How do you cut through? Part 1 of this article introduced the CAPFUL needs hierarchy with a focus on primal level needs. Part 2 covered social needs (love and prestige) the next level up. This Part 3 is about our highest level needs for fulfilment and achievement. Meeting these needs draw us to self actualisation. The barrier is most of us can only get to self actualising after our lower level needs are satisfied. It is worth the effort because we are complex creatures who can only achieve lasting happiness by unlocking the best aspects of our natures. This comes from aspiring to mastery and the fulfilment of giving back to others.
capful summary
CAPFUL is our contemporary evolution of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The acronym stands for six needs: Certainty, Achievement, Prestige, Fulfilment, Unusual and Love. The needs are paid in three levels (primal, social and actualisation). Each needs pair tends to create emotional conflict. This is the human condition!
All of us tend to have one or two of the needs we prioritise. But even so how we act to meet our individual needs is unique to each of us. Catering to people’s needs is how to create cut through in customer strategy and customer experience
What is your life purpose?
Have you ever asked yourself what it is all about? Who you are? What is your life’s purpose? These are the big questions stemming from our self awareness. For most of us there are inflection points in our lives when we need to take time out and reconsider our place in the bigger picture. Pink wrote about how ‘nine-enders’ (people who are something-nine years old) tend to change their lives. His book suggests we are often more motivated to take on bigger goals one year short of each decade than at other ages. Even more compelling is how nine-enders are more likely to succeed with extreme or difficult challenges. Nine-enders try harder. It seems we start searching for meaning in our lives as a result of approaching the end of another decade of our life. This drives us to take stock of what we have achieved and what remains in our bucket list.
Aspiration is the need seeking us to achieve, grow and develop mastery. Pink has also written about our need for mastery. We seem to have a compelling need to get better at things. To master them. It could be a practising a sport, playing a musical instrument, improving our golf, chess, snooker or poker game, tending a growing garden, learning to draw, dance, paint or sculpt, training a pet, appreciating wine or becoming a gourmet in the kitchen. There are many domains of mastery you can observe if you ever get travel again after this pandemic.
During our previous travels one of the most inspiring places we discovered was the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. The Temple is a park where retired locals spend time doing things offering the possibility to increase their mastery. They play mahjong for mental stimulation. Others (in defiance of their physical age) enjoy keeping hacky sacks in the air with nothing but their feet. The most serene practice water calligraphy. They spend hours trying to perfect this beautiful writing form with brushes and water. They are totally okay their creations always end up evaporating to nothing.
Their pursuit of mastery is very similar to any dedicated video gamer trying to level up. Both seem to have an almost zen-like, single minded focus to achieve. So compelling is seeking mastery McGonigal described it in her book Reality is Broken. Her message is about how the challenges in games perfectly meet our need for achievement. She describes how a game environment can provide us exactly the right level of challenge to engage us. In games the challenges can also meet lower level needs discussed in Part 2. Epic quests meet our need for prestige when we our alter ego gets to be the one who saves the world. If we do this as part of a group we meet our need for love and connection. The starting point is the desire to achieve the goal. But not all of us self-actualise by acting on our personal aspirations.
Fulfilment is our need to give back to others. It comes from the realisation we are part of something bigger and interconnected somehow. We may try to be part of something designed to change the world on a greater scale than we can accomplish by ourselves. It our need for fulfilment driving the success of campaigns like RUOK? and World’s Greatest Shave. We may give blood, volunteer for a charity or make donations to help a cause we believe in. We may just as readily act on a small scale to give something back. Have you ever coached your child’s team, mentored a colleague or simply been a friend by listening? If so you probably felt better for it.
Our work in customer experience research with cancer victims has shown us how specific life event can trigger a focus on fulfilment. Remarkably about half of the patients we interviewed diagnosed with life-threatening cancer had reframed their condition to be a good thing. They felt it had made them appreciate life more. And many of them improved their lives by working out how to give back more to others.
You might get a sense of this triggering by watching the video below. It introduces the ‘Overview Effect’ experienced by astronauts who see the world from space. The images in the video are quite beautiful. The conversations with the astronauts are considered and compelling. The clips show how this specific experience draws people to reconsider their place in the world.
So how do people change when they realise they can feel fulfilled by giving back? Chuck Feeney responded by giving more than $8 billion to causes. He closed down Atlantic Philanthropies on September 15, 2020 after meeting his goal to give away most of the fortune he earned from Duty Free Shoppers.
“Our giving is based on the opportunities, not a plan to stay in business for a long time.” Chuck Feeney 2019
Feeney embodies three themes of this article. He is an 89 year old nine-ender. He has achieved an extreme goal he set for himself. He has fulfilled this goal by giving back. Another example who combines aspiration with fulfilment is Vittorio Brumotti. Brumotti is famous in Italy for his online videos of his bicycle exploits. He has set ten world records including riding up the stairs of the world’s tallest building and in 2012 tried to climb Everest on a bicycle… He apparently got to base camp before the government of Nepal revoked his permit to go further! However Brumotti is just as famous for his regular segments on Striscia la Notizia.
On the long-running show Brummotti campaigns for greater social good using his bicycle tricks. This can be as small time as leaving plastic dog turds on cars parked in disabled spaces or as serious as outing government mismanagement by riding around expensive, never-completed buildings. In recent years Brumotti has even taken on organised crime by filming and outing drug dealers across Italy in the act of selling. In some cases this has prompted violent retaliation and | or criticism. But Brumotti is committed:
“I want to speak about big problems.” Vittorio Brumotti 2020
Even though activism might seems more relevant to the not-for-profit sector, there are commercial companies getting involved for profit. The video below shows how Microsoft has adapted its XBox game controller so disabled children can also play. It allows these children to be equals with their able-bodied peers. After all they aspire to level up in exactly the same ways. It’s a cool example of how a corporate giant, previously criticised for some of its more competitive business practices, can balance aspiration with fulfillment. Microsoft has targeted a huge niche market with more than a billion potential players world-wide by giving something back. The companies tag line for the product is ‘When everybody plays, we all win.’
This idea of combining aspiration with fulfilment is incredibly powerful for attracting consumers. But it also unlocks possibility inside companies to deliver customer strategy with cut through and remarkable CX because of how this makes employees feel.
“This is the thing. We, as Microsoft employees, live off this idea of empowerment. We all want to make a difference.” Bruce Johnson Inclusive Tech Lab Lead 2019
Great customer strategy comes from working out how to meet potentially conflicting needs. This Part 3 article considered how to achieve aspirations and be fulfilled at the same time. Achieving a personal goal or pursuing mastery can be selfish until it is directed at helping others. When companies create customer value propositions to do just that, they can also motivate their people to create truly exceptional results.
Robert Dew is a Founding Partner at CapFeather Global with more than 2o years of corporate consulting and university lecturing in Innovation, Customer Strategy and Customer Experience. His PhD related to improving creativity in strong corporate governance environments. He is not a currently a ‘nine-ender’ but vividly recalls getting a motorcycle license in time to ride the Great Ocean Road for his 50th birthday. These articles and two books so far are part of his attempts to give something back.