The Adaptive Marketer

December 8, 2013October 14, 2014

Is Your Marketing Message Visual, Understandable and Effective?

Patton Oswalt, the famous comedian, has a skit where he made fun of movie titles he thought were lame like “Something’s Gotta Give” or “Audacity” because they don’t tell you what the movie is about.

He then talked about the move Texas Chainsaw Massacre and he explained how as you hear each word, an image is forming in your mid. “Texas….Chainsaw…Massacre…. sounds like a great movie! I want to go! You can see the movie in your head, for free! ”

How does that compare to the messages that we marketers sometimes create? let’s look at some examples:

Take a look at this copy from a Toyota print ad ‘A quantum leap in interior refinement, and the uncompromising new shape of things to come from Toyota’. A lot of words, very little meaning. I can’t see a movie, or even a picture in my head.

Or this email I recently received from Dell – the headlined read “Get end-to-end solutions that go beyond making ends meet”. Can you guess what they are talking about? The message showed a banner that read: ‘Enjoy free shipping and easy returns on Dell.com’. Then a headline promised ‘Turn big ideas into cash big flow’ .Now I was seriously confused. What movie is in your head? it went on: ‘One Place. Countless ways to better manage your business’ finances.’. Do you have a clue what is Dell trying to tell me in this email? Continue reading “Is Your Marketing Message Visual, Understandable and Effective?”

December 1, 2013

Interview with Ted Rubin the Worlds Most Followed CMO

This is the second in a series of interviews of marketing leaders and CMOs that I respect and admire.

Today I am honored to interview Ted Rubin, one of the most forward-thinking and influential marketers. Many people know Ted for his enthusiastic, energetic and undeniably personal connection to people. besides his work as CMO, Ted is a leading social marketing strategist, keynote speaker and brand evangelist.

Ted is the most followed CMO on Twitter according to Social Media Marketing Magazine and #13 on Forbes 2013 list of Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers. I had the fortune of meeting Ted when he was the CMO at e.l.f. cosmetics and later at OpenSky. Here is what he has to say:

1. What company is an example of good marketing today? Who do you admire?

Duane Reade is doing a great job marketing and building relationships. They are leading the way for their parent company Walgreens. I admire Calvin Peters at Duane Reade for being open to innovation and for using social media and content to build relationships and enhance the rest of his marketing and PR efforts.

2. Did you have a mentor or a person you learnt the most from? What was a key lesson?

I have had many mentors over the years, and constantly seek out those I respect and admire. The most important lesson I ever learned was to listen, observe, and trust my guts instincts.

3. What story of a successful marketing strategy could you share?

The strategy I put together with the Collective Bias team for Duane Reade detailed here: Duane Reade Surpasses 1 Million Followers, Becomes Twitter’s Most Followed Retailer in the Drug, Food and Mass Arena Worldwide

You can read the case study published by Twitter here, but in summary, the company combined organic tweets with promoted accounts with geo-targeting to reach twitter users in specific markets like New York, Boston and San Francisco. Duane Reade’s VIP Blogger team featured rich media and promoted useful and interesting content highlighting content created by customers.

As a result, the company saw a 6,700% increase in followers in one year (almost 1.5 million today), a 4% promoted tweet engagement rate and 28% increase in sales during a specific campaign. Very nice to see some real ROI number (as in sales lift) from a social campaign.

4. What is your marketing superpower, the most important skill that makes you a great marketer?

For me it is all about Looking People in the Eye Digitally… truly doing my best to connect, be responsive, and care.

5. What interesting book have you read recently?

Best social media book ever written was authored in 1936, and it is more relevant, valuable, and important today than it was then… How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I keep a copy on my iPhone, iPad and coffee table and read from it often.

6. What new, modern tactic, tool, or aspect of marketing should marketers pay more attention to?

The ability to go into the “social” homes of their consumers and prospects, see and hear what they are talking about and interested in, and really get to know them where they live instead of waiting for them to come to their Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and YouTube channels. It seems so simple, but is being totally overlooked my almost all brands and marketers.

7. What good aspect of basic marketing have marketers neglected in recent years?

Oh, that’s easy. So many have forgotten about marketing to their target audience, and the importance of frequency. Make it relevant and of value and do it again and again.

8. What skills will marketers will need in the future? How do you stay sharp?

Clearly they will need to learn to wade through vast amounts of data. But more importantly they need to trust their judgment, guy instinct, and common sense, and not to make it all about data like some are suggesting.

9. What was the turning point in your career?

I have had many turning points in my career, but most recently is was jumping with both feet into the opportunities presented for relationship building at scale by the growth of social platforms, and not looking back.

10. How do you increase marketing’s relevance and influence in the organization?

Marketing’s relevance and influence will rise to the top when marketers not only use social tools to market to their consumers, but wrap a social shell around the entire organization to add value, create deeper employee loyalty, more effective knowledge sharing, improved brand reputation, lowered costs, and most importantly, increased revenues.

11. What blog would you recommend?

Here are three: www.Sethgodin.com, www.Mediapost.com, and www.BusinessInsider.com

12. How would you summarize your digital marketing strategy?

BE Authentic, don’t just ACT it. This might seem obvious… but authenticity is on the verge of becoming just another buzz word in social media marketing. TRUE authenticity (not just using that word often in your tweets and posts) will set your brand (product or personal) apart in today’s highly competitive market.

13. What experience in your past has best prepared you to be a marketing leader?

Being a divorced Dad, fighting to keep my daughters in my life, and then having to re-build my relationship with two teenage girls who were alienated from me.

14. How marketing leaders can be better mentors and true leaders of their teams?

Take the time to listen to your employees. Even when it’s about what they did for the weekend. Make it known that you truly care.

14. Any final thoughts or anything else you would like to share?

Welcome to the ‘Age of Influence,’ where anyone can build an audience and effect change, advocate brands, build relationships and make a difference. ANYONE

Relationships are like muscle tissue… the more they are engaged, the stronger and more valuable they become.

Thanks Ted!

As you can see Ted is all about relationships. His book, Return on Relationship was released January 29^th.Connect with Ted via twitter at @TedRubin and follow his blog http://TedRubin.com

November 22, 2013

What can we Learn from Nature this Season

I grew up in a place known as the ‘City of Eternal Spring’ where homes don’t have A/C or heating and where trees are green year round.

Maybe that’s why I have a special appreciation for the beauty of the fall foliage. It also made me think why trees get rid of their leaves this time of the year.

The leaves are beautiful, and perfectly fine. It’s not like the tree does not want them or that it feels it would be better off without them. The tree probably invested resources, energy and maybe effort in creating the leaves. So why drop them?

It’s getting ready for the hard times. Mother nature has made trees smart enough to know tough times are coming and while the tree wants to keep the leaves, it must get rid of them to focus maximum energy and protection on its core. The tree is smart enough to know it cannot support its core and the leaves, and that if it tries to do that it would probably die. So the leaves go. Could we consider this wise and courageous?

How many things in life, or in marketing are very nice, we want them – but like leaves in winter, create a distraction of resources and energy that we cannot afford?

When people talk about focus, often we hear the things they plan to do. Those with a more pragmatic approach know focus is about the things you will stop doing.

If you don’t have a list of things you will stop doing, you are not really focused.
If you don’t have a list of customers and markets you will not serve, you can’t say you are focused.
If you don’t have a list of marketing tactics you won’t pursue in 2014, you are not focused.
If you don’t have a list of the projects or tasks that would be nice to do but you won’t, you are not focused.

It’s hard to let go. A few months ago I realized I would not be able to keep my responsibilities of my job, my family, this blog and my new photography blog. Like the tree that lets go of a beautiful leave, I had to make a decision to stop working on posts for my photography blog. Sometimes I catch myself with ideas for a good post, but then I remember I can’t do all, and I have to move on and focus on the important things in my life.

It takes discipline. It’s hard. A few years ago I heard ‘The most important thing is that the most important thing remains the most important thing. It is not only a tongue-twister, it is a very wise saying – an important one.

As we start making plans for the next year – for your business, your marketing plan or your personal life – what leaves will you drop this year?

November 22, 2013

James Latham – Marketing Leader Interview Series

This is the first in a series of interviews of marketing leaders and CMOs that I respect and admire.

About James Latham – he is the former CMO at OpenText and VP of B2B Strategy at McCann Worldgroup. I had the privilege o working for James at OpenText and he is one marketers I admire both personally and professionally. James is also on the advisory board for the CMO Council.

What company is an example of good marketing today? Who do you admire?

James: I think there are a large number of companies that fit that description that I admire. A lot of my colleagues have told me they admire Apple, and there is much to learn from Apple. However, I think Apple represents only a couple of the strategic marketing components that some others have had to deal with more succinctly. I am a fan of how BMW/Mini created an entire profitable brand from a defunct automobile company. Making the Mini in to a personalized platform for driving, and following that strategy, tying it into a web experience, a dealership experience, and a user/driving experience all integrated together I find fascinating and instructive.

Did you have a mentor or a person you learnt the most from? What was a key lesson?

James: In my career I have had many lessons learned from many CEO’s, Managers, and executives. Perhaps some of the best lessons learned are from Kamran Kheirolomoom. Kamran was CEO of a startup that grew fast, stuttered, then regained its momentum. I recall clearly the lesson of focus. Customers were clamoring for solutions that my team could have built profitably with our software, but orthogonal to the company¹s mission. The discipline to stay true to a vision is essential in any size organization.

What story of a successful marketing strategy could you share?

James: I have a few that are best told over a beer, but one that I really like is the brand work that was done at OpenText from 2010 through 2012. After acquiring so many companies, OpenText had 27 brands in 2009. Taking that disjointed set of targets, solutions, software, and vertical industries, and tying them together into one voice and one vision was a major strategic and execution challenge. The marketing team there took that on and executed perfectly, setting the stage for even further acquisition, faster integration, and ultimately faster growth.

What is your marketing superpower, the most important skill that makes you a great marketer?

James: Without a doubt it is the ability to apply critical strategic frameworks to marketing challenges. Doing so provides key insights in to organization, program direction, investment decisions, and even hiring. Classic strategy thinking is extremely valuable in that it allows for assimilation of quantitative and qualitative data in a method that delivers insights and direction where none was obvious.

What interesting book have you read recently?

James: I liked David & Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell. His books always contain a tidbit or two of fascinating facts, and some stories that one can cite to make a point about marketing challenges and misconceptions.

What new, modern tactic, tool, or aspect of marketing should marketers pay more attention to?

James: I think tools that provide capabilities for dynamic and highly personalized marketing communications and engagement are impotent to consider. Getting a complete view of customer behaviors and the ways they engage with a brand from social media analysis in a tightly segmented, and in aggregate, can yield essential insights for evolving marketing efforts.

What good aspect of basic marketing have marketers neglected in recent years?

James: I don¹t think marketers across the board are neglecting basic marketing. It is easy to see examples of spectacular misses in product, placement, communications, etc., but no one company or industry is faltering in toto.

What skills will marketers will need in the future? How do you stay sharp?

James: Marketing continues to change rapidly. Without constant refresh, new insights, new connections, new ideas, and new research, every marketer, from the new marketing manager through to the CMO risks becoming obsolete. I read voraciously, engage with my fellow CMO¹s in the CMO Council, go to at least three conferences every year like MarketingWorld, participate in local AMA meetings when possible.

In addition, I keep current in marketing research in my specialty area international marketing. Finally, I¹ve been taking courses throughout my career, and do academic research at Boston University, where I recently received my Masters in International Marketing Management.

What was the turning point in your career?

James: I was a program analyst at IBM in a research facility when the company sponsored a program called ‘back to the field’ in order to get technology knowhow closer to the customer. I took that challenge and joined the marketing force there at IBM in New York City, and haven’t looked back.

How do you increase marketing’s relevance and influence in the organization?

James: I gave a talk a couple of years ago at MarketingWorld that is still relevant today: aligning marketing goals with the CEO. There is no faster way to alienate customers, sales, and all your internal constituents than pursuing a strategy that does not align perfectly with the company vision. Yes its important to be a thought leader relative to your industry, market, and discipline, but one must temper all that with alignment.

What blog would you recommend?

James: I am a fan of Jonathan Becher, CMO of SAP. http://jonathanbecher.com/ He does a great join of making his posts valuable and interesting for a wide swath of marketers not just enterprise software marketers.

How would you summarize your digital marketing strategy?

James: Eyes open for opportunities, in short. There will always be something new in digital since it is exploding. We can expect to see lots of innovation ideas, and capabilities that translate into new tactics we can use to engage, understand, and communicate our brand in relevant ways. Keeping your options open and looking to understand what works and how is most important. I always allocate 10% of the budget to testing new ideas and program components in order that my team can learn, and we can see what elements are resonating with the audience.

What experience in your past has best prepared you to be a marketing leader?

James: Interestingly enough, my background in computer science has prepared me for this new world of digital marketing and data analytics. Academically trained in classic computer science paradigms like finite state machine theory and database cluster analysis gives me the foundations to understand quickly the digital marketing and big data opportunities and landscape, and lead my team toward the future. I think this technology background, coupled with my experiences working within and for large organizations in a marketing leadership capacity gives me a world of differentiation.

How marketing leaders can be better mentors and true leaders of their teams?

James: Take the time to give back to the people that gave to you academic, industry, company, and community there are lots of ways to teach and lead. Take on only as many mentorship roles as you can realistically engage with enough time to be impactful. Leadership comes from the foundations and fundamentals. Take care of your own career and keep learning, and you¹ll be in a position to provide value to your team. Integrate, assimilate, analyze, and communicate. Articulate the vision in a strategic context, and allow your team to take on responsibility and risk, and they will be the better for it.

Any final thoughts or anything else you would like to share?

James: To all my fellow marketers stay sharp. We can expect more and more complexity in marketing. more data driven analytics and adaptive capabilities we¹ll need to rapidly understand and deploy. Staying on top of your game is both rewarding and fun.

I want to sincerely thank my friend James for participating in this project as the first marketing leader to be interviewed. You can follow James on his blog The CMO Zone at http://jameslatham.com and via twitter at @jlatham

Stay tuned for more interviews in this series.

November 9, 2013November 12, 2014

Does Your Marketing Formula Pass the Correlation Test?

Math Formula Finding the return on investment for marketing activities is like the holy grail for CMOs. There are countless articles wit ideas on how to determine social media ROI, content marketing ROI, video marketing ROU, and so on. We all have heard ‘I know 50% of my marketing spend is wasted, but I don’t know which 50%‘.

Every marketer has a hypothesis of what works. Otherwise, how could you do your job, You have one, right?

We should keep in mind, marketing leaders are not always looking for a mathematical formula, we are often looking for something more basic, more essential. We need to answer the questions: is this working? Should we do more? Could we have the same results with less effort? How do we know?

This is not a post about how to determine ROI (for my POV on social media ROI you can check my slideshare from 2009). This post is about how to make sure you have found a formula that works. Success without repetition is luck. Good marketers know what works, and can have predictable success.

There are many challenges that make it very hard to understand what marketing activities work. Here are three:

The Delusion of a Single Explanation: We would like things to be simple. Marketers would try to find correlation between two factors: satisfaction score and revenue growth, attending a webinar and purchasing, etc. In reality, most outcomes depend on a multitude of factors.
Confusing Correlation and Causation. Maybe we have observed people who visit a webinar buy more from us. But do they buy more because of listening to the webinar, or did they decide to listen to the webinar because they wanted to buy more anyway? Phil Rosenzweig, author of The Halo Effect (great book, by the way), observed the consulting company Bain & Co claims on their website “Bain clients have outperformed the stock market 4 to 1” implying working with Bain leads to better performance. It is very possible that high performing companies are the only ones that can afford to hire Bain.
Customers buy on emotion. Emotions are hard to understand and to map to a formula (anyone who is married knows that), how people buy cannot be put in a spreadsheet. But marketer will try anyway. It is almost impossible to understand what are the customers intentions. A UT professor shared with our class ‘I saw someone at Costco in the checkout line with a dolly on which he had two milk jugs and a 50″ plasma TV. Did he go to Costco for the milk and when at the store decided to buy the TV or the other way around?’

How do we solve this problem of correlation versus causality? How do we know what we think is working actually works? How do we avoid falling in the traps of market research?

I found one interesting point of view from another industry: the Bradford Hill criteria is used to determine cause and effect in medical tests. If this is the method to determine causation in an industry where being wrong can be the difference between life and death for many people, I figured it is probably good for us to learn from. These are the Bradford Hill checks to make sure your assumptions of cause and effect are correct:

Consistency. “One apparent success does not prove a general cause and effect in wider contexts. To prove a treatment is useful, it must give consistent results in a wide range of circumstances.” In your marketing test, are the results consistent when you try the same technique in different situations?
Plausibility. “The apparent cause and effect must make sense in the light of current theories and results. If a causal relationship appears to be outside of current science then significant additional hypothesizing and testing will be required before a true cause and effect can be found.” Which to me sounds like thinking – does this result make sense? Is this assumption aligned with what we know about customers and about marketing?
Specificity. “A specific relationship is found if there is no other plausible explanation. This is not always the case in medicine where any given symptoms may have a range of possible causing conditions.”. This is a big one, especially because of the delusion of a single explanation we talked about before. What other variables are in play? Can you rule our any other possible explanations? Is your test specific enough?
Evidence. “A very strong proof of cause and effect comes from the results of experiments, where many significant variables are held stable to prevent them interfering with the results. Other evidence is also useful but can be more difficult to isolate cause and effect.”. Right, test one thing at a time. A/B testing and MVT testing tools are helpful, but you need to be careful to isolate one variable at a time. Things like seasonality and external events are not factored automatically in these tools..
Analogy. “When something is suspected of causing and effect, then other factors similar or analogous to the supposed cause should also be considered and identified as a possible cause or otherwise eliminated from the investigation.” What other explanations can you find for a customer behavior? What similar activities could influence decisions?
Coherence.” If laboratory experiments in which variables are controlled and external everyday evidence are in alignment, then it is said that there is coherence.”. This point encourages us to experiment with the conclusions outside of our testing environment. Examples to check for coherence in marketing: If customers seem to react to certain messages online, test the same assumption offline. Testing theories in different geographical markets, for example, or validate what you ‘learn’ in a focus groups in a real world.

Four more things to keep in mind

Marketing optimization, especially online, can easily trick you into optimizing your marketing for those buyers that will buy quickly, not for the buyers that will take longer to buy which could produce a higher customer lifetime value
Don’t rule out something just because it did not work before. I have heard many times ‘We tried that last year and it does not work’ . Goes back to specificity. This is a false negative. Until you understand why it did not work, you may keep testing. Maybe you can find a way to make things work
Measuring direct influence behavior is easier than building a model that measures leading indicators to understand customer behavior over time that is difficult to observe and measure.
As Albert Einstein said: Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count and everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.

November 1, 2013September 11, 2017

The Modern Marketing Leader – A Manifesto

cmoBook A couple of months back, my friend John Ellett gave me a copy of his book, ‘The CMO Manifesto‘ which I thoroughly enjoyed. The book is the outcome of 50 interviews with CMOs to identify the best practices for the first 100 days of a CMO joining a new company. It turns out, The CMO Manifesto ends up being a very complete and modern description of the role of a modern marketing leader.

Establishing the role of marketing, a manifesto for a modern marketing leader, and best practices for marketing leaders in new roles is important because of four reasons:

The average tenure of a CMO is around 24 months.
Marketing is becoming more complex.
Most of the organization, including the leadership team, have a distorted, inaccurate or unclear understanding of the marketing role.
Leaders are realizing how fundamental and strategic Marketing is for the success of any business. As Peter Drucker said “Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”

Some of the more interesting points in the book I especially agree with:

Marketing leaders are change agents for the company
As leaders they impact strategy, revenue and the overall success of an organization
Focus and clarity (clear priorities) are especially important for a marketing team
Customer insights should guide all decisions
Vision, optimism and resiliency are essential traits of a good marketer

John organizes the book in 12 best practices for a marketing leader:

Lead positive change
Bring clarity and inspiration
Build Relationships and trust
Channel the voice of the customer and Insights
Focus leads to greatness
Drive agility and accountability
Build capable, committed, collaborative teams
Find the balance between chaos and process
Do plan but focus on action
Continuously measure and optimize
Leverage new tools and technologies
Remain resilient in front of challenges

Another thought leader, Ashley Friedlein, from eConsultancy recently published an update to his Modern Marketing Manifesto, which also happens to have 12 points. This manifesto has a slight digital marketing bias but is quite compatible with John Ellett’s point of view: There are many similarities and a few points that can be complementary :

Strategy. Marketers should sit at the board table and set strategy. Strategy is shaped by knowledge of markets, products, customers and positioning. Digital needs to be part of every strategy.
Revenue. Marketers must be accountable for revenue, have a common point of accountability with sales, and must understand P&L.
Customer experience. Improving CX for the most valuable customers must be the relentless focus of modern marketing.
Integration. Customers do not understand the distinction between mobile and desktop, online and offline, above and below the line. Marketing must focus on providing an integrated customer experience.
Brand. Consumers control the message, forcing brands to be authentic and transparent.
Data. Marketers must turn data into insight and action – hence the importance of research, marketing automation, predictive analytics, etc.
Personalization. Relevance and optimization to each customer and his context.
Technology. Marketers will have increasing ownership if the technology tools.
Creative. We need creativity just as mush as we need technology.
Content. Content marketing and the focus on owned and earned media.
Social. Social is not a choice.
Character. The modern marketer must be accountable, ethical, customer focused, agile, collaborative, innovative, brave and passionate.

What is obvious by reading both manifestos is that the marketing function is getting more complex, is evolving to play a more strategic role and becoming more and more interesting.

It’s a good time to be a marketer.

October 23, 2013June 7, 2015

Content Marketing as an Antidote to Discounting

Flying back from San Francisco, I open the in-flight magazine and a half-page ad by Riedel catches my eye. Riedel a German company and one of the best known manufacturers of high quality wine glasses.

It is a premium brand: a pair of wine glasses especially designed for Cabernet and Merlot retails for about $50. Their customers are either wine enthusiasts or people with a lot of money who don’t mind spending $25 for a wine glass.

It is a nice looking ad, but I was surprised to see the ad’s main message is an offer of 20% discount for a purchase of $100 or more. It does not seem to fit the brand. At the same time, it was not that surprising to see a discount oriented message: it is the easy answer. ‘What should be the message? I know, let’s offer a 20% discount’

When a marketer’s creativity runs out he defaults back to price discounts.

Continue reading “Content Marketing as an Antidote to Discounting”

October 11, 2013February 4, 2016

The Best Career Advice is to Follow Your Passion

Mentoring others gives me deep satisfaction. One of the most common mentoring topics is the question of how to be successful: how to orient one’s career, what is the right job to take, what to do with your professional life.

The Secrets to Success According to Richard St. John’s

One of the top Ted talks (4.6 million views as of today), Richard St Johns talks about the 8 secrets of success, which he developed after 500 interviews of highly successful people. I have to completely agree with these 8 “secrets”.

The second, third and fourth are hard work, focus and practicing until you get good. Simple words, sure – yet working hard, being focused and practicing are difficult to do on a daily basis. Focus is tricky, because there are always distractions and other interests that pull you aside from the road. This is why focus is best defined in terms of what you will not do anymore.

Focusing tirelessly, practicing every day and working hard should drive your life. Many consume more than one self-help books and try to build the discipline to get them done. But they come naturally, almost effortlessly, if you have the first one of Richard St. John’s secrets: Passion. You will need to watch the Ted talk for the other four. (it’s worth it, it is only three minutes).

Developing Passion

You can’t just decide to get passionate about something. Passion is not commanded intellectually. Passion comes from the heart.

Or maybe passion comes from DNA: Marcus Buckingham leads a philosophy that suggests every one of us is ‘strong’ in certain areas or activities that we enjoy: activities that give us satisfaction and make us feel better when we perform tem. His philosophy is that the people that pursue their strengths are happier and that companies that focus on aligning their people with the activities that leverage their strengths are most successful.

What are you Passionate about?

Because you can’t decide to become passionate about something , you must find what you are passionate about and then focus your work on that.

One of the things I am most grateful to my dad is that he exposed me to many things allowing me to discover my passions. He made it possible for me to try many things that I did not like – or that I liked but was not good at, like musical instruments. One day, when I was in middle school, my dad showed up with a book ‘Positioning. The Battle for your Mind’ . I devoured the book. Right then I knew I wanted to be a marketer. That’s my calling. What’s yours?

My point is that you can’t find your passion unless you spend some time exploring. A few months ago I blogged about my story of passion for Coffee and how knowledge is a requirement for love . You can’t love what you don'[t know. I probably would not be a marketer today if my dad had not exposed me to that book.

Be The Best You Can

You should aspire to be the best you can in whatever area you are passionate about. Note that being the best you can is about your performance relative to your potential. It is different to being the best in the world, which measures your ability relative to others (more ego driven). but even while you should measure your success in terms of your own capabilities, it is important to understand your level of ability or competency relative to the rest of the world.

In his book Quitter, Jon Acuff tells a story of when he really wanted to be a copy writer at a large agency. One day, an exec at a prominent agency receives him and gifts him the experience to read all the portfolios that had been submitted for consideration by copy writing candidates. The experience allowed Jon to understand where the bar for good and great was, and in his case, to realize that he was not made to be a copy writer.

Passion Makes You Work Hard and Become Great

When you are truly passionate about something you focus, you aspire to learn and get better every day. You work hard and practice until you become good. You try to be the best.

When Mark Cuban got his first job as a software sales person, he read all the software manuals he could get a hold on. He read a manual every single day after getting home no matter how late, and he enjoyed it. “I could not put them down“. Mark quickly became an expert, and a valuable resource for is clients. He pulled away from the rest of the salespeople in software Dallas and found success. The rest is history.

Just Do it

A few months ago, a friend asked me for career advice. He told me he really wanted to be a writer and he was looking for a break. I asked him to show me examples of his work. He did not have any. If you are passionate about writing, you surely have a blog, or a manuscript for a book in a drawer, or poems in napkins, right? I asked. He did not.

How come? He really wanted to be a writer. But he did not spend time on his passion. Maybe he was afraid of not being good. Maybe he was busy. Maybe he never took the time to think about a path to become a great writer and where to get started. Unfortunately, this is a common scenario.

You have to follow your passion. You have to spend the time to explore the world and find what you are passionate about and then you must make time to practice and get better. ‘I don’t have time’ is not an excuse if you spend an hour every day watching TV. Get up 30 minutes earlier. Eliminate distractions. Unsubscribe from 10 email newsletters and a few RSS feeds. Cut back on Facebook. Otherwise, you will be in the same place 10 years from now.

Applying the Hedgehog Strategy to Your Career

In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins describes a “hedgehog strategy” for organizations that can be very slightly modified to become a very simple but powerful tool for career planning. The concept is based on a VIN diagram with three intersecting circles:

One circle defines what you can be really good at. Your strengths and natural skills.
One circle defines the activities that you enjoy doing, your passions.
One circle defines the activities that fulfill your financial needs. Where you can make enough money.

The area where the circles intersect are the most interesting:

I enjoy and am good at things like photography that won’t make me enough money to provide for my family, so they are hobbies.
I am also good at things that I don’t necessarily like, I could perform these activities and even make enough money but I will not be happy and probably won’t be very successful. I am a very good salesman, and I know I could make a ton of money in this career – but I would be miserable because I don’t like working on a quota and probably could not deal with the pressure.
There are also things that I like, such as playing the piano, but I am not good at and I won’t get good at. I am delusional is I think I will be a professional piano player, I simply don’t have the coordination not I would be able to develop it.

The place where these circles overlap is the ideal spot for your career: an area you are passionate about, you are good at it, and you can make money. Again, it may sound like a simplistic concept, but I have seen it used as a tool by people in all stages of their career to make smart decisions.

“Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.” — Ray Bradbury

“You never achieve success unless you like what you are doing.” — Dale Carnegie

October 11, 2013

Make Someone’s Day

Image courtesy JoseMa Orsini - Creative Commons — Image courtesy JoseMa Orsini – Creative Commons

I was boarding my flight from Atlanta to Austin when I saw a little kid walking down the aisle with his mom. He looked a little bit scared or tired, I could not tell. They sat in the row behind me. The I overhead the lady on the seat next to them tell him “I am so happy I got to sit with you. I usually get sit next to very boring people.” as I turned my head I saw the kid smile. He chatted the entire flight. When we were leaving the plane, the smile was still on his face. All this for one sentence from the lady, who made the kid’s day.

Just a few days later I was chatting with one of my colleagues and simply told him the work he has been doing was impactful. I said something like “You have done a great job. We planned this a year ago, now we have solid results. Your work is having a positive impact for the company that can be seen in our revenue, thank you.”. Two days later my friend was still pumped. He thanked two more people who helped on the project and seemed happier than usual. All for a few sentences.

His reaction was not a surprise, but it made me think we should do more of this, I should do more. It is well accepted that feeling appreciated, recognition and encouragement are more powerful employee motivators than money. Bu you should not only do this because it is the right business decision, it needs to come from the heart. It is so easy to ignore the little things in life like this one that make a difference. They are important, that’s why I decided to blog about it even if it is off-topic for my blog.

How can you make someone’s day?

Tell someone in your team they are doing a good job and how they are helping the company
Smile to people that walk past you or say ‘Good morning” to people on the elevator
Find the person at work that has the most underappreciated job (helpdesk? IT? Receptionist? and thank them for what they do. Every time I am at an airport I thank the TSA personal for keeping us safe
Pay for coffee for the person next in line or bring chocolate to the a meeting for no reason
Write a sincere thank you note for someone

It’s so simple, it’s contagious, and it’s free. Most of our efforts in life are aimed at making us happy. And yet, happiness is right here, available to you and the people around you if we just make a small effort to create a spark.

Have a great day

October 2, 2013

Strategy or Tactics? It’s a Trick question!

You may have heard the question many times:

What is more important, Strategy or Tactics?

It’s a trick question. It assumes you can have without the other when in fact, the answer is that what is more important is the alignment between strategy and tactics:

Strategy should be based in your tactical ability to execute (which includes your core competency, as the thing you can execute on better than anyone else) and tactics should support the strategy

What is really important about this point of view is that it is not uncommon to find a disconnect between strategy an tactics in many companies:

The strategy is unclear for the teams executing, or
While the strategy is clear, how it should impact and guide tactical work for each member executing is unclear
Strategies are developed in a vacuum by executives that are not connected to the front lines, or worse, by top-dollar consulting companies that bring junior MBAs to craft a strategy with no real context of the business

Part of the problem is that there are very few people who can span both: who can think strategically but can also guide (and roll up their sleeves) to execute. Employees who can bridge strategy and tactics can add incredible value to an organization, when employed properly.

How do you do that? The first step is to take a dose of reality, we need to be self-aware of how strategic we really are. Most marketers consider themselves strategic, but do we even know what that means? Here are some questions to help you assess your strategic ability:

Do you understand the fundamental metrics of your company? Have you read the latest quarterly report and do you understand the fundamentals, and how marketing can influence the key metrics that influence shareholder value?
Do you understand how your company generates profits, cash and customers?
Do you understand the medium-term strategy for your competition? Have you reviewed their IR presentations?
Do you understand your core competency as a company? What are the things your company is really good at and which ones you should avoid?
Do you understand your customers, how they are evolving and how their needs and purchase behaviors are evolving over time? What is the gap between you and your customer expectations and what you deliver today?
Have you modeled the market and competitive landscape, using tools like Porter’s five forces or a simple SWOT model? and, if you have done this consistently, have you been able to predict market evolution?
Do you know exactly how your marketing tactics and the work you are doing today contribute to the long-term success of your company?

These questions are not perfect or comprehensive, they are a start.