CHAPTER 7

Reflective Improvisation

Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.

—Henry Ford

Delight is most delightful when it seems accidental and improvisational. But that doesn’t mean it’s purely impromptu. As you’ll see, that is why it is so difficult to delight and create that edge—it’s a careful balance between preparation and spontaneity, between not being ready at all and being overprepared.

This was none too apparent to a young French-Lebanese entrepreneur named Oussama Ammar when he began trying to raise money for a company he was starting, an intelligent crowdsourcing firm that connects global companies with a network of more than 950,000 experts across the world to solve their biggest R&D problems.

As he was based in Paris, he contacted dozens of investors throughout London, Paris, and Central Europe. But one particular investor caught his eye: a man who served as a director on a number of French energy and electricity companies, well known for his ability to develop young talent within his own businesses. He would not only be able to provide some of the capital they so desperately needed, but he could also help with strategy and business insight in many of the critical areas of the business.

But try as he might, all of Oussama’s attempts to reach out to this investor failed. It seemed he just wasn’t interested. Oussama knew that all he needed was another conversation with him—one in which he could fill in all the missing information that he hadn’t had a chance to communicate in his initial encounter with the investor.

A few weeks later, Oussama’s girlfriend came home to the apartment that they shared, mentioning a man who had tried to hit on her at a wine bar where she was having a few drinks with her friends after work. Trying to provoke some jealousy, she offhandedly remarked, “He even gave me his business card, and he’s the president of some grand company.” Oussama asked to see it.

When he looked at the card, the name was eerily familiar. “Call him and ask him to dinner,” he said.

You can imagine that the investor was pretty surprised to arrive to pick up his date a few nights later and be greeted not by the enchanting woman he had met at the wine bar, but by Oussama. But after that initial surprise, he was charmed by the absurdity and humor of the situation. He and Oussama hit it off tremendously, and he became one of the most important investors in the start-up.

What Oussama credits with his success is his ability to be “nearly ready.” Like Henry Ford, Oussama understood that getting ready is the secret to success. But what does getting ready mean?

To Oussama, it’s being primed and prepared to delight when the need and opportunity arise. If you are prepared with the knowledge of how you enrich—and if you’re sure that you will enrich once given the opportunity—you will have the confidence to be unapologetic and vulnerable, and to improvise when you see opportunities.

Oussama was unquestionably not who that investor would have expected when the door opened and he presented a bouquet of flowers to who he thought would be his dinner date. But in this instance, the surprise bred the capacity to delight, form a relationship, and mutually enrich. When we can look at the world through funky-colored lenses and experience the farcicality of situations, it ultimately provides fodder for our interactions with others and our ability to delight others.

Plan, but Don’t Overplan

I personally learned about the improvisational nature of delighting others through one unforgettable incident. I was getting my master’s degree at INSEAD, an international business school with campuses in Fontainebleau, France; Singapore; and Abu Dhabi. We were discussing a company that to this day remains one of the most bizarre companies I’ve ever heard of.

The company manufactured contact lenses for chickens. Yes, you read that correctly. Back in 1962, a farmer discovered quite by accident that some of his chickens were suffering from severe cataracts. As a result, these chickens were eating less. Not only that, they were easier to handle and got into far fewer fights.

Chickens are aggressive animals; they fight each other in all-out brawls that can be so severe that they often injure or even kill each other and then resort to cannibalism. Sometimes it’s about establishing a pecking order, or turf wars when there is overcrowding, but other times, they might fight just because they are stressed or bored. The chickens suffering from poor eyesight were less likely to get into these skirmishes. Because they injured each other less, the partially blinded birds were far more profitable for the farmers than their fully sighted counterparts.

This insight gave rise to an idea. A company called Optical Distortion Inc. (ODI) had figured out a way to diminish the vision of chickens through contact lenses. (And not only that, they had developed a method for insertion and retention that would make the lenses simple and straightforward to use in chickens. Not an easy feat.) These lenses worked by reducing a chicken’s field of vision and creating distortion—the chickens could still see, but the decreased vision prevented fighting and other unwanted behaviors. Moreover, the lenses were colored red; the developers didn’t quite know why, but the red lenses further reduced violence and cannibalism in chickens who wore them. The lenses were more effective and more humane than debeaking and the other preventive measures being used by farmers, and required far less effort.

ODI was granted a patent for its lenses but also knew that bigger players in the agriculture industry would get around that patent in due time. So our class discussion turned to how the company could capitalize on the development of their product, and how they would handle their marketing and product rollout.

My professor, Ziv Carmon, asked me to play the role of ODI salesperson, and told me to give my sales pitch to my classmate Robert, whom he asked to play the role of farmer.

I was not prepared to give a sales pitch, so I was completely taken aback. But I had in front of me three bullet points about the case. Those three bullet points told me everything I needed to know about these ridiculous contact lenses designed to reduce chickens’ eyesight. I had one bullet point related to the product, product features, and use cases. I had one bullet point related to the financials. And I had one bullet point on risks, mitigants, and potential challenges.

Bobbing and weaving off of those three bullet points, I was able to present a sales pitch that sold even Robert—who had actually grown up in North Dakota and knew something about farming. When he asked, “Why would my chickens want contact lenses?” I responded with all the benefits to not just him but also his chickens. I treated both Robert and his chickens as the consumer and him as the customer. When he asked about the extra hassle, I was able to tell him, “Chickens who spend their days seeing red are truly happier birds, and farmers whose chickens see red are those who get to see black [i.e. numbers in the black, rather than numbers in the red] and are truly happier farmers.” For every query, I had a smart response. And at the end of it, our professor quietly commented, “Damn . . . How did you get every one of us to want to shell out money for chicken contact lenses?”

What I learned was that the idea that you can never be too prepared is complete nonsense when you are trying to delight. Being prepared is a blessing. But being too prepared immobilizes you.

As Napoléon Bonaparte once said, “Over-preparation is the foe of inspiration.” Overpreparation deprives us of the ability to bob and weave—to dynamically regulate and calibrate. We become slow-witted, dull, and inflexible. Martin Seligman’s foundational research on preparedness has found that a sense of overpreparation can lead to worse results. It can lull people into complacency, leading doctors to overlook certain symptoms and clinical observations, resulting in misdiagnoses; and leading forecasters to miss predictions of earthquakes and other natural disasters.

Years after that class, I went on a real sales call. An entrepreneur I knew named Todd had developed a stunning piece of accounting software that could provide enormous value. But the customers he had approached were all nos. Frustrated, he reached out to me to see if I could help him sell it.

I spent a few weeks getting up to speed with the product and what it could do, his cost structure and the features that he was still developing, and a few other details about the company and the services he could offer. I went along with him to the next sales meeting, which was with an interested customer based in the Pacific Northwest.

After a bit of conversation and banter, the customer assuredly declared, “Great. I love it. I want to buy.” I looked over at Todd and saw the expression on his face turn to excitement and exhilaration, only to be followed a few seconds later by a look of terror. Because immediately after the customer said, “I want to buy,” he asked, “How much is it?”

And Todd froze. Because he did not know. Now, you might think he was an idiot for not knowing the price of his own product, but you have to understand that this was a product that typically had required long sales cycles (more than six months), involving numerous discussions about the features and capabilities, and finally, the price. Each time Todd had met with a potential customer, there had been rounds of feedback, iterating on the features, making improvements, tweaking here and there. In addition, Todd had been immersed in the product design process for eighteen months, leaving him with little attention to pay to pricing.

So after the momentary shock of realizing that Todd was not going to respond at all and was in fact completely frozen, I pulled myself together, reassumed an air of confidence, and said, “That’ll be ten thousand.”

To which the customer replied, “Great, that’s no problem.”

To which I responded, “That’s per year.”

Which he followed with, “Sure, no problem.”

To which I retorted, “That’s per user.”

To which he replied, “Oh, that’s a problem.”

And then I breathed a sigh of relief and we started to negotiate the price.

What prevented Todd from making sales, and what panicked him when his customer asked for a price, was too much information about his company. He was immobilized by his knowledge of all the product features, future offerings, services, and so on—so much so, he wasn’t able to be flexible in thinking about ballpark prices. I had enough flexibility in knowing the price—I knew the range within which I could work. Yet we had to also know the company intimately enough so that we could legitimately talk about the product and what we could offer. It’s a balancing act between being prepared and remaining flexible. Luckily, there are ways to develop and hone this.

A Repertoire of Prototypes and Exemplars

My daughter has been playing the violin for years, and recently a friend of mine commented on how wonderful that is. It’s true, there are lots of benefits: playing an instrument is supposed to make you smarter, improve your concentration, your patience, your discipline . . . I could go on and on.

But I can confidently say (as my husband can attest*) that the primary reason that my daughter is still playing the violin is because I am so smitten with her violin teacher, Tatiana. Tatiana is a superb violinist, yes, and fabulous at teaching my daughter the fundamentals of violin. But she is even better at teaching her the fundamentals of having an edge in life—though she’s probably not even aware of it.

Tatiana teaches my daughter what to do when she is approaching a new piece of music, and by association, any new situation: “You must first think, ‘Is this a march, a dance, or a song?’” You see, Tatiana explains, before starting any new piece of music, you must first identify whether it is a march requiring a strong, steady rhythm and a bold tone; a dance that brightly encourages listeners to get on their feet; or a song with irregularities and silences intended to mimic the human voice. If you don’t know what you’re playing, then you don’t know what is expected. More important, you don’t know what is unexpected.*

It’s like what the truly remarkable Phil Anderson, one of the mentors to whom I am most indebted, once told me: “When you’re asking a question, you should always surmise what answer you’re expecting to receive back. Because otherwise, how do you know whether you are surprised or whether you’ve learned something?” Have something—anything—in your mind so that you know whether it is surprising.

And know whether what you’re playing should sound like a march, a dance, or a song. It sounds trite, and obviously it’s not just about a march, a dance, or a song. But it works in much the same way in practice. Take, for example, the students I work with on start-ups and the entrepreneurs I coach who are seeking funding from investors. I tell them, “You must first think: Am I approaching them with a high-concept pitch, a two-sentence pitch, or an extended pitch?”

The high-concept pitch, the two-sentence pitch, and the extended pitch. Those are the prototypes that I tell them to think of and to try to assess. Whether it’s actually a “pitch” or not—what approach are you going to take, which of those prototypes are going to be most suitable to make sure you delight so that you have the opening to enrich? What I did with Elon was totally a high-concept “pitch”—a one-liner. With Todd and the customer it was a two-sentence pitch—slightly extended, with a bit more detail. And selling contact lenses for chickens? That was definitely the extended pitch, with lots of back-and-forth and substantive exchanges of perspectives.

The high-concept pitch is really something that allows you to distill your point into three or four well-placed, poignant words. It delivers all the information your target audience will initially need, in a quick “shock.” For example, if I were to ask you, “What is Facebook for professionals?” it would quickly get you to think LinkedIn. If I asked you about the all-electric Porsche, you’d likely think of Tesla.

But it’s not just about companies. What is the high-concept pitch that you would want for yourself? Remember what I did to delight Elon: I stayed at the high level—I essentially provided him with a high-concept pitch—a quick bout of witticism that shrewdly alluded to his level of wealth.

Now contrast that with Todd’s pitch. It was a bit more extensive and detailed (though the high-concept pitch can communicate a large amount of substance)—more of a two-sentence pitch (also referred to as an elevator pitch). This prototype is something I like to think of as how you distill a three-hundred-page business plan (antiquated, I know) into something easily remembered.

I teach my students that a two-sentence pitch might sound something like: For [target audience] who [has a need], the [product name] is a [product category] that [offers a key benefit]. Unlike [competitor or substitute], we [are different in a key way].

For example, Elon Musk might pitch Tesla like:

For wealthy individuals and car fans who want a high-end sports car that is environmentally friendly, the Tesla Roadster is an electric car that delivers unprecedented performance without damaging the environment. Unlike Ferrari and Porsche, we offer amazing performance without any direct carbon emissions.

What is your two-sentence pitch? And just as a start-up might have multiple two-sentence pitches—one for a supplier, one for a potential customer, one for a potential investor, and so on—what are your pitches and whom are they targeting? You’re not going to delight your mother in the same way that you delight your boss; you’re not going to delight your boss in the same way that you delight a customer.

And just as we saw with Todd and his customer, you’re likely to get some dialogue going from a two-sentence pitch. You’re likely to get some questions. That is the point. That is how you move from delight and start to enrich. What you should be doing during the two-sentence pitch is positioning yourself in such a way that it piques some interest in your counterpart and you elicit the types of questions that will allow you to shine and continue to delight just through your responses.

It’s the same reason why I tell those I’m coaching, “It’s not a pitch.” When we think about pitching, we tend to equate it with selling—but it’s really a conversation. You’re trying to elicit interest and start a conversation.

And the same applies for that third prototype, the extended pitch. And by extended, I mean anything that is longer than two sentences but shorter than one minute. No pitch should be longer than one minute—after that, you should be in full conversation mode.

Here are two extended pitches that I present to students, one an example of what to do, and the other an example of what not to do. See if you can figure out which is which, and why.

Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote:

Hi, I’m Phil Libin, the CEO of Evernote.

Evernote is your external brain—whenever anything important happens, you can put it into Evernote and you’ll always have it on hand when you need it. You can use Evernote with lots of devices you currently have. We have a version for Windows and for the Mac. You can also use this from any web browser, any phone, or any camera.

Now, your memory can take many shapes—there are lots of things you will want to remember. So you can use Evernote, for example, to take a picture of someone’s business card, or to take a picture of a whiteboard or a wine label that you want to remember. Or you can leave yourself a text note or a voice note—all this information goes up to the Evernote servers, where it’s processed and indexed, letting you do things like search for all the texts in your images, letting you search by location. The information is then synchronized back down to your clients, so that it’s always on hand so you can always find what you need wherever you are.

Everyone has two subscription levels: free subscription and premium subscription. Premium subscription is five bucks a month, and you get virtually unlimited storage and all sorts of other goodies.

And Rouzbeh Shahsavari, CEO of C-Crete Technologies:

The most widely used manufactured material on the planet is concrete. On average, each person uses more than three tons of concrete a year. Unfortunately, the concrete manufacturing process contributes to more than 10 percent of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide.

However, we have been able to develop a concrete that not only cuts the carbon dioxide emissions by half, but also it is five times stronger than normal concrete. Our design is unique because we have discovered how to change the very nanostructure of concrete. This approach is environmentally friendly and at the same time it reduces the cost of concrete manufacturing by 40 percent. Given that the US market for concrete is over $100 billion a year, this makes our product extremely lucrative for concrete manufacturers.

We are a team of five researchers including three superstar professors at MIT. I myself—I am a last-year PhD student working on innovative concrete and we are looking for two more passionate people to complete our team.

There is only one focal thing that distinguishes these two pitches, really: the level of detail. In the first pitch, there are too many details. Anything longer than the two-sentence pitch—even if it’s an extended pitch—should actually be thought of as having the same amount of content as a two-sentence pitch. The extended pitch situation is the one that we are most often going to be in. And when we think we have more time with an extended pitch, we end up saying things like: “You can take a picture of someone’s business card, or take a picture of a whiteboard, or take a picture of a wine label . . . You can use it from a web browser, or a phone, or a camera . . . or your mother’s camera, or your kid’s phone, or your neighbor’s phone. . . .” You get the point.

We become enamored with all the features—all the things that we can do to enrich—when we haven’t yet delighted. We think we have a lot more time with an extended pitch, but we should not be trying to fit any additional content into that extended pitch. All we are doing is providing more flavor and color.

Three Talking Points

It doesn’t matter which prototypes and exemplars you have in mind—it can be march, dance, or song; high-concept, two-sentence, or extended pitch; or any way that makes sense for you to frame a situation. Your prototypes can come in many forms. What’s important is to have a few distinct prototypes and exemplars in mind, so you go into situations armed with an approach to take, while avoiding going in overprepared. You have freedom to modify and alter your message. You can fine-tune and calibrate as necessary. I couple that with a bullet point list of things to remember—the data, or facts—which can be paired with any of the prototypes, just as I did when I used those three bullet points on the contact lenses for chickens in class that day.

I find that three is all I can cognitively handle at one time, but you can use as many as you can adeptly manage at once. I do the same before important phone calls, where I’ll take five minutes to jot down two or three bullet points; it’s the right number to help me reflectively improvise in a way that creates cohesiveness and logical progression. It also helps me lead the conversation. By knowing the two or three things that are most critical or that the potential client wants an answer or resolution to, I’m able to steer the conversation—and again, reflectively improvise in a way that comes off as elegant, by making connections between topics in a way that is not tangential or random—and arrive back at these two or three things.

It helps me seem prepared and on top of things, and more than once, I have been told that people have been impressed with my poise and expertise. In cultivating a mind-set for reflective improvisation,* I am able to delight, and then impress, and finally enrich.