More things you need to know.

We’ll resume our Deathbed Confessions series next week with Part 3. In the meantime, here are a few insights from people far smarter than me that might come in handy:

On innovation, grabbing life by the horns, and not pissing your life away:

“Do things that are gaspworthy.”

That was one of the main messages delivered by Tom Peters, the influential business thinker and management [expert], in a speech at Epsilon’s Integrated Marketing Symposium 2006 at the Quail Lodge in Carmel, CA.

“Do cool stuff that make people gasp,” said Peters, who looked older and angrier than in his “In Search of Excellence Days” (the book he co-authored with Richard Waterman in 1982 that was hailed by NPR as one of the Top Business Books of the Century). “Don’t piss away your life.”

He changed his speech at the last moment after having learned that one of his best friends had a terminal illness.

Also noted:

“Innovation comes not from market research or focus groups, but from pissed off people.”

– DM News

On remembering what creativity really is:

“Creativity is an act of open disobedience against the norms. Creativity is an act of courage.”

– Chris Bailey

On passion and work:

“Whether you are Jack Welch or the Dalai Lama, it is dangerous not to do what you love. If you don’t have a level of passion that drives your thinking about what you’re doing day in and day out, there will be others out there who are passionate who will overtake and outrun you. People who care will take the initiative away from those who are half-hearted. So loving what you do is a competitive imperative, not simply a nice thing to have.”

Knowledge @ Wharton interviews Mark Thompson and Stewart Emery, co-authors along with Jerry Porras of Success Built to Last

On retaining talent:

“One of my favorite cliches is “there is no such thing as indentured servitude”. I use that line to talk about the fact that talent can’t be bought and sold. It must be retained with something more than money.”

– Fred Wilson

If you want to share this with someone who needs the encouragement, I won’t turn you in to the SOPA police. 😉

Cheers,

Olivier

*          *          *

CEO-Read  –  Amazon.com  –  www.smroi.net  –  Barnes & Noble  –  Que

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The Psychology of failure – Part 1

On madness, models of failure, and the mythology of past successes

I have been thinking a lot about success and failure in business this past week, and about behavioral patterns and common cultural factors I invariably find in organizations that breed either one outcome or the other. I will dive deeper into this topic over the coming weeks, but for now, today, I want to show you something. Something that, at first glance, I found funny. Not knee-slapping, LOL-inducing haha-funny, mind you. Something funny yet tragic, because it illustrates not only the stupidity of the way some organizations cling to anachronistic models of failure, but the absurdity of it in its whole.

We’ll get to that in a minute, but let’s just say that what I received today, what prompted this post, made me wonder about the sanity of the person who thought it wise to send it to me. And this made me think about why some managers insist on never letting go of strategies and tactics which they know don’t work.

Point #1: Knowing full well that a method, tool or model no longer yields the desired outcome (assuming it ever did), some organizations will continue to bet on it, in the hopes that the laws of the universe will shift in the night and miraculously turn a completely ludicrous project into success.

The partial email I will share with you may make many of you chuckle, as I chuckled when I read through the first few sentences, but in truth, there really isn’t anything funny about it, and here’s why: As extreme as this example of stupidity may seem, the principles which guided the hand of a business to drive this campaign, to assign resources to it (writers, staff, computers, software licenses, chairs, desks, office space, electricity, lights, etc.) are no different from the principles that guide tens of thousands of companies to also cling to their own proven methods of failure.

That organizations, then, would cling to such ill-advised models in the face of logic, in the face of common sense even, I can almost understand. Not every organization or department is helmed by the sharpest mind of its generation. I get that. But more shocking to me is that this type of absurd behavior – this level of abject stupidity when it comes to discerning between effective and ineffective models – occurs in face of facts, and by that, I mean hard data and history, ignored, pushed aside in favor of a mythology of past successes.

Let the notion sink in for a moment. Mythology of past successes. The myth that the organization was once successful, and the further notion that the methods it employed then, if employed now, will restore it onto its successful path. A past success, mind you, that more often than not only exists in the minds of those who cling to its dream, therefore invalidating the very methods which they so revere.

Point #2: Imaginary past successes and glories are potent illusions – they aim to set the stage for future ones after all – but as poisonous and lethal as memories of painful lost loves: Embellished over time by the mind’s gentle healing hand, polished to a high sheen that grows brighter in magnificence with every passing year.

A man, in the embrace of weakness, can find himself trading the inconvenience of reality for the comfort of such an illusion, and as the mind is trained to do in order to help us survive tragedy, begin to turn the pain and reality of failure into something seemingly beautiful and pure. Faced with the prospect of further failure, facts go out the window. Reality seeks to be disproved. The mind begins to look for safety and comfort.  All that eventually remains is the legend of “the good old days,” and the notion that a higher power (even in the form of abstract “business cycles”) will come and make things right if only one perseveres in holding on to the past long enough.

Fisher Kings, organizational dysfunction, and engineering cultures of failure

This is something a C.E.O. told me years ago, when he and I were discussing the future of his company: “This is how we’ve always done it. It’s always worked for us. We’re not about to start doing it differently now.”

Except it hadn’t worked in twenty years, everyone knew it – as I suspect he did as well – yet there he was, defending the sanctity of a model that had already begun to fail a full generation ago and showed no promise of deliverance whatsoever. Embattled and failing, the company yet refused to let go of a past it had turned for itself into legend. Religion, even. This man, this grown man, clung to the safety of a myth of success the way an anxious child in the face of uncertainty clings to the hand of his mother.

The reality of the company’s past “success,” (the basis, in his mind, for the inevitable return of fortune as foretold by his internal narrative – the myth he created for himself over years of wishful thinking) was that the company had never, in fact, been all that successful. It had struggled, as all companies do, for market share, for growth, for loyal customers. What success it had enjoyed for a time had been hard-earned and modest at best.  There had never been glory. There had never been true sustained market leadership. The man sitting across from me was operating under a spell of denial which he had – over time – infused into his organization. The Fisher King retold.

One doesn’t have to be clinically insane to act like a madman but this one, afflicted as he was by his fears, by his bitterness, by his anger, by his own inner demons of self-doubt and shame, in retreating into a world of make-believe, was in fact acting like a madman: Working against all reason and common sense. Rather than steer his ship to warmer waters and favorable winds clearly discernible just ahead, he chose to keep to the murky, brackish waters he now believed had once been a glorious ocean. He painted himself the C.E.O. of a successful company, whose brand would someday regain dominance. A dominance to be regained again as its birthright, or so the tale went inside his head. This in spite of inaction, of denial, of stupidity and a surprising level of arrogance.

The places we allow ourselves to drift to and die, out of fear and out of shame. Both one and the same.  (If you hate your job, consider this a tap on the shoulder: How long do you intend to wait there in misery?)

This was the company I had been hired to rescue. I almost did, but only almost. I don’t always succeed. I managed to drag it back from the brink, to show them the way, even to pave it for them, but the last step, they had to take for themselves: Making the decision to change. To let go of their ghosts and commit to a fresh start.

Not everyone, though, has the courage to unfurl their sails.

The Greek perspective, and methods of failure

If I were an ancient Greek, I would talk about fear and anxiety in terms of spirits and possession. Not spirits as in demons, the way we think of them now, but the spirits of love, anger, hatred, fear, cowardice, envy… Emotions given life and will and power over our lives by us, their willing vessels.

The Spartans believed that blood lust in the middle of battle, for example, was possession – and something to avoid at all cost. Despair can be possession. Fury. Jealousy. Terror. Love. Enthusiasm. Every type of feeling can take us over. Overwhelm us. Crimes of passion are the result of possession. Brawling with fans of a rival football team is the result of possession. Understanding this is understanding something about human behavior, not just 3,000 years ago but today as well. Perhaps especially so.

We yet have much to learn from the Greeks.

Looking at human behavior from that perspective, whatever spirit possessed this man, this unfortunate C.E.O., I have met many times since. Different offices, different cities, different letters on the doors and the lobby walls and the business cards, but always the same madness. The same visceral need to create then cling to myths of success, and along with them proven methods of failure: Decisions and actions that led to their ship remaining in irons, year after year, in the false safety of a cove that in fact had become its grave. Cultures of failure start here. In this manner. Engineered by the dysfunctions of an individual ill-suited to lead an organization.

When mediocrity and failure are hailed as glory and success, take a bearing: Relativism doesn’t apply to victory. It only serves to paint defeat into something more palatable. It is the fuel of denial. Flipping success and failure on their heads so that one suddenly becomes mistaken for the other is madness as well.

Point #3: Failure in organizations, in business, in projects and campaigns isn’t always the result of luck or fate or circumstances. Sometimes it is (though I would caution against looking at obstacles and challenges, even the most seemingly insurmountable odds as anything but opportunity), but just as often, failure is engineered, constructed from within, given birth to and shaped, fostered, nurtured, encouraged and fed daily – like a creature.

The truth of failure, true failure, is that it lies not in circumstance but at the intersection of weakness and method. In the weakness that drives some men to shun the fight and the challenge which are the price of both success and victory, and to instead embrace illusion, relativism (characterized by endless strings of excuses) and the type of insanity that makes them act against their own best interest: Ignoring facts. Declaring success when none exists. Continuing down a clear path of failure. Adopting failure as a method.

Symptoms vs. Disease: Digging beneath superficial absurdity to find its cause

However extreme the following example may seem to us, scores of companies insist on clinging to equally ridiculous and completely ineffective methods of conducting business, albeit not quite as spectacular in their awfulness. Yet… outside of execution – or the manifestation of this type of nonsense, as seen below – compulsive adherence to methods of failure is in no way different in its path to what led to this example, and remains equally absurd.

Here it is, the first paragraph from an email like millions of others just like it, which we consider spam, yet someone, somewhere considers marketing:

I sincerely ask for forgiveness for I know this may seem like a complete intrusion to your privacy
but right about now this is my best option ofcommunication. This mail might come to you as a
surprise and the temptation to ignore it as frivolous could come into your mind, but please
consider it a divine wish and accept it with a deep sense of humility. This letter must surprise you
because we have never meet before neither inperson nor by correspondence, but I believe that,
it takes just one day to meet orknow someone either physically or through correspondence.

Ridiculous? Of course it is. It’s spam – and bad spam at that. But you know what?  The company that paid for it thinks this works, that this utterly ludicrous bit of email content is the best way to get me to click on a button or surrender personal information. And while we laugh at the stupidity of it, wondering in the backs of our minds what kind of manager or business owner would believe, in this day and age, that something like this is a method of success, it is in no way different from a manager or business owner in Kansas City, Charlotte, London or Chicago believing that their own brand of ineffective, outdated, business development method will somehow yield better results than it has until now.

Point #4: The absurdity of embracing methods of failure is not measured by the depth of stupidity characterizing their execution – like really awful copy, as seen in the above example,- but rather by the fervor with which failure-blind managers cling to their own delusions in spite of everything they know.

It’s tragic.

I don’t say this lightly. It is soul-crushing to see professional men and women – not organizations but human beings of flesh and blood, like me – so blinded, so possessed by layer upon layer of bullshit that they are no longer able to tell up from down, right from wrong, smart from stupid. Confused and lost in the wilderness of a world that has outpaced them, they cling to a made-up version of it, one they can feel comfortable and safe with, even if it doesn’t actually exist.

In this world, what they know, what they believe, even if it is completely absurd, holds more truth for them than the reality they refuse to accept. This shielding mechanism, this search for comfort and security in an idealized version of the past, of the “good old days,” makes every new idea alien and dangerous. A threat. They begin to regard progress at best as suspect, and at worst as a betrayal of their “ideals.”

In the same way that children invent for themselves imaginary worlds in play, adults sometimes invent for themselves worlds in fear. We see this with religion and politics, with extremism. We also see it in the business world: Some of these adults apply this mechanism to their professions, often with dreadful consequences.

When I hear a C.E.O. scoff condescendingly at Social Business, aiming to belittle and ridicule it as “something the kids do,” something legitimate businesses don’t need, a waste of time, a fad, a pile of crap, I don’t feel frustration anymore. I feel pity. Pity for the man, pity for the organization, pity for its future. Hell, I feel sadness because I know the fear that lives at the heart of the attitude that nurtured the opinion behind the comment. More importantly, I know instantly that the organization “led” by this person is crippled by methods of failure. And because the pattern of such dysfunction doesn’t deviate all that much from company to company, I can start mapping it out on paper without having to hear another word.

Point #5: When you understand a leader’s weakness, you know how his organization is failing.

Organizations that shun rather than embrace progress, whose default position is to embrace new ideas in meetings but somehow never manage to implement them, organizations that refuse to acknowledge or enable change from within or without, these organizations are all the same. Every single one. Identifying them is the first step. Understanding them follows. Beyond that, expect a bumpy ride.

Word to the wise: Not everyone is cut out to be an agent of change. If you can visualize your career, imagine the path of least resistance. Now imagine the complete opposite. More often than not, change is war.

Time to revisit the definitions of insanity and failure

It’s been said that the definition of insanity is to repeat the same action over and over again, expecting a different result each time.

I disagree.

Perseverance, then, would be insanity. Tenacity also. I reject that definition. Conditions change: The same action repeated enough times can and often does yield different results, and we intrinsically know it. From adaptation to probability, we know that results may vary. We put it in fine print on just about everything.

The exact same spin of the ball in a game of roulette will have it land on a different number each time. The same lotto numbers played week after week will yield a different relationship to the winning numbers arrived at elsewhere. The same degree of effort on the field of practice will result in physical and mental changes over time. And so it goes. Because conditions vary, repetition in the face of failure alone does not constitute insanity. What I propose instead is this, that the definition of insanity is to repeat the same action you know cannot yield the desired outcome over and over again, expecting a different result.

Insanity is deliberately choosing a method of failure over a method of success (or even an infinite range of experimental methods) because in spite of all logic, it fits within a world view -an ideology – borne out of anxiety and false nostalgia rather than experience and reality. THAT is insanity.

Failure – systemic failure, that is – is engineered. It is built from the ground up, much like success, one broken brick at a time.

Point #6: Just as surely as a culture of success can take root in a company (Zappos, Apple, BMW, Google, and many more) a culture of failure can take root as well: Characterized by internal dysfunction, the utter absence of loyalty among its staff, low morale, a poisonous work environment and an absence of fire and passion even at the helm, cultures of failure are tough to turn around. And you know what? they are as tough to rescue as a drug addict who, while begging for help, still clings to the needle and the gutter as if his life depended on it. It’s heart breaking.

What I do: Light, shadow and the need for both

Helping businesses succeed is often a lot of fun. It can be easy. You come along at the right time, get to know them well, give them a little push, and there they go: Back on track, rocking it out. Those are the good ones. The ones that make me feel like a million bucks. The ones in which everyone clicks and has fun. It doesn’t even feel like work. I secretly wish that all of my clients were like this, but I know that this is weakness as well. For every perfect client, I need an imperfect one. We all do. We wouldn’t be professionals if all we did all day constituted play.  We wouldn’t learn much. We wouldn’t improve. Delight is possession as well.

Just as often, helping a company succeed begins by teaching its management to stop failing. To stop mistaking mediocrity for success. To stop acting against their own self-interest. In some cases, the process boils down to dragging them out of their predicament, kicking and screaming the whole way. I’ve been insulted, threatened and even fired by clients who promptly offered to re-hire me the next day, only to fire and rehire me again. I’ve endured abuse at the hand of awful little children in adult bodies. What I do isn’t always pretty. It is intervention, pure and simple.

Dealing with a C.E.O. or manager possessed by the form of madness we’ve discussed today is no different from dealing with an addict fighting for his soul.

Point #7: Whatever we like to call “personal demons,” they destroy businesses too. As surely as what brought about a mid-life crisis can destroy a marriage or career, so can it shatter a business. It isn’t something we talk about much, but we should.

We can’t not talk about this. Companies don’t get fixed. Companies don’t win or lose. People do. What I end up doing, more often than not, is fixing people. Helping them find their way and be whole again.

Bad marketing and bad business decisions often find their roots in more than incompetence and accidental human error. In order to make sure they don’t happen again – or never happen at all – you have to go a little deeper than that. “Best Practices” are only the surface. Stopping there isn’t enough. You can’t stick to the edges and hope for the best. Sometimes, you have to go deep. Sometimes, you have to go all in.

What has been on my mind lately: Some clarification before we continue

I’ve been giving this and a dozen other related topics a lot of thought this past week, and how my chosen profession fits in all of this. How experience, knowledge, talent and insight have led me to become not only an advisor and educator, but also now a confidantz and a friend to individuals who don’t understand why their companies are stuck, unable to move forward as quickly and fluidly as they know they should. The human element to it above all questions of processes and best practices and clever ideas. How important to me this has become. The problem with becoming emotionally vested in something like this, in trying to effect real change, is that it consumes you. Theres no way around it. You have to let it.

While it sometimes seems that my job consists of coming up with cool ideas and helping companies divine insights from the fog of business, the reality is that I am more often than not a therapist. A business therapist, one might say, but there is no such thing: A business is a dream brought to life by a company of men and women who form its limbs and organs, and whose love for what they do is its lifeblood.

When I am called upon to help a company, an organization, a business, I end up helping people. Why? Because every dysfunction at the root of a problem with a business invariable finds its own roots in a personal dysfunction – sometimes, clusters of personal dysfunction.

In order to do what I do – and do it well – you have to be ready for that. You have to be ready to know when to bear the weight of it all, and when not to. You have to know your way around the human mind and the human heart. You have to know exactly what to do when someone with a serious problem tries to draw you into their drama. It can be emotionally exhausting. This line of work is not for everyone.

And I guess that is why I don’t like to call what I do “consulting.” Now I know why the term never sat well with me: “Consulting” is only a small portion of what I do, just like R.O.I. is only a small aspect of what I help shine a light on. Calling myself a consultant just doesn’t work. I don’t yet have a name for what I do, and I’ll admit that it’s a bit annoying.

I am telling you this because over the course of the next few weeks, I may write more about the role that human nature plays in adopting “best practices,” pursuing excellence and creating cultures of success than I have before, and I want you to know where all this is coming from, why these topics even matter, and how I came to want to discuss them from this unusual perspective. My mind is behind the curtain this week. Under the surface. I am looking directly into the nature of leadership, courage, curiosity, insight and the spirit of victory, which are at once timeless and very specifically connected. And if we are going to make any headway, it’s time we stopped focusing so much on the superficial aspects of business and brand management, and turned our attention to some pretty core elements without which Twitter, Facebook and all of the things we love to discuss here and on other blogs are little more than salon chatter.

And I hope this helps give you a tiny little glimpse into what makes me tick, why the way in which I approach certain topics might seem a little different from other blogs. Ultimately, everything comes down to people: Understand people, and you understand everything. It’s where every one of my blog post begins. At the core of every discussion we have here about brand management, Social Media, communications, R.O.I., etc. is human behavior in all its reality and relevance.

More to come.

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Social Media’s True Value To Business: Video interview from #LikeMinds

Click on the image above and reframe your perspective about Social Media’s importance to business in 4 minutes and 4 seconds.

(If the video doesn’t play for you, go watch it here.) This interview was shot during the 2010 #LikeMinds conference – mostly in the green room, which was a little noisy.

Outstanding editing job by the Wide Eye Communications crew. Super professional and a pleasure to work with.

Also be sure to check out these other interviews from Yann Gourvennec, Chris Brogan, John Bell, John Akwue, and Joanne Jacobs. (Lots of pretty cool accents between all of us.)

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Embracing Obstacles: A Leadership and Project Management Manifesto

“Making it work” : Lessons from the real world of “do or die.”

Sometimes, even the best laid plans just go awry.

Call them cliche, but those sayings about finding the silver lining and making lemonade when life hands you lemons, they aren’t just hot air.

When I was in the French Fusiliers Marins, the unspoken motto, the underlying mission imperative was always “make it work.”

The intelligence is wrong? It doesn’t matter. Make it work.

The insertion routes are compromised? It doesn’t matter. Make it work.

You got dropped 15 miles off target? It doesn’t matter. Make it work.

Nobody ever had to say it. Nobody ever had to bark the order. From day one of training, it was pounded into us:

Make it work.

Make it happen.

Find a way.

(If you don’t, people will die.)

The first officer I served under, 1st Lieutenant Rannou, had a saying: “There are no problems. Only solutions.”

He was right.

Sometimes, everything just clicks and works perfectly the first time. You don’t have to do a thing. You might as well be on autopilot: From start to finish, your project, your law suit, your surgery, your product launch, your hostage rescue mission, your ad campaign, your theater production, it all goes well. The planets are aligned. The cosmos is on your side. Everything goes so smoothly that you wonder if you aren’t dreaming.

Most of the time though, things don’t go your way. The unexpected happens. Gremlins. Ghosts in the machine. Flies in the soup. Whatever. The cosmos has a way of throwing obstacles your way at the most inopportune times.

That’s just a given.

A butterfly beats its wings in Buenos Aires, and a week later, your stamp machines in Taiwan are down for a month.

A health crisis in East Africa forces the cargo ship carrying the first shipment of your brand new product to spend three extra weeks at sea.

Your new boss is an self-serving imbecile.

Or in the case of teammate Jay Hewitt (photo above), you lay your bike down going 30mph at mile 51 of a Half-Ironman distance triathlon.

What do you do?

No… really. What do you do?

Murphy’s law isn’t an anecdote. It’s an engine of predictability. Use it.

Let me take a quick break from the full list of mishaps and just say that – in case you hadn’t guessed – skin + gritty pavement + speed don’t feel great.

Imagine getting thrown out of a car moving at 30mph, wearing nothing but your underwear.

Not fun.

Now imagine brushing yourself off, getting back on your bike, finishing the ride as fast as you can, switching out the cartridge in your insulin pump, and then completing a very fast half marathon.

Why? Because no matter what happens, there’s still a finish line to cross. A reputation to preserve. A project to complete. A movie to finish shooting. A new product to launch. An essential part to manufacture.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a military officer, a product manager, a movie director, a chef, a fashion designer, a newspaper editor or a CMO. This is something you can be absolutely certain of: Though sometimes, everything will click and flow smoothly as if by divine intervention, most of the time, obstacle after obstacle will get between you and your goal.

Call it Murphy’s Law. Call it whatever you want. It’s just life.

And in real life, shit happens. No matter what you do, something almost always goes wrong.

The more complicated or ambitious your endeavor, the more likely it is that obstacles will find a way to get between you and that golden finish line. Expect that. Plan for it. Train for it.

Heck, embrace it.

You might as well.

Still, I notice that most people freak out when their plan goes awry. They panic. They lose their cool. They suddenly find themselves feeling… lost. They make everything come to a grinding halt while they regroup.

Why?

Poor planning. Lack of training. They didn’t take the time to plan for failure. They didn’t think to come up with contingency plans.

Most of the time though, it just comes down to one simple thing: Lack of experience.

So for those of you who don’t quite know how to manage cool, crazy, ambitious projects, here’s a little bit of advice:

The Ten Basic Rules of Project Management

Rule #1: Never expect things to work right the first time. (If they do, great.  Just don’t expect them to.)

Rule #2: Expect everything to take at least twice as long as you know they should.

Rule #3: Expect the unexpected.

Rule #4: When everything is going well, worry. (You probably missed something.)

Rule #5: Find out what doesn’t work before your customers do. (That’s what prototypes are for.)

Rule #6: You learn more from how and why a product fails than how and why it works the way you expect it to. (So push your prototypes to failure as often and in as many different ways as possible.)

Rule #7: “Design By Committee” never works.

Rule #8: Trust your instincts.

Rule #9: Listen to the people who will use your product. Their opinion matters more than anyone else’s.

Rule #10: Have fun.

Why experience matters: A simple list.

Back to Jay: Jay has crashed in races before. Jay knows how broken bones feel. Jay knows that even with no skin on his shoulder, he can keep racing. He’s been there. He’s done that. He has already faced and concquered pretty-much every obstacle in the book when it comes to endurance racing. As a result, when problems happen, his resolution time is almost instantaneous. He doesn’t have to spend thirty minutes wondering if he’s badly hurt or just in pain. He doesn’t have to seek professional advice. He doesn’t have to weigh the pros and cons of anything. Knowing where he stands allows him to make the right decision in the blink of an eye: Keep going.

Experience builds confidence. Experience breeds forethought and insight. Experience takes doubt, uncertainty, and fear out of the equation. Jay knows that if he crashes, he can probably still finish the race. He knows how to fix a flat. He knows how to repair a broken chain. He knows a dozen ways to fix problems on his bike or with his body, and the ones he doesn’t know how to fix, he can probably improvise if need be.

There are no problems. Only solutions.

Simple enough.

More often than not, projects that appear to have gone smoothly from the outside didn’t go smoothly at all. Every day brought a new hurdle. Hundreds of fires had to be put out. Thousands of split-second decisions had to be made. Course adjustments. Quick fixes. A folder-full of improvised solutions. Personel changes. Vendor replacements. Timeline adjustments. Budget attrition. Whatever. The list never stops growing.

That’s how it really works.

Perfect illustration: Below is Jay at the finish. From the right side, he looks fine. His injuries are out of sight. He looks like a guy who just breezed through a Half Ironman the way most of us breeze through a Taco bell drivethrough.

To an outsider, a bystander, he had a flawless, fun race.

To someone with inside knowledge, he finished despite a horrible bike accident that could have cost him a whole lot more than another medal.

He crashed. He got up. He quickly assessed the situation. He got back on his bike. He finished the race. He added the experience to his knowledge bank.

He made it happen.

If that doesn’t perfectly illustrate the way a project is driven forward, I don’t know what does.

Project manager. Triathlete. Adventure Racer. Creative Director. Platoon Leader. Customer Service Rep. Design Engineer. Toolmaker. Sous-Chef. Football Coach. It’s all the same.

Project/Program Managers are wired differently. Hire and promote with that in mind.

Great project managers aren’t just natural multi-taskers. They’re also natural strategic masterminds. Improvisation kings (and queens). Crisis jugglers. Fearless creative acrobats. Their job (their nature) is to constantly find and implement solutions to problems, foreseen and not. Their job is to embrace hurdles and obstacles, because each one brings them one step closer to their goal. They thrive on making things happen. The more untraveled the road, the better. The more complex the gameboard, the better.

It takes a special kind of person to be able to a) do that kind of work well, and b) love every minute of it.

It isn’t for everybody.

Excuses and blame don’t exist in our little world. Neither does bullshit. At the end of the day, there’s only what you did and what you didn’t do.

Sometimes, even the best laid plans just go awry.

For most people, that’s not a good thing…

…and for some of us, that’s when the real fun begins. (And we do like our fun.)

Have a great weekend, everyone. 🙂

(Hat tip to Tamsen McMahon/@tamadear at Sametz Blackstone for pointing out that this should be a manifesto and not a primer)

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You are ALWAYS in Beta.

You’re always in beta. Always. If you think you aren’t, you’re already falling behind and bleeding relevance.

What does being in Beta mean? It means being in perpetual test mode. It means constantly asking “how could I do this better,” even when this worked just fine. How can I listen better? How could I improve customer service? How can I make my billing process smoother? How could we improve the UI/UX of our websites? How can I engage my user community even better? How could this brochure have been better?

I know what you’re thinking: Poor kid. He’s terminally obsessive-compulsive. 😀 (Actually, I’m just compulsive, not obsessive, but that’s a topic for another day.)

The point is this: The moment you start thinking that you have found the perfect model, the second you start adopting a “let’s not change anything” mentality, you’re screwed. The “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke” saying I hear a lot in the South is may have been pretty good advice a hundred years ago, but it isn’t anymore. Not if you want your company to stay competitive. Not if you want to see your company grow. Not if you want to see chronic improvement in everything you do.

Check out today’s video if you haven’t already. And if it doesn’t launch for you, go watch it here. (Thanks, Viddler!)

Interestingly, the “you’re always in Beta” mindset that I am talking about today seriously reminds me of the mindset athletes and coaches get into when it comes to improving performance. Say you’re currently a 24:00 5K runner, and you want to relive your college glory days by running an 18:00 5K a year from now. How do you do it? Simple: By stressing your system one little bit at a time. By challenging your comfort zone with every run. Going from 24:00 to 23:55, then 23:50, then 23:45 for the same distance, and so on. Turning up the heat and the intensity for a few weeks, then giving your body a chance to adapt. To plateau. And then starting over with a new cycle of stress and adaptation followed by a rest period. During that time, you are constantly testing your boundaries, monitoring success and failure, learning what works and what doesn’t. (And yes, measuring your progress to know what works and what doesn’t.) Pretty basic stuff.

The alternative would be to keep running the same 5K route every day at the exact same speed, in the exact same way. What would happen? Well, you would become pretty good at running a 5K  in 24:00. Comfortable? Sure. But whatever happened to improvement? See where I am going with this?

Okay, now let’s complicate things a little bit:

As a triathlete, training and competing in what essentially amounts to three sports (swimming, cycling and running) adds some pretty substantial layers of complexity. Not only do I have to figure out how to train for three specific sports, but I have to figure out how to combine and integrate all three in a way that doesn’t lead to injury or burnout. I also have to fit all three in my already busy schedule. Then I have to consider how to time my training cycles to coincide with specific races. In addition, I have to incorporate changes in nutrition and hydration based on my workouts, my training mode, outside temperatures, etc. And if I get into my head that I am going to train for a marathon, half Ironman or full-on mac-daddy Ironman, all of these variables take on a level of complexity I can’t even begin to explain in one blog post. How much Gatorade should I drink per hour in 94 degree temperatures at 80% of my maximum heart rate? How many energy gels can I absorb per hour without getting sick to my stomach? What cadence should I adopt to sustain an average speed of 21mph for 112 miles? Only one way to find out: Test it.

And I haven’t even talked about gear. Will the improved aerodynamics gained from dropping my aerobars down 2 millimeters shave 20 seconds off my 40K time? Maybe… but as a result, will my upper body’s new angle offset my hip angle enough to reduce my power output or stress my hip flexors enough that I will start cramping up 5 miles into the run? How will I find out? There’s only one way: Getting out there and testing that theory. It’s clipboard and stopwatch time for the next six weeks.

Should I go with a disc wheel or a deep dish rim for my next race? How will I know which works better for me on a moderately hilly course in 15mph crosswinds? Only one way: I have to go test each wheel configuration on a variety of courses in completely different wind conditions. Then I’ll know what works best in specific course conditions.

Rear-mounted bottle-cages or frame-mounted? Aero helmet or regular helmet? Motion control shoes or racing flats? Test test test test test. You get the picture.

Call it an occupational benefit or a pre-existing condition, but being a triathlete kind of trains you to be in a perpetual Beta mindset. And it isn’t a stretch to jump from the world of competitive endurance sports to the world of business performance. Different application, but same principles and same basic methodology: Ask, test, observe, validate, learn, repeat.

But before you do all this – the testing, the experimentation, the analysis and learning and adaptation – you have to make a choice. You have to pick a camp. You have to decide whether you are satisfied with your business performance as it is today (“good enough” is good enough for you and your customers), or hungry for improvement.

There’s no right or wrong answer here. It doesn’t matter what camp you decide to align yourself with: The one happy with the way things are or the one looking to kick ass a little more each day. What matters is that your decision work for you. But let’s be clear about the impact that your choice will have on your business: Sticking with a “let’s not change anything” mindset will not earn you more customers, increase customer loyalty or generate more sales. Where you are today is exactly where you will be tomorrow. If you’re lucky. Eventually, perhaps not next week or next month or next year, but eventually, this mindset will seal your doom. A Beta mindset, however, will help you uncover ways to innovate, earn more customers, cut costs, increase customer and employee loyalty, improve product design and performance… You name it: Whatever the opportunity to improve, do do things better and smarter, may be, you will systematically uncover it in the same way that Apple, Nike, BMW, Cervelo, HBO, Michael Phelps, IDEO, Lance Armstrong, Comcast and Zappos have.

If you want your company to be best in class, to own a market or an industry, to be the trendsetter, the example to follow, the leader in a category, you must adopt a perpetual Beta mindset. You have to constantly stress your systems and processes. You have to turn every action into a test an look at every activity as an opportunity to experiment.You have to measure, analyze, learn, adapt and repeat the cycle over and over and over again.

Question everything.

Work harder than the next guy to build the best XYZ the world has ever seen, and then find ways to make it even better.

Perfection is a process, not a milestone.

Embrace a state of perpetual Beta.

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The importance of speaking your clients’ language.

Somewhere in the subtext of yesterday’s post about what R.O.I. is and isn’t lives the realization that business managers and marketing people speak different languages. A few of you touched on this in your comments, so great job zeroing-in on the fact that each side has its own unique vocabulary, its own nomenclature, it’s own lingo. Most of the time, that’s all fine and good, but when the two come together to discuss business objectives (and ROI), miscommunication ensues. One side says one thing and the other hears something else altogether. Before you know it, execution misses the mark, expectations from both sides are crushed, and everyone is shaking their heads wondering what happened.

“Did you hear them say the wanted X?”

“Yeah, I did! That’s what they said they wanted.”

Except what the agency folks thought they heard wasn’t X at all.

So now, a little bit of organizational psychobabble that might actually come in handy, for once:

The first step in eliminating a dysfunction is to recognize that there is dysfunction. (Situational Awareness)

The second step in eliminating dysfunction is to understand the dysfunction. (Discovery and Analysis)

The third step in eliminating dysfunction is to accept the nature of the dysfunction. (Reckoning and Confirmation)

The fourth step in eliminating dysfunction is to address the dysfunction. (Solution and Execution)

Start with step one and work your way up to step four. Once you get there, here’s what you need to do:

If you’re on the agency/service provider side of the fence, start hanging out with business people. (Yes, the ones wearing the suits and ties. The ones who speak in acronyms and talk about revenue, ROI, payroll, net new customers, disti channels and stuff you can’t wrap your mind around.) Pick their brains. Ask them to explain what matters to them the most. What they get goaled on. How they measure success in their organizations. Ask them to clarify what they are talking about, even if that means explaining it all to you like you are a five-year-old.You need to learn this stuff: The lingo, the culture, the priorities, the aspirations, etc. Learn their business, their culture and their lingo.

If you’re on the business/client side, start mentoring your agency reps and marketing folks. Immerse them into your company culture. Show them how your business makes money. Show them how you are structured and why. Teach them your own unique vernacular. Show them what data you capture and what you do with it. Frame for them what matters most to you as a business leader. Help them see your business from your point of view. Teach them how you think. Get them on the same wavelength as you.

If you can do this, if you follow these simple suggestions, I promise you that your agency-client relationship will radically improve in a matter of weeks. Six months from now, you will be functioning like a well-oiled machine.

Wouldn’t that be swell?

Could it be as simple as setting up a mentoring program between client and agency or business and marketing folks? Is that all it would take for this communication and cultural rift to go bye-bye?

You bet.

Have a great Thursday, everyone. (And um… we’re back on R.O.I. tomorrow. Andrew Mueller found a Social Media R.O.I. calculator I need to go over with you.)

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We have that under control.

If I had a dollar for every time I have heard a company either say these words or infer them, I would be driving a much nicer car.

“We have that under control.”

Sure you do. 😀

That is why you are seeing 1,000%+ YoY growth.

That is why you are the category leader in your market and enjoy 80%+ market share.

That is why your brand commands rabid, cult-like loyalty from your customers.

That is why you don’t even need to advertise anymore. Word-of-mouth from existing customers is so good that people are tripping all over themselves to do business with you.

That is why while everyone else is cutting back, you can’t hire staff fast enough to meet your massive growth.

That is why you are driving companies that used to be your competition out of business.

That is why you have already been on the covers of both Fast Company and Inc. this year.

That is why Oprah is singing your praises every other day.

That is why you already have hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter.

That is why your CEO, CMO and other key managers are invited to speak at conferences on a regular basis.

That is why you attract the best talent from around the world without ever having to post a single position on a job board.

Yeah. You have everything under control. I can see that. The quality of your products is stellar. Exemplary, even. Your innovative spirit has helped redefine not only markets but culture as a whole. The way we live. The way we work. The way we communicate. You are the Apple or the Starbucks or the BMW of your industry.

Your Marketing communications are so fluid, organic and true that your company culture oozes from every press release, from every brochure, from every page of your website(s). It emanates from every employee. No… wait, “emanates” is the wrong word. It “radiates.” That’s better. Your company culture radiates from every single employee, from the CEO on down to the janitor, and it rings so true that people simply flock to you out of principle. Even if people don’t use your product, they love your company because of what it represents.

That’s how much you have things under control.

Your listening posts are everywhere. Every time someone says positive about your brand on the web, your community manager(s) and PR team know it, make a note of it, and even send out a little nod of appreciation. Likewise, when someone shares a negative experience or opinion, the same team immediately reacts and reaches out to the person or persons to find out how they might turn that negative experience into a good one. And that team does this flawlessly. It is fast, supremely professional and friendly, and doesn’t let anything fall through the cracks. Again, every such web interaction is cataloged, measured and reported.

Because you have everything under control.

You never ship late – and when you do, you make sure to make it right for your customers. You never make it difficult for customers to return a product or go through the warranty process. Your customer service/customer support team is among the best in the world. If you suddenly went out of business, people’s lives would be in shambles.

But when something goes wrong, the fact that you have hundreds of thousands of followers across your blog(s), Twitter, Facebook and other social web communities makes it easy for you to turn a crisis into a case study of how well companies can handle themselves when they get broadsided by an issue.

Because you have everything under control.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Whatever you say.

Every time a corporate honcho utters the phrase “we have that under control” or “we have that covered” or “we’re good in that department,” the red flags pop out of their stupid little heads like jacks-in-the-box.

Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

Whenever I hear that phrase, I catch myself laughing outloud… Which I probably shouldn’t do, but I can’t help it because it is so… predictable, in a sad, foreshadowing sort of way.

This is what it must feel to substance abuse counselors every time an addict sits in their chair for the first time and says “I don’t have a problem”or “I can stop whenever I want.”

You see it and hear the words enough times, you learn to understand the depth of the associated dysfunction before the response is fully formulated… And what always disappoints, I suppose, is the degree of predictability and… banality I now associate with that type of reply coming from professionals and industry veterans who clearly should know better.

In my head, I imagine myself thumbing through a dictionary, looking for the exact definition of the word delusional:

From http://www.merriam-webster.com: Delusion (noun) di-ˈlü-zhən, dē-

Etymology: Middle English, from Late Latin delusion-, delusio, from deludere (15th century)

1: the act of deluding : the state of being deluded

2 a: something that is falsely or delusively believed or propagated b: a persistent false (psychotic) belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary ; also : the abnormal state marked by such beliefs

And then I wonder how the clown I am having that conversation with ever managed to get promoted to a position of influence within a company whose very survival is now at stake because of either one of two things: a. Simple stupidity on their part, or b. an even less excusable and insidiously destructive ego trip. (Sometimes, both.)

To any company exec who thinks it smart to puff out their chests (even figuratively) and exclaim “we have that under control,” I say “grow up and get real”. That kind of ill-informed confidence will kill companies and brands faster than an accounting scandal or major recall. This isn’t a game. This isn’t about playing Mr. big-shot. This isn’t about “being right.”

What it is about is being smart – and that means being realistic, open-minded, and responsible.

Fact: No company has “it” figured out. Even if it seems that you are doing “it” better than everyone else, guess what: You can still do it better. And just because you do it well now doesn’t mean that you will still do it well in six months. Conditions change. Customer needs and expectations change. Your company’s staff and culture changes. Doing “it” right is as ephemeral a thing as breaking a world record. It comes and goes. One day you’re on top, and the next, poof. You have to readjust.

Companies should always be in the process of re-adjusting.

In the military, complacency and false confidence will get you killed. The business world is no different.

Show me a guy who thinks or runs a team under the delusion that he has everything under control, and I will show you a disaster waiting to happen.

All of that aside, what really tugs at my curiosity is this: What is so hard (for a good chunk of corporate executives) about simply accepting the possibility that maybe – just maybe – they haven’t thought of everything.

Maybe the Titanic isn’t truly unsinkable.

Maybe winning the war in Iraq isn’t that simple.

Maybe Apple without Steve Jobs or the culture he built can find itself circling the drain inside of five years.

Maybe poor leadership can kill or severely endanger major companies like Enron, GM, AIG and Circuit City.

Maybe iconic lovebrands like Levi’s can go from global Top 10 to WalMart sales bins in les than a decade.

Maybe platforms like Google and Twitter can make your business model completely obsolete inside of 24 months.

For every one of these stories and thousands more, there was a guy who thought he had things pretty much under control… when he really didn’t.

Maybe the first step to getting your company out of the ditch is realizing that you’re in the ditch to begin with. Just because the engine makes a sound and the needle reacts when you put your foot on the accelerator doesn’t mean you’re actually going anywhere.

And maybe the second step to getting your company out of a ditch is accepting the fact that you need expert help. Maybe a little bit, maybe alot, maybe somewhere in between.

So next time someone offers you advice or a helping hand, stop and think before you speak. Listen to what they have to say. The fact they they may hold the solution to a problem you weren’t aware of yet doesn’t make you any less of a man or manager or executive. You can’t think of everything. You can’t plan for everything. Not alone anyway, and certainly not from the same vantage point you enjoy day in, day out.

Stopping to ask for directions does not reflect poorly on your manhood or ability to navigate uncharted roads. Admitting that perhaps your engagement strategy could be better, that your social web strategy is really nowhere, that your staff isn’t as talented or effective or professional as you would like, that your product design isn’t as hot as the other guys… None of these things make you inept or weak or undeserving of your paycheck.

Pretending that everything is perfectly under control, however, does.

So next time you find yourself across a desk or coffee table from someone like me and they ask you how you’re doing in a particular area of your business, instead of putting up a wall of self-destructive bullshit, why not turn the tables on them instead, and ask them… “I don’t know. What do you think?”

1. You will get the benefit of an expert opinion – which you can still choose to ignore if that floats your boat.

2. You might actually find yourself in a position to gain a competitive advantage and improve your business for the first time in six months (or longer).

1 in 7 companies will typically jump at the opportunity to partner with someone who can help them gain a competitive advantage and come out of a challenge smarter, stronger and better. The other 6 will usually wait and wait and wait while things get worse, because well… you know… they have things under control.

Trust me: If you really have things under control, I won’t reach out to you. You don’t need someone like me. You’re doing fine. But if I tap you on the shoulder and invite you to chat, maybe – just maybe – you might want to put your own Fortune 500, global brand management genius, 5th Avenue ego aside and listen to what I have to tell you for a few minutes.

Believe it or not, you might actually benefit from the exchange.

… or you could just blow me off and continue pretending that you have it all under control.

It’s a whole new week: 1 out of 7 businesses is already getting ahead of the rest. Pray that you are among them.

Happy Monday, everyone. 😉

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New rules, new skillset

The topic came up in conversation yesterday: What grouping of skills and experience should a company look for in a Social Media manager or director? I have to confess that my answer sounded more like a list than anything: Marketing communications, PR, community management, blogging, account planning, business development, reputation management, brand management, brand insights and market research, web savvy, etc. And while I was going through my little skill mapping exercise, I suddenly remembered that we had touched on this topic about a year ago – not in terms of social media, but more along the lines of new marketing. Let’s run through it again:

You probably remember Tim (IDEO) Brown’s Strategy By Design article in Fast Company back in June of 2005. (You know, the one that mentioned T-Shaped people.) The article shed some light of the fact that innovative companies – or rather, companies who have shown an ability to innovate regularly – tend to favor hiring T-shaped people and fostering the types of cultures that work best for them, over hiring and managing employees the way our grandfathers did, which essentially consists of assigning specific linear jobs to people who were trained to perform the specific functions of these jobs – no more, no less. (The good old nose to the grindstone mentality.)

It went a little like this:

“We look for people who are so inquisitive about the world that they’re willing to try to do what you do. We call them “T-shaped people.” They have a principal skill that describes the vertical leg of the T — they’re mechanical engineers or industrial designers. But they are so empathetic that they can branch out into other skills, such as anthropology, and do them as well. They are able to explore insights from many different perspectives and recognize patterns of behavior that point to a universal human need. That’s what you’re after at this point — patterns that yield ideas.”

Good stuff. Since IDEO pretty much pioneered the innovation by design business model, Tim knows what he’s talking about. And having suffered the rigidity and lack of flexibility of forethought commonly found in many corporate environments, I have been a BIG fan of the T-Shaped thinking concept ever since I first read about it. It has been my experience that when putting a project team together, opting for one composed of people with diverse backgrounds yields much better results than one composed of specialists in a specific field. Especially if the project involves solving a problem or improving a design or process.

But last year, Dave Armano, from the Logic & Emotion blog, gave us this, which proposed an exciting next step in T-shaped thinking evolution:

“Lately I’ve been wondering—is there another way to look at this? What if we took a more basic human truth. Most of us have some kind of passion in a specific area. For some—it’s a hobby or interest. For others, it’s directly related to their work. I fall into the latter category. If you were to ask me what my “passion is”—I would probably say that at the core, it’s creative problem solving. This is pretty broad and incorporates a lot of disciplines that can relate to it. But that’s the point. What if we start with our passions regardless of discipline, and look at the skills which radiate out from it the same way we think about how rays from the sun radiate warmth?”

Excellent point. The radial pattern is definitely an improvement on the theme of the T-shaped individual. We’re adding new dimensions here and painting a more realistic, accurate picture of the breadth and depth of talent required in today’s much more complex workplace.

Assuming of course, that the said workplace a) recognizes the value of this type of individual, b) is able to foster an environment which takes full advantage of this potential pool of talent and innovation, and c) incites these types of people to want to keep working there.

Sadly, this still seems to be the rub in far too many offices across the US… Which is where smart marketing firms, think tanks, ad agencies and professional services firms can gain a definite edge over just about everyone else.

Here’s more from Dave:

“The majority of those reaching out to embrace this trend have their roots in the UI industry rather than industrial design. While traditional product and graphic design practitioners enter the field with a foundation based on design history, emphasis on form, method and process, those in the UI field come from myriad backgrounds such as software engineering, marketing, and brand strategy. Without a common heritage and education, these designers are more comfortable working with disparate client groups and in interdisciplinary teams.”

Food for thought.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

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Bruce Lee on the Art of Marketing

Fantastic piece on Bruce Lee and the art of marketing over at CultureMaking (via the Creative Generalist). Read the entire thing here.

Here are a few lessons we can all take to heart – and start applying immediately:

Bruce says: “Be formless… shapeless, like water”

Translation: don’t impose structure on a problem too early or stick rigidly to a process for process sake. Explore freely and allow your mind to wander; work adaptively and flexibly.

Here’s another:

Bruce says: “Here is natural instinct and here is control. You are to combine the two in harmony, now if you have one to the extreme, you will be very unscientific. If you have another to the extreme, you will all of a sudden be a mechanical man, no longer a human being. It is a successful combination of both. Therefore, it is not naturalness or unnaturalness. The ideal is unnatural naturalness or natural unnaturalness.”

Translation: In the end, a marriage of qualitative and quantitative insight is most sensible (where possible). But my personal preference is ‘culture-led’ i.e. cast your net wide and understand the problem/category/brand within its socio-cultural context first (via cultural analysis), rather than restricting your vision at the outset with consumer needs and statistical ‘facts’. Like Bruce also once said: “True observation begins when one is devoid of set patterns.”

Brilliant. Here’s more:

Bruce says: “I do not believe in styles any more”

Translation: Don’t get caught up with one one-fits-all models that claim to be the holy grail of branding. Mixing and matching different ideas, innovations, communication codes and media platforms often works best and allows you to execute your brand idea in a much more compelling and interesting way.

I love that one. All too often (still) do I run into the 100% old school (command & control / messaging / media-buying monologue) or 100% new school (WOM and SocialMedia are the new gods) mindset with Marketing firms and ad agencies. Very few actually know how to blend the two in an operationally effective way yet. This needs to change.

Long before the concept of T-shaped Marketing professionals ever surfaced, Bruce had these things to say about the advantage of being a creative generalist:

“The best fighter is not a Boxer, Karate or Judo man. The best fighter is someone who can adapt to any style. He kicks too good for a Boxer, throws too good for a Karate man, and punches too good for a Judo man.”

And also …

“Some people are tall; some are short. Some are stout; some are slim. There are various different kinds of people. If all of them learn the same martial art form, then who does it fit?”

Well put once again. Here is an interesting observation from the author (no, not from Bruce) that… at the risk of alienating many fine Marketing professionals, I have found to be surprisingly true:

As a parallel, this captures how the marketing industry prioritizes endless doing over learning, thinking and personal development. There are people who have worked in the industry for many years, clocked up a wealth of experience, and mastered all of the ‘core skills’ required, but because they have taken little time to read, explore, and broaden their horizons, they have remained trapped inside the paradigms of old, oblivious to the creative possibilities that lie before them.

I have similar conversations about this very topic on a regular basis: The marketing world should be a lot more forward-thinking than the rest of the business world. Why? Because Marketing departments, firms and agencies are a) populated with wildly creative and insightful people, and b) tend to attract the most creative and forward thinking art and business school graduates. It should be a no-brainer, right?

Wrong. I consistently find that Marketing professionals with 5+ years of agency experience tend to be  just as conservative in their approach to problem-solving and process than their “regular” business counterparts. By now, everyone in the Marketing world should have read Purple Cows and Tribes and The Tipping Point. Everyone should be at least familiar with the concept of broken windows and its relevance to the success and failure of brands. Everyone should be looking well past the messaging layer of all branding endeavors.

But that just isn’t the case. Most senior folks I run into are still holding on to Marketing assumptions and methods that were better suited for the 1980’s and 1990’s than to the era of emails, blogs, text messaging, and social networking sites. Most do not take the time to read the more influential books and blogs on branding and marketing. Most don’t even take part in the game-changing conversations that are reshaping their industry. The Marketing world as a whole still exists in a strange operational timewarp, and frankly, I have no explanation for it.

Fortunately, Bruce does:

“[W]hen clans are formed, the people of a clan will hold their kind of martial art as the only truth and do not dare to reform or improve it. Thus they are confined in their own tiny little world. Their students become machines which imitate martial art forms.”

Yeah, great creative is fun and effective, media buying is a great money maker, and despite what you may have read about recently, traditional marketing isn’t even close to being dead… But the people you are trying to reach are increasingly tuning you out. If all you have to offer is messaging, the very small majority of people you do actually manage to reach won’t believe you anyway. Among those who do believe you, without a remarkable brand experience to back up your marketing monologue, whatever you worked to hard to say will go in one ear and go out the other. (Yes, “sticky” should be part of your operational vernacular now. If it isn’t, you’ve fallen, way, way, waaaaaaay behind.)

With this in mind, how much more advertising do you and your clients really want to buy? At what point are you prepared to sit down and consider the enormity of the ROI that traditional marketing and branding methods alone truly have to offer anymore? At what point do you come to the realization that something needs to change in order for your clients (and you) to stop spinning your wheels so damn much… and actually get some serious, consistent, repeatable traction?

One of my smartest friends – the best kinesiologist on the face of the planet – Frank Roth put it all in perspective for me a few years ago. We were talking about websites and structure, and he suddenly had this spark in his eye, as if he had just remembered something true and raw and powerful that had been lurking underneath layers of superfluous verbage for a very long time… and it was this:

It’s just like dancing, sports, art and just about everything that stirs the soul and provokes reaction: First, you create the structure. You create a perfect, solid, symmetrical and harmonious architecture. (pause.) And then, you break it. You smash it. You shatter it. You completely destroy it. That’s when it becomes powerful. That’s how you release its energy.

As Marketing professionals, as brand strategists, as whatever it is that we happen to do for a living, work lacking in energy and momentum is just boring, dead, and stagnant. (No matter how clean, accurate and pretty it may be.)

I am sure that Bruce would agree that there is no power, no strength, no effectiveness in stagnation.

Step away from groupthink, if only for an hour a day. Free yourself from your corporate culture, no matter how cool or fun it may be. Read a book. Adopt a new point of view… or none at all. Shatter the structure of something beautiful, just to see what comes out of it. Attack a branding or marketing problem from this angle: What if I had a budget of zero dollars? How would I accomplish this? How would I turn this product or this brand into a media darling without advertising and brochures and websites?

Like Bruce, be mentally and operationally flexible. Keep an open mind. Don’t be limited by old thinking or traditional mindsets. Learn new skills. Adopt new tools. Improvise. Experiment. Rewrite the rules. Break new ground. Don’t settle for the little box you have carved for yourself in your market – and by doing so, don’t ask your clients to settle for their little box either.

You can all do much better than that. Um… we all can.

Have a great weekend, everyone. 🙂

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Saying “no” to corporate fossilization

Via OrangeYeti, from AdPulp, here is a little bit of an interview given by Maurice Levy (Publicis Groupe) to Scott Donaton (of Ad Age). If you’ve ever worked for a company that was so set in its ways that it had grown stale, you’ll understand what Levy is talking about:

“I have never stabilized an organization. Crystallizing an organization is freezing the energy. In chemistry, instability is very good because it creates some combinations you don’t expect.”

“Without change, there is fossilization,and that’s the worst thing that can happen.”

“Ideas,are so fragile, so tenuous, that managers must destroy layers that can obscure or damage them. If you have an organization that is too administrative, you are just killing the ideas. As we say in France, when you ask a committee to draw a horse, you get a camel.”

Read the full interview here.

So there you have it: As a business leader, look for flux. Look for tangents. Look for the unexpected. Recruit adventurously. Give your people the freedom and flexibility to contribute in the most personal, passionate of ways. Eliminate silos and procedures when it comes to the sharing of ideas. When it comes to dialogue. When it comes to cooperation. Decentralize “meetings”. Deconstruct the project ideation process. Empower your people to set the stage for extraordinary new products, business improvements, and creative work.

If you can’t trust your people enough to empower them, to literally give them the keys to the place, then you aren’t hiring the right people. Your job as a leader isn’t always to “lead”. Most of the time, because you aren’t there to bark orders or stand over everyone’s shoulder, it is simply to create an environment, an ecosystem, that allows your team, your army, to do the best possible work they can. It is to create a culture that makes them want to be a part of something greater than the sum of their job description. That makes them proud to be, even.

Ideas are fragile.

Without change, organizations die.

These are the two little mantras you should keep chanting every time you pick up the phone, or a magazine, or your TV remote. They should be in the back of your mind every time you shake someone’s hand or invite them to have a seat.

Embrace instability. Welcome change. Engage uncertainty. Welcome the unknown and love it for all of its infinite number of possibilities.

And they truly are infinite.

Chew on that. Have a great Friday. 😉

Technorati Tags: Maurice Levy, Publicis, AdAge, AdPulp, ideas, leadership, authenticity, branding

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New Marketing 101: Progress always starts with a question.

Great post on the Hill Mullikin blog about the need for new thinking in the marketing world. What’s interesting about it? Simple: This isn’t coming from a “new marketing” or Marketing 2.0 source like Seth Godin, Tom Asacker or Francois Gossieaux, but from someone who has been working in the agency trenches for years, using primarily traditional marketing tools to make their clients successful and happy. Yet here they are, talking about looking for a better way:

Is it time for us marketers to look in the mirror?  I believe some of the problem lies in the cookie-cutter approaches that most real estate developments have taken.  And we are all guilty.  Unlike most corporate brands with armies of marketing generals and brand police, real estate has always been armed with sales savvy entrepreneurs and “I need it yesterday” deadlines.  And when the pressure is on, we all default to what we know best – what ever worked last time.

The critical thinking that needs to go into a successful brand is always left in a haze of gotta-have-it-now timelines.  In the end, we have magazines full of beautiful mountain views, couples holding hands on the beach, seniors with their feet kicked up on bicycles (which I don’t think has ever happened without a camera around), and golf holes basking in the morning light.

We have forgotten some of the branding fundamentals that really connect with people and tug on the heartstrings.  Branding is about differentiation.  About standing out and being easily identifiable in a herd.

Brands are not things that developers or marketers create.  Brands are built in the minds of consumers.  And the art of “branding” is what allows you to plant that seed in the users mind.

So where do we start?  Back at the basics.  All successful brand share four common characteristics:

1. The brand presents a tangible point of difference. Attributes have been identified that sets the brand apart from the competition. Does the world really need just another signature golf community?

2. The brand is relevant to its audience. The audience has been identified, and that audience feels a need in their heart that can be satisfied. Is your community what the market wants, or is it a monument to your ideals?

3. The brand is consistent. The audience, when greeted by the receptionist, when reading a magazine or surfing online, sees and hears the same core message.  Verbal and visual cues align across all mediums.

4. The messages are frequent. When you understand what makes you different, who you need to target and what you need to say—then say it. Again, and again, and again.

So, does marketing really need to change?  Or did marketing ever change?  I think that it is really time to go back to basics and identify how we effectively communicate our unique selling propositions, who we are talking to, what they desire and last but not least, ask them to do something.

Do I call this progress? You bet.

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Understanding Marketing 2.0: A primer for companies looking for better media channels in a tough economy

How smart businesses are learning to combine “traditional” media and new “social” Media Channels to grow their brands:

Interesting slideshow from Austrian-based Knallgrau in which the company outlines some of the social media strategies and tactics they used in helping BMW seed interest in new X1 concept and promote its launch. Not entirely crystal clear (not bad for non-native English speakers though) but still pretty helpful in outlining how to incorporate new media channels into a complete 360 communications plan – especially if you are still new to social media/new media. Essentially, here’s how to break it all down:

Traditional media channels: The first three bars on the graph (left to right). Television, Print and Radio. Some basic attributes:

• High costs
• Closed (Monologue)
• Emphasis on quantity instead of quality in intended audience (reach-to-transaction conversion is <10%)

Social media channels: The long tail of the reach & depth curve, including Search, Blogs, Podcasts, YouTube, wikis, Twitter, Facebook, virtual worlds (like Second Life and even World of Warcraft), active communities and networks, etc. Note that new media channels are getting thicker (much broader reach) and also more more specific (deeper and well defined) – both good things if you care about who your target audience is. Basic attributes:

• Fractional costs
• Open (two-way conversation/dialogue)
• Emphasis on quality AND quantity (reach-to-transaction conversion >10%)

It is important to note that new media/social media channels are not intended to replace traditional media channels. If anyone tells you that traditional media is dead, they’re hacks. Don’t listen to them. The reality of media channels is simple: All channels have value, all channels address specific needs, and all channels need to be used intelligently in order to get the best possible results. Turning your back on any channel for any reason is basically turning your back on an opportunity to grow your business. It’s just silly. Truth: If a channel hasn’t worked for you in the past, it probably isn’t the channel’s fault. It just means that you haven’t yet found a way to make it work for you and your business. There’s an easy fix to that: Try again… and ask for expert help if you have to.

Whether you are developing your own media strategy internally or looking to hire a social media consultant to help you tackle this new marketing toolkit, remember to always look for a healthy balance in all things: Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket (traditional media or social media). If there is one concept that you need to take away from Knallgrau’s presentation, it is the concept of “seeding”, which is purely a breadth strategy: In order to maximize your reach (or even understand what channels work best for your company), you need to seed your brand across as many channels as possible. If you can take a step back for a second and look at every channel as an investment (which it is), what you have to do is use simple logic: Don’t put all of your eggs in just two or three baskets, especially when you know that the price of entry is high, and the dividends aren’t all that stellar. The smart strategy is simply to diversify your marketing channels portfolio.

Once you’ve identified which channels seem to be catching on (getting some sort of positive and quantifiable result), THEN start working on depth within those channels.

This takes a little bit of THINKING when it comes to mapping out how these channels will work for you. Hire someone who can help you make sense of this if you need to, but be cautious: With “social media” being the hottest marketing keyword right now, self-professed “social media experts” are popping up like a bad case of teenage acne. Unfortunately, most of them are anything but.

Nb: My bit of good karma for the day: If you are looking for a solid social media consultant/practitioner either in your area or your industry, shoot me an email and I will help you connect with the right person or company. The list of real practitioners is still pretty short, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to get you properly hooked up. My email: olivier@f360photo.com

Making it all work: Traditional Media and Social Media require different languages and mindsets.

While we’re on the subject of keeping the hacks away, it is very important for me to point out that the type of communication between companies and customers (or rather brands and people… and more people… and even more people), that takes place across new media channels is fundamentally different from the type of communication that occurs within traditional media channels. In the latter, messaging is king, and messaging is essentially a monologue. Conversely, the type of communication that takes place across social media is instead a dialogue. A conversation. The two require distinctively different approaches, and therefore two completely different mindsets. The danger in relying on self-proclaimed “social media experts” is that most come in two very distinct and equally ineffective forms:

1. The ad/PR agency who has finally hopped on the bandwagon about a year or so ago because everyone else was adding “social media” to their list of services. This breed will typically charge you hefty fees to set up a blog, create a community site or two, maybe even use Twitter as a means to send out press releases, but then nothing will come of it. They will get you into the right channels, but then use them the only way they know how, which is to treat them like traditional media channels. The result: Zero impact. Not only will you will have wasted valuable time and money on a poorly executed plan, you will also walk away convinced that social media is a worthless fad. This happens A LOT. It’s pretty much reached epidemic proportions right now. Way too many companies fall into this trap and I want to see it stop.
2. The Social Media cultist who keeps proclaiming that traditional media is dead. (Not in the real world, it isn’t.) I fell for that line a few years back when I realized the cost-benefit of social media, but I’ve gained enough experience and insight since then to realize that we were a little premature in declaring advertising and PR dead. (Thank goodness too.) These guys might convince you not to spend one more penny on advertising or PR. They will quote a handful of great examples of very well known companies that have grown their brands without resorting to traditional media channels… but those are few and far between and probably don’t apply to you. Truth: The vast majority of businesses can’t survive on social media alone. Even Apple – arguably the most successful superlovebrand whose fans will line up for days to spend their mortgage payment on its latest i-gottahaveit bit of design genius – spends a small country’s GDP on advertising. Starbucks, which for years never bothered with any advertising whatsoever is spending money on billboards and TV ads now. In spite of what these folks will tell you, social media is not the second coming.

In either case, it isn’t that the professionals you are dealing with are dishonest or out to “get your money.” Not at all. Most of these folks are trying to make an honest buck and they do want to help you. It’s just that they don’t really know how because they only have a portion of the equation figured out. Unfortunately, without the whole thing, you’re kind of screwed. You could equate it to toeing the start line of a marathon with only one running shoe, or having only trained to run 13 miles instead of the full 26.2. Sure, you might survive, you might reach the finish line, but at what cost and in what shape? The objective here isn’t for you to survive and gut it out just to say you spent some time in the race. The objective is to get ahead. To win, even. You don’t stand a chance if you don’t really understand what you are getting yourself into right from the start.

Here’s a tip: True social media practitioners a) understand the value of both traditional and new media channels, b) know how to get the most out of both traditional and new media channels individually, and c) can help you blend traditional and new media channels in order to maximize results and achieve your business goals. In other words, look for someone who knows how to strike the right balance for you, and NOT someone who will steer you towards one extreme or the other.

Straight talk and common sense: What this discussion all boils down to.

Back to the point: If you own or manage a business, learning how to incorporate new media channels into your existing marketing strategy is absolutely vital to your business’ future.

Especially in this economy.

Having an intelligent, balanced and well executed growth strategy that leverages both traditional AND new media will save you money, improve your brand equity, grow your market share, boost customer loyalty and engagement, and provide you with countless opportunities to increase your overall sales numbers. Period.

All of this is actually pretty simple to incorporate into your business… as long as you have a trustworthy and knowledgeable friend on your side who can guide you through it.

If you commit to learning how to make your company or marketing department smarter and more efficient through a combination of old and new tools, surround yourself with the right people with the right mindset and experience, and truly commit to kicking some ass (in the right way), very good things will happen.

Trust me, just like every other company out there (big and small) that has figured this out already, your modest investment in expert assistance (either by partnering with an expert or adding one to your team) could pay off BIG in no time. The alternative is to do nothing, continue to invest in an incomplete marketing portfolio, and hope that business will magically get better. (Good luck with that!)

Shoot me an email, and I will hook you up.

Have a great Monday, everyone!

😉

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Robert Killick on the value of risk and true entrepreneurship.

Robert Killick on the need for intellectual curiosity and courage in the face of “unknowns” in today’s business leaders:

Risk was once seen as a catalyst for competitiveness, innovation and change in enterprise culture. Now it is seen as a negative barrier to be avoided with all sorts of precautionary measures. ‘Risk consciousness’ is the order of the day, but the preference to always dig up the dark side of humanity betrays a lack of faith in human reason. Curiosity and foolhardiness are often derided as irresponsible and egotistical traits, but the great heroes of the past have taken personal risks that benefit all of us.

Today, research and experimentation that does not have a measurable ‘positive effect’ is seen as irresponsible. Yet it is precisely through experimentation, risk – and, yes, mistakes – that some of the major scientific breakthroughs and technological inventions have come about. Without risky experimentation, and without individuals willing to take those risks in the pursuit of knowledge, we wouldn’t have aeroplanes, penicillin, MRI scans or X-rays.

The ability to handle risk – though technology, human ingenuity, reason and resilience – is a measure of modernity and it can only be achieved through more experimentation, not less. The hard won freedoms to creative expression, communication and to technological innovation should be treasured, and the twenty-first century should be when we take them even further.

Risk-adverse/risk-paralyzed leaders aren’t leaders at all. At best, they are followers promoted or appointed to positions they should have had enough common sense, integrity and professionalism to turn down.

Fact: Leaders “lead.” They take their companies in a specific direction and make sure that course corrections occur as needed along the way. Standing still, ignoring emerging market trends, rewarding business-as-usual strategies, waiting for competitors to make a move before testing the waters, or building protective walls around organizations are not examples of leadership.

No one is advocating making rash decisions of course, but in order for companies to be successful, their leaders must possess certain key personality traits – among them the essential combination of vision, courage and an unbreakable pioneering streak.

Bear this in mine when placing your bets on a company, new boss or potential candidates for an executive-level position.

Have a great week, everyone!

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On Selling Marketing Short: Fixing the R.O.I. void

http://wray-mccann.com

Interesting post by JP Voilleque over at Marketing 2.0 this week about the use of mythology and archetypes when creating narratives for brands, but also (and more importantly) the generational roadblocks standing in the way of smart marketing being adopted by conservative companies.

Both of these topics are dear to my heart: The first because tapping into hard-coded symbolism and archetypes we project onto our various mythologies to make sense of the world can be the difference between an organization becoming little more than a company with a logo and that same company becoming a global lifestyle brand. The game here being one of identity and purpose, if a brand can tap into the collective need for a particular archetype, it can become a vessel for a culture’s very specific aspirations.

Nike is a perfect example of this type of exercise, from its choice of name to the way its brand is communicated via its many marketing channels. (Tell me Nike ads aren’t designed specifically to inspire the champion in you.)

The second is also crucial, especially in this economy, because it strikes the heart of Marketing’s Achilles’ heel: The seeming absence of R.O.I. (Return On Investment) at least in the minds of so many first wave baby-boomer executives. I have run into this my entire career, and I have to confess that has been one of the most frustrating of hurdles: Most business leaders simply have no faith in Marketing. They don’t see it as an effective business function, they see it as an expense rather than an investment, and more often than not, marketing takes on the form of a formulaic, uninspired afterthought that barely ever ventures beyond the stale world of “marketing deliverables” like brochures, websites, mailers and print ads. Worse yet, these deliverables are often utterly ineffective in both design and purpose, adding insult to injury in the world of pragmatic, no-nonsense business execs. This is not good, and it needs to start changing immediately.

Here’s what JP has to say:

I have a special place in my heart for resistance to change. It is endearing, like sepia-tone photos of families in Wild West garb. But when it comes to grappling with network externalities, it loses that cuteness and becomes a real impediment to rapid adoption of effective messaging. The people who are ordering the message don’t think it “belongs” in the Web 2.0 universe except in very narrowly sliced, buzzword-laden places that are no less guaranteed to provide a return than the entire space.

[…]

We’re talking for the most part about first wave baby boomers, but in some cases we’re discussing some “silent generation” folks. So depending on circumstances, these are people who are focused on toeing the line, “team play” as art form, and (for the most part) a hierarchical model of career development, decision making, and information processes. The 1984 Apple ad was aimed at/authored by the second wave of the baby boom, the ones that came of age during the sixties, and aggressively anti-hierarchy (though no less hard-working). The roadblock is the first wave. Worse, it’s a committee of them.

Read the entire post here.

Anytime someone talks about archetypes, metaphors and marketing all in the same paragraph, they have my undivided attention. There isn’t enough of this kind of thinking in our industry, and it’s a damn shame because it holds so much power. Unfortunately, the silent generation doesn’t always have time for archetypes, Jungian psychology or for peeling back the layers of mythology-inspired metaphor.

Fact: These guys don’t believe in the value of marketing because no one has ever shown them that it indeed has any value. Too many hacks in this business are content to charge exorbitant fees for deliverables without actually ever working towards actual business and brand-building objectives. (And I won’t even touch the topic of the growing number of internal marketing departments whose staff can’t come up with a single original idea, much less write half a page of decent copy.) Many small marketing and PR firms have thus become little more than job shops where a) the talent and the creative have – over time – slipped to the bottom of the commodity ladder, and b) have completely eliminated the strategic in favor of the tactical (if you can even call it that). This may be a great way to keep paying the bills, but it is no way to inject the true value of marketing into a company that needs it. Enough firms and practitioners do this, and the entire profession soon becomes plagued with low rent hacks selling “marketing” to business folks too busy running their businesses to know any better. This is how the marketing field spent the last three decades losing all credibility and value, bringing us to where we are today: A business world in which the first thing that gets cut during tough economic times is marketing. Bravo.

Incidentally, the one line-item in a business’ budget that should actually increase during difficult economic times is marketing. Why? Because the best time to reach out to your customers and possibly gain market share is precisely when your competitors are retreating. We’re upside-down in this scenario because for the last thirty years, hacks have been dragging this discipline down into the commodity gutter. Enough is enough. We need to get back to business now. And I mean right now, starting with the very same first wave boomers who currently have absolutely zero faith in the discipline.

To these folks, marketing is at best fluff. Pretty fluff, sometimes, but fluff nonetheless. And expensive fluff at that. They reluctantly sign off on brochures, flyers, websites, catalogs and the occasional press release (the latter usually aimed at investors and stakeholders rather than their customers) because they feel that they have to. It’s just a cost of doing business. *sigh* Aside from this expensive exercise in seemingly worthless self promotion (a concept they aren’t particularly comfortable with anyway), marketing seems to be an expense rather than a worthwhile investment. This is the biggest fundamental problem faced by marketing departments and firms today.

Another way to look at it is this: There seems to be little to no measurable ROI from most marketing campaigns or activities.

Chances are that if you are dealing with a CEO who has little faith in marketing, it is because no one has ever shown them the link that exists between real marketing (which reaches far deeper than just messaging), and something as simple as F.R.Y. measurements (Frequency, Yield and Reach), for starters. Forget brand valuation for the first couple of quarters. Don’t even bring it up. Just show them how great marketing can increase their sales through an increase in interactions between their company and its customers, a positive change in the average order size, and/or an increase in net new customers. This is something they understand. This is something that puts food on the table, therefore it is tangible. This is how marketing stops being fluff and starts being valuable. This is how cost becomes benefit. This is how risky expense becomes worthwhile investment.

In order to enable this transition, we need to connect the dots by demonstrating clearly and objectively that marketing drives business growth in a measurable, quantifiable way. Not only that, but your efforts have to show that the return outweighs the investment. Not through bullshit metrics but through measurables that actually show up on the P&L.

You aren’t going to turn the older boomers to pay any attention to quests and archetypes (unless they happen to work at Nike or Jaguar or Starbucks), but you can take these concepts and turn them into what they understand: ROI. Simple Business 101. Common sense cost-benefit data. Period.

Does this put marketing practitioners on the spot? You bet. And it’s about time too.

The shift that needs to occur is simply this: Marketing practitioners need to a) stop behaving like commodities salesmen, and b) (to borrow a phrase from the presidential campaign trail) stop slapping lipstick on a pig.

Our job is not to sell deliverables like websites, catalogs, print ads and clever copy (and especially not the mediocre kind). Our job is to help folks who already spend over 80% of their time running the day to day operations of their business connect that business with the outside world in an effective and extraordinary way. More to the point, our job is to help drive sales, create net new customers, and increase the number of positive interactions between the companies we serve and their growing customer base. Our job is to help delight customers so that they will become a) repeat customers and b) brand ambassadors. Our job is to bring context to products, services and companies’ identities in specific cultural subsets. Our job is to bring companies and “markets” together, which is really to say companies and people.

Summed up, our job is to develop all of the strategies and tactics that help companies find their audience, facilitate the first handshake, and develop lasting, delightful, fiercely loyal relationships with as many great people as possible.

Our job is to do this in a remarkable, memorable, delightful way. Our job, if anything, is to inspire our clients and the people they serve to engage in a relationship which benefits both parties equally, and somehow improves their collective condition in the process. Our job is nothing short of ensuring that the marriage between between them is a great and lasting one.

This is not the sort of thing you entrust to just anyone. Yet too many companies do just that – most of the time because they may not be aware that they have other, better options.

I say enough. Seriously. Enough with uninspired, ineffective mediocrity. Enough with chop-shop marketing. Enough with inexistent (upside-down) R.O.I. Enough with the snake oil bullshit.

Enough.

Not until that first wave of boomer execs start to see that Marketing is as vital to their growth and as worthwhile an investment as an acquisition or product innovation will they be able to connect the dots between marketing activity and simple, bottom-line, black-on-white R.O.I.

It’s time to start cleaning up our industry once and for all, one company at a time. If that’s what it takes, then so be it. I hope you’ll join me in this quest, assuming you aren’t fighting the good fight already.

Have a great Thursday, everyone. 😉

image by Chris Wray-McCann

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The Evolution of Brands: From Broadcasting to Facilitation to Community Engagement

That the always brilliant David Armano recently wrote yet another thought provoking post on his Logic + Emotion blog isn’t exactly front page news. He has a habit of doing so pretty much weekly… but what is particularly cool about this post is the fact that one of his graphic looks identical to a community engagement model I sketched out almost a year ago for some colleagues (who, back then, looked at me like I was speaking Chinese).

Check this out:

The first graphic shows a typical brand-as-a-broadcaster model, in which a company essentially fashions a messaging strategy and then uses various channels to broadcast it down to its buckets of potential customers and existing users (market segments or the more cynically named demos).

Note how the second graphic takes a much more organic, communal, non-directional approach to customer/user community engagement. In this model, the brand isn’t an external entity connect with individuals and communities through rigid vertical channels. In this model, the brand exists in conjunction with the communities. It’s hard to see where the brand ends and the communities begin. Marketing communications cease to exist as a product to be distributed, and become instead a living, breathing dialogue. This is exactly the model of community engagement that I sketched out, right down to the influencer/friends tags (though Dave’s version is much prettier than my improvised chicken-scratch). This is the community engagement model for brands whose products are important enough to scale in this way AND create users so passionate that they would give up valuable time to be active in these communities. Examples: World of Warcraft, Harley Davidson, the Microsoft Partner Community, Fiskateers, Comicon, Star Trek, BMW, WOMMA and the New York Yankees, for starters.

Note: Best in class companies typically manage to juggle both models simultaneously. Ideally, you should strive towards that balance as well.

Good to see Dave Armano come to the same conclusions I have. (I feel 100% validated right now, and I like it.)

Nb: Community engagement and brand building aside, it isn’t every day that I run into a graphic that is so precisely like mine that it makes my jaw drop. If we were talking about prehistoric cave paintings instead of marketing sketches, anthropologists would have a serious mystery on their hands. But this being the internet age, I’ll just chalk it up to Dave and I being in synch about a topic we both write (and sketch) about a lot. Still, I think it’s pretty cool that without having ever met, Dave and I have managed to tap into the exact same visual interpretation of two different concepts born of a single root idea.

Check out Dave’s otherwise not-weird-at-all post here.

Have a great, completely normal Tuesday!

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Guy Kawasaki + Dan Roam on The Art of Visual Thinking

Being a big fan of sketching, visual mapping and drawing diagrams of every idea, process and problem I run into, this post by Guy Kawasaki made me a very happy camper. (I really need to get out more.)

First things first: Go to Guy’s blog and read his post on the subject.

Second: Go read Guy’s interview with Dan Roam, author of T.he Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures

Here’s a taste of the interview:

Question: What problems are you really talking about solving with pictures?

Answer: All of them: business strategy challenges, project management issues, resource allocation problems–even personal problems–can all be clarified, if not outright solved, through the use of pictures. And the pictures we’re talking about are simple ones. If you can draw a circle, a square, an arrow, and a smiley face, you can draw any of the problem-solving pictures I talk about.

Question: What is an example of how a business problem was solved with a sketch?

Answer: The most famous business napkin is the route map of Southwest Airlines. When businessman Rollin King and lawyer Herb Kelleher sat down in 1967 in the St. Anthony’s Club in San Antonio, their intent was to drink to the successful closing of King’s previous airline. Instead, King picked up a pen and–drawing a triangle on a bar napkin as he spoke–said, “Wait a minute. What would happen if we created an airline that only connected Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio?” The world’s most profitable airline was born.

My personal favorite is still a work in progress. I’ve spent time with the senior executives of Peet’s Coffee and Teas helping map out the company’s growth and business operating strategies. In number of coffee retail stores, Peets is second after Starbucks, but it is still orders of magnitude behind: one hundred and sixty stores to Starbuck’s fifteen thousand. Clearly there is the opportunity for Peets to grow, but Peets has long been known as the “best” coffee available. So the question remains, “How do you grow without giving in on quality?”

We’re created a simple back of the napkin sketch that outlines Peet’s approach to maintaining quality while growing, and it has been circulated around the company so that everybody gets it and sees exactly where they fit into the “quality chain.”

Read the full thing here.

Simplicity works. A picture (or sketch) is worth a thousand words. Why bore your audience with numbers and bullet points when you can tell the entire story in one simple slide – or by sketching something on the back of a napkin? I thought I was weird for doing this, but now that I feel all vindicated by Guy and Dan, I am going to have to turn this quirky little habit of mine into standard operating procedure.

Next time someone asks you if you want them to draw you a picture, puff out your chest and proudly declare “yes!”

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Why positive people create positive brand experiences… and negative people don’t.

http://wray-mccann.com

Ever noticed how positive attitudes are infectious? You walk into a store, and everyone who works there is jazzed and happy to be there and energetic… and by the time you leave, you have completely adopted their mood?

Ever noticed that the opposite is also true: Walk into a business where everyone is negative or apathetic, and you find yourself feeling the same dread and negativity?

Sitting in Houston’s Toyota arena with thousands of the world’s most innovative Microsoft partners, I was reminded of the power that other people’s attitudes and moods have over our own – and remembered a post that Kathy Sierra shared many moons ago on her brilliant but now sadly defunct “Passionate Users” blog. It talked about happy vs. angry people, emotional contagion, and the role mirror neurons play in our involuntary tendency to be drawn into other people’s positive or negative attitudes. Very cool stuff, and particularly relevant to some of the discussions I have been involved with in the last few days with some of my international peers. I did some quick digging to find it so I could share it with you. Here are some of the highlights:

Mirror neurons and our innate tendency to pick up other people’s behaviors, good and bad.

There is now strong evidence to suggest that humans have the same type of “mirror neurons” found in monkeys. It’s what these neurons do that’s amazing–they activate in the same way when you’re watching someone else do something as they do when you’re doing it yourself! This mirroring process/capability is thought to be behind our ability to empathize, but you can imagine the role these neurons have played in keeping us alive as a species. We learn from watching others. We learn from imitating (mirroring) others. The potential problem, though, is that these neurons go happily about their business of imitating others without our conscious intention.

Think about that…

Although the neuroscientific findings are new, your sports coach and your parents didn’t need to know the cause to recognize the effects:

“Choose your role models carefully.”
“Watching Michael Jordan will help you get better.”
“You’re hanging out with the wrong crowd; they’re a bad influence.”
“Don’t watch people doing it wrong… watch the experts!”

We’ve all experienced it. How often have you found yourself sliding into the accent of those around you? Spend a month in England and even a California valley girl sounds different. Spend a week in Texas and even a native New Yorker starts slowing down his speech. How often have you found yourself laughing, dressing, skiing like your closest friend? Has someone ever observed that you and a close friend or significant other had similar mannerisms? When I was in junior high school, it was tough for people to tell my best friends and I apart on the phone–we all sounded so much alike that we could fool even our parents.

But the effect of our innate ability and need to imitate goes way past teenage phone tricks. Spend time with a nervous, anxious person and physiological monitoring would most likely show you mimicking the anxiety and nervousness, in ways that affect your brain and body in a concrete, measurable way. Find yourself in a room full of pissed off people and feel the smile slide right off your face. Listen to people complaining endlessly about work, and you’ll find yourself starting to do the same. How many of us have been horrified to suddenly realize that we’ve spent the last half-hour caught up in a gossip session–despite our strong aversion to gossip? The behavior of others we’re around is nearly irresistible.

Why choosing who you work, play and hang out with matters.

When we’re consciously aware and diligent, we can fight this. But the stress of maintaining that conscious struggle against an unconscious, ancient process is a non-stop stressful drain on our mental, emotional, and physical bandwidth. And no, I’m not suggesting that we can’t or should’nt spend time with people who are angry, negative, critical, depressed, gossiping, whatever. Some (including my sister and father) chose professions (nurse practitioner and cop, respectively) that demand it. And some (like my daughter) volunteer to help those who are suffering (in her case, the homeless). Some people don’t want to avoid their more hostile family members. But in those situations–where we choose to be with people who we do not want to mirror–we have to be extremely careful! Nurses, cops, mental health workers, EMTs, social workers, red cross volunteers, fire fighters, psychiatrists, oncologists, etc. are often at a higher risk (in some cases, WAY higher) for burnout, alcoholism, divorce, stress, or depression unless they take specific steps to avoid getting too sucked in to be effective.

So, when Robert says he wants to spend time hanging around “happy people” and keeping his distance from “deeply unhappy” people, he’s keeping his brain from making–over the long term–negative structural and chemical changes. Regarding the effect of mirror neurons and emotional contagion on personal performance, neurologist Richard Restak offers this advice:

“If you want to accomplish something that demands determination and endurance, try to surround yourself with people possessing these qualities. And try to limit the time you spend with people given to pessimism and expressions of futility. Unfortunately, negative emotions exert a more powerful effect in social situations than positive ones, thanks to the phenomena of emotional contagion.”

This sounds harsh, and it is, but it’s his recommendation based on the facts as the neuroscientists interpret them today. This is not new age self-help–it’s simply the way brains work.

Emotional Contagion explained.

Steven Stosny, an expert on road rage, is quoted in Restak’s book:

“Anger and resentment are thet most contagious of emotions,” according to Stonsy. “If you are near a resentful or angry person, you are more prone to become resentful or angry yourself. If one driver engages in angry gestures and takes on the facial expressions of hostility, surrounding drivers will unconsciously imitate the behavior–resulting in an escalation of anger and resentment in all of the drivers. Added to this, the drivers are now more easily startled as a result of the outpouring of adrenaline accompanying their anger. The result is a temper tantrum that can easily escalate into road rage.”

From a paper on Memetics and Social Contagion,

“…social scientific research has largely confirmed the thesis that affect, attitudes, beliefs and behavior can indeed spread through populations as if they were somehow infectious. Simple exposure sometimes appears to be a sufficient condition for social transmission to occur. This is the social contagion thesis; that sociocultural phenomena can spread through, and leap between, populations more like outbreaks of measles or chicken pox than through a process of rational choice.”

Emotional contagion is considered one of the primary drivers of group/mob behavior, and the recent work on “mirror neurons” helps explain the underlying cause. But it’s not just about groups. From a Cambridge University Press book:

“When we are talking to someone who is depressed it may make us feel depressed, whereas if we talk to someone who is feeling self-confident and buoyant we are likely to feel good about ourselves. This phenomenon, known as emotional contagion, is identified here, and compelling evidence for its affect is offered from a variety of disciplines – social and developmental psychology, history, cross-cultural psychology, experimental psychology, and psychopathology.”

[For a business management perspective, see the Yale School of Management paper titled The Ripple Effect: Emotional Contagion In Groups]

Can any of us honestly say we haven’t experienced emotional contagion? Even if we ourselves haven’t felt our energy drain from being around a perpetually negative person, we’ve watched it happen to someone we care about. We’ve noticed a change in ourselves or our loved ones based on who we/they spend time with. We’ve all known at least one person who really did seem able to “light up the room with their smile,” or another who could “kill the mood” without saying a word. We’ve all found ourselves drawn to some people and not others, based on how we felt around them, in ways we weren’t able to articulate.

Happy People are better able to think logically

Neuroscience has made a long, intense study of the brain’s fear system–one of the oldest, most primitive parts of our brain. Anger and negativity usually stem from the anxiety and/or fear response in the brain, and one thing we know for sure–when the brain thinks its about to be eaten or smashed by a giant boulder, there’s no time to stop and think! In many ways, fear/anger and the ability to think rationally and logically are almost mutually exclusive. Those who stopped to weigh the pros and cons of a flight-or-fight decision were eaten, and didn’t pass on their afraid-yet-thoughtful genes.

Happines is associated most heavily with the left (i.e. logical) side of the brain, while anger is associated with the right (emotional, non-logical) side of the brain. From a Society for Neuroscience article on Bliss and the Brain:

“Furthermore, studies suggest that certain people’s ability to see life through rose-colored glasses links to a heightened left-sided brain function. A scrutiny of brain activity indicates that individuals with natural positive dispositions have trumped up activity in the left prefrontal cortex compared with their more negative counterparts. “

In other words, happy people are better able to think logically.

And apparently happier = healthier:

“Evidence suggests that the left-siders may better handle stressful events on a biological level. For example, studies show that they have a higher function of cells that help defend the body, known as natural killer cells, compared with individuals who have greater right side activity. Left-sided students who face a stressful exam have a smaller drop in their killer cells than right-siders. Other research indicates that generally left-siders may have lower levels of the stress hormone, cortisol.”

And while we’re dispelling the Happy=Vacuous myth, let’s look at a couple more misperceptions:

“Happy people aren’t critical.”
“Happy people don’t get angry.”
“Happy people are obedient.”
“Happy people can’t be a disruptive force for change.”

So can Happy and criticism live happily together?

One of the world’s leading experts in the art of happiness is the Dalai Lama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. Just about everyone who hears him speak is struck by how, well, happy he is. How he can describe–with laughter–some of the most traumatizing events of his past. Talk about perspective…

But he is quite outspoken with his criticism of China. The thing is, he doesn’t believe that criticism requires anger, or that being happy means you can’t be a disruptive influence for good. On happiness, he has this to say:

“The fact that there is always a positive side to life is the one thing that gives me a lot of happiness. This world is not perfect. There are problems. But things like happiness and unhappiness are relative. Realizing this gives you hope.”

And among the “happy people”, there’s Mahatma Gandhi, a force for change that included non-violent but oh-most-definitely-disobedient behavior. A few of my favorite Gandhi quotes:

In a gentle way, you can shake the world.

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.

The argument for and against anger

But then there’s the argument that says “anger” is morally (and intellectually) superior to “happy”. The American Psychological Association has this to say on anger:

“People who are easily angered generally have what some psychologists call a low tolerance for frustration, meaning simply that they feel that they should not have to be subjected to frustration, inconvenience, or annoyance. They can’t take things in stride, and they’re particularly infuriated if the situation seems somehow unjust: for example, being corrected for a minor mistake.”

Of course it’s still a myth that “happy people” don’t get angry. Of course they do. Anger is often an appropriate response. But there’s a Grand Canyon between a happy-person-who-gets-angry and an unhappy-angry-person. So yes, we get angry. Happiness is not our only emotion, it is simply the outlook we have chosen to cultivate because it is usually the most effective, thoughtful, healthy, and productive.

And there’s this one we hear most often, especially in reference to comment moderation–“if you can’t say whatever the hell you want to express your anger, you can’t be authentic and honest.” While that may be true, here’s what the psychologists say:

“Psychologists now say that this is a dangerous myth. Some people use this theory as a license to hurt others. Research has found that “letting it rip” with anger actually escalates anger and aggression and does nothing to help you (or the person you’re angry with) resolve the situation.

It’s best to find out what it is that triggers your anger, and then to develop strategies to keep those triggers from tipping you over the edge.”

And finally, another Ghandi quote:

“Be the change that you want to see in the world.”

If the scientists are right, I might also add,

Be around the change you want to see in the world.

Strong organizations and communities are able to harness the power of emotional contagion to create engaging, productive and extremely effective collaborative ecosystems. The truly exceptional among them also manage to extend this collective positivity to their human/customer touchpoints (retail outlets, salespeople, CSRs, etc.). Obvious examples of this are Starbucks (except in airports), Mac Stores, and Whole Foods grocery outlets.

This week, a very large scale example of this (and the trigger for this post) was Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston, TX.

The complete opposite of this might be, say, the checkout at Walmart, Home Depot or Taco Bell, a prison ward, or an Vietnamese sweat shop.

Success breeds success. Enthusiasm breeds enthusiasm. Professionalism breeds professionalism.

Likewise, mediocrity breeds mediocrity. Apathy breeds apathy. Negative attitudes breed negative attitudes.

Now you know. What you do with this knowledge is up to you. For me, the choice is pretty simple. Always has been.

Have a great Friday. 😉

photo credit: Christopher Wray McCann

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Back from Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference

Just got back from Microsoft’s WPC in Houston, and I have one word to share with you (and one you might not normally associate with Microsoft): Inspiring.

Go ahead and buy into the whole Mac vs. PC propaganda if you must, but when you get to rub elbows with thousands of the world’s smartest, most engaged, most sophisticated IT professionals – some of whom are quite literally working to change the world using Microsoft based tools – and see how incredible the Microsoft partner community actually is, it completely changes the level of the Mac vs. PC conversation.

And I mean completely.

Not to mention the depth and breadth of products being developed, released, upgraded and optimized at lightning speed. Baffling.

No, I am not drinking any funny koolaid. If you are a long time reader of this blog, you know I’m not the type.

And just in case you were wondering, when I looked across the ocean of PC folks from around the world who were in Houston for the event this week, I didn’t see anyone who looked one bit like the PC guy in the Apple commercials. Not even close. As a matter of fact, most looked a hell of a lot trendier than the ads’ little coffee-shop dwelling Apple dude.

Nothing against Mac people (I dig Mac’s approach to design and completely understand the appeal) but in the real world, being a PC means you can actually change the world, not just entertain it – which is why I made the switch almost a decade ago.

And hate mail from Mac users can start flowing… now.  ;D

More posts about my experiences in Houston coming soon.

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One man or woman can make a difference.

“The problems of this world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.”

– John F. Kennedy

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Reinventing the Insights Incubator

David Burn gives us this (on AdPulp) –

Tim O’Reilly talks about the value of putting people from different disciplines in a room together:

“In thinking about the future of collective intelligence, we need to make sure that we not only think about systems that lead to convergence of opinion, but also ones that ensure divergence, and fresh inputs. The surest way I know to get this is not to pay attention to the breaking news in your own pond, but to find the next community over, and to create new cross connections.”

Clearly this is a page the ad industry needs to be on. It seems to me the perfect agency (that will never exist) would be comprised of the most eclectic mix of people possible—a dream team of organic farmers, cultural anthropologists, taxi drivers, vagabonds, poets, athletes, chefs, etc. Naturally, all of the above would be highly capable brand builders. That’s a given. It’s the unquantifiable X-factor that’s only found in the mix, that we need to go after.

Read the full piece.

Amen.

image: Dogs Playing Poker, by Cassius Coolidge

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PS: The vagabond thing took me by surprise, but why the hell not.

Noteworthy vagabonds:

Kwai Chang Caine

Forrest Gump

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