One of the great pleasures of Alisa Solomon’s book, Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof, is the story of how Broadway and dance legend Jerome Robbins led the writing and composing team to discover the essential message of the show: Tradition!
Robbins and the team realized that the stories of Sholem-Aleichem about Tevye the milkman were really about the internal and external pressures that were breaking down a traditional way of life. Robbins reorganized the entire show around this theme and in doing so created a musical that has found enthusiastic audiences all over the world — especially in Japan, where people find the show essentially Japanese.
My first reaction after finishing the book was to relate the way Robbins worked to the process of creating the perfect marketing message. (See “What is this Show About? Marketing Lessons from Fiddler on the Roof” for a detailed explanation of how Robbins pressed the team to the moment of discovery.)
But upon further reflection, and consideration of some coaching I’m going through for my business and the way that Amazon Web Services develops products, I’ve realized that Robbins's methods have a lot to offer people who are designing technology products.
What struck me really profoundly was the way that Robbins (and for that matter Steve Jobs) did not see it as his job to come up with the perfect idea. He kept asking the team, “What is this show about?” because he didn’t have the right answer. He would then listen to their responses and suggestions. Robbins's job was to recognize the right solution when it came along, not to craft it himself.
Anyone familiar with the Steve Jobs literature knows of the many, many stories of Jobs demanding a better solution than the one presented. In this way, time and time again, people reported they performed to levels they never thought capable under his famous “peer pressure of one.” But Jobs, like Robbins, didn’t see it as his job to come up with the suggestions but rather to listen and recognize when the solution appeared.
Listen to Yourself. Listen to your Business.
I recently started working with two excellent business coaches, Gale West and Mark Hurwich, who recommend what is fundamentally a process of listening. West and Hurwich advise to stop trying to figure everything out yourself, something that can induce incredible amounts of stress. Instead, they recommend that you consider your business a separate entity and instead listen to it. What does it want to be? What does it need to survive and thrive?
Instead attempting to craft an edifice from your conscious mind, allow your subconscious, your body, or whatever you want to call it to guide you. West and Hurwich draw significant inspiration from the Internal Family System method of therapy in which you listen to different parts of yourself to understand your psychology.
It occurred to me that that is exactly what Robbins and Jobs are doing in their design process. The are listening for the perfect product to emerge. It is interesting that both Robbins and Jobs were associated with striking fear into others, seemingly powered by a rage against imperfection. Robbins referred to it as the “black mood required for work.” Jobs was well aware that he radiated negative energy at times. As he once remarked to an editor of Fortune magazine in discussion a negative story about him, "Wait a minute, you've discovered that I'm an asshole? Why is that news?” In other words, the listening must be driven by passion.
As I thought about this I started to see evidence of this sort of listening all over the technology world. Fred Wilson once explained at the Data Driven NYC meet up, how he and his partners spend a year or two studying a space and attempting to understand it before they make their investments. It seems to me that this is a process of listening.
John Furrier, a technology analyst and entrepreneur, wrote a brief post about Amazon Web Services that suggests that the entire growth of that amazing business may have been driven by a process of listening. (See AWS Almost Never Happened - Where would we be today?) Furrier, citing Andy Jassy, who was present at the creation of AWS and now leads the business, wrote that “The idea grew organically out of the company’s frustration with its ability to launch new projects and support customers. … the concept of AWS was sort of stumbled upon while seeking to solve a recurring need, namely faster technology deployment. This trend would manifest as an entirely new and game-changing approach to technology development, which involved decoupling services. No one at Amazon knew at the time it would morph into what AWS is today."
During a recent interview with an AWS engineer, who would not speak for publication, he described how the product development process starts with a press release that describes the benefits the product will have for customers. He explained that these initial press releases that begin the product development process are often used word for word when the products are announced. The AWS design process indeed seems to be one that is driven by an organic process of listening for what the market wants rather than some top down method of forcing a vision on the market.
In my own journey as an entrepreneur, I am finding that adopting this attitude of listening as I have described it has allowed me to shed stress and instead focus on finding the resources to accomplish what the businesses I am in and the products I am helping create are telling me they need. My dark places of dissatisfaction, have become a source of strength.
I’m sure many others have discovered this phenomenon. Please send me examples of other forms of listening. I would love to learn from them.
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Dan Woods is on a mission to help people find the technology they need to succeed. Users of technology should visit CITO Research, a publication where early adopters find technology that matters. Vendors should visit Evolved Media for advice about how to find the right buyers. See list of Dan's clients on this page.
