MarketFusions

The Board Directorship Quest, for Women

2012-01-11T17:07:00.000-08:00

Last night I was invited to join the Washington Technology Industry Association's new "community" -- Executive Women in Technology. The inaugural speaker was Debbie Bevier, Chairman, Coinstar, and Director, F5 Networks, who shared her overall career trajectory to becoming a go-to board director in the Seattle area.

What began as a traditional banking career in branch offices, changed dramatically when Debbie was selected to move to her organization's holding company as part of their new diversity initiative in the mid-80's. That is, get more women on the corporate ladder! What seemed initially like a big risk, and departure from customer work that she loved, she quickly was in position to be selected for even greater challenges and the highest level promotions.

As part of her journey, she moved to Seattle and into various CEO roles - and integrated solidly into the community. It was these types of relationships that led to her first board position, and those that followed. Close professional network contacts were the key to Debbie landing board roles; in effect, these contacts became the career sponsors who championed her over time.

Today, Debbie is a full-time director who celebrates life and friends - and thoroughly embraces the flexibility that board director work offers. She's been able to better care for an ailing parent, manage some key personal issues, and still be deeply involved in the companies she helps govern.

She counseled the group to think about why you would want to be a board director, as many times you simply don't know what you are getting into. The job scope requires deep attention to a myriad of details, as well as solid perseverance to get through a wide array of potential political issues. Boards today are dealing with more and more complex challenges in terms of strategic planning, corporate performance, risk and crisis oversight, executive talent development, and CEO succession. In fact, the average board director spends 230 hours/year in role, but that too is highly dependent on the board and issues at hand - it could be a lot more.

So, think about it - is board directorship a responsibility you really want to assume?
From the perspective of board selection committees, they look for candidates that embody multiple attributes in these priority areas:

Corporate leadership experience
Specific industry experience
Financial acumen
Strategy development track record
Global expansion experience
Risk management

While there is great interest on the part of women to have significant board roles, as Meg Whitman most recently noted "progress in the boardroom has flattened for women." The answers why aren't clear, so clearly this type of dialogue and community effort needs to continue.

The Changing Face of Branding

2012-01-03T17:53:00.000-08:00

Recently I have been meeting with a wide range of folks to discuss the shifting foundation of brand management. Whereas many see branding as a superficial marketing function - driven by digital imagery, catchy phrases or splashy ads - dynamic brand management is something much more fundamental to the success of any company, product/service, or individual.

Effective brand management needs to begin during product development. Because strategic branding is based on expressing differentiation and value, brand managers must have a role in actually defining products and experiences. The product/experience is the brand message, and the customer engagement with it needs to be congruent with the desired brand objective.

In short, branding is an action and not a marketing communications deliverable. Brand managers need to act first, and speak later.

Being global - and who isn't these days - also challenges brand managers on how to adapt brands and build consistent experiences. As an example, how wealth is perceived and treated varies greatly by culture and geography. Whereas in some parts of the world the display of wealth (for let's say luxury products) is highly valued and should be featured prominently in the brand, in other places discretion/understatement are the appropriate "brand voices."

So, brand managers must build, with their product counterparts, brand platforms big enough to work across these differences then devise brand segmentation strategies to address different markets. No stock answer works; only awareness, agility, and adaptation.

What Makes Real Talent?

2011-12-08T15:03:00.000-08:00

I just heard George Anders speak on his new book, "The Rare Find: Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Anyone Else," where he examined what constitutes the best talent, where to look for it, and how leverage it. Everyone wants top talent, but research shows that hiring successfully is sporadic at best. It's hard to hire strangers, and surprisingly harder still to promote from within.

So, what should you look for in people and how can you improve your assessment process?

For one, traditional interview settings rarely tell us much about the person in front of us. In a face-to-face office interview, you can't really determine a person's core, underlying abilities. You can confirm what's on a resume, and explore conceptually specific scenarios, but these aren't complete indicators of what will happen in real life.

That's why, as an example, the Army Special Forces picks their elite forces based on multi-day, high-risk situations - infused with adversity and ambiguity - where candidates have to actually demonstrate how they confront crises, devise solution strategies, and execute successfully with other team members. Trying to solve the unexpected problem is what uncovers the traits the Army is looking for, especially a person's tenacity and resiliency.

When identifying the top high school athletes to recruit, college coaches gather student athletes together for multi-day camps. Some of the best recruiting coaches say it's seeing the athletes over time, in what is essentially an extended audition, that best informs their decision. These coaches pay close attention to the small stuff, i.e. how does a player handle injury, are they there for the team or themselves, are they demonstrating the attitude necessary for team success? These are the insights that provide the decision-making context for success.

But what's really fascinating, is that the most interesting and ultimately successful candidates may have "jagged" resumes - backgrounds where they may not have finished college, may have had several different types of jobs, may have resume time gaps, or may have explored several different fields. So, instead of focusing simply on conventional achievements and a straight/narrow path, it's imperative to look at the "whole" of a background and evaluate how individuals rank in terms of these types of competencies:

Resiliency
Efficiency
Self-reliance
Desire to improve
Curiosity
Creativity
Ability to influence others without having full control

Making Your Network Work for You

2011-11-21T12:23:00.000-08:00

Last week I led a career development roundtable at Microsoft on effective networking based on a number of sources, including a Harvard Business Review article from Rob Cross and Robert Thomas on "Smarter Networking." While this was more of a facilitated discussion, to engage the group in mutual exchange, I did highlight some key insights from this discovery process that impacted me and are causing me to rethink my approach to networking.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that research has found that truly effective networks only have a core size of between 12-18 people. While this may make immediate sense to some, I really had to stop and think about this conclusion. Larger network numbers don't provide more value and, in fact, actually decrease the value your network provides. You can so easily dilute your impact by expanding your outreach, versus maximizing the mutual exchange between a more limited set of committed network members.

Makes you think about your LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter connections. Is all that time well spent?

So, what really matters is your network structure: those 12-18 primary connections that bridge all kinds of smaller groups and cross all sorts of geographies, functional, and hierarchical lines. Additionally, interactions with these core relationships need to emphasize more mutual learning, committed engagement, and personal growth, and less transactional exchange. Maybe most importantly, this newly defined network should be comprised of positive, energetic, and authentic contacts - because if your closest connections exhibit these traits, so will you.

To get started, or revamp your network approach, it's important to ground your commitment to real outcomes that you want to achieve. You can't just network for networking's sake, or in some vague hope that a new contact is going to land you that dream assignment/job/promotion. Be realistic - what do you want to achieve in a six month, 12 month, and 24 month time frame. Then you can more effectively think about your network structure.

Here are some good steps for re-thinking, re-configuring, and living a smarter network:

Analyze who is in your network today by categorizing: (1) who provides new information or expertise; (2) those in other groups/locations who share best practices; (3) those who inspire innovation, especially those outside your current environment; (4) people who previously held "powerful" positions who can mentor you, offer political support, and help you analyze big issues; (5)folks who have informal power who can help provide direct and indirect influence; (6) those who help with professional or personal developmental counsel; and (7) people who provide personal support and promote your well-being.
Determine who in your network you should "de-layer" by categorizing: (1) people who are energy drains; (2) folks who have too much of you; (3) people who are in a category with too many other people, hence just repeating the same value; and (4) folks who don't provide real value back, or don't really care about the relationship with you beyond being transactional.
Connect your network to your professional and personal goals: (1) first, spell out three business outcomes you want to achieve over a year with your network; (2) categorize the "de-layered" or new network connections against your business objectives, by evaluating who can lend appropriate experience, resources, or support.

The Meaning of Visionary Leaders

2011-11-04T16:22:00.000-07:00

Like so many I have been deeply saddened by the passing of Steve Jobs. When I heard the news late in the evening at my desk, after a day of battling with attorneys, I bowed my head and cried.

Part of my reaction stems from the fact that I started my career at Regis McKenna where I did Apple PR, and I remembered the promise and light of that bright and often challenging young man. But something else has been at play, and I've been thinking a lot about that.

Visionaries mean a lot to people at large - they inspire excitement, and hope, with their communications. They create a sense of new possibilities not previously imagined. But so very often visionaries come and go - like presidents or corporate leaders come and go. Here today with their promise, gone so very soon after their "terms" end.

What moves us deeply is what endures. Visionaries that can hold on to their big ideas and keep working at realizing them are those that are truly inspirational. And yes, Steve Jobs was absolutely one of those people with his 30+ year vision of making computing easy. Bill Gates, with his profound vision of philanthropic impact and global computing empowerment, is clearly another. They were competitors and compatriots in the truest sense.

We cannot and should not forget these special people - when alive, and after they are gone. But more importantly, each of us should reflect on what our personal visions are and what we can do to work at them for a lifetime. We may not have the universal impact of these more high-profile and broad impact visionaries, but we certainly can make a difference in the lives of those we commit to.

Great Marketing Requires Experimentation, Not Just Analytics or Perceptual Studies

2011-09-27T11:36:00.000-07:00

I just heard Ducan Simester, professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, speak on the critical role of experimentation in the marketing decision process. He presented fascinating research that states that most marketing decisions are made pretty badly because marketers rely too much on perceptual information/insights or past analytics, without enough real-time customer input when forming plans to positively impact demand/buying behavior.

Unlike with operational data, analyzing customer data is just too hard for most organizations to get value out of it - even the largest corporations - per Simester. It takes the best people around - top Ph.Ds - to make sense out of the complexities typically presented. Corporations simply don't have the capabilities to pull this off.

Perceptual research - think focus groups, interviews, conjoint studies - is just customers' take on how they are going to behave in the future. It isn't their actual behavior. So, perceptual studies are good for generating hypotheses on what to experiment on, but not for basing strategic marketing portfolio decisions.

So, the underlying principle for making the best marketing decisions is to determine the best behavioral customer experiments - with feedback mechanisms - to enable business units and marketers to vary what they are doing with customers and their channels. Measuring everything that makes a behavioral difference in the purchasing equation during these experiments is critical.

It's also crucial to keep these experiments simple and small, because you have to implement marketing experiments real-time, with real people in the "field. " If experiments aren't simple/small, your people unfortunately will have high degrees of failure.

Here are some core guidelines for conducting effective marketing experiments:

Behavior: The key measurement
Simplicity: So experiments can be implemented by people in their jobs
Customer Acquisition: The target

The CXO Reading List

2011-09-14T17:22:00.000-07:00

After spending time evaluating a comprehensive set of books that would appeal to the broad business, economic, social, and cultural interests of the CXO audience, here are some titles that shot to the top:

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh
Overview: Zappos CEO Hsieh offers a compelling account of his transformation from Harvard student entrepreneur through his years as a dot-com wunderkind to the creator of a formidable brand. Delivering Happiness explains how Zappos employees actually apply their "Core Values" to improving their lives outside of work, proving that creating happiness and record results go hand-in-hand. A true personal journey into what it takes to create, build, and sustain a modern working corporate culture.

Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It by Richard Clarke
Overview: Cyber War is a powerful book about technology, government, and military strategy; about criminals, spies, soldiers, and hackers. This is the first book about the war of the future, cyber war, and it presents a convincing argument that we may already be in peril of losing it. Once again Richard Clarke lays out a cyber scenario that is chilling in the extreme.
“Will strengthen Clarke’s claims as one of the founding fathers of cybersecurocracy.” -Financial Times
"Clarke and Knake are right to sound the alarm.” -Wall Street Journal

The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World by Michael Spence
Overview: With the British Industrial Revolution, part of the world’s population started to experience extraordinary economic growth—leading to enormous gaps in wealth and living standards between the industrialized West and the rest of the world. Michael Spence, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, explains what happened to cause this dramatic shift in the prospects of the five billion people who live in developing countries. Spence clearly describes what’s at stake for all of us as he looks ahead to how the global economy will develop over the next fifty years
“Rarely does one find a book that is so powerful in its analysis, timely in its topic, relevant in its thinking, and clear in its exposition.”-Mohamed A. El-Erian, CEO and Co-CIO of PIMCO

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Nial Ferguson
Overview: Civilization takes readers on their own extraordinary journey around the world, and is the story of sailboats, missiles, land deeds, vaccines, blue jeans and Chinese Bibles. It is the defining narrative of modern world history. Frankly, I can't wait for it to be published.
“A dazzling history of Western ideas.” - Economist
“Ferguson is the most brilliant British historian of his generation ... he writes with splendid panache.” - The Times

The Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers by Bill Conaty, Ram Charan
Overview: Talent is the leading indicator of whether a business is up or down, a success or a failure. The talent masters know how to accurately judge raw human talent, understand a person’s unique combination of traits, develop that talent, and convert what supposedly are “soft” subjective judgments about people into objective criteria that are as specific, verifiable, and concrete as the contents of a financial statement. As always, Ram demonstrates why he is the top management consultant of his time.
“…The definitive guide to the art and science of talent development.”—Andrea Jung, chairman and CEO of Avon Products

Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story by Peter Guber
Overview: Former chairman of Sony Pictures and current CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group, Guber illustrates how powerful storytelling—about yourself or your product—can be the ultimate tool to get the meeting, engage the listener, and close the deal. It's truly a testament to why everyone should invest in becoming a riveting storyteller.
“I hope this book inspires you to create your own "never-ending story" to help take your business to the next level.” - Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, Inc.

10-10-10: A Fast and Powerful Way to Get Unstuck in Love, at Work, and with Your Family by Suzy Welch
Overview: A transformative new approach to decision making, 10-10-10 is a tool for reclaiming your life at home, in love, and at work. The process is clear, straightforward, and transparent. Suzy shares some clear insights on how to move forward, quickly and with clarity.
"If you're wondering what to do, which path to follow at the fork, whether to stay or leave -- no matter what it may be -- 10-10-10 will help you find your way." - Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence

Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living Like 50 Until You're 80 and Beyond by Chris Crowly, Henry S. Lodge M.D.
Overview: The authors base their plan on the idea that instead of looking forward to decades of pain as the body slowly deteriorates, it's possible to live as if you were 50, maybe even younger, for the rest of your life. Funny and amusing, it gives an accurate idea on what to expect from age 50 on. One of the most personally motivating books I've read in a long time.
“It is easy to read, the science is right, and if one follows Henry Lodge’s and Chris Crowley’s recommendations, both mental and physical aging can be delayed.”- K. Craig Kent, M.D., chief of vascular surgery, New York–Presbyterian Hospital

Learnings from Fortune Brainstorm Tech

2011-07-28T15:51:00.000-07:00

I made my annual sojourn to Fortune Brainstorm Tech last week in Aspen, and once again had another terrific experience connecting with industry insiders and hearing insights from an impressive speaker slate. Throughout the conference I regularly tweeted, and below are some further highlights I captured to pass along:

Bob McDonald, P&G:
- P&G is focused on having 1:1 relationships between all its brands and every consumer in the world
- It's important to dismantle the hierarchy of any organization so managers don't have time to micromanage

Dick Costolo, Twitter:
- We want Twitter to be the world in your pocket
- Ads are just tweets, and advertisers can now drive real-time marketing campaigns
- We plan to provide the Twitter experience on all platforms

Jeffrey Katzenberg, Dreamworks:
- It's unbelievable how bad movies have been recently
- The bloom is off the rose in 3-D
- Social media will force Hollywood to make better products
- If you love your work, love coming to work, you will do great work
- TV business is on fire

Trip Adler, Scribd:
- The digital reading landscape is fragmented
- Get people reading again by providing a more immersive experience

The New Consumer Conversation-Dan Rose of Facebook, Susan Lyne of Gilt Groupe and Stephen Gillet of Starbucks:
- Facebook is about helping companies take advantage of what's on the web, which is really about people
- Marketing in a social world is more like a conversation
- If you do a lot of little social experiments, you find the big thing that scales
- Social media was more about creating fans in the beginning, now it's more about engagement

Business vs. Government-Glenn Hutchins of Silver Lake, Gary Shapiro of CEA, and Christine Varney of U.S. Dept. of Justice:
- If you don't like the anti-trust laws, repeal them
- Technology moves so rapidly that the market has moved beyond the big anti-trust battles of the last 20 years
- Need a national competitive strategy for our government

Frank Quattrone, Qatalyst Partners:
- It feels like a new era of IPOs
- LinkedIn is the Netscape of its era
- Facebook has done a marvelous job of creating a platform people live on

Workshop: Publishing and Broadcasting--Who Survives?:
- Digital has enabled the direct relationship between the brand and the consumer
- You are not your distribution channel, you are your content

So, You Want to be a Marketing Innovator?

2011-06-26T11:06:00.000-07:00

I recently attended a Microsoft Marketing Excellence symposium that featured Mohanbir Sawhney, from Kellog School of Management, who spoke on the how to innovate the marketing process. I captured his perspectives below on the habits successful marketers should follow, and those habits that should be abandoned:

7 Habits of Innovative Marketers:

Just say no: Less is more, period.
Tell an engaging story: Story and narrative is everything. No story, no engagement.
Play a different game: If your competitor is winning in one arena, change the sport.
De-position the competition: Understand what differentiation means, and apply it every day.
Admit your mistake: And move on. Not moving on, and trying to defend, only leads to more failure.
Get management to reward creativity: New thinking requires support, rewards, and backing.
Ask how you can help: Build that direct relationship with your customer.

7 Deadly Sins of Marketers:

Saying too much: Really, less is more. More just gets lost in the morass of market noise.
Talking to yourself: Marketing is about the customer, not your internal organization.
Selling the steak: Remember that steak clogs arteries if you focus on it too much; same in marketing.
Focusing on competitors: Think about your own innovation; don't waste time obsessing on others.
Putting lipstick on the pig: Some things just can't be "pretty'd up." Move on.
Aiming for all: Get practical, and win your battles one by one. You might win the war that way.
Chasing the mythical mass market: This is the gold rush dream, but it's not a winner's strategy.

The Future of Work, and the Enterprise

2011-04-03T15:21:00.000-07:00

I recently attended the Technology Alliance's "Washington Innovation Summit," where Geoffrey Moore was the lunch keynote speaker. Geoff focused his remarks on his upcoming new book Escape Velocity which digs into how the enterprise business space has been quiet in terms of overall market noise, but certainly won't stay quiet.

Interesting insights, and Geoff posits that there are three pillars of enterprise change:

Access counts. Companies are having to deal with multi-dimensional market communications, brought on by rapidly adopted technologies such as social networks, blogs, Skype, Twitter, etc.
Broadband. No longer just enabling the media of the mind, but the media of hearts and souls. Pictures and videos are the new killer apps, while newspapers and magazine are toast and TV and radio are being re-engineered into new shapes/forms
Mobile: Privacy is almost gone, and mobile is the replacement PC for emerging markets.

The millenials' lament then is what will drive enterprise IT to embrace the consumerization of IT? Fundamentally, Geoff believes that global business dynamics will drive the enterprise IT revolution - which started with outsourcing, then globalization, commodization, differentiation, specialization, and finally economizing. All in all, this is the virtuous or vicious cycle that companies find themselves in.

So, with specialists all around, we now have the rise of collaborative business networks changing the fundamental structure of business. Business networks have increased demand for communications coordination, collaboration, relationship management, and trouble shooting. The challenge is engaging with peers globally to solve problems, which requires an interactional form of work and fundamental empowerment.

The collaboration burden falls then on the middle tier of organizations, not those focused on transactions or those strategizing. The net is that enterprises need to invest in the IT for the middle tier, and the systems of engagement must meet four design goals: mobile, social, adhoc, and real time. By focusing on moments of engagement in this collaboration layer, real differentiation for companies will occur.

The future of work then is really going to be about the virtualization of work - where we move from vertically integrated corporations to horizontally collaborative value chains. Work will become portable in space and time, and we'll move from supervisory management to outcome accountability where employees are contracted with deliverables, and employers operate as the client with acceptance criteria. We can already recognize this transition with younger works seeing themselves in highly contractual ways.

Why Being Wrong, and Accepting It, is Right

2011-02-03T16:32:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I heard Kathryn Schulz speak to a Microsoft audience about her new book, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margins of Error, a topic that makes people like myself cringe just hearing it. Avoiding being wrong is something I know I work hard at, and hate to really think about, but after some self-talk I made myself sit there and listen.

Being wrong happens, and it's not an isolated or rare occurrence; humans are really good at generating explanations for what's going on around us. Sometimes those explanations are interesting; sometimes we misunderstand the signs in front of our nose; and sometimes explanations are simply unmoored from reality. We don't always know if our explanations are true, yet we more often than not believe they are.

This tells of something about being human: Most of us think we are wrong as little as humanly possible.

Here's what the research shows in terms of who we (humans) think are fallible or infallible in terms of being wrong:

Fallible: The human species (we know humans can be wrong); other people can be wrong (of course they are); "I" can be wrong (in general we understand this to be true)
Infallible: "I" can't be wrong today (this is not possible, as I know I am right)

Unfortunately when we are wrong, we are already in trouble though we think we are on solid ground. The disconcerting truth is that humans feel right when they are right, when they think they might be right, and when they are dead wrong. This explains a lot about why arguing often leads nowhere - no one can concede that they are not right in the moment of the argument.

We also think that the way to succeed is to avoid mistakes, to not admit being wrong, and if fact, to not be wrong. And it is our fear of being wrong that actually stunts our growth and ultimately leads to disrespectful or unethical behavior.

Yet most of life is predictable; being right all the time, every day is impossible. Since we can't eliminate our mistakes, we must come to terms and accept them. Innovation and forward growth is about the creation of the "new" - that which is unpredictable, and full of wrong and right turns. Accepting this truth and embracing the possibility of someone else being right or having the better idea ultimately is the most powerful engine of human, and our individual, growth

Let Go of the Funnel: New Marketing Rules

2011-01-13T14:35:00.000-08:00

The marketing funnel is dead, long live the funnel. This type of statement reminds me of when my original mentor Regis McKenna said first, "PR is dead" (he the then guru of technology marketing/PR) and later "branding is dead." However, in this case I think the funnel is being replaced in the world of marketing models, and here's why.

In a provocative and compelling HBR article on "Branding in the Digital Age," McKinsey strategist David Edelman presents the research/analysis that consumers no longer predominantly move through the classic marketing funnel in the same way that they have. In this new digital era, consumers now have much more complex relationships with brands, and these relationships no longer just start with a general awareness of some select set of brands to address a particular need and end with the purchase of a specific brand.

Instead consumers are engaged in a circular, and not necessarily end-game dominant customer journey; they are no longer the passive observers of paid media selected to advance focused product decisions. More likely consumers are massively multi-tasking in the various brand considerations, for a variety of reasons, and engaging with a vast array of brands in these emerging ways:

Engaging ... in a complex evaluation of many brands across a swath of media for many purposes
Evaluating ... various brand promises for authenticity and sustainability to determine what promises they can "live" with
Buying ... an array of brands to experiment, to broaden exposure, without consideration for loyalty of any particular brands
Enjoying ... the many brand experiences, and considering how they want to evolve those experiences in the future
Advocating ... becoming one of the brand voices, and bringing others into the brand fold
Bonding ... becoming a part of the fabric of the brand itself

Quite simply, consumers are becoming part of the brands themselves. Marketers must interact with them completely differently. With this new, shall I say "paradigm," marketing needs to write a new playbook, and step into some evolved roles:

Become the orchestrator: Consumers interact with a variety of owned media channels typically run inside an organization by a range of groups/divisions. To present a coherent brand, marketing needs to take on an orchestrating role, and own these media channels.
Become the content supply director, and publish the content: Marketing is now orchestrating a tsunami of content, from all over the company, to appropriately position products, services, and the company itself. So, marketers need to take on publisher-like roles, and oversee the rapidly expanding content supply chain.
Become the market intelligence officer: Information comes in from IT, sales, customer services, customer engagement, and so on, and is not always well-managed or usually not well-analyzed. Marketing needs to own the market insights process, and help the organization see the relevancy of the information they have.

What Drives Us?

2010-11-05T14:11:00.000-07:00

This year one of our top CEO book selections was Daniel Pink's new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us - an inspirational treatise on how to keep moving forward positively in life and business.

Pink makes the case, via a persuasive summary of applicable research, that what propels people forward (gets them to act in any way) has changed dramatically in the last century, and profoundly from what motivated early mankind. If we start at the beginning, what drove humans to do anything had to basically revolve around survival; biological drives ruled human lives, from scrounging for food to procreation.

As human communities progressed, people also needed to work together in increasingly cooperative fashions to achieve more complex goals - like building physical infrastructures, conducting commerce, and organizing for warfare. This led to what Pink calls "Motivation 2.0" where people were primarily focused on gaining rewards and avoiding punishments, to meet societal expectations. But while this psychological approach worked for a long time, it started to break down during the last century when so many underpinnings started transforming - causing routine work to be increasingly displaced by creative and intellectual contributions.

New research conducted over the last 50 years convincingly argues that intrinsic motivation now may have the most power over human behavior. In fact most extrinsic motivation (such as rewards for performance) may actually have the opposite effect on desired behavior because it limits/narrows, as opposed to opens/broadens, the focus of one's actions. If the task/work problem is challenging, and hard to solve, then you want people to feel empowered to truly look outside the box not just within its parameters.

Ultimately, to respond to our new world order and develop the skills for true personal and societal success, Pinks makes the case that we must embrace three new motivating essentials:

1. Autonomy: The freedom-ability to direct one's own life, and work

2. Mastery: The desire and commitment to get better and better at something that really matters to the individual

3. Purpose: The desire to do work that serves a larger, and meaningful purpose beyond ourselves as individuals

Leadership 101: Live Your Values

2010-09-17T10:35:00.000-07:00

I went to a provocative talk yesterday by management consultant and corporate strategist Stan Slap who was in town and making the rounds promoting his new book. Without commenting on his somewhat controversial MSFT vignette, I thought it was important to share his insights about the criticality of emotional commitment as the trigger for generating a person's "output" and underlying source of what creates energy towards an effort.

The source of emotional commitment is the ability to live your values when being asked to commit to an effort. The truth is that if you want an emotionally committed relationship with your work team, then everyone has to be free to bring the best of who they are to the table, everyday. Conversely, if folks feel forced or required to subordinate their values, they can't fully generate emotional commitment. The end game of this psychological progression is that people essentially detach to protect themselves.

According to Stan and the research his team has done, here are the "fierce truths" about management:

* The #1 & 2 ranked values chosen by most managers: Family and Integrity
* These are the same values that the majority of respondents are most often required to compromise
* What's the net? Emotional job detachment

A leader's purpose then is to be an aware human who lives her values without compromising them. As a leader, the #1 responsibility is being true to herself and the #1 challenge is to make people free so they are able to commit fully to work by living their core values too.

Bottom line: If you aren't living your values at work, which really does occupy the majority of full-time professionals' awake time, then you aren't living them at all.

Insights from Brainstorm Tech: How Online is Changing Brands

2010-08-01T08:32:00.000-07:00

Last week I was at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, which was quite different from last year in terms of the scope of attendees, topics/presenters, and tone. At the Pasadena Brainstorm there were more larger companies than emerging ones, and the program strongly emphasized digital convergence and featured some pretty dazzling speakers.

The 2010 conference better reflected the entire industry - in terms of content and speakers - and there was a strong representation of some very cool emerging companies across consumer and enterprise market segments. A few less "star" speakers, but much better overall coverage. And the networking was simply excellent.

At the Aspen conference, I also was impressed with the overall innovative programmatic approach, and definitely got some great content insights. Here are some tips from a workshop on how online is changing brands, and branding:

- Video will be the big revolution for brands online
- Brands are all about creating conversation with the customer, and online is a powerful channel for doing so
- Creative and media strategies have truly converged - and this fact is changing branding models left and right
- Strategies need to encompass paid, owned and earned
- The importance of "purpose" in brand has raised, as there is so much more transparency
- The is a seismic change chance in that consumers can control when to watch TV
- With shows like Lost, people wanted more content and wanted it in forms they could interact with - the brand crossed all media
- Engagement is really an intermediary metric of brand
- How engaging is a brand? The reality is that we're a long way from engagement being an exact science
- Ultimate engagement is through buying the targeted product
- Consumers discover brands through every touch point with a company

The Irreversible Links Between Business and Personal Branding

2010-07-28T10:16:00.000-07:00

Much has been written about business brand building, but less about creating powerful personal brands that may, in fact, lead to sustainable business brands. Why? Because personal branding usually starts as a fairly simple set of external actions that reflect an individual's vision and commitments -- and often we don't think about how all this might add up to a personal brand, let alone a business brand.

The reason being that when folks launch an effort that strongly features them individually, they don't typically say "hey, time to build my personal brand." Instead, these people are just living the business or personal life they envisioned and are working hard to make their dreams a reality.

People can find it difficult to wrap their minds around the fact that they could be a brand - and that they might need to spend the rest of their lives making sure their personal brands reflect who they are and want to be. Meaningful personal branding is tough, much because it is an ongoing life activity that requires regular self-examination.

But, your personal brand happens whether you shape it or not. If you are out in the world at all, you are known for the qualities you project and the qualities external audiences believe are true of you. Your choice is simple: Own your brand, or let external audiences own it for you.

And if you are in business at all, then your personal brand is intrinsically linked to some business brand. If you work under a company's business brand, then your personal brand is like a sub-brand - always influenced by your connector brands. If you work under the label of your personal brand, then your business-personal branding is almost irreversibly linked. You are your business, and your business is you.

So, treat your personal brand like you would any other brand. See yourself as the asset you must nourish, the true legacy you must protect. Your personal brand is your current and future value.

To help define the core characteristics of your personal or business brand, here's a framework for working through - and living - the branding process:

1. Brand Attributes: Your brand attributes are the qualities that embody your personal brand, and should always be associated with it. To get there, distill down your core professional and personal values and the values of the key audiences you interact with, and in this intersection you'll find your most important brand attributes.

2. Brand Promise: In its most fundamental form, your personal brand promise is what you guarantee your key audiences (think employers, clients, customers, community) will experience because of their relationship with you. So, as with any other commitment, promise only what you will deliver.

3. Brand Positioning: Your personal brand positioning statement will (1) define your key audiences - the most important audiences you interact with, are influencing, or trying to influence); (2) pinpoint what they care most about; and (3) synthesize the value your brand delivers to them.

4. Brand Driver: Your brand driver is the outcome your personal brand is dedicated to seeing achieved with the audiences you interact with. It is the essential idea the captures and integrates all brand actions.

5. Brand Personality: Your brand personality is comprised of the human elements connected to your personal brand, and are the characteristics that inspire (or not) specific feelings in your key audiences.

Think You Can Be Swayed? Focus on the Absolute Realities in Front of You

2010-06-19T16:25:00.000-07:00

In working through my list of "must read" books (that's getting longer every day), I recently finished Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior. Sway is a set of stories of pretty incomprehensible behavior and decisions by normally sensible, responsible people and the set of psychological forces that prompted their seemingly unexplainable behavior.

Take one, extremely tragic example: The sequence of events experienced/driven by the captain of KLM flight 4805, which led to the completely avoidable collision of two temporarily grounded airplanes and 584 deaths. Because he was concerned about his crew's mandatory rest requirements, and the fact there weren't enough hotel-accommodations options for his passengers, this captain forced a take-off (and crash) that just shouldn't have happened. What's especially ironic is that he also headed up his airline's safety program.

Why did he make his increasingly bad decisions, especially since he was uniquely qualified to make better ones while facing a serious aviation situation? The fact was that he was dealing with a range of psychological undercurrents that were forcing irrational behavior.

In this particular case the captain was initially grappling with strong loss aversion - his flight time record and expenses for his passengers - that proved the human tendency to go to great lengths to avoid perceived future losses. For our psyche's standpoint, losses are just bigger than gains , and they dominate our thinking. And the greater the perceived loss, the easier it is to be "swayed" into irrational behavior and decisions.

Secondly, as he moved through a series of decisions (such as overriding normal air flight checks and balances), the KLM captain deepened his commitment to his take-off plan - proving the profound difficulties of letting go of things/actions that you are strongly bonded to. And hence this particular tragedy.

After further vignettes, I was convinced that all of us are susceptible to interior forces that can inexplicably create behavior that we would not believe possible of ourselves. Sway makes an amazingly strong case for not holding on to the past, or "what might have beens," and focusing instead on the absolute realities in front of you.

Off and On Corporate Career Tracks, and Re-thinking Glass Ceilings

2010-04-03T07:38:00.000-07:00

As part of some personal brand strategy work I'm doing, I decided to revisit the book "Off-Ramps and On-Ramps" by Sylvia Ann Hewlett. Hewlett gives a clear view as to why fast-tracked women "step off" the corporate ladder - to raise children, take care of elderly parents, attend to family needs, have some additional flexibility, and perhaps in today's environment, because they were downsized - and she talks about how corporate environments need to transform so as not to lose these valuable resources permanently.

A little data makes the case that this issue is mainstream: Women leave the workforce in substantial numbers. A survey of Stanford University's class of 1981 showed that 57% of women graduates leave the work force; three other surveys of Harvard Business School women graduates showed that only 38% end-up in full-time careers. Another study of women holding MBAs from across the country showed that one in three women are not working full-time, versus one in 20 men with MBAs.

There are underlying reasons that drive women out of the corporate environment according to Hewlett, and fundamentally she makes the argument that corporate criteria for advancement has simply not changed since the 1950s. Here are the cultural contributors that she identifies: Lock step career progression, in office face time, necessity of long hours, need for flattery and obeisance, ability to golf (this one did stop me-really?), and a myriad of male bonding rituals.

To attract women back into the workforce, and retain them over the long haul, Hewlett believes that companies need to adopt the following principles into their corporate culture:

1. Flex work arrangements - Offer options regarding when, where, and how work gets done

2. Arc-of-career flexibility - Offer alternative paths that support women during potential on-ramping and off-ramping phases

3. Re-imagination of work life - Offer women ways to keep a hand in their chosen field, short of full-time involvement

4. Continuation of ambition - Establish "old girls" networks enabling women to build skills, contacts, and confidence

5. Harnessing of activism - Find ways of supporting women's potential and rights for these natural career adaptations

6. Reduction of stigmas and stereotypes - Combat the stigmas that often follow in the trail of someone's alternative work arrangement

As a women who did not maintain a traditional corporate career trajectory - when I left the corporate world to run a successful marketing consulting firm - I truly appreciate the challenges talented women face in making the decision to leave the corporate workforce and the obstacles they encounter re-entering that environment.

Corporate career rebuilding efforts is a big job, and the process can be long and often disheartening; it takes drive and commitment to persevere and get back "on track." Now into my third year at Microsoft, I have spent considerable effort re-earning my brand position from a corporate perspective. Without mentors and guides, and the sheer force of my long career and business impacts, I'm not sure how possible it would have been to be back in the game. And regardless, the track I'm back on is not the same as the one I left.

Movement up into the highest levels of the corporate echelon is hard enough without taking "time off" for other pursuits - even if those pursuits are professional, as mine were. Hewlett makes a strong case for what type of new thinking/ cultural actions are needed to keep strong professional women in the corporate game, and/or help them transition back into it.

Social Bonding: The #1 Predictive Element of Great Teams

2010-02-25T09:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Keith Ferrazzi spoke at our quarterly WW Enterprise Marketing All-Hands meeting, and led an interactive workshop with over 100 people on "Networking and Success through Relationships." It may have been the first group meeting at Microsoft that I've been at where everyone stopped working on their laptops, and just focused on the speaker and what he was saying. Right there Keith hit it out of the park.

Since I too was pretty focused on experiencing the workshop, versus taking copious notes, here are some quick insights into the research and experience he shared:

* We've lost all experience in tribal norms

* Data doesn't sell, stories do

* In relationships, lead with generosity which fosters intimacy then giving permission to have candor and enforce accountability

* Candor comes from social familiarity, and along with transparency is a requirement for successful tribal relationships

* A relationship action plan needs to be written down. Here are the key steps: (1) Focus; (2) Target; (3) Refine; (4) Align; then (5) Outreach, via social media, meetings, events, and pinging; and (6) Renew

* Ask yourself, what's my currency to deepen relationships? Is it (1) Universal Currency - because you're the kind of person people want to hang out with; (2) Personal Currency - because you help someone for intrinsic reasons, and demonstrate true acts of generosity; or (3) Professional Currency - because you help others be successful

* Deepest loyalty comes from providing value to another person via (1) Wealth - helping grow it; (2) Health - helping to promote it for someone; and/or (3) Kids - assisting in the development of others' children

The Marketing, and Diffusing, of Innovations

2010-02-10T13:13:00.001-08:00

Lost in the avalanche of books on how to best market-brand-position products and services, and exponentially acquire-grow customers is the source book on marketing, Diffusion of Innovations, by Everett Rogers.

Diffusion of Innovations is the book that lit my marketing fire, along with Ev Rogers' sage and patient counsel as my academic advisor at Stanford (strangely enough in communications, where marketing was taught). His book established the time-tested, research-based foundation for how to get innovations - whether a new product, service or idea - diffused through, and adopted by, a social market system. It is the origin book for all marketing guidebooks ("The 7,8,9 Steps for Achieving Market Nirvana"...) and the source book for identifying market segments, "adopter" buyer/user categories, and the adopter life cycle process. All marketing theorists who leverage the concept of innovation adoption categories, market adoption life cycle theories (think "chasm crossing" as an example), and innovation diffusion processes should reference Ev's ground-breaking, pioneering work. They would not be able to pontificate without his incredible research and intellectual analysis.

Diffusion of Innovations puts forth that adopter groups are actually integrated social systems, and the process of understanding their structures, behaviors, and adopter-influencer psyches is the critical foundation step to devising a cogent business and marketing strategy. Meaning, you might want to "push" an innovation into a market but unless you understand that market's complexities and social nuances you are vulnerable to its whims. Bottom line: You just gotta get into the heart and soul of the system to make it work for you.

The marketing of innovations is just a core driver for me, and it's a reality check to remind myself that this is exactly right where I began. Many many thanks to Ev for his teaching, coaching, and not-so-gentle push to Regis McKenna, the firm - and for kicking off my career in the absolute right direction.

The Practice of Leading Differently

2010-01-27T16:41:00.000-08:00

Front Row Access, our Microsoft speaker series, just hosted noted author Debbe Kennedy who shared her framework for fostering our individual leadership capacities and forging a new global leadership landscape. Her fundamental message: Everyone needs to assume their leadership potential in order to create the types of innovations needed to drive our global future.

Kennedy cites four critical skills we must master to lead effectively in the new normal: (1) The mind space to develop new ideas; (2) the conceptual and organizing tools to develop new plans;(3) the focus and perseverance to implement second-to-none; and (4) the drive and fortitude to achieve superior results. To achieve personal skill set mastery, she advocates the importance of following a process of deliberate practice, clear expectation setting, adherence to a "checklist," and regular progress evaluations.

While she posits, along with Drucker, that leadership is defined by results and not attributes, she holds that there are five leadership qualities inherent to getting great things accomplished.

1. See DIFFERENCES differently: Prioritize diversity in your organization and integrate diversity actions everyday

2. Get to know PEOPLE: Dig down and check out what's special about people, what sets them apart, what types of excellence do they embody

3. Enable RICH communication: Be curious, and learn. Listen deeply. Discover new ideas. Value input. And build trust with authenticity

4. Take personal RESPONSIBILITY: It's a core value, so own what you own. Do what's right, and make that your mantra

5. Practice MUTALISM: Construct frameworks, processes, and work environments where everyone can win, and no one is harmed. Everyone needs to believe that there are fair and mutual benefits in order to commit and lead

Cultural Attuning, and The Marketer's Challenge

2010-01-19T14:14:00.000-08:00

When Business Week selected the Chief Cultural Officer: How To Build a Living, Breathing Corporation for its best of innovation books list, I picked it up to read over the holidays. While I am only part way through the book its author, Grant McCracken, just spoke at Microsoft. Here are some highlights:

* Many companies have abdicated the analysis of cultural trends/meanings to outside gurus who don't have an enduring connection to client companies, and who don't possess a true contiguous understanding of the company's cultural baseline. The result: These gurus can't make the necessary connections between often rapid cultural shifts and corporate business priorities.

* In a perfect world, this function would be the CMOs' domain. But CMOs are spending less time on strategic thinking work (on average two hours/week), than on broad execution and results analysis. Although understanding geographies and markets' dynamics is the primary job of a CMO, they just don't have the necessary bandwidth.

* In larger corporations, this marketing-cultural dilemma is compounded by what McCracken calls "death by committee" - essentially the process of how good ideas that have percolated up through the organization get edited by all those who must approve/endorse the concepts.

* Getting down to cultural context is the process of understanding "consumers' whole environment" - not just the problem/activity the customer is trying to solve. The best marketers, think A.G. Lafley of P&G, get this concept and employ it company-wide.

Bottom line: Corporate cultural competency needs to be institutionalized and run by a corporate officer focused on keeping his/her company's cultural architecture a living, breathing structure.

The Chemistry of Innovation

2009-12-03T13:06:00.000-08:00

In researching what new areas HBS professor Clayton Christensen has been pursuing (for the 2010 Microsoft CEO Summit), I just read his fabulous Harvard Business Review article, "The Innovator's DNA," which explores the qualities that make someone a stand-out innovator (December 2009). At heart the most productive innovators possess both a creative and constantly developing intelligence, which is the result of developing and practicing these five differentiating habits.

They Do:

1. They question - that is, they are always asking "why," "what's next," or " why does anyone really care?". In doing so they push beyond the status quo to see the real gaps and hold in their heads often radically opposing ideas.

2. They observe - that is, they are constantly paying attention to their surroundings, behaviors, habits, common and uncommon occurrences,etc. because they highly value seeing things from their own eyes and their own perspective.

3. They experiment - that is, they actively try out concepts, tinker with their surroundings, engage in experiential activities, and simply tests things like crazy. Fostering an experimental corporate culture is what most super successful innovators credit for true and ongoing breakthroughs.

4. They network - that is, they explore ideas with others, pump people for information that will further their innovation one step forward (or more), meet with people that might (or might not) be able to connect them to who (or what) is next, and get out to conferences like crazy because they trust the process that in congregations of like-minded people new ideas emerge.

They Think:

1. They associate - that is, they mix together all this information, discover new patterns, zero in on real "aha" insights, and drive to creative-innovative outcomes.

Does Your Company Differentiate, Neutralize or Optimize?

2009-11-18T12:36:00.000-08:00

This week I heard Geoff Moore, of "Crossing the Chasm" and "Dealing with Darwin" fame, speak at Microsoft on how to grow share through innovation. His mantra circled around the need to be more disciplined on driving to a specific, desired return on innovation and aligning with customers' innovation priorities.

Geoff proposes that there are three fundamental returns on innovation investment; that is, three approaches for getting paid for what you create and take to market:

1. Differentiation - Securing Competitive Advantage: You get here by focusing on competitive separation and amplifying some vector of innovation. The result is that you move outside of the current competitive circle - outside of what's currently available - and secure your differentiation.

2. Neutralization - Overcomes Competitive Advantage: You get here by focusing on meeting/exceeding the market's new norm. You regain market viability (and the ability to survive) by getting back into the competitive circle with a better sandbox than your competitors.

3. Optimization - Getting Back into the Competitive Game: Other companies have figured out what you do, and now do it more cheaply, so you get back into the market circle by focusing on fine-tuning your offering so that it enhances productivity gains. Now you are a player again on the field, but necessarily as a viable or long-term one.

Geoff takes this innovation methodology and offers that companies also need to align with their customers' mindsets in their sales, marketing, and services approaches. As a go-to-market strategy example, if your customer is most interested in understanding your differentiated innovations/products/services, then you can best connect with them via 1:1 marketing techniques such as executive briefings. If they are more interested in how your offerings fit in the overall competitive map - that is, the market norms - larger Summit briefings and vertical programmatic marketing programs are fine.

(Note: I refer to GM as Geoff, as he was a former Regis McKenna partner of mine and that's what we all called him although he goes by his full name publicly.)

Rethinking Work

2009-10-15T16:39:00.000-07:00

Best-selling author and London Business School professor Gary Hamel recently spoke at Microsoft on "Inventing Management 2.0" - making the argument that management innovation is essential to any organization's competitive success, while simultaneously claiming that most of us are prisoners of hand-me-down management beliefs that turn human beings into semi-programmable robots.

The challenges are as follows: The pace of change has gone hypercritical during the average professional's working life, and we've hit the inflection point where success is dependent on the pace of management change. Strategy life cycles have shrunk beyond almost time recognition and organizations are challenging their deepest beliefs and reinventing their core missions.

Whereas the historically valued professional attributes of intelligence, diligence, and obedience were once the hallmark of a great employee who could make meaningful contributions to executing strategy, these old world skills don't lead to the type of breakthrough thinking that is required of everyone in business today. In short, you are a professional commodity if this is the hierarchical philosophy you accept and follow at work.

Going forward, real organizational value will come from professionals who exhibit passion, creativity, and initiative - but Hamel correctly notes that these skills cannot be commanded. To consistently inspire behavior that results in using these skills and thus produces new types of outcomes, management philosophy and execution needs to be turned upside down and inside out.

Hamel believes that "lattices" need to replace hierarchies - where there are no titles, but plenty of "leads." All commitments should be voluntary - hence following the true definition of commitments as a set of objectives you choose as opposed to accept. If organizations follow these principles, they become more like thoughtocracies - environments where new, breakthrough ideas flow naturally and where every idea has the chance to garner support.

To get there from where they are will not be a simple exercise for many organizations, but the striking global shifts that have occurred over the last year may be the impetus for organizations to truly re-examine what makes people tick and work at their peak. Hard to do, harder even still to manage or believe.

Getting the Job Done Right

2009-09-28T17:40:00.001-07:00

Last week I heard Harvard professor and world-renowned innovation expert Clay Christensen speak on why disruptive, innovative thinking is required for continued business success.

His core thread was that because of the constantly changing market forces at play, innovation is by definition needed yet intrinsically unpredictable. As a result many of the principles taught at business school aren't always true. Some of these classical biz school tenets include:

-Focusing investment where the returns are the most
-Putting the customer at the center of everything
-Stepping up to higher-end markets, and out of lower-end markets
-Keeping business value intact and costs down by outsourcing

Instead he offers the thought that it is the "job" that needs to get done that should be the fundamental unit of business analysis as well as the catalyst for corporate action. That is, it is continuously getting the job right that determines a company's sustainable success. Each job has a functional, emotional, and social dimension - and mastering all these dimensions is what sets companies truly apart.

Think furniture type retailing companies. Some retailers think their business is best structured by product/price categories. IKEA however has achieved broad success because they have focused on the job that needs to get done: Furnish the place, in its entirety, by tomorrow.

According to Professor Christensen, market dominance is achieved when a company delivers on the job needed, not by following traditional business practices.

The Art of You, and Your Personal Brand

2009-08-26T11:06:00.001-07:00

From Microsoft to Apple, and many non-technology companies in between, I've spent my career creating or re-shaping brands and developing positioning strategies. Much has been written about business brand development, but less about building sustainable personal brands and defining how you are positioned. Why? Because effective personal brand development is a highly nuanced activity, and hard to adhere to without strong internal resources, clear and balanced ambition, and sustained personal commitment.

It's one thing to say, here's a hot company or product - and I need to devote significant company resources to forming and shepherding a brand that builds share value. It's another thing to proclaim, I am the brand - and I need to spend the rest of my life making sure my brand reflects who I am, what I do, and how well I do it. Quite simply, meaningful personal branding is an ongoing life activity that requires degrees of introspection, regular self-examination, and plain old hard work that's demanding for anyone.

But, your personal brand happens whether you shape it or not. If you are out in the world at all, you are known for the qualities you project and the qualities external audiences believe are true of you. Your choice is simple: own your brand, or let external audiences own it for you.

So, treat your brand like you would any other brand. See yourself as the asset you must nourish, the legacy you must protect. Your personal brand is your current and future value.

Like any other brand management initiative, a well-managed personal brand follows a strategy process that completes a brand framework like the following:

1. Brand Attributes: Your brand attributes are the qualities that embody your personal brand, and should always be associated with it. To get there, distill down your core professional and personal values and the values of the key audiences you interact with, and in this intersection you'll find your most important brand attributes.

2. Brand Promise: In its most fundamental form, your personal brand promise is what you guarantee your key audiences will experience because of their relationship with you. So, as with any other commitment, promise only what you will deliver.

3. Brand Positioning: Your personal brand positioning statement will(1) define your key audiences (the most important audiences you interact with, are influencing, or trying to influence); (2) pinpoint what they care most about; and (3) synthesize the value your brand delivers to them.

4. Brand Driver: Your brand driver is the outcome your personal brand is dedicated to seeing achieved with the audiences you interact with. It is the essential idea the captures and integrates all brand actions.

5. Brand Personality: Your brand personality is comprised of the human elements connected to your personal brand, and are the characteristics that inspire (or not) specific feelings in your key audiences.

Personal brand management pays off, although the process and actions are not always the most tangible or quantifiable. However, personal branding is a critical investment in yourself, and it's an investment that will stay with you for life.

Branding the French Chef

2009-08-05T17:49:00.000-07:00

I've just finished reading Julia Child's memoir, My Life in France, and I have been mesmerized by her story and later-in-life awakening to an all-consuming passion for fine food. It is simply one of the most authentic, compelling accounts I've read of personal transformation and discovery - and it's not even a great book in terms of structure or narrative.

Here is someone who fell in love in her thirties, moved to a new country, and over her first lunch saw (ate) something so different than what she had ever experienced that she proceeded to dedicate the rest of her life to its pursuit. In her recap, she remembers each course, each fabulous meal she ate with friends, cooked for friends, or cooked in class. Frankly, it's stunning - I remember conversations and clothes people wore, but NOT at this level of detail. You relive her days with her - and it is a day-by-day thing - and can almost smell and taste the cooking experiment that was her life.

Her voice is as riveting as you might remember from her show, and you're immediately drawn into the tangled web that became this totally outsized cooking book that took almost a dedicated decade to write. But here's the kicker: When she moved to France she couldn't cook, at all.

How is it possible to go from one extreme completely to another? Well, Child simply was open to life at such a fundamental level that she could embrace her food passion and let it infuse all of her. Basically, she did it like she wrote her book - in a step-by-step, totally pragmatic way as in writing a recipe.

But she didn't stop there, with learning or writing or cooking - she moved to marketing on a broad scale and again in a totally authentic and practical way. In doing TV and embracing the entire marketing equation (an early version of social marketing), she created an enduring brand, and one that remains very personally powerful.

She found herself through food, and then never let go of her essential sense of self. It's a good lesson for us all to pay attention to.

Creating a Best-in-Class Work Environment

2009-07-30T17:55:00.000-07:00

Building great teams that drive to even greater results, is every manager's dream. Achieving this state is not simple and it can tax the best of leaders.

But there are guidelines that can help managers in their quest for developing a high-performing workplace. Here's my short, top ten list of managers' "musts" for inspiring people and teams to perform at their peak:

1. Create, with zero exceptions, an environment of mutual respect and trust

2. Execute a powerful, defensible, and completely clear business strategy

3. Promote the expectation of execution excellence

4. Value talent and their work by clarifying an attainable career path

5. Reward and recognize outstanding work and organizational contributions

6. Invest in the development and growth of a diverse workforce

7. Communicate regularly, and with transparency, in terms of issues and decision-making

8. Operate with consistency and with authenticity

9. Maintain a positive tone in all interactions, regardless of business or social pressures

10. Align people with work they can do best

The Consumer Imperative: Combine Content, Experience & Choice

2009-07-28T17:31:00.000-07:00

Last week I attended Fortune's Brainstorm Tech Conference in Pasadena, where the program focused on (1) renewal and recovery; (2) technology and social transformation; (3) the 21st century consumer; and (4) business innovation. I was totally immersed in how technology companies, content creators, and other organizations are looking at how to thrive in the current recession, and take us forward into a new, integrated world.

Here are some key thoughts I captured while listening to Brainstorm Tech's line-up:

* Digital Kingdom - New Business Models for a Media Giant: Consumers are more powerful and authoritative than any other audience. All companies are going to need to practice corporate sustainability.

* Smart Cities: We need to have smart citizens first. Then, everything gets networked.

* American Technophile: The Internet is putting politicians out of business. Obama - The first administration maintaining a grassroots organization.

* Reinventing Hollywood: Consumers are looking for access, community, and experience. "We" are curators of quality entertainment experiences.

* Dollars & Demographics: The economy will be driven by the Internet demographic. The Internet introduces a lot of unstructured relationships.

* AOL - The First 100 Days: Lost consumer focus. Refocusing.

* AT&T Unplugged: In the connectivity business - making businesses and commerce go faster.

* Where's NewsCorp. Going with Digital?: People will pay for premium experiences. Brand advertising hasn't really migrated online. We'll look back and say, now is the emergence of the real-time network.

* The New Web Meets the Workplace: In early stages of how social media effects professional careers. Every individual has a brand - what is the brand of you, what do you want to be known for?

* Education Next: Can't just cram theory into heads, creates massive frustration.

* Reselling eBay: No just an online auctioneer. Largest ecommerce site. We're a marketplace, not a retailer.

* Remaking Digital Advertising: Who owns the data? Agencies are getting really educated. Creating direct links between ad and action.

* Rise of Diverse User Platforms: Platforms reach scale more quickly because of consumer behavior - creating platforms of scale. It's just easy to use Twitter. Creating an identity that will follow you wherever you go. We have no idea what is the magic that makes a successful platform happen.

* Twitter - Changing the World in 140 Characters of Less: Need to focus on value before optimizing for profit.

* Barry Diller Speaks Out: Not a believer in conglomerates. Local and search - still in formative stage.

* Power Brokers - Hollywood + Technology: Recessions are opportunities for good companies to get better. Most CEOs want to fly in the clear sky, not cloud. Data needs to be visualized.

* Digital Hollywood: An Early Adopter's View: Ashton Kutcher has 3 million Twitter followers. Twitter is a platform to syndicate content. Content can cross over TV, movies, and the Internet.

Social Networks: Like the Air You Breathe

2009-07-13T17:11:00.000-07:00

After reading Marketing in a Groundswell, I've had a couple of opportunities to listen to co-author Charlene Li. She shares that the reality is that, whether we like it or not, social networks will soon be like the air we breathe - that is, everywhere and inescapable to avoid. In fact, you'll need them in order to live.

While for many social media is still just a jumble of words - YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace - these social networks are redefining the kinds of relationships we can have with people. In essence, it's fundamentally changing how we influence and interact with key audiences whose perceptions we're interested in shaping.

If you look at any social network's infrastructure model, you'll find the following segmentation:

* Watchers: Like to read, and follow
* Sharers: Like to keep people updated
* Commentators: Like to share their opinions
* Producers: Like to create or reproduce lots of content
* Curators: Like to rank and hierarchically evaluate content

In developing your social media communications strategy to these audience segments, Li suggests following a straightforward, four step model:

1. Listen-Learn. Get out there and hear what your audience segments are saying. The metric is the # of people touched, and the value is fresher customer customer insight, and deeper message impact after delivery.
2. Dialogue. Engage in interactive conversations. The metric is # of comments and referrals, and the value is deeper brand loyalty and faster, increased sales.
3. Help. Start solving problems. The metric is the # of issues addressed, and the value is improved overall customer satisfaction.
4. Innovate. Do things differently; suggest new ideas. The metric is the # of implemented ideas, and the value is substantially faster development.

In terms of maximizing depth of engagement, it's critical to rank social networking channels that give the greatest return on your time. Perhaps better to blog, and start a dialogue with fellow bloggers (via links) than tweeting? You can also scale with people, and for instance have multiple contributing bloggers for one blog. By definition, media content aggregators utilize multiple contributors to get to scale and keep content fresh.

Everything is a Brand, Including You

2009-07-02T16:51:00.000-07:00

After hearing William Arruda speak at Microsoft on personal branding, I also picked up and read his new book, Career Distinction. His basic premise is that everywhere you look, you find a brand - and that includes all of us. No one is exempt from brand definition and categorization.

One way or another, and whether we manage it or not, each of us exude some special and specific promise of value. This communication, and external recognition of our value, equates to each person's particular personal brand. It's time to grab hold of these attributes that so powerfully define us, and help shape what people, companies, and customers think about us.

The process starts with knowing who you are (or want to be), and why you're doing what you do (or want to do). So start by answering some core questions, and understand how you want others to see and experience you, from both a rational and emotional perspective.

*What's your vision - Where do you want to go? What do you want to impact, change, or improve?
*What's your purpose - What's the fundamental reason you're motivated to act? What is your core driver?
*What are your values - What operating principles guide how you act and behave?
*What's your passion - What drives you, fulfills you, and makes you excited?

By giving voice to these questions, you develop information about your personal/professional goals - and not those goals/commitments you craft for your company. It's vital to know where you are headed, and remind yourself of this destination almost every day, because it helps your brain to be on the look-out for opportunities that will appear in front of you. Think of it as brain exercise, the kind that triggers your reticular activating system which decides what goes into your conscious mind, and stays there.

Then look at how you are different, and give voice to what makes you extraordinary. Think about your strengths, because they're the most powerful attributes you can shape and reform. All up, what could these strengths stand for and how could they help you stand out? This is the essence of your brand value.

The process for getting a brand to stick starts with who needs to know about you and building visibility and credibility with these audiences. So, get the message out. Build and execute on your own media plan. Reap the rewards of creating an authentic and resonate brand. And live the life you shape for yourself.

What's Your People Agenda?

2009-06-26T15:06:00.000-07:00

I just heard Keith Ferrazzi talk about his new book, Who's Got Your Back, which is fundamentally about the fact that none of us can really succeed in life alone - whether that's in our professional or personal lives. While I've read about 50% of the book so far, I found Keith's presentation here at Microsoft remarkably compelling and energizing in terms of inspiring me to take action.

His core premise is that we all need two or three people who are in our court - committed to telling us the truth and making sure we are successful. What's slightly shocking, is that his firm's research says that 50% of all Americans say that they are not sure who has their back at all, with 60% of those respondents actually being married. While humans are hard-wired to be tribal, with our very survival dependent on long-term communal connections and interactions, research shows Americans as the most transactional and least relational of all cultures.

Increased virtualization is a huge culprit in this unfortunate phenomenon, and no where else is virtualization more rampant than in corporate America. Typical corporate activities such as water cooler conversations, peer lunches, or the beer after work have been almost erased - the organizational environment, infrastructures and support are no longer there. So much of the time, people are simply alone and they stay that way.

Without true peer to peer support and honest permission, environments that strongly value "candor" - always telling it like it is - can often feel much more threatening than encouraging. In fact, Keith calls these "terrorist" environments - a radical assessment and it's one that most cannot claim due to political correctness. However you name them, these types of environments engender way less real truthfulness, much more protectionism, and severely decreased innovative output.

So, it's back in the people's hands: We all need to look at how we can build a few authentic relationships where both parties are safe to be vulnerable/honest and are motivated to be generous in terms of time, energy, and commitment. The first step is to ask; we can only be turned down. The second step is to keep asking and keep showing up until we make true connections and eventually form what Keith calls "Lifeline Groups."

In the process, we all can learn that any feedback is just data and that respectful, honest feedback is truly a gift. Thoughtful interactions will - over time - help others feel safe, and rebuild our sense of being part of tribes. The net benefits: Increased personal success, meaningful professional growth, deeper spirituality, improved financial paybacks, better physical wellness, and improved abilities to give back.

If anyone of us are responsible for our business' People Agenda - and I'm about lead one for our extended 100+ person WW Enterprise Marketing group at Microsoft - Keith's concepts and practices are a solid place to start.

Best of the Best: Books for the C-Suite

2009-05-01T09:52:00.001-07:00

I just finished compiling a list of business books published over the last year that would be worthwhile for C-level audiences, particularly CEOs. Incorporating third party reviews, and my summary analysis, here's a quick look at some of the most compelling business books out there today for C-level readership:

1. Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoffrey Colvin
- Published in October, 2008
- Wall Street Journal best-seller list
- Time Magazine: "How do you get to Carnegie Hall? goes the old joke: Practice, practice, practice. The author, a FORTUNE editor and columnist, is not a big believer in innate talent. 'Great performance is in our hands far more than most of us ever suspected,' he writes in this provocative book. But ordinary practice isn't enough for extraordinary results. Colvin is a believer in "deliberate practice," highly mentally demanding activity designed to improve performance, which should be repeated a lot--with feedback. Oh, yeah, says Colvin, 'It isn't much fun.' But it delivers."
- Analysis: A thoughtful examination of what it really takes to be great. Highly regarded by all major review sources.

2. Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: The New Rules for Getting the Right Things Done in Difficult Times by Ram Charan
- Published in December, 2008.
- Internationally renowned business guru, bestselling author and "most influential consultant alive" Ram Charan gives managers and leaders a concise, accessible, and hands-on guide to facing the challenges of rising costs, successfully surviving the pressures of inflation, and weathering the storm of a low growth global economy.
- Business Week, March 2009: Ram Charan on Leading Now - Leaders have to be "head in, hands on" to lead during this time of economic uncertainty. "You've never experienced so much change and uncertainty or faced such a deep downturn. Yet others are looking to you for strength and guidance. Are you up to the challenge? Whether you lead a company, business unit, or small group of people, Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty will be an invaluable tool for navigating today's troubled economic waters." From the Foreword by Larry Bossidy.
- Analysis: New, and thus less reviewed, this is a timely tool for leaders regarding what to focus on and do in these times – by a highly respected global business advisor.

3. Upside of Turbulence by Don Sull, one of the ten new gurus you should know - that you probably don't know (Fortune)
- Published: Expected publication date, October, 2009
- Don Sull: In a recession, managers fixate on bad news--falling demand, tight credit, and layoffs. Focusing on the negative obscures a surprising truth: The worst of times for the economy as a whole can be the best of times for individual firms to create value.
- Fortune: “Sull, 45, now has new solutions for companies. One is to forget entirely about a grand vision, which locks them into vague promises or could commit them to a doomed strategy. The other is to embrace uncertainty, which he addresses in his upcoming book. The takeaway: Companies still need a map, but it needs to be focused on a few must-win battles and be fluid enough to be redrawn in the case of sudden shocks.”
- Analysis: Not yet reviewed, but Don Sull owns definite buzz on thinking differently and optimistically about the end game of turbulence, and how to get there.

4. Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller forthcoming this spring.
- Published February, 2009
- Business Week, March 2009: “The authors' overarching message is that government needs to act forcefully to tame animal spirits, almost like enforcing rules on a child. In fact, they think government should follow the model in parenting books that advise being neither too authoritarian nor too permissive. Given the depth of today's downturn, such a prescription may find a highly receptive audience.”
- WSJ: "Animal spirits offer an explanation for why we get into recessions in the first place -- for why the economy fluctuates as it does. It also gives some hints regarding what we need to do now to get out of the current crisis."
- Analysis: Definite momentum growing for this book/topic, and its “animalistic” messages are hitting a collective nerve.

5. Discovery-Driven Growth: A Breakthrough Process to Reduce Risk and Seize Opportunity by Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. Macmillan.
- Published March, 2009
- Harvard Business Review: "In Discovery-Driven Growth, authors McGrath and MacMillan show how companies can plan and pursue an aggressive growth agenda with confidence. By carefully framing their strategic growth opportunities, testing each project assumption against a series of checkpoints, and creating a culture that acts on evidence and learning instead of blind stumbling, companies can better control their costs, minimize surprises, and know when to disengage from questionable projects -- before it's too late."
- “Organic growth is at a premium. McGrath and MacMillan provide a compelling, research-based and practice-tested approach to generating growth.” —C.K. Prahald, Ross School of Business, The University of Michigan
- Analysis: A new and well-researched book on new growth processes, highly supported by the top business guru community, and published with the authority of HBR.

6. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely
- Published March, 2008
- Best BusinessWeek books of 2008. "Behavioral economics is a major trend, and one of the more successful recent works in the genre is Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (HarperCollins) by Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Dan Ariely. The author illustrates his thesis—that real people are impulsive, short-sighted, and far from coldly rational—with ingenious experiments. The book is 'an entertaining tour of the many ways in which people act against their best interests.'"
- NY Times 100 Notable Books 2008: "Moving comfortably from the lab to broad social questions to his own life, an M.I.T. economist pokes holes in conventional market theory."
- Analysis: Perhaps a bit older, but an engaging and provocative look at why we make the decisions we do. Not necessarily something that CEOs will have read.

7. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcom Gladwell
- Published November, 2008
- BusinessWeek best business book list: "Gladwell already has two huge hits in The Tipping Point and Blink. Both books were distillations of academic research that explained us to ourselves via clever anecdotes and accessible language. Outliers employs the same formula and is another "Aha!" book that's hard to put down. But it's more ambitious than Gladwell's previous outings. The Tipping Point and Blink reinforced what we already sort of believed. Outliers challenges common assumptions about high achievers as it builds a case for nurture over nature, attitude over aptitude."
- New York Times: "Outliers represents a new kind of book for Gladwell. The Tipping Point and Blink, his second book, were a mixture of social psychology, marketing and even a bit of self-help. Outliers is far more political. It is almost a manifesto. 'We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that 13-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur,' he writes at the end. 'But that’s the wrong lesson. Our world only allowed one 13-year-old unlimited access to a time-sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today?/ After a decade — and, really, a generation — in which this country has done fairly little to build up the institutions that can foster success, Gladwell is urging us to rethink. Once again, his timing may prove to be pretty good."
- Analysis: A thoroughly captivating and well-written book, and set of stories, about why and how people succeed. Feels like a knock upside the head – and definitely inspires multiple “Aha’s.”

8. Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff.
- Published April, 2008
- Business Week, Best Innovation & Design Books of 2008: "Li and Bernoff, both analysts at Forrester Research, present a clearly written and refreshingly grown-up look at social media used by entire corporations, and not just Gen Y staff. They present real-world business narratives of how companies from Best Buy (BBY) to Ernst & Young use blogs, Wikis, and social networks to create, promote, and share new ideas, both within corporate walls and among consumers outside them."
- "The first phase of the Internet was about getting everyone connected. In this next phase, which changes the way we work, live, play, and learn, we’re starting to realize the value of those connections as well as the new communications and experiences those interactions lead to the human network. Groundswell effectively documents this shift and underscores the opportunities available to all from this major market transition." John T. Chambers, Chairman and CEO, Cisco
- Analysis: Details and examines all social media forms and makes the strong case for why to build communities via digital strategies.

9. The Innovator's Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care by Clayton M. Christensen
- Published December, 2008
- Business Week: "So if change is so difficult, how does an industry ever introduce greater quality, efficiency, and affordability? Disruptive innovations have been able to do this over and over in a myriad of industries by initially taking root and introducing change in areas of 'nonconsumption.' As outlined in The Innovator's Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care, these are markets or tiers of customers that are normally ignored by the leading incumbents because they don't have the money or skill to purchase and use their products and services.
- Analysis: Not yet fully reviewed, but his CEO level of endorsement is really impressive – thus making a book to be seriously considered.

and…

10. Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Clayton M. Christensen
- Published May, 2008
- Selected as one of the "Best Books on Innovation, 2008" by Business Week magazine. “In this book, prolific author Clayton Christensen took on America's crumbling educational system, applying his theory of disruptive change to schools. With his co-authors, he proposes moving away from standardized tests and towards customized learning, student-centric classrooms, and deploying computers to every student. For Christensen, competing in global markets is preceded by competing in the global classroom.”
- Analysis: A masterful treatise on completely innovating the educational system – very highly regarded.

11. When Markets Collide: Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change by Mohamed El-Erian.
- Published in May 2008
- The Economist, which named it one of the year's best books says, "Ignore the in-your-face cover. This is a fluent and intelligent account of the credit crisis: why it happened and how to survive it.”
- Winner of the 2008 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs business book of the year award
- Business Week: "Today's economic and financial disruptions are part of a much larger phenomenon that is yet to be fully embraced by markets and policymakers. The global system is attempting to accommodate the breakout phase in the growth and wealth dynamics of a number of countries. The system is also trying to absorb the financial innovation inherent in the proliferation of structured products. Too many participants in the global system embarked on this journey with blunt instruments, inadequate monitoring, and risk management systems as well as a backward-looking mindset.

The result is an inevitable series of market accidents and policy mistakes. Accordingly, and drawing on what the markets have been signaling, the book documents these fundamental changes. It also suggests ways in which investors and policymakers can navigate the new global realities—by taking advantage of the new opportunities and, critically, also reacting appropriately to the new configurations of risk."
- Analysis: A “thinkers” book that comprehensively synthesizes the disruptions in the global economic system, and offers cogent strategies for how to maneuver through and move forward successfully.

Leveraging the Luck Factor

2009-03-17T13:00:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading The Luck Factor by Dr. Richard Wiseman, after reading about his research in The Survivor's Club. I think most of us would acknowledge the power that pure luck has played in our lives - from the chance business encounter that led to the dream job, to the casual coffee date that evolved into a life-long partnership.

How we see ourselves is really the first step towards increasing luck and its paybacks. Whether we think we are lucky or not, is truly the influencing factor in experiencing luck on a recurring basis. The book's point is that we can make our own luck and transform our lives by embracing these four luck principles.

1.) Lucky people create, notice, and act upon the chance opportunities in their lives - basically, they pay attention. The three core defining points: Lucky people build and keep up a strong "network of luck"; have a relaxed and calm view/attitude toward life; and adopt an open mindset to new experiences.

2.) Lucky people make successful decisions by using their intuition and gut feelings -- seeing both as powerful information sources.. As underlying support, lucky people listen to their gut feelings and hunches and take action to improve their intuitive capabilities.

3.) Lucky people's expectations about the future help them fulfill their dreams and ambitions. Philosophically lucky people expect their good luck to continue in the future; they attempt to reach their goals even if the success odds are against them, and persevere even facing failure; and they believe that when they interact with others that these exchanges will be lucky and successful.

4.) Lucky people are able to transform bad luck into good outcomes. For one, luck people see the glass always as half full versus half empty; believe that any run of bad luck will, down the road, be for the best; don't focus on what's bad, but rather on what's good; and define measures and take action to lower the probability of future bad fortune.

Surviving: How Able Are You?

2009-03-05T17:44:00.000-08:00

I was reading Newsweek about a month ago when I turned the page on this book except from Ben Sherwood's, The Survivor's Club. From the first vignette about the knitter whose needle pierced her heart, which also was the instrument that "saved" her life, I was completely riveted. Since then I bought and devoured the book, captivated by the stories of amazing personal survival.

Courtesy of the US Air Force, there are some magic numbers for staying alive with the most important being to maintain a core body temperature of 98.6. Their research also supports their Rule of 3 which states you cannot survive:

-3 Seconds Without Spirit and Hope
-3 Minutes Without Air
-3 Hours Without Shelter in Extreme Conditions
-3 Days Without Water
-3 Weeks Without Food
-3 Months Without Companionship or Love

Facing fear, and conquering it, is of course one of the most critical elements in moving past the paralysis that often grips you in a profound crisis. You absolutely have to be able act, because if not the fear short circuits your brain and odds for survival plummet. Again, the Air Force to the rescue for another memorable mantra:

Hug the monster.

This is so true in extreme crisis, and during fire drills of an everyday but stressful nature. Fear stifles action, or triggers flight - but neither are good options. You need to take in what's happening, accept the fear/terror/horror, and use all the information that's coming in. The only way you can do that is to accept the circumstances, accept the truth of what's happening, and act.

Our daughter faced a life threatening situation almost a decade ago and it was horrifying. But as the information soaked into my brain that she was dying, acceptance and action were the only choices I had to helping her survive. Conversely in that situation I saw another very close person to us freeze and deny some pretty harsh realities - realizing later that if our daughter's life had been solely in their hands that she would not have made it.

The will to live is a powerful force, and it comes at you with almost unbearable force when you confront a life-threatening situation. But bear it you must, because it is in the willingness to face the truth that the likelihood for moving past the crisis exists. Sherwood's accounting of who has that special survival gene, and what they've done with it, is a fascinating narrative for all of us determined to make a go of it on this planet.

The Strategy Process, Redefined

2009-02-06T14:42:00.000-08:00

Recently I heard strategy guru Michael Treacy speak about the changing nature of business strategy processes, given the new twin evils of market unpredictability and complexity. Whereas conventional wisdom used to say that the best management team will beat the best strategy, the randomness of success or failure no longer guarantees this outcome.

Now only relentless performance improvement can avoid the gravitational pull of regression to the mean; traditional performance improvement methods need to yield to the new discipline of "progressive improvements" that embraces the complexity of performance through directed adaptation. True gains depend on compounding the effects of small improvements to achieve large gains - and do so by decomposing a long journey into holistic steps and engineering learning in the process.

In a business, achieving compound effects requires incorporating and adhering to: (1) shared infrastructure; (2) regulations that impose boundaries; (3) reviews that enforce compliance and accommodate exceptions; and (4) local initiatives guided by market forces.

Most importantly, the strategy process must be paced by the market and not the planning cycle - because as risk increases, planning must adjust to uncertainty. In short, companies must shorten the planning-doing cycle and move to a new strategy development construct that focuses on shorter time frames and more rapid outcomes.

I've summarized below Treacy's new thinking on how to drive the strategy process, and hence progressive performance improvements:

1. In the old world, we all started with research and SWOT analyses. Now, simply state your Case for Action.

2. Instead of a strategy articulation that was a full blueprint for getting from point A to Z, now compose a vision (a sketch) that is the design strategy ideal (and not complete roadmap).

3. Eliminate the detailed plan and instead devise a campaign that is a portfolio of initiatives that can be tested, embraced, or ditched.

Life, Always an Audition?

2008-12-29T11:27:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading Barbara Walter's life memoir, "Audition," over the holiday weekend. While riveted by the scope of her life's work, I was also struck by the reasoning behind why she made many of her life choices.

As her book title clearly says, she always felt she was auditioning to stay in the game and was thus motivated primarily by a strong fear of losing what she had earned (from a work/professional standpoint). Her ambition originated from her early life with her father, a entertainment maven who made and lost several fortunes and moved his family extensively - and who she supported along with her mother and sister in later life.

Driven by her work, the connections she had to build/maintain, and the work/travel schedule required in her field she found extraordinary success in the broadcast arena and as a pioneering woman executive. But, as she suggests, she experienced a little more of a rocky road in her personal life - perhaps this is what made her such a great and compassionate interviewer.

Walters married and divorced three times, and always experienced misgivings right before taking the leap. She also had a number of personal companions/friends - some more serious than others - with whom she richly shared many aspects of her life. She was a mother, of an adopted daughter, who she loves deeply and co-raised with two dear 30+ year staff retainers - since she traveled frequently for her work and had to attend regular evening business functions. Her daughter unfortunately experienced true difficulties as a teen, was sent away to a rehab/reform type of school, and later to her credit founded a similar type of program. By the daughter's account it wasn't a happy childhood.

Walters notes deep guilt for many of the things that did not work out personally - not moving her mother to live closer to her after her father's death, as an example, and her daughter's troubles. What was a little surprising was that her interior reflections are not lengthy or deeply reflective - perhaps for reasons of privacy or because she has a more matter-of-fact nature.

The thing I was most struck by in terms of Walters' professional success is that she is a truly hard worker. I think she blew by everyone else, and believe me she did, simply because she dug deep and was always, always, more prepared. Her work ethic was her secret ingredient, which in turn contributed to her incredibly honed craft as a researcher/writer/talent "getter." She is to be admired and lauded for her broadcasting career.

I was less than inspired by some of her personal accounts - perhaps because I have tried to make different types of life choices. I considered not finishing her book, but because of her significant contributions to equalizing the playing field between men and women in the workforce I felt she was owed the respect of readership.

I'm glad I did. It may not be my life, but Walters has lived a singular and fascinating one that most of us can only dream about.

Success Ingredients: Why Some of Us Rise, and Others Fall

2008-12-12T14:33:00.000-08:00

I recently finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's new book, "Outliers: The Story of Success," which paints a fascinating picture for why some of us succeed where others fail - independent of sheer, innate talent. Like Gladwell's previous books - "The Tipping Point" and "Blink" - it is the elegance of his language and stories which enthrall, not necessarily always his logic.

His lyrical weaving of statistical evidence, fascinating personal examples, and glamor makes the case that what propels people out of the ordinary into something more extraordinary is usually a combination of luck, timing, historical congruency, talent in your given area, and being really well-rehearsed to take advantage of all the above.

It wasn't just the Beattles' rare musical sensibility and wide-ranging songwriting talent that jettisoned them out of Liverpool and into the madness of Shea Stadium, it was the couple of years they played every night, into the night, at a German strip club. There they learned to play a whole variety of music to respond to the varying moods of their clientele, and so learned how different musical genres could go together in new ways.

It wasn't just that Bill Gates was born with a rare mathematical talent, it also was his years of early access to computers at his Lakeside high school and near-by University of Washington that give him the insight into understanding what computers could do and the ability to make them do it.

The point being, it takes about 10,000 hours to "master" a skill - and the people who develop mastery have had the special circumstances to invest their time to reach that pinnacle. They made their luck, and found sustained access to the tools needed to perfect their thinking/skills.

But according to Gladwell, it's also about when you were born. In the software industry, he notes that being born in or around 1955 was the pivotal year for achieving "big" success. Too young to join the older corporate IBM ranks, and coming of age when a whole new technology revolution was poised to take off, being born in the mid-50's placed you exactly in the right time for changing the way we think, work, communicate and play.

In the same style of his early books, "Outliers" shines with Gladwell's linguistic elegance and ease - but it doesn't make the case for its thesis as convincingly as "The Tipping Point" did. Nonetheless, it's a hard book to put down or ignore - although I'm not sure I will re-read it (as I did five times with "Tipping").

Alltop: The Internet's Digital Magazine Rack

2008-11-17T17:22:00.000-08:00

I've just discovered a seriously fabulous new site called Alltop, founded by marketing guru Guy Kawasaki and friends, that helps readers pursue their content interests by gathering (by the hour) stories from “all the top” sites on the web.

Pending your passions, you can dig into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as marketing, branding, work, environment, photography, science, celebrity gossip, military, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, and much much more. To navigate around, and decide what you want to read, each Alltop site displays the headlines of the latest stories from dozens of sites and blogs.

Alltop positions itself as a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet - but Alltop links are content starting points, not the end game. Nonetheless, Alltop is wonderful way to transform online reading - you now can easily find stories from both your favorite frequented sites and sites that were previously lurking in Internet worm holes.

Take a look at how Dan Roam, author of Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems with Pictures, visually describes the difference between Alltop and Google. It's hilarious, and accurate, and makes the best argument possible for making Alltop a daily habit.

Use Your Strengths Everyday

2008-11-13T17:05:00.000-08:00

I just listened to Marcus Buckingham speak, pioneer of the "Strengths" movement and best-selling author of First, Break All the Rules and Go Put Your Strengths to Work. His message is one of personal re-focus, in that studies show that the vast majority of people don't use their strengths the majority of the time.

His perspective revolves around the principle that your strengths are the single most important driver of performance. And, that the difference between great teams/companies, and not so great teams/companies, is the ability for people to use their strengths daily. Yet, we live in a world fascinated by what we don't have, what we don't do well, what we think we need to improve.

To help shift this somewhat universal mindset and help people put their strengths to work, he shared these macro "myths":

-Myth #1: As you grow, your personality changes
-Truth: As you grow, you become more and more of who you already are

-Myth #2: You grow the most in your areas of weakness
-Truth: You grow the most in your areas of greatest strength

-Myth #3: A great team member puts his strengths aside and does whatever it takes to help the team
-Truth: A great team member volunteers his strengths to the team most of the time

How Talented Women Thrive

2008-11-11T17:28:00.000-08:00

The most recent issue of The McKinsey Quarterly featured a study on "Centered Leadership: How Talented Women Thrive." Here is a quick summary of its key findings and themes:

1. Meaning: What matters to you is what motivates you. So, contributing to a "bigger" and meaningful purpose (as you define it) is how you'll fuel your career path.

2. Managing Energy: The report suggests that work-life balance is a "myth" despite the best efforts of corporate HR. The facts simply speak for themselves - senior executives work a lot of hours. The best advice then is, focus on priorities that energize you.

3. Positive Framing: Optimists actually view life through realistic lens, and that awareness leads them to acknowledge the truth of situations and act quickly.

4. Connecting: Bottom line, those with developed networks and committed mentors reap the benefits with a strong career path. Interestingly enough, because men have broader/shallower networks they attract more opportunities than women who have deeper/narrower networks.

5. Engaging: Women need to step into the flow more; speak up and promote themselves. Those that take more risks, and elevate their profiles, will absolutely reap greater professional rewards.

Success Formulas

2008-11-07T13:12:00.000-08:00

This week I heard Jack Canfield speak on his best-selling book, Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. Invoking 64 steps to follow, he lays out a broad road map for visualizing and actualizing a successful life - albeit from a more monetary versus holistic perspective.

Canfield's background suggests that his success perscription has worked for him: From a teacher scraping by to make do to a multimillion dollar, best-selling book author/guru he has truly walked down his own transformation path. If the success of his Chicken Soup series is any indicator, his new book has mined a winning formula that the masses will want to consume.

His philosophy is straightforward, and manner engaging, and is summed up by the view that success is not delegatable to anyone else but yourself. Here are some of his fundamental dictates:

1. Take 100% responsibility - give up justifying, defending, and excuse making
2. Decide what you want - have a vision - and eliminate the phrase "I can't"
3. Set measurable goals - and think of goals beyond yourself, and envision them as already complete
4. Think positive thoughts and visualize - thought is energy
5. Give up blaming - complaining puts you in a powerless position
6. Take action - and establish new habits
7. Adopt beliefs that empower you - your perceptions are limited by your beliefs

In the no excuses comment category, Canfield asserts that the people who don't have goals end up working for those that do. (Ouch.) To start off, you have to determine if what you are only tolerating outweighs those things that truly contribute positively to your life. If this scale is unbalanced, start the process, embrace the principles, and start to rewire your brain. Success will follow.

Why How We Work & Live Matters

2008-10-23T16:47:00.001-07:00

I just finished Tom Friedman's New York Times column about a book I read last year from Dov Seidman, HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything...In Business (and in Life). In a world where progress and success is often rewarded regardless of how it was achieved, How makes a compelling argument for rethinking this strategy and reviewing the set of values by which we live. Friedman's point is that the world wouldn't be in the financial mess that it's in if we focused more on how we live/work than what we want out of life/work.

HOW makes the case that in today's world where information is immediately accessible on just about everything and much of what is produced in terms of products and services (the whats) have been commoditized, how you behave-act-live-work is where the real game of differentiation and value needs to be played. Also, when everyone can see "what" you do, they can infer "how" you are making decisions and the values you uphold.

Think Sarah Palin and her $150K accessories budget for a campaign wardrobe upgrade - how does that make her look to "everyday" folks struggling with their food and gas budgets?

Seidman makes a cogent case that the age of transparency is right here/right now and that success in life is more based on behavior - or in the case of business, of outbehaving the competition. Characteristics such as integrity, passion, humility, and trust are the true cornerstones of personal or business success and living according to these tenants is what your customers, partners, colleagues, employees and investors (and friends) can count on.

The concept of HOW represents a new currency for business, and not necessarily an easy one to calculate if you've lived according to a different set of rules. But in a wired world, a sterling reputation is your greatest asset and it is a well of capital from which you can draw. Mismanaging that reputation and not thinking about "how" you are living/behaving can have grave and lasting impact. The HOW will not go unnoticed.

Forecasting the US & Global Economic Environment

2008-10-08T12:06:00.000-07:00

The Conference Board just released today its national and economic forecast, and the news continues to dampen expectations and overall confidence. It's clear that recent government-sponsored rescue plans have not had the impact wanted, or anticipated, leading to damaging spill-over across some global markets.

Their economists see the ongoing credit crunch resulting in:

- Some Q3 '08 negative growth for U.S. gross domestic product

- Further recessionary signals in Q4 '08 and advancing contraction into the first half of 2009.

- No housing market uptick before the first half of 2009 at the earliest, plus possible further drops in housing prices

- Near-term credit channels locking up (i.e.commercial paper) - putting a huge load on conducting daily business across the board

Their expectation is that inter-bank lending will resume, building a step-by-step upswing in overall business and investing confidence - given that the government measures create the planned effect.

Bottom line: All hands from the private and government sector need to stay heads-down and work these measures through the system and, simultaneously, do their best to minimize public exposure to the messy, depressing inner workings that by definition must go on. Public confidence is absolutely a core component to switching the downward financial course - and the growing global tidal wave of fear must be rechanneled.

The Net Generation: A Demographic Tidal Wave

2008-10-03T17:14:00.000-07:00

Recently I heard Don Tapscott speak on his new book just about to be published, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing YOUR World - a natural progression from his Wikinomics and Growing Up Digital best sellers.

Based on a multi-million dollar research effort, his thesis is that this is NOT the dumb generation, dumbed down by technology. But rather it is a generation that because of its digital origins thinks differently; is scoring higher on SATs; graduating more from college (and creating more college drop-outs); volunteering at an all-time high; changing family organizational models; and engendering the rise of truly collaborative communities.

As a result, the Net Generation have a whole new set of "how to live" expectations that include:(1) Freedom; (2) Customization; (3) Scrutiny; (4) Integrity; (5) Collaboration; (6) Entertainment; (7) Speed; and (8) Innovation. One of the most important findings was that 62% say that having fun while engaged in some product/service is as important as what a product does. And they extend that value to the workplace - have fun, or they'll leave. Moving in and out of jobs at an amazingly rapid, sequential rate.(Side note: Perhaps without truly understanding the new economy that we are facing).

For them the marketing "P"s have also changed. Instead of product, it's about consumer experience. For place, it's any place, any marketspace, anywhere. In determining their price thresholds, they are interested in discovering true value before buying. And they are not grabbed by promotions, but rather engagement.

The net for all of us marketers (and in fact all business people): Brands need to be relational in every aspect for those who have now grown up digital.

The CIO Agenda

2008-09-26T14:43:00.000-07:00

At a conference this week for global CIOs, a few key themes emerged for IT leaders to embrace as they prepare themselves for the business road ahead:

1. Read the Tea Leaves: In today's uncertain, complex environment, failure to develop early warning systems will cause a rapidly descending downward cascade. The lessons: Learn to expand your horizons, see what's coming, develop key indicators, and conjure up a sense of possibilities.

2. People are the Issue: At the heart of every challenge a technology leader faces, the technology is always trumped by people. Real technology leadership mastery will come from embracing the sociological equation.

3. Experience is the New Center: The shift has happened. We have moved away from thinking about technology in terms of the coolness of the devices, to the rightness of the experience. This transcendence of experience centricity requires leaders to think less of product-service functionality and more about creating innovations in customer experiences.

4. The Conundrum of Big Change and Stubborn Stability: Everything, everything is moving so fast - elevating the value of speed, scalability and rapid decision-making. Conversely, no matter how hard you try, some things stubbornly will not inch forward an iota. Finding balance here, and working within this paradoxical construct, will be the new business zen.

5. Unmanageable Practices, Disciplined: Everyone is hungry for ways to wrestle down unmanageable processes - look at the huge success of six sigma, statistical process controls, and supply chain management. We're just beginning to see how software development and business experimentation can become more of a 'science' than art.

6. The Limits of Controls: Controls are stretching beyond control with the adoption of so many consumer technology innovations and digital mobile work - and even individuals empowering themselves in the face of corporate control mandates. Controls? Think again, and think radically differently about risk, security, responsibility, and individualism.

7. Simplicity Trumps All: Bottom line, the answer to all questions is elegant simplicity will win - no matter what technology, design, process is behind a solution. So, all competitive landscape bets are off, because going forward simple pratical solutions will prevail over what's harder.

8. Fun and Learning-The New Work: Hard to imagine for a certain generation and for those of a certain mindset, but fun and learning are the new workplace absolutes for business success. Understand it, embrace it, live it - or lose consumers, customers, and a whole generation of workers who won't work for you without it.

Opening of Opportunties

2008-08-14T11:49:00.000-07:00

I've been re-reading The New Earth while traveling, and a sentence towards the end of the book particularly struck me with its truth:

"When you've have had a direct experience of the unstable nature of all forms, you will likely never overvalue form again and thus lose yourself by blindly pursuing it or attaching yourself to it."

Tolle speaks to the importance of living in the moment - finding your inner purpose - as the primary way to find peace/happiness, as opposed to the living in the past or future and living primarily for an outer purpose. The path to shifting your orientation begins with simply being present with "Now," although the path to living fully in the present is not necessarily a fast or slow one.

But, if an event or series of events impresses on you that all external forms are transitory - say a tragedy or sudden major life change - then you shift more radically and step back from over placing importance on forms. I know this to be true in my life when our daughter had a life-threatening situation seven years ago; my total external orientation shifted. Work and my career took second place; our new home that we had just built was no longer very important; the pursuit of all various external forms simply lost their ascendant value in my life.

This is not to say that I still don't care about my outer life, and that I don't believe in being the best I can be. I just don't attach like I did to external forms and measures, and from the moments where our daughter's life was in danger, I knew I never would.

The result for me has been a new freedom from what others think, and how they measure me against themselves or some externally defined "measuring stick." These measure don't have any real meaning for me, although I may have to co-exist with them. I care most about my family, my home, and doing good work every day. In the process, I have been happier and more fulfilled than ever before.

Almost losing our daughter immeasurably contributed to a much better life for me, and my family. Work and my career have benefited as well. And all because my values are much more fully intrinsically aligned.

Sobering News for Working Women

2008-07-22T17:44:00.000-07:00

Today's New York Times published a staggeringly sobering article about women in the workforce - or rather - women not in the workforce any longer. Based on a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for the first time in the post-modern, post-feminist era, an economic recovery has come (and gone) and there are fewer women in the workforce than before.

Of the seven recoveries prior, more women re-entered the workforce post recovery - but not this last time.

When first tracked, the analysis was the "women were staying home to raise their children" - another assumption that really should raise the hackles of every sentient women. However, data irrefutably proves that women across the board and from the executive suite to the factory floor went home and are staying home.

Citing downturns, pay cuts, stagnate wages, lay-offs, and a whole plethora of dismal causes, women are just stepping out as opposed to dropping down the "scale" - perhaps fearing that once they step down they are going to have an impossibly hard time getting back to where they were, let alone to where they legitimately aspired to climb.

Facts are the facts: Median pay is falling from $15.04 in 2004 for women to $14.84 for women, adjusted for inflation. Those that didn't go to college are scaling back, and getting that degree now. Those that have any safety net are in those nets.

This is not a positive outcome for anyone - women or men. But women need to take notice for themselves and their daughters. It's not time to step back because it is gut wrenchingly hard open those doors again. Many of us went through this during the last downturn, and the best (although hardest) thing to do is stay in the game. Getting out the game takes you off the roster - and for sure your odds to play again in the league you were in takes a nose dive.

Awakening Inside - Awakening Outside

2008-07-11T14:57:00.000-07:00

I first heard about Eckhart Tolle and his book The New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose when I, and my extended content team, were evaluating books to give to the 100+ global CEOs attending the Microsoft CEO Summit this May. I am the content director for the CEO Summit, and we were considering the hottest, and newest, books that provide insights into the global issues CEOs are most concerned about.

Honestly, the last thing I expected to add to this list was a book like The New Earth - not that I don't read books like this because I do all the time. I just didn't think my company would want to stray outside the normal boundaries of business concerns. However, our executive sponsor (via his wife) had heard raves about The New Earth and hence we included it in our "book gift package."

Given my responsibilities/time commitments directing content at the Summit, I didn't have a chance myself to crack open the book until I was on my annual Kauai vacation a couple of weeks later - and in fact, on the flight back home to Seattle. (OK, I said, let's see what this book is all about. I'm rested; have swum to my heart's content; have just been in my family world without work interference for a couple for weeks...I'm ready for something new.)

I don't normally find that a spiritual book can hold my attention while flying, so I knew I was running a risk cracking open The New Earth. (As a precautionary measure, I had my back-up books all ready in my canvas bag!) But once I started reading, I was riveted in a completely different way that I normally am. I felt that I was being spoken to, and called on, to do something beyond what I had been doing with my life - and I really needed to pay attention to what this book was trying to say.

I've spent a whole lot of time thinking (and talking) about "what is my life's purpose" - and often have felt extremely frustrated that I wasn't achieving great clarity with what is surely the most important question I can answer in the 80 or so years (I hope) I'll have on this planet. But instead, I think I should be asking the question: "What does life (or God) want from me? What is my place in terms of the greater scheme of things, not in terms of 'me.'"

This question is big, and seemingly impossible to answer according to our normal paradigms of consciousness. You just can't get there from where most of us are. So The New Earth starts with the first baby (and giant) step we need to take to awaken to the larger purpose - and that is to access the stillness within ourselves. We need to step out of our interfering thinking minds and be open to the broader dimensions and possibilities of inner stillness - and what arises from a place of utter quiet within.

So, the first action Eckart Tolle suggests we embrace is to step into nature and perceive natural phenomena against the background of stillness - such as to look at a flower and simply experience it and not try to name it or describe it but just be with it. In stepping away from the voice that plays in all of our heads, we can start to "see" in new and more vital ways.

Like many concepts in this book, the step into stillness is powerfully captivating and simultaneously elusive. Which is why I am reading the book again. What's interesting is that when I went on www.oprah.com to watch Oprah's and Eckart's first global webcast (10 week program) on the book, I read in the "exercise workbook" section that the best way to assimilate The New Earth's messages was to read, and re-read the text. "As you read, a shift takes place" within the reader.

For this reader, and awakening spiritual student, I can only say that this direction has resonated strongly and positively within me.

Thinking About New Combinations

2008-06-27T10:43:00.000-07:00

The power of "&" - that is, the action of combining new elements together - has the power to transform how the world operates.

New combinations of people-technologies-innovations, previously unrelated, can transform…

-the food we eat
-the entertainment we enjoy
-the tools we use in everyday business-commerce, and
-the underpinnings of global equilibrium

Here are some powerful examples of the transformation power of “&”

-Chocolate & peanut butter for the most addictive candy combination possible; Ben & Jerry for creating gourmet ice cream we all can afford; cereal wrapped like candy bars for a breakfast every family member will eat

-John McEnroe & Bjorn Borg for taking tennis out of the club and into our hearts; Tom Brady & Peyton Manning for setting new bars of competitive challenge; and Larry Bird & Magic Johnson for elevating basketball out of the playground and onto everyone’s TVs

-John Lennon &Paul McCartney for creating the modern rock movement; Laurel &Hardy for changing how we laugh and cry at the world; Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers for making dance come alive in the movies; for Pixxar & Disney for telling the most human of stories via non-human characters

-Winston Churchill & Franklin D. Roosevelt , and Ronald Reagan & Mikhail Gorbechev, for building (or tearing down) infrastructures necessary for global peace and prosperity

-Matthew Boulton & James Watts for the invention and manufacturing of the steam engine which heralded in the industrial age; the Wright brothers for elevating the human race into the sky and igniting the fuse for “around the world in the day” global human movement; for Art Fry & Spencer Silver of 3M for envisioning how a glued-back hymnal bookmark could become the “sticky notes” found on every home and office desk; and Microsoft & Intel for a partnership of software and silicon that promised, and delivered, computing power to all of us

As Built to Last authors James Collins & Jerry Borras said, “Highly visionary companies liberate themselves with the ‘Genius of the AND’".

Rules for Your Brain

2008-06-25T16:29:00.001-07:00

Several months ago I dug into John Medina's new book, Brain Rules, which dissects what scientists know about the human brain and presents provocative "rules" for how all of us can better and more meaningfully live. It was one of those great weekend reads that I had meant to write about here...

In weeding my office magazine "file" (meaning basket from Africa that was over-flowing) of old reading materials, I found today the CD which accompanied the book. It offers a rich, multimedia experience that more fully articulates his 12 principles (below) for surviving and thriving at work, home, and school.

12 Principles:
-Exercise. Rule #1: Exercise boosts brain power
-Survival. Rule #2: The human brain evolved, too
-Wiring. Rule #3: Every brain is wired differently
-Attention. Rule #4: We don't pay attention to boring things
-Short-term Memory. Rule #5: Repeat to remember
-Long-term Memory. Rule #6: Remember to repeat
-Sleep. Rule #7: Sleep well, think well
-Stress. Rule #8: Stressed brains don't learn the same way
-Sensory Integration. Rule #9: Stimulate more of the senses
-Vision. Rule #10. Vision trumps all other senses
-Gender. Rule #11. Male and female brains are different
-Exploration. Rule #12. We are powerful and natural explorers

Building a Civilized Workplace

2008-01-27T17:23:00.000-08:00

Distinguished Stanford professor Bob Sutton, management science and engineering, wrote a now famous (and maybe in some quarters, infamous) Harvard Business Review article in 2004, "More Trouble Than They're Worth." After receiving unprecedented response, he followed-up the article by publishing a book titled after the article's thesis - The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't.

The book's thesis is derived from Professor Sutton's academic group, where one of his colleagues clearly articulated what was to become a defacto policy, "Listen, I don't care if that guy won the Nobel Prize...I just don't want any asshole ruining our group." From that day on, his academic circle held all potential faculty hires to what they termed their "no asshole rule."

Although on the surface the subject seems inflammatory, especially if you hold to a careful, corporate mindset, this treatise is really an object lesson about something incredibly important to anyone who co-exists with others - whether in business, academics, government, science, medicine, entertainment or at home.

Professor Sutton's research clearly reveals that accepting, tolerating, enduring or "living with" a bully, jerk, control freak, asshole (you choose the descriptor) negatively impacts physical and mental health. What's even scarier is that when someone submits or accepts to being around these negative people, beyond a short period of time, they become increasingly like them. I call this the "clone bully evolutionary process." It's just easy to see how a culture with top leaders that lead by intimidation, control, or fear, create an overall negative environment that mirrors them.

Professor Sutton offers two tests for categorizing this unappealing type of person. Test one is if the "target feels oppressed, humiliated, de-engerized, or belittled by the person; if the target feels worse about him or herself" as a result of the interaction. Test two is if the "alleged asshole aims his or her venom at people who are less powerful than at those people who are more powerful."

This is not to say that Dr. Sutton doesn't support the importance of productive confrontation and competition. But when it all comes down to it, he says to listen to the language - the healthiest, and eventually most productive, organizational environments more often say "we," "partner," and "team," than "I" and "me."

Purpose: The Heart of Strategy

2008-01-18T14:36:00.000-08:00

In any organization the chief strategist is, by necessity and function, the CEO - the true steward overseeing an organization's current and future state. HBR's "Putting Leadership Back Into Strategy" contends that strategy has become a left-brained exercise dominated by systems, frameworks, numbers, up-down arrows, scorecards, and a full plethora of tools.

This profound amount of analytical ammunition dominates how the C-suite integrates strategy into business processes. As a result, strategy is now seen more as a type of plan or idea derived and driven by quantitative parameters. The consequence of this shift is that "what we have lost sight of is that strategy is a way of life for a company. Strategy defines what a firm will be."

But what's truly been lost by this pendulum swing is the importance of purpose to strategy. In defining purpose, we need to ask why does a company even exist? What is the organization committed to accomplishing in the broadest sense? How should employees focus their efforts? And, why should any employee intrinsically care about their work beyond their normal financial compensation and corporate benefits?

In truth, "purpose should be at the heart of strategy." Purpose directs the course of a company, sets guidelines for all behaviors, and motivates employee contributions to the corporate effort beyond strict quid pro quo. In all simplicity, defining purpose answers why any employee, customer, partner or market observer should care about your company.

Unfortunately, acknowledging the value of purpose is difficult today given how much the world has come to rely on analytically-based strategies. The topic seems "cosmic" (one definition I've heard), and the process of articulating a corporate purpose requires deep inner thinking and creative interpersonal interactions. However, marshalling one's resources and determing an actionable corporate "purpose" is, in fact, the true task of today's CEO to give meaning and direction to his or her business.

The Modern Boss

2008-01-11T10:35:00.000-08:00

This month's Harvard Business Review features an intriguing article that examines what's effective today in terms of modern leadership styles. "Love and Fear and the Modern Boss" examines Niccolo Machiavelli's' 500 year-old premise that if a leader can't be both loved and feared that they are more effective being feared.

Although the article suggests that there are business environments that for security or safety purposes (think nuclear plants and heavy equipment manufacturing facilities) where fear-based leadership still needs to reign, I wonder what that thesis says about the workers employed in these situations. That people can't make good everyday or significant decisions without feeling the fear of immediate respirals? Don't they have inherent concern about safety or security that guides their behavior?

Frankly, I don't believe in leadership by fear or intimidation in any business, social, political or community circumstance. Fear, or power-based based leadership is the path of least resistance for leaders; it gives them an easy "out" to avoid coming up with positive, forward-thinking approaches for communicating with, motivating and rewarding team members as equal human beings. It's lazy and destructive, and should never be "in style."

If team members have to continuously deal with leaders that impose direction vis-a-vis fear/bully-based styles and methods, then they'll stop thinking for themselves and only focus on responding to demands and edicts. What will happen to creative thinking and next-generation innovation (in any form) in these circumstances? They will disappear, along with true individuality and having a personal voice.

Born Standing Up

2008-01-08T09:34:00.000-08:00

This weekend I devoured Steve Martin's spare "biography" of a guy he used to know, himself. Born Standing Up is a crisp, poignant and detail-rich recital of how Steve was compelled to perform from the time he was a young boy working at the magic shop on Disneyland's Main Street despite an enduring shyness and a long, winding road to super stardom.

His is a story of amazing perseverance and fearless dedication to his craft - a strange blend of creative foolishness, magic and music that annoyed and faltered much longer than it resonated in terms of the length of his stand-up career. What really stands out in his book is how HARD Martin worked - getting gigs, refining his no-punch-line comedic craft, and traveling/performing incessantly for journeyman-like pay. He became a consummate professional by sheer endurance more than any particular raw talent.

His big moment almost didn't happen and it took the confluence of timing, constant second-tier exposure, and the emergence of SNL to propel him into a whole new category of comedic success. But when he stepped into the big bright lights Martin knew that his moment may be short and that he needed to maximize his pay day. So, the crowds grew bigger and bigger - defying any previous norm about audiences paying to see comedians.

In the end, the crowds and his huge, unbelievable popularity were the things that put an abrupt and final end to his stand-up career. People expected to see Steve Martin - that wild and crazy guy - King Tutting his way through his performances. These incessant expectations left no room for the discovery and practice of new (potentially equally crazy) ideas which were the hallmark and foundation of his comedy.

So, he quit stand-up permanently one night and never looked back - until now. I'm glad he did turn his gaze backward and share with us this ordinary story of someone who became an extraordinary performer. Thanks Steve.

The Five Faces of Genius

2007-12-31T16:32:00.000-08:00

After a blogging hiatus, it's time to make one last blog post for 2007...More to come, and more regularly for 2008.

In December, I spent a late afternoon/early dinner with Annette Moser-Wellman - founder and president of FireMark Consulting and author of The Five Face of Genius. A specialist in business creativity, much of Annette's work revolves around how to cultivate and inspire the creative thinking strategies necessary for succeeding in today's business world.

Her framework circles around the concept of "Five Faces of Genius," which are:

*The Seer - The Power to Image. Seers can conceptualize ideas, concepts, directions as "pictures in the mind's eye" and thus can imagine and see unexplored possibilities. Their key creative skill is visualization.

*The Observer - The Power to Notice Detail. Observers pay attention to all the information and data that they encounter and through their analysis of this information form new ideas. Their key creative skill is the incessant collecting of detail.

*The Alchemist - The Power to Connect Domains. Alchemists take different systems of thought, domains and disciplines and shuffle information from them together to form a brand new set of ideas. Their key creative skill is that ideas come from previously unconnected connections.

*The Fool: The Power to Celebrate Weakness. According to Annette, the Fool is the most complex face in that it celebrates weakness, turns ideas upside down, and demonstrates extraordinary perseverance. Their key creative skills are the ability to embrace absurdity and staying the course.

* The Sage: The Power to Simplify. Sages distill information down to its core and in doing so hit upon a new way of looking at that information. Lots of information is key to this process, however, and they look to the past for clarifying insights. Their key creative skill is simplification and seeing that ideas coming from history and story.

Why Global Brands Work

2007-10-22T14:52:00.000-07:00

Working Knowledge, from the Harvard Business School, just published a post on "Why Global Brands Work" that delineates what makes a great global brand. The answer: Focus on a single global brand.

In examining the challenges that Ford faces in having created specialized products for different countries, under various brands, author John Quelch concludes that Ford's multi-brand strategy has resulted in "added manufacturing and supply chain costs, a balkanized bureaucracy, and deteriorating market share, financial performance, and stock price." In short, Ford's brand value has declined significantly while companies like Toyota, Nissan, and Honda have built brand value by selling standard products under a single brand umbrella.

And the result today is that Toyota is one of the top 10 most valuable global brands and Ford, once on that prestigious list, is no longer.

To be a top global brand, here are the five characteristics Quelch posits are needed - with my added commentary:

1. Same Worldwide Positioning: When you start making notable changes to how you position a product based on some sort market segmentation, you lose the power of having one consistent message and run the risk of message dilution and market confusion.

2. A Focus on a Single Product Category: Even if it is a broad way to categorize your positioning, zero in on one category for any product brand. Although Quelch says this is the best company strategy, and certainly it has worked with companies like Intel, I think you can successfully be in several product brand categories if a company has a clear and unifying corporate brand.

3. The Company Name is the Brand Name: It's the best bang for your buck, for sure, and companies like IBM have leveraged this strategy very successfully. However, my opinion that even the best of brands (think Microsoft) can have great sub-brands (think Xbox), and often have to.

4. Access to the Global Village: Quelch says the "consuming the brand equals membership in a global club. Think IBM's solutions for a small planet." I agree that infusing the brand with some sort of broad, global meaning is necessary to maintain power brand status and insure that customers/clients keep wanting to associate with your brand.

5. Social Responsibility: It's not enough to grow, drive profits, create shareholder value, and deliver superior solutions; the marketplace expect leaders to lead in areas of social need. So, companies have to determine how to focus authentically on a particular social cause that makes sense in the context of the company and its operations - and deliver tangible results.

Top CEO Concern: Excellence of Execution

2007-10-19T11:27:00.000-07:00

The Conference Board recently announced the results of their global survey of 769 CEOs from 40 countries and reported that excellence of execution is their top business challenge, overtaking profit and top-line growth concerns as their core focus.

As the report notes, CEOs have shifted their attention to strong execution because they recognize that execution comes before, and certainly drives, profits and growth. It's an internal orientation shift that certainly implies a new way of thinking about business strategies, operationalizing the business, and motivating corporate employees.

Steady and sustained top-line growth is their second area of greatest concern, with keeping top management aligned to execution of strategy in the third, profit growth the fourth, and finding qualified managerial talent in the fifth positions of concern, respectively.

People management, in short, is back in the spotlight replacing U.S. healthcare costs as the top HR issue as CEOs "become increasingly aware of the crucial role that people play in growing their companies." But U.S. CEOs still rank healthcare significantly higher as a concern than global counterparts, placing it as their 16th issue vs. European CEOs ranking it the 71st and Asian CEOs the 69th position, respectively.

Market Adoption & Brand Loyalty Strategies, Revisited

2007-10-12T14:59:00.001-07:00

The Harvard Business Review annually publishes their catalog of business breakthrough ideas for the year ahead and earlier this year offered some new thinking that could radically change our assumptions about market adoption and brand loyalty strategies.

Here's a quick synopsis, with my commentary, on these new theories:

1. The Accidental Influential: Duncan Watt's academic research turns upside down Malcom Gladwell's theory in The Tipping Point that the rapid spreading and acceptance of big trends, "social epidemics," are triggered by a small subset of highly influential individuals in a particular social environment. Influentials are described as a smallish, select group of people who supposedly have "influential" impact (influence) on various market subsegments (people) - thereby negating the need to market to everyone in these market subsegments, but rather to a few key influencers.

Watt's research instead shows that the key requirement for what his calls "global cascades" - the broad propagation of an concept through networks - occurs via a critical mass of "easily influenced people." Via this theory adoption and buying trends are not led by a few influentials, but rather though many easily influenced individuals. So, we can see why today's popular social media vehicles (MySpace, Facebook, YouTube) are the real catalysts and drivers today for the adoption of new ideas, concepts and products/services.

2. Brand Magic: In brand marketing theory it goes without saying that a brand strategy matches up with a market segment - an audience category defined by its primary and differentiating characteristics such as age, interests, education, and socioeconomic status. As an example take a look at the range of cosmetic brands, by the same parent company, targeted at different age groups. To follow traditional brand principles, the brand parent graduates their customers to new brands once customers "move beyond" a certain age.

However, this approach can discourage customer loyalty, cause indiscriminate brand jumping, and is the root source of significant overspending in product development and marketing. Instead, a brand parent should build and evolve a brand along with its customers' natural developmental processes, and adapt the brand as their customer base grows older, has (or doesn't have) kids, and moves forward in life. They call this form of brand strategy "Harry Potter marketing" - a branding concept that grows up with you like this fictional character did with its reading population.

What Type of Leader are You?

2007-10-11T10:59:00.000-07:00

A new poll conducted by Maritz Research, a leading customer and employee research firm, has identified the six supervisor personality profiles and analyzed how different leadership personality types impact employee engagement and customer satisfaction.

Although we might assume that it's the aggressive, hard-driving bosses that get to the best sales and financial results, it's actually the supervisors who demonstrate the more human, positive, upbeat and flexible leadership traits who best motivate employees who in turn deliver the highest levels of customer service and build the strongest customer loyalty.

According to Maritz, employees reporting to a supervisor who they classify as being in the "Caring Mentor" category rate their businesses the highest on having a strong and productive customer focus. These employees also have the strong relationships with customers and build affinities with them, while believing their company can be classified as "outstanding" in their customer service. 26% of respondents have this type of supervisor.

"Caring Mentors" excel in relationship management and receive high appreciation marks from their direct reports. They rate high on being knowledgeable about relevant subject matter and demonstrate constancy and steadiness in their everyday business dealings. They are not seen as been particularly task driven, nor are they described as controlling, tough or ruthless. Bottom line, employees serving under this manager are the most likely to stay with a company long-term, as well as recommend the company to others.

Conversely, the least effective supervisor type is best described as tough, controlling, ruthless and Machiavellian. Maritz has named these inconsistent, untrustworthy and dishonest supervisors as "Win-At-Any-Cost" and 19% of respondents have this type of supervisor. Employees do not respect these bosses and employee engagement is the lowest among this group. In fact, 71% of employees would fire their supervisor in this category if they could.

Then there is the "Taskmaster/Taskmistress" category, with supervisors that are tough, controlling and task-driven but who exhibit a higher level of competency and ethics than "Win-At-Any-Cost" supervisors. Their focus is on productivity and achieving results but they are not rated as being highly effective or having/inspiring high customer service competencies. 10% of respondents have bosses that are in this category.

The largest percentage of respondents (29%) work for the "Respectable Professional" - a highly task-driven boss that is not greatly involved with business operations but is regarded with respect by their employees.

The Shift in Job Opportunities

2007-10-10T12:15:00.000-07:00

As reported today in Forbes, and based on statistics from the Department of Labor, the future looks bright for professionals in health care, education, and financial services; these are the growth sectors for the foreseeable future as the U.S. moves to a services-based economy.

Conversely, it won't come as any surprise that job opportunities are diminishing in manufacturing (5% decline by 2014), textile workers (36% drop), and administrative office positions (36% decline). But take note, there are some surprises in the job segments that are projected to experience slower than average growth, that being under 13%.

Expect computer programming jobs to decrease by 2% between 2004-2014 due to the profound shift towards outsourcing. Who would have thought of this during the go-go technology years? So, if you want to stick with coding, refocus your professional energies on hot specialties such as security.

Journalism opportunities will also go into a nose dive, despite the proliferation of rapidly expanding media outlets. This segment's dilemma is that online media will increasingly replace print and there will be a profit crunch. Jobs and overall costs will need to be slashed, forcing an internal contraction inside media organizations. In fact, journalism jobs are only anticipated to grow by 5% in the next ten years.

This isn't the moment to begin a career in radio either. Consolidation abounds, and the next decade will see overall job reductions in the area of 5%.

A big surprise however is in area of federal jobs, with Washington employing two million people excluding the military. But, federal job growth is only expected to grow by 1.6%. Why? It looks a lot better (on paper) to move that money around and pay private contracting companies instead of federal employees to do the work. In fact, the House of Representatives reported that government contract spending rose by 103% between 2000 and 20005. Amazing.

What Got You Here Won't Get You There

2007-10-09T11:21:00.000-07:00

In his book What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful executive coach Marshall Goldsmith counsels successful achievers that that they may need to re-examine behaviors and habits that were useful to date, but not may not be useful moving forward. In essence, he claims, successful people often over-reach in terms of claiming successes and have an elevated sense of what their actual contributions were. The net effect: Other people around these overachievers don't like, trust or want to continue to work with them.

If someone fits this particular "success" profile, Goldsmith strongly urges specific behavioral changes. Here are a few "success habits" that Goldsmith identifies as problematic and as impediments to ongoing personal, developmental progress and professional advancement:

1. Adding too much value. Instead of being good listeners, many successful people achieve success based on always being the one to present an idea, critique others, offer the most cogent analysis, etc. If they do this constantly, and don't make an effort to encourage and listen to others' input, their "added-value" has a depressing, rather than uplifting, effect on team members.

2. Winning Too Much: Many successful people are driven by the goal of winning and, as a result, their "I'm a winner" mindset can dominate their behavior. Their actions may be all about positioning themselves as #1 and subordinating those around them. However, if those around them are always "put down" they are not going to continue to support the perpetrator of that behavior.

3. Passing Judgment: In the normal course of business discourse, it's natural and often required to make a judgment about actions. But, if you have asked for an idea, advise, or recommendation, Goldsmith say it is inappropriate to pass judgement on whether something is a good or bad idea. A simple thank you will suffice and later you can take whatever action you feel is appropriate after your own internal evaluation of their input.

4. Starting with "No," "But" or "However: When you start off any communications with any variation of these words, you set a tone that puts your comment in the ascendant, "I'm right" position. Your message delivery comes from a defensive and off-putting posture.

5. Telling the World How Smart You Are: It's a basic insecurity to have to remind people of where you went to school, how well you did at the company's last boot camp, or to always have to one-up a colleague in a conversation. While this behavior may have served an individual well in climbing the "accomplishment ladder," it won't continue to serve him/her well with seasoned, high-placed executives comfortable with their track record and innate abilities. In fact, you won't look too smart telling everyone how smart you are.

The Future Value of an MBA

2007-10-05T10:36:00.000-07:00

Penelope Trunk, Boston Globe and Yahoo! Finance columnist, blogger, and author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success, just wrote a recent column positing that the MBA degree is moving towards obsolescence because the degree has been devalued.

This is an alarming thought, if true, for those currently investing back-breaking sums to put themselves through a high-end business school and for those back in the workforce after giving up several wage-earning and career-building years. It used to be that the MBA was a core requirement for ascending the corporate totem pole, but as Penelope notes, "there are few corporate ladders to climb anymore and people are increasingly experimenting with ways to speed up that climb anyway."

Here's a quick review, with my further commentary, of a few of the indicators Trunk identified as signs that the MBA degree is facing devaluation:

1. Not all rising stars go to business school these days.
It's used to be part and parcel of an investment banking career to have your MBA. But today, as The New York Times reported in their 9/07 article "Bye, Bye, B-School," this advanced degree is not the most efficient or financially sound path to success. As a former Goldman Sachs analyst noted in the NYT article, "Like other young people on the fast track, (I've) run the numbers and figured that an M.B.A. is a waste of money and time — time that could be spent making money."

2. Schools are sacrificing quality standards to increase viable female applicant pool. Fewer women are applying at the age where they are both simultaneously ready to start a family and have worked long to meet standard business school professional experience requirements. So, schools like Harvard Business School have changed their admission requirements regarding this work experience timeline to reverse the downward trend in female applications. It's a conundrum in that this revised standard accommodates women (which I have to applaud personally), but doesn't necessarily create the most prepared pool of biz school students.

3. It's the 80-20 rule (or 90-10 rule). Trunk notes that only the top-tier MBA schools deliver a viable return, i.e. the "big job," coveted by matriculated students. If the goal is this big jump on the career ladder, a person will probably be disappointed by the hiring results following graduation from a Tier 2 biz school. It would be better to go attend an executive evening program, continue to earn your salary, and progressively moved forward in one's current career.

Money Talk: The Number & Money, A Memoir

2007-10-04T13:43:00.001-07:00

Lee Eisenberg's The Number: A Completely Different Way to Think About The Rest of Your Life and Liz Perle's Money, A Memoir take the money conscious and concerned reader down two paths of financial meditation. In The Number Eisenberg poses the not really hypothetical question of whether you have, or will be able to reach, the magic money number (saved) that allows you/your partner to retire. Conversely, Perle shares her own and her interviewee's not-so-positive relationships with money and her "headslam" into the wall when she has to start all over again financially.

Both long-term editors, writers and content-oriented folks (Eisenberg was editor-in-chief, Esquire, and a senior Lands End exec; Perle, a long-time editor and publisher, now of CommonSense Media) they reveal their tip-toeing attitudes and ambivalence about the almighty dollar. In fact, Eisenberg was "caught" by his preoccupation to make his Number by the Lands End job offer following their IPO, taking him away from strict editorial. Perle made her own contract with money, saying she "would think about what it took to get it - work hard, marry right - but (she) didn't want to have to think about it."

In sharing their and their subjects' vignettes these authors unveil that the money topic is indeed "the last taboo" of modern social discourse. Like any other taboo, the act of not speaking of the subject keeps many in ignorance and abject fear of its power - mostly self-created. To help dispel the anxiety, they both chip away at the formidable walls regarding what makes us tick as it relates to personal finance. In Eisenberg's case he starts by categorizing people into four personality types and offers compelling scenarios regarding how they live:

1. Procrastinators: People in their 40's and 50's who are in denial about their future and have not demonstrated any serious intent regarding their financial planning.

2. Pluckers: Well, these folks think there is some number out there and they'll "pluck" it out of the ether without really planning how they will achieve it.

3. Plotters: Here are the folks wwound up tight about the numbers, but their focus is on the trees and not the forest - the spreadsheet not the quality of life - so much so that they are not living fully in the moment.

4. Probers: These are the people who understand that money enables good things in life and can work with money regularly in positive ways to live a fulfilled life today and in the future.

Although these are not financial planning books, they do lend financial awareness tips and confidence building insights that have the power to strip away the blinders people can have on about money, their lives and the meaning of both.

The Chief Strategy Officer (CSO)

2007-10-01T12:04:00.000-07:00

The Harvard Business Review just published an article, "The Chief Strategy Officer," by a team of Accenture executives explaining the merits and rational for why many companies now need a chief strategist to facilitate the process of corporate strategy being translated to action. The problem, as they summarize it, is that for many companies strategy gets articulated (in regular corporate strategy sessions and processes) but it is simply not well-executed throughout the organization.

As studies show, top corporate management spends an average of less than three hours a month dealing with strategy topics (including M&A) or making strategic decisions. Couple that with the "get immediate results" directive for the C-suite, plus ever-increasing global challenges, and it becomes perfectly clear why the CEO needs executive assistance on what has become a continuous, and not occasional, process.

Because of this need to drive strategy through to action, the new "CSO" is much more than an ivory tower strategist who has spent her/his career running strategic consulting practices or initiatives. Today's CSO typically has run operations, worked in marketing, has been responsible for financial metrics, and maybe has had some strategic consulting experience - in short, the new CSO is somewhat of a CEO in-training.

In everyday life, CSOs focus on three fundamental strategy implementation areas:

1. Building and furthering commitment to strategic plans: They articulate and explain the company's strategy and clarify how different operations and employees will help contribute to its future actuality.

2. Driving immediate action and change: Examining and determining what change exactly needs to occur within an organization and orchestrating the cross-functional initiatives necessary for achievement of this change.

3. Promoting decision making that sustains change: Building agreement-alignment and rebuilding it again so that strategy decisions are not "watered down" across the organization and leadership structure.

More of today's CSOs come from inside a company, with 84% of all current CSOs having been promoted from within after an average of eight years at their company. To be a strategic partner at the C-table, yet able to work as an influencer across the entire organization, requires the type of influence and trust that only time and personally experienced success can foster.

A Room of One's Own

2007-09-30T14:33:00.000-07:00

On this rainy and dreary Sunday I have been deep in my library re-reading a classic introduced to me early in life as a teenager - A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf. Based on a series of lectures she gave to two women's colleges at Cambridge University, England, in the late 1920's, Woolf's extended essay examines why women have not achieved the prominence of men in the literary world and looks at the underlying question (of the time) of whether women were actually capable of equal literary achievement (to men).

She opens with her now famous assertion that a woman must have money, some sort of financial independence, and a room of her own to write honestly, freely, and with authority. But in Woolf's time and place, financial security did not come easily to women if it was not inherited or married into; entry to so many intellectual "worlds" and places of commerce was also mostly closed. So it was true that such a narrow way of being over a long historical period did not build intellectual and spiritual independence in the female population or lead to a great, and voluminous body of, literary work by women.

Her view was that financial and opportunity constraints are indeed formidable barriers to creativity and can effectively suffocate the spark of imagination. The reality of financial dependence can impede on basic human comforts like eating well and being at ease in the physical environment one has to work in. According to Woolf, being physically comfortable and having guaranteed privacy in your working environment is mandatory for investigation, intellectual breakthroughs, and most importantly the exploration of "truths" that a woman might otherwise have to hide.

Comfort, in all its manifestations, helps nurture personal optimism which, in turn, is needed for living a productive creative life. Woolf fundamentally felt that the creative life demands confidence and strength and as such needs to be fed appropriately. Indeed, a woman needs money and a room of her own to break through, create, and contribute equally to society at large

Decoding Business Strategy

2007-09-27T14:51:00.000-07:00

In a business world dominated by the drive for results, the underlying process that guides and informs a coherent and inspiring business strategy effort is often neglected. One explanation for this behavior is that strategy development activities (qualitative primary research, off-site white board sessions, positioning exercises, etc.) can seem like, as one CEO once said to me, "a lot cosmic activities that don't tackle the bottom line."

Recently I was in another planning session where, once again, executives were struggling with what a corporate vision is and why their company should have one. Vision: What is that? What is the difference between vision and mission? And why are two definitions needed when one seems like it serves the purpose? These questions make a lot of sense when you step back and realize that the executives asking them are driven by business pragmatics, and not by what may seem like theoretical exercises.

And yet, this process and related exercises yield demonstrable results - albeit through what is always a somewhat painful and challenging process with busy, stretched execs. As any business school professor will articulate, a business needs a strategy foundation, and alignment within all the elements of that foundation, to guide long-term actions against objectives that will drive to desired business results.

Here are few definitional elements underpinning a coherent business strategy that have been helpful to me in working through business strategy and business transformation assignments:

1. Strategic Business Objectives: The quantitative and qualitative targets/achievements a company want to reach/exceed

2. Vision: An inspiring articulation of the desired impact (net result) that the company wants to have on its target market(s). The result of reaching/exceeding its core business objectives; the ultimate and market-centric strategic outcome of the company's activities.

3. Mission: Expresses the operational focus of a company and articulates what will be achieved, and where, why, and by who

4. Value Network - Market Infrastructure: For whom, and with whom, a company creates identified added-value via the delivery of its products, services, solutions and knowledge/education

5. Strategy: The roadmap for how a company will allocate its people, investments, activities, resources - and in what sequence - to accomplish its mission - over time, and via multiple dimensions

6. Whole Product: In a given market, and across markets ultimately, the sum of the technologies, platforms, products, differentiators, value, etc. that a company offers

7. Business Definition: What a company does, provides, for whom, and for what benefit /value over alternatives and in what type of way that addresses target audiences desires and concerns

Marketing as Strategy: A Transformational Engine, Not Just Function

2007-09-25T14:46:00.000-07:00

In The Practice of Management, Peter Drucker wrote, "The business enterprise has two and only two functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs."

Something has indeed happened since these words were written because the majority of C-level executives no longer see marketing providing this type of higher-level, organization-to-market contributions. According to the CMO Council's research report, "Define and Align the CMO," hiring stakeholders are focusing more on functional, tactical, and programmatic experience rather than high-level, strategic competencies because they have recategorized marketing as a spend, and not strategic, function.

Performance pressures to meet revenue objectives and short-term profits have adjusted the prior enterprise mindset articulated by Drucker, causing C-suite executives to expect marketing to always have positive, quantifiable, and measurable outcomes. Unfortunately, research shows that this same audience isn't satisfied with the metrics they are seeing and, as a result, they have lost faith in what marketing can really do. It's been a vicious cycle for the strategic marketers out there trying to regain their foothold in the organization.

In trying to counteract this "spender" positioning that marketing currently operates under, marketers have fallen into the almost unavoidable trap (driven by the chorus of metrics, metrics, metrics) of being all about the "Four Ps" of product, place, price, and promotion. But this specialization, forced by marketer's survival instincts, has seriously hurt the marketing profession and it has subordinated marketing's organizational role.

Nirmalya Kumar, marketing professor at the London Business School, tackled this issue in his ground-breaking, Harvard Business School Press book, Marketing as a Strategy: Understanding the CEO's Agenda for Driving Growth and Innovation. As he expresses it, the challenge is for marketers to move beyond the tactics of marketing to lead broader organizational initiatives focused on issues related to delivering value to customers.

In the end, getting marketing back on the CEO agenda may be more about mindset than function - requiring broad organizational ownership of the objective to dramatically increase customer value. And so, marketers will need to step up to this challenge and lead cross-functional teams focused on transformational initiatives tackling the core enterprise issue of how to continuously increase customer value over time.

The Successful Brand Checklist

2007-09-20T14:47:00.000-07:00

Business Week's Small Business section recently published an article on what it takes to successfully position a small business brand, a particularly challenging exercise when budgets are tight and creativity can be stretched by day-to-day demands.

Here's a review of, and my expanded commentary on, the six characteristics that BW suggests define and make a successful brand:

1. Relevance: A brand needs to match what your core customer audience is looking for and expecting. Basically, what a business is promising and delivering in their message and product needs to matter to your audience and have discernible, practical value to them. What's also important to remember is that brands need to evolve to stay contemporaneous with their audiences who are also changing, while remaining true and consistent to their brand origins.

2. Simplicity: Lots of concepts, words, ideas, features, details (you get the point) overwhelm audiences to the point that they will shut down their receptors. It's critical to synthesize your brand, brand value, product positioning, packaging, etc. to the point that the essence is distilled and presented. That's the core of what audiences take in, and once that clear message resonates, then a business can expand into details (but still in an orderly, structured fashion.)

3. Differentiation: A brand needs to be able say "we're different" and be able to actually and tangibly support that difference. The differentiation war cannot be won by claims alone, no matter how much money a business may have to spend, because end customers/consumers are simply too savvy in this online world to take proclamations at face value. It's not enough for a business to just claim that you are better than your competitors, you need to zero in on what being better means and articulate those concepts/facts.

4. Believability: Will your customers/market audiences accept what you are saying and delivering, and under the auspices of your current brand platform, or does a specific positioning or strategy stretch what they think is acceptable coming from your company? This is a critical, core analysis point in determining how to launch or reposition products, packaging, and campaigns. Miss here, and a business needs to go back to the starting gate.

5. Credibility: Delivering on your promises, always. Acting responsibly, always. Operating with respect, always. Doing business according to a high standard of business ethics and values. A business builds credibility with every interaction it has with the marketplace, and it can sometimes take just one deviation to damage trust.

6. Defensibility: Is is easy or hard for a competitor to copy what you make/provide and go to market? To have a defensible market position, offerings can't be easy to imitate and you need to consistently and rigorously reinforce the brand's positioning. In the end, the brand itself may become the most defensible asset in your arsenal.

The Psychology of Words

2007-09-17T11:40:00.000-07:00

This month's issue of Scientific American Mind features a fascinating, maybe even disturbing, article on the power and potential of premeditated message construction titled "When Words Decide."

According to landmark research conducted by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, a Princeton University psychologist, and his collaborator, psychologist Amos Tversky, studies suggest that we humans do not absolutely have or maintain preferences and are influenced in making choices by how questions or options are presented to us. Linguistics may have more power than we might want to imagine as we react to the plethora of information presented to us.

Gains and Losses
According to Kahneman's and Tversky's statistical studies, two ways of describing a choice that are, in absolute terms, equivalent are not always psychologically equivalent to the person presented with them. In fact, their studies show that it will be more motivational to get people to focus on avoiding losses when choosing between options or coming to some conclusion, than having them focus on achieving or securing a gain. As an example in their research, women reacted much more strongly to appeals that emphasized avoiding the costs of late breast cancer detection versus those that emphasized the benefits of early detection. Seemingly counter intuitive, but true.

Leaving Matters Unspoken
Another powerful way to influence choice is to leave an option unsaid. In fact, studies prove that when you don't ask for buy-in and instead are presented with default options (meaning that you will donate your organs unless you select not to or that you will participate in the presented 401K plan unless you select not to) that participation is remarkably, substantially higher.

Context
Another influencing factor is whether you present some comparison of choice, and by doing so present a context for that choice. If you offer a new product at a certain price, but there is no other product like that within its category, the price is hard to judge. But, present another product (from your own company) that places the first product and price in (a less expensive, but very functional) context, research shows that sales leap.

What We Say & Why We Say It

2007-09-14T13:42:00.000-07:00

In Steven Pinker's new book, The Stuff of Thought, the Harvard psychology professor explores how we use language and how that usage illustrates how we actually think while communicating.

One of his main assertions is that every time we use language in a verbal and interactive context, humans are both attempting to communicate a specific and desired message and are trying to navigate, establish or affirm some sort of social relationship with the "human object" of this communication.

As an example of this dual action, the book cites the example of asking someone "to pass the salt." Rarely does someone make this request in a straightforward way; people normally frame the language of this request in such a way so as to acknowledge their social system pecking order. Because of their care, people's language often borders on being nonsensical or obtuse. But social currency, the real concern, is maintained.

Pinker categories this way of speaking and utilizing language as being "indirect speech," a segment of language that also includes euphemisms and innuendo. He also digs into the sheer prevalence of metaphor in everyday communications as well as the meaning of swearing and its relationship to human emotions.

In essence, what Pinker is saying is that what we say and how we say it says everything about how we feel about ourselves and our place in the world. A fascinating read for those captivated by language and its hold over our minds/hearts, or rather, our minds/hearts' hold over language.

Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes

2007-09-11T12:55:00.001-07:00

Mark Penn, CEO of PR firm Burson-Marsteller and Hilary Clinton's chief strategist and pollster, has just released his new book - "Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes" - which makes a data-driven case for how small movements have the greatest potential today for creating societal change. This is one of the most riveting books I've read recently, and it broke an all-time record for start-to-finish completion.

As the man who identified the "Soccer Moms" pivotal swing audience in Bill Clinton's 1996 presidential campaign, Penn is credited for being able to spot and isolate small trends or patterns of behavior in the environment - which he dubs as "microtrends." His book credits these new, just emerging microtrends as having the potential to shape our future and society.

He gives numerous examples: With so much teen crime we aren't seeing that the youth audience group is succeeding in life as never before. With so much attention on the political power of large religious groups, we find it difficult to grasp that it is the newer, more narrowly focused religious sects that are the fastest-growing.

As technology may have enabled, individuals have more choices today than at any other time in human history and the reasons and patterns for eventual end choices have never been more difficult to predict. But the ability to identify small groups and communities of like-minded people, and communicate effectively with them, is indeed today's primary challenge for marketers and politicians. Mass marketing and mass communications is dead in terms of real impact.

Utilizing "some of the best data available" Penn identifies more than 70 microtrends in business, religion, leisure, politics and family life that are quickly changing the way we work and live. A few of them include:

* People are retiring but continuing to work
* Teens are turning to knitting - I've seen this!
* Geeks are becoming the most sociable people around
* Women are driving and buying technology
* Dads are older than ever and spending more times with kids than in the past

To really know what's emerging "out there" Penn says we need "magnifying glasses and microscopes not the naked eye and an eloquent tongue" - and that equates to analyzing markets/audiences with polls, surveys, and statistics. His real point is that there are hundreds of "Americas" now for marketers and politicians to contend with, comprised of untold niches of people loosely or tightly joined together by common interests and beliefs, and we ignore them at our peril.

On-Ramps and Off-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success

2007-09-10T09:33:00.000-07:00

The Harvard Business Review 2005 article on "Off-Ramps and On-Ramps" has now been expanded on and released as a book by one of the original authors, Sylvia Ann Hewlett. It's a complete look at how many fast-tracked women "step off" the corporate ladder - to raise children, take care of elderly parents or attend to other family needs - and struggle when they return to work to find their way back into the business mainstream.

A little data helps to make the case that this issue should be a real concern: A survey of Stanford University's class of 1981 (the year I graduated) showed that 57% of women graduates leave the work force; three other surveys of Harvard Business School women graduates showed that only 38% end-up in full-time careers. Another study of women holding MBAs from across the country showed that one in three women are not working full-time, versus one in 20 men with MBAs.

According to Hewlett, corporate criteria for advancement has simply not changed since the 1950s including factors such as lock step progression, face time, unreasonable hours, flattery and obeisance, golf and strip clubs and male bonding. To attract women back into the workforce, and retain them over the long haul, Hewlett identifies six key elements to incorporate into the corporate culture:

1. Flex work arrangements - Offer options regarding when, where, and how work gets done

2. Arc-of-career flexibility - Offer alternative paths that support women during potential on-ramping and off-ramping phases

3. Re-imagination of work life - Offer women ways to keep a hand in their chosen field, short of full-time involvement

4. Continuation of ambition - Establish "old girls" networks enabling women to build skills, contacts, and confidence

5. Harnessing of activism - Find ways of supporting women's potential and rights for these natural career adaptations

6. Reduction of stigmas and stereotypes - Combat the stigmas that often follow in the trail of someone's alternative work arrangement

As a women who has chosen a not completely corporate career trajectory, and has taken a year off in pursuit of the joys of family life and travel, I deeply understand and appreciate the challenges successful women face in making the decision to leave and re-enter the workforce. The personal experiences are completely worthwhile but the career rebuilding efforts are absolutely substantial, and can be disheartening. It takes sheer drive to persevere and get back "on track" - although I think the track a woman gets back on is usually very different from the one she left.

Tracking the Influence of Conversations

2007-09-05T11:34:00.000-07:00

"Tracking the Influence of Conversations: A Roundtable Discussion on Social Media Metrics and Measurement" authored by Jeremiah Owyang, formerly with Podtech.net and soon to be with Forrester, and Matt Toll, with Dow Jones, begins the dialog about how an organization can effectively measure the value and marketing effectiveness of social media.

As collaborative Web 2.0 technologies continue to be introduced and proliferate the consumer and business environment, we are seeing increased interest and discussion about the value of social media tools - blogs, podcasts, videoblogs and social networking sites. But how important are these conversational vehicles, really, to overall buying decisions? How can organizations join in these conversations, and influence product-service evaluations and purchasing behavior?

The key to remember is that social media is about having two-way conversations, and that previously powerful obstacles between a seller and target customers are being removed with tools are simple as blogs. All of a sudden, information can be disseminated (locally to globally) in a heartbeat via some combination of social media.

For the findings below, about 30 marketers, bloggers and social media experts gathered together and came up with these measurement attributes:

* Analytics and Activity: Focused on traditional measurement elements like page views, unique site visitors, etc.

* Community Activation/Call to Action: Are recipients reacting to some call to action message?

* Conversation Index: The ration between blog posts and comments-plus-trackbacks.

* Demographic/Who: Understanding who is responding to the message - who is reading, watching, talking, and for how long?

* Influential Ideas (Memes): The intensity or velocity of the spread of an idea or message over time - answering the question, who is creating a real dialog? (Bloggers and marketing consultants placed the most value on this metric.)

* Participation and Engagement: Responding, and acting, on the message. (Corporate marketers placed the most value on this metric.)

* Reach: Has less to do with sheer numbers and more with who you are influencing.

* Relationships and Connections: The concept of influence in a specific target community is growing in importance as small communities form and niche conversations start in every industry.\

* Relevance: How relevant is a specific blog post to a given company.

* Sentiment/Tone: Tone-flavor of any given response.

* Content: Intrinsically linked to the focus of a given social media platform

One interesting finding was that traditional Web analytics placed very low as a metric - suggesting that social media is relevant in ways different from traditional online marketing. "Reach" also was ranked very low, suggesting closer relationships are more highly valued.

Although the group did not determine or endorse any particular standard method of measurement, they all acknowledge the pressure they experience to validate their investments in social media marketing. Clearly this particular dialog has just begun.

Social Media and Transparency

2007-09-04T10:07:00.000-07:00

In today's social media world, marketing is changing dramatically in that everyone is increasingly able to communicate directly with actual people and not just target market segments or "audiences." As a result of this social media trend, marketers need to think more about how to establish direct, authentic relationships with people - and why they are doing so.

The irony of this movement is that "market relations" - the process of establishing direct relationships with an infrastructure of market segments that have some influence on a buying decision - is the very basic marketing principle taught by my first professional mentor, Regis McKenna. Back 25, even 15 years ago, real market power came from having sustained relationships with a wide variety of people of influence.

Once the PR industry caught on, this trend became an bandwagon that truly overplayed its welcome - everyone talked about communicating to influencers for a company (within the context of its market and technology segment). Unsurprisingly, those influencers (market analysts, all media, associations, noteworthy VCs, high-profile CIOs) all became numb to the constant barrage of communications. Everyone's effectiveness suffered.

But, with the proliferation of social media and its requirement of sustained personal integrity, it's possible once again (although via different mediums) to establish the type of one-to-one connections that are so intrinsically important and so highly leveragable. Authentic dialogue can be reestablished between those who are seeking to honestly communicate and respond. Tools and technologies will enable and accelerate these conversations (blogging, Facebook, Podcasts, etc.) and those most facile in them will have the competitive advantage of "speed to market" but even more importantly, "transparency of voice."

Understanding the sociology of networks that are then created is a concept that Ev Rogers so eloquently wrote about in his ground-breaking book Communication of Innovations (now in its 5th printing as Diffusion of Innovations.) His statistical, communications-based research proved that the rate of a market adopting an "innovation" is specifically driven and effected by the activity of one adopter category of people choosing to influence another. Bottom line, there is always a set (or sets) of people in a social system that play(s) a catalytic role in how an idea, concept, product, etc. takes fire and gets adopted.

So, in today's social media reality, we're back to relationships then between groups of people, and understanding how the process of authentic and transparent communications impacts eventual market success.

Forrester Explores Social Media at their Consumer Forum 2007

2007-08-31T11:10:00.000-07:00

Forrester is hosting a social media conference in Chicago on this October 11-12th that will address how to succeed in a world increasingly infiltrated by social media technologies. The conference will focus on how individuals are being massively influenced by each other rather than traditional -institutional marketing methods, creating a new way that brands must market.

As Forrester notes, there is tons of data supporting that this new social structure is pervasive.

"Only 53% of consumers in 2006 believed that ads were a good way to learn about new products, down from 78% in 2002. At the same time, consumers are increasingly seeking each other out for information — 31% of online consumers buy or sell products online from and to other consumers, 26% contribute to discussion boards or submit product ratings, and 11% publish their own blogs or personal journals.

Broadening avenues of feedback lead consumers to expect participation in product development, innovation, and advertising — witness the success of Wikipedia and Doritos' user-generated Super Bowl ads. These open source brands and products will not disappear. Armed and empowered, consumers will increasingly disengage with disconnected companies and give new life and market share to niche firms that embrace brand participation. At this year's Consumer Forum, leading Forrester analysts will present research on how brands are stimulating loyalty through this new social structure, and executives will share their companies' best practices for including consumers in the brand dialogue."

Forrester plans to zero in on some of these types of questions:

* How are social technologies — such as blogs, social networks, and user review sites — changing consumer behaviors and attitudes with respect to brands, content, and interactions?

* How does Social Computing appeal to the psychology and aspirations of consumers, and how does that vary around the world?

* Which social technologies hold the most promise for creating meaningful connections with consumers?

* When are consumers willing to establish a relationship with firms via social media and technologies?

* What are examples of brand communities that strike an appropriate and sincere tone, voice, and connection with consumers?

* Which companies have best harnessed the power of consumer communities and input?

* What tools, technologies, and skills will companies need to succeed in this new social structure?

* How do companies monetize the value of a participatory brand experience?

* How will Social Computing evolve over the next decade, and what radical implications should brands expect in the coming years?

Social Media's New Blog and Conference

2007-08-29T13:29:00.000-07:00

The folks that brought you the Blog Business Summit (the blog and related events/conferences ), which helped educate all of us bloggers on how to maximize and leverage business blog behavior, have just announced their new foray into the social media environment - The Web Community Forum. As their new blog reports:

"The Web Community forum is a site and event series dedicated to supporting and fostering online community building best practices. This blog is intended to track, facilitate and continue the conversation surrounding this rich topic, and the next conference will take place December 5-6, 2007 in Seattle, WA.

The goal of Web Community Forum Seattle 2007 is to discuss and propose some emerging best practices for community building for business, political campaigns, marketing, and other professional efforts using Facebook and the Facebook platform."

The event has signed up Jeremiah Owyang as its keynote speaker, who just announced on his blog that he has joined Forrester as their senior analyst for social computing and interactive marketing. Most recently he was at Podtech.net as their director of corporate media strategy. His blog's notes that his keynote will cover:

Facebook Strategy: Opportunities of a Ready-Made Platform

Facebook is a media, community and application platform that offers an existing thriving ecosystem, scalable growth, and word-of-mouth marketing. The ability to understand users, their preferences, and networks, helps web applications to quickly segment and rapidly grow. Of course, no system is perfect, so attendees will come to understand the challenges with data, privacy and the growing conflict as work and personal lives collide online.

By analyzing users, their profiles, networks and affiliations there’s a tremendous amount of rich data that not seen displayed so readily. The ability to create a targeted web strategy to meet specific needs of the ‘long tail’ is more accessible than ever before.

Facebook provides targeted advertising unlike before, the ability to provide messages segmented by location, gender, and or preference gives the ability to accurately market effectively

The recently launched Application Platform gives a small agile web team the ability to quickly deploy a widget, scale and monetize. Explore what’s worked as these mini-applications are launched on top of an existing community.

Attendees will learn:

-Demographics and Trend Data of Facebook
-Word of mouth and viral growth using the Newsfeed and Widgets
-Groups, Sponsored groups and other community features
-Harness Personal and Network information
-Contextual and targeted Advertising opportunities
-Monetizing your efforts
-Case studies of success and failure
-Understanding costs, and strategies to measure ROI

BTW, Podtech.net is a great social media resource and if you haven't checked out Jennifer Jones' social media show "Marketing Voices", this is a "must-listen-to" regular podcast. I worked with Jennifer at Regis McKenna, and she has a great background in marketing, social media and broadcasting - journalism.

And be sure to check out the new Web Community Forum blog, and stay tuned for what should turn out to be a fabulous line-up of speakers!

Brand You, Revisited

2007-08-28T11:09:00.000-07:00

In August, 1997, management consultant and trend-setter Tom Peters wrote a seminal Fast Company article, "The Brand Called You," followed by his book The Brand You 50 - spawning an entire movement on personal branding over the last decade. It was a call to arms to be CEOs of our own identities and position & reposition ourselves so we can be "a brand worthy of remark."

If brands are everything, according to Peters, then all of us must stand for brand attributes that define us, brand values that we live by, and a brand personality & style that accurately reflects our way of being in the world. We need to conduct our own competitive analyses, define our differentiating characteristics vis-a-vis other players in our "space," and create our own message and content framework to script us in our communications with the world at large.

Then, the real action starts. Brand campaigns. Building visibility. Extending our social relationship networks. As Peter said, "it all matters. When you are promoting brand You, everything you do -- and everything you choose not to do -- communicates the value and character of the brand." Based on this thinking, we can see why many of the real breakthrough innovations (technology and otherwise) of the last ten years emerged.

So in this process we need to embrace our individual power and become a powerful personal brand. What helps, is that much of work (then and today) is segmented into chunks called projects and a project-based world facilitates the development of personal branding. There are simply many, many opportunities to showcase deliverables, outcomes and successes - and build your own brand assets.

As a result of our brand actions, we are able to build the kind of loyalty that endures and is based on more than blind allegiance to a company, boss or last year's wins. The measurable outcome of our self-branding efforts is a different type of career where, as Peter says,"Linearity is out. A career is now a checkerboard. Or even a maze. It's full of moves that go sideways, forward, slide on the diagonal, even go backward when that makes senses. (It often does.) A career is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new capabilities, grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand."

To succeed today, we all must embrace the reality of self-branding and understand that it requires the type of vigilance and dedication much akin to what's needed to manage even the most significant of brands.

Women and the Leadership Glass Ceiling

2007-08-24T11:46:00.000-07:00

The Harvard Business Review just published a refreshing report that rethinks why women aren't breaking into the C-suite, challenging that the reason is related to the sum of all obstacles women face in business rather than their facing an abrupt halt imposed by a "glass ceiling" (the concept that women are simply blocked in place below the top positions).

No one disputes that the numbers of women at the highest level of business are dismally low, and that despite the fact that women occupy 40% of all managerial positions in the United States, only 6% of the Fortune 500's top executives are female and only 2% of this group have women CEOS. But coming up with viable strategies for reversing this trend has stumped pundits, researchers, executives, and boards alike.

The problem, according to this research, is that "discrimation" against women operates at all ranks and throughout their entire careers and not at just the top when they are poised to "break through." Examples of the obstacles that women face throughout their careers and their rise up through organizations include:

1. Prejudice: Men get promoted more quickly than women with the same background and qualifications - and this includes the traditional "women" careers of teaching and nursing.

2. Resistence to Women's Leadership: Business people see successful women managers in a more negative light than men and attribute qualities such as deceitfulness, selfishness and abrasivenss to them vs. men.

3. Leadership Style: Women tend to be conflicted with balancing how they think "leaders" should behave to succeed (with assertion and control) vs. qualities that are seemingly preferred in women (compassion, collegiality).

4. Family demands: Women are still the primary family member who make family/work concessions in terms of time and as such they don't have the same amount of time as men with children to engage in necessary networking, socializing, etc. that is part of career advancement.

Because of this intersecting web of issues, attitudes, and barriers the report advises that if company executives and boards want to foster female leadership and integrate more women leaders in order to achieve greater parity then they need to simulaneously implement a full range of tactics including:

-Reward women's productivity by objective results, not hours worked

-Take bias out of performance evaluation processes, and make criteria explicit

-Use open-recruitment tools (recruiters, advertising) and not just informal social networks for recruiting

-Avoid have just one women team member on any team. By themselves, women usually are ignored by men

-Encourage mentors for women who are highly regarded in the organization

-Achieve a critical mass of women in executive roles to avoid "tokenism"

-Provide developmental job experiences that build leadership competencies in women managers

-Create family-friendly HR practices such as flextime, job sharing, and telecommunting

-Give parents with significant parental responsibilities more time to prove their promtional qualifications.

-Establish alumni programs for women who need to leave the work force but want to return

The 100 Best Global Brands

2007-08-21T11:48:00.000-07:00

BusinessWeek's and Interbrand's annunal rankings of the 100 best global brands was just released and Google, Zara, Apple, and Nintendo top the list of this year's primary gainers. Some long-time top brands such as Ford and Gap lost 19% and 15% of their brand value respectively given consumers' negative perceptions of these brands.

To be considered, each brand must receive a third of its earnings outside of its home country, be recognized outside of its own customer base, and have publicly available financial and marketing data.

In terms of specific valuation methodology, Interbrand measures brand value as any other corporate asset is valued - on the basis of how much it is likely to earn for the company in the future. Analyzing analyst's projections, company financial statements, and Interbrand's own qualitative and quantitative research findings, the brand value calculation drives to a net present value of those earnings.

Although the rankings themselves are interesting, the most valuable deliverable of this rankings process for a company is the definition of the asset value of the brand itself to its own company. A brand can be seen and accepted as an economic asset, like other business assets. Therefore, companies can interpret these brand analytics to more effectively channel their brand management strategies and activities to keep increasing the brand's value.

As global brands, these top 100 brands are challenged with how to create and hold onto brand consistency across different countries, cultures and market segments. It requires companies to embrace a rigorous, highly analytic, and deeply creative approach to adapting their brands so that their brands create a profoundly similar resonance within all target market audiences.

Put simply, brand is pervasive both internally as well as externally and long-term market success relies on the recognition of this fact and the sponsorship of the brand at the highest leadership levels of the organization.

The top ten global brands are, in ordering of their ranking: Coca-Cola, Microsoft, IBM, GE, Nokia, Toyota, Intel, McDonald's and Disney. The top risers in terms of brands are: Google, ZARA, Apple, Nintendo and Starbucks.The top decliners in terms of brands are: Ford, GAP, Kodak, Pizza Hit, and Motorola.

The New World of Marketing and PR

2007-07-26T11:13:00.000-07:00

David Meerman Scott just released a ground-breaking book on The New Rules of Marketing and PR that promotes the importance of online thought leadership and viral marketing strategies. Its thesis is that marketers should tell their stories directly to interested audiences and stop worrying about always being on message, paying for expensive advertising and pounding the PR payment to get mainstream media to cover them.

The New Rules of Marketing & PR focuses instead on how to leverage and maximize the Internet, zero in on market segments and specific audiences, craft powerful messaging and deliver those stories to those who you really want to impact. In particular, the book posits the importance and increasing relevance and appropriateness of directing press releases, blogs, podcasting and other marketing devices to reach your target buyers directly.

To focus in on releases and how the PR world has changed, here are some key ways to rethink your communications efforts:

1. Position your company and people as experts, or thought leaders, in a wide variety of subject matter areas

2. Press releases are no longer just for the big news and the “consolidated” story – companies have lots of news that is interesting that should be communicated regularly. Think “nuggets” of information now. Speaking at a conference – write a release. Sign up a new customer – write a release. Launch a set of product features –write a release

3. Don’t just target journalists and analysts because the media has been disintermediated – instead directing the content of your releases to buyers because they are finding and reading your press releases directly

4. Know what keywords your target audiences are interested in (need to do that SEO work) and regularly integrate those keywords into your releases for better search results

5. Include links in your releases on relevant subject matter – with those links directing traffic to landing pages on your company’s website

6. Understand how to optimize press release delivery for search – use one of the wire services

Accelerators for Start-ups

2007-07-25T11:48:00.000-07:00

The Kauffman Foundation, a leading foundation that is dedicated to advancing entrepreneurship in the U.S., just released a report on an emerging trend in start-up venture formation - the growth of the "accelerator" model in seed stage/early stage company development. Like American Idol which is based on grooming leading contestants for a career launching and promoting records in the music industry, the "Business Idol" formula features a similar contest-based method of selection, funding and management nurturing.

Kauffman's findings indicate that not only is the "Business Idol" trend a rapidly growing phenomenon in the U.S., it is also gaining in popularity in Europe and throughout the world. A core reason behind this new development is the shift in how venture capital is being deployed post the dot com bust. From 2000 until 2005, seed-round investments by the venture capital community dropped from 281 deals to 63 per VentureOne. Although the stock market has been heating up, Kauffman believes that VCs will not return to heavily supporting seed-stage investments.

In the absence of this financial channel, the importance of angel investors has dramatically risen - those individuals or investor groups that function independent of a formal management organization. Kauffman notes that angels invest their own money in early stage ventures that meet their assumptions of future high-growth for a variety of reasons that extend beyond just wanting to earn the highest returns. Their research posits that angels fund deals (normally in their areas of expertise) so as to contribute to local economic growth, apply their expertise in a real-world company environment and find personal enjoyment-enrichment.

In addition to the angel community and the growing formation of angel resource groups (see the Angel Capital Association), Kauffman reports that the "Accelerator" or "Business Idol" model is catching on as an alternative to early stage financing and company development. They have redefined this model as a full partnership that provides much more than space and common management services to start-ups. Accelerators actually help form companies in terms of becoming a legal entity, interviewing - hiring - developing the management team and lending its own management know-how and time. In truth, the accelerator actually becomes part of the emerging start-up throughout its entire early stage development.

This makes a lot of sense from the start-ups perspective. In the early company development stages there really isn't a need for a full-time CEO, VP Marketing or CFO - although their input and guidance is critical to determining a successful long-term business strategy and overseeing operational progress over different functional areas. Working with an accelerator gives the start-up access to the resources they need, without the huge expense and commitment normally required.

To access one of these "accelerator organizations" Kauffman reports that companies "audition their skills" and compete for slots on an accelerator's team, with the business idea normally being less important than the individuals and their history and experience. Accelerators operate this way because they see that many new ideas, not just one new company idea, will emerge from bringing together groups of potential entrepreneurs.

Today accelerators appear to be focusing on specific industries or sectors and selecting a critical mass of people with common backgrounds to come up with the next generation of new technologies and products. Accelerators that are operational today include The Foundry, Inc. in Menlo Park, CA (medical device development); The Accelerator Corporation in Seattle, WA (biotechnology); and YCombinator in Mountain View, CA (software and web development). Similar models are forming at venture firms and universities, which are also featuring competitions and intensive training

Conversational (Word of Mouth) Marketing Summitt

2007-07-16T14:59:00.001-07:00

To follow-up my recent posting on conversational or word of mouth marketing, Federated Media is hosting a new conference in San Francisco on Septmeber 11-12 that will examine the rise of conversational media and marketing and the evolution of formal packaged- goods media from mainstream media companies into more informal, author- and consumer-driven products. The conference will be held September 11-12, 2007 at the Golden Gate Club in the Presidio, in San Francisco.

The Conversational Marketing (CM) conference is bringing together leaders in conversational - word of mouth - marketing to discuss the current state of affairs and trends and will include participants such as Laura Desmond, CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group/The Americas, Jay Adelson, CEO of Digg, Casey Jones, VP Marketing at Dell, and senior executives from Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Six Apart, and many others.

The purpose of the CM Summit is to present interactive, thought-provoking discussions and case studies covering marketing and media topics including integrated online campaigns, measurement, new approaches to traditional online marketing and leveraging new distribution channels like RSS.

Leading industry experts will be on hand to discuss social networking, virtual worlds and non-traditional marketing. Speakers include:

* Jay Adelson; CEO, Digg.com
* Barak Berkowitz; CEO, Six Apart
* Matt Cohler; VP Strategy, Facebook
* Laura Desmond; CEO, Starcom MediaVest Group/The Americas
* Scott Donaton; Publisher, AdAge
* Sarah Fay; Group President, Isobar
* Shawn Gold; SVP Marketing & Content, MySpace.com
* David Grubb; Worldwide Media Director; Microsoft
* Curt Hecht; EVP, Chief Digital Officer, Starcom MediaVest Group
* Carla Hendra; Co-CEO, Ogilvy North America
* Casey Jones; VP Marketing, Dell
* Patrick Keane; EVP, CMO, CBS Interactive
* Ross Levinsohn; Former President, Fox Interactive Media
* Daina Middleton; Dir, Global Interactive Marketing, Imaging and Printing Group, HP
* Jon Miller; Former Chairman & CEO, AOL Inc
* Kent Nichols; Co-Creator of Ask A Ninja, Beatbox Giant Productions
* Greg Ott; VP, Global Marketing, Ask.com
* Randall Rothenberg; President & CEO, Interactive Advertising Bureau
* Suzie Reider; Head of Advertising Sales, YouTube
* Douglas Sarine; Co-Creator of Ask A Ninja, Beatbox Giant Productions
* Tina Sharkey; CEO, BabyCenter
* Rishad Tobaccowala; CEO, Denuo
* Johnny Vulcan; Founder, Anomaly
* Jeff Weiner; EVP, Audience, Yahoo!

If you are thinking of going, target attendees include brand marketers, media buyers and planners, industry executives and other thought leaders who decide which new media to use, and who drive the creation and adoption of new products, technologies, and brands.

Jump Start Your Sales Force

2007-07-16T14:28:00.000-07:00

The Harvard Business Review published an intriguing and relevant article on how an organization's sales force needs to evolve - from the appropriate sales force during the start-up phase, through growth, maturity and potentially business decline. The difference between success and failure in each of these life cycle phases depends on how well businesses adapt to, and structure, the following factors:

1. The roles the sales force and selling partners play, and their relationship with each other
2. The size and scalability of the sales force
3. How specialized the sales force is in terms of competency and knowledge
4. How salespeople divide their time among customers sets, products and other daily work

For start-up companies the essential business issue is creating awareness and understanding about, and adoption of, new products. Speed to market and product uptake is paramount to survival and the core sales decision for any new business is whether to sell products directly to customers, sell them through partners, or some combination of both. It's clear that there are major cost savings in partnering with others - think of the advertising, promotional and PR costs that they absorb and not you. The partner is responsible for lead generation, and they were probably selected because they "own" a core set of prospective customer leads.

In this scenario, risk can be comfortably managed, especially if you only have to pay a commission on sales and your partners have established market entry programs, established channel relationships and solidified customer contacts. But there are risks in the partner sales approach in terms of "owning" the partner's attention who by definition is more concerned about building their brand and not yours. In the case of relying on strategic partners, start-ups need to establish partner management systems that contractually delineate co-marketing programs and motivating incentive packages and articulate who internally is in charge of managing the partner relationship - someone who owns partner process management, sales analytics, customer data and day-to-day partner team member encouragement.

Start-ups also need to track performance and end relationships that are not performing according to expectations. Research shows that many start-ups rely on their selling partners for too long and find themselves surprised that they don't really own the selling activity. In fact, selling partners should be evaluated not just according to cost benefits but in terms of the strategic advantage they provide along with longer-term differentiation.

In parallel, emerging businesses need to evaluate how big their sales staff should be. The sales force has a large role in educating potential customers about products and they have the persuasive responsibility to change customers' buying processes. They also own the sheer dogged task of "chasing" every viable sales lead. It's not a simple job and often, because of limited resources, new businesses build sales teams with an "earn your way" strategy.

What's concerning about the "pay as you go" approach, which in effect results in often not hiring the needed numbers of salespeople, is that most companies lose the opportunity to earn the sales available to them. A key lesson is that when start-up businesses see signs of market success, they usually need to ramp up their sales forces accordingly.

Word of Mouth Marketing Revisited

2007-07-06T11:37:00.000-07:00

In Lois Kelly's new book, Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word of Mouth Marketing, she explores how companies need to connect better, faster and more meaningfully with their market "infrastructure" - a term marketing visionary Regis McKenna coined that delineates all the audience categories that a company needs to influence in order to sell its products and/or services. A market infrastructure typically is comprised of target audiences such as your own employees, BOD, investors, strategic partners, trade-technology associations, market and investment analysts, trade-consumer-business media, bloggers, market influencers and prospective-current customers.

In short, Kelly proposes two marketing priorities for getting your market infrastructure connected to your company: (1) Really listening to your customers and the market and integrating that information into your strategic plans, product development and sales/marketing programs; and (2) having something interesting to talk about so your market infrastructure is interested in having a long-term conversation with your company and its representatives. She calls this form of word of mouth (WOM) marketing, conversational marketing. Like McKenna over 25 years ago, Kelly sees that much of marketing is comprised of one-directional, one-way efforts in terms of messages, content, ads, direct marketing-mail, sales presentations and the like.

What has changed today and elevated the importance of dialog or conversational marketing is that people have less trust in marketing-sales content; they are extremely overpowered with information & content; they want to understand what it will be like working with your company, not just using your products; they have a plethora of "talk" communications channels such as blogs, podcasts and the like; and they want to have a voice with the companies they buy from because they know they can have a voice, period. Trust today is built on this two-way platform where give and take is the name of the game.

To really engage in this type of conversational marketing then companies need to have (1) something intriguing to talk about; and (2) know how and when to listen. To start with what's interesting, Kelly emphasizes the importance of having a point of view - that is, beliefs, opinions, commentary on relevant topics to your market - that provoke and engage response. Here are some point of view themes she recommends companies-executives-employees use while having conversations with key audiences:

1. Aspirations: Things your company wants to change, and your thoughts about the transformative impact you could have on people's lives.

2. Avalanche About to Roll: A clear sense of disruptive trends or events that have the potential to "kill" markets/customers.

3. How To: The easy to digest, practical steps for solving xyz set of problems. This is why everyone reads the "7 Steps to Financial Freedom or Life Time Weight Loss."

4. Personal Stories: The life lessons that humanize the sharer and have the immediate "connecting" power.

5. David vs. Goliath: Ways to make comparisons that keep your company in the David spot, where people root the strongest.

6. Glitz & Glam: The pull and appeal of things that "shine" is strong, and integrating some of that magic dust into your conversations will captivate listeners.

7. Contrarion-Counterintuitive: It may seem like you're at cross purposes, but having a point of view that's like a "whack on the side of the head" can grab your audience because you are making them think in new ways.

The Art of Personal Branding

2007-07-03T11:31:00.000-07:00

In yesterday's New York Times they had a great article on the importance of selling yourself and promoting yourself for the purpose of getting ahead, competitively differentiating yourself and your business, and being top of mind with your customers or clients - in essence, helping build your own personal brand.

The article and its experts caution that this is not to say that professionals should promote themselves 24/7 because that can result in inauthentic, "canned" monologues but rather be prepared to flip the switch at opportune moments with stories that captivate, engage and inform. The key is to be an active participant in any interactive dialog and be genuinely interested in listening to, and prompting others, in conversations.

In comes down to building your personal brand, as well as business brands, and managing your brand development and evolution. Every encounter, every phone conversation, every meeting, every report, every PowerPoint, every email - basically every interaction - is an opportunity to build or deconstruct your personal brand. What is it that you want to be known for? What type of environment to you want to be a part of and help create? Answer those questions clearly and then be sure to act with consistency - and you'll see your visibility widen and expand in ways you may have never imagined.

Like any branding process, getting your messages/stories down cold is a key practical step for any self-promotional effort. Peggy Klaus provides a 12-item checklist, adapted below, in her book Brag: The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without Blowing It that gets you thinking about what stands out for you and your business efforts in terms of successes, interests and other defining traits:

1. What are five of your personality pluses?

2. What are the ten most interesting things you have done or that have happened to you?

3. What do you do for a living - and how did you end up doing it?

4. What do you like/love about your job/career/current business?

5. How does your current job/career/business use your skills and talents, and what projects are your working on right now that best showcase them?

6. What career successes are your most proud of having accomplished?

7. What new skills have learned in the last year?

8. What obstacles have you overcome to get where you are today, both professionally and personally, and what essential lessons have you learned from some of your mistakes?

9. What training/education have you completed and what did you gain from those experiences?

10. What professional organizations are you associated with and in what ways?

11. How do you spend your time outside of work, including hobbies, interests, sports, family and volunteer activities?

12. In what ways are you making a difference in people's lives?

Leadership Brands

2007-06-28T11:02:00.000-07:00

The ability to build a great brand, and one that can be successfully measured vis-a-vis competition in terms of financial performance, is a hallmark of dominant market leaders such as Apple, PepsiCo, Boeing, FedEx, P&G and Wal-Mart. What these companies have been able to achieve is alignment between corporate brand attributes (what the organization is known for) and its leadership team brand attributes (how leaders lead). What ultimately occurs in the marketplace is the acceptance of a common brand identity that blends this outward organizational face with the actual leadership faces - and if successful, a leadership brand emerges.

The Harvard Business Review just published a fascinating article that drills down into the process for creating a leadership brand and a brand that will successfully create long-term differentiation from competitive brands. The five categories of steps to the process include:

1. Master Leadership Fundamentals: Help organizational leaders develop and master fundamental skills such as strategy (a point of view of the future and the ability to position the organization for this future); execution (creating the internal systems to operate the organization and the actions that deliver results); talent management (building a cohesive and committed team across all functional levels); talent development (creating the next generation of leadership); and personal proficiency (improving on one's own internal skills that enable performance, trust and relationship building).

2. Match Corporate Brand Attributes with Leadership Attributes: Identify what defines and differentiates the organization in terms of attributes and qualities and link these brand attributes with the necessary leadership skills and behavior.

3. Assess Leaders Vis-a-Vis the Lense of the Market: Assess how the market evaluates your leadership team in terms of qualitative & quantitative research (interviews, focus groups and surveys) with customers, partners, investors, and other audiences that comprise your market infrastructure.

4. Give External Market Audiences a Teaching Role: Incorporate external market feedback in corporate training programs and leadership courses - and invite them to participate. When I was a partner at Regis McKenna we had a great training department that regularly and vigorously incorporated our clients, analysts, market partners and the like.

5. Measure the Success of Leadership Branding: For a brand to be successful it must show positive impact on an organization's financial performance. Create metrics that track this success in terms of market share growth, confidence in future earnings (price/earnings ratio), and competitive displacement.

Finding the Next Core Business: The Process of Business Transformation

2007-06-22T10:57:00.000-07:00

Many businesses find themselves in a situation where they have hit the proverbial wall with their core business and recognize they are stalled, will stall or have hit a previously unknown competitive barrier. A recent Harvard Business Review article explores this very real dilemma that so many companies face and discusses how to assess whether your business needs to change and how to evaluate possible new core business directions.

Key indicators that a business' current strategy has or will lose its momentum may be if your company is targeting a shrinking profit pool as Apple faced in the mid '90s PC market; a new competitor has entered your market without the legacy cost structures and burden that your company works under; or if you can recognize that your growth formula is no longer sustainable.

To assess your core business and help determine if it is time to redefine it, here is a evaluation framework to work with and understand:

1. State of Core Customers: Examine profitability, market share, retention rate, customer loyalty and advocacy and share of wallet

2. State of Core Differentiation: Define and determine metrics for differentiation, relative cost position, business models of emerging competitors and increasing/decreasing competitive advantage

3. State of Industry Profit Pools: Look at size, growth & stability; share of profit pools captured; boundaries; shifts and projections; high costs and prices

4. State of Core Capabilities: Create inventory of key capabilities and determine relative importance; note gaps vis-a-vis competitors and their future compelling needs

5. State of Culture & Organization: Assess loyalty and undesired attrition; determine capacity and stress points; articulate alignment and agreement with objectives; calibrate energy and motivation; and pinpoint bottlenecks to growth

If after this discovery and analysis phase you determine that this is indeed the time to re-craft where your company's future lies, here are three areas to explore:

1. Undervalued Business Platforms: Investigate undeveloped adjacencies, organizations that support the core; non-core businesses; and orphan products

2. Untapped Customer Insights: Explore unrecognized segments, privilege access of trust, and underutilized data and information

3. Underexploited Capabilities: Look at hidden corporate capabilities, noncore capabilities in different divisions, and underleveraged core capabilities in different divisions.

What's particularly revealing about the research behind this article is that although it is tempting to decide on dramatic change when faced with a depleting future, data proves that the most successful corporate transformations come from changes in your own "backyard."

Online Advertising - Fast, Efficient Lead Generation

2007-06-18T15:20:00.000-07:00

In March 2007, comScore Networks reported that 7.3 billion domestic searches were conducted on search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others. As Internet usage by U.S. consumers has continued to expand, it has never been more important that businesses can be found online.

One reason pay-per-click (PPC) online advertising campaigns have become so popular is that they are significantly quicker than traditional search engine optimization (SEO). Businesses don't need to change any of their current website content, so PPC campaigns can be implemented almost immediately and results can take just minutes versus weeks or months to get started and see leads. In fact, Jupiter Research (2007) reports that the majority of advertisers are satisfied with the ROI of their search engine marketing.

At Innuity, PPC packages are designed to ensure that businesses are connected with consumers most likely to purchase their services and goods. Innuity's online marketing experts research and identify highly targeted keywords, set up clients' search engine marketing campaigns and provide ongoing management to generate the maximum budget results.

Each of Innuity's PPC packages includes complete end-to-end campaign set-up and maintenance; the only difference is the number of qualified prospective customers-leads that will be sent to clients' website on a monthly basis:

-Traffic Express: 260 target clicks-leads per year @ $50/month
-Traffic Plus: 780 target clicks-leads per year @ $100/month
-Traffic Pro: 2,400 target clicks-leads per year @ $250/month

Innuity's pay-per-click online advertising programs also include:

1. Keyword Research: Innuity's PPC team researches current consumer search behavior for each specific client's business and helps identity the most relevant, high-impact keywords for the campaign.
2. Ad Creation: Online marketing experts craft the online text ads for your campaigns that will generate results.
3. Account Set-up: The Innuity team sets up accounts within the search engines - uploading the targeted keywords and text ads.
4. Monthly Campaign Management: Once accounts are active, Innuity team members continue to monitor the performance of campaigns - identifying additional keywords and modifying ads to motivate qualified customers to click to a business' website.
5. Detailed Reporting: At the end of each month, businesses receive a detailed report showing the number of prospective customers sent to their website.

Inner Work Life - Delivering Peak Performance

2007-06-13T11:09:00.000-07:00

It seems intuitively obvious that marshalling a workforce to perform at consistent high levels would be a top priority for all businesses and organizations. Yet the task of understanding the nuances of positively impacting employees for the purposes of motivation, productivity and performance is somewhat elusive. The Harvard Business Review recently published an article titled, the Inner Work Life, which details their research on understanding the subtext behind business or at-work performance.

What their research suggests is that if an organization doesn't see peak performance in the workforce despite regular "walking the halls" efforts, pizza Fridays and regular public recognitions in team settings then perhaps the organization hasn't taken care of employees' "inner work lives." The HBR study defines inner work lives as the interrelationship between employees' closely held private perceptions of their work environment, the emotions they experience as a result of this awareness, and their resulting level of motivation to perform and "do good work."

What's critical for organizations and their leadership then is to demystify the inner work life system - that interplay beween employees' perceptions, emotions and movitation. Steps in this system include:

1. An event happens or annoucement made - like an email sent that doesn't get a response or a lay-off that is announced by senior management in a mass communications

2. Each individual tries to make sense of the occurence - creating an internal explanation and determine potential implications

3. If resulting perceptions from the "making sense" phase are positive this fuels the employee's motivation which then drives performance along four dimensions - creativity (can produce new solutions), productivity (speed of output), commitment (buy-in to the work itself) and collegiality (ability to connect as a team member and as an active part of the organization).

If the resulting feelings are negative, then output suffers across all these areas.

What's interesting is that while giving positive feedback and other typical employee-building techniques are helpful in building a positive cycle inside employee's inner work lives, the single most important tool is helping people believe that they can make positive, forward progress in their work. To build that trust, and encourage a true belief in one's personal progress, managers and top executives need to:

1. Provide direct help

2. Provide appropriate resources & time to accomplish task

3. React to outcomes with a learning orientation, rather than simply an evaluative orientation

4. Set clear, understandable and believable goals and explain why their output matters to their team, organization and customers.

ROI-driven Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

2007-06-12T13:46:00.000-07:00

Search engine optimization (SEO), the process by which a company-organization-product gains top organic-natural search engine rankings (in Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.) has become one of the most critical marketing activities to integrate into a strategic marketing program. With the majority of U.S. consumers using the Internet to search for services and products, no organization can afford to not have an intelligently-designed SEO program.

There is a plethora of SEO companies in the market, but potential SEO clients need to examine the technology and approach that these companies employ. One of the SEO service provider leaders, Innuity Inc., has continued to refine its approach to SEO to one that leverages the data behind consumer behavior and the search engine algorithms that are used to determine top rankings for specific keywords. Innuity's SEO services research the behavior of client's target customers and create and execute an online program to get client websites included in relevant keyword search on the major search engines.

Innuity's five step SEO process includes phases for: Keyword identification, ROI analysis on selected keywords, webpage revisions, link recruitment for high ROI keywords and ongoing link expansion.

1. The Assessment Phase: Clients provide Innuity with an initial set of keywords that are relevant to their business. Innuity then utilizes its proprietary tool, Optify, to expand this list to identify similar words or phrases that prospective and current customers are currently using to search for products or services in the client's category.

2. Solution Plan: Innuity's Optify tool conducts a detailed, research-based analysis for each keyword resulting in a prediction of the length of time it will take to get a top ranking for each potential keyword. This step allows Innuity to calculate the project revenue from each keyword--resulting in a plan that will focus efforts on the keywords that will deliver maximum business results.

3. Website Revision: Once the keywords have been identified, Innuity's team of professional writers create content pages for the client's website that are focused on each selected keyword phrase. Innuity then works with client teams to integrate these pages into their websites.

4. Traffic Generation: After each page is live, Innuity's marketing team works on recruiting links to these pages from reputable website and online directories. These links improve the "importance" of your website and the specific keyword pages, leading to improved rankings.

5. Detailed Reporting: At the end of each month, clients receive detailed reports showing how their websites are ranking for each of the targeted keywords on Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

Think Like Successful Leaders

2007-06-06T16:48:00.000-07:00

Roger Martin previews his upcoming book to be published this fall, The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking, in a recent Harvard Business Review article. His core message is that business executives who aspire to lead need to learn how to think like a leader, not study all the life lessons of various business leaders so they know how to act like one.

His premise and supporting research suggest that real leaders - the type that create, innovate and transform businesses, large and small - are ones that develop and excel at integrative thinking. That is, they can hold two opposing concepts-ideas-business alternatives in their heads, and instead of making a choice for option #1 or option #2 they integrate content from these two dichotomous alternatives to form a transformative option #3 - a new direction, resolution or in the parlance of business speak, strategy.

This way of thinking forces business people to leave behind an either-or approach to problem solving, and shifts them to embracing a world view that is more holistic, messy and changeable by definition. But, the point is that you have to look beyond the obvious answers to really "lead" an organization to new, better and ultimately more successful places.

Martin posits that there are four mental organizational steps to integrative thinking:

#1 - Identifying Key Factors: Conventional thinkers evaluate obvious or clearly known factors, while integrative thinkers demand research and exploration beyond information that is commonly known.

#2 - Analyzing Causality: Conventional thinkers see forward movement as a function of interrelated relationships (product definition, pricing, distribution, marketing, etc.) progressing in a linear direction from Step A to Step B fashion. Integrative thinkers, however, see multidimensional relationships as a given and acknowledge that forward progression could be dependent on a multiplicity of factors, moving in any direction.

#3 - Envisioning the Decision's Overall Structure: Conventional thinkers see problems and break them into "pieces" and work on each individually, whereas integrative thinkers consider problems from a holistic dimension and analyze how elements may impact each other.

#4 - Achieving Resolution: Conventional thinkers make either-or decisions and integrative thinkers go beyond clear options to consider ones not yet fully defined.

The good news is that Martin believes that this isn't a God-given talent, but rather is is one that can be learned. The challenge is to let go of trying to get to answers that are "right" or maybe "wrong," and seek solutions that defy prevailing, conventional wisdom.

For Your Business Book Summer Reading Pleasure

2007-06-05T11:35:00.000-07:00

Summer is almost here, and whether you are planning business or personal travel in the coming months here's a business book list to consider. Since the best reading is pleasurable (and doesn't feel like work), these books were selected to engage the mind and hold your interest whether you're flying red-eye across the country or sipping your favorite beverage by a tropical beach.

Bill & Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the World's Greatest Company: Hewlett and Packard built a revered brand and powerful global company based on a combination of strong business principles- ethics, integrity, a customer-centric corporate philosophy and just plain smart engineering. Step back and remember how the good guys built something that really lasted.

Blog Schmog: The Truth About What Blogs Can (and Can't) Do For Your Business: More the anti-blog book than the pro-blog book, Blog Schmog takes the contrarion view to the popular belief that all businesses need blogs to succeed. Blogs are a huge time investment (which I can attest to), and before embarking down this path read this book to get a critical look at what blogs can do (or not do) for your business.

Publish and Prosper: Blogging For Your Business: Go to Blog Business Summit and get your free copy of this important business blogging book today from the folks who have led the charge on proliferating business blogging. These are the real experts of business blogging, and they are immersed in the blogging world. No sideline coaching here - hear from the real guys and gals of blogging.

How to Work a Room: Your Essential Guide to Savvy Socializing: This updated edition of the classic "how to network" book is a must read for everyone - and I mean everyone. In the end, author Susan Roanne makes it totally clear that everyone can master business socializing - it's just a matter of a few rules: Prepare for the event; have a self-intro memorized; read a lot and thus have a lot to chat about; figure out what you have in common with the person you are talking to; make small talk & remember most conversations are just that; approach the person standing alone - no one, and I mean no one, likes to be alone at a gathering; and finally, just smile and say hi. All pretty easy stuff that's easy to forget, and good to be reminded of.

Coolhunting: Chasing Down the Next Big Thing: How does someone in business envision the next big idea out there on the horizon - or beyond? Does it take a special "cool" trend-setter gene to predict what's going to really take off or are there new ways (such integrating into the social networking world) to figure out what's going to pop up next? Read on, and become the next business visionary!

Rules for Renegades: How to Make More Money, Rock Your Career, and Revel in Your Individuality: This is actually a late summer read (per its publishing date), but put it on your list for embracing your inner entrepreneurial renegade spirit. From her days at Microsoft to being a Buddist monk, author Comaford-Lynch is known for her engaging stories about starting businesses and rapidly growing established enterprises.

Typo: The Last American Typesetter or How I Lost $4 Million (An Entrepreneur's Education): A true story about how author David Silverman borrowed his dad's life savings to purchase a faltering Midwest typesetting company. He brings human and insight to his story about his struggles and failures as he valiantly goes after achieving his life vision.

New Ideas from Dead CEOs: Lasting Lessons from the Corner Office: A catchy title and a pithy catch-all of engaging, corporate war stories from 10 really intriguing CEOs, including Walt Disney, Tom Watson Sr., Ester Lauder, and Mary Kay Ash. Nothing to bog readers down here - it's one interesting recap after another of lessons learned, battles waged and corporate wars won.

The Positive Thinking Trend

2007-06-01T11:16:00.000-07:00

Fast Company just published a fascinating article exploring the recent surge of books and multimedia vehicles emphasizing the power of positive thinking. From Rhonda Byrne's The Secret to Jon Gordon's new book The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work and Team with Positive Energy, the "positive energy" industry is taking off with a very big bang.

The Secret in fact has sold an astronomical 3.5 million copies, which is literally out of this world in terms of book sales where 5,000 copies sold equates to an average success. Of course, Oprah's endorsement had a lot to do with the propulsion of this book but, nonetheless, The Secret has struck a nerve. Coming soon in 20 languages, we're about to see a world-wide epidemic of positive thinking. All this supply and demand will fuel a self-help industry that is expected to reach 11 billion next year.

What's also interesting is that this is not just a personal growth phenomenon, it is a thriving business trend as well. From a business owner perspective, over 25% of U.S. business owners read at least one self-help book last year vs. 20% of business owners who launched or started a new product line or grew top-line revenue in the same time period - as reported by the research firm Warrilow & Company. You'll see when you read The Secret that Byrne has astutely recognized her growing business, as well as personal, audience with her formula of providing less rather than more - short chapters, catchy phrases and a PowerPoint - bullet point orientation.

Whether people are trying to find or maximize "love", achieve fame, or obtain and grow wealth there is a growing sense that harnessing and leveraging positive thinking is the means to these ends. However, you have to ask the question if all positive life results are solely based on positive energy, or whether they are grounded in a combination of positive thinking, comprehensive research, rigorous analysis, strategic planning and a sensible command of reality.

Stumbling on Happiness

2007-05-29T10:35:00.000-07:00

I recently "stumbled" over the book Stumbling on Happiness, written by Daniel Gilbert. What triggered my interest was Malcom Gladwell's glowing and unqualified endorsement: "If you have even the slightest curiosity about the human condition, you ought to read it. Trust me." OK, I loved The Tipping Point so much I've read it over five times and definitely enjoyed Blink, so I just ordered Gilbert's book.

Although the reviews say this is an amazingly accessible book, I would offer that it is surprisingly readable and entertaining articulation of what is actually some pretty scientific research from this Harvard professor about how humans imagine and conjure up the future. Gilbert opens with his articulation of what he calls "The Sentence" - the sentence that every pyschologist vows to answer some time in their professional future: "The human being is the only animal that..."

Stumbling on Happiness is an analysis of Gilbert's "Sentence": The human being is the only animal that thinks about the future.

Gilbert guides us through the findings of how information gathered after an occurrence changes your memory of the event. We humans simply fill in details that were not stored, but make sense given the context of the event. Gilbert notes, "Perceptions are portraits, not photographs, and their form reveals the artist's hand every bit as much as it reflects the things portrayed." So, how we look back and see something in our past is simply shaped by how we see things today.

Imagination has difficulties in seeing things that are not there - both in terms of depicting or analyzing past events as well as looking towards the future. When we humans look forward and think about the future, a whole lot goes missing in terms of what we can project. Humans tend to focus on what they know, right now, even when they look out.

An example Gilbert gives is what study participants think their future would look like in two years if a child of theirs dies. In summary, respondents could not envision a future that was not filled with heartbreaking loss; they could not see that there would be many moments, for most, that would be filled with the normal everyday pleasures. So, people envision a future that is most like what they are seeing and experiencing now - as opposed to being something completely different, new or even modified.

These findings turn upside down our perceptions of our own powers to see, plan and imagine our futures - business and personal. It certainly explains why we humans are so in awe of those who seem to break through these barriers and come up with a "vision" for the future that is new, upredictable and yet ultimately compelling and satisfying.

Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success

2007-05-21T15:43:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading this weekend Penelope Trunk's new book Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success. I was riveted by this lucid articulation of what I have been experiencing in my career, in the career trajectories of my peers and, most especially, in the career paths of those younger than me.

It's been clear for a while - the last five, maybe ten years if I was totally honest - that we won't be getting married to any company for a work life time. Although I started along those lines by moving through the ranks at Regis McKenna Inc. for almost ten years, I too left my "origin company" for two years to go to a client company. But what Trunk's book spells out, and it feels like one of those creative whacks on the side of the head, is that work in the future will be more like serial dating than even multiple long-term relationships.

It's irrefutable. The work world has changed. Period. It's not comfortable or secure, and it certainly isn't something you can completely control. My mother doesn't get it, and won't.

Since this is what it is, then people too have changed their attitudes towards work. These attitude shifts, in turn, circle back and change some very fundamental assumptions about the definition of work. Here are a few of Trunk's new views:

End of the Glass Ceiling: Men and women equally care about life balance and so both care less about moving up a ladder that could tip over with little provocation. They are simply not seeking to climb the roof top.

End of the Grind: People will choose a career because that's what they love to do. They'll want to have a larger sense of purpose.

Pay Equality: Generation Y men want to be equal partners in child rearing and are choosing low stress jobs earlier on in their careers.

The End of Consulting: All work will feel like consulting - more project based & serial in nature - so the term consultants will loose its meaning and distinction from workers.

End of Hierarchy: Employees will never stay long enough in a job to make hierachical concerns meaningful to them. The concept of "how to get a promotion" will lose its relevancy because this next generation cares more about development and skills they can take to their next position.

Trunk writes so that her words hit you between the eyes and it's crystal clear why she is a popular syndicated career columnist and thought leader. Read this book - you'll finish in a few hours and it will affirm all that you know deep down inside about what you are experiencing in the workplace.

YPGuides.com Preview

2007-05-18T10:29:00.000-07:00

In my Innuity CMO role, we just did a soft launch (extended beta) of our new local business information guide, YP Guides. We are very excited to let our extended small business community know about it, try it out and provide feedback on what's working well and where we can improve.

Innuity's new YP Guides is a local online service that offers its online visitors a rapidly growing amount of product and service information provided by US businesses. The YP Guides property allows a business owner to provide all of the core information about their business including things like hours of operation, services provided, products sold, specialties, and much more. Additionally, businesses that sell products online can also have their products included in YP Guide search results.

For consumers, YP Guides is able to provide search results that connect them directly to appropriate local businesses they are looking for. Instead of the frustration of seeing some limited business information only, YP Guides search results will give online visitors all of the core information they need determine if they want to visit or call the local business. Visitors to YP Guides can also directly transact with businesses that come up on their search - meaning they can buy products and services online the business has an online store.

The Value of Authentic, Living Brands

2007-05-15T11:31:00.001-07:00

In a day when brand champions are supplanted by number crunchers or this month's top sales guy, Fast Company's May issue makes a compelling case for why authentic brands are critical to the long-term success of any company. In fact, the plethora of sales pitches, new products and overall sensory bombardment have made buyers/consumers leery of the latest & greatest and more determined to find and support what's authentic.

Defining what's authentic is akin to the quest of defining what's real. In marketing parlance knowing what is real is based on pinpointing what matters in a target market, producing products/services that are congruent with this information and identifying how to act consistently (brand values). An authentic brand is based living these brand values and making meaningful connections with your audiences.

Per the article, an authentic, living brand is also often rooted in communicating a sense of place - in the real world or in the consumer's mind. It's comforting to know that Starbucks is on most "corners" and that they publicize where the coffee comes from. I like that my toothpaste comes from Tom's of Maine, or that my software comes from Microsoft in Redmond, WA.

A strong brand needs to radiate a powerful point of view. Think of Steve Jobs and Apple, and like me, you might say that this one, opinionated person has defined and continues to define both consumer and business digital product innovation. Oprah, Rosie, Martha all do the same - and we keep buying their stuff no matter how mad one gets at Donald Trump or whether one goes to jail. They all have championed causes - the evolved person-planet, a person's rights or a perfect home - and they continue to do so despite obstacles that are often formidable. We believe in them because of their steadfast commitment.

For brands to represent strong points of view, they often have to serve a larger purpose. Think of American Idol and its movement to embracing and funding broad, international causes. Smart thinking since they want to stay relevant and compelling to audiences who may be tiring of endless reality shows and the quite simple format of a singing competition. And it worked. Almost ~140 million votes in two nights. (Maybe presidential campaigns could take note...)

Finally, as the article states, there's integrity - doing what you say you are going to do & acting (always) according to your brand values. Everyone, every company, every brand WANTS to live this way, but honestly it is the hardest thing to do. When faced with decisions about how to act, people worry about careers, jobs, stock price, how much time and money they have invested, their connections, their network, etc. etc. and so often can't hold themselves to a standard of integrity. It seems like there are always good reasons to deviate from brand values (and that's if you know your brand's values.)

But the combined net result of slipshod brand integrity is just this: Say good-bye to the hope of an authentic brand.

Meet the VCs

2007-05-14T11:58:00.000-07:00

In March (2007), a new site called TheFunded was started by a group of emerging business executives who wanted to talk about their fundraising experiences with other CEOs - in a private fashion. It's a very intriguing and informative site for entrepreneurs who want direct insight from other entrepreneurs who have approached venture capitalists as a possible funding source.

Over 95% of the 700+ members of TheFunded are serial CEOs who have raised monies previously for earlier companies and are now looking to raise Series A, Series B or Series C rounds for their current companies. The site claims that 1,500 membership applications have been processed, and approximately one third have been rejected. To date, 1,000 members have submitted reviews of 250 separate funds (who finance emerging businesses) and each fund has received an average of 3.8 pieces of feedback.

The site has experienced rapid growth since its inception, and it claims that the venture capital community has taken notice and may be thinking about how to improve their interactions with entrepreneurs/emerging business executives during fundraising activity. Certainly if this site keeps attracting media attention as well as publicizing wide-ranging reviews (both positive and negative) from credible entrepreneurial sources, a lot of people will be more closely examining the process of working with venture capitalists.

It seems like this is an experiment in process, and that the direct, bottom-line benefits are still subject for interpretation. Maybe entrepreneurs will come to better understand how to approach the financing process and learn how customize their approach for different venture capital firm requirements. Maybe they will opt out of approaching certain firms and certain general partners/associates. Or, maybe, venture capitalists will take note of the specific critiques and adapt certain behaviors accordingly. Whichever way, a sea change is possible if these reviews penetrate the typical defense barriers that surround the VC community.