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Bruce and Derek get back to the (imaginary) whiteboard to talk about drivers - drivers for new products and drivers for life. Reed asks "What's my motivation?"
Join Derek Hudson as he explores Essential Dynamics, a framework for approaching the challenges facing people and organizations. Consider your Quest!
Well, that sound means that it's another episode of our podcast for Essential Dynamics, and I'm drawn to this microphone to say, is Derek Hudson there?
Derek:Hey. Derek's in the building. Excited to be here.
Reed:In the building. I'm really glad because he's our leader and guru. Welcome to Essential Dynamics. I'm Reed McColm, your incredibly good looking host. And, Derek Hudson, what is exciting about today's podcast?
Derek:What's exciting about today's podcast is it's Bruce Alton number two, long overdue.
Reed:Oh, Bruce Alton is back. You know, some people just can't get enough of us. That's really kind. You may remember Bruce from when he his last podcast when he considered me his best friend.
Derek:So it's great. Yeah. It's, even despite that, he's back. So, Bruce, welcome. Yeah.
Bruce:Hey, guys. Reed, Derek, great to see you and talk to you again.
Derek:So so, Bruce, I just wanna set the stage a little bit because it's been a while. Bruce and I had offices right next to each other for five years. And the number of times that I was in his office, or he was in my office, or we were in the hallway, writing on the whiteboard, about all our amazing cool ideas, You know, that was like a it was just a fantastic experience that that I really enjoyed. It was one of the great things about working at Micralyne at the time. So here we are back, and I think Bruce and I wanna just kinda whiteboard today.
Bruce:Okay. I think the whiteboard is one of the most important business tools out there.
Derek:So, Bruce, let me get started. Let's put the subject on the table. When I was working on the basic concepts of, essential dynamics, I got to the path, which is systems. And when I think systems, the first thing that comes to my mind is constraints and the theory of constraints. And just in recent previous episodes, we talked to Kristen Cox about constraints.
Derek:But because we're looking at dynamic forces, they're in my mind, the opposite of constraints is drivers. I haven't found a lot of material on drivers, and I'm still exploring it. And I know it's really kind of a world that you work in to some degree. So, what are your, either your ideas or questions about drivers?
Bruce:Well, excuse me. When you when you asked me, about that and if I would be interested in talking about that, it actually really triggered some some thoughts in my mind about what does that actually mean for, for different, companies and organizations. And I think it's a really important question to ask because it's, it's one of those kind of first principles thinking that that can be applied. I mean, I, I, I was thinking about it in the context of the product opportunity mapping framework that I have. And, when I kind of thought back about like, what are the drivers related to that?
Bruce:And I kind of realized that when I, you know, I spent thirty years in product development, revenue generation, new business development, and I'd done a lot of product development. And so today through product opportunity mapping, I, I help companies spin products out that are different from their current, you know, core businesses. And when I kind of put it all together, I kind of put this framework together and, and I thought I had to show, you know, this really comprehensive document. And I think there's, you know, might be 50 different exercises and case studies and, and things. And, and I thought that was it, you know, that's what I had to go out and tell people about and what they had to, you know, what they had to, to look at and go through.
Bruce:But every single engagement, I'd say 99 times out of a hundred, it always came back to four questions, four questions they need to ask. And and we've talked about this in the past. And so I realize, you know, when you asked the question about drivers, those four questions were and I can go through them if you want, but are are the drivers of new product development. And then when you kind of think about it, I think that is a drivers there's drivers for any business. And I was thinking about it in, you know, from a bunch of different perspectives.
Bruce:So, Derek, I think you as a CA and and there's drivers in being a CPA or CA. Read your your, a screenwriter or a playwright, and there's drivers to a business, you know, or to a sorry, to a play and and, you know, plot in a play or a movie or anything else. And I think you can apply it to, you know, your, you know, getting physically fit or dieting. Like there's these key drivers that you have to really pay attention to. So I think it's a really interesting question.
Bruce:And and on the product side of things, if you're developing a new product, what I've discovered is it comes down to four, four key questions, four key drivers. And one of them is, is the first one is what problem you're trying to solve and is it worthwhile solving? The second one is, you know, who's your customer and where do they exist? The third one is who's your competition direct and indirect. And then the fourth driver is why you and why now?
Bruce:Like what what's your secret sauce? And the, those were the four questions that no matter who I talked to, no, didn't matter the industry type of product, you know, scale of product, those, it always came back to those four fundamental questions. And, I realized that's what you have to focus on and, and addressing them or asking and answering those questions. You're developing a product is it doesn't guarantee success, but what it does do, it really reduces the chances of failure and increase increases your, your product, ROI and, or the product development ROI. So that was really for me because it didn't, it wasn't obvious to me right away when I started on my product opportunity mapping journey, but I see it's just happening over and over again.
Bruce:So that was, from the product side. So there's, those clearly are the primary drivers. I should also add though that, you know, if you're developing any product, those are the primary drivers, but there's also a series of secondary drivers, and they're more specific to the industry you're in and the product you're developing. So if you're developing a software product or a new podcast or a some sort of physical product, you'll have these secondary drivers that are specific to the product itself or or the industry, that you're in.
Derek:So so, Bruce, if I could
Reed:go that defined.
Derek:Go ahead, Rick.
Reed:I'm just wondering. I want that defined, secondary drivers. I want you to under I want to understand that better.
Bruce:Okay. So primary drivers are the key boulders, first principles that will drive any product. Any product that you're actually developing, you have to ask those four things. Then there's a series of secondary drivers that are more specific to a product or an industry or a specific situation. So those drivers would be different, would change depending on what sort of product that you're developing.
Bruce:So as an example, you know, in a, if you're developing a SaaS software product, you know, it's often, you know, they, they have these secondary drivers about, lifetime value, customer acquisition costs, churn, and all those things are specific to that industry. If you're developing a hardware product, it driver might be, you know, bill of materials or, distribution channels or something like that. But in rig even if they're very different products, the primary drivers are always the same. So what problem are you trying to solve? Customers, competition, and why you, why now?
Bruce:What's your secret sauce? Those are universal.
Reed:Problem is is selfish? What if your prod what if the what is the problem you're trying to solve may be selfish? Like, all I care about is making a living.
Bruce:Yeah. And, well, I think that's, that's that too.
Reed:Yeah. Exactly.
Derek:Who's the customer for making sure you have a living?
Bruce:Well, and actually, if your your problem is to make a living, you know, what problems can you solve for other people? So in Reid, in your cases, are you trying to entertain people as a playwright? And so if that's the problem you're trying to solve, who's your customer? Who are you targeting that towards? Who's your competition?
Bruce:And you got tons of them with other playwrights and authors and everything else. And then the third p or fourth piece is the secret sauce. Like, why why Reid? You know, why why what, you know, talents do you have, you know, that you can put into that that piece? So I think those questions are really are universal when you're developing Reed's product for, you know, whatever to in order to make a living.
Reed:No. I get that. I get that, and I respect that, and I appreciate that. I, but you say there's a lot of competition, and and is it only the secret sauce that sets you apart, or is it attitude? I have a new pizza, for instance.
Reed:I want to deliver my pizza I want to start a pizza company. For heaven's sake, shouldn't someone confront me and say there are enough pizza companies? Or do they encourage me and say, okay. Yeah. You can be on there there's there's room in the there's room in the competition for you.
Bruce:Well, I think it's the it's all asking all four of those questions together. It's not one by itself. So recently we, my family and I, we went and, we got pizza from Haidou, which is, on A Hundred And Ninth Street and kind of near the university and also Sepp's Pizza Pizza, which is in that Lava space, 9080 Sixth Avenue, Hundred And Twelfth Street. One's a thin crust pizza. One's the thick crust pizza, and it's Philadelphia pizza or something like that.
Bruce:Detroit pizza or something like that. And I'm like, why are we going there spending twice as much at a Boston pizza? It's because, you know, they it's it's they literally have a good sauce, not a secret sauce, but a good sauce. They've kind of recognized their target market. They recognize, you know, who their competition, why they're better.
Bruce:They understand who their customers and all those things. So I think you need to ask it, you know, in that context, you need to ask everything together. And but at the end of the day, you're right. Like, why why create another another, pizza joint? It's like if you had a startup and you said, well, I got a new software.
Bruce:I've got a new, word processing software, a spreadsheet software. I'm like, well, good luck with that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Bruce:You're not gonna compete against, against Google or, or Microsoft. So the point, the point is you can actually use these things and ask these questions before before you spend a ton of money on product development, and it acts as a filter. Because you might conclude, no. Don't do it. It's a dumb idea.
Bruce:You're not you're not gonna succeed. So you can use it as a bit of a test.
Reed:Yeah.
Derek:So so, Bruce, I'm interested in like, you know, your question was, how do you find the driver? And one of the things I'm really fascinated by, Essential Dynamics, is, you know, start out trying to solve business problems, and then and then it gets brought more broadly applicable as you look at it. And that, I think, kind of reinforces the stuff that's sticky that, you know, that might actually be true. So we're looking at, you know, my mind, the driver is the natural force that's already there. That's, you know, moving something forward.
Derek:And, as a marketer, if the driver is, I'm going to get in your face until you buy my product, it's the wrong direction. Right? And and so what are those, you know, sort of natural things that are happening that you can tap into? And I don't know that this is really the case, but one of the close things that came to mind is, a few weeks ago, we had Dave Bodnerchuk on. You know Dave, and,
Bruce:We grew up in the same
Derek:neighborhood together.
Bruce:I know. I know. Same elementary school.
Derek:And Reid and I were in the same neighborhood, and it was only a University Farm apart in the two neighborhoods.
Reed:That's right. As I recall it, we were bullied by you guys.
Derek:That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, Dave's driver for Election Buddy was that these associations had to have elections, and they couldn't gather in person because of a constraint, which was COVID lockdown. And so now all of a sudden, there's this, like, there's this, like, unsatisfied need that Dave's product can solve.
Derek:Not every product has that just sort of, like, glaring, obvious, you know, need. But I'm interested in, you know, how do you unearth the natural driver that might be there that you can tap into rather than something that you have to force or create? Yeah. Another context is as an employer, or maybe even as a parent, you know, you want somebody to do something and you can, you know, entice them or scold them, but as soon as the light goes on inside and they want to do something, then the, you know, the world changes.
Reed:So I'm interested
Derek:in, you know, trying to figure out how do you, how do you find the natural, you know, force that's already there?
Bruce:Yeah. It's a really interesting question to ponder. And, you know, I look at, I'm familiar with, what Dave has has done and doing at at Election Buddy. And and I think, you know, he was doing that before COVID came. And, so you think, well, maybe that was circumstantial, but I think if you look at David's career, he's been really successful in a bunch of different industries.
Bruce:So I I would maybe back it up and say, was it this the market driver or the situational driver that is making Dave Bodnerchuk successful? Or is it Dave? And where I'm going with that is I think a lot of it to answer your question, Derek, is about pattern recognition and is really understanding an industry, the pattern going on. So you can see it when it pops up again, you can recognize it. And I think that you as a CPA is a is a really good example of that is, you know, when you were the CFO of the company that we were at.
Bruce:And and I have a % confidence that if I gave you, for example, a set of financial statements for a company, you know, a a or an income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement, and maybe a few notes of the financial statements, or even better, I did give you three years worth of those statements. I am 100% confident you could review those. Twenty minutes later, you'd be able to give me the red flags, yellow flags, green flags about that business. Like, I I know you'd be able to do that. And I kind of think about that.
Bruce:Well, what was your career? So I know you have a business degree and and you took a bunch of accounting courses and then you article and you wrote that tough that CA exam, which, God forbid, I would ever wanna do myself, but you did it. You learned at it. You know, you you learned a lot studying for that. And then you work for an accounting firm and you started auditing different companies, financial statements, etcetera.
Bruce:And then you became a CFO and you saw different industries, different, you know, companies' stages development. So all along the way, you were looking at the puzzle pieces and you were understanding the individual puzzle piece, that you, you know, put together. You put all the pieces together. And then over your career, over thirty five plus years, you can now see that pattern where it's just intuitive. Right?
Bruce:And so I think that you what you did and what I did on product development is you had all the individual pieces over time. You put together the puzzle and then you see the puzzle and then you take a step back and you look at, okay, this piece, this piece, and this piece, those are the drivers. And so it comes it that pattern recognition, I think, is this is very consistent. And if it's read you developing a, you know, a a plot outline in in a in a play, or if it's your kids, you you know how to treat them. You know that.
Bruce:You know how to motivate them in different ways. But you might not understand that with the first kid, you know, when they're two, but a kid number three comes along and it's twenty years later. You know, I wish I had a redo because I know a lot more now with kids. So I think it's it's really just the benefit of experience. And so I think if you look at a guy like Dave Bodnerchuk, he just had that ability to see patterns.
Bruce:And then when COVID came along, he said, okay, I gotta double down on this. I gotta bet on this big time. And I think that's I don't know if that's what he did, but I certainly suspect he he did. So I really think it's pattern recognition is a key part of identifying those drivers. And then the next question, of course, ask is, can do you have to wait thirty years?
Bruce:Like, Like, do you have to wait through all that whole experience to to recognize those paths?
Reed:To see it in in hindsight. Yeah.
Bruce:Yeah. What how can you accelerate it?
Reed:No. You make a great point. And especially about, yeah, kids. And and I know, for instance, in Derek's case, he has four four adult children of whom he's very proud, but what he doesn't talk about is the first four that he threw away and
Bruce:Or that ran away from
Derek:That ran away, that's right. Yeah. So I think, Bruce, I think that pattern recognition is really interesting. And, you know, it does come you know, in my case, there's a professional discipline. Like, I had a framework to work with.
Derek:Right? And there's some basic principles of accounting and my understanding of business. You talk about business model and stuff like that. So there's that. One way to accelerate it might be to ask the question, what's driving this?
Derek:Yeah. For sure. And, you know, we had my daughter Jade on, because I quoted her in an episode before she was on, and then I had to get her to confirm that she would have said what I said she would have said. Which was, you know, in the school system, the kids are fine. It's just what the, you know, what's the system trying to ask of them?
Derek:And the job of a teacher and a coach, you know, of youth is, what's the kid's internal driver? And, and how do you recognize that and pull that out? And for some, you know, it becomes second nature, but you can start by asking the question, what's going to move this kid forward? What inside them can we channel? Rather than, what do we have to create out out of nothing?
Bruce:Well, and and what complicates that is what it can what really amazed me about my three kids are all boys and how they both they all had the same parents, but they all turned out really differently. And so that driver for one is completely different for the second one. It's completely different from the third one. So you I guess, I think we're all biased by our own motor you know, own drivers, our personal drivers, and we try to put that upon other people, which sometimes works, but is often a mistake because it's the wrong the wrong driver. We're assuming we know what the driver is.
Bruce:And I think that's the same. You know, I could advise you guys how to, hey, you know, this is how you diet or work out or something like that. Well, what works for you and what works for me may not work for you and and vice versa. So I think that's you need to ask the question, but I think part of that challenge is how do you how do you articulate a driver? Like, if I asked you, what's your driver?
Bruce:Like, it's a hard thing to to articulate. Right? Like, it's a hard thing to really pull out and understand.
Derek:Well, let's put this let's put this to our drama guy, because isn't that the classic trope that the actor says, what's my motivation?
Reed:Absolutely. It is. Absolutely.
Derek:So tell me and you you said that you're a method actor, so tell us Yeah. How it's made up, but it might be real.
Reed:I've studied it. I've gone through it. I spent a long time deciding what to do as an actor, and I often ask that question, what's my motivation as this character? And, I find that the most, the most effective answer is, a paycheck.
Derek:Which is not true. Which is, because You're right. It's not true. It's not true because we get art. Like, it's true for some, but where the real art is, it's not true.
Derek:Because it's it's the story. It's the human drama. And
Reed:Yeah. And that's what makes it fulfilling. And that's what I'm leaving behind because I'm certainly not making money at it. Yeah. But, Derek, could we have Bruce back for a third episode, please?
Reed:I think we've got lots of stuff to talk about, but we don't have any more time.
Derek:I'm I'm I'm losing count, but Bruce and I have, you know, we know we can talk about this for five years straight, so I'm sure we have content for one more episode.
Bruce:I would I would love to come back. I think there this is a really interesting question a lot of people are interested in, and it's actually triggered a lot of thoughts in my mind. So I got I have more to say too. So thank you very much for having me this this second time. I really appreciate it.
Reed:Oh, Bruce. You are welcome. Welcome at anytime. We are grateful to have you. For Bruce Alton, Bruce, how would people find you if they needed to get in touch with you?
Bruce:Well, for product opportunity mapping, the website is wwwproduct-mapping.com, or probably the easiest thing to do is to follow me on LinkedIn as well, Bruce Alton.
Reed:Okay. Derek, how would people find you?
Derek:Derek hudson dot ca.
Reed:That's it. Well, good. That's that's
Derek:that's that's fascinating. Although, our guests are talking about LinkedIn, so, you know, we're gonna send them a bill, but you just can't find me on Yes.
Reed:I'm on LinkedIn as well, but it's very lonely on that. But, I I I just wanna thank our guest, Bruce Alton, for joining us today. And as ever, Derek Hudson, our guru and, and leader through this, path of essential dynamics, and also for Brynn Griffiths in the studio, engineering us to a a good result. I'm Reid McCollum. Please consider your quest.