When I first read that now-prophetic Fortune article about former Gap CEO, Paul Pressler, from my "Part One" posting ... I tucked away a knowledge nugget about how to better approach starting a new job or new consulting assignment.
The article mentions when Pressler took on the CEO role at the Gap, he made it a priority to ask top Gap executives a short list of questions. He learned these following five questions from a recruiter who had gleaned them Kevin Sharer, CEO at Amgen.
Q1 | What about Gap do you want to preserve, and why?
Q2 | What about Gap do you want to change, and why?
Q3 | What do you hope I do?
Q4 | What are you concerned I might do?
Q5 | What are you concerned I might not do?
Smart questions, eh? I’ve used these questions during my consulting assignments to better gauge a company’s comfort level with regards to change and to new ideas. (They work well.)
Now ... the Fortune article says Pressler added another question to the list — What is your most important tool for figuring out what a consumer wants?
Everything I’ve read about Pressler says prefers to make decisions based on loads of data and not on gut instinct. (Reckon this helps to explain why he added a “research” question.) However, it seems Pressler’s penchant for customer research clashed with the Gap business culture.
The New York Times shares a story where Pressler faced making decisions on some graphic t-shirts and instead of using his gut retail instinct to make a decision, he asked Gap designers to pull together a focus group in order to determine the most likeable designs. Not surprisingly, the Gap designers weren't hip to this request. The Gap company culture has been to use gut retail instinct to make decisions and not to use focus group research data.
Hmm ... all this makes me wonder if one those Gap executives answered Pressler’s question of “What are you concerned I might do?” by saying they would be concerned if he insisted on making retail decisions based on data gathered from customer focus groups.
Great bit of research to dig out those articles John that did indeed fortell the sorry story that was to follow. It seems that Pressler was miles away from what I call "customer empathy", which goes beyond just understanding the consumer to a much deeper, more emotional level of insight. The best way to get this? Its to BE the consumer, and hire other people who are the same. Then you need a lot less, or even no, market research. I've posted on this here.
Posted by: David Taylor (brandgym) | January 25, 2007 at 06:13 AM
Very interesting story; your comments about the cultural fit are very perceptive.
I remember seeing Paul Pressler at Disneyland when he was there. He was the stereotype of the dapperly attired corporate executive: Expensive pinstriped business suit, silk tie perfectly tied, crisp white shirt, fancy black wingtips polished like mirrors, every hair in place. He even went on a ride dressed to the nines.
After readng your article, and the quotes, I can see how foolish it was to force this self-described clothes-horse to trade in his fancy suits and ties and cufflinks and put on GAP jeans and tee shirts.
But I don't understand why the CEO of ANY company should dress like a slob just to fit some image. Does CEO Lee Scott swap his Armani suits for Walmart specials? I don't think so. So why was Pressler put in a situation where he didn't fit? Did they force him to take off his Gucci wingtgips too and make him walk around in his bare feet, like a true slacker?
No wonder it didn't work out.
Posted by: Jim Wellington | March 13, 2007 at 06:21 PM