How desperately does politics need a strategic makeover?

How desperately does politics need a strategic makeover?

Jul 27, 2016 | Change, Leadership

The train smash that doubled as the recent Australian  federal election, and more tellingly, the ‘cluster-intercourse’ (politeness overcame me) that is the US presidential race have something in common.

They both lack any sort of the foundations for prosperity that we demand, indeed, regulate for, in our corporations.

In a corporation, when you do  not deliver the results, shareholders move their money elsewhere. Not so in Government.

In a corporation, when the leadership fails to deliver promised results they  get fired. Not so in Government, although some do carry the can for the rest, usually on a Last In First Out basis.

In a  corporation, if you tell a lie to shareholders, you can go to gaol. Not so in government.

In a corporation, when you do  not adequately articulate a realistic and achievable financial plan, bankers will not lend you money. Not so in Government.

In a corporation, when there is a noisy minority mouthing nonsense, you ignore them, or make polite fun of  them. Not so in Government, indeed, it seems that the noisy minority often successfully drives the agenda.

How have we allowed this to happen, after all it is supposed to be a democracy, although sometimes I wonder, as who in their right mind would vote for any of the above.

A year ago, the notion that an ego driven billionaire with no experience in government, little affinity to anything beyond his own interests, and little apparent relationship with the truth would be the US President was a laughable prospect. Now he is one of two in a race to the finish.

No laughing matter anymore is it?

How has this happened?

It seems to me that Trump has succeeded wildly where the Liberal party in Australia failed.

He has mastered the tools of immediacy marketing, social media platforms, particularly Twitter, and leveraged the fact that our journalistic capacity has been so  gutted, along with the attention span of the electorate, that the capacity for sensible and measured comment and debate has been removed. Have you noticed that everything anyone on the Democratic party side says gets a Trump response, often an outrageous one, on twitter within 5 minutes. The media picks it up, and in the absence of anyone on the newsrooms not playing Pokemon Go, reprints it in entirety as news. Then a few huff and puff for 24 hours and it is  forgotten or replaced by the next piece of shambolic inconsistent nonsense. By contrast, the Democrats take a day or so when they are awake to comment on the next of Mr Trumps blatherings, and are not nearly as colourful and entertaining when they do so.

And I have not even mentioned Britain’s new Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, whose mastery of the entertaining absurd rivals that of Mr Trump.

The simple fact is that you do not get headlines with measured, thoughtful analysis of the facts, together with projections that are never favourable to everyone, but you do get headlines with sensational brain-farts that disappear almost as fast as they are produced.

Headlines are now news, there seems to be no demand for substance in excess of 140 characters.

However, that current state is no excuse for not trying. Without the effort to reform from the grass roots the way we select our leaders, and demand from them some level of quality in the political and economic debate, on top of a reasonable degree of integrity and transparency, we are all in deep doo-doo, and it is getting progressively deeper the longer we allow this to keep happening.

4 questions every business owner should ask themselves. Now.

4 questions every business owner should ask themselves. Now.

Jul 25, 2016 | Change, Governance, Leadership, Strategy

In principal, business is simple, sell something for more than it costs you too produce it. After that it gets more complicated, but is always tangled up with the word “Value”

It is a word with many meanings to different people in different contexts.

How do we create value?

Value, like beauty in the eye of the beholder, is in the eye of the user. Value means different things to different people in different circumstances, and figuring out how to add value to that customer under those circumstances is the secret sauce of success. The key to value identification is always to be able to see the offer you are making through the eyes of the customer.

How do we deliver value?

‘Value’ is only valuable when it delivers a benefit. If you have the only part in town that will fix a problem, that part only has value installed, it is no good in your toolbox.

The means by which you deliver value varies, and the business models available have exploded. Supermarkets have an entirely different model to a grocery home delivery service. While the products may be the same, and from time to time the customers the same, the circumstances under which they are used will never be he same.  AirbnB would not have been possible 10 years ago, two sided markets were simply too cumbersome except in capital intensive applications like a stock exchange. Similarly, the availability of digital versions of books, along with the spoken and traditional print versions deliver the value of a book in different ways.

How do we capture value?

Business is about getting paid for  the value delivery more than it cost you to provide it. Again, digital changed the game, just ask anyone in the newspaper business. Deep consideration of the most appropriate business model is required if you are to capture all the available value, and leave your customers happy enough  to go again.

Will it be the same tomorrow?

Almost certainly not.

And the day after tomorrow, there will have been substantial change. How you react to or better, anticipate the change will be the measure of how commercially sustainable your business really is.

One more really important thing to remember.

Businesses are inanimate collections of assets and processes that can do nothing by themselves. They need people to make them work, to create the environment that accommodates the four factors above. The old cliche of people being our most important asset has never been truer than in this current environment of accelerating change.

Is technology killing advertising, and ruining our lives?

Is technology killing advertising, and ruining our lives?

Jul 20, 2016 | Governance, Leadership, Marketing

A while ago I asked the question ‘Is the net killing marketing creativity‘ and came to the conclusion that the instant gratification now apparently demanded in all phases of our lives has indeed killed creativity.

Perhaps tritely I put it down to the not so bright amongst the marketing fraternity taking the easy way out, because it was the only one they could see.

However, the question does require some greater consideration.

That technology has overtaken us is indisputable, giving us the potential for focus and reach in addition to great  performance metrics, but creativity requires more than just speed. It requires subtlety, deep understanding of those with whom you are communicating, a capacity to see yourself through the eyes of others, and a willingness to be different and take risks.

It is in these latter areas that advertising is failing, badly.

For the uninitiated, ‘Martech’ seems to have caught on as the phrase of the moment, very intelligently pushed by my colleague Scott Brinker on the Chief Martech blog.

A subset of the Martech environment is the ‘Adtech’ tools, which have automated advertising, the most obvious but far from the only manifestation of creativity. Whether it  be on line or in an analogue environment, only the means of delivery has changed, not the need to engage, entice, intrigue and advise readers.

The ad industry has certainly been damaged, although great swathes of it have just got what they deserved, being mediocre purveyors of wasted investment, and unwilling to see the writing on the wall, although it was their wall.

The technology has been abused, and consumers have turned off it all, and the evidence for  that is everywhere.

Over 400 million people, 22% of smart phone owners use ad blockers to insulate themselves from advertising, and the number is currently higher on desk-top devices.

Web advertising has evolved quickly into the digital version of the crap that fills your letterbox, direct response, discount coupons, price promos, untargeted rubbish. Where is the recognition that advertising has a higher purpose, it is an investment in the long term, things called ‘brands’.

Remember them?

And as for advertisers, they are slowly waking up to the fact that up to 40% of their ads are being seen only by robots, and last I looked they do not buy much. In addition, the media placement is now often done by so called ‘programmatic buying’ which is a way of removing the insight and intuition of people from the process, saving money and pocketing the difference. While sellers tout the value of programmatic buying, and in some circumstances it does have merit, the major benefit is their pockets, not the advertisers marketing outcomes.

More fool the marketers I guess, they are getting what they deserve.

I will show my colors here, as little investigative reporting as we have come to know it being done in the digital space. Where would Australians be without people like Kate McClymont of Sydney’s SMH who almost single handedly, and against great odds provided the impetus that led to the conviction of Eddie Obeid for fraud, and exposed the predation of members of the Catholic church clergy in Newcastle that led to the current Royal Commission. Google and Facebook have no interest in this sort of journalism, paid for by advertising, and benefiting the society we live in.

As for consumers, we have had our privacy thrown against the digital wall. My kids seem less concerned than me, but nevertheless, I am bothered by the implications, as well as those bloody ads for stuff I do not want that follow me wherever I digitally go.

And as for the digital security of us all, when hackers find 138 holes in the pentagon web sites, good luck with the security of your google account.

7 things business leaders can learn from this election campaign

7 things business leaders can learn from this election campaign

Jun 27, 2016 | Governance, Leadership, Personal Rant

Over the weekend I was talking to my 32 year old son about the coming election.

I thought I was  the quintessential cynical old buggar, while being politically engaged, but I had nothing on my formerly optimistic son.

He is not just a cynical young buggar, he is so disengaged that in the long term, it can only be bad for our economic and social life if he is any way representative of his demographic cohort, and I fear he is.

As he said ‘Problem is that the gap between what the pollies say, and what they do is so wide, they have lost any sort of credibility and moral authority’.

Sadly I agree with his analysis, but the core of the problem seems to me that they claim control over things they cannot control, while ignoring, misrepresenting or pork-barrelling the things they can.

It is the same in business.

Those that promise the world do not have any credibility at all, while those that demonstrate the performance and value of what they can control earn our loyalty and respect.

There is a lot those in businesses can control, and should strive to improve.

You can control the way you spend your time. Every job, even those on a manufacturing line has some level of flexibility in the way the time is spent. In management roles of any type, the discretion is significant. You can choose to do what may be apparently urgent, but is unimportant, or those things that may  not be urgent, but are important. It is those who elect the latter route that will prosper in the long run.

You control the way you  behave. Those who say one thing and do another, or worse, demand behaviour of others  they are unwilling to demand of themselves will be judged failed leaders.

You control your attitude. An optimistic person has an effect on those around them, infecting them with your optimism and enthusiasm

You control your leadership style. Dictatorial, aggressively demanding results without consideration of the personal toll that may take, or you can be a coach and mentor, seeking to improve the results by improving those around you.

You control the way you see opportunities. Often opportunities are in the problems being faced, but if all you see are the problems, the opportunities will pass on by.

You can choose where credit/recriminations are levelled. The best leaders I have seen have a common characteristic: they give credit to others, even when the credit is largely due to themselves, and they take absolute responsibility for the performance within their span of control, never seeking to allocate blame elsewhere.

You can choose to have a clear and unambiguous moral compass, or purpose in your life. Having a purpose, and living to that purpose is empowering for individuals and the groups they interact with. Even when others disagree with you the simple presence of a foundation of beliefs that drive your behaviour will get you considerable credit, loyalty and an ability to get things done.

When you think about it, politicians have exactly the same choices we in business have.

Perhaps it is their collective failure to adhere to the basic tenets of leadership that has us so disillusioned with them all.

I predict that come next Sunday, there will be a narrow Coalition win, but the outstanding feature will be the percentage of the first preference votes that go to other than the two major parties, particularly amongst those under 30 whose expectations have been shaped by different factors to those that shaped their parents. This group will also exercise their compulsory obligation to vote by deliberately voting informal. This will not be a ‘donkey’ vote, it will be a vote against what these youngsters see as the irrelevance, hubris and self interest of the political class. It will be fascinating to watch the spin  the major parties put on this disaffection, assuming that both, somebody does the analysis and I am right.

How to make a workshop work for you.

How to make a workshop work for you.

Jun 13, 2016 | Collaboration, Leadership, Marketing, Strategy

Last week I ran a workshop that was designed to wrinkle out the options facing a community organisation. It has been successful for many years, but now faces the challenge of significantly changed competitive and social environments since its formation,  and the loss of a key person whose mission in life had become intimately tied up with the organisations success.

How was that volunteer passion to be replaced?

What did the future hold for this organisation?

How are they going to continue to win?

There was limited time available, certainly no time for chasing rabbits,  so the structure had to be pretty simple and lead to useful outcomes.  In reality is was bog standard ‘workshopping’

  • What is the current situation?
  • Assuming success for the next five years, what would the organisation look like? (I call this hindsight planning)
  • What had been the strategies, both  successful and unsuccessful that had been tried over the 5 years, leading to the success?
  • What resources and capabilities were now evidently required for the ‘success’ to be replicated in real time?

In starting to write up the workshop over the weekend, and necessarily reviewing my own performance as the exercise leader, I thought about the factors that in the past have made for a successful  workshop beyond the necessary structural elements.

Domain knowledge.

Workshops and so called ‘brainstorm’ efforts commonly fail because there is insufficient  domain knowledge and  expertise available that addresses the key questions central to the purpose of the workshop. Success in any activity requires the presence of some sort of plan, with objectives and metrics, combined with a factual assessment of the circumstances that led to the discussion. Without this level of immersion, the workshop will just be a conversation. ‘Think outside the box’ is often the instruction, but if that leads to random thoughts outside the relevant postcode, it will not add any value, and will be enormously distracting. Domain knowledge, and knowledge related to the domain in some relevant manner is essential.

Roadmap.

As the Mad hatter said to Alice ‘If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there’  you need a map of some sort that includes your starting point and an end point. Without these, you  will go around in aimless, unconnected circles. No workshop of any kind ever works without some sort of map or guidelines understood by everybody involved.

Inspiration.

Inspiration and ideas come from the friction created by differing and often opposing views presented by intelligent and informed people. Rarely is an idea complete at first blush, rarely can an idea not be improved by some level of refinement, and rarely does informed and creative debate not lead to creative solutions and ideas. It takes people prepared to accept that their idea is merely a contributor to a more complete picture, that it is a point in the road that contributes to a better outcome that leads to true inspiration.

Action plan

As with a workshop roadmap, any plan that evolves out of the workshop needs to have a plan, no different to the one that drove the workshop in its structure. As George Patton said on his drive towards berlin in 1945, ‘without a plan you are just a tourist‘.

Implementation.

An imperfect plan today, well implemented is better than a perfect plan tomorrow. Anther of the wise sayings of my old dad, ‘you get 1/10 for a plan, the other 9/10 are kept for the implementation’.

I have seen many workshops that come up with very useful stuff that is just lost or put aside once the participants get back to what they see as their ‘real jobs’ facing the urgency if the daily grind. It takes a good dose of leadership, and often outside  coaching to make the implementation part of a workshop actually part of the daily business of the enterprise.

The greatest failure of marketing management.

The greatest failure of marketing management.

Jun 2, 2016 | Change, Leadership, Lean, Marketing

 

The headline is a big call, competing as it does with some real doozies.

Remember “New Coke” or the Ford ‘Edsel‘ or perhaps Thomas Watsons declaration that there was a world market of no more than 5 for computers?

This one is a general observation on the nature of marketing people generally and their project management skills, at least in my experience.

They tend to spend too little time really defining a problem, but then jump effortlessly to a conclusion, leaving a pile of crap in their wake for others to clean up, and sub optimal outcomes from projects.

The explosion of marketing technology is not just making the shortcomings more obvious, it is delivering the means to measure it.

Holy cow Batman: Accountability!

The smoke and mirrors are being removed, leaving many self declared marketing gurus naked.

Leaving aside the question of individual capability, the root cause of this can usually be pinned down to a failure of project planning.

Specifically the failure to recognise the nature of critical activities that are sequential, building on the one before. For example, only a fool would lock into a creative approach and copy before the persona of the target market was absolutely crystal clear.

This notion is entirely different to the usual ‘critical path’ which can be a moveable feast as timetables move around.

Critical activities are just that, and they do not move around, at all. Project planning should always acknowledge the time necessary to complete each critical activity, and the specific sequence that is necessary.

Marketing project planning is no different to planning any other context, although the questions to be answered are usually less black and white, which simply means that the planning process needs to be rigorous and scientific if it is to be any good.

Marketers have a lot to learn from the manufacturing end of the lean movement.