might say something like a virtual reality escape room is new so it’s not an improvement. I use this as I recently did a VR escape room. Let me show you it is. Back in the day, we’d go to a place where they had big boxes with small screens where you would place one game. It was called an arcade. Even that was an improvement on the stick and hoop from even further back in the day. Then there were escape rooms came along, basically a group puzzle solving game. Combine those with advancing technology and you have a VR escape room.

Improvements are being made all the time, like combining peanut butter and chocolate. You just need to know where to look. You might be surprised once you start looking for these opportunities, you’ll see they are all around. Find something that could be done better and do it. Align incentives with those using and those providing the product. The world is waiting for your contribution.