Source: The Fighter official movie website

Or: When Leadership Squanders its Innovative Workers

My wife and I finally watched The Fighter (2010) for the first time on DVD. It’s an exceptional movie based on the true story of Micky Ward, a professional boxer from Lowell, Mass.

Set in the early 1990′s, the film introduces Micky Ward (portrayed by Mark Wahlberg) as an aging boxer whose champion potential is slipping away as trusted family members fail to look out for his best interests.  Between his drug-addicted brother Dicky (Christian Bale) missing training sessions and his mother Alice (Melissa Leo) mismanaging his matches, Micky Ward suffers a series of stinging defeats and considers ending his boxing career.

The Fighter led me to wonder how many people are out there today with similarly high potential being similarly squandered. Does this suggestion ring true to you?

I am certain the vast majority of people (certainly not just product marketers and product managers) have felt the same gnawing cognitive dissonance during their careers that Micky Ward felt: an awareness that one’s work and skills were somehow being stifled, but knowing neither why nor what to do about it.

I believe the root cause behind the vast majority of struggling products (and, therefore, struggling businesses) is people not living up to their potential due to a non-supportive organizational environment. Like Micky Ward’s frustrations early on in The Fighter, the core issue is a pervasive inability of people, starting with the management team, to work with one another effectively and treat each other properly.

There are many types of managerial dysfunctions that contribute to a non-supportive environment that adversely impacts people, which cannot help but adversely impact products. Here are a few that might ring true to you (though I hope not!) …

Leadership that is disengaged from the company’s original innovation and brand equity. Beware of management who was not around and/or not emotionally invested in the company’s original innovations that earned its success and brand equity in the first place. There are many particularly bad examples out there, such as “professional” management teams as described in this past blog post.

Starbucks is a recent high-profile example of “post-founder” management that missed the mark badly.  After original visionary CEO and chairman Howard Schultz’ retirement from Starbucks, the company pursued an unfortunate strategy of over-expansion while becoming less like the original Starbucks and more like Dunkin’ Donuts.  Thankfully, Starbucks is also a success story in recapturing that innovation and rescuing its brand following the return of Howard Schultz to the company. His book Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul, is definitely on my “to read” list.

In an organization with a management team that just doesn’t “get” it, innovators are much more likely to be “reined in” than celebrated.

Leadership that punishes unsuccessful innovation.

If you say, ‘I want people to take risks,’ and then fire the guy if the outcome fails, it becomes clear how your organization really feels about risk.

- Anthony F. Smith, Consultant and author of the book ESPN the Company: The Story and Lessons Behind the Most Fanatical Brand in Sports.

There’s a great old movie sight gag featuring an overworked bus boy at an understaffed diner. Hurrying with two full armloads of stacked dishes, he slips and drops one armload of dishes that fall shattering to the floor. The slave-driver boss roars, “You idiot! You’re fired!”

The bus boy looks his boss in the eye, shrugs his shoulders, lets the other armload of dishes fall crashing to the floor as well, and walks out.

The lesson is clear: a company culture that punishes workers for honest mistakes, and even worse, for taking a risk and trying out a new idea that doesn’t work out, deserves the plentiful fallout it creates. Nothing stifles innovation (or, for that matter, careers, information sharing, customer service, etc.) like a ham-handed “slap on the wrist” from an authoritarian boss.

Leadership that fails to reward or even recognize successful innovation. Failing to appreciate or acknowledge innovation success might even be worse than scolding unsuccessful efforts. I recall some years ago reading some of the 1985 book Intrapreneuring: Why You Don’t Have to Leave the Corporation to Become an Entrepreneur by Gifford Pinchot. The book described an ingenious manager who single-handedly created a new multimillion dollar stream of revenue for his employer. The manager discovered an innovative breakthrough that transformed tons of scrap material previously hauled away as waste into a vital component of a new product.

Great job, right? Tell that to the manager’s employer, whose collective response was little more than an indifferent shrug. Incredibly, the manager was not rewarded in any way for his multimillion dollar innovation (!!) – an injustice that Gifford Pinchot seemed to gloss over and almost excuse:

[The manager] doesn’t seem bitter that he barely received a thank you for creating a new business…He is from that loyal generation who is thankful for a job, and my questions about recognition and rewards made him uncomfortable.

This feeble conclusion to a dismal story debunks the book’s premise; after all, an entrepreneur in charge of his or her own company actually reaps the rewards of his or her innovation, rather than having them gobbled up without even a “thank you” by an indifferent executive team!

In addition to conveying the cynical notion that the manager “should just be thankful he has a job,” the company made a very loud and clear statement about how little it valued innovation and those who engage in it.  I’m sure  that message was received loud and clear, and remembered, by others across that organization.

Leadership that is preoccupied with “problem solving,” not innovating. Referring to the previous sad example, problem solving would have amounted to simply finding a new vendor willing to dispose of ‘all this worthless material waste’ for a few bucks less than the current cost. Innovating is what that manager actually did, turning that scrap material into revenue-generating gold.

An organization unduly focused on linear “problem solving” will readily recognize the former and often underappreciate the latter (even if the innovative efforts prove successful!), perhaps even going so far as to label those innovative efforts as indicative of “not taking direction.”

I discussed this malady in a recent article exploring the Hierarchy of Imagination, in which I suggested that many boss-subordinate conflicts stem from incompatible levels of imagination, such as a highly “creative” person reporting to a “left brain”-focused, “problem solver” boss.

Some years ago I recall reading about the CEO of a consumer product manufacturer [UPDATE 1/21/2012: I since recalled the article appeared in the Boston Globe, by writer Dale Dauten who spoke with former Gillette CEO James Kilts]. who proudly described how he successfully… [drum roll?] mandated a dramatic reduction in the company’s product SKU count. Hmm.

Apparently Mr. Kilts regarded the number of SKUs as being excessive and too complicated. I remember being underwhelmed by what struck me as administrative work of nominal relevance. Apparently summary roll-ups of SKU data would not placate Kilts either. I also wondered whether some poor soul had to regularly burn the midnight oil to break all the product SKU data back to its previous level of detail necessary for operations.

My frame of reference is the article by Dauten, but I now see that Kilts later touted this same achievement in a book entitled Doing the Right Thing. Anyway, Kilts soon sold Gillette out to P&G.

Instead of tinkering over such “problem solving,” I hope your company’s leaders are doing the right thing and attacking the work they were mandated to do: increase the top line by setting the vision, agenda and right environment for creating innovative new products.

I would also very much like to hear your insights into this topic.

I was already impressed with the work of Stu – I mean Dr. Stuart Payne – and his staff, and yet was even more so after reading his Principal’s Message in the latest issue of Northwood Elementary’s impressive parents newsletter, which summarized the goals he and his teaching staff set for 2011:

At the beginning of this year, our dedicated staff set…three goals for ourselves: (1) Rigor, (2) Differentiation, and (3) Progress Monitoring.

These succinct goals no doubt rang true for Northwood Elementary parents.   In fact, they rang quite true for me in my world of product marketing.  Let’s look at each one more closely:

Photo by courosa (Flickr CC)

Rigor.  Stuart Payne writes: “Through rigor, we endeavor to make sure that every child is challenged in a developmentally appropriate manner.”  This vital educational goal can be easily adapted to product marketing/product management terms: We must challenge ourselves to really understand our products and our markets, and convey our value in a compelling manner that our target markets will understand and be motivated to learn more.  I am reminded of a blog post by Dave Kellogg (MarkLogic CEO for six years) on applying (rigorous) critical thinking for effective product positioning (I elaborate on Dave Kellogg’s fine post here, BTW).

One sidenote: Stuart Payne also wrote: “(R)esearch indicates…that when the work is too difficult, (students) become frustrated.”  This reminded me of a classic blog post by Kathy Sierra: Do your customers feel a similar sense of frustration trying to understand and/or use our products?  Why?  How can this be corrected (and fast)?

Differentiation.  Of course, as a product marketer, product differentiation is critical.  However, Northwood Elementary is referring to differentiation as in the non-standardization of classroom instruction:

By designing differentiated lessons that meet the needs of our students varying ability levels, we ensure success for all  (emphasis added).

So let’s look at “differentiation” in a similar way for marketing: The “standardization” of marketing and PR is long gone, as David Meerman Scott and others have already made quite clear.  That said, what different means, what different avenues should we share our product messaging?

The new book I am reading now, Content Rules by Ann Handley and CC Chapman addresses this very topic (watch for a book review here soon).  In a nutshell, it’s a how-to guide to differentiate your product messaging mediums – video, podcasts, webinars, blogs, ebooks.  Doing so enables us to connect with prospects in the mediums of their choice, in which we convey in informative, compelling ways what our products are and why they are essential.

Progress Monitoring.  Stuart Payne explains:

Progress monitoring is the way in which we gauge the effectiveness of our instruction and the way in which we measure students’ progress toward their learning goals (Emphasis added). During our Response to Instruction (RTI) block, for example, we are able to target instruction in a way that aligns with each child’s reading ability.

Similarly, how do you know if your marketing programs are any good?  I’ve always defined success of my product positioning, messaging and marketing content is its capacity to yield qualified leads and ultimately translate into revenue.  True enough, but just counting up “leads” is insufficient.  Ardath Albee, in her excellent book eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale, connects the dots between marketing and revenue with content marketing:

Building online engagement…depends on your ability to develop compelling content…’Engagement bling’ is what I call the positive results your company gains from sustaining trusted engagement with prospects and customers throughout their buying journeys…

The goal of marketing in a complex sale is to generate qualified demand that efficiently transitions to revenues.  And if you want to increase the level of demand for your solutions, it is critical that you enrich the relationships your company establishes with prospects and customers.  Marketing with contagious content operates like a pay-it forward system for your company.  This is because the value your content provides transfers to the value your prospects and customers ascribe to your company (p. 14 & 16 – emphasis added).

Ann Handley and CC Chapman elaborate further in Content Rules:

(A)ccording to Forrester Research, “Long sales cycles and complex purchase decision-making challenge B2B marketers to find the most qualified prospects and to build relationships long before the first sales call.” As a result, you need to embrace a new mind-set – one focused not just on generating leads but on developing a [content] strategy to keep prospects engaged until they’re good and ready to talk to your sales reps. (p. 25)

 In other words, the old metaphor of the marketing department “throwing leads over the wall” should be replaced by a metaphor of marketers throwing an entertaining, informative party that prospective customers want to stay at and meet all your friends…who happen to work in the sales department!

There’s plenty more to write about on this topic, but it’s important to note that Northwood Elementary is taking an innovative approach in how student progress is being measured (its Response to Instruction block noted above, as opposed to, say, grades – a flawed, lagging indicator).  Similarly, marketing programs should be judged not just on a flawed measure such as the number of “leads” who, for example, opened an email link, but based on the quality and duration of the engagement of prospects to “keep them at the party.”

The staff goals of Northwood Elementary to engage and help their students succeed bear some interesting similarities with the goals of effective marketers, working to engage and help their prospects succeed with your products.  And, no, I’m not suggesting prospective customers be treated like elementary school children.

Actually, hang on, I take that back: If your prospective customers are given the same respect, dedicated focus as afforded to the kids in Northwood Elementary, with the same authentic desire to help them succeed, that will put you way ahead of competitors whose product marketing practices and corporate culture are the equivalent of vapid school lessons that may as well have originated in the mimeograph era.

If you liked this post, you may also like:

Be a Dogged (Not Dog!) Product Marketer/Product Manager

Play the Product Marketing Game Like a Chess Grandmaster

“Missionary” Technology Really Requires a Technology Evangelist

This insight came from Mark Suster’s colleague Ameet Shah, a co-worker at Andersen Consulting  in the late 90′s.  Andersen Consulting was the largest independent consulting firm at the time, but amid scores of existing competitors and newly-funded Internet consulting startups…

…the market seemed crowded and our leadership position that had been built over many years seemed to not matter any more…[But] Ameet said to me, “Ah, I’ve seen this many times before.  See, Mark, in a booming market you can never tell the winners from the losers.  In a booming market buyers aren’t very discerning and companies that have weaknesses can mask them…Andersen Consulting always gains market share in down markets.  That’s where the companies who are [only] good at marketing tend to crumble…Don’t worry, we’ll be fine, just wait for the next downturn.”  That had never occurred to me.  In other words, in a strong market, even turkeys can fly.  (emphasis added)

A company that works to “gain market share in down markets” and seizes “the next downturn” as an opportunity is most certainly the opposite of a “flying turkey” business.  I’d call it a “crow” business, referencing the amazing adaptability and intelligence of crows, as I have blogged previously. 

I also suggest Jeffrey Fox’s latest book, How to be a Fierce Competitor: What Winning Companies and Great Managers Do in Tough Times, is a users guide on how to become a “crow” business. 

Read on for a review of this great book along with more insights from Mark Suster’s fine blog post.

In his usual quick, cut-to-the-chase text style he established with his original bestseller How to Become CEO, Jeffrey Fox begins his book by describing fierce competitors as companies that “relentlessly, tirelessly, continuously do whatever they legally can to pursue and capture every profitable customer.”  Well, even the most pudgy flying turkey company would claim to do that.  So what makes a fierce competitor/crow business truly unique?  In a nutshell, it is how they respond to tough economic times.  No doubt Ameet Shah would approve of this by Jeffrey Fox:

The savvy, smart, well-led companies see bad times as a good time to gain market share, to outfox the competition…From the economic panic of 1823 through the Great Depression and the twelve recessions since 1955, the facts are indisputable: those companies that outsell, outmarket, out-train, out-innovate and out-hustle their competition emerge from a downturn in a stronger market share and profit position than do those companies that hunker down…Fierce companies go after the business when the other companies are giving up on the business.

In similarly fast-paced, no-nonsense text, Jeffrey Fox provides over fifty best practices of fierce competitor companies to achieve the above-noted overarching aim of taking advantage of tough times…with the tenacity and hardscrabble adaptiveness of the crow.  Rather than just quote selections of Jeffrey Fox’s book chapter and verse, I’d like to share some recurring themes from How to be a Fierce Competitor that jumped out at me:

• Fierce competitors/crows have leaders who are self-leaders: they set winning examples, including being visible, with customers, prospects and employees – and not just physical presence, but also in active communication, sharing news, company strategy, and otherwise being an evangelist for the company’s culture as a fierce competitor.  They also reject traditional, antiquated executive perks like preferred parking spaces and the like.  Flying turkey CEOs are more likely to remain aloof, seemingly behind closed doors and are otherwise ”missing in action” with any number of managerial layers between (s)he and the customers.
• Flying turkey CEOs respond to tough times with all-too-familiar, shop-worn actions, most notably reactionary cost-cutting.  They might ” ‘save’ money by quarantining their sales people, by cutting [marketing, or] customer service reps.”  Of course, such “cost savings” are illusory and myopic; Jeffrey Fox likens such cuts to a baseball team cancelling batting practice.
• Fierce competitors/crows have leaders who recognize that change is a constant and do not fear it or resist it.  Without this core mindset, a company cannot be a fierce competitor/crow business.

Returning to Mark Suster’s blog post: In 2001, Andersen Consulting, now as Accenture, was able to ”double down on recruiting, sales, outsourcing, new market entries and marketing (yes, with Tiger ads)” while other consulting firms were laying people off en masse and most of the Internet consulting startups were already bankrupt.  The flying turkeys had crash-landed.

Mark Suster sees a similar process going on in the market today and offers the savvy advice of a fierce competitor:

When the tech market is done over heating, or over hyping or whatever is going on right now, there will be a select few companies who have built differentiated products, hired talented teams, raised sufficient capital, established good operational processes and have strategic insight into where their market is heading.  These companies will grab massive market share as others fall behind.  Many “me, too” companies will perish…My advice to entrepreneurs is to have a sense of purpose and stick to that regardless of what you’re reading in TechCrunch or Business Insider…If you know what your customers need, deliver against that promise and provide a product or services that has economic value you’ll do well.  Double-down on great people, process & IP.

For those of you playing at home, I am a couple of rows in front of the post holding my book with a thumbs-up.

Dan and Howie will receive David Meerman Scott’s new book we’re all holding up in the photo, Real-Time Marketing & PR, plus a great bonus book I will be reviewing here soon: How to be a Fierce Competitor by Jeffrey Fox. Enjoy, guys!

Thanks to David Meerman Scott for a great presentation on Real Time Marketing for the Boston Product Management Association Thursday evening, January 6, at the Microsoft NERD Center, an impressive, event-friendly space in Cambridge, Mass.

David Meerman Scott built his presentation off his new book, Real-Time Marketing & PR.  Key highlights of David’s presentation follow!

BPMA attendees holding their happy fun complimentary copy of David Meerman Scott’s “Real-Time Marketing & PR”!  And now a challenge: “Where’s Mike?” The first non-attendee to contact me and point out where I am in this photo (click on photo to access full size version), I will get you a copy of David’s book plus a super-awesome bonus book!  UPDATE 1/12: Was lost but now I am found – See above post for my two winners/finders! (Photo taken in real-time by David Meerman Scott.)

“We’ll Always Never Have Paris.”  David Meerman Scott led off with a few examples of “real-time” marketing and PR, including Wynn Hotel’s PR announcement banning Paris Hilton from their hotels.  The announcement was made immediately following Paris Hilton’s drug possession arrest.  Wynn’s ‘No Paris Allowed’ announcement was reported and repeated constantly by all media channels.  Of course, this PR (certainly at Paris Hilton’s expense) cost Wynn nothing.  Key point: Company size and media buying power are no longer the decisive advantage it once was.  The new marketing competitive advantage is speed and agility – acting very quickly on opportunities as they present themselves.

Does This Mean Buddhists are Cut Out to be Great Marketing Leaders?  Organizations must “live” in the present.  This means acting upon ”now.”  Unfortunately, few do: most companies draw from experiences from the past and then plan way into the future.  Organizations must react to “now” – the present moment:

• Communicate in real-time.  David Meerman Scott urged attendees not to turn “off” cellphones.  Please do set them to mute/buzz, but go ahead and Twitter now; shoot a video and upload it now!  (David couldn’t have known this, but he had just given an effective sales pitch why I should upgrade from my vanilla, keyboardless cellphone with a smartphone.
• Just add watershed content: Instant Websites.  Website platforms, hosting sites and blog services (naturally, I’d place WordPress at the top of that list) means the creation of websites can be nearly instantaneous, replacing the old school of outside consultants building “wireframes,” designing stylesheets, etc.  The website for the Bush-Clinton Fund, assisting the Haitian people immediately after Haiti’s earthquake, was built in one day, immediately earning millions in its first day live.
• Engage the media in real-time.  David Meerman Scott shared a great B2B example of real-time media engagement, which you can also read in his blog: As soon as Oracle issued an unusually terse, in David’s words, ”North Korea style one-paragraph announcement” of the acquisition of a competitor to Eloqua, Joe Payne, CEO of Eloqua, immediately wrote a blog post about it, and in so doing, took control of subsequent media reporting and analysis of Oracle’s acquisition.

A New Kind of “Permission Marketing”.  David Meerman Scott suggested a list of “things to do” to get started with real-time marketing and PR, including developing real-time guidelines, which give managers and workers permission to react. I was impressed to hear from David that IBM, for example, has written guidelines advising managers and workers exactly what permissions they have to issues comments and respond to comments in social media, and enabling them to do so with confidence.

It’s ironic that a giant like IBM is way in front of enabling workers to engage in real-time marketing and PR while companies a tiny sliver of IBM’s size would never consider allowing workers to speak on the officers’ behalf. (This reticence is hardly limited to small companies that don’t get it; United Airlines kept mum throughout its United Breaks Guitars PR fiasco, which earned United Airlines a black eye and Dave Carroll, the musician whose guitar was trashed loads of online notoriety and a business deal with guitar case company Calton Cases.)

The most important point of David Meerman Scott’s entire talk:  Social media are tools; real-time marketing and PR is a mindset.  Developing this mindset is very hard, but essential to put real-time marketing and PR to use for you and your company.

Thanks again for a great presentation, David!

The good old “800 pound gorilla” metaphor came up in a conversation this week, reminding me of a clever article I read a few years ago on the subject of animal metaphors, which are all too common in business-speak.

This company or that company is the “800 pound gorilla.” Another company might say it “strives to be an eagle in its industry.” Infamous ex-Sunbeam CEO “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap, fitting his penchant for firing scores of people with impunity, adorned an entire office wall with an image of a mighty lion, honoring its predatory, eat-or-be-eaten, zero-sum game carnivorousness. And of course, one wants to be a “dog” company.

Source: jpmckenna (Flickr-CC)

Actually, companies should strive to be the crow of their industry.

Putting aside the ominous symbolism of crows in mythology and popular culture, business columnist Dale Dauten made a pretty good case for businesses to act like the crow. Given the particularly difficult economy today, calling for business to have the same kind of hardscrabble resourcefulness and adaptiveness of the crow is more on target now than when he wrote this a few years ago:

Most corporations aspire to being mighty, seeking to be the lions or eagles of their industries. Indeed, the largest and strongest of the business predators are sometimes referred to as ”category killers.” Grrrgh…

I’d like to see what we can learn from the wisdom of the crow. Crows are the geniuses of the avian world…crows are ”eight times more abundant within six-tenths of a mile (1 kilometer) of people than they are further from people.”

Yet, crows do not require humans. They eat seeds, insects, worms and just about anything else. When convenient, crows can work as a team: Should they spot an otter with a freshly caught fish, the crows gather around, and one crow pinches the otter’s tail to distract it, then the others nip in for the fish steal…

Thus, we see the wisdom of the crow, the ultimate adapter: Go with it. Not the old ”go for it” of the predator relying on strength and will, but the brainier ”go with it,” accepting the environment and making use of whatever it offers.

Dale Dauten’s point nicely dovetails (no aviary pun intended) with the more recent advice  from 37Signals founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson to utilize simplicity as a product differentiator to beat the competition: “do less than your competitors to beat them. Solve the simple problem and leave the hairy, difficult, nasty problems to the competition.”  I blogged about Jason Fried’s and David Heinemeier Hansson’s book Rework in this blog entry, which also includes some related advice directly applicable to software companies by Kathy Sierra.

It is also clear to me that Jeffrey Fox’s new book, How to Be a Fierce Competitor, can be described as a primer on how to be a crow in business: seeking and finding new opportunities amid hard economic times while bigger competitors sit on their hands to “wait things out.”

Please read my review of How to Be a Fierce Competitor, perhaps Jeffrey Fox’s best since his first bestseller How to Become CEO.

Read Dale Dauten’s archived article here.

Acting like a crow, with full awareness and action based on a very acute knowledge of the realities of its markets, will no doubt improve the likeliness for businesses to succeed, despite hostile economies and would-be 800 pound gorillas, eagles, lions, tigers, and/or bears for a very long time.

I’ve been reading Rework by 37Signals founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. The book is loaded with wise, relentlessly succinct and deliberately sharply-written advice to succeed in business in a web-enabled world. 

There are plenty of insights in Rework worthy of several blog entries, but one that especially jumped out at me was Jason Fried’s and David Heinemeier Hansson’s advice to “underdo the competition.” This is also one of the blunt implorements on the back cover, including: Emulate drug dealers(!) Pick a fight(!) Happily, each is elaborated upon in the book to successfully deliver a salient point.

As for underdoing the competition:

Instead of entering into a “one-upping, Cold War mentality” with competitors, “do less than your competitors to beat them. Solve the simple problem and leave the hairy, difficult, nasty problems to the competition.”  (Rework, p. 144) …

In the end, it’s not worth paying much attention to the competition anyway…Focus on competitors too much and…(y)ou wind up offering your competitor’s products with a different coat of paint. (p.148)

Simplicity is clearly a strong product differentiator.

As product examples proving their point, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson point to the increasing popularity of plain-vanilla fixed-gear bicycles that are cheap, easy to ride, and require less maintenance, as well as the Flip, a best-selling compact camcorder with no bells or whistles - except that the market has decided ”ultra simplicity” is the one bell/whistle they really need.

Actually, I found an example of my own while looking for a web-based to-do application. There are plenty of fine (and free) online organizers out there, but the one I settled upon was perhaps the simplest one available: TeuxDeux by “studio-mates swissmiss and Fictive Kin.”

In keeping with Jason Fried’s and David Heinemeier Hansson’s advice, take a look at the one and only screen you work with in TeuxDeux. You have just logged on with your new free account and here is your blank canvas:

There are other to-do applications that run rings around TeuxDeux in terms of features, options and automation, but, just looking at this screen, can’t you tell just by looking at it how to use it?

Instead of learning how to use their to-do application, might most people want to hit the ground running and start using their to-do application immediately?

The element of absolute simplicity is critical for any winning software application. With perfect simplicity, the time it takes to go from an absolute beginner to successful user must be as short as possible.

This winning observation is from Kathy Sierra and her grand slam home run of a blog, Creating Passionate Users (Dec 2004- Apr 2007) here:

For most of us, our user wants to use our tools (software, books, sermons, screwdrivers, saddle, music) to do something else ([solve business problems], learn, find inspiration, build a deck, ride a horse, dance). So we try to think about the thing they want to do, and how quickly we can get them through those two thresholds:

1) The point at which they stop hating you (your company), the activity itself, or their complete inability to do anything useful.

2) The point at which they start feeling like they kick ass. While passion is not a guarantee at this point, the chances of someone becoming passionate before this are slim.

And it’s not always about the product–sometimes it’s all about framing, documentation, and learning. It’s about [straps self into buzzword appreciation chair] attenuation. Turning down the gain. Narrowing. Focusing.

and also here:

We will resist the siren call of the market, because we believe the best path is:  Give users what they actually want, not what they say they want. And whatever you do, don’t give them new features just because your competitors have them! … Be the “I Rule” product, not the “This thing I bought does everything, but I suck [at using it]!” product.

(BTW: An excellent update on, and an appreciation of, Kathy Sierra and retrospect of some of her best posts is here, by David Barnes. Nicely done, sir).

Source: Flickr (by Auntie P - Creative Commons)

November marked Dale Carnegie’s birthday (November 21, 1888) and also the anniversary of his death (November 1, 1955). While recently browsing the bookstore, I saw Dale Carnegie’s classic How to Win Friends and Influence People alongside another familiar book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey’s 1989 bestseller. I have read both books; while both books have much to offer, I hold one book in much higher regard than the other (I bet you can guess which one from this post’s title!).

Covey billed his book as a next generation self-improvement book above and beyond Dale Carnegie’s (complete with a “Goodbye, Dale Carnegie” quote of advance praise); and yet, Dale Carnegie’s venerable 1937 book has actually endured much better than 7 Habits over the last twenty years, thanks to Carnegie’s timeless, highly personable advice, wrapped in one of the first and best conversational writing books ever written.

Source: Creating Passionate Users blog by Kathy Sierra. (Just one example of Kathy's many typically great 50's era B&W graphics)

Kathy Sierra, whose Creating Passionate Users blog (2006-2007) remains one of the best I have ever read, had a lot to say about the value of conversational writing over formal writing, identifying a universal truth that goes a long way to explaining the 72-year strong success of How to Win Friends and Influence People:

If you want people to learn and remember what you write, say it conversationally. This isn’t just for short informal blog entries and articles, either. We’re talking books. Assuming they’re meant for learning, and not reference, books written in a conversational style are more likely to be retained and recalled than a book on the same topics written in a more formal tone.

I wondered whether How to Win Friends and Influence People was recognized as a groundbreaking book when it was first published.  I could only find one book review in a search of major newspaper archives: a January 31, 1937 review in The Washington Post (Advice for the Lifelorn, by Gilbert Stinger). Yes, the review was favorable, but while referring to How to Win Friends and Influence People as “a popular treatise, dressed up in fast-moving, twentieth century English, full of hardheaded testimonials,” the reviewer also remarked “the core of [Dale Carnegie's] advice is: Think about others, be unselfish. Other authors in this field have recently stressed the same point [including] Dorothea Brande in Wake Up and Live.”  In fact, the books could not be more different. Reading the dry and stiffly formal dissertation style of Wake Up and Live (available online), presumably typical of the prevailing 1930′s style of non-fiction, led me to appreciate how ahead of his time Dale Carnegie’s conversational writing truly was, and how fresh it remains even today.

If you haven’t recently read How to Win Friends and Influence People, pick up and read an updated copy; ideally, get the 2-in-1 edition that includes How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, Dale Carnegie’s follow-up bestseller. How to Win Friends and Influence People remains the first and best self-improvement book.

Dale Carnegie’s work would have been right at home as WordPress blog, but was just some 65-70 years ahead of its time. Mindful of this fact, plus given that a number of blogs have been republished into books, I hereby nominate Dale Carnegie as the world’s first (de facto) blogger. Carnegie was perhaps the first non-fiction author who understood the value of ”writing as you talk.”

You were supposed to give the bus driver the number of your bus stop near your car.  Running late, I rushed to catch my departing flight and didn’t make note of the number, but I knew where I was in relation to the entire lot.

“Excuse me,” I said to the bus driver, “but I don’t have my bus stop number. Can you just drop me off at whatever stop is near to the far right corner of the lot?”

“What’s the number?” grunted the bus driver.

“I don’t have the number.  But I know my car is near the far right corner of the lot from where we are right now.”

A slightly louder grunt this time: “What’s the number?”

Huh…?! After one more similarly circular exchange I said, “Sir, any stop near the far corner of the lot will be just fine…”

One of my compadres from the trade show mercifully interjected with a stop number he knew was somewhat close to my car. The bus driver, now given “the number,” did silently acquiesce to stop there, his eyes forward. Note that there was no language barrier or misunderstanding. The driver could also hear me just fine. But he was simply locked into his own way of thinking to a degree beyond the pale.

The way a person communicates is a major part of their reputation, and therefore, their personal brand.  I also suggest the vast majority of communication problems are caused by the personal baggage we bring to the table when communicating, known in sociological terms as conditional confirmation bias.  

Specifically, a person might pay attention to those bits of a conversation that verify their beliefs about the matter at hand, and ignore other information that doesn’t fit that pre-existing bias. That bus driver was certainly was not communicating with me; for all I know, his confirmation bias may have been, who does this guy think he is for not knowing his bus stop number…?!

There is an excellent book I am now reading of relevance to this topic: Know What You Don’t Know: How Great Leaders Prevent Problems Before They Happen by Michael Roberto.  A book for anyone involved in management, marketing communication, or business intelligence/data warehousing, Michael Roberto’s book addresses human flaws in how we interpret, communicate and act upon information.  Michael Roberto explores why failures to discover informational insight and/or act upon it happen.  He draws illuminating examples from business, healthcare and world events (including 9/11). Michael Roberto also highlights the active behaviors and actions needed to effectively communicate and see the forest through the trees of information to prevent crises before they happen.  I look forward to sharing more when I finish this book.

I recently read that vast majority of all organizations in a recent survey reported very little benefit from Business Intelligence systems, if ever!  While many such BI failures may have been due to various technical problems, I have to wonder: are such lopsided statistics really all due to the Business Intelligence tools and Data Warehousing solutions themselves, or, as Michael Roberto suggests, might it be due to the corporate cultures that discourage asking “politically unpopular” questions based on data analytics, or pooh-pooh “gut feel” when little or no supporting data exists (yet)…? As the saying goes, a bad carpenter blames his tools!

It’s easy to recognize the bus driver’s rudeness and poor communication skills. The much harder question that demands an honest answer is to ask ourselves what personal baggage have we brought to a series of communications that caused misinterpretation of information, inappropriate actions, or worse?  Did we fail to communicate, filter information to match our personal biases, and act in our own way at least a little like that bus driver?

Since I traveled to BWI at the end of September and returned in early October, I had a chance to read AirTran’s September and October issues of its Go magazine. I found it interesting that the business author profiled in each issue so thoroughly and diametrically opposed the other.

How is this for disagreement, not to mention two very different personal brands, as summarized by Go magazine:

Source: PicApp.com

On Leadership:

George Cloutier: I am Your Work God! You want your employees to do what you say, not what they think.

Anthony F. Smith: Avoid the myth of single-person leadership. “Leadership is really a shared phenomenon…(Each ESPN executive) needed to surround themselves with other effective people who could fill in areas where they were not as skilled.”

On Employees:

GC: “[Management experts say] ‘Work with everyone and be everyone’s best buddy.’  This is the opposite [of what you should do].”

AFS: Hire passionate employees. “Even if you manufacture cardboard boxes, [employees] should be fanatical about something, whether it be the job, the opportunities,…or that they have a great boss.”

On Mistakes:

GC: “Small businesses don’t have the time and resources to be particularly tolerant of mistakes and problems.”

AFS: Take risks and reward the effort. “If you say, ‘I want people to take risks,’ and then fire the guy if the outcome fails, it becomes clear how your organization really feels about risk.”

I will go out on a limb and predict most readers will side with Anthony F. Smith on this “point/counterpoint” between the September and October Go issues. Branding himself as “the ultimate contrarian,” George Cloutier no doubt is used to people disagreeing with him. It is easy to deride George Cloutier’s very sharp managerial recommendations; what is much harder, though, is to think of a company that has achieved long term, enduring success as a going concern following similar advice. To be sure, there are exceptions, notably turnaround situations with an eye to sell all or part of the “fixed” business, or ”forced marches” in which everyone suffers for now with the glittering promise of a liquidity event, like an IPO (remember those back in the dot-com heydey?).  And considering this from a different angle: Would I really want to lead like this? I think I would rather strive to lead as a mensch.

I look forward to any comments from anyone, including anyone who has read either or both books…