Quality, Empathy and Transparency: what being “human-centered” really means for businesses nowadays.

A few weeks ago, my social enterprise, ila Generation, turned 2. Looking back at these past two years as an entrepreneur, I realised again how many lessons and skills I had learnt in such a small amount of time. So many that I couldn’t recall them all in just one conversation. Yes, entrepreneurship teaches you a lot about yourself but also about business and not only from the perspective of the seller.

As part of my entrepreneurial journey, I have been targeted by a wide range of offerings to “enhance my business” the same way I have been given the opportunity to look into other businesses values and functioning. The least I can say is that we are all far from having the same approach with our clients’ needs and wellbeing and have different definitions of success.

Do you want your product or service to be successful? Make sure it adds value to the ones meant to use it.

I know this sounds like Marketing 101 but it doesn’t take long to stumble across examples of businesses that misunderstand the need they aim to fulfill. From a kettle that pours boiling hot water on my table/floor/hands rather than in my cup (how ridiculous is that?) to the dozens of messages and emails offering services for start-ups that I started receiving the minute I changed my LinkedIn status to “co-founder”. For the record, many entrepreneurs are running on a tight budget — especially when starting. So there are very little chances that the founder of a 4 month old start-up will hire your agency to handle their digital marketing or manage their accounts. No matter how many unreplied follow up emails you send. Halloween being on its way, I can’t resist sharing one last example with you. So grab yourself a cup of tea (hopefully your kettle works better than mine) and ignore the sales emails piling up in your inbox for a second. I’m going to tell you the story of the “ghost accelerator”.

A few months ago, we were approached by a UK-based company that presented itself as an accelerator and network for entrepreneurs and innovators. On the paper, it looked amazing: friendly representatives who took the time to jump on a call with us to better understand our business and needs, a seamless website and a plethora of opportunities: investment, partnerships, mentoring, fellow entrepreneurs to connect with… All this with no fee or equity required. And though it sounded too good to be true, we decided to give it a try.

Months after joining the “community” we had seen no difference. And, as the team was becoming more and more silent, we realised that investors were not the only ones we hadn’t met. We hadn’t met or heard of any of the organisations, leaders and entrepreneurs supposedly part of this network. Looking back at the website, there was no concrete information or proof of activity. We ended up messaging our contact asking for our data to be removed from their list and went through a round of very unpleasant and unprofessional emails. Here is the thing: as a start-up, your brand is all you have and you can’t risk giving it away to anyone unreliable. Transparency, in this case, was key. And this venture failed to understand it.

So how can all these companies be that oblivious of their clients and stakeholders’ drivers and constraints? As a founder, I know that there is always a risk of falling in love with an idea and blindly overlooking the signs telling you that it’s a bad fit for your project. The bigger the organisation, the more mistakes tend to be structural rather than individual. Many could be avoided by not underestimating the value of a qualitative and thorough research process.

Walk a mile in the shoes of your clients and users.

This is the first thing you learn in any good innovation course. Yet, by lack of time and budget or for the benefits of getting new offerings out at a fast pace, many brands chose to stick to basic surveys and industry stats. However, none of it will get you as far as qualitative data.

Qualitative, adj, /ˈkwɑl·ɪˌteɪ·t̬ɪv/

Relating to the quality of an experience or situation rather than to facts that can be measured. (Cambridge dictionary).

Two weeks ago we were publishing an article giving 5 tips to collect insightful data for your business. And a lot of it was about empathy. The problem is that many confuse empathy and sympathy. When sympathy is about feeling for someone, empathy is about understanding what it is like to be in someone’s position. In highschool, for our board exams we used to study a French philosopher called Merleau-Ponty who used to take a simple example for this. If I have a friend, called Paul, who loses his wife I can, out of sympathy for Paul, feel sad but my pain will only be mine. It will be a reaction to seeing Paul suffering and it will feel completely different from Paul’s “for the simple fact that Paul is Paul and I am me”.

Now, let’s take an empathic approach to Paul’s loss. In this situation, it would not necessarily mean crying with Paul. It would be wondering what Paul is going through and how to get a better grasp of this experience. If I have not lost a spouse myself, what can I do to understand how Paul is feeling? I can survey people like him who lost someone but that will only get me so far. However if I can learn from people who experienced something similar by interviewing them or if I can stay with Paul for some time and see all the things that he needs to do and how he feels in the process, I have a better chance of imagining what he is going through and how I can help. And, in this case, if you are running a funeral parlour or an insurance company, it would make sense for you to consider this approach. It actually has a name: it’s called design thinking and has been practiced and mastered by IDEO for years to the benefit of many companies like Muji.

People will support companies who care.

When you think about it, what does my dysfunctional kettle, sales emails that miss the mark and our favorite ghost accelerator have in common? They all tell me, as a user, that the relevant companies 1. Don’t understand my needs and 2. Don’t really care about them anyways. These are two really good reasons for me not to buy from them and not to recommend them to anyone.

I get it. Releasing new products maintains brand awareness. The bet is that appealing design, cheap production and good marketing will altogether cost less than coming up with something new and qualitative with all the additional research costs involved in the process. My kettle is a low involvement product and the company knew it: they knew the probability of me actually having an emotional attachment to it or to their brand for that matter was quite low. Therefore if not satisfied with the product, my levels of frustration would probably be quite low as well. I’d simply buy a new kettle and get rid of the other one. A decade ago, this would have probably been true.

At a time when sustainability and transformation are key to a company’s strategy, clearly showing your clients and customers that profit is all that matters to you might not be the smartest move. According to IBM, one-third of all consumers today will stop buying their favorite product if they lose trust in the brand. In fact, in 2019, one-third of them had already done so. And releasing bad products and services is far from being the only way you can lose this trust. In 2018, 64% of consumers already based their purchases on brands’ stand on social issues. Movements like #metoo and Black Lives Matter have impacted the way we do business just as much as global warming and the current global pandemic have. Additionally with the development of social media and access to information in the 21st century, it’s no longer possible for companies to shy away from their responsibilities towards their consumers and employees.

So -yes- embracing a human-centered and empathic approach to business is going to take more than changing the color of your logo once a month out of the yearor publishing a statement filled with good intentions. It will go beyond taking an online pledge and wearing a pin at a conference. It will require brands to build a strategy and take action for change by actively changing their processes and internal culture. For decision makers and board members it will mean putting your money where your mouth is to avoid backlashes like the one Oatly recently faced when the openly green and sustainable oat milk brand gave equity to Blackstone, a company actively taking part in the destruction of the Amazonian forest. Finally, it is calling for transparency. A key ingredient that you will find in any successful social enterprise today.

For us at ila, being human-centered means all these things:

• Electing quality over quantity by complying to a thorough and precise research methodology when working with an advisory client or building a socially impactful project from scratch.
• Using empathy to truly understand the needs of our users and clients. Considering people in their entirety rather than slicing them up into categories by gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation etc.
• Being transparent about our activities and how we run them. Which also means acknowledging our mistakes when we make some and planning for ways to improve for our impact to be as positive as possible. Ultimately, it’s all about being human.

Written by: Julie Sané-Pezet, Co-Founder at ila

As a multi-awarded social enterprise, our aim, at ila, is to champion a purpose-driven and socially aware workforce. Our innovative tailored programs and world-class advisory team have extensive experience working with HR professionals, leadership teams and employees to champion a diverse and gender equal culture in the workplace.

Visit ila at https://www.ilageneration.com/home to find out more about us, the work we do and how we can help you in taking the first step towards a new way of working.