Jim Gilmore and the Geeks

Friday, March 23, 2007

I had the distinct honor this week of participating in the Michigan Leaders Read program here in Ann Arbor. Four local business leaders started this book club a couple of years ago as a way to help develop the caliber of leadership in Michigan. A committee selects four books each year to organize thought and discussion.

The first book of the year was “The Experience Economy” by Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore. We were fortunate to have Jim Gilmore join us to explain and discuss what an experience economy is and why business leaders should care.

Jim and Joe make the argument in their book that the drive to extract more economic value out of human activity has resulted in an evolution from an agrarian to an industrial to a service and now to a experience economy. In many market sectors, particularly those that are consumer-based, delivering acceptable customer service is not enough of a differentiator to justify premium pricing for the service. Being able to stage and deliver an experience for the consumer that blends theater, education, escapism, and estheticism is what Jim and Joe would call the “sweet spot” of an experience offering.

So one of the examples Jim talked about this week was the Geek Squad. In case you don’t know, the Geek Squad is a computer repair service that makes office calls, house calls, or in-store repair. Robert Stephens started Geek Squad in Minneapolis in 1994 and in 2002 Best Buy bought the company (with Robert as part of the package). There are now 700 Geek Squads in Best Buy stores across the country. Its shtick is nerdy computer repair people in short sleeve white shirts, black pants, black ties, agent badges a la “Dragnet,” deadpan humor, along with many, many extensions of this persona. Click here to read why Jim and Joe think the Geek Squad is a great example of a service provider wanting to play in an experience economy.

When I first read about the Geek Squad in their book, and listening to Jim this week, I couldn’t help but think this was just a gimmick. Yeah, pretty creative but still a gimmick. Even when Jim pointed out that Robert Stephens would passionately disagree that this economic theater was anything close to being a gimmick, the consumer inside me said, “OK, but why should I take you seriously?” I reflected on this conundrum over night (how does a business stay away from the gimmick trap?) and of course I turned to my favorite answer: it’s all in the culture. (Why else would this posting be on www.corporatexray.com?)

So what would be some features of the culture of an experience-based enterprise? Well, for one, since the experience economy is all about staging “economic theater,” you would need “actors” and not simply employees. And you need these actors to buy into the persona (both character and environment) that you have created to stage this experience. In the Geek Squad’s case, the persona is “comedy with a straight face.” If I, as a consumer, have any chance of crossing over that imaginary line of buying into the Geek Squad experience, the Geek Squad Agent, in that moment of truth with me, needs to stay in character and not let my view of our shared reality define the moment.

Their role models should be the stoic guards of Buckingham Palace. Not only because of their ability to “stay in character” but also because there is an element of truth in this persona: guarding the Queen of England is no laughing matter. Neither are fixing or installing complicated, temperamental home computers and networks.

So if our working definition of organizational culture is “it’s the way we do things around here,” the Geek Squad agents have to buy into the fact that “playing” this nerdy character somewhere connects with his or her personal values and is ultimately an act of self-expression and not merely corporate expectations. For this to happen, the culture would need to “pull” out of the employee the behaviors, language, and attitudes that feed and support the desired experience. This is a key ingredient if the culture has any chance of be self-sustaining over time. But the type of culture that will ultimately undermine this experience is one that “pushes” this persona on to the employee and ultimately undermines the employee’s buy-in and leads to scripting. Therefore, the Geek Squad culture needs to be an improvisational culture rather than an acting culture if it is to avoid being simply a gimmick.

The ultimate question in my opinion is “to what degree is this a self-sustaining culture?” A good indicator of this is to find out whether the new embellishments to the Agent persona come mostly from Robert Stephens (the founder) or from the actual geeks themselves. In other words, if Robert Stephens were to walk away, would this culture and persona continue or would it peter out over time? I’ll leave you with this. Are the Geeks a cult of personality or a culture of theater?

What say you?