Blog
By dan | Published: May 30, 2011
Have you ever been inspired to work harder or faster by someone? Most of us have at one point or another in our lives. Maybe it was coach, or a teammate – a teacher, or a mentor – a friend, or a parent. Or perhaps it was a certain boss who had been appointed as ‘leader’ of your business group or team – or someone who might have simply assumed leadership when things weren’t going well. What separates these leaders that inspire us from those who lead in name only? As a leadership student, practitioner, trainer and evaluator for over 25 years, there seems to be at least three things that almost always standout. First, inspiring leaders have a clear vision for what they want to accomplish. It is usually much loftier than just the business objectives and incorporates both rational and emotive goals. It is often rooted in the higher purpose that the business hopes to achieve – e.g. eradicating a disease, raising a standard of living, becoming recognized as ‘best in class’ in your particular industry. Second, inspiring leaders clearly and consistently communicate both their vision and specific expectations to all their constituents. This allows everyone to understand not just where they are being led, but what their contributing role is and how they are to be measured. The better they understand these, the more focused they are on delivering the results – better, faster, with greater ingenuity and higher quality than just what’s ‘required’. Third, inspired leaders are generous – with their time, with their praise, and with their willingness to help those who are trying. That doesn’t mean they are soft – they are usually very direct and very clear when the team’s falls short. But rather than seeking to blame, they seek to understand and avoid making the same mistakes again. In this respect, inspired leaders are extraordinarily efficient – they cut through the drama and focus on the data — with the goal of developing stronger people and delivering better results, faster and cheaper. The good news for you is that inspired leadership is a learned trait, not a genetic one. There are specific tools and techniques that can be coached, that can be built into young (as well as more ‘experienced’) managers that are asked to ‘lead’ for the first time. The benefit of not just appointing leaders, but actually developing and building inspirational leaders is that you will start to see consistent improvement in the motivation of your employees, the sense of pride they exhibit in delivering results that exceed expectations, and the efficiency with which the organization grows.
Blog
By jen | Published: January 30, 2011
In today’s climate, managers are being asked to drive more revenue with lower budgets. This pressure to cut spending, while innovating to keep brands relevant, often leads to costly mistakes. The search for marketing efficiency can cause managers to cut corners and stray from best practices. One of the most common and costly shortcuts that I run across is cutting customer research. Cutting research may appear to minimize time and investment in the process, but you often pay far more in the long run because you lose valuable customer insights and information that are imperative to cost-effective marketing.
Let’s take a close look at what happens when companies launch new innovations or branding without appropriate customer feedback. Last fall, when GAP brands rolled out its new logo, irritated consumers registered copious complaints online, forcing GAP to return to its former brand identity. As GAP brands president Marka Hansen later explained, the company had been gradually updating the brand image “to make GAP more relevant to (their) customers,” GAP believed updating the logo was just the natural next step in updating the brand. Apparently, their customers did not agree! GAP’s new logo probably cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars in time and materials to address consumer complaints and make changes to marketing, retail, and production materials that had been updated with the new logo design. Talk about inefficient! Appropriate customer feedback upfront could have spared GAP brands a lot of wasted time and money.
Frito Lay learned a similar tough lesson. The company was recently forced to withdraw its new biodegradable Sun Chips package. The noisy packages sparked YouTube videos and fierce complaints on social networking sites, and caused sales to decline each month post launch. Customers sent Frito Lay a loud and painful message that they did not care for the new packaging, forcing them to return Sun Chips to the original package. While Frito Lay has declined to disclose how much it spent on scrapping the bags and damage control, you can bet it was a lot – certainly a LOT more than it would have cost them to do the appropriate research upfront. They may have had consumer concept research which supported a biodegradable package, but they failed to adequately test the actual product to ensure acceptance.
Cutting steps like research from the initiative development process may seem like a way to gain efficiency, but it rarely is. Making a small investment to ask your customers the right questions upfront can save you significant time and money down the road. There are now a number of very efficient market research techniques available to help marketers guide initiative development efforts and avoid disasters. Asking the right questions of your customers at the right times will significantly improve your marketing efficiency and success, no matter how well you think you know what they need!
Blog
By dan | Published: January 20, 2011
Nearly one in 7 viewing households tuned into the BCS national championship football game and they saw a terrific game! Two great teams battling each other for every yard; two great head coaches try to outwit the other and keep their players focused; and in the end, a finish worthy of all the hype that came down to the final play. Auburn’s first championship in over 50 years. When asked (repeatedly) what the key to victory was, Coach Gene Chizik – and every single one of his star players on this night — said the same thing … we came together as team, trusted and respected one another, and stayed focused on what we had to do to win. Simple to say – sure! Simple to do – no way! But wise advice for any team (or ‘coach’) that wants to excel, wants to function quickly…efficiently, and wants to win against the toughest competition. This could be your team – though odds are it is not. Every team – perhaps especially marketing teams – too easily get distracted, they lose their focus, they don’t make the time to reach out to, and rely on, other colleagues or ‘coaches’ for advice and ideas. Why not? As with most things, it starts with a motivating vision and clear expectations. Expectations for the team that are clearly translated for each member, so that each knows how their work helps the team achieve its goals. It takes practice, it takes encouragement (yes, both kinds…), and it takes the maturity to seek and be willing to share new ideas, new solutions, with one another. Simple to say … but to do? That requires leaders that understand the importance of keeping their teams focused, working AS a team, and reinforcing the importance of respect and integrity for each other – especially when things go awry. And if you’re running fast, and being innovative, and competing hard – something will go awry! That’s okay …. you learn from it and move on. Another tough lesson that successful leaders must master. So that’s it … no magic potion, no special strategy. Your team has the ability to win … are you up to the task? Simple to start doing …
Blog
By dan | Published: January 2, 2011
This is the time of year is when many people set - or confirm - their goals for the upcoming year. It’s a good time to review your business goals as well. There are hundreds of books and articles that talk about the importance of setting aggressive, audacious, inspiring goals – but fewer about the ‘boring’ work of developing the detailed plans necessary to achieve them. Having the discipline to develop and implement the plans to achieve your goals is the hard part. The interesting thing is that having a simple, well-thought through and executed plan gives you a much better chance of not just meeting, but exceeding those audacious goals! A case in point – a non-profit organization I’m familiar with met to set fund-raising goals for the next 3 years. They had expenses of about $10M in the past year and wanted to greatly expand their services. To do that, they had to convince their donors to dig deeper and pledge more – not an easy ask in this tough economic environment! There was much discussion about an appropriate target – should the goal be 10% more, 20%, or perhaps really step out and set a goal of 50% more?! They decided to be bold and set the goal at $15M. They developed a detailed, thoughtful plan and carefully executed it in a focused and disciplined way. When the results were tallied, they had received pledges that not only met, but exceeded the bold goal they had set – by over 200%!! Pretty amazing but entirely driven by how they set up and executed their plan. Not everyone can expect such exceptional results but everyone who expects to exceed their goals should use the same type of discipline in their approach and execution. Your business can do this too – let us know if you want some help.
Blog
By dan | Published: December 11, 2010
I saw a interesting presentation recently about what keeps us from being efficient at work. Many managers believe that distractions in their employees’ lives outside of work – family or personal needs, relationship issues, hobbies, passions, etc. - keep them from being productive when they’re at work. Undoubtedly that’s true at some level- we all intrinsically multi-task in our lives and sometimes that can rise to point of interfering with our tasks in the office. There is also the ever-growing concern that the internet is allowing employees to fritter away their time watching YouTube videos, shopping, or searching for content that has nothing to do with work. How much time and energy does you’re company spend trying to control or minimize these distractions? As Jason Fried in the presentation below highlights, in far more instances it is the environment within the workplace itself keeps us from being productive. He primarily attributes the biggest distractions from getting work done as the M&Ms — the meetings and managers. It’s as if nothing can get done without meetings these days! I’ve worked with clients that proudly show me how many meetings they attend each week – stacked one on top of the other every day – as a measure of their productivity. Meetings require preparation, participation, and follow-up and – if you want to see progress – you must make time for all three. Regarding managers, in most cases their role is to’ manage’ both the work of their direct reports and the expectations of their bosses. That requires, frequently checking in on (aka interrupting) their people to ensure they are working on the right things and getting updates (via summary reports and meetings) to show progress to their bosses. As business leaders, we should be worried about how to make our organizations more efficient, our employees more productive – they are, after all, our biggest expense/investment, right? There are lots of ways to do that, but perhaps we should first try to fix the things firmly within our control – like the scheduling of our meetings and the expectations of our managers – before worrying about those things that are further outside of our control - like the lives and personal habits of our employees. Watch the video and tell me what you think. Jason Fried on Productivity in the Office
Blog
By dan | Published: November 16, 2010
I was asking Steve, a VP of marketing, the other day, “How do you make your marketers more efficient? “We don’t have that problem” he said. And then proceeded to reel off examples of delayed launches, ineffective market research, poorly run meetings, and mis-targeted promotional campaigns. Sound familiar? Most marketing organizations – even those in very successful companies – waste about 1/3 of their marketing budgets. And that doesn’t include the impact of lost time and creative energy marketers spend trying to overcome administrative barriers or cumbersome decision-making processes. Yes, most marketers in the job more than 6 months can tell you, without much prompting, what could make them more efficient. The first answer we often hear is “better data”. I like to re-focus them by asking, “what information do you need?” ‘Information’ is different than ‘data’. Information may include ‘data’ but may also be ‘input’, ‘feedback’, ‘perceptions’, and a host of other things that lead you to better, more actionable decisions. It also opens up potential ways to secure what they need – to include mining the ‘data’ they already have, asking others in the organization with greater experience, or finding creative – faster, cheaper – ways to get what they need. And, if they do need ‘data’, it sharpens their thinking by forcing them to consider how it will be used to achieve their objectives. Critical thinking is a lot cheaper than buying data. What answers do you get to the ‘how can we be more efficient’ question?
Blog
By dan | Published: November 16, 2010
I was working with a young brand director in a very successful company recently – very sharp, very pragmatic, and very articulate. He had some great ideas, built on sound principles, entirely customer-focused, and … frustrated beyond belief. Why? He and his team had studied the market, created a strong plan, built in cross-functional input and were ready to begin executing, but instead found themselves spending 70% of their time revising PowerPoint presentations for successive layers of management. I know – your organization would never be that inefficient. Good ideas bubble rapidly to the top. You expect your managers to be decisive, to streamline decision-making, to encourage risk-taking, to keep things moving. So does this company – did I mention they were very successful? And yet they were wasting the talent, time and effort of some of their best people. You need management alignment, you can help them anticipate issues – the intent is right. But sometimes our processes undermine the best intentions. Do they in your company? Which ones frustrate your marketers the most?
Blog
By dan | Published: November 16, 2010
Have you seen the CBS show, Undercover Boss? Last night’s episode with Fernando Aguirre, CEO of Chiquita, was somewhat predictable in terms of outcome – senior executive underestimates the difficulty of what their employees are required to do and sees first-hand how committed they are to serving their customers, in spite of outdated equipment, staff shortages, and administrative barriers. The executive is humbled, commits to changes, everyone hugs and things improve (hopefully). The show provides some interesting insight into how customer-driven companies underestimate the difficulty of integrating the many different departments and functions to deliver quality products efficiently to their customers. This is as true in manufacturing and distribution as it is marketing. In fact, integration is one of the key competency areas where many marketing initiatives fail. You may have good market knowledge, great customer insight, and innovative solutions, but flawed execution still = a failed initiative. You may get by getting only 2 of the first 3 right, but the 4th one is absolutely critical. Good companies work toward this – great companies accomplish this routinely. Do your marketers think through the execution? Coordinate delivery schedules with manufacturing? Develop effective sales and customer service training? Create targeted promotion and advertising campaigns that excite consumers and build demand? Anticipate issues and prepare contingency plans? Which integration issues are the most problematic for your organization and how well are you addressing them?
Blog
By dan | Published: November 16, 2010
“I want more, I want it now – and I want it for less!” Remind you of a recent customer meeting? Actually, this was my 23-year old son as he tried to balance his income from a new job with the reality of apartment living … in California. Just graduated, very smart, goal-oriented – and totally irrational … right? You’re secretly laughing, I know. Saying ‘welcome to the real world’! Now think about your last agency planning meeting (see if this YouTube clip doesn’t sound familiar – www.vendorclientvideo.com). Or how about that last budget discussion with your marketing leadership. Uh – oh! You may not have used the same language, but is there any doubt in your mind how those discussions got summarized after the meetings? Unfair! Not what I said! Really? As company executives we expect to have to do more, do it faster – and do it with less … less people, less budget, less time. But with leaders, partners, managers who are less experienced – they can’t always understand why or rise to the occasion as we’d like them to. How can we ‘hard wire’ this mindset into our organizations? How do we ‘incentivize’ our young managers and agencies to think this way – routinely. What tips do you have that can help?
