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Integrity Redefined: Resilience in Times of Change

If only this book had been published ten years ago...   I would have avoided some regrettable hiring decisions, and one-sided friendships as well.    It's the fairweather friend or colleague that trips us up -- the sunny disposition that turns surly when the forecast turns foul. 

In Integrity -- The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality, Dr. Henry Cloud does an admirable job of defining the elements of character that either enable people to rise to the occasion -- or go down in flames. 

Change changes everything:  a stellar candidate becomes an underachiever (or a destructive force) in a crisis.   Down-to-earth becomes Diva in the face of success.  How do you gauge a person's capacity for change?   Dr. Cloud illuminates how we can misjudge character:  we see admirable traits (trust, concern for the greater good) as absolutes, when they may be conditional or situational.   

By deconstructing our "gut instincts", Cloud has created a useful formula for evaluating relationships with potential employees, colleagues, friends -- even future mates.  Although it is geared towards human behavior in the business world, Integrity's blueprint extends to human relationships in all aspects of life.

Chris Rock, Business Strategist

Multi-tasking in front of the TV, I read a book on corporate strategy while watching an Inside the Actor's Studio Interview with Chris Rock.  Chris Rock's business advice was far more useful. 

It shouldn't surprise us that comedians have serious advice.  Comedy might easily be the toughest creative profession.  Few businesses require the same levels of idea generation, product delivery, stamina and nerve.

Comedic success can be painfully short-lived.  Chris Rock emphasizes that, with the exception of a dozen luminaries in Hollywood (Spielberg, Geffen, et al.), everyone is auditioning.   

He believes that if you accept the fact that you're always auditioning, you see the world differently.  You keep your skills honed.  You constantly evaluate and differentiate your personal brand.  You see each human interaction as a chance to connect with others.  You understand your unique talents and look for different ways to demonstrate your value, so you don't get typecast.

As a comedian, you create original material by drawing upon your own experiences.  And you constantly test your material in the outside world to make sure your product is authentic.

Sounds like relevant business strategy and career strategy for the rest of us. 

Black Coffee for Starbucks from an Artist and Marketer: Focus on Community

The buzz on Starbucks these days is about getting back to their core business:  Coffee.  Through the Customer Experience lens, their other other core business is Community -- and it's conspicuously absent.   In an attempt to process large quantities of hand-crafted lattes in robotic fashion, most Starbucks locations lack the "personal touch". 

I discovered one exception when hanging an art show at a Starbucks in the center of Lexington, Massachusetts.   This particular location was as close to a corner coffee shop or local pub as one could get. Regular customers were recognized and their coffee preferences embedded in the baristas' brains. Newbies and tourists were greeted like old friends. Artists like me (I'm a CMO the rest of the time) were welcomed to show their work, borrow hanging tools and talk with customers. Despite the winter weather, it was a warm place, indeed.

Customer-centric Marketers, including Paul Paetz of the Anti-Marketer and Marketing Profs have served up some black coffee for Starbucks' team to ponder.  Let's hope it wakes them up to the fact that even with exponential growth, the little things still count.

The Impact of Inconspicuous Consumption: Marketers Take Note

Conspicuous Consumption is Conspicuous.   Does it distract us from what's really going on in the market?   In her Marketing Profs article last Tuesday, The Devil May Wear Prada, But Everyone Else Wears Isaac Mizrahi, Marti Barletta cautions marketers to look beyond trend hype to what people really buy.   In a larger context, we may be missing the forest for the ornamental trees.

So how do we track Inconspicuous Consumption?   In their book The Influentials, Ed Keller and Jon Berry go where The Tipping Point's Mavens and Connectors leave off.   The book's subtitle is:  "one American in ten tells the other nine how to vote, where to eat, and what to buy".  According to Keller and Berry, Influentials are information-hungry, outgoing, and suprisingly pragmatic.   They don't seek to influence, but others trust their judgement.   What does this mean to marketers?   

We need to seriously consider who our real brand ambassadors are -- but not mistake Word of Mouth Marketing with orchestrating buzz through stealth spokespeople.   

Worth adding to your news feed: the Influence 2.0 blog, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association Womnibus Blog.  A Great Primer for Marketers on Social Media: Brand Marketers, Meet Social Networks: Building Communities Without Jeopardizing Your Brand, by Joe Lichtenberg of Marketing Profs.

Making CRM Live Up to its Promise: Tips for Marketers

Despite CRM's vision of "Knowing Thy Customer", CRM for most companies has not evolved beyond Sales Force Automation.  As a Marketing VP, I've been on the hook for customer experience, outreach and acquistion, and had little more than stone-age CRM tools to work with.  To help other Marketers avoid the same tool-related injuries, I've been writing a series of articles Lies, Damn Lies and Dashboards for Marketing Profs both to share cautionary tales and to provide action plans for making CRM projects work.

Here are my tips for Marketers to take control of the CRM lead machine:

1.      Get Marketing on the CRM Steering Committee – if it’s not already.  Most CRM deployment projects are driven by the sales team.  Marketers need to be involved up-front to define the systems, project plan and measurement criteria.

2.      Become a CRM Expert – Get Your Hands Dirty!  When your programs are under scrutiny, the last thing you need is another action item -- but understanding how your CRM system works is critical to your success as a marketer.  Take advantage of online training and webcasts.  Make your administrator your IM buddy (I did, and all I had to do was ask).  Focus specifically on the data fields and reports in the campaign management function of the system so you can quickly get your hands on the data you need.  Or deputize an ambitious, tech-savvy member of your team to do the digging for you and keep the whole group informed.

3.      Don’t Expect a Solution Out of the Box -- Allocate Budget for Marketing Automation Tools Most CRM systems are not designed for campaign management (despite what they claim).  To track lead to revenue (which this is about, after all), to consolidate leads from all sources (web leads, search engines, outbound campaigns), and to nurture leads over time, you will need Marketing Automation tools to supplement your CRM system.   I know a few marketing departments that assign a person to import leads from other systems and export data to Excel™ to create custom reports – but it’s not anyone’s favorite job. 

4.      Don’t Stop Learning – Keep Evaluating and Tuning the System. No one gets it right out of the gate.  Be prepared to evaluate your progress monthly – not just when you have a reporting deadline.    Challenge yourself and your team to find new ways to measure your progress – and to find holes in the process that could hinder you moving forward.  Have a working lunch with the sales team (and offer to buy the pizza) to test your reporting metrics and question your assumptions.

5.       Be Proactive -- Set Realistic Expectations for Upper Management. Just because you can access reports instantly, doesn’t mean you’ll instantly impact the revenue line.   If you have a six-month sales cycle, a real-time dashboard won’t close the deals any faster. Expect to proactively walk through the lead nurturing process and the lead-to-sale process with your management team.

The Economic Impact of Creativity: Globally and Locally

In The Rise of the Creative Class, The Flight of the Creative Class, and www.creativeclass.org,  Richard Florida investigates what makes world regions creative, productive and competitive, as a result.  Looking beyond traditional economic productivity indices, he characterizes the “3 T’s of Economic Development”: Technology, Talent and Tolerance.  Creative capital drives growth in an idea-driven economy.     

How do we apply this global premise locally?  This week the Ewing Marion Kaufmann Foundation released a report on state competitiveness, looking at several factors.   My state, Massachusetts, landed on top of the list.  I recently investigated relocating a corporate HQ in Boston for a high-growth software company.  It was challenging to choose a location with proximity to affordable housing, universities, suburban bedroom communities and a vibrant town center. Despite the #1 ranking, we're still far from creating a creative renaissance in Massachusetts–- high housing rates discourage newcomers, management training programs are rare and start-up executives

seldom find the time to mentor young talent. 

We can all have an impact on our region’s economic growth, and could do worse than to apply macro principles to our daily practice of attracting, hiring and developing talent in our organizations.    

Creativity Isn't Restricted to the Creative Department

As both a technology executive and artist, I continue to get unsolicited career advice on combining my two vocations, including "you should be in advertising" or "you should design greeting cards"...   I don't mean to disparage well-meaning career counsel, but if creativity just lives in the creative department, then say good-by to innovation.   

Creative thinking is required for every corporate function (creative accounting excluded).  Stuart Jackson's article in today's Wall Street Journal Finding Tomorrow's Winners Today -- Try Firms with Fresh Perspectives suggests investing in companies with a creative twist on their market space -- and there's not an ad agency in sight.   

Thankfully, there's no shortage of creative thinkers, and they don't have to pack a travel easel to be inventive.  But how do you find them in your organization?    IDEO,  the industrial design firm, has come up with a process for characterizing innovators and nurturing their entrepreneurial instincts.    Their 2005 book, The Ten Faces of Innovation will help you see ingenuity beyond the creative department and dig deeper into the product development process, regardless of the market space you're in.    You might find yourself in one or more of the "faces", whether you're coming up with the concept, corralling the forces in your organization to deliver the product or putting the final product into your customers' hands.   I initially identified myself as a "cross-pollinator" and "hurdler", but have since been characterized as an "anthropologist" and "storyteller".   Regardless of the label, I'll keep the book as a reference to encourage everyone in the organization to contribute new ideas.   

Sorry, Sun Tzu -- The History of Military Strategy is History

No offense intended.  I have several copies of The Art of War -- all given to me by former bosses.  Could it be that our current generation of CEOs feel compelled to quote military analogies because they never served in the military?

Conventional military strategy is not the path to victory in the 21st century.  And it has lost its effectiveness on the corporate battlefield as well.   Head to head competition doesn't build shareholder value -- it ravages it with inconsistent earnings and lower margins.

So what's the alternative?   Fortunately, there are several fresh opinions on the subject.  I'll start with one and post more ideas over the next couple of weeks:

 

A strategy guide I refer to often is Blue Ocean Strategy, which turns conventional strategic thinking on its head by offering paths to finding "uncontested market space" where you can build value for customers without getting battered by competitors first.   Quite often, creating value is about what you DON'T offer the customer -- why spend time and money to offer customers what they don't want, just because your competitors do?   

Thoughts on the software industry (my own industry):  application software is well-known for piling on more and more features in each release, but not building significant value as a result.  I use PowerPoint daily -- but 85% of the time I use features from release 3.0  (which was released over 10 years ago!).  Are more features adding more value, or more frustration?   I resent the extra space the new version takes up on my laptop.

Perhaps less really is more.   Or perhaps it's all about listening to the customer.  Which is what we should all be doing in the first place.

Taking Bias out of Brainstorming

Successful teams have strong personalities -- when brainstorming, these personalities can become caricatures:  the naysayer, the vulcan fact-checker, the polyanna, the emotional chest-pounder, etc.  Bias squelches creativity.   Good ideas, cloaked in emotion, never see the light. 

One way to take bias out of brainstorming is a methodical approach.   There are many structured brainstorming processes designed for long, complex product development cycles, but small processes and small companies can get bogged down with all the details.   

An approach that's worked for me over the years is the one of "thinking hats" where everyone on the team has to take on different roles (or "hats") to think through the situation from multiple angles.   The red hat is the emotional hat, the black hat is the devil's advocate, the white hat is fact-based, the yellow hat is the sunny optimist, the green is the creative hat and the blue hat is the integrator that brings them all together.   The method is 40+ years old, but it still feels fresh.  The book is short, once you skip the overly congratulatory introduction by the author.  Add a Post-it Note easel pad, place the six points of view around your conference room, and make everyone try each role at least once -- you'll have a more balanced view of your situation -- and a better end product as a result.   

Who wants to be labeled "doom & gloom naysayer" or "naive optimist" anyhow?

Business Inspiration from the Art World

Art has the power to inspire us.  The real creative inspiration, however, may come from artists themselves.   They need to think differently every day - so they know how to get through creative logjams.

Great Resources for all of us, Artist (or Not):

Books:

Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit, is one of the best tomes on the creative process.  Her creative challenge as a choreographer is multi-dimensional, since she needs to bring together movement, music and the visual arts.  I keep her "exercises" close by as a constant reference, and her autobiographical notes add a human touch to her hard-driving persona.

Wolf Kahn's America is popping with color -- but it's not just eye candy.  Kahn is matter-of-fact when talking about his work and the creative process. He doesn't get swept up into flowery artist statments.    He's just doing his job. 

Alison Stanfield provides business backbone for the artistic spirit.  Art schools offer little support on "how to build a business".  Her ArtBiz Blog offers daily encouragement, expert advice for navigating a world of subjective opinions (and constant rejection) and a community of others.

Artists need to think like businesspeople to support themselves.   We need to think like artists to stretch ourselves.