Believe what they do, not what they say.

Believe what they do, not what they say.

Apr 8, 2019 | Governance, Leadership

Last week I was reminded, again, to take what people told you with a grain  of salt, and to watch closely what they did, rather than believing what they said.

I watched as the CEO of a significant business took a decision that was in direct conflict with the values he regularly espouses to staff and customers, in the interests of a short term cost mitigation.

He did not seem to accept the inconsistency when it was pointed out.

In the early 70’s as a student, I did a couple of holiday stints as a door to door market researcher. In one project, we were banging on doors and asking which brand of cigarette was smoked (in those days, smoking was widespread). When the answer was one of a couple of premium brands, we had to persuade the respondent to show us the packets in the house, and half the time, it was one of the cheaper brands.

Had we accepted what they said, rather than confirming with what they did, the research results would have been even more rubbish than they were.

Putting yourself in the shoes of a research respondent is really hard. It requires empathy, close observation, robust but sensitive questioning, and savvy choices in who you talk to if the results are to be reliable. It also offers the opportunity to gather insights into behavior that enables better product and service design, uncovering unstated or unrecognised problems being faced.

I hesitate to mention, we are about to go into an election campaign, the reality is we are already there, with the welter of blather, tired clichés and bullshit about to overwhelm us, again. As a community, we should really point out to all who want our votes the truth of the post headline.

Illustration credit: Tom Gauld from Instagram.

Managing the Jenga tower of marketing

Managing the Jenga tower of marketing

Apr 3, 2019 | Change, Marketing

Have you ever set up and played with a Jenga tower?

As the game progresses, some blocks can be removed easily, with no impact, others are really sensitive to any movement and can bring the tower down with a crash.

Problem is, the difference is really hard to tell.

This is a  bit like marketing.

There are a lot of variables, all with differing impact on the outcome, and all differing again, depending on the circumstances of what has gone before, and the manner in which the remaining blocks, or variables, are arranged..

What is important for one customer, in one situation, may be irrelevant to another, or even to the same customer in different circumstances.

Experience with Jenga, and careful testing of the ‘stickiness’ of different blocks before you pull them out can deliver you a win. Similarly, in marketing, the more analytical tools you can bring to bear that account for the minor variations, and differing configurations of the variables, the more likely you will be to get a favourable outcome. Increasingly, this task will be done by machine learning and pattern recognition, that accommodates the specific circumstances of the ‘marketing tower’, in this case,  the customer.

However, AI will never completely replace the wisdom of experience, creativity, and domain knowledge, which the truly successful will continue to observe, gather, and ultimately, rely.

 

Photo credit: Wikipedia

How to build a hierarchy of performance measures.

How to build a hierarchy of performance measures.

Apr 1, 2019 | Governance, Management

 

Corporate KPI’s should be evolved as a hierarchy, that measures the cause and effect relationships through an organisation, and be largely agnostic to the individual. After they are in place, you can develop the KPI’s for a role to be filled, for which an individual allocated to that position has responsibility.

There are 4 levels in most organisations that I see.

Measures of  sustainability.

These measures are connected to the purpose of the enterprise, they answer the question, how do you know if you are successful?. Sustainability is used in it broadest sense, commercial, cultural, and ecological.  In effect they are the harbingers of future success as well as current levels. Most organisational KPI’s that I see are all about financial success, which is critical, but is an outcome of success in other areas, not in itself a driver of success.

Measures of  strategic success.

These measures are directly related to the strategic priorities set. As strategy is about choices, so the performance measures should reflect the quality of  the choices made, and progress towards the agreed objective. Some will be financial, ROI, shareholder value, but the most effective ones will be about customer churn, geographic footprint, innovation, customer satisfaction, reflecting the strategic resource allocation decisions made to prioritise activities.

Process measures.

Process measures are those tactical measures that reflect the performance of the processes in the business that deliver value to customers, and feed the measures of strategic success. These will vary widely dependent on the type of business, but logically they include things like customer satisfaction, delivery performance, lead conversion, revenue, customer profitability, and so on. They tend to be the measures most appropriately reviewed on a shorter time scale than those above.

Operational KPI’s.

Operational measures should deliver a picture of  how the individual cogs in the wheel are operating. They should be directed at the items that are at the root of process productivity and efficiency. Measures such as machine availability, lost time injuries, rework, inventory turn, daily output to plan, and so on.

Together these measures should offer a complete picture of the way the separate parts of the organisation mesh together to deliver the enterprise purpose, the ‘Why’ you are here.

Ensuring measures are transparent across and through the organisation gives them ‘life’ beyond the dry review process.

Financial measures play a role at each level. However, because it is generally easier to gather financial information, and they are more commonly understood, they have become the default and only measures many use, which is to their detriment. They also fail the test of telling you why an outcome occurred, they just tell you it did.

Mapping the cause and effect chains summarised as KPI’s is always a useful exercise. Many people learn and understand visually, particularly when they have a role in the process mapping, and such an exercise enables a connection of KPI’s throughout an enterprise to be made. Experience shows it is a great way of generating the strategic alignment and buy-in so hard to find in most businesses.

 

What is the one skill no SME can do without?

What is the one skill no SME can do without?

Mar 28, 2019 | Marketing, Strategy

Simple answer, rarely given at first: Writing quality copy!

Quality copy, in whatever form it is delivered,  gets inside someone’s head, it joins in and contributes to the conversation already happening, and influences the outcomes that evolve.

Everything we do in an enterprise is in one way or another directed towards the objective of getting someone to do something. It therefore follows that we need to be able to communicate with them clearly, in their words, saying things they either want to hear, or are receptive to hearing which may lead to an action.

This does not happen by accident, it only happens when time is invested in the writing process, and importantly, the preparation that happens before the pen is lifted. From writing a simple email, to communicating the most complex message by any number of media, the rules are pretty much the same, only the time invested will vary.

It is also true that we humans relate to, understand, and remember stories, so tell one! Do not just deliver a bunch of words, data and illustrations, create a memorable narrative.

There are 4.5 million copy templates out there, available via Dr. Google. Scrape away the jargon, fancy words, and promises of millions of dollars if you will just do this one thing, and there is a very common thread running through most of them that offer any real value. That thread comes down to  a few simple to say, but very hard to implement rules.

  • Audience. Know who you are talking to
  • Objective. Know exactly what it is you want to say, and why.
  • Action. Communicate what Action you want them to take as a result of reading (or listening)
  • Impression. What is the lasting impression you are seeking to place in the mind of the reader.

A simple acronym: A.O.A. I. That makes it 4.5 million and one!

An email will differ from website copy, and both will be different to a sales letter,  and to a major verbal presentation, but all will follow those simple rules, with the obvious variations in the manner in which they are executed.

Common to all are a few further observations I will make.

  • Every successful communication starts with a draft, that can always be improved. The more complex the communication, the greater the potential for improvement. Usually this is achieved by cutting words and selecting them more carefully to better communicate the meaning, motivate the desired action, and leave the lasting impression. For example, despite the following two sentences being quantitatively the same, almost everyone will feel substantially more favourable towards  the first:

‘This milk is 95% fat free‘ . Versus, ‘This milk contains 5% fat‘.

The pursuit of clarity, brevity, and maximum impact  are voracious consumers of the writers time, but always offer a return on the investment. Variously credited, but I believe correctly to Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) is a note to his wife while visiting Australia in 1895. ‘Darling, I wrote you a long letter because I did not have the time to write you a short one’

  • In written communications, spelling and grammar are essential skills. Not because of some preoccupation with the past, but because the rules of spelling and grammar evolved to assist in delivering clarity. Spellcheck is a good first start, but it misses a lot, particularly grammar, and the construction of sentences to deliver clarity. When writing anything, from a simple email to a book, in the absence of a person playing the role of editor, read it out aloud to yourself, saying every word as it is written.  There is a tool in Word, called ‘Speak’ which I have on my quick access toolbar, which reads back your copy in ‘computer voice’. While it is far from perfect, no matter how careful I have been, listening back to  ‘Speak’ always highlights something that can be improved.
  • Verbal communication, from a simple elevator pitch, to a major speech, should always evolve from a written draft. ‘Winging it’ is almost always a very bad idea! Once you have an elevator pitch, it can be memorised, repeated, and ‘tweeked’. Writing any communication the first time is always hard, as you have to decide what to leave out. Doing a brain dump of everything you know  about a topic will just lead to a bored, and disengaged audience.
  • Verbal communication in front of an audience also imposes another set of choices that need to be made in addition to the choice of words. That is how those words are to be delivered. Speaking naturally, including all the intonation and body language as you would to a single person, is always best, but with caution. Colloquial and ‘expressive’ language that may be acceptable one to one, may not be in front of an audience. This is a judgement to be made each time, usually somewhat dependent on the audience. Practise helps, as does the recognition that it is natural to be nervous, and importantly, working on the written drafts until you know  the content intimately, removes a lot of the self imposed pressure.

While the basic rules will remain consistent, the formats used will differ markedly. A sales letter will  look different to the copy on a website, which will be different to the presentation you do to an audience. However, the basic AOAI framework will help in the writing of the copy that is the foundation of delivering the message.

In addition to my simplistic A.O.A.I. template, there are many others of value from successful writers, as noted, roughly similar. The following two I commend, which come from books I have read and re-read on several occasions.

R.O.A.M. Readers, Objective, Action, iMpression. Josh Bernoff, ‘Writing without Bullshit’.

P.A.S.T.O.R. Person Problem Pain; Amplify; Story, Solution System; Transformation, Testimony; Offer; Response. Ray Edwards. ‘How to write copy that sells’.

When you need help developing and articulating your strategy, and figuring out how to implement, call me.  0410 627 318

What have you got to lose?

6 components of successful gambling (otherwise known as marketing)

6 components of successful gambling (otherwise known as marketing)

Mar 25, 2019 | Marketing

Successful Marketing is like having a great hand of cards.

Each card has a value by itself, but in isolation, that is very limited. The value of a hand is in the combination of cards you have, particularly the combination you have compared to the combination of your opponent, and how you leverage that combination. Sometimes as in Bridge, the combination of your hand with that of your partner is crucial.

Marketing is gambling, you are betting on the shape of the future, and your place in that future.

Just like gambling, professionals are better able to manage and manipulate the factors ‘at the edge,’ that compounded mean the amateur will never beat the professional.

Following are 6 factors professionals use to beat the amateurs. The analogy to marketing may be a bit ‘hairy’, but for me it works!

Incumbency.

A casino, the church of gambling, has an institutional advantage over the gambler. They only have to equal the gambler to win, the gambler has to beat the house, and do it on a consistent basis to win. ‘One-off’ wins happen all the time, but over time, the institutional advantage unless mitigated in some way, will always win out. 

Know the numbers, understand the odds.

‘Counting cards’ in a game of 21 for those few who can do it, will get you thrown out of a casino, as it is one of the means by which the odds can be altered against the house. When you can remember the cards that have been discarded, you are theoretically able to calculate the odds of a given card coming up next, and alter your bets accordingly.

Poker is a game of odds. The odds are dictated by the chance of a specific combination of cards being held, and when being dealt, of a specific card arriving. Playing ‘show poker’ assists those who can count, as they are better able to calculate and recalculate the odds based on the cards shown than the amateur.

As it is with marketing, the more you know that may have an influence on the outcome, the better able you are to calculate the odds.

Know the opposition.

Serious card players are very sensitive to unconscious signals from their opposition, the presence of a ‘tell’. In the movies, the protagonist scratches his forehead when an Ace arrives in his hand, a giveaway to  the professional.

‘Body language’ is a huge component of face to face communication, a professional sees and understands the meaning of all sorts of subtle, unconscious signals coming from their opposition, and is able to use them to their advantage.

Know the rules.

Every game has rules, knowing them is a foundation skill necessary to play. Understanding how the rules can be ‘managed,’  how the usual responses can be massaged to deliver a changed outcome is the sign of a professional.

Remember the stakes, and the balance of odds.

Playing the game, any game, requires investment, and for someone to win, it requires that someone loses. Very few amateurs accurately calculate the costs of losing, in the emotion of a potential win, something the professionals rely on. They win when amateurs lose, which is most of the time!

Opportunism pays.

Sometimes, even when the odds are stacked against you, luck plays a role. When the lady does show up, you have to be able to recognise her in order to take the advantage on offer. Always remember the old dictum of Louis Pasteur: “Fortune favours the prepared mind’ and as the scouts say, Be prepared!

When you need the experience and advice of a professional on your side, give  me a call.