My first day at school (ah..I mean Intuit)

                          I will never forget my first day at Intuit. After sitting in a three hour training meeting (which we call ‘onboarding’) about the company’s benefits, leadership practices and products, my manager brought me to a meeting with Scott Cook. We shared with him some ‘data on how the site was doing and how we planned to change the site.’ His initial response was ‘what are the website’s users saying.’ Instead of just looking at the numbers, he wanted verbatims. He wanted VOC – he wanted to know the ‘voice(s) of the customer.’ I have to admit that this was very different from what I had experienced at some of my other companies, where management just wanted to ‘see the numbers.’ Since then, I have noticed that our product managers relay on what customers are actually saying and what types of words they are using.’  

Now the Online Team reports not only on the numbers, such as unique visitors, posts, posts replied to by forum, but also share the actual verbatims with our product management team….not only from Intuit sponsored online community websites but also third party websites for information about our products.

Since day 1, Scott’s question about voice of the customer ‘VOC’ has lingered in the back of mind.

By the way…. I love going to school and am always in learning mode.

Thanks Scott!

What is your mindset

Recommended read:

Mindset, The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck. It is a little academic, but is really interesting read for anyone that works with teams — with children — or with others. The book focuses on people having two type of mindsets: growth or fixed.

If you have the fixed mindset, you believe that your talents and abilities are set in stone–either you have them or you don’t. You must prove yourself over and over, trying to look smart and talented at all costs. This is the path of stagnation. If you have a growth mindset, however, you know that talents can be developed and that great abilities are built over time. This is the path of opportunity–and success.

Growth mindsets views life as a series of challenges and larning opportunities vs. people with fixed mindset who believe they are ‘stuck’ with what they were born with. Which one would you rather have on your team.

Dweck demonstrates that mindset unfolds in childhood and adulthood and drives every aspect of our lives, from work to sports, from relationships to parenting. She reveals how creative geniuses in all fields–music, literature, science, sports, business–apply the growth mindset to achieve results. Perhaps even more important, she shows us how we can change our mindset at any stage of life to achieve true success and fulfillment. She looks across a broad range of applications and helps parents, teachers, coaches, and executives see how they can promote the growth

Why is this important?

– When building a team, I prefer individuals who are in learning mode and don’t get frustrated by obstacles, who don’t accept ‘things the way they are.’

– When managing a community, you see a significant percentage of users who don’t want to dive in and post. There’s nothing wrong with being a lurker, but.. I have seen knowledgeable customers and even knowledgeable employees afraid to make a mistake online. That’s why we try and provide an opt-in training program for both groups, so they can feel comfortable ‘playing and particpating’ online. On our Small Business Development Center site, for example, we created a little demo video, on how to use the site. It is not that great — maybe not even YouTube material — but it is one way to help prospects feel more comfortable. Well, at least those in a growth mindset vs. those in a fixed mindset.

Other tactics about how we try and get users and employees engaged will be discussed later on….

I will write more about this later, but the important take-away is that we try to get users engaged in our community, we need to be aware of their Mindsets.

In the meantime, here’s an interview with Carol Dweck