Maslow’s Hammer, Digitized

Posted by Rich Crowley in Change, innovation, management, strategy, thinking

Abraham Maslow is attributed with saying that “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.

Most of us are guilty of falling prey to such thinking in our personal and professional lives at some points in time. However, I think this mode of thinking also affects organizations.

Individuals and organizations attempting to remain relevant and thrive in the digital age should resist the temptation to focus too much effort on transforming their existing skills, products and services (their hammers) to meet the needs (ie. the nails) of an increasingly digital world.

It could be that the world is moving past nails and on to screws, or some other type of fastener, or more drastically, digital disruption has led to new business models where the assemblers in the supply chain are drastically reduced in number and hence in market size. It could also be that a less effective fastener is simply easier thing to sell or service digitally than a hammer is.

In this hammer scenario, you are at best wasting some of your effort by focusing too much on your hammers and at worst, you risk being run over as your customers move to those selling screw drivers or alternative fasteners or as they leave the assembly business altogether.

While this hammer scenario is a bit of an oversimplification, there is good value in really assessing the details of what you offer and deciding if a digitally enhanced version of that thing even makes sense.

Perhaps it is obvious that things with built-in complexity have always been vulnerable to improvements driven by simplicity. However, I am a big believer that one of the key characteristics of domains ripe for digital disruption are those with complexity.

In the entertainment industry, the record album, while noble and not dead yet, quickly lost favour when Napster and iTunes made single songs accessible. Streaming services with their focus on simplicity-of-subscription (in spite of initially thinner content catalogs) have hit traditional distribution players hard.

In the technology arena, the smart phone and tablets quickly ate the lunch of the PC in spite of less functionality and simple applications (apps) geared at very specific problem domains.

In financial services, ETF’s have attacked the value-proposition of fund managers and robo-advisors are doing the same to the financial advisor. Complex insurance products (in spite of their richness) may prove tougher to market, underwrite and service online and fall victim to simpler, more targeted product offerings.

So…is your hammer (or nail gun) complicated? Is it built for big nails and little nails, big hands and little hands and is it scratch-proof?  Do you have a product backlog item to add a digital interface that tracks number of nail-hits, frequency, force etc. which can be loaded to the cloud and consumed by an app?   If you do, consider whether your clients may simply want to use their iPhone to find someone nearby with a hammer they can borrow instead of buying their own.