How to close the growth gap: turning customer insights into business results with Robyn Bolton

Speaker A: Welcome back to Insights Unlocked. In this episode, I sit down with Robin Bolton, founder of Miles Zero and author of Unlocking Innovation, who has spent her career helping companies like Medtronic, Nike and Santa Fe turn bold ideas into real business results. Robin makes a, uh, compelling case that innovation isn't an idea problem, it's a leadership problem. We get into how to close your growth gap, why innovation theater backfires, and what it really takes to to listen to your customers. Enjoy the show.

Speaker B: Welcome to Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing, where we bring you candid conversations and stories with the thinkers, doers and builders behind some of the most successful digital products and experiences in the world, from concept to execution.

Speaker A: Welcome to the Insights Unlocked podcast. I'm Nathan Isaacs, principal content marketing manager at User Testing, and our guest today is Robin Bolton. Robin is the founder of Mile Zero and a leading voice on turning innovation into real revenue, helping companies like Medtronic, Nike and santafi move from bold ideas to measurable business results. A former partner at InnoNight and BCG Consultant, she works with executives to navigate uncertainty and build the leadership behaviors and capabilities required to make innovation actually work. Welcome to the show, Robin.

Speaker C: Thanks. So excited to be here.

Speaker A: Robin, you spent your career at the intersection of innovation and real business results, from P and G to Innocyte to Found in Mile Zero. Can you walk us, uh, through that journey and what led you to focus so deeply on helping leaders turn uncertainty into growth?

Speaker C: Absolutely. So I was very fortunate that, um, while I graduated from undergrad, I had studied marketing and I got hired by P and G into brand management. And it was at a time, a long time ago now when the company was just kind of just refining its innovation wings. It had started up, uh, some new brand groups based on the realization that the company hadn't created a new brand in something like 30 years. And so I just got assigned randomly to one of those groups, and quite literally a year to the day that I graduated, I was on stage with the team launching Swiffer. Um, so it was a wild first year out in the real world, but I loved it. We had a great general manager who I didn't realize then, but I realize now, did everything right when it came to leading innovation, you know, intrapreneurship, entrepreneurship, honestly, as a profession was still relatively new. I'm talking the late 90s. Um, and so we're all figuring these things out, like, what's the right process, how do you run experiments, how do you do user testing? And I just loved all of it. So from um, from P and G, actually, still with P and G, moved down to Arkansas. That's a whole other adventure. Was on the Walmart sales team. And then when it was time for me to move back to Cincinnati, P and G, for very, very good and sound business reasons, had actually cut all innovation. And I was like, well, I really like the innovation stuff. I love the kind of turning the chaos into order and the constant learning and experimentation. So left P and G, moved up to Boston, got got my MBA at Harvard, went to work at Boston Consulting Group, went to work at innisight, which is Clayton Christensen's firm, and all the while working with big successful companies like the ones you named, helping them in a lot of ways. Yes. Launch new products, launch new revenue lines, and alongside that, build the capabilities and the leadership skills that you need to do something different in a successful company, which has kind of grown and gotten successful by doing the same things over and over really well. So, you know, had that incredible experience, continue that incredible experience at mile zero, and have realized, especially in the last, we could say two, three, maybe even going back to 20, 20, um, years that the world is getting more uncertain. Shocker. Um, and it's moving faster and more things are changing at one time, and it just feels overwhelming for a lot of folks. And interestingly, all the tools we use in innovation, I know it doesn't sound glamorous, but they're all about managing risk and managing uncertainty. And so they are the perfect tools to, to use in any part of the business these days. So that's why, as I talk about what I do, the tools haven't changed. But talking about it has changed in the sense that in a lot of ways, we all have to be innovative. We all have to be nimble and able to change and process quickly and test and learn. Because the days of making a decision and then following that plan for a year or five years or ten years, that's over.

Speaker A: What you're saying there is what keeps me up at night as I think about my future and what the work I do especially, it seems like, uh, all these AI startups are focusing on my creative space. I'm like, come on, guys, pick something else. Um, but you've written a book and a lot of your story, your backstory. I have an MBA as well. Uh, it seems like a lot of your backstory or all the case studies I remember reading during grad school. Right? It was like the, uh, swifter, uh, uh, you know, launching that, uh, all the companies that surrounded Benton, Arkansas for Walmart during those days, Clayton Christensen and, and his book. Uh, so it's just like, oh my gosh, uh, and you go, oh, you were lucky. I don't you. There's luck, sure, but then there's like, uh, you have to have that talent that's, you know, be at the right place at the right time, I think. So congratulations to you, uh, and good work on your part. And, uh, I should also mention you've also written a book on innovation called Unlocking Innovation. We will, uh, make sure to link to that in the show notes. Um, in all of this, you've said that innovation isn't an idea problem, it's a leadership problem. Where do customer insights fit into that? And why do so many organizations struggle to turn those insights into actual revenue?

Speaker C: Oh, my goodness. I'm going to try not to get out of my soapbox because I will tell you, customer insights, they are the hill I will die on. Um, one of Christensen's kind of main theories is jobs to be done theory that people don't buy a product or service or whatever, they hire it to solve a problem or make progress. And I have said many times before, jobs to be done is a hill I will die on. It is like, once you get it, it's like seeing the Matrix. Everything makes sense to you. And, um, I really believe that customer insights are everyone's job. Like leaders, executives, they need to be out in the world talking to customers, spending time with customers in the customer setting, not pulling them into a focus group room or into a studio and filming it for a lovely video. I mean, you can do those things too, but you need to be with the customer. And even harder, I find for folks is having the humility to listen to what they're saying to, uh, suppress the desire to explain all the great things that you and your company are doing and all the amazing things about your product, which aren't insight sessions, they're not discovery sessions, they're selling sessions. So don't sell. Actually ask open ended questions and be humble enough to listen because what they're saying back to you is kind of the truth. It's not the truth you want to hear usually, but it's the truth of their experience. And it's your job as somebody within the company, as an executive to figure out how to, you know, how to affect that. If they're using the product wrong, okay, what do you need to change about the product design or how it's communicated? If they're, um, finding something complicated, how do you simplify it? So, yes, Customer insights, literally everyone's job. And you cannot spend too much time actually side by side talking and more importantly, listening to the customer.

Speaker A: Yeah, the. As you're talking about that, I'm. I'm reminded of, like, it's when the leadership or somebody from the company organization is. Is talking to a customer, and the customer says, well, I don't. I don't know how to find this. And then they start explaining that. But don't you see that button right there? And, like, no, if they saw the button right there, they would have clicked on it. Right. And. And you say it's what we don't want to hear, but it's really what we. We really should want to hear it. Right. I mean, it's like, here's the path for making money. Right. Solve this person's problem, they will give you money.

Speaker C: Um, yep.

Speaker A: Uh, if you can't solve it, maybe you should think of a different problem to solve then, you know, and that also is good information.

Speaker C: That's totally fine.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Right. Right. No, I remember, um, I was working with a company that makes, um, medical devices for diabetes for people living with diabetes. And the president of the business unit and I went out and we met with people living with diabetes, and we watched how they used the devices, and we filmed it, and we took it back to the R and D folks. And I think, honestly, we didn't even make it 10 minutes into the video before someone actually threw something at the screen. And people were screaming like, you're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. And both the, uh, BU President and I stood there and were like, guys, this is the reality out there. We have to figure out how to do better so that the behavior we get on film is what we want. They're not wrong. They're teaching us.

Speaker A: A lot of leaders struggle to connect innovation to actual business outcomes. How do you help teams move from those interesting ideas, kind of like what happened with the diabetes thing, uh, to something that clearly drives growth? So how do you get it from the whiteboard to, you know, the. Whatever that analogy is?

Speaker C: So, um, I'm kind of a big meanie at times before, because before you even go to the whiteboard, we have a conversation with the executives, with the stakeholders, and ask them two questions. One, what results, like l. Revenue and profit results do you need to see? And we work on something that I call the growth gap, which is, all right, we have some aspiration for revenue at, uh, you know, three, five years in the future. If we just project out what we're doing today? Where does that get us? And then what's the difference between projecting today out and that aspiration? And that's what we call the growth gap. It's like, all right, well that number, whatever it is, is what innovation has to deliver. So if the ideas we're getting are really cool, but they're like $10,000 revenue ideas and you have a hundred million dollar growth gap, those ideas don't work. We need much, much bigger ideas. So that's one goal and also one filter. The other question I ask is what aren't you willing to do? And we go through a tool that I call the innovation playground that looks at the different parts of the business. Your margin, what your capabilities are, what products, industries, whatever you play in and go through. And what would be an easy yes if we came up with an idea and what would be a hell no. And it doesn't mean that we will know, stay fully away from the hell nos. We just know that if we find an idea that crosses into one of those spaces, we're going to have to have a real conversation about whether to pursue that idea. And a lot of people at the beginning are resistant because they're like, uh, you know, we're constraining. We can't constrain innovation, we can't constrain creativity. I'm like, actually creativity thrives within constraints because that's what makes it necessary. You have to think differently. So yeah, before we even get to the whiteboard, like what does this have to deliver? What aren't we willing to do? Now let's go to the whiteboard because we're already thinking of kind of the results we need to deliver.

Speaker A: Uh, I mentioned an mba, but I also do most of my work in creativity. I create videos and, and podcasts and things like that. And over the years when a client would come back to me say well, can you do this? I'm like, oh, you're showing me an example from a Nike video where they spent a hundred thousand dollars. I can do that if you have the hundred thousand dollars. Right. Uh, and it goes to that, that whatever they call the three legged stool. Right. Time, money.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And production value or whatever it was. And if you want one of these, you have to give away one of those. Um, and I think that's kind of what you're saying too about that gap. Right? What uh, do we need to get, ah, do we, do we have a hundred million dollars to spend to get that $1 billion in revenue that we're going to need or Whatever it might be or what's our time horizon, we may have all the money in the world. Uh, we don't have the development resources or the. Whatever. We'll have to acquire it. Um, yeah, uh, as I'm thinking about that and I was just reading. And then what are you willing to give away or, or you know, like, whatever that is. I, uh, was just. It was reminded me of a Twitter post I just read recently from the CEO of Intercom who, you know, reinvented their company here a few years ago to be AI oriented and, and said they basically had to throw away everything. Uh, kind of made a point to say that, you know, like, including the CEO and the board and, and all that, to kind of have this new outlook that was just strictly focused on AI. And we'll talk more about AI in a bit. Oh, yeah, but, uh, you know, so. So that's the foundation. That's what you should be doing, is just thinking about all those sort of things. But then you have something that you call innovation theater. And that's like. When organizations are going through these motions but not getting any results, what are some of the signs that you may be be on the path of innovation theater rather than innovation?

Speaker C: If you are having events and your only plan is for the event itself. So a lot of companies will have hackathons or shark tanks or even brainstorming sessions, and those are great things. I don't want to say not to do them, but as you're planning them, you also need to plan on what happens after, because I have seen so too many companies have shark tanks, hackathons, et cetera, and everybody loves them. They pour their hearts into their, you know, working nights and weekends, and it's this amazing experience and they go through the judging and some team wins and everyone celebrates and then nothing. It's just back to your day job. And companies that have done this over and over, it's actually, I watch it breed cynicism like it is doing the exact opposite thing that it's intended to do because everybody's on board the first year. The second year, the doubters are comfortable getting a little bit more vocal. By the third year, the people who've been through it are like, it's a trap. Don't do it. Nothing's going to come of it, and you're going to be exhausted. And. And so if you don't have a plan for how you keep going with the winning ideas, how you continue to test them, how you figure out if they should be commercialized, if you don't have a plan to staff them and fund them. Don't even have the event.

Speaker A: Uh, I'm reminded of years, uh, ago we talked with Christian, uh, Ioti of, uh, Silicon Valley Product Group or something like that. I think that's where he's from. One of my favorite interviews. And, uh, he talks about where innovation is everyone's job. And, and kind of what you're getting at this, the hackathon, is like, it's always another group of people. You were like, oh, I wish I could be part of that. And then, yeah, you're right. Nothing ever happens to it. Uh, but if it's everyone's job and everyone's thinking about and everyone's throwing those ideas, I mean, that's part of the process. Uh, then you have to kind of be able to execute on those ideas. But it's, it's really creating a culture for this. Is that right? Or.

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, the intention is always to create a culture around innovation. And one of the things, I often get calls from executives like, hey, we want to create a culture of innovation. I'm like, great. Are you willing to change your behaviors for the next five years? I'm like, what are you talking about? Culture is the perception of what matters as evidenced by the actions of executives. So if you want to build a culture of innovation, that takes time. That's actually a lagging indicator of, um, all the. As I talk about the architecture and the behaviors required for innovation. And so you have to be funding and pushing innovation and investing in innovation for years in order to build that culture of innovation. Where people finally see it not as like, oh, this is the management flavor of the month. Oh, this is an event. And start seeing. It's like, this is how we do business.

Speaker A: Is that. How does that play out if you're a startup? You know, like, how does that work in that sort of world?

Speaker C: You hit the nail on the head. It's so different for a startup because the startup is essentially created from innovation. I mean, that you have to be scrappy and ingenious and just constantly moving. And so it's baked in. I often say to the startup, it's as the startups go from startup to kind of little toddler company to then growing up and even getting into kind of the teenage years when you have the second generation of leadership, and then certainly as it becomes an adult, that's when the culture of innovation starts to fade and the culture of efficiency starts to grow. And as companies move from what I call innovation into operations and that Efficiency, doing the same thing over and over, better. That's when the culture of innovation starts to fade. And so that's when it's harder. The longer you let that go on, the harder it is, the longer it takes to get the culture back.

Speaker A: Well, I think we're in a world now, uh, with AI and what we're doing with AI, whether that's, you know, building LLM products or agency AI or whatever it might be, uh, so you've mentioned, AI is both transformative and over hyped. What separates companies that are getting value from AI, from those that are just experimenting and creating outputs rather than outcomes?

Speaker C: Uh, it's such an interesting space because we're all experimenting with AI. Right before I hopped on this podcast, I was fiddling around in Claude and Claude code. We're all playing around with AI. I think what separates the companies are, um, one that they're starting with a goal in mind so they're not just trying out AI because they're supposed to and everyone's talking about it and just like it's the next shiny object, let's AI, um, and there's nothing wrong with that. But just like be clear that it's an experiment. Just be clear that you are playing around with it. Don't lay a thousand people off because you're playing around with it. But once you realize that like, okay, this is the end goal that we need, AI is a tool to achieve that end goal. It is not the end goal in and of itself. And we need to rethink from the ground up how we roll this out. Because we're not rolling out a new ERP system, we're not rolling out cloud migration. This is a fundamentally different, almost business model way of operating as a business and we need to think about it that way and not just like, hey, we're going to put a new icon in your screen so you can chat with the collective wisdom of the company.

Speaker A: M. The, uh, well, it's just all so scary. How do you, you know, any advice and going back on these, on these, the, the tool set of strategy and innovation that you learned 30 years ago and, and have applied over and over, you know, as we've adopted different technologies along the way. What's your advice to those teams as they're thinking about doing this, as they're building out their innovation plans and stuff like that so that they can, you know, manage that risk, you know, even just live with the risk, I guess. Right, Because I, I think a lot of people are going to be deniers to AI because they're afraid of the risk that comes with it. Right? If. What if they choose wrong? What if we've all heard enough of the uh, you know, the early adopter sort uh, of failures too, right? The, you know, the second movers got to be the better one or, and all that kind of stuff. So what's your advice to those, you know, those builders and creators out there?

Speaker C: Yeah, so for the, the builders and the creatives, find a pain point, you know, focus on solving a pain point. I was talking to a friend of mine and she, she's been using various AI tools in her role in her company for the last 18 months. And she was saying she's easily wiped out at least 10 hours of work a week by using different AI tools. And it's because she started with her pain points of. I, uh, have to create these monthly updates, but I have to pull data from seven different systems. Can I get AI to do that for me? And then she experimented little by little figuring out kind of how she could piece together various tools. And she went and talked to it and she went and talked to experts within her company to get help pulling together this thing that now she has automated and she has an agent running that just automatically pulls everything together for her once a month. You know what she does with that extra time? She uses it to go talk to customers. Um, she spends it with her team kind of in one on one conversations and she spends it with customers. So fully endorse this. Um, so start with the pain point and then take little steps. This is one of the hardest things for big companies to do because they just do everything on a massive scale. Um, but take little steps. If you pick, if you buy like a one month subscription to something and it doesn't work, what, you're out 20 bucks. That's okay. Don't install a custom LLM built by Palantir. Don't go whole hog into something because then yes, it is expensive and then there is regret and there is too much uncertainty. So big uncertainty, little steps and investments. Once you have reduced the uncertainty, then you can start making bigger bets. But experiment first.

Speaker A: Uh, and I guess also you know that extra time you're spending with the customer, you're identifying new problems that you may be able to solve. Right? You can find the go, uh, go further back in their journey, uh, to see where they're having other pains that you might be able to help and see if there's a move from that ten thousand dollar pain point that you can solve to that Hundred million dollar pain. Uh, point.

Speaker C: Yep. And don't forget that you have customers inside your company, especially with a lot of, uh, the AI that is about efficiency and things like that, the people who are going to use it, the users, are your customers. And so go spend time with them and talk to them just as you would an external customer. You have internal ones that need to be treated the same, listened to the same, valued in the same way.

Speaker A: Well, and, and then also too, as I think about that, it's like you're not just trying to, you know, solve a problem, make some money off of it. You're also just. The more you talk to people, you have better relationships with people. Right? I mean, uh, you're, you're going to renew. They're, they're going to renew. The, the employees are going to stay there. Everyone's just happier in general. Right?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: The, um, I mean, I, that's what my m. Wife tells me. Right. Let's talk more. Okay, sure.

Speaker C: Okay. Yeah. Because if you, if you listen, you understand the other person better. If you feel listened to, you feel valued, you're more willing to kind of try somebody's crazy idea if they've talked to you first because you're like, okay, that sounds bonkers, but you've talked to me first and you have this idea based on something I said. So. All right, I'll give it a shot. And it just, everything becomes better. And from a quick conversation, this isn't like I'm now devoting years of my life to serving you. This is literally a 10 minute conversation.

Speaker A: Interesting. As we wrap up, I'm just wondering, like, what's one practical thing a leader can do, who's listening today, what they can do this week, uh, this month or this quarter, to be more innovative in how they and their teams work.

Speaker C: All right, so I call this the George Costanza principle, uh, because there's one episode of Seinfeld where just to quickly explain, George Costanza is the loser of the friend group. Everything has gone wrong in his life. Every single episode but one episode, he realizes that he's been following his instincts. So if he does the opposite of his instincts, his life will get better. And in fact, at the end of the episode, he has his dream job and a hot girlfriend in a great apartment because he did the opposite of his instincts. What I, um, want leaders to try to do is the opposite of their instincts. Be George Costanza from that one episode. And specifically where to try it out is when somebody comes to you with a question, don't Give them the answer. Now, obviously, if it's like, hey, this is on fire, what should we do? Give them the answer. But if it's like, hey, we just heard this from a customer. People are really struggling with this. What do we do? Don't answer. Get curious. Tell me more about that. What specifically are they struggling with? What have we tried, what haven't we tried, and why? And, um, it's questions that are genuine. You're not quizzing them. This is not a test. This is about you understanding better and more deeply what the problem is and then working with your. Your team, working with the person to come up with the best answer. So, George Costanza, yourself, you know, when you get a question, don't give an answer. Come back with some genuine questions to learn more.

Speaker A: Right. That, uh, well, to borrow, you know, I'll shut up. And just to borrow from George's dad on the show Serenity Now. Right. So

Speaker C: also a very good mantra.

Speaker A: Yeah, we'll wrap it up there. Um, I really appreciate your time, uh, for joining us today. How can someone learn more about you and your thought leadership?

Speaker C: Yeah, so you can hit my website, miles0,IO and the 0 is spelled out Z, E R O. Um, there you can read some of my past writings. You can sign up for my website. You can also learn more about my book, Unlocking A Leader's Guide to Turning Bold Ideas into Tangible Results that is chock full of practical little tips and tricks like the one I just shared.

Speaker A: Excellent. Yeah, we'll have links, uh, to all that in the show notes. Again, Robin, I appreciate your time today. Thank you so much.

Speaker C: My pleasure. Thank you.

Speaker B: Want to keep the conversation going? You can find the show notes@usertesting.com if you haven't already. Don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or Google Play, so you never miss an episode. And if you enjoyed today's show, please share it with a friend or leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcast. And until next time, this is Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing.