Strategy on One Page
Posted by Sam Kale in Data Visualization on June 1, 2011
It comes down to asking the “Why, what, who, and how” of your business, arraying it across one page in a way that makes it extremely useful as an alignment tool amongst management or board members. This is hardly a novel concept, but it falls into that category of common sense that is not so commonly done.
Tjan goes on to outline 4 questions he thinks helps frame up the gestalt of a company. Those questions include:
- What’s the big idea? Why do you exist?
- What is your value proposition?
- Who are you trying to serve?
- How do you know you are winning?
Not sure I agree on the order of the questions, but the intent, I think, is sound: if you can’t clearly and succinctly describe your company to yourself, how will you ever be able to describe it to anyone else.
Put it another way: if you’re asked what you do at a family get-together, how are you going to explain yourself?
One potential pitfall of the above questions is the temptation to answer them too broadly. Often I have heard people say “Well, my product is really a global product, and my positioning is really global positioning, so I’m really serving everyone everywhere.”
It seems that the most successful companies are those that are able to answer the above questions as narrowly as possible. Take 37signals for example: they have a very narrowly defined user base that in turn informs a very narrowly defined product. If a customer asks for a product modification, more often than not their answer is “No, we’re not going to do that. We’d hate to lose you as a customer, but we understand if your needs have outgrown our product.”
Compare that to Microsoft and their almost pathological need to have “Windows Everywhere for Everyone.”
The most important of the four questions above, I think, is #4 … how do you know you are winning? It’s easy to focus on doing things, but as my friend John likes to say “Activity does not equal accomplishment” (not sure from where he borrowed that). You need to know what success looks like, you need to know what and how to change mid-stream, and you need to have enough data to make an informed decision.
How do you think through a business strategy?
Still on Facebook
Posted by Sam Kale in Communications & Social Media, Marketing & Branding on May 23, 2011
Before crafting a social media plan, first become a “social consumer” yourself. What would you personally welcome in your newsfeed? The experiment will shape what you create.
Last weekend, while sitting in the stylists’ chair getting my hair cut, I noticed a small decal on the mirror inviting me to “Like” the salon on Facebook. I was at the same time unsurprised, intrigued, and not just the slightest bit weary of these sorts of requests. It seems everywhere we turn these days, some product or the other as asking us to “like” them on Facebook or “follow” them on twitter.
My problem is not that these products have a presence in social media. My problem is that their presence in social media doesn’t give me anything new. More often than not, what I find on twitter amounts to little more than a RSS feed. And more often than that, what I find on Facebook can only be charitablydescribed as noise.
Fishburn is completely right1: social media should be a tactic in your larger, long-term promotional strategy, you need to understand the medium before diving head-long into it, and you should try to offer something different in each of your different channels.
- As usual.
VW gears up underserved segment
Posted by Kris Kaneta in Sports, Entertainment and Media on May 20, 2011
Every now and then I come across some really great advertising and when I do I try to make a point of calling it out. Though usually just post it on Facebook, occasionally I may also blog about it. This is one of those times.
Volkswagen has over the last several months put out a handful of really good commercials, a couple in particular that I would say are great. That said, before I make my case, I’ll let you decide for yourself.
OK – so here’s why I think these stand out in particular…
VW tells a compelling story in under a minute. And it’s a story that resonates with a generation of parents across the nation. StarWars, yeah we get that. Heck, that particular commercial could have been filmed in my house, it was so close to home (minus the VW in the driveway). And the parental fear of a kid sneaking off with the car… again, we get that. But they told it without the tired father-son speech about someday this car will be his, blah blah blah.
Besides a great story, and perhaps more importantly, VW demonstrates a clear understanding of their target segment and show cases the brand in a context meaningful to that segment. Affluent suburbanites, Gen-Xers with kids, above average tech savvy, who want functionality as well as aesthetics.
VW doesn’t try to go after BMW here or any other “performance” brand. I mean, it is German engineered and no one would have been surprised nor faulted them if they had. But the car never even leaves the driveway!!! Much less fly around some curvy hillside with the disclaimer of “professional driver, closed course”. Instead, there was a clear focus on NOT being BMW. VW is “your” car… you, the hard working, white collar, family-values parent that clearly has a desire for something above average, but without being extravagant or superfluous.
I love what VW has done. Some might perceive this as a risky route. They’re not talking performance (BMW), they’re not talking safety (Volvo), they’re certainly not competing at the entry level value segment (Hyundai). And yet, I’d argue they’ve captured a valuable segment, one that has long been overlooked.
Well done, VW. Das marketing.
HBR: The Risks of Quantification
Posted by Sam Kale in Data Visualization, Product Marketing on May 19, 2011
Admitting uncertainty means facing reality — and our own needs for security. But admitting uncertainty is not enough. We must learn to actively embrace uncertainty and work with ambiguity.
As I sit in a two day meeting about drawing insights from data quantification, this article is very timely. Obviously there’s merit in looking at your data and trying to draw as many insights as possible, but we as marketers can sometimes end up hiding behind the data, using them as an excuse to take no action in favor of gathering and analyzing more data.
There comes a time, however, where you have to accept whatever level of ambiguity you’re willing to accept, make a decision, and take action. The question then becomes: When is the right time? A better question might be: What do I get by delaying and gathering more data? Am I falling prey to the law of diminishing returns?
As the ever-prescient Merlin Mann likes to say, “How do you know when you have enough [information] to get started? What can you not do with the [information] you have right now?” 1
How do you overcome “Analysis Paralysis”?
RIM: One more nail in the coffin?
Posted by Sam Kale in Product Marketing on May 18, 2011
RIM recalling over 900 faulty BlackBerry PlayBooks, is yours on the list?
Sadly, no explanation of what, exactly was faulty in the devices nor has any official communication come across as of yet…
Yet another nail in the coffin of a company that was too late in admitting it had competitive problems. 1
While it seems clear that RIM isn’t ignoring iOS or Android, per se, what does seem clear is that RIM is caught in the unenviable position of having to choose between what they know – their existing consumer base – and what they should know – that the future isn’t going to embrace their past with open arms (see ComScore link above).
MacWorld has a nice write-up of some of the other “nails” in the coffin.
So why bother? That’s the only conclusion to draw from RIM’s latest grand plan. It should stop pretending it has any other strategy than to hope it will wake up one morning to discover the iPhone and Android phenomenon was just a bad dream. That storyline doesn’t even work in soap operas, much less the real world.
Ouch …
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If you scroll down in the commeents, you learn that the problem is that the software license agreement won’t load, rendering the device useless. Ironic, isn’t it?
Dan Ariely: Wait for another cookie?
Posted by Sam Kale in Marketing & Branding on May 17, 2011
There is not much place for waiting in today’s marketplace. In fact you can think about the whole capitalist system as being designed to get us to take actions and spend money now – and those businesses that are more successful in that do better and prosper (at least in the short term).
A recent study by colleagues of mine at Duke** demonstrates very convincingly the role that self control plays not only in better cognitive and social outcomes in adolescence, but also in many other factors and into adulthood … Controlling for socioeconomic status and IQ, they show that individuals with lower self-control experienced negative outcomes in [health, wealth, and public safety]…These results show that self-control can have a deep influence on a wide range of activities. And there is some good news: if we can find a way to improve self-control, maybe we could do better.
An interesting analysis. Ariely’s thesis is that over time, people who are better at resisting temptation tend to do better in life (at least with respect to health, wealth, and public safety).
What he doesn’t explore, however, is what happens to companies that are able to resist the allure of immediate gratification. Put another way, is there any material difference in “prosperity”1 between a company that focuses on quarterly profits versus a similar company that looks quarters or years down the road?
In many ways, Jim Collins’ Built to Last tried to answer this question. It profiled 18 companies and compared how they conducted themselves both internally and externally. And while Collins and co-author Jerry Porras concluded that it was better to focus on the long-term, what they couldn’t predict was that nearly half of the companies they profiled have had one trouble or the other in the decade since the book was originally published.
Ten years on, almost half of the visionary companies on the list have slipped dramatically in performance and reputation, and their vision currently seems more blurred than clairvoyant. Consider the fates of Motorola, Ford, Sony, Walt Disney, Boeing, Nordstrom, and Merck. Each has struggled in recent years, and all have faced serious questions about their leadership and strategy. Odds are, none of them today would meet BTL‘s criteria for visionary companies, which required that they be the premier player in their industry and be widely admired by people in the know.
So it seems that if we look long term and the companies that focused on the long term, not all have done well. What’s more, if we look long term at the companies that focus on the short term, some of them have done well, calling into question at very least the applicability of Collins’ conclusions.
And so the question remains: is it better to resist temptation and pursue long term profits, or is it better to give in to the temptation of short-term profits?
- However we choose to define that word, whether it be stock price, market cap, quarterly or yearly profits, or any other metric.
Simplicity Sells
Posted by Kris Kaneta in Product Marketing on May 16, 2011
People who own Flip cams will tell you how much they love(d) them. I’m one of them. If you are too, ask yourself one question – are you carrying around your flip? Do you have it within an arm’s length of you right now? Probably not. And that my friends is why Cisco ended up closing up it’s Flip business. In it’s heyday it was pure cinematic magic. It fit in your pocket, was easy to use and may have even recorded in HD.
Today, those things are still important but now you’ve got your iPhone, your Android or (gasp) your Blackberry. Mine is 8 inches away from my left hand and it’s rare for it to be much further than that. And oh besides pics and movies, my smartphone also has music, texts, apps and this crazy thing called e-mail.
Do you know who is the #1 manufacturer of cameras in the world? …wait for it…. Nokia. That’s right. The world’s #1 camera maker also happens to be one of the worlds top cell makers. Now you could quickly interpret this as a blog post advocating feature integration, and it is to a degree, but simplicity doesn’t have to be about integration. In fact – adding more features isn’t necessarily a good thing. But it’s important to note that simplicity of yesterday may quickly become the inconvenience of today (which I surmise is why flip struggled to make it in today’s environment).
So here are three more products besides the Flip, who in my opinion, are on similar paths. At one time great products, these now face some serious issues in simplifying their functionality, whether it be a more integrated experience, changing market dynamics or simply better competition.
1) Rhapsody Music. I love the idea of Rhapsody. I never have to actually “pay” for music. For a flat fee, I download as much music as I want to multiple devices and I never have to worry about backing it up. That said, Rhapsody to-go, due to digital rights management, only works on a select number of handheld devices. It’s great if most of your consumption can be via computer and streaming but bad if you are a commuter or frequent traveler. And it should come as no surprise that Rhapsody and Apple haven’t really figured out how to play ball on this particular issue.
2) Time Warner Cable – or cable companies in general, at one time a must have in every American household. The advent of DVR and on-demand programming likely helped stave off some user attrition but cable companies are in for some rough times as most of the major networks are already giving content away for free and on demand. Then add in services like Netflix. Paying for cable and DVR subscriptions is quickly becoming more of an annoyance than a convenience. Most services still haven’t figured out how to let people access their recorded content remotely, not to mention we as consumers have gotten use to getting content for free.
3) Healthcare providers. I’m continually shocked by how few providers actually provide value added services like remote consultations via video conferencing. How few actually let you schedule appointments online. How many still confirm appointments by phone rather than text or email. Healthcare is in a sorry state. The only saving grace right now is that everyone is more or less in the same boat – competing against mediocrity. But sooner or later, that will shift and the winners will quickly be separated from the losers. Here is a great article from Fast Company that paints a very encouraging picture for the future of the patient experience.
I’m sure collectively we can think of dozens more but these are the products/services I use today that I believe face some serious challenges if they are to compete in today’s integrated market, one where consumers in a singular voice are demanding simplicity. Marketers can no longer create products in a vacuum where they address a singular need. Needs are converging and the lines are becoming blurred. What others can you add to this list?
Dilbert on customer feedback
Posted by Sam Kale in Random Musings on May 15, 2011
A tongue-in-cheek commentary on how marketers often can’t resist the urge to over-survey.
Can introverts succeed in business?
Posted by Sam Kale in Random Musings on May 13, 2011
A few years I had a performance review in which I got heavily criticized for “not appearing engaged enough” in meetings and other social situations. As an extreme introvert (by Meyers-Briggs standards), I often find it difficult to relate to a large room filled with very exuberant and outgoing people. And while it’s far from being debilitating, my penchant for listening rather than talking has at times, as in the case of my former manager, earned me a reputation as aloof and unengaged, when in reality I’m simply listening rather than talking.
I spent a long time trying to change, until a subsequent manager helped me remember that each person is different and that the better manager tries to mold themselves to their people, not the other way around. This is not to say that I didn’t make my fair share of mistakes in that previous role – I did, many times over – but I came to realize that my former manager also missed a few opportunities to relate to me more successfully.
That story came back to me yesterday when I stumbled across a post by Carl King on the 10 Most Common Myths About Introverts. As a strong introvert, I definitely related to all ten of his points, none more than the last one:
Myth #10 – Introverts can fix themselves and become Extroverts … A world without Introverts would be a world with few scientists, musicians, artists, poets, filmmakers, doctors, mathematicians, writers, and philosophers. That being said, there are still plenty of techniques an Extrovert can learn in order to interact with Introverts. (Yes, I reversed these two terms on purpose to show you how biased our society is.)
It got me to thinking about the difference between introverts and extroverts in the enterprise setting. I don’t know whether it’s that we expect our leaders to be outgoing and charismatic or whether the outgoing and charismatic are the best at positioning themselves for advancement. Regardless, it seems that too often the strong introverts are, for whatever reason, overlooked. A recent study published in Harvard Business Press points to the necessary balance between introverts and extroverts on teams.
A new study finds that extraverted leaders actually can be a liability for a company’s performance, especially if the followers are extraverts, too. In short, new ideas can’t blossom into profitable projects if everyone in the room is contributing ideas, and the leader is too busy being outgoing to listen to or act upon them.
An introverted leader, on the other hand, is more likely to listen to and process the ideas of an eager team. But if an introverted leader is managing a bunch of passive followers, then a staff meeting may start to resemble a Quaker meeting: lots of contemplation, but hardly any talk. To that end, a team of passive followers benefits from an extraverted leader.
So it seems that the best teams benefit from the mix between introverts and extroverts. The problem, of course, comes when it’s only the introverts that recognize and promote the introverts, leading to silos of introverts and different silos of extroverts. Put another way, you get one group that only wants to think and plan and another group that is all to eager to execute, regardless of the level of planning involved. Each type brings a much needed skill – and check and balance – the other other.
Once I found my place in a team that recognized – and even encouraged – my personal style, I can say that I found a place where I could chase my successes.
Disruptive thinking
Posted by Sam Kale in Product Marketing on May 12, 2011
Great article at Harvard Business Review’s HBR Blog about the difference between Big 1 and Small Companies’ approaches to changing tides in their industry.
A big problem is that these [big] companies tend to treat nascent opportunities the same way that they approach established businesses. They want data, even though data on non-existent markets is inherently fictional. So they focus on the market as it is today, where data are more easily obtained, and they employ the most conservative estimates about new sources of growth. They may also concentrate exclusively on what their customers want, which biases them toward incremental improvements of current solutions. As Henry Ford reputedly said of his industry, “If I had asked customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”
When they do go after an idea, big companies can pursue it so cautiously that opportunity slips through their fingers.
Entrepreneurs follow a different path for a simple reason: they have to.
A great analysis, which in turn generated a couple of other questions I’d love to see addressed in a follow-up, including:
- What happens when the Big Company buys the Small Company to “Level Up” in product innovation?
- Should the Big Company even try to pursue product innovation in the same manner that the Small Company can? Can the Big Company innovate in the way the Small Company can?
- Is the role of the Big Company to be the ones to buy the small company when the technology gets to the right place?
- Is it better to approach Small Company as a Strategic Partner or to buy them outright? What happens when the Strategic Partner Small Company turns into a Direct Competitor Small Company?
- This type of behavior is well established in Big Pharma … the Small Company does most of the preliminary development and shoulders nearly all of the risk. When the product/medicine progresses far enough, the Big Company buys the Small Company, essentially trading their in-house R&D for M&A. What can the broader business community learn from this? When is this not the right model?
- Full disclosure: I work for one of those Big Companies. That said, any opinions expressed or inferred from this post are solely mine.
Kris
Sam
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