I got a chuckle from this recent tweet that called out a malapropism in another tweet clearly intended to comment on employee sentiment analysis. It’s an important type of text analytics (and a focus of my employer, Attivio) to analyze and discover “business signals” buried within online reviews, surveys, and other text-based opinion.
But, just as ‘many a truth is said in jest,’ many a truth can also be said by mistake as well: companies should monitor – and avoid – employee “sediment.” Doing so will help ensure an environment of innovation and free-flow of new ideas.
Somehow that ‘sediment’ gaffe triggered a memory (from ‘sediment’ to ‘dirt’ … ‘soil’ … plants) of an article I read some time ago about “potted plant syndrome” in the workplace. I couldn’t find the article I had in mind, but this article hits on the same idea:
There was a boss who complained that everyone around him was a “potted plant.” He couldn’t understand why his managers wouldn’t take charge of an idea or come up with solutions. In his management meetings, if a manager suggested how to handle a problem or come up with solution, he would tell them how they could do it better or differently. Or, he would argue that they were wrong. He didn’t realize he was killing commitment and innovation.
The boss was a one-person idea prevention department. People were tired of standing out with an idea only to get it shot down, so they stopped offering them, becoming “potted plants” – hence my employee ‘sediment’ line of thought.
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!) …
With thanks to a recent Tweet by Donald Farmer, I recently came across an impressive graphic representation of the increasing degrees of human imagination.
Brennan’s Hierarchy of Imagination was designed by John Maeda, President of the Rhode Island School of Design, based on his conversation with Patti Brennan of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Similar in design to Maslow’s classic Hierarchy of Needs, the Hierarchy of Imagination is represented as a pyramid progressing from the base of reactionary behavior with little or no imagination (Reflex), proceeding upward to Problem Solving, then Creativity, and finally the pinnacle of “completely unrestrained” Imagination. It is a very thought-provoking model.
I had a few thoughts related to this Hierarchy of Imagination and the workplace, and product management and marketing in particular. I’d like to know your thoughts as well.
The hierarchy should not be interpreted as disparaging jobs in which little creativity or problem solving is expected. What sets a worker in such a job apart from others is the level of wisdom they bring to their job (Read more here). That said, a person in the Reflex category had better not find himself in a Peter Principle job situation and be expected to proactively solve problems or provide creative leadership.
Many boss-subordinate conflicts stem from incompatible levels of imagination. A Product Manager who spends his time gathering customer enhancement requests and prioritizing bug fixes (Problem Solving) will likely find himself in trouble with his VP who expects him to creatively identify new, ground-breaking features for the next version of the product. Conversely, a “left brain” business owner who prides herself as a Problem Solver may underappreciate the creative work of her marketing manager. She might be reluctant to attribute new business leads to creative marketing, but be unusually perceptive of flaws in “how” marketing tasks were completed (was paperwork completed properly, did a project merely beat a deadline or was it finished with days to spare, etc.).
With the above thought in mind, I read an article linked on John Maeda’s blog on the challenges creative people might face when pursuing leadership roles. I’m willing to wager that many of those surveyed demonstrating ambivalence towards creative people tend to fit into the imagination hierarchy as Problem Solvers themselves, perhaps focused on successful project administration but with less awareness of the creative value and impact of the final project. To paraphrase a passage I recall from a Tom Peters book, “the project was done under budget and ahead of schedule, but no one cared about it.”
In fairness to Problem Solvers, creativity needs to be directed carefully. Product manager turned CEO Barbara Tallent warns Product Managers to avoid working on “cool stuff” instead of what customers have already said they need and will pay for. (Read more here).
The further you go up the imagination hierarchy, the more vital your skills of persuasion are. In order for a creative person or someone with “completely unconstrained” Imagination to achieve his vision, he will need to effectively brief others in the organization on the merits of that vision and gain their buy-in, enthusiasm and support (Read more here).
I liked Patti Brennan’s comment: “teaching creativity doesn’t work but expanding their imaginations might work better.” In her work in patient healthcare, Patti Brennan believes “that in order to get patients to take control of their health, they need to imagine what it looks like to be more healthy.” Indeed, the ability to visualize something better than what you are already doing is vital for creativity. Similarly, creativity requires a capacity to empathize with others, whether we are talking about the health problems of patients or the challenges and frustrations of our customers. Good product managers and product marketing managers can translate their empathy towards what customers are going through into well-defined products and clear, relevant, engaging messaging and content.
I found Brennan’s Hierarchy of Imagination very insightful and I look forward to reading more from John Maeda’s Creative Leadership blog.
I recently read a great Ad Age article by Chris Kuenne, Four [Marketing] Talent Categories You Need to Win in a Connected World. Recognizing that many marketing organizations still cling to discredited, “old school” marketing and PR, Chris Kuenne provided a timely description of the new talents, skills and attitudes found in today’s “new rules” marketing organizations that are actively contributing to company growth and success.
Chris Kuenne listed four skill categories vital for today’s successful marketing organization – Strategic, Analytic, Program Design and Technological – which, combined with talent-building marketing leadership, will yield well-orchestrated “personally relevant experiences” that “translate the brand promise into relevant and entertaining interactions that always seem fresh and new.”
To support his spot-on core point that “the old set of skills and conventional deployment will not work,” Chris Kuenne offered a sports analogy:
In [American] football, everyone is a specialist with a distinct position and responsibility. Each player goes one-on-one against his opponent, helping the team advance the ball in a linear fashion down the field. Marketing over the past 50 years reflected this linear approach, in which a brand’s marketing plan specified a highly planned, seldom altered, set of initiatives…Today marketing is closer to rugby. All players handle multiple roles, using many different skills…
I agree with Chris Kuenne’s historical and current assessment of the marketing function. However, Chris’ description of football is outdated: today’s game of football is actually brimming with innovative tactics. Perhaps I underappreciate the tactics in rugby, but I see a lot of parallels between the practices of winning “new rules” marketing organizations and winning football teams:
Transformation through Innovation. Both football and today’s marketing function have benefited dramatically from innovation. The one-on-one, seldom-altered, linear genre of football described by Chris Kuenne is an accurate description of the “smashmouth” version of the sport as it was played over a century ago, as exemplified by the feared Army football team and its predictable but brutal, physically punishing running game.
And so it went, until Notre Dame, in 1913, under new coach Jess Harper, unveiled an innovation that would thankfully transform the game: Notre Dame took unprecedented full advantage of the forward pass (!), recently legalized but widely ignored. Practiced that summer by quarterback Gus Dorais and offensive end and legend-to-be Knute Rockne, Notre Dame’s passing plays bewildered the Army defense for a lopsided 35-13 upset victory. (Of course, clever, daring plays unimaginable even a decade ago continue an ever-accelerating trend of innovation on the football field.)
It is amazing in hindsight that marketing has not experienced such dramatic transformation until recently. At roughly the same time as Notre Dame’s game-transforming forward pass innovation, John Wanamaker, the pioneer of the department store, made his famous remark, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Similar frustrations by marketers have continued on right up to present day! Thankfully, marketing innovations today are replacing decades of plodding, seldom-altered, and maddeningly difficult to measure interruption marketing with a still-evolving paradigm of content marketing, permission marketing and marketing automation technologies. The marketing function is finally undergoing its own game-changing, “forward pass” of innovation and transformation. More >>
Some ten or twelve years ago I flew home from a trade show via TF Green Airport in Providence, RI instead of the usual Boston Logan Airport. This small airport has (or at least had at the time) one large economy parking lot with shuttle buses.
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.Read the rest of this entry »
I recently successfully bounced back from an April layoff from my former employer and landed a great new job. Networking made all the difference in the world. In fact, in terms of what really worked in my job search, networking was the world.
Just to be clear, this is NOT effective networking! (Source: University of Melbourne, Australia)
Without networking, I never would have found this job, or another offer for an appealing extended consulting opportunity which I respectfully turned down. I was not one of hundreds of resumes in someone’s inbox. Neither opportunity was advertised anywhere. In fact, the opportunities were not even fully defined yet when I first explored them.
If I did not have my network which I initiated before I was laid off, if I had not cultivated my network with new contacts after I was laid off, I would still be unemployed. It’s that critical.
Holland-Mark CEO Chris Colbert led a thought-provoking presentation at last week’s Bentley University Success Network meeting which I believe inspired attendees to build and nurture their networks. Effective networking is made possible by your personal brand (Brand U); who you are and what makes you unique (what Chris refers to as your One Simple Thing). Chris’ presentation was recorded and should be available on the Bentley University website soon (stay tuned).
I spoke yesterday with Chris about his presentation and dug a little deeper on how job searchers predisposed to introverted behavior might be at a disadvantage, as they might be more reticient or even shy about approaching others and developing a network to succeed in their job search. The bottom line is clear: Not networking is not an option. But introverts out there who bristle at the thought of getting out there and networking should take heart: Networking is not about winning a popularity contest or using phony flattery to manipulate others to help you. At its core, networking is all about being authentic.
Read on for my chat with Chris Colbert. I hope you find it helpful.
Tim Cook: Apple "arguably only co. innovating in PC space." Flustered responses by Dell+HP only validated his point. http://t.co/TxiC0dEx Posted 14 hours ago
Posted by Mike Urbonas 
