Getting trough the silos (process evolution). A new C-level position?

When you start as an entrepreneur, life is hard, but straightforward when it comes to getting things done: you and you alone are responsible. If the product needs a new price, you do it. It you need to update the packaging, you do it. It’s always you. If things go wrong, you are responsible. If things go great, it’s you who made it happen.

The larger organisations become, the more processes, governance structures and job descriptions with clear lines between what is job of person A and what is the job of person B. At some moment in time, you arrive at a situation where processes seem to define everything. “Computer says no” becomes a reality. What really is the issue is when people start believing that there is a process for everything because this implies that having an issue, opportunity, idea,… that can not be funnelled in an existing process… cannot exist. In the mind of people fallen into the ‘a process for everything’-trap, it is virtually impossible to grasp the fact that their might be an idea that does not follow the ‘processes’. It’s a bit like telling to a medieval family that the earth is round. It’s just beyond their way of thinking. To make things even more complex, there is probably a separate silo in the organisation that even is responsible for processes. They tend to be the one that guard the processes…

It’s clear that innovation or even being able to adapt to the changing market in an organisation as this is … well … just not imaginable.

Now imagine a new C-level executive, directly reporting to the CEO. (S)he has no direct reports, no teams, just an MOO-printed business card and carte blanche to investigate each process, follow on every lead (because every employee can send Kafka-like stuff or roadblocks to the_mover@yourcompany.com) and force easier ways of working. He does not have to make a business case to change things, it’s the current process owner who is responsible for the business cases that proves that his current process is still the best).

What impact would this have on your organisation? Sounds like an interesting job to me!

Article also on Medium.

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?

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.

Off course, you always want to be AND harder AND better AND faster AND stronger (AND more AND less costly AND more innovative…)
The real question is: if you are forced to choose, what do you do?

Do you want to go towards more customers
or do you want to be there with more products
or do you want to be the first with a new idea?

Probably, there is no right answer, as it al depends on the situation.
If you are for example a large commodity supplier in a saturated market, you want to be STRONGER. Taking more parts of the existing value chain for example. If you are in a downside market, you want to be BETTER and do the same for less. Reduce your operational costs again and again…
If you are a start-up, you want to go HARDER: taking more customers with your one product/service you are build upon.

But when in doubt, the smartest way is probably to go for FASTER. Getting towards the market faster gives you either more revenue and margin/EBIT, or it gets you to failure more quickly. Which enables you to learn, adapt en beat the competition that has not yet failed but is loosing touch points with their existing audience.

Pop-up consulting

… or make it or make it Pop-up creation.

Getting the time to focus on the important (but maybe less urgent) things is not that easy. By borrowing the pop-up concept (be it from stores to agencies), there might be a solution to all your important needs. Image that a small team of external people comes in for 2 days, develops together with your internal people one concept (be it a new product idea, a go-to-market strategy, a marketing plan, a sales campaign,…), how time and resource efficient would that be. You combine the experience of your people, the knowledge and focus external people can bring to create a real output.

I know I would love it!
JOINED!ly, we can make it happen!

Innovation is not a business unit, it is a mindset.

A lot of companies set up a dedicated innovation department, expect the world of it and then… get disappointed by the results.

The reason is simple: typically these departments are organised to work on business changing and money generation projects which tend to be… well large.

To make it very clear: they should be there and they should be filled with some of your best people, but innovation is more than only this. It is also about your team member having an idea on how to get your insights faster to the sales team, on how to save 1000 Euro by doing something different, on just testing out that new product tweak with a real customer (yes, he might be surprised, but he will not kill you for it), on trying to use a new tool to get organised better, on sharing that one thing you learned from that book/blog you read.

Innovation is about going out their, alone or with your team and challenge the status-quo of your day to day operations.

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…

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.