Discover ‘flow’ to build scale 

Nov 28, 2019 | Leadership, Lean, Operations

The notion of ‘flow,’ or as we call it, ‘In the zone,’ is a psychological state first articulated by psychologist Mihaly Csikenmihali, published outside academic circles in his 1990 book ‘Flow: the psychology of optimal experience’.

From time to time, most of us experience ‘flow’ in our lives.

Those rare times when deeply immersed in a task, when energy and concentration are together forming a focus and delivering a rolling output, that makes the time seem to compress and fly. The level and quality of output when in such a state is surprising to us, even  astonishing. 

I wonder if there is a collective noun that describes such a state to a group?. It would apply when a group of individuals are so closely working as one, but using their individual skills simultaneously, and cumulatively, such that the collective output is greater than the sum of its parts.

How does a group go about achieving this state of flow?

It takes engagement, focus, alignment around a common purpose, and preparation. The output when it happens, is amazing.

Einstein must have been in an extended state of flow during his 1905 ‘miracle year,’ when he wrote four papers that together formed much of the foundation of modern physics.

He did  not achieve this by himself, although he was not known outside a small group of friends. He was working full time in the Swiss  patents office in Bern, these seminal papers were his ‘side-gig.’ He was not able to access the supposedly best minds in the fields he was thinking about, as he could not get a job in a university, so he walked and discussed with his few close friends and colleagues, and significantly his first wife, herself a substantial mathematician.

There must have been some degree of collective ‘intellectual flow’ present in that time, the state where collective and collaborative activity delivers compounding outcomes, leading to those seminal papers.  

Every enterprise should strive for ‘Flow’ in their activities. The flow of processes, such that everything happens predictably, smoothly, to a predetermined cadence, building on itself, delivering a compounding outcome.

This applies as much to innovation activity, and strategy development and implementation,  as it does to the mundane processes that we need to have happen every day to keep the doors open.

Can you see any sign of ‘flow’ in your enterprise?

 

Header credit: Lucidpanther via Flikr

The new Revenue Generation paradigm

Nov 25, 2019 | Customers, Marketing

When was the last time you made a sale without the customer first doing a google search on their problem, and alternative solutions, before you knew they existed?

A while ago I bet!

Customers no longer need you, the information you have, and  the products you sell, simply because they can easily find many alternatives.

The traditional sales funnel, starting with awareness, moving through familiarity, to intent and action, is dead. The model of a marketing function producing ideas and collateral, which is thrown over the organisational silo wall to sales to use for everything from the cold call to take the order is also dead.

In its place is a flywheel with has customers at its centre.

This simply means you have to know your customers intimately, not just their demographics, their circumstances and behavioural patterns. This in turn implies a great deal of work has been done in defining who is your ideal customer, and being able to reach out to them at a time when they are in ‘buying mode’, with a solution to the problem they are facing, that you can solve better, in some way, than anyone else.

There are no magic bullets to any of this, it takes hard work, experimentation, and persistence, and most importantly, the assistance of those customers you do know well,  to tell you what you need to do to keep them. When you enhance your levels of service, then they will be your sales force, spreading the word, one by one.

The Buyers journey is also an old fashioned cliché, usually represented by a linear process. These days it is no such thing, it is more a series of many interdependent decision points, whose order is often  changed as your ideal customer drops in an out of a decision cycle that is independent of you, the seller.  

No longer should you see Sales and Marketing as separate functions, one feeding the other. Both are part of a highly variable non-linear Revenue Generation process over which you may have some influence, but no control.

The day of the functional silo being efficient is over, thrown out the window by the power of the buyer!

 

 

 

 

 

The curse of insider knowledge

Nov 22, 2019 | Communication, Leadership, Management

When we know something, the automatic expectation is that those with whom we are communicating understand it equally well.

This automatic, unrecognised assumption can be a barrier, and at its worst, a curse.

Participating in a conversation a while ago where I was the outsider amongst a group of Canberra bureaucrats, their verbal shorthand, particularly around the departmental names and programs was incomprehensible to me. The terminology  was perfectly well understood by all of them, and they were surprised at my ignorance, when I pulled them up and pointed it out.

Try a little experiment.

Tap out a song, like happy birthday, with a pencil on a desk, and have people tell you what it is. We expect most to be able to pick it, the tune is obvious to us, singing it in our minds as we do it, but only a few actually pick it.

Of course, this closed communication loop is used all the time as a badge of membership, and a means of exclusion.

It may be that the group I was talking to were expressing their status as insiders by excluding me, but assuming this is not the intent, it was nevertheless the effect.

Every group has its own set of verbal and behavioral tools. These can be used as an offensive weapon, a means of exclusion, or they can be a tool of inclusion, it just depends on how you use it.

 

Header cartoon credit: Scott Adams and his mate Dilbert.

Pray harder for leadership.

Nov 19, 2019 | Leadership

 

As I look out my window in suburban Sydney, there is a bluish tinge to the air.

The fires around Sydney, and along the Australian east coast have made us all aware that we do live in a very dry continent, and that we do not value the water resources we have, in fact, we literally piss them away.

It is enlightening to watch the and hear the differing conversations going on around us, not just in the pub, but in the media.

People, those who live ordinary lives, pay their taxes  raise their kids, seem to have a different set of perspectives to those who are supposed to be leading us. They seem unable to open their traps without making it a race for political points.

What better time for the pollies to do what the rest of us have done already, and come together, recognising that we are stronger together than we are divided.

News to politicians, who seem to think and act as if the opposite were true.

It is the time for leadership, and leadership is not about how much money has been spent, or how much might be spent at some time in the future, or whether there are more or less park rangers than there were a year ago, it is about the stories of bravery, sacrifice and just old fashioned humanity that will move us.

We humans evolved with stories, it is how we understand, remember and relate to others in our ‘tribe’. We do not remember facts and figures without the context of a story, when listening to a story that engages, our neural activity increases, allowing us to feel, hear and taste the essence of the story.

What an opportunity for politicians of all colours to show leadership, to restore at least a little of the lost trust and faith, that they are there not just for themselves, but for all of us. They wonder about the position of trust they occupy in public sentiment, below lawyers, and just above child molesters. It is a problem of their own making, one that can be reversed with time, honesty, transparency and humility, so I guess that is unlikely.    

The Husband of the mayor of Glen Innes Carol Sparks, Badja Sparks now virtually homeless after fire ripped through the township of Wytaliba, said it best when he said: ‘This climate has changed. Pray for rain: Pray harder for leadership’.

 

The 3 complications of calculating an accurate ROI on your digital marketing investment.

Nov 18, 2019 | Marketing, Social Media

Self styled ‘experts’, flog all sorts of metrics that are supposed to tell you how well your digital marketing efforts are doing.

Many of them do give useful information,  but it is only ever partial.

I am certainly one who loudly  advocates the extensive use of data to measure and improve the productivity of marketing investments.

Opt in rates

Sales Conversion rates

Earnings per click

Cost per click,

On, and on, and on.

Being an old fart means I like simple stuff, and the simple measure of the effectiveness of your marketing dollar is the return on investment. ROI. The actions taken as a result of the investment divided by the cost to inspire and  motivate that action.

Always has been the best measure, always will be!

Until the digital stuff took over, the best you could do was take an educated guess, informed by some research and experience.

Now you can usually get a pretty good read on ROI if  you think hard about it.

How much did we spend divided by how much we got back.

There are  really only three  complications, beyond the technical ones involving statistics, and the lies that they can tell. Also, unfortunately, many marketers are lousy at statistics and mathematics, which is often a challenge to credibility.

First. Over what time frame do you do the measurement?  For example, the lifetime value of a customer means you need a framework to make the calculation. This involves a lot of data as well as assumptions, and an intimate knowledge of customer behaviour over an extended period. This is very hard to get right, so most just use averages, which are almost always misleading. If my right foot is in a fire, and my left in a bucket of ice water, on average, my feet are at a comfortable temperature. Nonsense.

Second. Attribution. Which part of the investment led to the transaction? Was it the digital marketing activity, or the manner in which the receptionist took the phone call, or a thousand other sometimes tiny things that contribute to the transaction evolving. This challenge is not exclusive to digital marketing, it is to all marketing activity. However, the specific and very misleading claim made by most digital urgers, that you can measure the effectiveness of an investment in digital because you can measure movement through the ‘sales funnel’ is simply ignoring the reality of attribution. The claims made by the urgers of digital that they can reliably deliver attribution sufficient to make micro adjustments to the allocation of resources in an ever evolving competitive context is rubbish. You can get closer than a ‘best guess,’ but not with anything resembling statistical reliability.

Third. There are still things that we simply cannot measure. Most of us would agree that being a good parent is a great investment in the success of our kids, but how do you calculate an ROI on parenthood? Similarly, the impact of being part of an enterprise culture that encourages and values diversity of opinion,  enables all stakeholders to have a genuine voice, and creates alignment of objectives, is hard to measure.

None of the above should restrain you from making the effort, and continuously improving the methodology as you learn more about your customers, and their behaviour, but it is a warning to those who just believe the nonsense peddled by digital urgers with a dog in the fight for your money.

Header cartoon credit: Tom Fishburne at www.marketoonist.com