In an earlier post, I mentioned Delta’s Song and that two major items jumped out – their credo and their target audience. I think the target audience item really highlights the problem with many companies’ approach to new ideas - self-centered, inward focus - which can be rectified with a design-centered approach.
The case study states that after four months of work by McKinsey consultants and an LCC Task Force of super smart Delta executives, they turned over a game plan for a new low-cost airline, outlining routes, aircraft to be used, pricing, etc. The article states, “On other matters, however, the proposal was purposely left open.” It continues, “…the construction of the airline began with a search for a target customer.”
What?! Four months of work, brilliant people and expensive consulting fees and they created a plan with no audience. If I was given a business plan and told to implement it and there were all kinds of fancy charts, analyses, instructions on where my planes had to fly, what I can charge, etc., but then was told “the rest” is up to me, well I would like to think I would tell them where they could put that PowerPoint.
As our professor pointed out, the task force did the easy part. Not that it's easy work to complete but easy as in the data, the information, is laying out there, “known” – detailed analyses of cost, ideal turnaround times, route planning, etc.
The hard part is finding unmet, usually unarticulated, needs that solve real problems and then creating an appropriate solution. The hard part specific to Song's management was finding people for which this offering was relevant. Delta did it backwards. They went and found a solution (a theoretical one at that) for a non-existent problem and then gave the Song team the job of finding people who fit that solution. It’s like a tailor making a bunch of incredibly customized suits ahead of time and then trying to hunt down customers with the right measurements who happen to like that color, that style with that number of buttons.
The problem Delta acted as if it was trying to address was already solved…by Jet Blue and Southwest. The problem Delta was really solving for wasn’t a customer problem, it was a Delta problem – how to stop losing money in Florida to competitors. At the risk of sounding super obvious, customers don’t make purchase decisions based on how they can help you.
Very insightful. Thanks! I think in part Song lost because they tried to fit the Southwest/Jet Blue structure on the "old world" Delta foundation. It just doesn't work. But it's interesting to find out they were backward from the start.
Posted by: Darrin Dickey | October 11, 2007 at 03:10 PM