Nilofer Merchant's WinMarkets Blog

Think-ectomy Needed

2008-12-12T15:26:41Z

A long time ago, i wrote this set of ideas on how business / market segmentation will evolve. I still think it is one of the definitive clear pictures of how web technologies allow us to get more refined and clear with consumers.

This morning, Eli Cohen, the CEO of Creative Concepts just wrote. to share this:

I just wonder if this atomizing process makes it too difficult or time consuming to relate to your potential markets. Obviously web 2.o gives various technical options for doing this but the whole purpose of segmentation is to try and group mass markets into groups with certain common denominators. I think it is an interesting question where the limits of individualism are – I think in terms of trends that the majority of humans do not function well unless they can be part of some perceived greater whole. This is why I think we see branding continue to be crucial to the success of product sales.

I think Eli raises a good point in that people do need to be a apart of something larger than themselves and that consumers buying behavior is often tied to this. Eli inadvertently illustrates the still pervasive mindset that marketers are in charge. I believe consumers will end up co-driving what you produce and that will result in better products, that serve real needs. Our mindset needs to change. We need to have a think-ectomy on who is in charge.

Thoughts?

Swing Thru the Ball

2008-10-23T22:09:59Z

Imagine you are a leader of a business, a division, an institution, or of a team. You've worked with your team to come up with plans and goals for the coming year. Now the economy goes south in what some believe will be an 18-24 month down cycle.

What should you do? Do you stop things? Start things? Answer: yes, to both. Of course you should rethink and reevaluate but if you do that for long you put at risk the current business or effort simply because you didn't execute what you could have done.

Thanks to some friends at big companies, or saas companies or web 2.0 firms, the question of "how to focus on delivery, now" has been in my inbox and meetings. You've inspired me to write some basics down that are focused on how to make sure a team achieves a specific goal.

How do you make sure your business is going to achieve your goal? How do you let people follow you? How will they know they're on track.

Here are 7 tips to make sure you achieve goals -
1. First, make sure you have a goal. Is the defined goal really a goal? I think the only way a goal becomes really clear is if you know what success looks like. Let's say you want sales revenue growth to be 20% worldwide? Does that come with gross margin growth or decline? By how much? Does a particular product line need to be incubated so that u achieve next year's growth. In other words, get concrete and lear about what u want."double click" down on the specifics in such a way that when others go off to achieve the goal, they understand any conditions that must be met and have the same picture in their mind as you do yours.

2. Add visibility. There's been a bunch of research and of course anecdotal information that says when people publically commit, their follow-through increase. I personally don't mind if this is linked to peer pressure or peer awareness, all i care is that people are aware that someone will notice if they don't follow-through.

3. Brainstorm lots of strategies. Take the growth example...we could do that growth in one region, thru one product, etc. There are so many ways (strategies) to accomplish a goal. But without deliberating the many ways to achieve a goal, you haven't figured out which option is best for you to achieve goal.

4. Stop confusing goals and strategies. A team I worked with recently talked about a goal being "get X million people to visit a home page and do trial". That's not a goal. That's a strategy. It is being done to support the goal which is to drive attachments, sales, upgrades. Web traffic is one way to achieve goal but not the only one. If you only focus on one strategy, you have no other alternatives to pursue when that one goes down in flames. Think of a goal as a target city on a map, and the roads being strategies. You want to make sure that people have many roads to get to a destination but not just one.

5. Encourage debate. Talk thru programs, ideas, potential risks because you will learn something you don't already know that will help you have more fidelity on an issue or opportunity. A client and I were talking yesterday. She had been advocating the use of traditional marketing and I kept advocating online web marketing (new tools). I thought we were out of agreement. I could have viewed her as wrong or she could have viewed me the same. But here's the reality. Both were true. She had data that showed a yield on traditional marketing was higher than online. So while the cost of entry was lower online, current performance techniques means u have to spend more to go do it. That additional information that we discovered allowed us to have more clarity on what we were trying to solve and we had a more creative resolution to the strategic next steps.

6. Change what you need to change. Before you need to. Quite often, teams embark on new strategic directions without deciding to stop something else or to think through what needs to change. At the beginning of the year, Bruce sat in my office while he was helping drive the Rubicon '08 plan....and he reminded me of the basics. We had some new goals and new team members to integrate and all that. He wouldn't let me add a new thing until I could identify what do we STOP doing. What a great question. If you are going to lose weight, you stop eating sugar. But what do we do when we do business planning?

7. Create a building team, not a wrecking crew. Who we surround ourselves by is the difference between the team that slogs through vs the one that wins. We need to build a team that knows how to debate, understand, improve each others ideas and then ultimately build upon each others' strengths to help one another. Only a great leader can find those people and create a culture where this is not only permissable but required. Be one of those and other teams who value a meritocratic culture will want to join too. And the flywheel of success will grow in momentum.

Know Yourself

2008-09-25T13:30:30Z

What matters to you? This isn't just a touchy-feely question, it's the bedrock that describes who you are.

What is deeply felt and has meaning for you will ultimately inspire you to do your best work.

It took me years to figure out that I’m a truth-teller. I see things before others do. And when that happens, I'm led to call it out. But, to state the truth in a way in which it can't be heard is self-defeating. I didn't understand why others found my insights so disturbing.

In the past, people heard, "That sales strategy is a loser." What I was trying to communicate was, "I've seen this before - watch out! You're moving directly into the path of an oncoming train. Your company is in danger. Stop!" I value my expertise and perception as an early warning system, and I've honed it to make clients millions.

Along the say, I've also learned to tell the truth with kindness. I'm more likely to say, "Can I share something that could be uncomfortable with you?"

Know yourself - know others. Put your communication in a context that helps the truth come out so that it can be understood.

Lessons Learned

2008-09-22T13:30:30Z

I constantly remind myself to learn. No matter what the experience, how tough or how painful, if I've learned something from it, I can live with it.

Pay attention to what you're learning. Work to incorporate those lessons into the next meeting, the next experience, the next version of the document.

When you need to know more - ask. Then ask again. Even when you don’t think you need to know more - ask. There's always something that's been missed - find it.

Particularly when you're feeling that you're in a cave without a flashlight, keep going forward by asking questions and taking action. Asking questions is a great way to silence doubt.

Difficulty is a Great Teacher

2008-09-18T13:30:30Z

What I thought was torture when I worked at Apple - working with 23 different managers in seven years - I now see as an experience that refined by ability to work with many different kinds of leaders. It was a training ground that has paid big dividends - though I couldn't see it that way while I was immersed in the experience.

If you want to make an impact, only full immersion will do. You’ve got to dive in and paddle like crazy. There will be setbacks and detours. Maybe there will be a failure or two. Face all of it head on with courage.

Growth is a serial process and each move you make will reward you - even if it's just getting the knowledge about what you don't want.

It's hard to know in the present what will hold great value for you when it finally becomes history.

Scobleizer Gets it Right

2008-09-15T21:37:48Z

From September 2008 article by Robert Scoble:

"Being tethered to its Windows cash cow limits Microsoft from competing effectively against Google in online advertising. Sky is just one of dozens of Google services -- social networking, docs and spreadsheets, maps, and video, to name a few -- that can be linked to and embedded in your own Web site. Google collects data from millions of sites that are running one or more of its services and that's the big prize. Google Sky opens up yet another universe of potential customers for it to learn more about and then make smarter contextual advertising offers. Microsoft's software? You can't embed it anywhere, so what's the advertising opportunity with it? There's isn't one. That is why MSFT is going to have a tough time competing with Google...MSFT is a beautiful piece of software...too bad it isn't a harbinger of a beautiful business model for the future."

As if we needed yet another example of how a traditional company keeps trying to keep things the same as they always did it while new business models of this era skip by towards a new future. The traditional companies like Adobe, Symantec, Intuit, Autodesk, Microsoft, etc have to buy a clue. It's not about doing a sprinkling of this web stuff into their existing model but to think of how to transform the business model while staying true to your vision and DNA. Not easy but surely not this hard.

Sit Forward

2008-09-15T13:30:30Z

How often do you go to a meeting and check-out? Do you ever tune-out people you don't agree with?

Make the decision today to engage and be truly present.

Instead of judging, participate. Embrace whatever you find.

I call it 'sitting forward' - it's what we do when we're eager and interested and it helps us meet the world in a way that demonstrates we're ready for action. Ready to listen, learn, connect, create and make a strategy real.

Do this and the kinds of problems you deal with might not change, but your understanding of them probably will.

Sit forward and the world will look different - and you will be perceived differently.

Make a Conscious Descision to Lead Ideas

2008-09-11T13:30:33Z

Big contributions come about through conscious preparation and planning. That’s what strategy is about. And it requires being a leader of ideas.

Be an advocate, a co-creator, a facilitator, a lobbyist for the creation, development and sponsorship of ideas that help your organization to win. When these ideas are driven by your personal gifts and your unique passion, your ability to create lasting value becomes a natural part of who you are and how you work.

Because great leadership comes from passion and a desire to learn, being smarter is just the start.

Being a strong strategic leader comes from knowing what matters in a situation, making trade-offs with insight and being able to act in accordance with a vision.

It’s less about having the ‘right’ answer and more about sharing keen insights and perspectives with others.
Those come from three things – awareness, action and continuous practice.

Performance vs. Behavior

2008-09-08T23:24:19Z

We're schooled, whether through B-school or working in organizations, in the outer trappings of success - status, money, title and so forth. How do we tie that to individual satisfaction and a feeling of success?
What we likely haven't been taught is that the ways we create value are as important as the dollar amount that results.

Here's an example. Susan is a total pro. A high-ranking executive assistant in a Fortune 500 company in Silicon Valley, she is a 'touchpoint enhancer' - someone who consciously provides extra information, a compliment or subtle deeper knowledge with each contact. She makes a significant contribution to the larger whole, it's her individual strategy that makes a difference.

Why is this important?

Because we create value when we help others flourish in our organizations and contribute their highest talents. Creating value is what fuels business and it's why people work. The symbols of success (title, logo, who you've worked for, your degrees) may be proof of success, but they don't connect to your approach to work.

Tap into the approach to increase your value creation.

Employees and Strategy

2008-08-21T01:03:51Z

For many executives, the two words above don't go together. Why? Because they think strategy is done in the C-suite.

I'm here to tell you that's old thinking.

Life is different now. Status is less relevant. We're in an era of ideas - and they can, and do, come from all directions. The formal, power-based gatekeepers aren't in charge anymore.

Google is a company that gets it. They require their employees to take 20% of their time to develop new ideas - to live in a state of discovery.

Maintaining an openness to the new is important to innovation. It benefits strategy-makers because they can allow themselves to be in a continuous state of learning. And that benefits the entire organization.

Curiousity means that we hold back our concepts, our cherished traditions, even our habits. Instead, the courage to discover helps us be better business thinkers and more effective leaders. It opens us to questions that may lead to new products, different services - possibly even unique uses of our existing product lines.

People are the most valuable resource in any company. Tap into your gifts and those of the people around you and strategize your way to the top.

Strategy vs. Truth

2008-08-18T01:00:00Z

What happens inside an employee when strategy doesn't jive with what they know to be truth? In a millisecond, a string of questions unwinds.

Questions like: Do they expect me to say something? Will I get in trouble if I say something? Will I get in trouble later if I don't say something? Is talking about this career suicide? If I raise concerns, will I be seen as a problem? What if my comments are wrong - will I be seen as being too tactical? Does anyone else see the fatal flaw in this strategy? How will I pay the price for my perceived 'insubordination' somewhere down the road?

This demand dialogue indicates individual and organizational conflict that results when what's known at the 20,000 foot level doesn't match what’s happening on the ground. People feel a mixture of political fear and personal confusion. The fear of delivering 'the news' is the sign of structural problems and a likely indicator of eventual breakdown.

Strategy has 5 Structural Elements: People

2008-08-15T21:57:20Z

Strategy has 5 Structural Elements - power distribution, decision-making, idea generation, ideas, process and people. If you miss tuning one, you'll fail. Add items that don't blend and you'll fail.

People

In an organization of any size, people bring their domain knowledge, talents and perspectives to strategy creation. Often people are viewed as the first point of strategy failure, but they are actually the last point of failure in a long series of cascading interactions.

Put another way, very bright, creative, motivated people can fail if they are embedded in a strategy creation structure process where power, decision-making, idea generation or process are broken.

Strategy has 5 Structural Elements: Process

2008-08-15T00:44:37Z

Strategy has 5 Structural Elements - power distribution, decision-making, idea generation, ideas, process and people. Miss tuning one and you'll fail. Add items that don't blend and you'll fail.

Process

Process is the way that ideas are handled and consumed within organizations. Process defines the way that agreements and commitments are made and managed, and how well people understand what is happening and what to do.

The process-driven organization avoids wasting employee time and energy. People in this type of company reach agreement that an action is valuable, develop a process around it and set it in motion. It's the classic definition of a fly-wheel, which Wikipedia notes is 'a rotating disc used as a storage device for kinetic energy.'

Process may be communicated to a team in writing, by word of mouth or in other ways. Agreement is critical to the understanding of process within an organization.

The Five Structural Elements of Strategy: Idea Generation

2008-08-05T00:09:35Z

Strategy has 5 Structural Elements - power distribution, decision-making, idea generation, ideas, process and people. Miss tuning one and you'll fail. Add items that don't blend and you'll fail.

Idea Generation

How ideas are generated affects the quantity and quality of these ideas, which directly impacts the number of viable strategy options.

A company that has an annual strategy meeting with a brainstorming component that encompasses input from many directions within the company uses one type of idea generation.

The Google model involves having employees use 20% of their time for innovation. They test and grow projects. Some get nurtured and provide the company with revenue. Others are killed off. It's even possible that original projects may mutate into something different.

Once ideas are generated, Rubicon uses a proprietary method called Murderboarding. It focuses on idea selection - finding the single best solution to a problem.

Let's not do it again

2008-07-29T16:43:34Z

Harry Max send these two links, here, and here. on web-based failures yesterday and they had me going down memory lane. From lamo things to Beenz to worthy ideas like WebVan. It is both funny and sad to see the abslutely

And so I remind you/me/everyone the simple lesson we must hold onto. Every successful company has to have a clear customer pain/problem that they MUST solve. No company, regardless of the zany notion or the fantastic technology succeeds without that.