Opportunity Indigestion

Packard’s Law states: “A great company is more likely to die of indigestion from too much opportunity than starvation from too little“.

In today’s 3.0 world, the ability for companies (as an institution or as a network of employees) to attract the ‘right’ people becomes crucial. Just hiring people based on job descriptions is becoming kind of strange (to be polite) in an environment where both customers, markets, products, CEO’s,… change at the speed of light. The only true skills that remain relevant are ability to change (and thus eagerness to learn & open-mindness), creativity (in connecting with people, ideas,…) and willingness to succeed (the old getting things done, be solution oriented, be able to act fast and learn).

For these employees to actually deliver, your company needs a clear vision, purpose and core-values. Without it, you will either limit the creativity (and in the end loose those employees) or they will not be able to work in the same direction.

The last part of the cocktail is for employees to have personal values to be in line with your company values, as this is the only way to guarantee long-term sustainability of the continuous improvement of both your employees as your company.

Today’s world is full of opportunities, don’t get a indigestion!

Ps: One fourth cocktail element: have fun!

There is no such thing as a 90% happy customer.

Touring, a car assistance company is now doing a radio campaign to boost their membership level: “9 times out of 10 you are back on route within 30 minutes”. This strikes me as kind of an irrelevant shout. Especially in rather one off customer events (The number of car breakdowns in one’s live should be very limited) that are also negative by their nature (It’s always a bad time to have a car breakdown), there is no in between: You either succeed to get people back on the road withing 30 minutes or you don’t. You cannot even out between car breakdowns, because typically there will be no next interaction in the near future.

The real question is, why should this be different in other industries: For each individual customer you either succeed in making him happy or you don’t. Overall percentages may be a way for management to give them a good feeling, but you better make sure every individual on your payroll, every process, every product is going all the way in every customer interaction.

Customers don’t stay because they are 99% happy, they leave because they are more than 1% unhappy…

The strategy paradox.

Let’s say you have a strategic plan (and so do your competitors) for 5 years into the future: What is it worth?

With an average CEO lifetime span of 2-3 years (according to this article), employee turnovers easily reaching 5-15% in some sectors, trendwatchers issuing new trend briefings more than there are changes in the weather (even in Belgium) and customers that seem to switch products and brands daily, what is the use of having a slide deck that describes your sales figure on the third Wednesday of August 2015?

Real value for a company lies in being adapted to react swiftly to change, in daring to question it’s ‘strategy’ on a daily basis (note: questioning does not always means changing). There has been written and said a lot about ‘culture of change’, but how many organisations are actually ready?

Having a strategy makes it harder to change your behavior, because you tend to have to work harder to find evidence if you want to change it. Most people don’t want to do the extra effort (or confront their bosses with it).

We are humans: we like change if we choose it ourself. So let’s start choosing to change (yes: it can be fun!).

Everybody wants to be the marketeer.

The glossyness of your product leaflets, the color of a button on your website, the typeface of your logo,… it seems that everybody (from sales over IT up until your CEO) has an ‘expert’ opinion on it. Let’s make it clear to all ‘marketeers’: When we say that ‘everybody is a marketeer’, we mean that you all should think about customer experience in your part of the value chain, that you too should be aware that you communicate with the customer (not only when you pick up the phone in a call centre, but also in the way you present your offer to the customer and in the way your invoice is structured).

So yes: marketing communications is a profession, customer obsession is (next to a passion) a company asset for sustainable development.

Now you all be ‘marketeers’ in your part of the value chain!

(and some cool music to go along with that @

The second worst mistake

The worst mistake a marketeer can make is to transpose his own beliefs to the rest of the market. Assuming that all your prospects and customers like the same things as you do, that they will react in the same way you do is a embarking on a safe trip to disappointment and failure.

The second worst mistake a marketeer can make is by not letting his own emotions, beliefs, preferences, reactions,… come into play. If you are not taking the time to experience your product, service,… with your own eyes, if you do not feel how you like to be treated as a customer, if you do not let your passion for the story behind the product carry you away, you will end up without a true compelling story, product, service, … & life.

E=mc&#178

What gives you Energy? Or probably even better: what gives you a true emotion? It is about your Market (what you do) , your Customers (who you do it for) and let those two Communicatie with on and other.

E=mc².

If you try to do everything, you don’t have a market, you have a garbage.
If you try to do well for everybody, you will get tired very quick.
If you cannot bring the added value to your customer, you are actually… well not creating any value at all.

So go bring some creative value out there!

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
˜Albert Einstein

IT architecture of the future.

IT Architecture is grasping to keep up.

Today, most major enterprises struggle with on of the following IT architectures:

A custom developped core system in a program language no developper below the age of 50 speaks, with a mish-mash of different applications build on that core (from access db scripts written by somebody 10 years ago to interfaces to create interactive websites by an ad agency).
An industry standard ERP system (think SAP) build for massive transactions 10 years ago and tweaked by countless waves of consultants and internal IT gurus based on continuously changing demands from the business.

This leads to a situation where IT gets frustrated by a chaotic and hard to maintain architecture and ’the business’ does not understand why IT never seems to be able to deliver something without taking 2 years. Add the rise of social media and the need for people to collaborate more in their day to day job, pushing business people towards SaaS solution not supported by IT and it is not hard to see that things can get quite heated. IT departments fight with security guidelines to prevent employees to use social collaboration tools. How hard it may be for some, I am convinced we are (sorry for that: we have) evolved to a situation where the user is more in control (CMS allow non-IT profiles already for years to tweak ’technical’ things). Not to mention the overall ‘IT knowledge’ of younger people.

My conviction is that IT architects should refocus on the core of the organisation: The processes that are stable for years, require a great deal of protection and consists of data that can deliver value to all business units (and external stakeholders like customers). Make this data completely error proof and uptodate should be their main concern. The next step would be to create an open layer (this means not without security!) where the business can attach other solutions to. Being in the world we are at, having stable requirements for business applications is impossible, so IT should not ask the business for it.

This open but stable core functionality gives companies the possibilities to quickly deploy SaaS solutions for a need that is imminent now (without having huge setup costs) without compromising the need for core data stability.

Ps: The link with marketeers is obvious: They also find out the hard way that their customers cannot be managed anymore on a coporate transactional way. This realisation only makes it more synical for IT departments who had been warned: Times they are a changing indeed!

Private social networks.

In Belgium, the penetration rate of Twitter is very low compared to Facebook (eg. http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/belgium). There can be many explanations as the why to, but I argue here that we Belgians are as a group rather introvert (or at least: less extravert than for example the Dutch), which makes that we are social, but more in our circle. Of course, with social networks, this circle can be relatively big, but the idea stays the same.

The question is, how do you get a grip on your customers when they use social media more every day, but in a private circle? Simple: you don’t. The only option is in bringing them the added value, the experiences, the authenticity, the values and the fun they also expect from their real live friends.

Happy ‘nice to meet you’!

Doing the right thing

… is a matter of timing.

If you are talking about innovation, the right time is before anyone else does it (be it in your peer group, your industry, your group of friends, …).

If you are talking about creativity, the right time is just when people are ready for it, but did not yet dare to ask for it.

If it is about your career, it is about when you think you are ready for it.

If it is about giving praise, it is around the time when people need it to got the extra mile (or to get back on track).

If it is about letting go, it is before you spend to much money, let other people decide on it or somebody gets hurt.

But in all these cases, whenever you are in doubt, it is about… now!

Social Media: Start sharing intern first

There is a lot to say about Social Media in Marketing meetings, among CMO’s and even in the boardroom. But if everybody seems to be willing to ‘share’ with their customers, why is it so hard then to start sharing within your organization? It is amazing how little people do know about what their colleagues are doing. Maybe it is an obsession on everybody’s own scope and the recognition that comes with a internal network that took 15 years to build? The opportunities that are wasted because every person, team, business unit,… is only sharing information on successes (so when the work is done) are enormous.

Just imagine what could happen when today you see that the guy from finance you never met is working on a solvency analysis of a newcomer in the market whilst you are working on a commercial competitive analysis for your sales manager? Or to see that the guy from R&D picked up an idea you had 6 months ago and have developed already a little bit further in your spare time? Or you inspire a co-worker with the market research you did?

An internal social network is technically no work at all. Start doing it.

(Yes, we can help you ;-)).