Agile for business

Working within and with a marketing team typically means working with always changing stakeholders (every project is different), a lot of young and eager people, a lot of overloaded decision makers, continuously changing market demands,… All the things that make business life lively. You have to love it, but this also means that quite some time is spend on aligning people, on planning, follow up, sharing information, status meetings,… This all seems like typical project management stuff and there is quite some research on that: what works and what doesn’t. However, in a typical project resources are committed to one scope, where’s in business reality today, you tend to be more in a web of different ‘projects’. Question there is: How to bring in the knowledge from project management without bringing in the heavy methodology and tools that might work in a large project setting, but nog in various day to day interactions?
Doing some investigations on how multidisciplinary teams can work more efficient together when not being in one great project, I learned some things.

things need to be able to shift/transfer quickly trough the organisation without loosing it’s point of origin
forget about one solution for the whole company if you are more than 100 people
extreme choice (as in: whatever solution you choose, push it hard and force yourself to put as much in it as possibel) has some advantages (don’t use multiple ways of communication).
one exception: face 2 face can (and should) always complement the communication method/tool you use.
as always, people and their belief in the process & the use of the tools define the outcome.

I am now experimenting a lot with Trello combined with some sort of weekly (and in some periods daily) kind of stand-up meeting to get all our campaigns, strategic work, projects,… done.
What works well for you and your team?

Why a cover letter is just waisted time (aka: The BS of a cover letter)

The official version goes that a cover letter shows your motivation and your hunger to get the job. If you do not take the time to write a cover letter, you don’t really want the job no?? A more down to earth version goes that it helps the junior HR staff to preselect the short list of potential candidates. After all, if you get 100 cv’s, you need some help in drilling down… Would be ok if you believe it’s HR who does the final decision, but in a phase of just filtering the bad ones out, all you need is a CV.

But in my opinion, it’s all BS: If a recruiter only takes time to write a half pager with some generic stuff (you know the drill: open minded, team-player, 5-10 years experience in a BtB market, project experience,…), how do you expect somebody to already want the job with all their hart?? People who say this are only interested in either the company name (“it’s the coolest brand ever”) or in the job-title (“look at my new business card”), none of them are good reasons to hire somebody.

And yes, I know, you would love to see me telling how great your company is (it probably is, otherwise the applicant would not even go through the trouble of reaching out, asking to open up the conversation), but that should not convince me to hire me either don’t you think?

Wanting a job really shows trough interaction with people, by talking to people working there, by interacting with the company twitter, by walking to the interview space in their offices.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/interview_questions

Helping people to reach their goal.

There is a lot to tell about leadership, coaching, tutoring,… and how important it is in getting more efficient, more innovative, more customer centric,… as a team or company. Off course, you should help people when their success helps you to have a success (typically always the case for your team members).

However, what most people forget is just how good it makes you feel personally when you can help people in reaching **their** goal, even if it is not linked to your objectives. It is definitely not a pure hedonistic view on it, but it’s a strong and good driver I think. And also: when the going get though, they might remember you for helping them shine!

What about you, when did you help people in reaching **their** goals.

Be hard on values.

Organisations should not be soft on values in times when things are good.
In times when things go good, organisations tend to be ’to human’. Employees who are doing an ok job, but not in line with the values are easily tolerated. Just because: they can afford.
The thing is however, that when things become more heavy, and the organisation needs to perform high to survive, you see that you are not getting there with those ’tolerated’ people. The problem now is however, that just because things are hectic, you cannot afford missing anybody now.
So always make sure you have people that are performing well and in line with your values, you’ll need the best when things are going to get rough.

Focus and organisation setup.

Getting focus in a world full of distractions (personally, I would call them more positively more inspirational inputs ;-)) can get you in some kind of idea paralysis. When you get to much inputs, idea’s, projects, opportunities,… the risk is imminent to overload your system and stop actually realising things.

There is a reason why in typical team profiles, there is paid a lot of attention in getting balanced teams: you need people who generate ideas, challenge them, other people to get the stuff actually done and still others for maintaing the survice (and often forgotten: others to monitor it). The challenge today is that organisations expect more and more for individual people to be able to generate ideas, implement them, get them to customers, monitor them,…

To get to this ideal situation, let’s train people to exchange information (learn from the guy that is good in implementation and the girl that is good in follow-up) and most of all: enable (stimulate even!) them to create small working units that can get the complete development cycle done without having to worry to much about rigid organisational structures. This way you will enable a way of working where the best people for each specific project get the work done (because typically for launching an internet product to BtB customers, you need Marlies to do the implementation, where you would need René if it is about an technical service for BtC customers).

Off course, you need some kind of ‘driving’ focus. To stir up the discussion, as a marketeer, I would tend to argue that your customer segment should be the overall umbrella (and not: product range, sales channel,…). What do you think? How does your organisation works today??

Resolutions for 2013.

What will your priorities be for 2013?

A new year, time for resolutions (or objectives if you prefer a more direct approach). Talking about resolutions is talking about priorities. It is about defining what will be important for you, your job, your team,… in the coming months. It can be about what you want to achieve, but also in how you want to get there (or with whom)?

I dare to argue that in the world we live in, where change is a daily given, thinking about the who, the whom and the why is even more important than the exact what. It still is important to know what you want to achieve in 6 months from now, but it might be even more important to know how you will monitor whether your course of action is still the right one, how to make decisions in case of storm, how to adapt quickly and keep your team innovative and alert.

Taking time to really think about it is not wasted time, it is a sound investment in being effective and successful in 2013.

Let me wish you a successful 2013, full of new challenges, great people to meet and lot’s of customers to please!

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…

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 ;-)).