Getting to Excellent

Want to do Great Things? Be Under-Employed

2012-02-01T09:36:00.000Z

My yoga teacher was always telling me to slow down: “What’s the rush? Put your suitcases down and let the train carry you along”. I was always the one late to the class, worrying about something and fidgeting to leave before the end. “We are human beings”, he would calmly point out, “not human doings”.

“Just being” was, and still is, very hard for me. While I could hardly sit still for a moment, he seemed to spend his days taking long walks in the woods, practicing yoga and volunteering at the local hospice. His serenity and calmness was a world away from my life of busy activity.

But rush doesn’t accomplish much. Running around trying to get lots done, without time to think or rest, leads to burn out and confusion. James Watson, who together with Francis Crick discovered DNA, said “It’s necessary to be slightly under-employed if you are to do something significant”. I’ve always found that a rather shocking and controversial idea when I try to make good use of every moment. Their breakthrough was one of the most significant scientific discoveries of the last Century, and laid the foundation stones for molecular biology.

Beethoven also understood the need to let his mind relax and come back refreshed. He worked only from sunrise until two or three o’clock in the afternoon. His mornings also included a number of breaks outdoors, where he “worked while walking.” He never worked in the evenings.

Beethoven struggled with his compositions, working and reworking themes over and over again, yet he created some of the most beautiful music ever composed.

Whilst it is counter-intuitive, it seems that making time to do nothing pays off; even if your ambitions are less lofty than discovering DNA or writing a symphony.

Weekly Meetings

2012-01-31T11:49:00.000Z

Meetings get a lot of bad press: too many, badly run, no preparation and of negligible value. Yet meetings can be tremendously valuable. A weekly meeting is an opportunity to plan and review, and to set the tone for the upcoming week’s work.

Steve Jobs had a meeting each Monday with his executives to review all the products in development. “Eighty per cent is the same as it was the last week, and we just walk down it every single week,” Jobs said in an interview with Fortune in 2008. “We don't have a lot of process at Apple, but that's one of the few things we do just to all stay on the same page."

I know if I were an executive at Apple I’d make sure I was up to speed by the end of Friday on what progress had been made, and what the plan was for next week because if I didn’t know, I’d be getting a roasting on Monday morning. So not only did Jobs create accountability and visibility with these meetings, but he also made sure that all his executives had reviewed the past week and planned the upcoming week. Sure, this was something they should have been doing anyway, but that Monday morning meeting made sure of it. Not bad for 60 minutes of everyone’s time.

Steve Jobs: An Unconventional Leader, The Sunday Morning Herald, Australia: http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/management/steve-jobs-an-unconventional-leader-20111007-1lcmo.html#ixzz1l2AZC5il

Eat and Sleep Routines

2012-01-27T17:57:00.000Z

“You wouldn’t forget to eat or sleep, would you?” I can still remember the piercing gaze staring at me across the table. “So why did you forget to write your monthly report?” The message was crystal clear, if not completely logical.

My boss was telling me in no uncertain terms to make my monthly report as habitual as eating and sleeping; if I wanted to carry on working for her, of course.

It’s a lesson I have never forgotten, even though it was many years ago. When something is as habitual as eating and sleeping, it doesn’t get forgotten. Ever. I know other people who also treat their monthly reports with the same reverence; they don’t forget either. You don’t need to add it to your “to do” list, you don’t need to worry about it, you just do it. As easily as you eat and sleep.

The difficulty, of course, is that some pretty powerful mechanisms were designed into us to make sure we don’t forget to eat or sleep. The same cannot be said of monthly reports.

But if you can make something into an “eat and sleep” routine you have found a pretty powerful way of increasing your effectiveness.

Benjamin Franklin recognised the benefits of cultivating positive habits. He called them his 13 virtues and he spent many years of his life trying to live by them. He wrote about them in his autobiography and it is an early glimpse we have of how difficult it is to change behaviour.

There is a lot of guff out there on the magical World Wide Web about how it takes 30 days to form a habit. I can muster quite a lot of evidence to say this is codswallop. It takes much longer, particularly if the habits are difficult. So we need reminders and rewards. We need persistence and perseverance. And we need to keep our new habit visible, so we don’t forget what we are trying to do. Even after many months or years, we still have to be vigilant in not letting it slip. Benjamin Franklin used a little paper notebook for most of his life to try to make his 13 virtues as natural as eating or sleeping.

If all this sounds like a lot of effort, I’m afraid it is. But the payoff is enormous. Good exercise habits are not easy to cultivate, but they keep us out of hospital; as do good eating habits. Good working habits are every bit as difficult, but lead to a more productive and effective career. It may take more effort, but the rewards are there for the taking.

So what sorts of habits improve effectiveness? Strangely, the monthly report is one of them, or at least it has the same effect. Reviewing and evaluating our work on a regular basis leads to better decision making. It’s not rocket science, but also not easy to do. It is, however, very effective. As is good planning; equally difficult to do on a regular basis, but invaluable if you want to be effective and successful.

My old boss is now a millionaire several times over and looks younger now than when I was working for her. So her advice is perhaps worth listening to. She also had the uncanny knack of putting the fear of God into the people who worked for her, but that’s a completely different story …

How to concentrate for longer

2012-01-25T16:00:00.000Z

It seems the modern world is designed to de-focus and distract us from whatever we are trying to do. E-mail pops into our inbox every few minutes, or the phone rings. Thoughtful people don’t call, but text, so the phone is never far away. Of course a text is far too interesting not to read, even if it’s only the bank or when the shopping will be delivered. So we are distracted anyway.

I see mothers walking their children and talking on the phone. We can’t get out for a refreshing walk without staying in contact.

We are now so used to constant interruptions and distractions that if there are no emails, no texts, or no phone calls, we double check our email, or go online for diversion.

Welcome to the digital age – designed to make our lives easy. Now three screens is the norm, and our attention span is short and getting shorter.

Concentrating on what we are doing is hard work. Focusing requires discipline. The brain wanders easily and often. Thoughts and ideas pop into our heads all the time. Try sitting still for 5 minutes and thinking about just one thing; a candle, a diamond or a flower. Notice how many times your mind wanders. Each time it wanders bring it back to the thing you are focusing on. Notice how it wanders off again. And again. You will lose count how many times you have to bring it back to the task in hand, in just 5 minutes.

Focusing may be difficult, but it is also very necessary to produce anything worthwhile.

20 minutes seems to be the generally accepted length of time that a healthy adult can focus on something, although it will be longer if you are comfortable and proficient in the work. So difficult things, problem solving, things you are learning for the first time or trying to master are more difficult to focus on for long periods of time.

So if you are unfocussed and distracted, you are not alone. But crucially you are not as productive as you could be, which means you won’t achieve as much as you would like.

So what’s to be done? How can distractions be cut down and concentration improved? Here are 7 ideas:

Turn off email (yes, I know, but do it anyway)
Take time to get become more proficient in your field
Put your phone in a drawer for a couple of hours (you can pick up messages later)
Be clear about the purpose of your task (this takes a bit of pre-planning, but increases your productivity)
Use a stop watch. Start the timer when you start work, and stop it when you get distracted. Note how long you spent concentrating, and then little by little try to increase your concentration time.
Get out of the office and work in the library, park or zoo
Reward yourself for 1,000 words written, half the job done, or the phone call made. Your reward could be a 10 minute break in the fresh air, or picking up flowers on the way home depending on how difficult the task was, and how long it’s been on your “to do” list.

One final thought on this vexing matter of improving concentration. If we accept that good quality, focused work is difficult, we may want to be a little pickier about what we tackle. Saying “no” to some, not doing others, or simply checking out how useful they are could save time for something more important. And when you are sure you should be doing something, you will find concentrating a great deal easier anyway.

What’s the Big Idea?

2012-01-24T14:38:00.000Z

We are all working for something; whether it’s to pay for our children’s education, buy a house near the sea, or build a worthwhile business. Everyone’s big ideas are different, but we all have them.

Yet although these big ideas are important, often we don’t give them much attention. It’s rare for them to be written down, or looked at from month to month. Often they stay in the back of our minds as “someday-maybe” ideas; perhaps because we’re not sure we can achieve them we don’t dare hope.

Yet one of the biggest differences between successful people and others is that high achievers write down their goals, and make plans to progress them.

Jim Collins called them BHAGs – Big Hairy Audacious Goals. Stephen Covey referred to it as “Begin with the End in Mind”. Many writers and successful people have, over many years, stressed the importance of knowing what you want to achieve. So figuring out what is most important to you is a good first step in making them happen. Then you need to commit them to paper or hard disk.

Of course there are many different types of people. Whilst some people will recognise this reluctance to commit big, important ideas to paper, other people have lots of big ideas and write them down all the time. They have so many ideas and dreams and plans, they can barely keep track of them all. Their list of “Big Things To Do” is long, and gets longer by the day.

The Chinese wryly point out that “The man who chases two rabbits, catches none”. So whilst it’s great to be creative and generate ideas, it’s vital not to get lost amongst the noise of what could, should or might be done. Decide what's most important, even if it takes some thinking, reworking and crossings out.

This list may have about half a dozen items on it, maybe a few more or perhaps a couple less - certainly no more than nine. Why? Because we can only focus on a couple of things at a time, so the more that goes onto the list, the less likely it is you will achieve them. It’s better to have fewer, big ideas and get them done, than to have a shopping list as long as your elbow that gets ignored.

Working with calmness and composure

2012-01-09T16:28:00.000Z

By knowing how long things take

It is stressful and unpleasant being late for an important deadline.

There is nothing elegant or enjoyable about running, red faced and flustered to catch a train. And it is traumatic and disruptive burning the midnight oil to finish a key report that was started too late. Creative juices do not flow and it’s not good a good way to work, or to live. Of course what I’m describing here is different from being in “flow mode” where you are so lost in your work that you don’t notice the time.

Being on time, with a little time to spare has much to recommend it by, not least the higher quality of work that gets done. Planning ahead, having time to think, and finishing things to a high quality causes less worry and is more enjoyable. It encourages “flow mode” because the brain isn’t stuck in "panic mode".

Repeatedly hitting deadlines without compromising quality requires a number of things to get done:

1. Creative thinking or brainstorming about how to give it the “wow factor” (less appropriate for catching the train, more appropriate for key reports). Sometimes referred to as the “fuzzy front end” it can have dead-ends and wasted work, but is important nonetheless.

2. Identifying tasks - figuring out what needs to be done (talking to certain people, reading around the subject, checking the train timetable, etc)

3. Estimating how long things might take (easy for how long the train will take to get to Edinburgh, less easy for creating and agreeing an outline for a report)

4. Planning what will be done when, and who will do what.

5. Creating checklists for repeating tasks.

6. Accounting for other things that need to be done – so you can be confident that you are working on the right thing, at the right time, without another problem cropping up elsewhere.

7. Working the plan – trying to do what you said you were going to do, when you said you were going to do it. And trying to get everyone else to do what they said they were going to do, when they said they would do it.

8. Reviewing and adjusting – either for this project, or for the next one.

Reading through that list makes me, and probably you, realise just how much scope for error there is in the whole process. Not least because things take longer than we think they will take, other people don’t do what they said they would do, etc. etc. To such a degree that many people don’t believe it’s worthwhile to make a plan because “things change anyway”.

A particularly difficult (but crucial) step in this process is estimating. Figuring out how long things might take is difficult for many reasons, but up at the top of the list is the belief that whatever it is we are doing is a “one-off”, with the second being optimism. The “one-off” argument says that this project is different from the last one, and that the problems encountered on the last project won’t be encountered on this one, which inevitably leads to optimism. Instead of thinking we will have different problems, we think we won’t have any, and therefore believe the new project will be quicker to do.

How do I know, for example, how long it might take me to write this blog article? I don’t know when I start how long it will be, or how complicated the subject matter might turn out to be. The only way to know is to time myself when I write blog articles - long ones, short ones, difficult ones and easy ones.

Only then will I know whether I'm likely to finish one before I have to leave the office to catch a training in 45 minutes. Otherwises I'm likely to start, get absorbed and then end up running for the train.

I appreciate that timing what we do is counter-intuitive, but much of what we depend on today were once considered alien. Like the trains running (roughly) on time or knowing how long a policy document might take to write.

All the planning in the world is useless if everything takes twice as long as the plan says it should take to complete. Or even longer.

The value of knowing where time goes

2012-01-06T12:50:00.000Z

Time and tide, as we all know, wait for no man. There’s no better time of year to be reminded of that as we review the past year. What projects did you complete? Which ones weren’t even started? What should have got done, but didn’t? What was important to you? What was your greatest success? What was your greatest failure? What would you do differently if you could replay the year again?

It’s an interesting exercise, and if you haven’t yet reviewed the year I’d urge you to do so. I gained a number of insights from reviewing my 2011.

Certainly, the big things that I accomplished during 2011 were done with the aid of quite a bit of planning, focus and time. Now that’s not to say that everything that gets planed, focus on and time to will have a successful outcome, unfortunately, but it does increase the chances. And when I look back over my life at my major successes, I also recall the planning, focus and time that went into them.

Which brings me to the value of knowing where time goes. Because of the nature of my work, I analyse how my time is spent. It provides an invaluable additional dimension to reviewing the year. I can see how much time I spent on various different activities, and how much time I spent on my important projects. It gives me another lever to make changes – whether I should be giving more or less time to certain activities or projects.

I don’t think many people do this, perhaps because it reminds us of “clocking in and clocking out” and “command and control” type management systems. No one likes someone breathing down their necks to see what they are doing every minute of the day. And sometimes we don’t want to see the unpalatable truth ourselves. But, certainly for me, unless I know where my time goes, I’m in danger of not giving enough attention to the important-but-not-urgent things.

Eisenhower apparently remarked that “what is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.” Which may go some way to explain why important things don’t always get done.

So one of my New Year resolutions is to track my time more carefully, and analyse it side by side with the big things I’ve want to do this year. As regular readers of this blog will know, I’m a big fan of measuring things. It will be interesting to see whether increased focus in this area brings about improvements.

Deciding what’s important and why time management isn’t

2011-12-14T09:24:00.000Z

You can’t manage time. It’s like trying to manage your cat: a frustrating and consistently unsuccessful activity. Time passes regardless of how important or trivial whatever you are doing is. The sea ebbs and flows, the wind blows, and time passes. All are unmanageable and completely disinterested in our minutiae.

What you can manage is yourself and your choice of what to do. So time management has always seemed something of a daft name for our efforts to be more effective. Self-management might be more apt.

But time is a useful way of measuring our focus and energy on tasks. Or indeed the time we spend not doing things. It is, however, nothing more than useful; it’s not the whole story. That’s because we can’t measure the value of our activities over a given period of time. The value of what we are doing has a much bigger impact on our success than how long it took to do.

So that’s the first and biggest secret of time management – decide what’s important. Because unless you know what’s important and what’s not, you don’t know where best to spend your time. Or to say it another way, you won’t know how best to spend your life.

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

2011-12-13T11:50:00.000Z

Most people have dreams, ideas and ambitions that they hope they will achieve one day. I’m no exception and I doubt you are either.

The only trouble with dreams is that it’s a little tricky turning them in reality. Our ambitious dreams often get trodden on by the little sceptic at the back of our minds who tells us we can't do whatever it is. And too often we listen to the sceptic in us, instead of the dreamer.

Randy Pausch, who was Professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon, USA until he died in 2008, once wrote “Get tenure” on his to do list. He laughed about it and said it was probably naive to write such a big thing on a To Do list. He said should have broken it down into smaller chunks. Maybe he was right, but he did become a Professor at Carnegie Mellon and did turn his dream into a reality. His book “The Last Lecture” talks a lot about achieving dreams and is well worth a read.

There is a nugget of an idea here, though. If we were to put our dreams onto our To Do lists, we might start doing more to achieve them. We might start breaking them down into smaller tasks, and get on and do something about them. Because unless we start doing something, we will definitely NOT achieve our dreams - that much is certain.

Just about every time management course I’ve ever been on, and I’ve attended a few, has always asked the same question. What did you do today to achieve your most important goals? What have you done this week, or this month? Sadly, many people admit they haven’t done anything in a long time. Many people admit they forget, for long periods of time, about their dreams and ambitions.

It’s worth more than a passing thought as we jot down what we intend to do today.

Being Productive when Tired

2011-11-24T17:48:00.001Z

There are different types of tiredness at work. Like:

No sleep last night because of noisy neighbours/ baby crying/ didn’t get in till 3am (delete as appropriate) tiredness
Been in the office since 7am, now it’s 5pm and I’m running out of steam tiredness
Had a super productive day, got loads done, and now tailing off fast
Just got back from a business trip and I’m jet-lagged or just plain tired from several days intensive work
Got a cold/ headache/ hangover/other type of unwellness
Not got a good reason, just firing on much less than three cylinders and don’t seem to care …. tiredness
You probably know other types of tiredness at work. It’s a universal problem.

No matter how many books get bought on Time Management, it’s a simple fact of life that we get tired and work gets a lot more difficult. So how can we be productive when dog-tired?

As Philip Pullman once said – “A bad day’s work is a lot better than no day’s work at all”.

So here are my ten tired, tried and tested ideas:

Work on your To Do List – and prioritise it. Make sure everything you need to do is written down and then decide what needs to be done next. The act of sorting out what needs to be done, and in what order, is motivating in itself, and more often than not prompts thought and action on the task.
Set your stop watch to 15 minutes and work on your Most Important Task. Just 15 minutes, even if you work slowly. Getting started on a task, even a little bit, moves things forward and will make the next 15 minutes easier to do.
If you can, take a nap. Even a short nap can make a huge difference in your productivity and might make the difference between a decent day’s work, or a totally wasted day.
Work on routine admin stuff, like expenses, filing, accounts or something that doesn’t take too much brain power. I often that I can get quite engrossed in little tasks, and get quite a lot done despite initial tiredness.
Track your time. You are most likely to waste time by web surfing, reading the paper or generally wasting time when you are tired. And most likely to lose track of time when you are tired. We do it without thinking, or realising how much time has gone. If you track your time then at least you get reminded where the time is going, and can use another technique to try and get back on track.
Learn something new. Reading is productive, and a good way to learn about important but not urgent things. So if you’ve been meaning to learn a new software package, or get up to date on industry trends, tired time might be perfect timing.
Give yourself a deadline. Not having a deadline for tasks can be a huge problem – when everything is urgent, but nothing absolutely has to be done today. Work ahead and figure out deadlines for mini-tasks and work in hour long chunks, tracking your productive time in each hour.
Work with someone else. Hold a meeting, a telecom or something that requires interaction with someone else. It’s amazing how you perk up when reacting to someone else’s ideas and views. Just be careful not to waste someone else’s time in the process of trying to rescue your own day. I like holding meetings at the end of the day because it helps everyone keep going a bit longer, and the ideas are just as relevant.
Work on something you love. It’s always easier to work on something that naturally inspires you. It may be better to get something done in an area that flows easily during tired time, and work on more difficult things when you are fresh.
Remind yourself of your ultimate goals. Not giving in to tiredness is difficult, and often the only way to do it is remind yourself why you do what you do, and why you love it. It’s easier to motivate a tired brain when you know why it’s worthwhile.

What are your top tips for working when tired? I’d love to hear them. And I promise not to disappear for such a long time again!

What does it mean to be Customer-Centric?

2011-08-24T11:21:00.001+01:00

In theory, customers would be at the heart of every business. In practice, there’s a real tension that between business interests and customer needs and wants. All customers want great quality, service, and functionality at the lowest possible price, but businesses exist to deliver a return to their shareholders. So although most businesses start out with a focus on customer needs, bit by bit their attention shifts to profitability, operational efficiency, what their competitors are doing, etc, etc, etc. Over time they become less customer-centric and more company-centric or competitor-centric.

The rub, of course, is that for every business that does not pay close attention to customer needs, there is a competitor who does. And no matter how efficient a business is, unless it produces what customers want to buy it will not be successful over the long term.

Businesses that recognise and respect that tension, however, improve their profitability by adopting a customer centric strategy. By looking at every problem or opportunity from the point of view of the customer, the business gains new market insights and is better able to compete. They remember that the customer always has a choice.

Today’s renewed focus on being customer-centric is due to globalization and the internet, and the increased choice that customers now have as a result. Power has shifted away from the salesperson having all the knowledge, to the customer. An hour’s desk research now produces a list of suppliers in any given market, as well as a host of unbiased, real-life consumer reviews of how well the company or product performed when used in anger. When customers make an important purchase, they can spend as much time as they want researching their options and are quite likely to know more about it than any salesperson. The company that wins their business will offer the best value for their particular situation – whether they are looking long term or short term, whether they want something cheap and cheerful, or something they expect will last a lifetime.

So being customer centric means putting the customer at the heart of decision making and planning; being aware of different customer needs, and catering to a specific segment. Apple has done this to stunning and profitable affect.

How to Listen

2011-07-20T09:15:00.000+01:00

Pay attention
Don’t talk
Don’t think about your reply while the other person is still speaking
Pause before replying
Think about what the other person has said
If it’s helpful, say back to them what you understood they said

How do you excel at listening? What do you do badly? What tips can you share to listen better?

What Gets Measured Gets Done

2011-07-13T13:57:00.002+01:00

There’s nothing like a blog post on measurement to get comments flying. It is as though in business “To Measure” or “Not To Measure” is an either/or. Of course it isn’t! Both qualitative and quantitative aspects of management and leadership can and must live happily side by side.

It was Tom Peters, the indefatigable business guru who inspired this blog, who reminded me of the importance of measuring the important stuff in business. I recently came across one of his essays from 1986 entitled “What Gets Measured Gets Done”. In his tireless campaign to improve customer service, improve efficiency and generally shake up business people everywhere he advocates measuring our promises to improve. Then holding ourselves accountable – weekly – with our peers.

He suggests starting out by quantifying 10 areas that are fundamental to success: sound advice which just happens to work.

As regular readers will know I have been moaning about my weight for far too long. I keep meaning to do something about it, and then nothing happens. Well measurement turns out to be the answer. By rigorously measuring my calorie intake on a daily basis at last I’m beginning to see results, even though my running has taken a bit of a back seat recently. And I’m still eating everything I enjoy, admittedly in smaller quantities.

This isn't rocket science, but neither is it the Atkins diet, the cabbage soup diet or even the Dukan diet. It's the measurement diet. And it works astonishingly well, without buying a single book, DVD or branded kitchen scales.

Peters recommends regularly celebrating small successes, a Danish pastry for meeting a project milestone or whatever. It’s nothing more complex than carrot and stick, or positive reinforcement, but it has a dramatic and hugely beneficial effect. I'm looking forward to my slap up meal for losing a stone!

Thank you, Mr Peters. Still inspiring excellence after all these years ...

And just in case you can’t find the article when you type “What Gets Measured Gets Done” into Google, here’s a link to the essay: http://www.tompeters.com/col_entries.php?note=005143&year=1986.

The Value in Neat and Tidy

2011-06-30T18:26:00.000+01:00

Tidying up is a thoroughly therapeutic task. Organising something that was previously chaotic has so many benefits, quite apart from the calming effect on the soul. My kitchen cupboards recently unattached themselves from the wall thanks to an over-enthusiastic washing machine. Rather than have their precious contents become part of an insurance claim, I emptied the cupboards. This was not only hard work (who would have thought kitchen cupboard could hold so much?) but also revealing.

I found ingredients that had been bought twice (a surprising number), ingredients that should maybe be eaten up (nothing earlier than 2009, but even so …) and bottles that had never been opened (but will be now). In short, I had only a vague idea of what was in my cupboards. And I only moved three years ago!

Although kitchen structural defects are not to be recommended to anyone, I have found the act of clearing out, cleaning up, and re-organising to be extremely valuable. I have reassessed what I really need, what is only used occasionally or not at all. And I have resolved to simplify: which should save money, save space, and improve efficiency.

Transferring the same ideas to work is even more worthwhile. Although my hard-disk is unlikely to fall off its perch due to too much data, a spring clean and re-evaluation of what’s important yields similar benefits. Pruning projects has even more value than throwing out duplicate ingredients. The CRM database is next ….

So, it’s Summer Cleaning for me! It doesn’t have the same ring to it as Spring Cleaning, but it has all the lemon-scented benefits.

PS Getting to Excellent isn’t going into semi-retirement, despite appearances. I was away for two blissful weeks in Provence and surprisingly not motivated to blog. I wasn’t sure you would be interested in thyme-scented hills or how all food tastes better in France …

Searching words of wisdom

2011-06-21T10:56:00.000+01:00

I’m currently working on a project that includes a lot of text as part of the data.

Traditionally computer systems and databases don’t like free text; they prefer values that can be added, evaluated and easily stored. Of course there is much to be said for that; assigning a value enables us to clarify our thoughts and opinions. But we can’t communicate everything with numbers and capturing free text provides a great deal of rich understanding. It also enables us to store information which may not be considered relevant right now, but could be valuable in the future or to other people.

Happily, searching text has become a great deal more sophisticated than when I first started working with business systems. Databases such as Microsoft’s SQL Server now have the ability to search for meaning as well as words, to rank search results in terms of likely relevance, and to filter out the “joining words” that don’t add anything to the search process.

When we search for things on the internet we use the same functionality. We expect to key in a search term and find relevant information from a variety of sources. We rarely stop to consider the software technology that is behind making it happen, even though it is hugely powerful and is the piece of the jigsaw that makes all the internet information useful.

Our electronic world has made it so quick and simple to send an email to anywhere in the world, so a huge amount of information is being conveyed in free text. Documents can easily be created and stored on the billions of PCs in businesses everywhere - the issue now is to make the information accessible to the people who need it.

Listening - the quiet strength

2011-06-17T09:19:00.000+01:00

A number of different incidents recently have made me aware of the importance of listening. Oddly enough, the brighter and more competent the person, the more likely they are to believe they are right and don’t need to listen to other views. Yet in so many cases, being right isn’t what gets results. What gets results is ensuring that everyone is in agreement with the plan: even if it’s not the very best possible plan.

The reason for this will be obvious to anyone who has ever worked on a team. If only one member of the team doesn’t believe in what’s being done, they can stop or slow the whole process. Yet a team where everyone is agreed is pretty much unbeatable: even if they are not as talented as the divided team.

Jim Collins’ influential book “Good to Great” has much to say on how seemingly quiet, experienced leaders are more effective than their showy, high profile counterparts. Collins lists a number of qualities of a great leader, and among them are “confronting the brutal facts” because unless you know the extent of the problem, and the reasons for why things are as they are, nothing can be changed. It is seemingly obvious, yet we can be strangely reluctant in wanting to know the truth. Humility is also listed by Collins as desirable in an effective leader.

Whilst Collins’ research was not statistically valid – I’m sure there are exceptions to every “rule” – his observations are interesting. Putting people first, being humble enough to know when you are wrong, and having the patience to listen what is actually going on, instead of what you think is going on, are foundation stones to making things happen.

To Do

2011-05-17T18:19:00.000+01:00

I’ve been through my fair share of time management courses, books and systems. I suspect you have too. Some of them are actually been useful; some less so.

Yet the old stand-by that never fails is the good old To Do list. It’s not fancy, it’s not complicated, but it is effective. A day in the office without a To Do list is likely to be less productive than a day with a To Do list. Somehow it focuses the mind; even if the list only has one big item on it.

So why is a To Do list so useful?

I think it has two benefits. Firstly, it requires purposeful thought in order to write it. If you don’t know what you are trying to achieve, your lack of purpose becomes abundantly obvious. Deciding your objective then becomes your first To Do item. If your objectives are clear, then a little thought about what To Do next produces your list.

Secondly, having decided what should be done listing them provides focus through the day. When you get called into an unexpected meeting, or something takes longer than expected, the list pulls you back to what you hoped to achieve. It often produces a last bit of extra effort at the end of the day to get one or two more items ticked off.

There is something ridiculously satisfying in being able to tick things off.

The To Do list is so simple that it seems almost ridiculous to write several paragraphs on the subject. Yet I’m not the first fan to put fingers to keyboard and take up virtual air time with a subject that must seem second nature to any productive person.

So – can a To Do list be beaten? Is there anything better at aiding and abetting the person who wants to Get Things Done? I’d be interested to know whether anyone can trump it …

Thoughfulness

2011-05-09T10:18:00.000+01:00

I was standing in line in a café on Saturday afternoon when I saw a sign hanging above the counter: “Drink Coffee – Do Stupid Things Faster with More Energy”. It made me laugh and brightened an already sunny afternoon.

It made me stop and think, though, about the number of things we do without thinking; and how infrequently we do things slowly and thoughtfully. Getting through a lot of stuff makes us feel good, but doesn’t necessarily move things forward. Whereas doing a well-chosen thing a little more slowly and thoroughly is likely to produce a better result.

Of course so much depends on what work needs to be done, and what your objectives are. Despite my long battles with reducing caffeine, this isn’t a rant against coffee; I personally don’t drink the stuff, though, as I’m quite capable of doing stupid things without any chemical additives.

What really got me thinking was a visit to a local National Trust property some weeks previously. It was a house I had seen on a number of occasions because it is so close to where I live. This time, however, I visited with someone who isn’t quite as mobile as he was in his younger days. So the visit was longer than normal, and we saw only half the house. Did this spoil the day? Au contraire! It was twice as interesting as I had chance to look and think about what I was looking at. I got more out of that visit than I had done in all the previous visits put together. Yet given the choice, I would have bashed on at my normal speed. Clearly, I had been missing so much. And there is still more to go back and see.

There seems to be so little space for thought in our busy coffee-fuelled lives. Yet slowing down and thinking always produces a better result. The old saying: “there’s not enough time to do it well, but there’s always time to do it twice” sort of comes to mind. Another coffee anyone?

A place for everything; and everything in its place

2011-04-28T11:38:00.000+01:00

I’ve always wanted to be the sort of person who could honestly say things like “a place for everything – and everything in its place!” It is so organised, so logical and so likely that you could actually find things again. Even though our desire for order and organisation is strong, the tendency to be disorganised is ever present – at least with me.

One of my favourite quotes is from Gustave Flaubert – the French author of Madame Bovary. “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

As the complexity of our work increases, so the need for order increases. As the complexity of the problems we wish to solve, so the need for organisation increases. As the number of people we involve in our endeavours, so the need for regular orderliness increases. When this order is missing, so unproductive thrashing increases.

I was talking to someone yesterday about an interesting (and far from straightforward) business problem. As we talked and I tried to understand their approach, it became clear that one issue was having information in different places. Whilst the system we were discussing was in constant use, other information was in other places and getting no attention. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the information was lost – but another few months, or years and it may well be lost. Or at least forgotten about so it will be of no use.

So it seems that both my grandfather and Flaubert were right. Whilst Flaubert is known for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style, he is also known as being one of our greatest ever novelists. He was certainly violent and original in his work - which is not bad for such a short life.

Customer delight .. and customer dismay

2011-04-20T17:02:00.006+01:00

Thinking about being customer focused has made me a lot more aware of how some companies behave and a few recent examples seem noteworthy.

Just a few days ago, I wrote to company that assists me when my car breaks down to enquire whether their service has VAT on it or not. There is no mention of it on the invoice, but I assumed it must. A few other folk had wondered too and posted things on the internet. One such person had a reply saying that a VAT invoice would cost him £15. He was outraged and complained vigorously. I sent a polite email enquiring about a VAT invoice. They informed me that it would cost £15 for a VAT invoice, but made no mention of whether there was VAT on their service. There isn’t. It would have been easier (and shown some thought for the customer) to just say so. I don’t think that is customer-focused; to the point of being obstreperous. It’s a good job their roadside manner is so superb.

On the plus side, I recently had my hair done at a new salon. On the morning of the appointment they called me. O-oh I thought. My heart sank as I envisaged the stylist being ill, or changing the day, or the usual reasons that hairdressers call. No. It was none of those reasons. As my appointment was at lunch time they wanted to know if I wanted a complimentary sandwich. I was literally speechless for a moment or two. I then recovered and said “Yes please – a salmon one”. How customer focused are they? They totally understand the stresses of their customers getting their hair done in the lunch hour. I was one delighted customer - who is telling ALL her friends!

Then today I had reason to return a bottle of booze to my local supermarket. They are part of a company which prides itself on not selling more expensive than the competition. And advertises the fact. When I pointed out that another supermarket was selling it for £5 less (I’m not making this up) they said – "that doesn’t apply to us!" Not – “we will make sure we check it out”. Or, “thank you for telling us”. But with a solemn face – “that doesn’t apply to us”. I’ll be watching their prices a lot more carefully in future.

Now “the customer is always right” doesn’t mean that the customer IS always right. Many customers belly-ache about bad service but still go back. Perhaps because the product is so good or perhaps because they have no choice. But when a company comes along with a good product, and little ways of delighting their customers, the customer switches without a backwards glance.

These instances show something of these companies attitude to their customers. Funnily enough the hairdresser is expanding, taking over the city-centre premises next door, and taking on more staff. Coincidence? Maybe. But there again, maybe not.

How Customer Focused are you?

2011-04-19T16:56:00.002+01:00

We all like to think that our businesses are customer-centric, just as we are all convinced we are good drivers. Yet the numbers of dissatisfied customers, like the number of accidents on the roads, points to the story being a little different

Customers are always right; they are the ones with the budget, the choice and a world full of connected information. And because their choices determine the success of our businesses, it pays to focus on what the customer wants. And needs. And is prepared to pay for.

But how do we know whether we are customer focused? Or whether our business is customer focused? What metrics determine our ability to focus on what the customer wants? As always in business, actions speak louder than words:

Customer lifetime value (rather than one year, or the typical but arbitrary three years)

Revenue by product/service (if they don’t like it, they won’t buy)

Repeat purchases (you might get ‘em once, but dreadful service or lousy products don’t create fans who come back time and time again)

Number of complaints & number of customers won back from problems

Number of recommendations

Number of unsolicited letters of delight

Time since last purchase

Time since last meaningful discussion

Metrics are arguably the most difficult part of defining how to implement a customer-focused strategy. Metrics define the strategy because they are what people focus on when trying to do a good job.

What do you think defines a business that is truly customer focused? What would you measure if you were CEO of Barclays bank, Coca-Cola or the Virgin empire?

Is social media suited to marketing?

2011-04-05T10:47:00.002+01:00

Are we heading for a social media implosion? Will businesses begin to question whether the social media emperor has indeed got any clothes on? History has an uncanny knack of repeating itself, and social media is beginning to show some of the hallmarks ….

Back in the 1990’s the internet created the dot-com bubble, which blind-sighted many otherwise rational business people. Now the social media revolution is changing the rules and vast numbers of business people are trying to figure out its potential. Social media specialists and experts are springing up everywhere (well, mostly on social media sites … ) with a zealot-like passion to teach other business people how to get more and more followers.

As marketing guru Philip Kotler points out “companies that focus inward become blind to seismic changes in markets, competition, distribution, media and technology that are occurring outside”. So the rapid growth of sites such as Twitter, FaceBook and others cannot be ignored, even though this particular change leaves us far from clear about how it fits into our marketing plans.

Yet there must be many who wonder whether we are not heading for another heady crash.

“Marketing is the business that identifies unfulfilled needs and wants, defines and measures their magnitude, determines which target markets the organisation can best serve ….. and calls upon everyone in the organization to ‘think and serve the customer’ ”. (Kotler)

In other words, marketing is about understanding what customers want. It’s not about the number of followers, or even the number of people who read your (or my) blog. He goes on to say:

“marketing is not the art of selling what you make. It is the art of identifying and understanding customer needs and creating solutions that deliver satisfaction …“

Going back to basics when all around you are making it complicated has many advantages. One wonders (out loud if you write a blog) whether the dot-com crash, the banking crisis, and many other fiascos would have happened if anyone had an eye on the basics.

Twitter, Facebook and blogging have all quickened the pace at which we can communicate by enabling us to “talk” to more people more of the time. Like the internet itself, and the printed page before it, social media found an unfulfilled need, and satisfied it with aplomb.

However, unless the many businesses that populate these sites can figure out how to tune in to their customers and listen to them, satisfying their own customers’ needs and wants well be as difficult as ever. They may well find their thousands of followers are worth about the same as tulip bulbs.

Perhaps then social media will revert to its origins – being social.

It is likely that social media will mature over time – satisfying both social and business needs. But it will take time, and a more sophisticated approach - and in the meantime the rush to find gold amongst a million “get rich quick” schemes might seem a little hasty. I also wonder why people who don’t even speak my language (or I don’t speak theirs) are following me. Life is full of mysteries.

Look “inside” your data to improve your marketing

2011-04-04T11:46:00.003+01:00

Do you store customer data in a computer system? Do you store information about purchases? Gathering and storing customer information in a database is now “business as usual” for most organisations.

But once you’ve got the information, what should be done with it?

Using it for marketing is an obvious candidate. Emails, letters, and phone calls can all be done more efficiently once your data is in one place. But this is only part of the answer. Whilst this is a terrific time saver, all that has happened is that manual processes have been digitized. Your database has enabled your marketing communications to be processed more quickly: not more intelligently.

To gain real competitive advantage from customer databases, you need to look “inside” the data. The key to creating more profitable marketing programs is analysing customer data (sometimes from several systems) to understand patterns of behaviour, and profitability. Why? Because when you work from real world data, you are faced with real world problems and real world opportunities. Instead of dreaming up marketing ideas with fragmented and anecdotal evidence of customer preferences, real customer data grounds your thinking, and challenges it.

The old saying “the customer is always right” holds a lot of water when it comes to data. Looking at what customers actually do, rather than what you’d like them to do, or what your business plan says they should do, moves marketing closer to the customers’ needs and wants. Once your thinking is aligned with customers’ needs and wants, marketing communications become more relevant and more meaningful to customers. Which kinda helps.

Analysing customer data should be a starting point for marketing planning, not an afterthought.

Decide what you want

2011-03-29T18:08:00.002+01:00

Deciding what we want is difficult, for the simple reason that there are so many things to want. And if we want too many different things, we end up with nothing. Which is why so often we end up break New Year Resolutions, or other fine goals we set ourselves. It’s not that we don’t want whatever it is (being thin/rich/a good dancer) that we resolve to achieve, it’s just that we don’t want to give up other things that we want even more.

So setting goals and objectives is mostly about making difficult choices.

But if we are clear about what we want, and we want it badly enough, very often we become unstoppable – whatever the goal.

H L Hunt, the oil tycoon, apparently said:

“Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities, and go to work”.

It’s not only good advice, but succinctly put. And I don’t think its overstating it to say that it’s the secret (if indeed there is a secret) to success.

Whenever I have wanted something badly enough, I have figured out a way to get it. (Right now I just have to figure out how to want a 2.5 hr half marathon badly enough to train and starve myself for it ….)

Being clear about your goals is central to achieving excellence. But it’s also one of the most challenging aspects. Which is perhaps why there are many ballet dancers, but only one Darcy Bussell, many runners but only one Paula Radcliffe, many business people but only one Bill Gates, many investors, but only one Warren Buffett …. Yes, of course, all these people have talent. But all of them challenged their focus, their time, their energies on achieving their single most important goal.

Know Thyself

2011-03-25T10:42:00.002Z

To thine own self be true

Shakespeare’s words ring as true today as the day he wrote them. If we are not true to ourselves, we will forever follow the direction of the wind. But how well do we actually understand ourselves? Apparently I wasn’t the only one who didn’t come with a manual. We all go through life trying to figure out what we like, what we don’t like, what makes us happy, and what doesn’t. What are we good at, and what just doesn’t fit with our temperament.

It’s a slow and sometimes torturous journey with many twists and turns and a fair number of false starts. But as we grow as people, so our understanding of who we are also grows. Or at least it grows somewhere in the back of our minds, in our subconscious. It’s rare that we step back and take a good hard look at ourselves.

But when we do look at ourselves, we find patterns that repeat themselves. I make sense of the world through words – writing and reading. It’s how I am. You may make sense of the world through numbers. Others may be visual. There’s a big difference in these different types, and it moulds our careers and what we do when we want to relax.

So would our lives be different if we DID come with a manual? I think they might. Knowing whether we should put diesel or petrol into the car means our cars last much longer. If we just kept trying one and then the other, murmuring, “No, I think it went better with the petrol” we probably would never have built motorways. Yet still we insist on eating foods that don’t agree with us, we don’t take enough exercise, and we don’t really understand our strengths and weaknesses.

Of course the fact that a manual didn’t arrive in the package when we were born doesn’t stop us creating our own. It might take a few drafts to get to something that seems to work, but it might be a big improvement on having no manual at all.

Make the process your goal, not the outcome

2011-03-24T10:06:00.003Z

Making the process the goal, rather than the outcome, seems like strange advice. Indeed in my last blog post I set myself the goal of running a half marathon in 2.5 hours or less. But what if I get injured before the race? What if I’m ill? Even if I don't run the race it doesn't mean there won't be another, or that my training will be wasted ...

Goals mostly focus on outcomes: winning business, running marathons in a certain time, achieving a certain outcome in a meeting, etc. But these goals rely on a host of external events: customers wanting to implement a solution when you have the staff available, being fit to run, or other people agreeing with your views. To a large degree we have little influence over these external factors.

What we do have control over is the process. The quality of our proposals, the amount of training we do, being open and fair in meetings. Focusing on the process is what really gives us the advantage. Yet when we are focused on the goal we can sometimes forget the importance of each of the tiny steps along the way. Managing time, creating opportunities, being thorough in preparation all add strength to whatever goal we are trying to achieve.

Gretchen Rubin in her wonderful Happiness Project blog has written some wise words about paradoxes. Sometimes to achieve the outcome, we have to focus on the process and forget about the goal.

One Year, One Run

2011-03-22T13:48:00.002Z

Setting a goal a full year ahead is always satisfying. There’s plenty of time to do what needs to be done, and a nice warm feeling of having something to aim for. But as the weeks and months tick by, the reality of doing the work sets in: quickly followed by growing panic as the deadline looms.

One very short year ago I set myself the challenge of running a half marathon. The Reading Half Marathon, to be precise, which I ran last Sunday. At least I ran most of it, my feet and ankles complained bitterly towards the end which slowed me to a walking pace. I took 7 minutes off my Henley Half Marathon time, and wasn’t last! Yeah!!! And I achieved my goal - even though I wasn’t nearly as well prepared as I could have been, or as I would have liked.

A year ago I struggled to run one mile, let along 13. I was very nervous of joining my local 3 mile Saturday morning Park Run. So although I don’t yet have the Kenyan runners quaking in their running shoes, I’ve made a lot of progress.

As always with projects, be they running, software or other changes, things never turn out as you expect. I thought if I took up running my excess weight would drop off me automatically, whatever I ate. I have to tell you that ain’t so. I thought I’d have two running buddies to keep me company, for all sorts of reasons that didn’t work out either (although one volunteered as a marshal on race day and sent me off and welcomed me back with a bright, encouraging smile). I thought running would be easy. It isn’t.

So it’s been a year of learning. Learning about motivation, my body, and my limitations. Learning that if I don’t put the effort in, I don’t get the results back. And learning that there’s a great deal to be learnt from others: authors, friends, trainers, coaches and people you meet along the way. (A huge thank you to all of you!)

Reading Half Marathon was run on the same day as the New York City Half Marathon. Over 16,000 runners took part, compared to about 10,000 in New York. Our fastest runner was Simon Kasimili from Kenya at 1 hour, 3 minutes and 8 seconds. New York was won by Mo Farah from Great Britain in 1 hour 23 seconds. Both deeply impressive and scarily fast. There’s a big difference between the best and the rest.

So although this project started out as being “One Year; One Run” it’s turned out to be just the beginning. The next goal is to run October’s Henley half marathon in under 2.5 hours. It won’t make headlines, but might give me a small feeling of satisfaction. As well as sore feet....

Managing your Time as a Master Builder

2011-03-15T17:16:00.002Z

Time management is a long established but curious management idea. Time, after all, is a measurement like length or depth or height. Just like physical dimensions, we can fill it with things. So a mile along a street might be filled with houses, an hour can be filled with events. Events such as the ticking of the clock, the writing of a report, or the watching of a TV programme. Or sleeping, or eating lunch, or having an argument. Or planning the following day’s work, or taking a nap, or doing nothing (a tricky one).

So time management isn’t so much the management of time, which will pass no matter what we do, but the management of the events that fill our time.

Of course not all events can be managed. There is nothing we can do about a colleague coming in to work in a lousy mood. We can’t control the Porsche trying to overtake just before a bend, nor the weather. But we can attempt to manage the events that are important to us.

Our choice of “events” or “things to do” during each hour is what determines the course of our businesses, our careers, and our lives. Just as what we choose NOT to do during each hour has the same (but less obvious) effect.

If we think of ourselves as master builders, coming to work each day to build houses, hotels or mansions on our day-long streets, we get more of a physical picture of what we are doing. We are building little houses along our days. Some days we barely manage to complete the foundations for a rickety garden shed, other days we map out grand plans for palatial extensions.

As you start your day, have a look down the street you are currently working on and inspect yesterday’s building work. Was it done according to the architect’s plans? Are you happy with the quality of the workmanship? Are other builders briefed so that tomorrow’s work can start on time? Are you almost ready to start roofing work or have you been labouring on the foundations for far too long?

Most of us manage a multitude of projects, and it can be helpful to think of abstract notions such as time, reports or software as physical things. Time as a street that we are about to walk, and our day’s work as the buildings we are constructing. Concepts such as foundations, levels, and rooms, are useful for many different types of work, whether they are tangible or intangible. Happy building!

4 pointers to make better decisions

2011-03-09T15:01:00.002Z

Good decision making is crucial for a happy life and building successful businesses. So how do we guard against poor decisions? Whilst some bad decisions are just annoying, others can have truly dreadful consequences. So why, when often others can see a mistake is being made, do people sometimes bash on so determinedly?

The answers make uncomfortable reading. Uncomfortable because I recognise them in my decision making, and I bet you will recognise them too. Just knowing this list, however, helps us make better decisions. When we recognise them, we can double-check ourselves.

Intuition. Generally, we have a great belief in something we call gut feel or having a “nose” for something. But good decisions are rarely, if ever, made on intuition. Good decisions are based on evidence and data, in many different forms.
Emotion. We get overly engaged with our decisions. Somehow if someone is challenging our decision we thinking they are also challenging us as a person, our judgement and our very worth. And isn’t it just true that the more emotionally involved we are, the more certain we are that we are making an objective decision? Emotion is the second sign of danger when it comes to good decision making.
Attachment. Attachment is when we care more for people or things more than we care about whether a decision is right or wrong. We rationalise why we are right, knowing in our hearts that we are really attached to something that we may not want to even articulate.
Self-interest. Making a decision based on what’s in it for us. More money, more power, more kudos as a leader. Bigger, better, more beautiful. More, more, more. There are too many examples of where greed and self-interest have led to disastrous decisions. Self-interest does nothing for clear headed decisions.

All four traits lead us into subjective decision making, rather than objective decision making.

Of course that’s not to say that buying the pretty, but dilapidated old cottage, isn’t the right decision for example. But our objectivity should at least enable us to realistically budget for renovations instead of potentially making an expensive mistake.

Keep on keeping on

2011-03-02T10:55:00.002Z

It’s too rare these days that I make time to catch up with friends. But the other night I went out with my wonderfully glamorous and deeply French friend. She’s huge fun and annoyingly thin. But then she is French.

So, she asked, you are still writing the blog? There was a feint raise of the perfectly plucked eyebrow and small surprise in her voice. Of course, I returned. But of course isn’t of course. Keeping something going is difficult. After the first flush of excitement it gets harder to keep on keeping on.

Which I guess is why you see so many deserted blogs. So much “space debris” cluttering up the internet with well-meaning but ultimately useless resolutions. “I’m going to write 200 words a day” claimed one blog. They managed about 300 words in total, and that was about two years ago. Seemingly the public outing of their intentions wasn’t enough.

But blogging isn’t the only thing that needs persistence. Succeeding in business is, according to Donald Trump, “sheer persistence is the difference between success and failure.” Bertrand Russell said “No great achievement is possible without persistent work.”

As I look down my “to do” list, the small urgent things get done. But the big, difficult things require a more disciplined and longer term approach. And a lot of keeping on keeping on to see them through.

So as the conversation twisted and turned, inevitably we talked of running, personal trainers and diet. I bemoaned the difficulty of losing weight. We talked carbs, calories and champagne. She manages to ingest them all and still look perfect in a size 8 suit. Finally she snapped - "don't talk about it, do it! If it's important, make it a priority". For the first time that evening I was stuck for words ...

Persistence pays in so many areas - the bits we enjoy, and the bits that are more difficult. But keeping on keeping on is the only way. Crumbs, is it still a full hour before lunch ....

Intelligence as a System

2011-02-23T14:13:00.001Z

I continue to annoy friends and family with ridiculous questions about Intelligence. I am getting some confused looks as well as some illuminating answers:

Intelligence as the ability to make good decisions
Intelligence as the ability to learn
Intelligent people aren’t always very practical
Intelligent people have an unusually large vocabulary (really?)
There are many different sorts of intelligence.

For a word that’s in such common use, it’s amazing how we can’t quite put our fingers on what intelligence is.

This morning as I was driving to work I was pondering the Intelligence question. I was deep in thought as I drove through the wet and windy February weather. By the time I got out of the car I was miles away (in thought; I hadn’t lost my way) and was brought back down to earth with a beeping sound. My car was talking to me. It reminded me to switch my lights off.

What an intelligent little car, I thought to myself. With all my education, years of experience, and perhaps a small amount of something that might vaguely be described as intelligence, I would certainly have forgotten and left the headlights on. But my car had this particularly useful bit of intelligence built into it.

You may be thinking that this isn’t so remarkable, and in one way you are right. Once some bright spark had realised just how easily otherwise intelligent people can leave their lights on, and the technology became available to create the warning, the rest was relatively mechanical. I’ve written before about just how intelligent some cars have become, and the same might be said for washing machines, sports watches and many other devices that are now part of our normal lives.

Yet we forget how much freedom and intellectual space they give us. It made me wonder how much intelligence is in other systems such as checklists, software, maps and the like, that we also dismiss without a thought. Intelligence as a system places a great deal less responsibility on the individual and raises standards for the many.

Are you Intelligent?

2011-02-18T10:00:00.001Z

Which would you prefer? That people think of you as being intelligence, talented and bright? Or methodical, disciplined and thorough?

I’m guessing most of you think of yourself as intelligent. Like drivers, we all think we are in the 10% when it comes to driving ability. And none of us like to think we are stupid …

Yet intelligence is a curious quality. Intuitively know when we meet an intelligent person. We don’t need to ask them to do tests, or perform calculations. Somehow we can see intelligence in their eyes and hear it in what they say. However, we struggle to explain what we mean by intelligence. Like a fine wine or great art, we know it when we see it. (Of course, schools and universities test for a certain type of intelligence with examinations, but history has demonstrated that many intelligent and capable people have little aptitude for passing exams).

But what about the methodical, disciplined and thorough lot? The well-organised brigade who can always find things and have the right information to hand?

Even though the two are not mutually exclusive, and many intelligent people are also disciplined and methodical, it is not their organisational abilities that grab the headlines.

A visit to the war cabinet rooms in London this week made me think about the complex nature of intelligence, and what is required to outsmart the competition (whether in war or in business). Churchill’s brilliance (although he famously struggled with exams) and the military’s great organisational abilities, were clearly on show. Maps lined almost every wall covered with pins and wool showing enemy locations and manoeuvres. Graphs and carefully stencilled statistics were also pinned to the walls; not hidden away in ring binders.

Military Intelligence has come to mean information and data rather than thinking ability. When the stakes are as high as the independence of a nation, it’s interesting to reflect on whether it was the intelligent, talented and bright bunch who carried the day. Or the methodical, disciplined and thorough crew.

Running Lessons

2011-02-14T15:56:00.002Z

With five very short weeks before the Reading Half Marathon, I met up with my (virtual) running buddy on Saturday to compare notes. I say virtual, because it has been almost a year since we met in person – even though we’ve exchanged many email excuses for why we couldn’t make a running session!

We both bemoaned a whole number of well thought out and credible excuses – including injuries and some big life changing stuff that got thrown at us. But the fact remains that during a full year, neither of us lost any weight, neither of us is as fit as we should be, and neither of us feels prepared for this half marathon. That’s despite a year of so-called preparation. Wow – how could that have happened?

We agreed we’d learnt some lessons. So here’s my list:

Running isn’t a substitute for eating well. I have to eat sensibly if I want to lose weight – running won’t melt excess weight away. I hate to say it, but I think this might be an age thing.
To get better at running I have to show up: at practice, on a Saturday morning, for races, for training runs.
A great coach helps a lot. Providing I show up on a Wednesday…. thanks Tom!
Having a committed running buddy helps a lot. Doing it together is always easier; thanks Jacqui!
Get the right kit. Running shoes that don’t rub, light-weight jacket for the rain (how useless is it that I still won’t go running when it’s raining?), warm weather kit, the right socks, a calibrated distance measurer (and I thought it was a cheap sport!!!).
Make a checklist for race day
Keep a training log
Have races in the diary to keep focus and momentum on training
It takes time and patience to form a new running habit; to lose weight, to get fitter, to build up stamina, to get to like (ha ha!) running.

Looking back at my notes before the Henley half marathon, I weighed 5 kilos less, and was running a 5K distance 5 minutes faster than I’m running it right now. Crumbs, that’s a bit of a wakeup call. Time to put those lessons into practice!

Mad Men: lessons from episode one

2011-02-09T12:53:00.002Z

Despite dropping too many hints to everyone I know and I few people I do not, no one bought me Mad Men Series 1-3 for Christmas. A disappointment that could only be rectified by an overnight Amazon Prime delivery. Needs must (sigh). The 1950’s would have been as shocked by Amazon as we are at their bad boy attitudes.

The opening episode saw the heart-stoppingly suave Don Draper fretting about cigarette advertising. Readers Digest say that cigarettes might be bad for you. His Lucky Strike executives are coming in for a creative meeting. He has no idea what to do. Draper is in a fix.

He does two things that are instructive. Firstly, he talks to people about smoking; anyone, anywhere. Because he is Don Draper and he spends a lot of time in bars, he talks to the waiter who offers low-key but pertinent insights. Secondly, he talks to his scary research lady about her scary research.

In the meeting, when the client turns to hear his brilliant ideas, he still hasn’t got a clue what to suggest. He thinks the research is stupid, and the problem insolvable. Why would anyone buy something that might harm them?

Of course, we know the answer to the conundrum. People don’t care that cigarettes are dangerous. They just want to enjoy one of life’s pleasures; which Draper figures out just in time to keep the account. He lets every other cigarette be dangerous - Lucky Strike is the one that contains “toasted tobacco”.

As it turns out, the research was absolutely right and what Draper had discarded turned out to be the key to unlocking his creativity. Although Mad Men is fiction (or is it?) it is based on (some) real people and very real advertising and marketing issues. Which is perhaps what makes it so watchable.

Many great advertising and marketing people have pointed out that you need to understand both your product and your market in order to come up with a compelling proposition. Draper makes it look easy, Ogilvy admitted it was hard work and tedious. Both knew it was necessary.

If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it

2011-02-04T12:26:00.003Z

Does a ruler set your heart racing? Would a new protractor make you feel a little giddy? Did you go into maths lessons with a hop, skip and jump when you were at school? No? Well me neither, but that doesn’t mean to say that measurement isn’t one of the most important aspects of the highly sophisticated lives we live.

Lord Kelvin pointed out that “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”. Those carefully chosen words seem self-evident to me, yet measurement is not something we accept naturally. Much human communication is though words, expression, tone or voice, touch and emotion – all of which are difficult to measure.

But all great advances in human endeavours have come about through our ability to measure things. The list is very long: healthcare, safety, architecture, transport, energy efficiency, food quality, and much more.

A couple of weeks ago I went to see what might be the world’s oldest clock, which could date from the 14th century. It currently stands in the magnificent Salisbury Cathedral which is well worth a visit even if you have no interest in early time pieces. Of course in the 14th century, and many years afterwards, accurate timekeeping was not possible. If you don’t know what time it is, you cannot co-ordinate people or events around you or across town. Nor do you know how long things take to do (like cook a soft-boiled egg or travel to Leeds).

Whilst it is interesting to look back at advances in measurement and understand the benefits they have brought, it’s also interesting to think about the things we can’t or don’t measure. Of course that list is a great deal longer than the many things we already measure. From my limited experiments with measuring time spent on different activities (focused work, day dreaming, wandering around) or the number of data-driven decisions we make in a day (not many), I concluded that it is possible to usefully measure more than we currently do, even though it is difficult and somewhat unnatural.

Benjamin Franklin famously tried to measure thirteen things that he considered important: silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, etc. He tracked his adherence to these virtues at least until he was 79 when he wrote about them, and resolved to follow them longer as they had brought him so much happiness. None of them are concepts that lend themselves easily to measurement. Yet if Franklin hadn’t measured his adherence to them, he would probably have forgotten them long before his 21st birthday.

Bernard Shaw once said that all progress depends on the unreasonable man. I suggest he was wrong; progress belongs to the man with a mind to measure.

How Many Benchmarks in your Day?

2011-01-28T17:03:00.002Z

Benchmarking might appear to be a pretty academic concept, yet it’s amazing how much we use it at work and at home.

Are you happy with what you are paid? Having a rough idea of the national average or how much people earn in our line of business makes a difference: so much of a difference that this benchmark affects how happy we are with our work.

What time do you set your alarm for in the morning? Knowing that you will function well on 8 hours sleep affects your attitude and demeanour the following day. A daily benchmark we use without even thinking about it.

How many hours a day do your colleagues work? Having a rough idea also affects how satisfied you are with the number of hours you have to put in to get your work done. Benchmarks are everywhere, even though they don’t have that label.

I was looking up how many telephone calls professional telesales people make a day. 100 calls a day gets bandied about on forums that discuss this sort of thing. 100 calls a day! Wow! That’s a huge number. Well it might seem that way to me, but to some it’s a normal day in the office, and they fit in other work besides.

Benchmarking is important because it gives us an idea of what’s possible, what’s exceptional, and what’s sub-optimal. When managing a business, that’s hugely important.

Being able to measure and benchmark people’s capabilities and achievements enables everyone to reach for their best. And that’s when people are at their happiest – when they are striving for something that’s worthwhile, difficult but achievable.

Benchmarking is also a way to solve problems. Once you can measure the current position, and compare that to some sort of benchmark, you can start to figure how big or small a problem you have. And even where you might look to start solving it.

So keep a look out for where you are, and are not, guided by benchmarks. Some of them might surprise you.

Goals in Theory and Goals in Practice

2011-01-25T17:59:00.002Z

January is a time for resolutions. I’m not immune to Thinking Big about all the things I will achieve in a New Year. But this year I have a more pressing problem – a goal I set myself almost a year ago. 10 months ago to be precise. Because it seemed like A Good Idea at the Time, I also roped in a couple of friends so that I couldn’t squelch my way out of the commitment.

Only now, 10 months later, can I see the full brilliance of my dreadful plan. Yup, it’s almost half marathon time again!

Last March I set myself the goal of running Reading Half Marathon. Although I ran (including a bit of walking, limping and moaning like mad) the Henley Half Marathon, that was A Long Time Ago. Three months ago in fact; that’s three months of focusing almost entirely on holiday and Christmas Carbohydrate Loading.

So now all my goals in theory have caught up with me, and the true horror of goals in practice is staring me blankly in the face.

Two months to lose some weight.
Two months to run further than the end of the road.
Two months to find some running shoes that don’t give me blisters.
Two months to salvage some small amount of self-respect amongst family and friends who listen to me talk as though I actually can run.

So this is where theory meets practice. Having set the goal, persuaded my friends to join me, and paid the entrance fee, the whole lunatic idea has got a momentum that I can only follow, huffing and puffing and wishing I were anywhere else instead.

As an old colleague once said “Be careful what you wish for, it just might come true”. Oh, my!

Work with your hands, and all you get is dirty hands

2011-01-17T10:34:00.002Z

Until very recently, increasing efficiency meant creating a software system to store relevant information about part of your business. Instead of doing the job manually, or on spreadsheets, it went into a database system. Software systems improve productivity and efficiency, whether it is linked to other aspects of a company’s work (ERP) or stand-alone.

It is a hugely successful approach that all businesses have embraced.

The focus on these projects is the data that needs to be stored in the system. If you put the right information in, we thought, you will get the right information out. The only problem is that all the emphasis went on putting information in, and hardly any focus was on understanding the data.

As the big system trends, such as accounting, CRM and ERP, are becoming more mature, we are now turning our attention to what all this information means. And increasingly we are finding that it is not as self-explanatory as we thought.

Firstly, data isn’t neatly together in one place. Rather, it is in a number of different systems that were created at different times for different reasons.

Secondly, traditional system reports are geared towards efficient systems, not business insight.

Thankfully, a new generation of software tools is coming to the rescue. They are focussed entirely on finding meaning from existing data and are priced to be attractive to businesses of all sizes. For example, Microsoft’s SQL Server Integration Service, Analysis Services and Reporting Services are included in all versions of SQL Server from 2005 at no extra cost.

This changes the nature of business competition. As well as having products and services that customers value, which you can produce cost effectively, visionary businesses are looking at their systems to find new insights and meaning within customer information. And they are using those insights to improve the value they provide to customers.

It is a logical next step. We’ve all spent 25 years creating software systems; now it’s time to use that information profitably. As my father is fond of saying, if you work with your hands, all you get is dirty hands. But if you work with your head ....

Why Customer Intelligence is the No 1 Priority for Marketers

2011-01-11T15:11:00.000Z

Customer Intelligence is the process of improving strategic marketing decisions by joining together and analysing customer data from a company’s various different software systems.

Despite it’s relatively low profile, it is likely to be the single most important issue facing marketing professionals over the next 10 years. Why? There are three big unstoppable trends:

Customer data volumes are exploding. Disk space is cheap, database systems are powerful and can store many different types of data, and software applications such as accounts, CRM, ERP are holding vast amounts of customer-related data. The result? More customer data than you or your competitors have ever had before.
Increased competition. Globalization has been a trend for over 100 years, but with cheaper travel and better communications it has become more pressing over recent years. The internet reduces barriers to dealing with suppliers in different countries and massively reduces costs. Consolidation in many industries has also been a competitive trend, resulting in larger and better funded competitors. Both trends are continuing in many industries.
Better informed customers. High speed internet connections and low priced PCs have enabled every home and business in developed countries to be connected. When only a few years ago information was difficult to find, now Google produces highly relevant search results instantly. The increase in consumer comparison web sites puts a great deal of power in the hands of consumers. And where once content was generated by the marketing department, now it is generated by millions of bloggers, reviewers, contributors to Wikipedia and social media enthusiasts. There is no shortage of information for customers who want to know.

It’s not difficult to conclude that vendors will have to work harder to attract and retain loyal customers.

Yet customers have not changed. They still want value from their purchases, and they want their custom be valued.

Differentiation and value are still the keys to keeping customers happy. And understanding customers is the key to figuring out what they value.

Customer Intelligence is all about understanding customers; their history, their behaviour and their preferences. The information is already sitting in a million accounting, CRM or ERP systems and will yield a million different insights for the methodical marketer.

So Customer Intelligence will become the number 1 issue facing marketers over the next decade. Data-centric decision making will become vital as businesses of all sizes search for ways to improve products and services. Astonishingly, most companies already own the tools needed to create these marketing insights. All they have to do is to use them.

Uncertainty is a powerful marketing tool

2011-01-10T12:48:00.003Z

“Oh, I hate all this uncertainty!” says Rex in Toy Story 3 as the toys try to figure out what will happen to them when Andy goes to college.

Despite many of us professing to feel the same way (about uncertainty, not Andy going to college) we seem to be inexplicably drawn to uncertain situations. Take the meteoric success of eBay as an example.

eBay’s ability to bring together buyers and sellers is awesome, yet their auction system is infuriating. It’s completely addictive, whether buying or selling, and often encourages impulsive bids in an attempt to “win” an item. During the cold snap in December I watched a perfectly ordinary, inexpensive and pre-owned hat sell for over £30 plus postage. An identical new one could have been bought from the high street or an alternative eBay vendor for less than £10 including postage. It was cold, but even so …

Prize draws are another example. Have you ever found yourself dropping a business card into a bowl to win a bottle of Champagne? You know perfectly well that the company is building a mailing list and will fill your inbox with reminders about the excellence of their products and services, but still you can’t resist the chance to win. Have you ever won the Champagne? I haven’t, I think the same one comes out year after year…

What about the stock market? Do you know any shares? Do you follow their rise and fall, eagerly noting the gains, and trying not to get too despondent about the falls? Unit trusts are a much more sensible way to invest, but many cannot resist the idea of making a killing on the attractions of a share no one else has noticed.

How about premium bonds? The government’s own prize draw. You could win a million or, much more likely, you could “win” below market returns year after year. Yet the chance of winning £1m is too much for the 22 million people who hold premium bonds. And don't get me started on the lottery ...

January is traditionally Sale time, and don’t we all just love the sales? People have been known to queue overnight outside the store to get cut-price “bargains”. Interesting ….

It’s hard to conclude that we hate uncertainty. Or at least that we are not prepared to get caught up with it in order to profit in some way. It’s a lot easier to believe that we like uncertainty, despite protestations to the contrary.

Uncertainty has been used for years by marketers to give a sense of excitement or scarcity to otherwise ordinary promotions. When you stop and consider how much uncertainty adds a touch of excitement or fun to your life, it’s not difficult to see how or why this is such a potent idea.

How to proofread for zero defects

2011-01-05T16:28:00.002Z

Over the Christmas break I was asked about how to improve attention to detail and proofread work so that it is error-free. It’s an interesting question and one I have given much thought to over the years.

So, on something of a tangential note for the New Year, here are my tips for proofreading and zero defect copy:

Allow time between finishing the work and proofreading. Ideally this would be several days or at least overnight, but even an hour or two will help. Allowing the brain to focus on other things allows you to come back to your work with a more detached view.
Read the document several times to check for different things, eg whether it makes sense, whether it flows nicely, whether it is factually accurate, whether there are any misleading sentences, etc. Proofreading is not the same as reading through your work. We often mix up proofreading with these other activities, trying to do too many things in one reading. Separate them out to improve accuracy.
Use an eye-guide such as a ruler, your finger or the cursor to check each sentence slowly and methodically. Because we are capable of reading quickly, we do. But proofreading requires us to slow down and purposefully read each word. The physical act of moving a ruler or a finger helps.
Change the look of the document. Word processors enable us to very quickly change things such as the margins, font or pagination to get a different view of the text. Make the text larger to see if errors are easier to spot.
Use the spell checker. This is standard in most word processors but some software requires it to be switched on. Never release a document without spell checking it.
Read your work aloud. This has two benefits; firstly you “hear” errors more clearly aloud than when you are reading to yourself. Secondly, it slows down the process, also making errors easier to find.
Always go back and re-check your work after you make a change. Many mistakes slip through because of last-minute changes that alter the sense or structure of a sentence. If you make a change, carefully re-check that section.
Ask someone else to read your work. No book publisher would ever allow a book to be printed without several people carefully checking it. Someone else will more easily spot awkward sentences, sentences that make no sense, spellos, typos and other gremlins. Even better if you know someone who is a stickler for grammar and punctuation.
Concentrate on the proofreading process. Often this “last lap” is done without the attention it deserves. We allow our minds to wander as we work. Proofreading for zero defects is strenuous and requires 100% concentration.
Listen to your inner voice. Often we notice errors even though we don’t do anything about them. Grammatical errors or using the wrong word register with us on a subconscious level; listening to your inner voice at the checking stage often saves a red face later.
Have good references. Using a good dictionary, a good thesaurus and style guide all help in quickly checking the correct word or phrasing.
Create your own checklists. A checklist for things to check, eg grammar, style, readability, clarity, accuracy, completeness, spelling, typos, accuracy of numbers, etc. A checklist for favourite mistakes, eg words you frequently misspell or grammatical errors you make often. Every time a mistake creeps into your work, add it to the checklist so you improve next time.
Create your own style guide. Each industry has its own best practice. Create a style guide that includes common company names, abbreviations used in your industry, etc. Include good examples of other people’s work. Include favourite references such as dictionaries or web sites that are useful. This is another feedback loop that helps improve writing with every piece that is published.
Read your work in different ways. As authors of our work, we start at the beginning and lovingly read through every word. Readers don’t do that. They scan the title, intro and random paragraphs to see if it looks interesting. They miss bits out or skip to the part that is relevant to them. Simulate a reader’s behaviour by reading random sections, or parts you know might be read out of context. Do they make sense? Are they clear and unambiguous? Try reading backwards and focusing on each word rather than the sense.
Proofread from a printout; don’t rely on working from the screen. I know it’s not ecologically sound, but moving away from the computer to a quiet place makes a big difference. You can work slower and more thoughtfully.
Build proofreading time into your schedule. Nothing ruins good work like silly errors that should have been picked up long before they get to the reader. It is tempting to think they don’t matter, but readers subconsciously mistrust error-prone work.
Use a professional service. I have employed a copywriter to check my work for important work and it doesn’t have to be costly. If you have a large or important document, it could be worthwhile.

It’s a long list. And I’ll admit to having made each and every mistake going. Working in the software industry teaches accuracy, even if it doesn’t come easily and is an on-going struggle. But proofreading and producing zero-defect work is a process rather than a talent. Certainly some people have better attention to detail than others, but technology and checklists help.

Does anyone else have any tips or techniques to share? I’m sure there are more and I’d love to hear!

Happy Christmas and New Year

2010-12-24T11:01:00.001Z

It’s been a quiet month for Getting to Excellent. A week away in the beautiful land of Norway, marvelling at their vast acres of twinkling Christmas trees, has thrown my blogging schedule. And now it’s Christmas.

2010 has been an interesting year in all sorts of ways. As social media and email marketing has taken off, so it has become more important than ever to remember that marketing is all about people, and relationships. Technology is still just an enabler in building relationships, not a replacement for it.

But Christmas and New Year is really about getting in touch with friends and family. As well as business colleagues you haven’t seen for ages. At least there is one time in the year when we all make the effort to re-establish contact.

So as 2010 draws to a close, I’d like to wish all Getting to Excellent readers a very happy Christmas and New Year. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read the occasional post, and agreed or disagreed with what’s been written. I look forward to seeing you in 2011.

Promotional gifts that stir emotions

2010-12-15T12:39:00.002Z

Christmas time is a time for gifts - enormous amounts of money will get spent on presents for loved ones this Christmas.

But all year round marketers use thoughtful promotional items to enhance their marketing. A recent study by the Institute of Promotional Marketing measured people’s responses promotional gifts. They found a high emotional reaction to well-pitched promotional items: a reaction normally associated with pornographic images, in fact. This has been backed up by other studies. Whilst the pornographic bit grabs headlines, that's not really the point. The point is that they stir positive emotions in us.

This is interesting. In business, just like at children round a Christmas tree, we love getting gifts. And if it’s something useful/pretty/nicely packaged, we respond very positively to it. And we remember the positive feelings associated with the promotional gift.

This is extremely important for marketers. If you are going to give something away, make sure it gets the response you want from the person who receives it – whether that be loyalty, remembering your company or buying your product or service.

Recently I was on the receiving end of two promotions that were giving away £20. Both companies had worked out what it was worth to get my custom, and were offering £20.

In the first case, the offer was made in a letter that had clearly been sent to a large list of people. As it turned out their computer systems weren’t good enough to recognise when I responded, and I had to argue with them to get the money. No warm feelings there. But it still cost them £20.

In the second case the £20 came packaged as a beautifully branded plastic card. It was enclosed in a laminated card folder with “We appreciate you custom – here’s a gift” printed on it. It was beautifully produced and a joy to open. It will be a joy to spend too. This company perhaps spent a little more than £20 but gets wave after wave of warm feelings from their promotion.

In a world that is increasingly digital, it is a useful reminder that people still respond to physical gifts; whether they may be a voucher, certificate or package with a well-chosen item inside. We may be older than when we first hung up a stocking for Santa, but it seems our emotions are still the same.

Who is your hero?

2010-12-07T15:25:00.002Z

At the end of a long and busy day yesterday, Notting Hill was the perfect antidote. The film required little or no concentration, brought a surprising number of smiles to the face, and could be switched off part way through because the story is older than most hills round my way.

The film is all about Julia Roberts (aren’t all Julia Roberts’ films?). She plays a Julia-Roberts-type actress called Anna Scott who falls for ordinary Notting Hill bookshop owner William Thackeray. Will’s little sister loses no time in telling the famous Anna Scott just how much she loves her films, and how they have just “got to be best friends”. It’s as silly as the rest of the film but this no-holds-barred star worshipping made me think about few heroes we have these days.

I’ve been rereading David Ogilvy. He was a real advertising and direct marketing hero, described as a genius by many. Yet his genius followed a careful study of other great men’s work. Raymond Rubicam (also of advertising fame), Dr George Gallup (for whom he had worked) and Claude Hopkins were all credited by Ogilvy as major influences on him.

The world’s most successful investor, Warren Buffet, was a great student of Benjamin Graham’s work. He apparently has read his book many, many times over.

Whatever our field or specialisation, we all need heroes. We all need to look up to someone who has excelled and contributed lasting value.

"If we can see further it is because we stand on the rungs of a ladder built by those who came before us."

Where have all the salesmen gone?

2010-12-03T15:32:00.001Z

Have you noticed there are no salesmen anymore?

They have all morphed into business development professionals, account managers, or client service executives.

Yet we make sales; not developments, or accounts, or client services. We make sales and are pleased about it because our businesses depend on sales in order to survive.

David Ogilvy apparently had a sign on Ogilvy & Mather’s wall that said:

“We sell. Or else.”

It was there to remind every art director, every copywriter, every account manager and every print buyer that the purpose of their business was to help their clients sell more stuff. And as Ogilvy & Mather grew it helped to keep everyone grounded in this very simple philosophy; their business is to make money for their clients.

According to the very nice chap at Ogilvy’s the sign is still on the wall. Probably not the same sign, but I’m sure David Ogilvy would be pleased. He might have also renamed the Group Communications department the Sales Department, but I can’t be sure.

Make contact; make someone’s afternoon

2010-12-02T15:25:00.002Z

I’ve said it before, but making contact with someone seems to be pretty much always the right thing to do. Whether it’s a customer, a prospect, someone you’ve just had a row with, your boss, or an old friend. About the old exception I can think of is an old flame. That’s a bit trickier …

Yesterday I made contact with someone I have known for a long time, but who doesn’t know me. I’ve kind of admired them from afar. So afar that I wasn’t sure they were still alive, until recently. But he is very much still alive, doing great work, moving and shaking as much as ever before. How excellent is that?

And he replied. Said it made his afternoon. It made me wonder what kind of brilliant morning he'd had. The rich and famous, huh?

Working in difficult and stressful times can make us introverted and unwilling to make contact. But it’s so rewarding. And interesting. And it just might make someone’s afternoon.

The Customer Intelligence Journey

2010-12-01T18:38:00.001Z

When I started my career I couldn’t understand why EVERYONE didn’t want to be in marketing! To my way of thinking, it was the central activity for any company. Despite a long career in or close to the marketing function I still feel the same way.

Without marketing, no one knows about your product or service. Without marketing, no one knows how your product or service might help them. Without marketing you have no business.

Yet marketing has become more complex over time. The emergence of the internet and social media mean that would-be customers have many more options to familiarise with your product and service, as well as your competitors’ products and services. And alternatives to both. Today’s purchaser has the opportunity to be better informed on a wider variety of subjects than ever before.

Marketing people are slowly waking up to the fact that whilst the consumer is getting more clued up, so, perhaps, should they. They are starting to think about how much they know about their customers and prospects; and beginning to realise that it’s less than they thought.

It’s not that the information isn’t there. No. It’s just that the information is all over the place: in different systems, in different departments, in different formats. It hasn’t been entered correctly, or checked. It hasn’t been cared for in the way that someone might care for something that is REALLY VALUABLE!

The Customer Intelligence journey is that of starting to understand your customers and prospects by looking at the information you have, as well as the gaps: and starting to make some sense of it all.

It’s a journey because getting to know people is an on-going process. A process that requires smart use of today’s sophisticated technologies, and a process that requires a different way of thinking about what’s important in business. A process that starts to put customers at the centre of things.

A place I’ve always felt they belonged.

What’s your experience of understanding your customers and prospects from data within your company? Have you started on the Customer Intelligence journey? Are you considering it? Leave a comment and join the conversation!

Can you work effectively without caffeine?

2010-11-26T16:58:00.002Z

I saw an old friend today (yes – all my friends are now old) and as we ordered drinks he made a reference to my caffeine-free beverage. Whilst it’s true that orange juice doesn’t contain caffeine and his Coca Cola did, it wouldn’t be true to say I’m caffeine-free these days. Which surprises me as much as it surprises a few others.

The reason is simply that on many occasions during the day I feel I need a bit of an energy boost.

Caffeine came back into my life during a particularly stressful few months with long days and not quite enough sleep. Caffeine seemed a reasonable reaction, and it sort of stayed. And it makes me wonder whether other people have tried and failed to banish caffeine from their work-a-day lives.

In theory I would live without caffeine. But in theory I would get enough sleep and banish deadlines. In practice my working life is often stressful and doesn’t fit into the hours I would like to allocate to it.

So I’m wondering, in a blogging type way, what do others think? Have you tried to give up caffeine and quietly gone back to it? Can man (or woman) work effectively on peppermint tea alone? And if you never want me to mention caffeine ever again, that’s also a reasonable response …

Basic human drivers

2010-11-24T17:36:00.002Z

Good marketing and advertising reaches us at an emotional level, without us even realising. Or putting it a different way, it answers needs inside of us that we are not really aware of.

But what are our needs? What are the emotions that we respond to? I found a list of basic human drivers attributed to Dr Kevin Hogan, which I thought made rather interesting reading.

Do you agree or disagree with the list? Would you add or remove anything? Should marketing be considering such psychological factors? Comments, thoughts and debate all welcome.

Here’s the list: 16 basic human drivers

Sex/romance
Acquisition/saving
Bonding/connecting
Learning/curiosity
Eating
Defence/fight or flight
Nesting
Vengence
Status
Power
Loyalty
Order and organisation
Independence
Acceptance
Altruism
Physical activity

Marketing messages that delight

2010-11-19T13:41:00.002Z

Work can get pressured, can’t it? Deadlines, stuff running late, things not happening when you want them to happen. It’s all pretty normal in my world.

So when my Friday morning gets interrupted by an email that makes me laugh out loud, it’s a real delight.

Let me be plain, this was a sales email from a determined and focused young man. It did not contain pictures of cats with orange peel on their heads, nor did it try to amuse with jokes or overt humour.

It was just well researched, well targeted and well written. And whilst he had in no way bombarded me with emails he had kept in touch: quietly and appropriately. It was a delight. And I wrote and told him. I have no doubt he will go far.

The late and oh so great David Ogilvy would have approved. He made the point that you can’t bore people into buying your product, you can only interest them in buying it. His italics.

Maybe I’m unlucky, because so much of what hits my desk either in paper or by email is uninteresting, untargeted and uninspired. So when someone takes the trouble to stand out from the crowd, he has at least got my attention - in all the right ways.

Nice to end the week on a positive.

Keep on communicating

2010-11-18T14:54:00.002Z

I've taken up running recently, and am still pretty useless. I'm slow, get out of breath quickly and generally find the whole thing exhausting. Not unnaturally, this has the effect of me wanting to stay in with a nice bottle of wine and a good film. Like a normal person.

Except that once a week I get an email from the nice people at parkrun. Parkrun organise a Saturday morning 5k dash round the local park, or in my case the Thames. It is also exhausting, but I’ve got to know a few people and am getting used to the mud. So the combination of the little reminder, the social, and some small conscience that I should be keeping fit, means I actually turn up on a Saturday morning as often as I can.

It dawns on me that the urge NOT to go running is a great deal greater than the urge to run; by quite a long way. So this little communiqué is doing a good job in reminding me to get out there.

And so it is with all marketing communications. Out of sight is out of mind, particularly if it’s something we can put off. It absolutely helps that this email is something I have opted to receive, is relevant to my interests and contains relevant news, but shouldn’t all our marketing communications have the same attributes?

It’s a challenge for all companies to regularly communicate relevant and interesting material to our target market. And the parkrun email seems to me to be a good example.

Meanwhile I am carbohydrate loading ready for my run on Saturday. The only part of the whole process I find really rewarding …

How interactive is your marketing?

2010-11-17T13:07:00.002Z

I get an enormous number of sales emails. Many businesses think that my life would be better off with their product or service. That’s what I like to think. Otherwise why would they email me?

Oddly enough, I get the impression a lot them think THEIR lives would be better if I bought their product or service, not mine! Well - that’s what business is all about, isn’t it? Hmmm …

The trouble is, these emails get deleted faster than you can say “Recycle Bin”! They contain no benefit to me and so whatever it costs to write and send them is completely wasted. Many companies just play the numbers game, and there is some sense in that. They blast out huge quantities to any email address they can find, regardless of quality or suitability. Maybe enough reply to make the exercise worthwhile. I’m guessing they must, otherwise people wouldn’t do it. I’ll be honest, though, I think a lot of people would go out of their way to NEVER buy their wares.

But other companies get despondent with low conversion rates. With such a good product, backed by such good service, why aren’t people buying?

It may be they are sending carefully though-out marketing to the wrong people. Whilst it’s difficult to create a list of people waiting to buy your product as soon as it is produced - hats off to Apple, the only recent example I can think of - it is possible to have a list of people who are likely to be interested in your product or service. How? By designing marketing activities to learn something about prospective customers. In other words, instead of broadcasting to them, interacting with them. Asking questions and using the answers in marketing promotions.

Then maybe, over time, what is being sold will come closer into line with what people want to buy – by just listening.

Don't call me average

2010-11-11T16:00:00.002Z

I’m going to have a rant. I’ve just had yet another email from a local business man who assures me he is in the business of selling. But it’s the funniest looking selling I’ve ever seen.

He doesn’t know me, he doesn’t know my business, and he doesn’t know my priorities, yet he assumes he does. He writes about my knowledge and my concerns. The only trouble is he is absolutely wrong. This might be forgivable if we hadn’t already exchanged emails, and if he didn’t have ample opportunity to figure out a little bit about me.

In other words, he is treating me as average. Which I can assure anyone who is trying to sell to me, I am anything but average.

Broadcast marketing is suitable for broadcast media, like the cinema, the TV or radio. Even then there is a great deal that advertisers can do to target their message to their audience. People want to be entertained at the cinema, and Orange devised a brilliant set of advertisements that are funnier than many films. Cooker manufacturers sponsor foodie programs. Instead of being bored by the idea of a new kitchen appliance, I am inspired to recreate part of Tuscany for my own adoring family.

So why, oh why, do people use broadcast messages on personal platforms? Email is personal. It is addressed to me individually, in the middle of my busy day when I am worrying about other things. My business colleagues use email to talk to me, as do my family and friends. So why do people broadcast their offerings with no thought of the suitability for their audience?

Twitter is personal; I follow individuals, not homogeneous globs. So why are people writing direct messages to me as if I were a tiny fraction of a homogeneous glob? Maybe they too think I am average. A girl could get a complex …

There is a lovely (old) video clip of a famous (m)ad man having a rant about not knowing him, not knowing his company, not knowing his problems, etc etc Now what did the salesperson want to sell him? For the life me I can’t find the clip, otherwise I’d give you a link. But it’s oh, so relevant to anyone in the business of finding new customers. Because none of us are average.

What marketers can learn from road signs

2010-11-09T15:38:00.002Z

My route into work is currently plagued by road works. After a summer of pot holes, they are resurfacing the road just in time for this year’s snow and ice. So I get to notice all sorts of things as I wait for the cars in front of me to move.

The other day I noticed a little sign for a local village fete. Upton and Somewhere. Sometime in November. A Saturday I think. It was a beautifully printed coloured flyer lovingly enclosed in plastic and tied to a lamp post. Someone had thought carefully about how much traffic passed by, and strategically positioned the advertisement for maximum viewing.

The trouble is, that’s all they thought about.

It was printed on A4 in tiny type and placed close to ground level. Whilst I noticed the notice, I couldn’t possibly read it. Not without causing an accident and even more delays.

Just a few feet away was another sign. This was about 6 feet off the ground and maybe 2 or 3 foot square. It simply says:

Free Recovery Starts Here

Four words on an area many, many times larger than the village fete ad. And you know what? I must have driven past it maybe a dozen times before I noticed it.

This is a stark lesson for all of us involved in marketing. Whilst we lovingly craft our carefully worded emails and web pages about our complicated propositions, our customers are flying past with their minds half on something else entirely. Anyone who has ever been caught speeding knows they may well have seen the sign once or even twice, but didn’t really register what they saw.

So in marketing, we need to ensure our messages are clear; very clear. And repeated - many times. Rather than boring our prospects, we may still not have got their attention.

I counted the number of road signs that warned me to slow down as I approached a village on my route home. The signs appeared 3 or 4 times, and in a number of different ways (30 miles, flashing light bulb thing, 20 mile sign, 20 miles painted on the road). And people still drive too fast.

Of course road signs are there for safety, not to sell anything. But it is sobering to realise how large and flashing and enforceable they have to be before we even notice them. We can’t make our marketing legally enforceable (probably a good thing!) but we can make it stand out.

I’d like to be able to tell the people who are organising the village fete during the cold and windy November, but I have no idea where they are …

Be remarkable – or be invisible

2010-11-04T09:50:00.003Z

“Be remarkable, or be invisible.” Seth Godin of Purple Cow fame throws down the gauntlet to the ordinary everywhere. Being remarkable sounds great in theory, but in practice it involves risk.

I was chatting to the Over 60's World Champion of Bog Snorkelling last night, which in itself is pretty remarkable. I suppose he carried his share of risk by taking part, but not quite much risk as the bright sparks who thought up this unlikely sport. The story goes something like this …

Locals in the pub were chatting about how to attract more tourists to the pretty Welsh town of Llanwrtyd Wells. Having decided that consonants were not necessarily a selling point, someone had the great idea of digging a ditch in a field and hosting the Bog Snorkelling World Championship. I think they must have had a few pints ….

As remarkable (in every respect) as this sounds, the idea was and is a great success. Over 200 entrants take part in the annual event held every August bank holiday, and the sport has spread to Australia and Ireland. Contestants wear snorkels and flippers and are not allowed to swim. Wet suits are usually worn but I believe the current Over 60 World Champion ruined a beautiful white T-shirt during his attempt.

Tourism is not an easy business to promote. Yes, you have beautiful hills, sandy beaches and friendly locals, but so does Scotland, Spain and France. And at least two of those places has a lot less rain. It is easy to be ordinary, safe and ineffective.

No doubt a great many people scoffed at the idea of bog snorkelling. But by being remarkable, the people of Llanwrtyd Wells got themselves on the world map, got an entry in Wikipedia and the Over 60’s champion has been on TV in Brazil. None of those things would have happened if they had carried on promoting beaches. Or consonants. Or the fact that the pubs close on a Sunday.

Customer-Centric Marketing

2010-11-01T13:01:00.003Z

“Boost your Assets!” ran the promotional pitch at my local La Senza store. “£15 off gel bras!”

The offer was accompanied by a picture of an attractive girl who clearly had no qualms about showing off her assets, in all their boosted glory.

The promotion is fun, appropriate and eye-catching to both male and female shoppers. The blokes probably don’t know (or care) what a gel bra is, whilst the girls know exactly what it is, what it does, and why they want one. £15 off is an attractive sweetener to the whole deal, and enough to entice you into the shop. Looks like great benefits-led marketing to me.

So what’s with the undies-led theme to the blog today? Well, I seem to have been surrounded by small businesses promoting at their customers, instead of for their customers.

My local hairdresser ran an offer that said "buy two heat styling products and get one free". The age of the products indicated these had not been the run-away success they had hoped for. By way of an after-thought the author had written "BOGOF!" I wondered if this was by way of suggestion to their customers ...

So seeing a customer-centric promotion made my day. Understanding what customers really, really want, and finding ways to fulfil that need is what marketing is all about. Must look up when La Senza’s offer finishes …

Slow and steady progress to your goal

2010-10-21T13:26:00.004+01:00

The lessons that business can learn from sport are well documented. I’ve written before about sports psychology in business, in particular about goal setting. At the time of my previous post I had only just started running. I was bright-eyed with my new running shoes and a great deal of enthusiasm.

My running shoes are now rather muddy and annoyingly prone to giving me blisters. And I am decidedly frustrated at my slow-coach style. I had to pull out of the track exercise last night because my legs just wouldn’t respond when my brain said accelerate. There was no more go in them. No matter how positively I thought about it. It’s a wry lesson.

In business, as sport, there is no substitute for slow and steady progress with an eye held firmly on the target. In business, as in sport, progress is often painfully slow.

Confucius is credited with saying:

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”

I repeat that advice to myself almost constantly as I run (completely ignorant of Confucius and his musings): just run, don’t stop, keep running. As you can tell I’m not what you might call a natural at this running lark, but after 6 months of plugging away at it I have just completed my half marathon. When I started I couldn’t run a mile without medical assistance.

So when I read Gretchen Rubin’s blog post quoting Vincent Van Gogh, it got me thinking:

“If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.”

It is beginning to dawn on me just how difficult it is to make real progress with my running. Difficulties in business can be equally frustrating. Yet keeping on going, continuing to make small steps may be the answer to both. Maybe understanding my limitations with running will help me understand my business better too.

I wouldn’t have believed 6 months ago that I could run a half marathon, and now I don’t believe I can run one in anything like a decent time. But if I continue to train, maybe I won’t be quite as hopeless in another 6 months. Maybe.

Blog Action Day: Water

2010-10-15T09:38:00.003+01:00

I live in the country. I’m a lucky girl. I’m so lucky that we have a bore hole to pump water from the ground to the house. It’s what you do in the country, apparently. It’s wonderfully clean, fresh water. And none of those pesky water bills. Kind of ideal really.

Now before you get all carried away with the romance of taking it in turns to go pump the water by hand from the bore hole, I have to say that we do have electricity in the country. So the electric pump does all the hard work of getting the water up from the ground. I’m put to no more trouble than turning on the tap. Or shower. Or flushing the loo. We have all mod cons in the country.

Apart from when our local electricity supplier gets a problem and cuts us off, which has happened a fair few times. I don’t know whether that’s to do with being in the country or not, I just know it’s annoying. No lights. No fridge. No dinner. And, wait for it, no water. No water!!!! Arrgghhh!

So no water means no shower, no water to cook with, no water to drink, no water to flush the toilet. No water to clean clothes. No water to do anything with. The last time the bore hole pump packed in, we had to get water from the neighbour in plastic containers. That was sort of interesting. And heavy. And not too easy to deal with.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because it’s Blog Action Day when bloggers from around the world discuss one topic, and this year it is water.

So why am I telling you about my bore hole? Because when my bore hole pump stops working, and I have no water, I’m put in the same position as nearly 1 billion people across the world who do not have access to clean water. Whereas I know my water supply will be restored within a few hours, women living in Africa often have to walk miles with heavy containers to get the family’s water. Day after day, week after week, year after year.

It makes you think, doesn’t it?

My inconvenience of not having water is shocking to my friends. We take clean water for granted, attaching almost no value to it. If you are out of champers, orange juice and beer, you would be embarrassed to only be able to offer a guest a glass of water to drink. Yet in too many places in the world, the value of clean drinking water is immeasurable.

Read more about the problem of water and if nothing else, be thankful for the clean water you have.

Dig deep for Ovarian Cancer Action

2010-10-14T10:26:00.002+01:00

Many of my long suffering readers already know that I completed my first half marathon last Sunday. Indeed many of them have been encouraged to support Ovarian Cancer Action - the charity I was running for. They have already heard me moan about how unbelievably difficult it was to run 13.1 miles.

I guess completing a half marathon is an achievement, even if it did take me a full 3 hours to do it. I only marginally beat the pantomime horse, who seemed to have walked most of the distance. But who cares? I ran most of the distance (yes, I know, I am the slowest runner ever … ) and learnt more about myself than I really wanted to know.

First of all I learnt that not being fully prepared isn’t the greatest idea in the world. I hadn’t done enough training, not lost enough weight and hadn’t really understood what running 13 miles meant. My iPod was overestimating my practice runs, so I was lulled into a false sense of fitness security – thinking I had been covering longer distances than I had. You live and learn. But the psychological trauma of realising I had only run 9 miles when my iPod said 10 miles, and my legs said 24 miles was not something my head was ready for. And the humiliation of needing to be talked up that endless hill by a 14 year old boy on a bicycle is something I will train long and hard to resist next time.

I also learnt something about digging deep. Alliterations always have a jolly ring to them, but when you are living them they look a little different. Digging deep last Sunday meant remembering why I was running (because someone else had to endure the pain of chemotherapy) and why it was important (because I want future generations to have a better chance). Digging deep also meant keeping on going, when all I wanted to do was stop. Digging deep meant trying to think of something other than what might be happening under my socks.

I also learnt that it is worthwhile to stick my neck out to try and achieve something worthwhile. I’ve now got a great deal more respect for people who regularly run, cycle, walk and abseil down buildings for causes they believe are important. Without those people we wouldn’t know half what we know about cancer, how the heart or head works.

So thank you everyone who supported me, and Ovarian Cancer Action. My Just Giving page is http://www.justgiving.com/Caroline-Eveleigh0 if you would like to add to the bellow of voices who want a higher chance of survival for the lovely women in their lives who are unlucky enough to get ovarian cancer.

Making the right decisions when it all goes pear shaped

2010-10-08T11:28:00.002+01:00

Last night I was at a Question Time-style session organised by The Marketing Society. It was lively, engaging, funny, frustrating and highly entertaining. There were some smart cookies in the audience as well as on the panel. One question that particularly interested me was: “What leadership qualities are needed to repair a damaged brand?”

Brands get damaged for all sorts of reasons – but mostly because something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. You’ve not delivered on your brand promise. BP, Toyota, Royal Mail, BA have all recently had operational problems that have tarnished their marketing image. So what to do? Is it a question of spending more on marketing, PR, sponsorship? Or as is being suggested for BP, changing your name in several countries?

Or is it a question of communicating?

When things go wrong at home, communication is normally at the heart of the problem. And so it is with brands.

When it all goes pear shaped, communicating clearly, honestly and openly about what’s happened is usually the best route. Food companies have become well-rehearsed with this. From time to time something gets into the product that shouldn’t. The press love it, and the marketing people have hysterics. But we all goof up from time to time. And explaining what happened, what you are going to do to put it right, how you will reduce the risk of it happening again – all go a long way to reassuring your customers. That, and saying sorry.

Nothing as simple as this came back as an answer to the questioner’s insightful probe. What do you think? How do great leaders repair damage to their valuable brands?

Feed the Addiction

2010-10-07T11:42:00.002+01:00

I admit to having caught the tail end of The Apprentice last night. This hammed-up but fascinating series continues to annoy and delight in equal measure.

Making and selling sausages at a profit appears to have been the first task, which was lost by the boys team (I told you it was delightful). What was most fascinating though, was the team leader’s approach to management. “Standing around giving orders” seems to have been his management style – an approach most of us in business would find amusing if it wasn’t mixed with so much aggression and swearing.

The Apprentices do play up for the cameras, as do the Board, but beneath all the play acting are some serious business conundrums. How do people work when they are under pressure and haven’t had enough sleep (for whatever reason)? Do they rise to the challenge and help their colleagues or do they turn into bullying slave drivers? No wonder large companies wine and dine would be employees before deciding whether to send a job offer – they want to know what’s beneath the gloss and bravado. They want to see what kind of person they are really brining into the fold.

It’s no surprise Alan Sugar has indicated that underperforming bullies have no role in any of his companies, whatever the stresses and strains. His job was made easier by the so-called Sales Director’s inability to sell sausages. I hope his decision would have been the same if he had sold several pigs-worth of the things.

If you didn't see it, you can watch here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00v7sg9

The Cloud’s Silver Lining

2010-10-01T14:54:00.002+01:00

Cloud computing offers significant benefits to cash strapped businesses that need to Get Things Done. There are no high upfront costs of buying servers and software, rather you on pay as you go for what you need. The service is ready and waiting for your requirement, like a Labrador puppy – always eager for walkies.

But the silver lining doesn’t stop there.

Whilst cost and availability are pretty helpful (OK, more than just helpful in difficult economic times) one big benefit of cloud computing is its ability to join up geographically separate locations. If I want my Edinburgh office to see the same set of performance indicators as my Southampton office, I need a way for them both to be able to see the same data - and I need it to be secure. For smaller companies that don’t have their networks linked, this isn’t so easy.

Putting your application in the cloud takes care of all the communications issues in one monthly payment. No support costs. No need to hire someone to take care of the infrastructure. No necessity to deal with multiple suppliers: just a simple internet connection.

Whether a company is spread across town, across the country, or all over Europe – this is a big benefit. And the mechanics of designing the application are no different from any other business app.

So whilst cost is often trumpeted as the big benefit of cloud computing, I suggest there are others that are probably more important. After all, what price efficient communication?

The economic sense in segmenting your market

2010-09-29T18:26:00.002+01:00

There are many different ways to categorize marketing, but one very simple way is this:

Undifferentiated
Differentiated
Concentrated

Undifferentiated marketing is where everyone in your target market is treated the same. TV advertising reaches everyone – those who want clean, shiny floors and those who have no interest in clean shiny floors.

Differentiated marketing segments the target market into groups with common interests. With some knowledge of these common interests, you can then tailor your message more precisely. So you don’t sell cleaning products to teenagers, for example. Or recruitment services to corner shops. That sort of thing.

Concentrated marketing is where marketing messages are aimed at a small, precise market. For example, a company might choose to market to artisan cheese makers in Wigan or museum curators outside of the capital. I practice, I'm not absolutely sure how this differs from differentiated marketing.

This idea was first put forward by Philip Kotler, and sounds eminently sensible. In fact much of marketing theory has been built on the idea of differentiated marketing, or segmenting the market.

When resources are limited (which they always are) choices have to be made. Figuring out which part of the market is most likely to respond to offers of what you sell makes good economic sense. Whatever label you put on it.

Do you love or hate your marketing systems?

2010-09-16T14:28:00.002+01:00

Software systems - you either love ‘em, or you hate ‘em. Well, actually, for the most part we love them (and need them) and hate them (when they don’t do what we want).

Sales and marketing has become too complex to manage without systems: those that you love and those that you hate. Sales people are well known for being rather wary of CRM systems – for good and bad reasons. Marketing people would like to manage without, but can’t.

But whether it’s a manual process or a software system, systems of all sorts are vital for efficient and effective sales and marketing.

It’s not always easy to tell whether a system is effective or not. We have all come to rely on email, but the time saved in being able to send a message with hardly a thought has meant we have so many more messages to read. So the time saved is now spent sorting and figuring out what is important and what is not.

It’s the same with many other systems. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems can hold an enormous amount of data, but can you see the information you need? Can you identify whether time and effort is being spent with the right customers with the right results? Not always ....

So it’s worth stepping back from time to time and thinking about what you and your senior team really need to know about your marketing. Are your systems alerting you quickly enough to problems? Are they providing sufficient visibility into what’s happening? And if they don’t, what can you do about it? Another report? Collecting different data? Or pulling together information that’s already there so you can see the situation more clearly?

Marketing is all about difference – demonstrating to your customers why you are different, and providing a better solution to their problem or opportunity. Be different, and create systems that enable you to do that better than any of your competitors.

4 P’s: Is the marketing mix out-dated?

2010-09-15T16:06:00.001+01:00

If you have heard about marketing, you have heard of the 4 P’s: product, price, place and promotion. Sometimes a fifth P is added: people.

The 4 P’s have become a standard model for thinking about marketing. But what if they are wrong? Or at least, what if they are out-dated?

Marketing in today’s digital economy is a complex and confusing business. Hugely successful companies such as Dell have numerous Twitter accounts whilst the rest of us try to figure out what the platform is all about. Whilst marketing is becoming more important, it also has to work in a more fragmented and increasingly noisy marketplace. Gone are the days when advertising in the relevant print publication sorted out the year’s marketing.

Maybe today’s marketers need better tools than just to figure out what they are selling, at what price, how they will get it to customers, and how to promote it.

So if the 4 P’s are out-dated, what should take their place? For service oriented businesses, SIVA is a better variation: Solution, Information, Value and Access. These equate exactly with Product, Promotion, Price and Place, but put the emphasis on how the customer sees the transaction, rather than how a company views its marketing.

But what about strategy? What about the competition? What about positioning? Target market? Measurement?

These are all elements that can make a huge difference to the success of marketing initiatives. The alliteration isn’t so neat, but the components are necessary for successful marketing.

Whilst models can be helpful, they are only models. And if the model is out-dated, or plain wrong, they might hinder more than they help. Is it time for a 21st century model for marketing?

Make your Goals Realistic

2010-09-10T14:59:00.002+01:00

As regular readers of Getting to Excellent already know, I think setting goals is tremendously important. Goals improve performance by focusing the mind on a particular outcome, help to remove distractions, and provide motivation to achieve something. So as a tool to manage ourselves, and other people, they are kind of handy.

But they are not simple little beasts - far from it.

A goal that is too easy encourages complacency, and might even result in something not getting done at all, or taking too long to do.

A goal that is too difficult becomes demotivating because you don’t/can’t achieve it, and either blame yourself for poor performance, or whoever encouraged you to try for the goal. Either way you come away dispirited and sure that “setting goals doesn’t work”.

What’s wrong in both cases is that not enough thought and data went into setting the goal. After all, what you are aiming for is the best performance possible from yourself or someone else. Not a sorry wreck at the end of the exercise.

Figuring out current performance, comparing performance of others of similar ability, and figuring out what a realistic improvement could be, are all ingredients to a realistic goal. The answer you get might not be the nice round number you first thought of, but it is likely to produce better results. Yes, it will have taken a little longer to arrive at, but it will also encourage a higher level of commitment in whoever is doing the work.

I’m forever guilty of setting unrealistic goals with my running, whereas a little more thought might help motivate me, rather than demotivate me. The same goes for sales targets, marketing objectives, delivering projects, passing exams etc. etc. A touch more realism, and a touch less optimism, might produce much better results in all areas. True of all things in life really.

Fake Guinness Viral Advertisement

2010-09-09T12:47:00.002+01:00

Did you see the fake Guinness viral ad? The one with the naked lady doing goodness alone knows what underneath a bottle of Guinness? If you haven’t, it’s too late, because Diageo have made YouTube remove it from their site. I’m not surprised.

Although it was free advertising for Guinness, it wasn’t at all consistent with the Guinness brand values. Whilst 50% of the population (that’s not the female half) I'm sure thought it hilarious, its overtly sexy and sexist content seemed more suited to a Castlemain 4X Aussie commercial - with all its sophisticated humour. The Guinness advertising has always been wholesome, intelligent and stylish. Consistently wholesome, intelligent and stylish: which is why Guinness is a valuable brand that Diageo rightly want to protect.

Great marketing is a good deal more than a fun idea and a camcorder – although at times it doesn’t look that way. That’s the real beauty in something as complex as a world-beating brand – when you get to see the finished result it looks like a 16 year old could have done it.

But they didn’t.

Marketing results matter

2010-09-08T15:52:00.001+01:00

Marketing results matter - good results and bad results - and are well worth studying. And here's why.

If you don’t pay attention to the results of your marketing, you are not listening to your prospective customers. They tell you, through their responses (positive, negative or indifferent), what is relevant to them and what is not. They tell you what is addressing their problems, and what is not. They tell you what they need, and what they don’t need. Powerful stuff.

History shows that companies who don’t listen to their market get results that match their attentiveness.

So pay attention to your marketing results – good, bad and indifferent.

How to ensure good intentions are followed through

2010-09-06T16:35:00.003+01:00

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Most of our good intentions – whether carried through or not – don’t lead anywhere close to hell. They lead to emails never written, untidy desks or turning up late to appointments: minor things that are nothing more than an irritation to us and our colleagues. And then, for some reason, we get thoroughly fed up our unhelpful behaviour and resolve to change. But like Toad in Wind of the Willows our good intentions are genuine but short lived. We simply fail to follow up on answering all our emails/being punctual/tidy or whatever.

Change is a great deal more difficult to affect than we realise. Habits get ingrained and are not easy to change. That’s why so many New Year resolutions are made and religiously kept through the first couple of weeks of January then abandoned without another thought.

So how can we ensure that good intentions get followed through? In my eternal battles to conquer tidiness and clear my inbox, here are six of the best in making lasting change:

Tackle one habit at a time. A list of resolutions isn’t really helpful to anything other than our ego. Start with the single habit that will make the most difference.
Write down your goal and progress. When I was living without caffeine I had a spreadsheet that I logged each and every day I didn’t drink caffeine. It sounds a little over the top, but unless you have a reminder mechanism, you are unlikely to follow though.
Tell other people what you are doing and enlist their help. Not just on day one, but a month or two into your change. Most of us don’t like to lose face in front of people we respect and so will work twice as hard to keep resolutions we’ve made public.
Recognise it takes time to change. My experiments indicate that it takes at least 100 days to get a new habit established, and even then you can’t relax. You have to keep reminding yourself why the habit is important, and put the effort in to keep it going.
Know why you are doing it. Any worthwhile change takes effort, so it’s important to understand how life will be better once you’ve established a new habit. Talk to other people to find out how they work – the more sure you are of yourself, the more likely you are to stick with it.
Make a change that’s right for you. If you like to work late into the night, and start work late in the morning, you are unlikely to be successful in changing into an early riser. Figure out what you are trying to achieve, and then work within your preferences and abilities.

Human beings seem to be designed to strive and change things for the better. We are never quite satisfied with what we have, or how we work. But setting the same resolutions time after time is a soul destroying exercise – better to put more effort into what’s really important. Leave the long list of “wouldn’t it be nice if” resolutions until you've got the important ones licked.

Raise energy levels by doing things differently

2010-08-27T10:29:00.002+01:00

Habits are important – I would be the first person to admit that – but they can also limit us. As a good friend is fond of reminding me:

“If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.”

Breaking out of entrenched thinking, and re-evaluating entrenched habits can have an invigorating effect. And so I have found this week. I’ve not been doing what I’ve always done; I’ve been doing things a bit differently. It’s August and I’ve been letting my hair down. Green tea is back fuelling my days (oh, so good). A glass of wine has been allowed with dinner (don’t tell the neighbours). And a little more energy has been going into my work.

It may simply be enthusiasm for what I’m doing: SharePoint is an exciting new technology and I have some interesting projects bubbling away. Or it may be that occasionally things need shaking up. Rearranging the furniture in my mind, so to speak.

This has all been fuelled by a radical suggestion from Leo Babauta that great habits are formed when we enjoy what we are doing. It doesn’t sound radical – in fact it sounds stupidly obvious. But I think it has more depth than first appears.

So I continue to go with the flow and re-examine long held views about “what I do” and “who I am”. On a number of levels this has been enormous fun, and energising.

A little bit of what you fancy does you good

2010-08-20T15:46:00.002+01:00

My Grandmother was fond of pointing out that “a little bit of what you fancy does you good.” Sadly, the world I live in has so much of what I fancy, what really does me good is having a little bit less of just about everything. My Grandmother’s world was very different.

I suppose I have got used to the idea that in order to improve I need to be disciplined, and cut out harmful things. Moderation has never really been my style. My 100-day caffeine challenge was a prime example. It took three attempts to live without caffeine, but after a recent upset in my schedule caffeine is now back in my routine. Life throws all sorts of unexpectedly wobblies, and being disciplined doesn’t always work if you need to stay awake.

But then this week I read a blog post that kind of shattered my view of the world. The talented and highly readable Leo Babauta of Zen Habits suggested that the best habits are the ones we enjoy. On first reading this I scoffed: Of course! It’s easy to keep to habits we enjoy. That takes no effort at all! What a silly idea.

But then I let it sink in a little more. By finding the pleasure in what we do, and what we need to do, we are more likely to do what needs to be done. Simple. But effective? Maybe ...

He is not the only writer to have suggested this type of approach. The scarily prolific Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project has all sorts of good advice such as “enjoy the process” and “spend out”.

Is there benefit in working on pleasurable habits? Or in making stuff-that-needs-to-be-done more fun? Common sense tells me “Yes”, but it seems so radical.

So I’m enjoying a few cups of green tea each day, and not feeling bad about it. The occasional glass of wine with dinner has also been known this week. My yogic self doesn’t approve, but for the moment I’m going with the flow and letting the idea grow roots.

Habits are so important, but habitually get too little thought. Aristotle advised “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit”. Health, wealth and sanity depend on what we do day in and day out. Finding a way to enjoy what we eat, how we work, and how we relate to one another seems like a basic building block.

Maybe the wise words in my Grandmother’s advice were “a little bit” rather than “what you fancy”. Enjoying life and work through moderation? A radical idea!

Improve your chances of success

2010-08-17T14:10:00.002+01:00

Performance management on a large and small scale is of constant fascination to me. So whenever I come across an article or example of someone else’s struggle, it is invariably of interest.

I came across a treat this morning, courtesy of Twitter. Charlie Brooker has written the most delicious piece in the Guardian about the art of writing, and more specifically, the benefits of having a deadline. It is so worth a read, even if you have no interest in the art of stringing sentences together.

Brooker sees great benefit in deadlines. He doesn’t say whether he actively likes or dislikes them, but he acknowledges their ability to focus the mind and Get Things Done; in particular his 800 word article.

Assuming that all of us have a basic ability to do whatever job it is that we have been putting off, deadlines/goals/objectives are of tremendous help. They narrow down the range of options we have with what to do with our time. When the deadline is still many months, weeks or days away, our options are wide open. We can clear down our email, work on interesting projects, or whatever. As the deadline approaches, we realise time is pressing and we need to get started. The closer the deadline, the harder we work.

I cannot run unless I have a race to aim for. The only thing that gets me out of the house is the prospect of humiliation in not going the distance. Posting blog articles is no different. I have a goal of posting three times a week. I don’t always manage it, but I rarely post less than twice a week.

Of course there are counter arguments to goals and deadlines - the quality versus quantity argument being the most obvious. Yes, I can blog three times a week, but during a busy week would I produce better quality by only writing two posts? Maybe …. it often occurs to me.

But what goals and deadlines do, is to get something delivered. As Woody Allen says, 80% of success is showing up. I’m fond of that quotation, it gives me half a chance.

Crowdsourcing

2010-08-12T10:56:00.003+01:00

After admitting that crowdsourcing was a new concept for me, I now have my head firmly stuck in the book of the same name by Jeff Howe.

It doesn’t take much reading to recognise a phenomenon that has been growing for some time. Development of the Linux operating system is perhaps the best known of the many-hands-make-light-work idea, but there are many more. Software development. Logo design. Computer time. It seems there is a vast underworld of worker bees doing stuff outside of the normal business model, just for the sheer joy of being involved.

What comes across most compellingly when you check out each of the examples is that these people are all doing something they love. Programming. Designing. Writing. Whatever. They don’t see it as work, but as a privilege to be involved in.

It seems to me that there are two really important ideas that come out of this “oh, my goodness, what a brilliant idea crowdsourcing is” thing:

1. When people do something they love, and are good at, they produce excellent results
2. When like-minded people get together to do something they love, and are good at, they produce amazingly excellent results

Unsurprisingly, others have read the book and are clambering onto the crowdsourcing bandwagon. Large companies (Dell, Google, and I’m sure many others) are taking advantage of something that clearly has benefit to their bottom line if they can get it right.

But you don’t have to be Dell or Google to make use of this idea. The idea of managed collaboration was highlighted in a comment to a post just a few days ago. Whether the people you are collaborating with are in the next cubicle, the next town, or several routers away on another continent hardly matters. What matters is bringing people together to create something more extraordinary than anyone could produce on their own. Technology is as beautiful as nature sometimes.

As an aside, if you are reading this and have an opinion or two on anything you have read, leave a comment. Whilst my merry band of readers might not quite fit the definition of a crowd, they do massively enhance and expand the value to everyone by adding, challenging and commenting.

Progress and the Unreasonable Man

2010-08-10T15:24:00.004+01:00

I was at Kew Gardens at the weekend enjoying a particularly sunny London day. When it came to lunchtime a debate broke out over whether the restaurant prices were reasonable. Some felt they were too high - far too high. I erred on the side of considering the special case for this particular venue.

Two quotes came to mind:

George Bernard Shaw suggested that “the reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Whilst Ella Wheeler Wilcox pleaded “Don’t look for the flaws as you go through life; and even when you find them, it is wise and kind to be somewhat blind, and look for the virtue behind them.”

Who is right? I don’t know. Both, I suspect.

I didn’t want my sunny day spoilt with carping over restaurant prices, yet if everyone felt the same way motorway service stations would still be horrific places to eat (which these days they are not always).

Maybe what is most important is doing something about it. If prices are genuinely unreasonable then having a moan over lunch will achieve little, whereas writing to the CEO of the catering company, telling the local newspaper, blogging about it and telling all your friends might. Or setting up a competitive eatery half a mile away.

So perhaps progress depends on the men of action, however reasonable or unreasonable they may be. However, when one discovers that Oliver Peyton has recently been awarded the catering contract for Kew, and that all the restaurants and self-service cafes will be refurbished within a year; prices seem a little more understandable. And the food a little more palatable.

Working through consensus

2010-08-05T10:59:00.003+01:00

Collaboration is very much on my mind at the moment, so it’s perhaps not surprising that a new book caught my eye. "Smart Swarm" by Peter Miller suggests that the business world can learn from the behaviour of bees, ants and other animals. These groups communicate and make decisions by consensus, rather than follow-the-leader.

It isn’t the only book of its kind: Wikinomics by Don Tapscott considers mass collaboration across the internet.

Just a couple of weeks ago I was introduced to the concept of crowd sourcing – a concept which has appeared on my radar several times since – but was previously unknown to me.

All of these ideas highlight what we already know – that we work better together than we do alone.

The idea isn’t without its detractors: some believe that intelligent, trained specialists will always make better decisions than a large, generalist group. That may well be true, but there appears to be an ever increasing number of examples, from an increasing number of authors, suggesting that overall groups fare better than individuals at making good decisions.

All of which has big implications for the workplace. Wikis, discussion forums, team collaboration software are ways to facilitate communication, discussion and better work. Twitter is the latest in a long line of innovative ways of digitally getting people together. Ebay, Facebook and LinkedIn also spring to mind.

Of course great work doesn’t have to be the product of a sizeable group, evidence suggests that many successful endeavours are built on partnerships. Crick and Watson, of DNA fame, are a good example. Bill Hewlett and David Packard of Hewlett-Packard are another famous duo. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. I could go on, but you get the idea.

All of which flies in the face of the traditional CEO as leader and saviour of an organisation.

Are times a changing? Is software genuinely helping us work together more effectively? Could we prevent disasters such as the financial meltdown of 2008/09 by listening to the group, rather than the few? The little crowd of recently published books on the subject suggest there is something in this concept, but only time, and consensus, will tell.

Meetings, bloody meetings

2010-08-03T17:22:00.004+01:00

I noticed the heading of blog post a few days ago: "10 Ways to Get out of Meetings". I didn’t read it, but suspect it was popular. Too many meetings are less productive than they should be.

Instead of trying to avoid meetings, though, how about figuring out how to make meetings more useful, and more effective? After all, two or three or four heads are always better than one. It’s just that it takes a little effort to get a meeting to work well. When creativity and problem solving start to work in a co-operative way, meetings are worth their weight in gold.

So, with reference to John Cleese’s excellent film “Meetings Bloody Meetings” here are 10 ways to get more out of meetings:

Prepare in advance (Is the meeting necessary? Who should attend? What is already known? Are sensitive issues being discussed that merit face to face discussion, etc, etc)
Set clear meeting objectives
Have an agreed agenda
Make sure everyone is invited who needs to be there, and that they have the opportunity to give their input during the meeting
Give people time to prepare in advance (with sight of relevant information)
Ensure everyone is working from the same documentation (up to date agenda, budgets, documents, etc)
Keep to time (start, finish, take individual items off-line if they are taking too much time)
Record decisions and key points in the minutes
Follow-up after the meeting
Use a collaboration tool to keep everything together rather than relying on email (it provides structure and reduces the risk of missing things): Dates, times, attendees, objectives, the agenda, additional documents, minutes

It isn’t rocket science, but it is almost always more work than we first reckon. If that means having fewer, but better, meetings that would likely suit everyone. Including whoever is trying to get things done.

My very old copy of John Cleese’s book “How to Run a Meeting” always brings a smile to my face. Cleese’s eyes are raised skywards in sympathy in frustration at yet another unnecessary, unproductive and unbelievably long meeting.

Collaboration and knowledge-sharing is much more of a framework than it was in the 1970’s where the emphasis was on controlling meetings. Yet the dangers of rambling, unfocused discussion is as great today as it was then. So Cleese’s 1976 book stays on my bookshelf, alongside my 2010 collaboration software.

What makes marketing successful?

2010-07-29T15:07:00.002+01:00

Having ruminated on whether business should employ marketers at all, it seems only fair to consider the people who are responsible for building great brands, and great profits. What makes a great marketer, and what do they do to enable their businesses to succeed and prosper?

A couple of marketing leaders, interviewed for Marketing Week, talk about what it takes to succeed with marketing:

“Being ruthlessly focused on the consumer and making money at the end of it” – Tim Hawley, Global Marketing Director, Bacardi

“World-class marketing is nearly always based on insight, whether it be from structured research, knowledge within the department or visits to the field” – Phil Chapman, Group Marketing Director, Kerry Foods. He goes on to say “To be a great marketer, you have to be comfortable with both the art and the science of your job. Marketing is about being logical and structured, but also allowing yourself to be completely creative.”

“You have to remind people, and institutionalise the fact, that they must connect directly and regularly with consumers” – Helen Lewis, Consumer Insight and Marketing Strategy Director, Unilever

Marketing Week has this week published an article “The steps you must take to become a marketing leader” and stresses the importance of creating a vision:

“Build belief in a clear vision of market opportunity based on a deep
understanding of potential customer needs.”

Marketing’s role in a business is driven by the people who work in the business. Employing people who are analytical and market-savvy doesn’t happen by accident; such people are in demand. It has to start with a belief that a market-led strategy will succeed. Then the people, the data, and the vision can be assembled.

Of course the marketing people quoted here are working for some of the world’s most market-led companies, with budgets to match. But I doubt budget is the defining factor – I suggest it is attitude of mind. Anyone can (and I have) get out there and interview people about what they think: it costs nothing. Anyone can analyse their own customer data to inform their marketing strategy. Where there is a will, there is always a way.

Does business need marketing?

2010-07-28T12:13:00.003+01:00

Nothing happens in business until someone sells something.

Oh, how true. At least, nothing profitable happens in business until someone sells something. Yet most businesses have so many wheels turning within wheels that people can be happily forget that businesses exist to make a profit for their shareholders. Without sales there is no revenue, and without revenue there are no profits. No business can (or should) run for very long without profit.

So businesses need people to sell their products or services. That much is clear.
But does business need marketing? What additional value does marketing bring to the profits party?

To answer that, you first have to understand what marketing is. And in true marketing style, prepare to get anything but a straight answer.

“Marketing is the battle to dominate a market niche in prospects’ minds” say Ries and Trout.

“Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably” according to the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

You would be forgiven for thinking that marketers run the business, so central is their role. And maybe they should, but they don’t. Far from it. More financiers than marketers run successful companies.

Yet it isn’t the financiers who are tasked with understanding what customers want. They are not figuring out why customers make one buying choice rather than another. It is marketers.

In theory, at least, marketing plays a central role in making sure businesses are producing the right goods and services, pricing them so the business is profitable, and ensuring customers know about them, and are able to buy them (4P’s: Product, Place, Price and Promotion).

Some of these decisions are rightly taken with the input of many aspects of the company: finance, operations, and marketing. Yet without recognising the market-led nature of these decisions, businesses may not give marketing the priority or resource necessary to help the business make the best decisions.

Marketing’s all-encompassing nature is both a strength and weakness in its role within business.

Of course there are some businesses with no need for marketing. These include:

Businesses with little or no competition
Businesses whose potential customers know who they are, what they do and why they should buy
Businesses in industries that do not change

Not your business? Not mine, neither ...

What’s the point of loyalty points?

2010-07-23T15:26:00.003+01:00

For reasons that are too complex to explain, I found myself being driven through the middle of Slough yesterday evening. A rare treat, you would have to agree. Slough boasts one of the largest Tescos I have ever seen. I clearly don’t get out enough because these Tesco Extra stores are a now a feature of many large towns and cities.

However, it wasn’t just the gleamingly large two-floor-ish-ness of this Tesco store that caught my eye. It was a rather aggressive message emblazoned across the front of the store. No, not Slough graffiti: this had been put there by management.

“Asda vouchers accepted here” it read (or words to that effect). It was alongside an equally pointed message: “Morrison vouchers accepted here”.

My eyebrows were raised with interest, whilst the other occupants of the car quietly wondered at my sanity at such interest in a supermarket.

What is interesting about the tactic, apart from its bare-faced cheek, is that neither Asda nor Morrisons have a loyalty scheme: both compete purely on price.

Tesco, who are offering double loyalty points this summer, have a three-pronged competitive spear, compared to Asda and Morrison’s single spear:

They are keenly priced on many lines
Customers are encouraged to join the loyalty scheme and then earn additional money-off rewards
Customers get further targeted offers for more savings from the loyalty scheme.

Oh, and of course, Tesco are also accepting vouchers issued by rival supermarkets. Neat. They are proving themselves a thoughtful and resourceful opponent.

Which makes me wonder why more companies don’t look at the value of marketing data?

Marketing data can be generated on purpose, eg through loyalty schemes or other devices, or may just be sitting on a file server unloved and unused. Marketing data often has a relatively low cost and a surprisingly high value – when it’s used properly.

Interesting place, Slough.

Do I miss caffeine? Not at all!

2010-07-21T13:27:00.002+01:00

I had a lovely comment yesterday from a reader who was interested in someone else’s journey to live without caffeine. They were wondering how I was doing. Was I still caffeine free or had those green teas edged their way back in to my life?

I can report that I am 100% caffeine free and have been for about 10 months. I might occasionally accept a chocolate if it was offered to me, but I never drink coffee or tea. After I finished the London 10k I had a bottle of iced tea thrust into my hands and I admit I made an exception. I was too tired, too polite, and too much in need of a cold drink to refuse. But it’s the first caffeinated drink I’ve had since I don’t know when. And I have no intention of making caffeine part of my diet again.

But you know the strangest part? I don’t miss it at all. Not a bit. I’m sure I would enjoy a cup of green tea if I drank it, but the cravings have completely gone and I just don’t think about it anymore. When asked if I would like a cup of tea or coffee I now automatically answer that I’d like a peppermint or herb tea. I don’t have to think about it: that’s what I drink.

It’s a little like going vegetarian (or fishetarian in my case). It’s difficult at first, but once it has become a habit and you start to enjoy the benefits, it just stops being an issue.

I know there are many people who are thinking about, or have started to give up caffeine. I guess everyone has their own individual reasons. But for me, I’m glad I did it. I find I am calmer for living without caffeine (I never get that jittery sensation I used to have) and if I do get a headache, at least I know it’s not due to overdosing on caffeine. And I think I get fewer headaches overall. I also sleep better for not drinking caffeine.

This isn’t necessarily a recommendation to go caffeine-free. Some people happily drink tea and coffee and suffer no ill effects. I know some people who can have a cup of coffee in the evening and have no concerns about their sleep. But I wasn’t one of them. And the reading I did around the subject convinced me that it was a drug I could live without. So I do. Happily.

Why email isn’t the answer

2010-07-20T11:10:00.003+01:00

Email has revolutionised our lives. No question. The days of typing memos and sending them round to the next office in a large brown envelope have long gone. (I realise the Facebook generation have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about. You will just have to take it on trust that that’s what happened in the “old days”.)

So we’ve come a long way. In the blink of an eye my email can be in Edinburgh or Bangalore. I can even attach a document or a spreadsheet. Communication is easier than it has ever been.

But when it comes to organising information, email has a lot to answer for.

Yes, we can get our message across quickly. Yes, we can circulate documents to any number of people very quickly. But what we can’t do is order and prioritise information.

We can’t ensure everyone has remembered to read the agenda before the meeting. We don’t always send out everything for the meeting all together. And sometimes things have to be amended before the meeting.

So all you can be sure of is that your message has gone to the top of someone’s inbox - until the next message arrives. Then the next. And the next. Until your message is, well, somewhere in the pile of emails. Then it’s anyone’s guess what gets retrieved before that crucial meeting.

What’s needed is a way of organising information so everything is together:

The meeting objectives
The agenda
The latest version of documents relating to the meeting
Attendees
Date, time and location of the meeting
Minutes after the meeting

And indeed to make sure that other documents such as budgets or project plans are easily to hand.

Whilst email has revolutionised the world of work, there is still further to go.

Collaboration software complements email by adding organisation and order. It enables everything to be in one place for everyone to access. So there is one version of the objectives and agenda. And, crucially, everyone is working on the latest copy of the proposal/budget/project plan (delete as appropriate).

So there is no last minute scrabbling around wondering where the meeting is being held, or whether anyone circulated an agenda. Because it’s all there together to be reviewed when you’re ready. Cool.

8 Habits for Success

2010-07-15T17:52:00.004+01:00

Like many people I have phases when I don’t eat well or exercise as much as I should. I’ve been making more of any effort lately as I have started running. It’s been sort of horrifying just how unfit and overweight I’ve become. So leaves are being turned, and habits examined.

Here is my wish-list for habits I think will encourage success:

Eat well. Or as Michael Pollan of the New York Times puts it: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Excellent advice and his essay Unhappy Meals is well worth a read. Eating well promotes health and increases energy.
Exercise. Make flexibility, strength and cardio exercises a part of your (and my) routine.
Take less drugs. Caffeine and alcohol are the business person's drugs of choice. Neither have any nutitional value and both can have a detrimental affect on performance, depending on the degree to which they are indulged. Drinking alcohol during the day went out with the '80's, and drinking on weekday evenings has (pretty much) gone out of my routine too. A difficult one as so much socialising is done "over a drink".
Personal reflection. This must be one of the most powerful, yet under-utilised habits. Reflect at the start and end of every day on what needs doing, what has gone well or not so well, and how things could be changed for the better.
Sleep enough. Not getting enough sleep is miserable, and does not create the right mood for excellent work. There are lots of articles floating around (the internet) about rising early and catching worms, but we all know how much sleep we need to perform well.
Get rid of clutter. Clearing clutter has a positive effect on mood and organisation. I have far too many books and need to send a load to the charity shop. Oh, so difficult! But it will be so much better when it’s done.
Surround yourself with bright people. Mix with people who will challenge your ideas, and encourage better performance.
Be a lifelong learner. Reading, attending courses, and writing all help to keep the mind stimulated and introduce new ideas.

So what’s on your list? What have I missed? Do tell …

The gentle art of working together

2010-07-14T15:02:00.005+01:00

People can be prickly sometimes, can’t they? We easily get upset when left off the email distribution list for one of our projects, or when someone doesn’t invite us to a meeting. Rightly so – work is an important part of everyone’s lives.

As work becomes more complex, and pressures build to do more, we need better ways to collaborate and share. Email gets a message from one machine to another, but does nothing to help organise and prioritise. The internet has done a great deal to put more at our finger tips, but sometimes the result is overwhelming – so much information, so much to do, and so little organisation.

Within Anatec we use Microsoft SharePoint to share information and coordinate goals. That’s not a great surprise as we are Microsoft Certified Partners. But I think everyone’s needs concerning collaboration are pretty similar. Here is my top ten list of what’s important to get the best out of other people:

Be clear. Collaboration sites need to have a good hierarchical structure so information is easy to find. Colour coding by department can help orient people in a large site.
Make it attractive. Just because it’s work doesn’t mean to say that the look and feel of your collaboration site isn’t important. The better it looks, the more likely it will be to be used. Have a house style so that fonts and headline sizes are used consistently: it’s a lot easier on the eye.
Consistency of purpose. Make objectives consistent and visible and ensure company communications reflect current priorities.
Time to think. Make key documents or discussions available to everyone involved. The more time people have to mull over a problem, the better their input will be.
No surprises. Ensure key dates are visible well ahead of time. A shared company calendar with dates for exhibitions, people’s holidays, key presentations, etc. helps to keep people focused on the major events during the month.
Make it inspirational. Whatever your line of work there are people who will live better lives as a result of what you do. Share the inspiration with your co-workers though words or pictures.
Keep content up-to-date. Intranets are a great place to share things, but they need to be kept up-to-date and they need to keep people’s attention. If they always see the same old stuff, pretty soon they will stop reading. If there is a key report you can share though your intranet, then do. People will get familiar with the structure and content by using it more.
Make it interesting. Is there a relevant RSS feed you could include on your home page? Can you use appropriate and attractive pictures to help get your message across? It all makes work more enjoyable, and collaboration more effective.
Don’t make it optional. Whenever a new system is introduced, there is always resistance. Don’t be tempted to keep emailing documents, just because it’s easier. Put the document on your collaboration site and then email the link. Keep on eye on what people are accessing to make sure its being used.
Get everyone involved. Collaboration is exactly that – people working together to create something more than one person could do alone. Ensure there is a structure to the way you work, then use it at every opportunity - in meetings, as a way of discussing things, even as internal presentations.

Collaboration through intranets is not new, but options are opening up for smaller companies to use tools that the big boys have enjoyed for years.

“Do or do not …. there is no try”

2010-07-12T09:57:00.002+01:00

I’ve never seen Star Wars, but Yoda’s advice rang true on Sunday morning as I waited to start the London 10K. As part of a crowd of 25,000 runners it was an amazing, if tough, experience. But I finished, and I didn’t walk a single one of those 10,000 metres, and I was very happy to have achieved a personal goal: particularly as I had been daft enough to sprain my ankle just a couple of months before.

Although I achieved it, and although I did train (but not nearly enough), the thing that made the biggest difference on Sunday morning was the voice in my head as I slogged through London’s streets. This was the voice that told me to keep my body upright, the voice that reminded me to look ahead and not to slouch, the voice that told me to lengthen my stride.

So whilst Yoda’s emphatic advice is inspirational, getting expert help to achieve my goal was what made the biggest difference. I learnt how to lace my shoes, which socks to wear and to what not to carry when I run. And it all helped enormously.

So thank you Tom, for your kind and patient help. Thank you mystery man with an inspirational quote to remind me that achieving goals is important. And thank you London for being such a wonderful city to run in. I’ll be there next year – a little fitter, a little slimmer and a little more determined!

Respect my differences (and similarities) if you want to sell to me

2010-07-07T08:51:00.001+01:00

Are you an individual? Of course you are. You are as unique as I am. None of us are average.

Or so we would like to think. None of us like to think we behave in ways that are anything but specific to us and our unique situation.

That may be true, up to a point. Yet the dazzling array of differences, and similarities, we display in our purchasing habits somehow have to be managed by those responsible for marketing (selling) to us. A business with over 200,000 customers cannot possibly craft 200,000 messages to all her unique customers. Nor could she use “technology” with any degree of success to somehow create messages based on characteristics held in a database. The resulting mess is likely to be highly comic.

So in order to manage complexity, and the similarities that we invariably display (I'm not nearly as unique as I'd like to think) we have to group customers and prospects together. Well, we have to if we have more than a handful of high-spending customers.

So in addition to being able to inform our business and marketing strategies, segmentation also allows us to manage complexity in a way that would not otherwise be possible.

It may not be the newest marketing kid on the block, it may not have the originality of Twitter or augmented reality, but it has the distinct advantage that it works. And if more of our marketing cousins in the financial sector had thought to segment their customer base by how profitable their customers were, maybe we wouldn’t have had the financial meltdown we had.

PS A comment on yesterday’s post suggested that we should be marketing to customers individually, and providing what they individually want. Further, that segmentation was an old-marketers notion that stood in the way of progress.

If only that were true.

Despite many companies holding a great deal of information about us, and our buying habits, they still insist on treating us as one group. Sending me samples of baby food (thanks Ocado!) or offering a free all expenses paid trip to Cardiff to someone who lives in Cardiff (not sure he will be entering that prize draw). Or sending me vouchers for steak, chicken and hamburgers when it has been at least 15 years since I have eaten any meat (forgivable if it were not from the company that benefits from my monthly grocery shop). I could go on, and no doubt will, but I hope I have made the point.

Segmentation is more economic, effective and polite than treating everyone as proud parents/thrilled at the possibility of shopping in Cardiff/eating dead animals (delete as appropriate).

Market segmentation

2010-07-06T13:23:00.005+01:00

A market segment is a group with shared needs. Sounds simple enough and I suppose it is.

Mothers-to-be have shared needs (pre-natal classes, books of children’s names).
Students have shared needs (low-cost food, inexpensive accommodation, text books and places to socialise with other students).
Business people have shared needs (cases for carrying laptop computers, well-cut suits, smart phones).

You get the idea.

But of course a market segment could be anything, depending on your business and your customers.

It could be frequent-purchasers. It could be infrequent-but-profitable purchasers. It could be people-who-influence the buying decision, but are not responsible for the purchase. It could be anything that makes sense to your business, your data, and your customers.

In other words, not only must you have data to support your idea of, say, a group who “rarely buys but spends a lot and is very profitable”. But you must also have a meaningful way of communicating with them that makes sense to them, and is profitable for your business.

So segmentation is both a science and an art:

Science in the analysis of the data.
Art in the sense-making and marketing know-how to make use of the insights.
Science in turning ideas into profit.

So what are the benefits of market segmentation?

Many companies that use a data-driven approach to marketing say that it has changed their business-thinking and profitability completely. Benefits include:

Developing promotions to appeal to a specific market segment, therefore increasing response rates, keeping costs down, and showing customers that their needs and wants are important to you. (The last point often gets overlooked in these days of email marketing.)
Developing products and services to appeal to a specific market segment.
Informing competitive positioning relative to different market segments.
Informing business and marketing strategies.

After all, customers buy from us as individuals (as consumers or business people). So the more we are able to treat them as individuals, whatever our business, the more successful we are likely to be.

Segmentation is one of the cornerstones of data-driven marketing, and one of the most profitable to get right.

How well do you know your customers?

2010-07-02T10:33:00.002+01:00

I guess the answer to that question will depend on what type of business you are in. If, like me, you are in a service business, the answer might be “pretty well, thank you!”

But if the question were phrased slightly differently: “What characteristics do you look for in new customers?” that might not be so easy to answer. Attracting new customers isn’t always straightforward. And all our customers are different, aren’t they? Well yes, and no.

Yes, in that we are all unique. No, in that we share characteristics that make us more or less likely to purchase from any given business. If we can understand those common characteristics then we are better placed to attract and keep profitable customers.

Most companies have a lot of data about their customers, but very little insight into what these common characteristics are. Yet with a bit of analysis these shared characteristics can be uncovered. It’s called data mining, data analysis, analytics, or segmentation depending on who you talk to. But it’s a potentially profitable part of any new business campaign.

What is a data warehouse? And do you need one?

2010-06-29T17:51:00.003+01:00

The language of business intelligence can be confusing. Cubes, data warehouses, OLAP, and data mining are all terms that are not exactly self-explanatory. One of the most often used terms in business intelligence is the Data Warehouse, which conjures up images of vast spaces filled with digits. As if 5’s and 8’s all had their own bin in a super-efficient warehouse.

So what is a data warehouse, and how is it different from other databases?

Just about every company has at least one transactional database, and most have many. They store accounts data, contacts, stock or project data. Transactional databases are the ones we use to run our businesses:

Those that get updated on an hourly, daily or weekly basis
The systems (whether we recognise them as databases or not) that we could not do without.

But not every company has a data warehouse. They are often considered the domain of very large companies, even though that is not necessarily true.

A data warehouse holds historical information. It’s where the data goes after it’s been used in a transactional database system.

As an example, a hotel reservation system is used to let customers know whether there is availability for their preferred dates, and to produce an invoice for hotel services used during their stay. A data warehouse for the same hotel might hold this information summarised by day, month and season so as to better understand customer booking behaviour.

Transactional systems hold detailed information such as the alarm call time for the guest, whereas a data warehouse summarises several years’ data to get a more accurate picture of how promotions or seasonality affect bookings.

In addition, data warehouses can bring data together from several different transactional systems to gain new insights into a particular problem. In the hotel example, costing information might be added to find out which customers are most profitable.

So whether or not you need a data warehouse depends on what your business priorities are. Whether, for example, you want to:

Better understand customer behaviour
Understand which customer segments are most profitable
Send more appropriate marketing communications to your customers

There are many, many more uses for data warehouses, but understanding customers and profitability better is a good start if you haven’t started planning your data warehouse.

Five Criteria for Greatness

2010-06-25T11:15:00.004+01:00

This is not my list, but paraphrased from someone else’s blog post. She had read about James Dewey Watson, who discovered the structure of DNA with Francis Crick. Ruby's original post appeared on Zen Habits and is well worth a read: Why Discovering Your Obsession Can Lead to Your Greatness.

The list apparently came from a speech Watson made on why he deserved to discover the structure of DNA.

Go for broke - if you are going to do something important, do it.
Have a way to get the answer – if you haven’t a clue, you’re going to waste time.
Be obsessive – think about it night and day.
Be part of a team – have a partner to bounce ideas off and support you.
Talk to your opponents – share your ideas, cooperate and talk to others.
Never be the brightest person in the room; so you can always learn something.

I was so impressed with the list that I keep a copy in my notebook. I hope you get something useful from it too.

Why marketing is difficult to measure

2010-06-23T17:23:00.002+01:00

Despite its central importance, marketing's value to the business can be difficult to quantify. There are 4 main reasons for this:

Marketing is about perception. It's about positioning products and services within a space in people’s minds. This can only be measured over a period of time and in relation to alternatives. Damage done to a brand today may not translate into lost sales until the day after tomorrow.

Marketing is multi-channel. People often purchase after exposure to a variety of different messages. All, some, or none may have contributed to the final decision; the advertiser does not (always) know. Hence the most often-repeated saying in marketing: ”half my advertising is wasted, but I don’t know which half”.

Marketing is creative. It is populated by ideas-people, visual-thinkers and wordsmiths. Not by statisticians or accountants. Yet numbers are the language of business and some argue that marketing would have more influence if they were more willing to quantify.

Marketing is part of the whole. The marketing led company has products and services designed with customers in mind, serviced by customer-care departments and created or provided by customer-focused people. When considering sales or profitability, it is impossible to split out the influence of the product, the after-sales service, the marketing, sales effort or the skills of Human Resources to find good people.

However, moving towards a data-driven culture in marketing has big benefits, not least of which is making decisions based on fact rather than guess-work. As innovative technologies become more powerful and more affordable for marketers, measures become more relevant. And excuses less so.

How involving is your marketing?

2010-06-21T15:49:00.002+01:00

“Tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I’ll remember, involve me and I’ll understand.”

Marketing is often thought of as the way of getting a message out to a particular audience; a way of broadcasting our message in the hope that someone hears and finds it interesting enough to buy. Television, radio or cinema advertising is an example – advertisers expect their audience to sit, listen and absorb their message. They hope and expect that next time consumers need their product or service they will remember the advertisement and buy.

Data handling has now made it possible to interact with potential purchases to a great degree than has ever been possible before. Database marketing, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are all good examples of involving people in a company’s brand, product or service.

A simpler, but no less effective device is the survey or questionnaire as a way of involving customers or prospects. Instead of guessing what people want, you ask about likes and dislikes. Some companies even listen to the answers.

At its simplest level, involvement marketing is getting customers to DO something, rather than passively listen to a marketing message. Involvement includes signing up for a loyalty card, answering a survey, joining a group on Facebook or LinkedIn, attending a webinar or requesting a sample. All these things indicate that the person not only knows about your company, but they care enough about what you are saying or selling to join in the conversation.

Involvement marketing is all about creating a mutually agreed communication link – where both parties understand the ground rules, and both parties benefit. It sounds simple, but it takes thought and technology to get right. But it’s more cost-effective than broadcasting, and therefore ultimately a better deal for everyone.

What do you think? Get involved and leave a comment with your examples of the best and worst of involvement marketing.

Can you buy loyalty?

2010-06-18T11:13:00.001+01:00

Before I was able to drive I remember my Dad getting given glassware from petrol stations. Drinking glasses and glass bowls were carefully brought home after paying for a tankful of petrol. We had quite a collection – I suspect many people did. I can’t remember who gave away the glasses – was it Esso? Perhaps. Would my Dad have filled up there anyway? Probably. I guess the petrol station was on his way home.

So did the glassware buy loyalty? If it did, it wasn’t much.

Before glassware there were Green Shield Stamps: little machines spewing out yards of green stamps that were pasted into books and exchanged for a variety of “gifts”. Green Shield Stamps were popular, and a type of currency in its heyday – but expensive for retailers to administer. They purchased stamps, gave them away, but did they get loyalty in return? That was the idea, but as retailer after retailer stopped the scheme, I’m guessing they concluded it was a cost to their business, rather than an asset.

Today we have loyalty cards such as Tesco’s Clubcard and the Nectar card. At least with these schemes the retailer gets something in exchange – data about what you have purchased. But do they get loyalty? Look into many people’s wallets and they probably have “loyalty” cards for as many supermarkets as they regularly shop in. Would they change where they shop because of their loyalty cards? I doubt it, and from the small survey I’ve done, others agree: they shop where is most convenient. All retailers have good food, good prices, and reasonable customer service.

Loyalty schemes are expensive to administer, but according to Tesco at least – well worth the effort in terms of additional sales. I guess if the schemes were to be renamed “cards to encourage you to buy things you wouldn’t otherwise buy” they would be viewed differently by customers. But that’s exactly what they are: ways of incentivising customers to part with their personal details in exchange for money off promotions targeted to their profile.

What makes these schemes successful is the company’s ability to analyse and make sense of the data – understanding what customers like and what they don’t like. Without that the supermarkets may as well be giving away wine glasses.

Tesco – driving growth through better data

2010-06-11T11:37:00.002+01:00

This week Sir Terry Leahy of Tesco announced that he would be stepping down next March from the role of CEO. It prompted a number of articles in the press about Leahy’s achievements in building Tesco into the UK’s largest supermarket chain, and global brand (almost 30% of its revenue comes from overseas sales).

Leahy was responsible for launching the Tesco Clubcard, the loyalty scheme which uses data gathered at the tills and has been much copied in retail. By making good use of the enormous volume of purchasing information stored every day, Tesco are able to target promotions more accurately. In a world where direct mail often gets less than a 1% response, Tesco get up to a 95% take up of their offers. How? By carefully tailoring their offers to known customer preferences.

One of Tesco’s rivals recently enclosed a free sample when my shopping was delivered a month or so ago. It was for a new brand of baby food. How kind I mused, as I threw it away. No babies in my household. There are many, many more examples where that came from. Not only are such promotions wasteful but they also underline that the company isn’t interested in what their customers like. They are only interested in what they might get back from the promotion.

So whilst the meteoric rise of Tesco is not without its detractors, they have done a great deal to demonstrate how to use data to increase sales. Food for thought, huh?

Build your brand

2010-06-09T15:23:00.002+01:00

Just lately I’ve been thinking a lot about brands. You might think that brands are only important to large companies, the Coca Cola and Pepsi’s of the world. I think brands are important to all of us.

A brand is the idea in someone’s head about what the product or service will deliver. That idea will have been formed by perhaps trying the product or service, seeing it advertised, or by passing by the store twice a day. Talking to others about their experiences will also change our views about what a company sells. In today’s socially connected world, views expressed on Twitter, on blogs or online forums also contribute to views formed about a product or service.

The more consistent all those messages are, the stronger the brand.

So if every time you stay with a certain hotel chain their service is always impeccable, the room clean and attractive, the staff friendly and their advertising consistent with their service, your estimation of them will go up. If you hear colleagues talk of their good experiences, it will strengthen your view that you might want to stay with that hotel chain again. The larger the number of consistently good experiences you have, the more likely you are to forgive the occasional mistake, or to ignore a bad review.

A poor brand, on the other hand will have mixed feedback. Trains that run late, product lines that fail, poor feedback from customers, etc.

So whether you are Coca Cola or Joe’s Printing Works, consistency in delivery and promotion is important in building up a good image in your customers’ minds. Strong brands, large or small, come with valuable benefits according to Drayton Bird:

You can sell products or services at a higher margin
You get more repeat purchases
Higher sales volumes means economies of scale which increase competitiveness
People are more likely to forgive mistakes.

That’s a pretty strong list. And when we think of such mighty brands as Hilton Hotels, Heinz, Coca Cola, Perrier, IBM and Microsoft, it rings true. It is also a list that would be of value to any business. Which is why it's worth thinking about building your brand - whoever you are.

The vision thing

2010-06-08T10:14:00.001+01:00

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather
wood, divide the work and give orders.

Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

Antoine de Saint Exupery

Why measuring matters

2010-06-02T09:04:00.002+01:00

What we choose to measure makes a big difference to what we finally achieve. In business it is financial results: sales revenue, profitability or share price. In sport it is goals scored, distance run or races won. But these “lag indicators” can only measure the success of past actions, they cannot predict future success. Measuring the things that contribute to the final result is what keeps you on course, and guides future success.

Before I sprained my ankle I was training to run a half marathon. Running 13 or so miles seems like a very big challenge to me, even though it would be easy for many people. Although I cannot control the final outcome (success/failure/jubilation/humiliation) I can control the “lead indicators” along the way such as number of kilos lost, overall distance run in a week, number of times I train in a week or attending running club. None of these things on their own will guarantee me success in the half marathon, but week by week they will increase my chances – even with the occasional injury.

The sales pipeline is one business equivalent. The number of people who enquire about your product or service as a result of marketing campaigns might be the lead indicator. Or the number of visitors to your web site who view more than 4 pages. Or the number of sales conversations you have in a week. Or whatever. Taken in isolation none of these things guarantee healthy financial results, but they are excellent progress indicators.

So measuring the right things really does matter - whether you want to run a marathon, or enjoy financial success. The key is choosing the right measures, and being consistent in monitoring progress over time. And if some of your measures turn out to be not as instructive as you anticipated then change them; they are there as helpers on the journey and not the final destination.

Ten reasons time is so precious

2010-06-01T09:18:00.002+01:00

You can make more money, but you can’t make more time.
You can store money to be used later, but time stops for no man (a bit like the tide).
You can borrow money to achieve an important goal, but you can’t beg, steal or borrow more time.
We all work with the same 24 hours, no ifs or buts and no way to inherit a tidy pile more.
Most resources can be bought, borrowed, sold or lent. Time cannot be traded, and so is the scarcest of all resources.
You can’t swap time for all the tea in China. Unless you have a plan. In which case time can be used to earn a lot of the tea in China, a bigger house or a faster car.
Writing a cheque won’t allow you to spend a sunny afternoon in the park with those you love, but using some of your precious time will.
No one ever laid on their death bed wishing they had spent more time in the office. But I suspect a few wished they had spent their time more wisely, doing the things that were important to them.
Time flies like the wind, and fruit flies like bananas.
Once a day is done, you cannot get it back again, whether it was well spent or frittered away unthinkingly. But tomorrow, said Scarlet, is another day.

Where is Business Intelligence Heading?

2010-05-28T12:10:00.001+01:00

It seems that organisations are increasingly falling into one of two camps:

Those with a strong information-based culture of decision making
Those working to achieve an information-based culture

I guess there might be a third category of businesses who believe they are managing just fine as they are, but they are certainly swimming against the tide.

If Microsoft is correct in their predictions of the way the market is heading, BI and Performance Management will be in the hands of those who need the information before too long. In the same way that Excel democratized number crunching, BI tools are climbing down from their lofty positions above ordinary folk doing ordinary jobs making ordinary decisions. Ordinary folk want and need better information to make their not-so-ordinary decisions that make or break businesses every day.

I suspect information transparency and performance management will become the big issues of the decade within medium and large sized companies. And what the big boys are doing today, smaller businesses will be doing tomorrow. So the information-based culture is something that will affect everyone at some point.

Social media tools like wikis, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are the public and high profile tip of the iceberg. Under the surface there are many businesses working hard to ensure information flow gets better and more productive. Costs are coming down, and tools are getting better. It won’t be long before those without the right information to do their jobs well will be wanting to know why …

Designing a better mouse-trap

2010-05-26T09:45:00.002+01:00

The Chief Executive Officer of Dyson was being interviewed on the radio as I drove to work this morning. As the weather gets warmer, thoughts turn to cooling and Dyson have invented a new desk fan. It looks cool as well as keeping you cool, and is on sale in my local Comet at about £200. That’s a lot to pay for a desk fan. It does, however, look good and work well. Like their vacuum cleaners and hand dryers.

Before you think this is a blogomercial for Dyson, it struck me how brave it was to design a better fan. Or a better vacuum cleaner come to that. Fans worked perfectly well before Dyson came along, as did vacuum cleaners. In both instances they have only made marginal improvements to the original. But those improvements, plus eye-catching design, have been enough to capture a significant market share in their field. It’s impressive, bold and extremely difficult to do.

I have a friend who has developed a better way of fastening a bra. Another problem that you might be forgiven for thinking doesn’t need solving – but bra fastenings have pretty much stayed the same for an awfully long time.

People who dare to do things better, more stylishly and more efficiently are not given an easy ride. But thank heavens they are a determined lot. Without them life would be more difficult or less interesting in all sorts of ways.

So here's to the inventers across the land who are making our lives better, whilst making their own lives more difficult.

How Things Change

2010-05-24T15:20:00.002+01:00

Over the weekend I was in Yorkshire celebrating my parents’ Golden Wedding Anniversary. It was a time for celebration and reflection– quietly remembering absent friends and delighting in the company of those who could be there with us. 50 years sure is a long time for two people to be together. There was much reminiscing, as well as astonishment that 50 years could have passed so quickly.

I was struck how business changes in the same way – very slowly day by day, but quickly decade by decade. And of course it can quite often take time to adjust to the new order. The internet is a great example. During a few short years it has been transformed from "slow and static" to "instant and interactive". The explosion in social media, video and the speed with which information now proliferates is a bit bewildering. But of course there were many signs along the way, none of it happened instantly.

I guess the trick is to look forward, rather than backwards. Enjoying each other’s company while we can, so there are no regrets when we cannot. And reacting to trends as they start, and not when it’s too late. Like many things in life, it is a great deal easier to say than to do, but every effort helps: whether it is a family party, or a new Twitter account.