conversations
What’s in a conversation? It’s the beginning of new ideas. A sharing of personal stories.
A start of meaningful relationships. This Pulse section called Conversations
highlights opinions, ideas, visions and personal anecdotes of CEOs and leaders from across industries.
Join the conversation. Send your questions and suggestions on leaders you’d like Pulse to profile.
B Y M A E M A Ñ AC A P - J O H N S O N
I
n today’s business setting wherein competition is steep, innovation is what separates thriving
endeavors from real success. And Peter Sheahan, one of this year’s ISPA Conference & Expo
speakers and founder and CEO of ChangeLabs which partners with companies to create innovative change programs, stresses the need to constantly “change how we do what we do, not just
what we do.”
Author of Fl!p, an international best-selling book about leadership, Sheahan—along with his team—
created and executed award-winning change initiatives like the StartSmart program which taught over a
million young people financial literacy skills and The Productivity Project which used collaborative technology to create new market value in hundreds of world-leading companies.
In this Conversations issue, Sheahan expounds on the hot topics of creativity and innovation in an entrepreneurial context, and on how to bring both customers and your team into the innovation process.
PETER
SHEAHAN
PULSE: Why is “innovation”
important?
Sheahan: Competition makes
innovation crucial in every
industry. When your competition raises the bar for price, quality or experience, you are
now compared against that new standard and need to
respond. The last decade or so has seen significant growth in
supply of spa-related services, and consumers are increasingly
spoilt for choice. In what is ultimately a discretionary category, we need to do new and interesting things to engage our
customers and keep them coming back for more.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, we should look at how we
organize ourselves internally as much as how we look externally. I call it “non-sexy innovation”—changing how we do
what we do, not just what we do.
22 PULSE
■
July 2012
P: In terms of how we communicate, how should business and spa owners communicate to different
generations of consumers?
S: The materials on generations have been blown out of proportion. The big shift in communications may have started
with younger people, but it has quickly trended upwards and
is now impacting the whole market. Specifically, it is transparency and dialogue.
Both the new media and [the modern] customer, who are
used to having their views heard, have taken word-of-mouth
into “word-of-mouse” which has driven unprecedented
[levels] of transparency in [business-to-customer] industries
the world over.
Were they friendly? Was the facility well-maintained? Was
my therapist professional? Everyone has an opinion and, now,
everyone has a platform, too.
The impact on communication is simple. Leverage these
tools and ensure your happy customers—not just the occasional unhappy customer—have a voice. More importantly,
realize that this new communication dynamic is forcing us to
raise the quality of our experience. This is its real impact.
Transparency means we need to be better.