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Last year, I went to Center Parcs with two other couples (and the kids).
On the Friday night, the three women went for an evening in the Spa together, coming back fully relaxed.
On the Saturday night, they suggested us three blokes should do the same, so we did.
When we got back, my friend’s wife asked how we found it.
‘It was great! We completed the whole thing’.
It’s fair to say they looked quite bemused.
In a recent podcast, Rory Sutherland mentioned a book called ‘Obvious Adams’. Published in 1916, it’s one of those beautifully slim books that manages to contain more wisdom in its 60 pages than most modern books do in 600.
In short, it’s the story of a young marketeer who finds his way in the industry by, well, hanging around, watching people, and stating the obvious. Think a cake company that needs to get people to taste their cakes, not just see them. Or a store that needs to move location to somewhere with more passing footfall. The things that organisation’s know, but have become blind to.
A couple of years ago, I had my own Obvious Adams moment in an airport we were working with at the time.
The brief was simply: improve the experience for customers. So off we went, like Tom Hanks in The Terminal, to spend a few days just sort of… hanging around.
As the days went by, I became fixated on a table by one of the wings of the airport, leading from the main concourse (where all the shops are) to some of the gates (where the planes are).
Throughout the day, people would see their gate called, neck as much of their pint as they could, put their glass on this table, and run down to the waiting plane. This meant that as the day went on, the glasses piled up, leaving a table full of half-drunk beer to act as a final goodbye to people as they left the city.
I went to ask the airport customer service team – whose desk was meters from the table – why they didn’t do something about it.
Oh, those glasses belong to the pub, they’re not our responsibility
So I went to speak to the pub, again pretty close to where the beer-tsunami table was, to ask why they didn’t do something.
Oh, our jurisdiction is only the area of the pub, we don’t get involved in anything outside of that
When we played back our findings to the Exec team, we put up photos of everything we’d seen and experienced during our visits. Walking the walls, we paused at the photo of the troublesome table. I asked why the table was there in the first place.
One of the Execs looked a little sheepish.
Oh, well, Burger King wanted to increase their footprint and add a few more of their own tables, so we took a few of ours away to make room and just popped them around the airport.
One very innocent act had caused half of the passengers going through that airport to walk past an overflowing table to empty glasses, with no obvious owner.
So what did they do? They just took the table away. And what did customers do? They finished their pints, and took them back to the bar.
The thing is, you’re not getting that from a survey. People are unlikely to talk about their airport experience and specifically call out the table with the glasses on. And even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to explain why they were behaving in that way. But that doesn’t mean it’s not important – especially if you have many of those small things add up, to give the impression of a tired, unloved, unclean space.
And in the same way, you’re probably not going to find out that for me and my friends, our approach to a nice relaxing spa is to try and get through every room in the allotted time. ‘Come on, we’ve had our five minutes of steaming, only twenty minutes left to do the hot pool, and sauna, and the weird showery spray thing!’
What if they lent into that, and gave us a set route to follow? Or they could push against it, realising we had no clue what we’re doing and giving us a quick introduction that made it very clear THE POINT IS TO RELAX, as our partners made clear to us when we got back, high-fiving our achievement.
Either way, it would show a bit of understanding of how different people see the world. And to understand that, you have to try and see their world for yourself.
Thanks for reading this article, I really hope you enjoyed it. You can subscribe to my monthly newsletter below, find me in picture form on Instagram @johnjsills, or in work mode at The Foundation and LinkedIn.
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