Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
This post clearly has the opportunity to be a whoa is me post, but I’ll try and not make it one of those.
So I’m officially immersed in the my spring speaking tour, 3 speaking gigs this week and at least another 12,000 air miles and additional 3 pitches before June 10 and various and sundry trips in between. I just received an email from a colleague informing me to have fun in Boston and I thought about it and I think folks who don’t travel much don’t necessarilly understand that travel isn’t fun.
The Essence of Business Travel
No matter what the location - Pheonix, Maui or Amsterdam it is still work! Typically you travel somewhere because you have stuff to do and places to be. You may be staying at the Pheonician, a four seasons or resort in some place like Banff Springs - you rarely get to enjoy the ammendities. OK sometimes you DO get to golf…
Ultimately I try my best to weave in friends and family in as possible, but it is normally a 1 out 10 type of thing since the paid gig comes first - priorities. You have to make sure your up for a keynote, customer meeting or prospect meeting at 9, so you can’t do bars with your fraternity brother until 3 AM. So while I appreciate Ed’s well wishing and fun recommendation, it is gonna be difficult.
But wait, I should have a good meal at least right?
Good Food Must Mean Good Times, Right?
A man’s got to eat and not every meal on the road is good, there is a whole lot of airport McDonald’s, more than I like. That being said, admittedly I have had some GREAT meals on the road, both on and off the expense account, but that doesn’t mean that it was fun. The general rule is that the better the meal, the more likely it is NOT on an expense account, since I’m a foodie I try and get the best local food possible. I acutally spend a good deal of time investigating place to eat, since this is typically the only thing which you can ultimately count on when on the road, since a man’s got to eat.
At the end of the day, no matter what the restaurant is - it is business if you aren’t able to eat alone. You’ll typically have customers, partners or staff members and you still have to talk supply chain or technology all night long, remain sober and not unveil your real interests. I gotta be work Jon who likes wine, boring stories and is just facinated by your latest project which has no relationship to the deal I’m trying to position or close.
Not that I’ve done the math, but I think there is actually an inverse relationship between food quality and fun on the road. The better the restaurant the more mundane the discussion - karma punishment. Too often you are forced to fain interest in stories about a kid’s tee ball league, football or the latest cool thing they did with a Seibel integration.
So while you may get good food, you’re ultimately stymied by the atmosphere. How many people who you work with or who you are selling to are people you would actually hang out with?
In closing, I do have to say the event I’m at and speaking to are some of the most interesting folks I know. The people that participate at NEECOM are as innovative as anyone in the industry and significantly improve my understanding of the stuff I do every time I attend. I am ultiamtely blessed by the opportunities I have and the people I meet, so Ed - I guess I will have fun in Boston since I will learn from the folks I see.
Please Note: Feel free to forward this to your spouse if you have the same type of discussions I have when I say good night as I leave Morton’s. If you have these discussion you know what I mean and you need to forward this as independent validation of life on the road.
Posted in Geeky, Life, Travel | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
Sharing the links for the day:
Posted in Fluff | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
That’s right - honesty is the best policy. So in full disclose this is Just a traffic update, yesterday was the worst traffic this blog has had since I’ve been paying attention! (Nov. 07). That’s right, celebrate the little things, because it appears y’all are transitioning to rss readers. Thanks team!
Maybe it is that no one is searching of relevant terms for what I’m writing about, so let’s highlight the top 10 search items, since we have analytics.
- bob’s ichthyosaur - A Great book and apparently the top search term.
- what is scientific management - High school students everywhere are googling.
- twing - Very cool, cool people
- mbifm - A made up acronynm, which apparently means Member of the British Institute of Facilities Management.
- calculating gross margin
- danielle pribbernow - Chick on the Check out blog, wonder if it’s just her searching on herself? Way too much traffic for a Wal-Mart employee. No I mean WAY TOO MUCH.
- dijouri - I made up this name for my second son, 12 years old. I think this IS my son searching on himself or people trying to figure out if I made up his name or people looking for movie made in 2003.
- things i am thankful - This is encouraging.
- afro - Right on.
- giggly quotes - Who searches on giggly quotes?
So if you don’t find anything interesting above interesting, perhaps one of the top 10 “trafficked” pieces, mainly produced via keywords - which you will notice via the relationships between keywords above and titles below. That being said,I REALLY am partial to the Stuck in the Middle series — and — I like the Mosaic piece the most, mainly because it plays well in my head. Yup, I’ve sucked you into a replay post, but a replay of posts everyone else seemed to like too, or at least this is 10 most visited posts here.
- Lessons Learned: What is scientific management
- 100 Things I am thankful for… – A thanksgiving post
- Spatially Relative: A community’s place… - A piece about a book I read
- About – Self-explanatory
- 5 Ways YOU can launch a Twitter stream remediation program – geeky thing I wrote and scoble called it geeky, that scoble effect is a real thing.
- Lessons Learned: How to calculate Gross Margin
- 10 Themes and concepts for YOU to blog on
- 10 Tips for dealing with the fact that you will never leave your Job
- WANTED: Social Media Antagonist
- The Death of Marketing? Mix it up.
Hopefully the new folks that have added me to your reader find some of these interesting. Cheers!
Posted in Geeky, Leadership, Life, Marketing, Social Media, tools | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
Relevant links for April 2nd:
Posted in Fluff | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
Our stories as marketers continues to be a theme of late, whether it’s understanding how YOUR history and biases impact your stories and now from Seth, how your EXECUTION is central to the story/brand experience. Below is an excerpt which asserts lack of a story can impact consistency of the brand:
But what if you haven’t figured out a story yet?
Then the work is random. Then the story is confused or bland or indifferent and it doesn’t spread.
On the other hand, if you decide what the story is, you can do work that matches the story. Your decisions will match the story. The story will become true because you’re living it.
Does Starbucks tell a different story from McDonald’s? Of course they do. But look how the work they do matches those stories… from the benefits they offer employees to the decisions they make about packaging or locations.
The pithy piece from Seth opines about what comes first, the story or the work. Not sure that this is the best way to manage the story or the execution, since they are more or less ONE thing - the Brand. These are two interactive and evolving components which can’t be untethered. Customers, employees and transactional interactions move the story and change the story over time, evidence the $1 coffee from Starbucks or the 3 hour re-training event which was intended to boost the barista-ness of the the customer experience.
This example from Starbucks is a great use case for how to align execution to the story and the market. So if the story is linked to execution/the work, then speaking to the market is only part of the story to be told.
As brand managers/creators, marketers need to continuously deliver messaging not just for the market, but for the larger organization in partnership with human resources and the leadership. What are the types of activities and processes required to consistently deliver on a brand story/uphold the integrity of a brand? The realities is it varies. This will vary from industry to industry and market segment to market segment, but 3 key areas for consideration regardless of industry:
- Establish a Unified Tribal Understanding
- Open Channels for Feedback
- Consistently Reward and Publicize Contribution
Tribal Understanding
You can’t tell the same story, unless you KNOW what the story is, so what have YOU done as a marketer to make this happen?
This is the concept of making sure the whole organization understands what a product is supposed to do and what the value drivers are for the consumer. In technology for example, the larger organization needs to understand the solutions being delivered, the relative importance of the solution for the consumer and overall strategic direction of the company.
With this baseline folks can understand and how this relates to what customers/the market need for a given technology provider. Without common tribal understanding, you get inconsistent execution which can greatly change the market version of the story/the stories your customers tell.
Tip: The easiest way to figure out if you need to develop a plan for this is fairly simple, walk around the business. Walk around and ask say 10 folks across the organization from a functional perspective and seniority perspective and see if they tell the same story about your product or your brand. If you get 6 different answers, you probably need to do something.
Channels for Feedback
As consumers habits change and market requirements evolve, it is important that every organizational story teller cannot only understand the brand story, but also that they can contribute to the evolution of the story. Whether it’s collections, professional services or customer service, all of these stakeholders interact with the market daily and should have easy access to provide input from the business. This can be as simple as email or a suggestion box on the intranet and is imperative to keep a pulse on the market and to understand how your product is perceived on the front lines.
Tip: See if you have a clear path from communication to the marketing team, product management and leadership of YOUR organization, if not perhaps you should roll out a formal plan, remind folks of how to contribute and develop a formal plan to manage input for improvement.
Reward and Publicize Contribution
This seems a little obvious, but telling the story for the market, requires awareness for the larger organization of how a single person can leverage their tribal knowledge and exceed the promises of the brand. While the type of recognition will vary by company size and budget, marketers need to equally tell the story internally and leveraging an open channel for feedback and ensuring the full understanding of the story makes it simple. Don’t underestimate a Starbucks gift card and an “all employee” email.
Tip: Recognition isn’t about burying an accomplishment on the intranet for a specific functional group - it needs to be shared. Don’t fall for the corporate newsletter trap here - you can mention it in the newsletter, but take the time to highlight individual successes outside of the normal communications channels for the whole organization.
While this clearly is not the alpha and omega of brand based story creation and modication, it’s a good place to start. Do YOU have any ideas on how to improve the stories told in the village? Leave a comment and let us know.
Posted in Brand, Leadership, Marketing | 1 Comment »
Monday, March 31st, 2008
Relevant links for March 31st:
Friday, September 14th, 2007
I appreciate Robert Frost’s questioning of why fences make good neighbors in Mending Wall. It seems like a construct at opposition to getting along and a free existence. It is however, not so in more effective business, groups and organizations.
Many leaders and individual contributors are very focused on building, mending and extending their fences. This too seems oddly inconsistent with a friendly little workplace, but alas it is how it is. Perhaps fence mending is a corporate culture issue as much as a personnel concern.
So what type of fences exist in corporations? Organization, process and the ad-hoc fence - all of these magically remove accountability of ownership when someone throws something over the fence. The fence mender can be a leader or a individual contributor, as a mid-level leader this is an persona which if effectively dealt which can dramatically improve the execution and cross-functional execution.
The fence mender is consistently proving the value of fences for lack of ownership, since they are consistently defining the fence with forwarded emails and copious “cc-ing” of folks, hoping that someone will pick it up.
Real easy to improve interactions in this mode - just ignore it or follow up with the mender and clarify alternative next steps for that person to work. The other way to change this organizational behavior is to find revenue risk or to optimize the process (less boxes and arrows). This behavior existing in both Product and Process roles, which I’m not sure I agree with some of the conclusion/assertions, I do like the construct, since in Howard’s description most Fencer Menders are in product jobs, from what I have seen, but the most damage (revenue or risk can be done process-centric roles.
Since a fence mender can be a worker bee too, it’s just an opportunity for growth. If you manage the fence mender, it represents an opportunity for embracing accountability and personal ownership of an issue which has found it’s way to you.
As a rule, if a customer, team member or manager (actually these are all customers if you think about it) reaches out to you it is implied that they are looking for the Menders assistance - and assistance to closure. So in fact a fence mender is anyone in the organization who is willing to flip things “over the fence” and use the fence or the public throwing over the fence as an excuse for why something didn’t go well.
In the Vassal organization ( A Vassal leader is not one we have examined yet - but think BIG organization), there are even fences in the same organization and even within smaller groups/team. Typically these organizations are horribly overstaffed and each person has a very small zone of ownership, skill requirement and little to no accountability.
In principle, a Fence Mender organization is overly process-centric (way too many swim lanes and boxes), lacking creativity (I do what is in my box) and generally the domain of the mediocre (just get it out of my box). To that end:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
- R. Frost
It appears the only person who is given offence is the “customer” in need of something. So why is it that fences make good neighbors?
Technorati Tags: Robert Frost, Mending Wall, cross-functional, process-centric, swim lanes
Posted in Stuck | 1 Comment »
