Asking the Right Questions

From CIO Insight:

A few years ago, I attended a session at which management expert Peter Drucker was speaking. At the end of the presentation, one of the participants approached Drucker with a personal question. He said he had a son, a senior in high school, who was trying to settle on what to study as he tried to envision his future and career. The man then asked Drucker what he considered to be the most promising fields of the future that his son should consider pursuing. I will never forget Drucker’s response: “You asked the wrong question,” he said. “What are your son’s strengths and natural gifts? What he decides to pursue in his life and in his career should be aligned with those gifts. Then he will be successful.”

Just like this well-meaning father, well-meaning executives ask the wrong questions about growth—and in doing so miss the true opportunities awaiting their companies as the economy expands. Traditionally, businesspeople have thought of growth as entering an expanding market or adding a new product in hopes of increasing revenues. But that’s only one of four dimensions of growth, and it is not the most important. What does growth really mean? Successful growth starts with being clear on what our purpose is, and on what we want to accomplish as a corporation. This is the most important dimension. The second most important is being clear on what strengths we have that we can leverage to that end. Without purpose, growth is meaningless and chaotic; without strengths, successful growth is impossible. Only when we’ve determined the first two should we turn to the third: what we might add in terms of new product lines, acquisitions or capabilities. The fourth dimension of growth is determining what products, product lines or companies we need to shed because they lie outside our corporate purpose or strengths.

Terrific article... although I do think that there's an important clarification to be made to this list of questions. We must also ask, "Is our purpose meaningful to our customers?" I'm working with a technology client right now and it's becoming blindingly obvious that the company's purpose is not at all aligned with customer needs. They're trying to expand into additional product and service areas, but the fundamental mission is not what customers want to buy.

You can't raise ducks in the desert, no matter how good of a duck farmer you are.

Ikea: The Importance of Passion

From the Guardian:

The gospel according to Ikea teaches us that customer evangelism begins with with vision, passion, purpose, and evangelical zeal from the pulpit of the CEO. I normally don't like to include so much text in a blog post, but it's all really good stuff:

It is frequently observed that, for a broad demographic swathe of Britain, Ikea has designed our lives; it is almost as frequently noted that its customer service sucks, that the traffic jams outside its stores are intolerable, and its assembly instructions indecipherable. We love it and hate it, rely on it and satirise it, often simultaneously - as if it were not a shop at all, really, but something far more emotively substantial: a football team, or the Church of England, or the government. Attempting to quantify Ikea's spread across the planet is an exercise that swiftly induces dizziness. Last year, 310 million people visited Ikea worldwide. On some Sundays in Britain, according to one estimate, almost twice as many people visit a branch as attend church; it has been calculated that 10% of Europeans currently alive were conceived in one of Ikea's beds.

Ikea has approached its world domination project with a missionary zeal - and, as far as it is possible to tell, it takes the missionary part literally. In 1976, (founder) Ingvar Kamprad crystallised his thinking in a hyperbolic tract entitled The Testament of a Furniture Dealer, setting out Ikea's "sacred concept", and waxing evangelical on the necessity of salvation. It was, he wrote, "our duty to expand ... Those who cannot or will not join us are to be pitied ... What we want to do, we can do and will do, together. A glorious future!"...

Kamprad, now 78, has long since ceded day-to-day control of the firm to others, but his obsessive personality, and his zealous frugality, have seeped into every corner of Ikea. Famously, even senior executives travel around Europe on budget airlines such as Easyjet, and always stay, they insist, in cut-price hotels. They recall with approval the rumour that Kamprad himself never takes a fizzy drink from a hotel minibar without also visiting a nearby supermarket, so as to replace it as cheaply as possible...

Ikea's moral crusade extends uncompromisingly to the customer. Whether you like it or not, it intends to teach you the value of good, honest, simple hard work. Self-assembly, viewed from this perspective, is more than a cost-cutting measure: it's a tool of evangelism, designed to make you sweat for your own edification. (And if all the pieces aren't in the box when you get it home, a cynic might add, well, then, the challenge is simply the greater.)...

The Ikea path to self-fulfilment is not, really, a matter of choice. "They have subtle techniques for encouraging compliance," argues Joe Kerr, head of the department of critical and historical studies at the Royal College of Art. "And in following them you become evangelists for Ikea. If you look at [police] interrogation techniques, for example, you see that one of the ways you break somebody's will is to get them to speak in your language. Once you've gone to a shop and asked for an Egg McMuffin, or a skinny grande latte, or a piece of Ikea furniture with a ludicrous name, you're putty in their hands."...

But if missing boxes and poor customer service explain the hate part of our love/hate relationship with Ikea, the love part, though real, remains much harder to pin down. Besides, after several days in Älmhult, I'm wondering whether I haven't missed the point. Reading Kamprad's quasi-religious writings, watching the glowing faces of zealous Ikea co-workers, one overriding fact becomes clear. True, you can love Ikea or hate it; you may feel both things at once. What is certain, though, is that Ikea loves you. This love is not unconditional - you're going to have to work for it, primarily by assembling furniture. But Ikea really does love you, with an intensity that can be unsettling. And it has big plans for your future together.

Where would you rather shop? A retail store that operated flawlessly but employed uninspired worker drones who clearly would rather be someplace else? Or a store that had its flaws but employed passionate, friendly people whose enthusiasm was infectious? There are pros and cons to both, of course, but I think most people like to feel inspired. There is so much same-ness in our lives, so much routine... when we encounter a genuine smile and a spark of passion, we are reignited ourselves. "A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle" (unattributed). The only reason why I continue to shop at CompUSA -- after innumerable problems with customer service -- is because of an absolutely delightful girl named Vanessa (and I usually have a hard time remembering names!) who bends over backwards for customers. Now imagine if that enthusiasm for customers were part of CompUSA's corporate bible, inspired by senior management and transmitted to all employees? There may continue to be customer service issues, but I'd venture to bet that customer loyalty and evangelism would skyrocket.

If the executive team isn't passionate about the company's mission, how enthusiastic can they expect their employees to be? And if employees do not exude passion, how can we expect anything more than apathy from customers? There's been so much written on corporate visions and missions, and they don't mean diddly-squat unless people can get passionate about them. What is the gospel according to your company?

I'm back

It's been a crazy few days... had company from out of town, jumped out of an airplane for the first time (great fun!) and got food poisoning. Feeling much better today, thank goodness, and I'm back to work. And back to my blog, which I've neglected for a while!

Been on the road

Haven't posted in a while... I've been in San Antonio and Lubbock on business, and now trying to get caught up on a number of items! Traveling really messes up my schedule; hopefully I'll be able to sit down today or tomorrow and get my blog back on track... stay tuned.

Corporate blogging case study

For those of you who don't receive the MarketingSherpa e-newsletter (and if you're at all interested in marketing, you should!), check out their newest article/case study:

Software Company President Blog Proves a Publicity & Search Optimization Bonanza

Article is only free until June 26.

Escaping the Price Wars

I've worked with many clients who trapped themselves into price wars, eventually driving their product/service down into the death realm of perceived commodity. IMO, the keys to maintaining healthy margins are to 1) have a product or service that delivers real value to customers, 2) knowing how to clearly communicate that value, and 3) believing in the value yourself to resist pressure to drop prices.

Along these lines, I found the following Q&A on the Strategic Pricing Group's web site that I thought made a terrific point:

Question: How can we deal with a company that allows users of our product to select us based on the value we bring to them, but then expects us to negotiate a price with a purchasing department that treats us like we are supplying a commodity?

Answer:
The answer is, in principle, quite simple and similar to the question above about dealing with "reverse auctions": un-bundle the elements of value. When you tell the purchasing agent that you are willing to meet or come closer to the competitive price but only by taking away the things that differentiate your offering, the purchasing agent is forced to reintroduce the users to evaluate the tradeoffs. If you can't unbundle, then you have to be prepared to walk away. Do not do so without, however, reinforcing your value to and desire to work with the users. It is their job to fight the battle with purchasing. It is your job to empower them with a compelling value story for buying your product.

Cool Honda commercial

Via Graham Glass:

Check out this incredible Honda commercial. Apparently, everything is for real and there are no computer graphics. It took 606 takes to get right, three months to complete, and cost $6 million.

That had to be an excruciating photo shoot. You know the agency people were getting a bit worried by take #600 and the client's saying, "Are you sure I didn't just waste $6 million on a cool but non-executable idea?"

Naming Update

I've gotten some terrific feedback on my renaming exercise... here's where things stand right now:

I've gotten several comments that I should keep Mantra in the name. The pros are that it has some brand equity (at least in the blogosphere), and a few people think it can be evolved to fit my new focus. I'm personally not so sure about that. Mantra, to me, is simply a repeated phrase. It's the vision or brand statement that pulls a company together. So it's great for a branding company (my original intent), but maybe not so great for pure customer strategy. It seems a bit too marketing-focused to me. But hey, maybe I'm just too close to it. I'd enjoy hearing your thoughts on it; I may be persuaded otherwise.

The alternative name that I like is Orbital... implying a 360-degree view of business from the outside-in. It's extremely extendable into anything else I might get into, future-focused and global (I'm starting to do a lot more international work). I also deal mostly with b2b and tech clients, and this name would seem to resonate a bit more with that group than Mantra, which seems a bit voodoo/new age-y to some (to me, anyway).

Tom writes a comment that choosing a name becomes an obsessive activity for most entrepreneurs and small business owners. I think it's because one's company name is an extension of one's own personal brand (which means I probably shouldn't be asking for advice :-). However, I also think that a brand is created collectively and that it's helpful to get the outside-in perspective. So I'm taking my own advice: being transparent and soliciting that outside view that I seek to provide to others. Your vote and/or comments are welcome!

Microsoft is listening

Microsoft is starting to move beyond product-centricity and learn more about its customers. This article in inc.com describes the company's foray into the minds of small business owners:

Many companies talk about getting close to the customer, but Microsoft pushed this idea to the extreme when it hired Nelle Steele to show up at 5 in the morning at the Milwaukee home of Tim Tucker. The owner of Air Engineering Inc., a supplier of industrial air compressor parts, is Microsoft's model customer. Steele's mission was to observe Tucker at close range, arriving as soon as he stepped out of the shower, then shadowing him until his workday ended at 10:30 p.m. Steele, a cultural anthropology Ph.D. student on leave from the University of Wisconsin, is one of five anthropologist-ethnographers (and the only one focused on entrepreneurs) that Microsoft hired full-time to conduct a field study. Called "Dawn to Dusk," the study documents the work habits and thought processes of a species the software behemoth had never before tried to understand: owners and employees of small businesses.

In tailing her quarry, Steele discovered, to her surprise, that small companies kept vital information in disconnected places -- what she called "data silos" -- from scribbled notes on scraps of paper to files on a PC that could be accessed by only one employee. This made it harrowing to try to answer basic questions like, "How did we do in the Northeast last quarter?" "I saw the pain that data silos caused day to day," says Steele.

Her work is part of Microsoft's $2 billion research and development effort aimed at convincing these tribes of technological primitives to join the modern world. While most of that is earmarked to improve products, a lot of it is going to spreading the word. That's in addition to two recent acquisitions -- Great Plains and Navision business management software at another $2.4 billion -- to enhance its offerings for small business. Even for Microsoft, with $50 billion in cash in the bank, that's a major investment. Microsoft has started trying to care about these customers.

Naming guidelines

This link to the Igor Naming Guide was posted by Abnu in the comments section of my last post, and I think it's the best overview on naming that I've seen. Check it out to learn more about functional, invented, experiential and evocative brand names.

Company Name Contest

If you've started your own business or renamed a company, you may have felt the pain I'm feeling now. I'm in the process of renaming my company and everything that I like is taken or has trademark risks. So I'm going to open it up to the blogosphere and see how creative you guys and gals can be! The winner gets a $100 gift certificate from GiftCertificates.com, acknowledgement on my web site and fame throughout the blogosphere. :-)

If you accept the challenge, read on.

I originally started my company, Mantra Brand Communications, as a virtual marketing agency using freelance creative. I did the brand strategies and farmed everything else out. Gradually I realized that the only part of it that I enjoyed was the brand strategy aspect. And if you've followed my blog, you know that I'm not fond of the word 'branding'. It's overused, misused, and there's far too many people in this space. It's time to follow my own advice: differentiate myself and do what I really enjoy.

The part of my job that really jazzes me is bringing completely new perspectives to the client and catalyzing an "ah hah" moment. Usually it comes through customer research where we discover that what customers think is important is not at all what the company thinks is important. I also like to look at a business from multiple perspectives: talking to employees on the front-line, finding untaken opportunities in the space, and looking at how future trends will impact my clients' businesses. Lastly, I see a lot of waste that happens in customer research: often a research firm is hired by a specific department (usually marketing) to answer a specific question, and the results are only used by that department. Or the report ends up as a dust-collector because the wrong questions were asked, or execution strategies weren't included.

So my new space is customer strategy consulting, which encompasses evaluation, research middle-man and strategic interpreter. What are the business challenges that need to be solved? What are the right questions to ask for the results to have relevance to all departments within an organization? What different perspectives will yield 'ah-hah' insights? I'll source the right resources for the job (anthropologists, quantitative researchers, database analysis, smart people in different industries, etc.), supervise the project and then apply the learnings to the business. This is, by the way, the same process that would yield a brand strategy. It's framed differently to be more relevant to senior execs, and it also opens up opportunities to solve problems and create opportunities in various departments like customer service, product development and sales.

The name I really like so far is Perspective Lab. My web designer has a cool site design that uses photographs of buildings and other objects from artsy, interesting perspectives. But there's a videoconferencing router company called Perspective Labs, and although we're in completely different industries, my TM attorney says there's some risk because the name is almost identical. It's still viable so I might go with it anyway, but I'm looking for alternatives that are fun, original and --most importantly -- not taken. If you want to play, assume that anything remotely descriptive of what I do is taken. One random idea I had was Highway 39... did you know there's never been an interstate highway 39? So it's the "take the road not traveled" idea. But the highway motif has been overused so I nixed it.

OK, enough rambling. If you've got some ideas, toss them into the Comments Hat in the next few days. Deadline is when someone submits a name I like, or when I get tired of the process and risk going with one of my other ideas. Whichever comes first. Thank you for helping, good luck and have fun!

Creating a personal brand

Robin Good gives 10 steps to creating a personal brand. Great stuff.

Think like a free agent.
Discover what sets you apart and market it shamelessly.
Get visible.
Stop networking, and build a network.
Add value - and then some.
Accelerate your brand power by getting in sync with a major trend in your field and moving to the head of it.
Marry an important, ethical cause as a complement to what you like to do
Share before looking for profit.
Help others become as successful as you.
Question yourself and your approach systematically - get forever curious.

Found via A Penny For and Scoble LinkBlog

Stimuli and Inputs

At BusinessPundit, Rob bemoans the interference of the day-to-day work grind with creativity:

Over at FC Blog there has been a lot of discussion about ideas and how to generate them. I've been ruminating on some of the posts and I realized that I don't feel nearly as creative as I used to feel. I think my creativity has been killed by my daily grind. Almost everything I do right now is focused on the operational aspects of a new business. Since I started these long days focused on getting everything in place, I haven't had time to do the things I used to, and I think those things helped make me creative. So what I would like to add to the debate is this question: Are we uncreative because we simply don't have the time? Seriously, creativity takes work. It takes varying stimuli and inputs. I don't have those right now. My thinking has moved from dynamic and non-linear to linear and one-dimensional. I can tell. It really sucks, but I can't break it until I have time to stop this one-track thinking process I have of growing a new business. It's a catch-22, because I'd probably grow the business better if I used some creativity.

I've been thinking a lot about this topic, but more in context with what I can offer my clients. Here's a heads-up for my blog friends... I'm renaming my company and repositioning myself out of the branding game. Stay tuned; I'll hopefully have a new web site & corporate ID in a couple weeks to share with you. I decided it's time to follow my own advice! As many of you know, I've been struggling with the word 'brand' for a long time; there's too much confusion about what it means, and 'branding' is too crowded of a market. But more fundamentally, most execs don't think they have a branding problem. The issue they usually face is being too close to their own businesses... getting mired in operations and 'the way we've always done things.' They'd all like to be creative about where to take their businesses, but as Rob points out, that can be a real challenge.

I think the biggest stumbling block to creativity is not time per se, but finding the right "stimuli and inputs' that generate creative thought. If I can bring that to the table -- not a brand neatly wrapped, but completely new perspectives on their businesses from the eyes of customers, employees and the marketplace -- then I can work with my clients to co-create new directions and opportunities. The process might produce a brand strategy, a new way to go to market, a new product idea, a way to reduce churn, or simply a more effective sales presentation. This is what I truly have fun doing in my work; finding the 'ah hah!' that changes the way my clients see their businesses. More to come on this topic...

Update

Sorry folks, I've been quite negligent in keeping up with my blog. Had a busy last week moving into a new office (yay!) and traveling up to Redmond to meet with my new client and team at Microsoft (who, BTW, found me via my blog... rah rah for blogging!). While I was there, I was also able to spend some time chatting with fellow blogger John Porcaro, who's just as nice, smart and engaging in person as he is on his blog. So I must say, despite the bad rap that Microsoft Corp often gets, the people who work there are absolutely terrific. I had a great time there.

I just looked at my calendar for this coming week and I have no meetings and no travels (good grief, how did that happen?) so I'm sure you'll be hearing from me frequently this week.