Leadership in Focus
Teaching Notes
Case: Listening for Innovation
Leader:Carl Ziade
Topic: Innovation
Capstone Overview
Co-Founder and CEO shares how spending time with employees at work, listening to them, watching them work through processes, and building relationships with customers helps drive opportunities for innovation at the early stage of a company.
Capstone Summary
By listening to customers, while engaging with them personally, Ziade started to better understand their needs. He learned the names of family members because when you engage at that level you learn insights that cannot come from a questionnaire. By having engaging conversations, he is able to tap into their subconscious minds to learn how they design their lives and manage processes, helping him get clever around addressing their problems. He invested over 1,000 hours watching employees work and saw this as a good investment of time since it is difficult for clients to unleash an insight or opportunity from a questionnaire or based on a framework. In conversations he would simply listen and mirror what clients said. This allowed them to share their pain and get involved with him since he focused less on questions and more on listening. This process led to customers asking him to use their technology to support processes that had been uncovered through conversations, resulting in revenue. This strategy works well in the early stage of companies, since it give you the flexibility to truly design technology that supports customer problems. He concludes that while building relationships it is important for people to like you, because if people like you, they will open doors for you.
Context
Carl Ziade grew up in Beirut, Lebanon and worked as a software engineer before getting his MBA and co-founding a startup business in the insurance industry. He raised money from investors who believed in Ziade and his cofounder more than their idea, which gave them the confidence to pivot and learn more about the space and persona of an insurance broker so they could build a product useful to customers. Realizing they were experts in the industry and how much they understood the persona of an insurance broker, they worked to dive deeper into finding a technology that could support their target customer and build a viable business.
Capstone Perspective Design
The Capstones Perspectives are short commentaries by leaders on a particular leadership topic. The run times for these videos are shorter than the leadership cases (typically less than five minutes) and there are no pauses for discussion. They are designed to spark conversation among small groups, but they can also be used for individual viewing.
Facilitation Questions
Use the brief video of this leader to spark discussion on the topic. You might want to consider a couple questions such as:
- Do you agree with this leader’s perspective? Why or why not?
- Share a personal experience that aligns (or conflicts) with what the leader shared.
- What personal values help you structure your own thinking on this topic?
- What leadership principle or perspective drives your behaviors and actions?
Considerations
The lessons shared by this leader are based on his own experiences. These lessons are not necessarily substantiated by academic research but are shared to spark consideration and insight.
Leadership in Focus
Teaching Notes
Case: Listening for Innovation
Leader:Carl Ziade
Topic: Innovation
Capstone Overview
Co-Founder and CEO shares how spending time with employees at work, listening to them, watching them work through processes, and building relationships with customers helps drive opportunities for innovation at the early stage of a company.
Capstone Summary
By listening to customers, while engaging with them personally, Ziade started to better understand their needs. He learned the names of family members because when you engage at that level you learn insights that cannot come from a questionnaire. By having engaging conversations, he is able to tap into their subconscious minds to learn how they design their lives and manage processes, helping him get clever around addressing their problems. He invested over 1,000 hours watching employees work and saw this as a good investment of time since it is difficult for clients to unleash an insight or opportunity from a questionnaire or based on a framework. In conversations he would simply listen and mirror what clients said. This allowed them to share their pain and get involved with him since he focused less on questions and more on listening. This process led to customers asking him to use their technology to support processes that had been uncovered through conversations, resulting in revenue. This strategy works well in the early stage of companies, since it give you the flexibility to truly design technology that supports customer problems. He concludes that while building relationships it is important for people to like you, because if people like you, they will open doors for you.
Context
Carl Ziade grew up in Beirut, Lebanon and worked as a software engineer before getting his MBA and co-founding a startup business in the insurance industry. He raised money from investors who believed in Ziade and his cofounder more than their idea, which gave them the confidence to pivot and learn more about the space and persona of an insurance broker so they could build a product useful to customers. Realizing they were experts in the industry and how much they understood the persona of an insurance broker, they worked to dive deeper into finding a technology that could support their target customer and build a viable business.
Capstone Perspective Design
The Capstones Perspectives are short commentaries by leaders on a particular leadership topic. The run times for these videos are shorter than the leadership cases (typically less than five minutes) and there are no pauses for discussion. They are designed to spark conversation among small groups, but they can also be used for individual viewing.
Facilitation Questions
Use the brief video of this leader to spark discussion on the topic. You might want to consider a couple questions such as:
- Do you agree with this leader’s perspective? Why or why not?
- Share a personal experience that aligns (or conflicts) with what the leader shared.
- What personal values help you structure your own thinking on this topic?
- What leadership principle or perspective drives your behaviors and actions?
Considerations
The lessons shared by this leader are based on his own experiences. These lessons are not necessarily substantiated by academic research but are shared to spark consideration and insight.