Source: Lifehacker.com

I just read a clever tip on the Lifehacker website on how to easily reuse sturdy electronic device boxes for shipping or storage: turn the box inside out.  Many electronic device boxes use no glue or tape at all, making the process very easy.  You end up with a like-new, “fresh” box ready for easy labeling for shipping, storage use, etc.

In fact, a shipping box company has taken the inside-out box idea further with a reusable box design that turns inside out, by enabling easy removal and reattachment one of the glued box edges.

This tip suggested to me a business metaphor: Think outside the box by turning it inside-out! After all, that’s one thing that takes place when implementing a business intelligence system: data and insights previously not visible become available for many, if not all, people in the organization to see.  That can be regarded as a boon or a liability depending on one’s perspective.  Indeed, a significant hindrance to business intelligence acceptance is the perceived loss of control over the data, and therefore perceived risk of judgment and  reprisal, of one’s department, region, product line, etc.  In her book Successful Business Intelligence, Cindi Howson quoted a senior executive who said, “Some departments don’t like [their] data being exposed…others may see they are not doing a good job…” (p. 159).

Maureen Clary wrote an excellent article for the BeyeNETWORK on proactively addressing people problems that might derail a business intelligence initiative.

Personal issues are usually the drivers behind resistance. Concerns about job security, visibility, competition, personal risk, inadequate skills and fear of failure can create a reaction to change. The resistance to change is almost always caused by personal/individual concerns. Business intelligence leaders must be central to understanding and mitigating the individual resistance related to these organizational changes…Research shows that people problems are the most commonly cited reason for project failures. Experience indicates that people problems are also a dilemma for the changes associated with business intelligence initiatives.

Maureen Clary proposes the use of the ADKAR model to successfully manage the “people dimension of change” a business intelligence system will bring.  I encourage you to read the article for a solid overview of the ADKAR model and its utilization within a BI project.  I will cite here the “D”  of ADKAR – Desire – which appears to me to be the most important of the five change model elements for a BI project:

Desire or motivation refers to the way an organization’s system of rewards and punishments either encourages or discourages behaviors…Motivation is important at both an individual level and to overall organizational success. Rewards and recognition can help compensate for the inherent uncertainty associated with any type of complex change, including business intelligence…Rewards should be structured so that individuals benefit when the organization is successful and the organization benefits when the individual is successful. Otherwise, neither the organization nor the individuals will be aligned toward achieving the results.

Successfully aligning of individual interests with overall organizational interests will require senior management to openly embrace a new culture of data-informed decision making that unabashedly ”confronts the brutal facts” of the organization (as Cindi Howson quotes Jim Collins’ Good to Great), and does so even-handedly across the organization. No sacred cows!  Plus, the fear of “killing the messenger” must be taken off the table.  In other words, managers and workers must have the confidence to call attention to business problems identified by BI data (even in their own areas of responsibility).

By openly embracing and cultivating such a new business culture, the organization can experience a like-new, “fresh” start with its new business intelligence system, successfully “turning the box inside out.”

Just send me some advice. 

- Charlie Brown, asking an advice columnist for “advice”

Somehow this classic Peanuts comic strip I read as a kid came to mind when I came across this question from the Inbound Marketing group on LinkedIn:

What is your one “Inbound Marketing” tip for 2010. And it can’t be “hire me.” If you bumped into someone in a lift and they asked for one inbound marketing tip what would it be? 

Perhaps I read into this type of question too much, but I found the question to have an unappealingly vague ”just give me some (marketing) advice” ring to it, a la Charlie Brown.

I was also reminded me of the old trick interview question, “Can you tell me a story?”  The “correct answer” the interviewer is looking for is for the interviewee to qualify the question: “What kind of story are you interested in?” as opposed to launching into a “It was a dark and stormy night” tale!

Just as Charlie Brown would have benefited from qualifying his own need for “advice,” if a marketer was asked for “one inbound marketing tip, the “correct answer” would be more questions…

Person in the lift: “What is the one inbound marketing tip you can give me?”

You: “Is there a certain aspect of your inbound marketing you’re looking to improve upon?”

Person: “Well, yes…I’m not engaging enough visitors on my website.”

You: “What do you mean?”

Person: “Well, I’d like to get more online registrations for our webinars and our other content…”

And now there’s a good chance you can offer an inbound marketing tip that actually addresses that person’s needs.

In keeping with my theme of answering the “give me one inbound marketing tip” question with further questions, the responses posted on LinkedIn that really rang true were those that simply emphasized listening and understanding. Of those, the response posted by product management executive Gopal Shenoy, who also happens to be a former colleague from the Boston Product Management Association board of directors, summed it up especially well:

Stop talking and start listening. Listen to your prospects, customers, partners and respond by doing what they are asking to do. Everything else (revenues, profits, content strategy etc.) will fall into place if you just listen to these constituencies and then start delivering what these want from you.

Photo by Zevotron (Flickr CC)

I have written before about the risks of misusing business intelligence software and misinterpreting business intelligence data results.  To help avoid these and many other business risks, organizations should encourage employees to be “intelligently disobedient.” 

This term is from a great article by The Leader as a Mensch author Bruna Martinuzzi which cleverly presents this highly beneficial trait:

I once worked for a technology company that encouraged employees to practice what they called “Intelligent Disobedience.” The concept originates from Seeing Eye dogs: while dogs must learn to obey the commands of a blind person, they must also know when they need to disobey commands that can put the owner in harm’s way, such as when a car is approaching.

Intelligent disobedience is not about setting out to be disagreeable or arbitrarily disobeying rules for its own sake. Rather, it is about using your judgment to decide when, for example, an established rule actually hinders your organization, rather than helps it…the antonym of intelligent disobedience is blind conformity.

That blind conformity, all too rampant in weakly-run organizations with executives preoccupied with loyalty, can rear its head any number of ways, including using business intelligence/business performance management software to “do the wrong things right.”  Blind conformity can also result in incuriously sticking to conventional wisdom within product marketing or product management, resulting in, for example, a preoccupation with competitors instead of actively differentiating your products from the market.

Bruna Martinuzzi offers a number of ideas to encourage cultivating an environment of intelligent disobedience, several of which are directly applicable to the wise interpreter of business intelligence data, as well as product marketers and product managers, including the following…

Quoted from “Intelligent Disobedience” by Bruna Martunizzi:

Consider the benefits of decentralizing some of the decision-making in your unit. If you are used to making all the decisions, allow those closest to the customer the flexibility to make appropriate decisions on the spot, as for example, to right a wrong, even if the decision is contrary to some established rule of the organization. This places the value where it should be — on customer satisfaction rather than on lockstep adherence to the process — but it also places value on team members by giving them the authority to bend the rules when necessary.

Don’t surround yourself with yes-men. Ponder the words of Barry Rand of Xerox, quoted in Colin Powell’s A Leadership Primer: “. . . if you have a yes-man working for you, one of you is redundant.”

Help your people distinguish between fact and conjecture. Conjecture can be influenced by mental scripts which don’t have a bearing on current reality. Be the voice in the room that calls others’ attention to this possibility, and help everyone pause so that they can analyze inferences and conjectures that may or may not be valid.

Be aware of mind traps that lead to blind conformity. Mind traps act as mental straight-jackets, preventing you from thinking creatively and rationally. These include, for example, the “herd instinct”, i.e. relying on the fact that “everybody else is doing it.” Here is a compiled list of the ten most common thinking traps.

Read Bruna Martinuzzi’s complete post.

The particular piece of this funny scene I had in mind occurs early in the YouTube snippet below: Shortly after Dr. Barbay begins a lesson about the creation of a manufacturing company, Melon asks, “What’s the product [we will be making]?” After a few failed attempts to dismiss the question, an exasperated Dr. Barbay finally insists the specific product they will make “doesn’t matter” – absolute heresy for any self-respecting product marketer or product manager!  Of course, the entire snippet is well worth watching.

On the contrary, the idea, the answer to “What’s the product?” is, of course, everything to the company’s success. More on this topic soon.

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).

My immediate reaction was one of personal offense for intruding on my simple act of browsing a book, coupled with disbelief over some fool actually expecting to realize some business from a small but nonetheless particularly annoying act of interruption marketing, one-way marketing that depends on getting people to stop and pay attention to the message.                      

Interruption marketing can range from traditional media advertising, which might briefly entertain a viewer, but is usually quickly forgotten, to obnoxious actions like sticking business cards into books or getting rudely awakened from an airline nap with an in-flight announcement of a Carribean flight offer, as experienced by David Meerman Scott.

With the widespread acceptance (deservingly so) of Permission Marketing, the innovative marketing approach devised by Seth Godin, it is tempting to dismiss all interruption marketing as not worthwhile at best and downright bad at worst. So can interruption marketing still be effective in a Google search, Permission Marketing, New Rules of Marketing & PR world?   

In researching this question, I found this thoughtful post by Neil Davidson:

The new conventional wisdom states that interruption marketing is dead. We’re so bombarded by billboards, t-shirts, pop-ups, television and magazines that we’ve developed an immunity to advertisers’ messages. There’s no point even trying to interrupt us. You’re just wasting your money.    

I disagree. It’s hard to interrupt us, but it can be done. Not by being loud, but by being different. Be witty, tell a story, and tell it to us when we want to be interrupted, and you can leap out from the clutter.   

I agree with Neil Davidson: tell a compelling story when we are unlikely to mind being interrupted. I suggest this is an improvement to Neil Davidson’s misnomer, “want to be interrupted.” We are least likely to mind being interrupted when the interruption is relevant to what we are doing. For example, while browsing books, I didn’t “want” to be interrupted, but I would not have minded if the card inside the book was in fact a (relevant) insert placed there by the publisher. How well I’d have taken note of such a publisher message would depend on the creativity of the story the publisher wants to tell: perhaps an invitation to an online community for business books, etc.  That story should invite the person receiving that message to interesting, relevant content, or even better, an ongoing relevant dialogue.            

Perhaps interruption marketing is most effective when it interrupts at a very opportune time and elicits a response that segways quickly into a permission marketing opportunity.          

Here is a very good example I came across shortly after my “get-rich-quick business card in the book” experience: an interesting bit of public service interruption marketing, while reaching for paper towels in an airport restroom: 

The These Come From Trees sticker interrupts you at just the right moment, reminding you in a friendly way the paper towels you are about to use come from a finite resource, plus quickly tells a simple yet compelling story explaining the benefit the sticker’s presence provides, and also invites the reader to become part of the effort, and dialogue, to help reduce needless paper towel waste. Well done!           

Not long thereafter, I noticed a business marketing message with a reasonably timed interruption message coupled with a compelling story.  An airport wall ad from Marriott to ”Meet the Driven” - an invitation to interesting online content about inspiring, “driven” business professionals - struck a chord.  The implied assumption of the airport ad that the business people who see the ad will identify with being “driven” is reasonable and not an unwelcome interruption. What’s more, the ad is an invitation to stories of inspiring business people, with a URL not for marriott.com but for meetthedriven.com. This appeared to be a good business use of interruption marketing.

Unfortunately, the Meet the Driven website was not what I expected at all.  The meetthedriven.com URL merely redirects the visitor to the marriott.com site, with a flash introduction and links that primarily lead to information on business traveler-friendly features of Marriott hotels. It is necessary to click on a specific link, and then make a drop-down menu selection to actually ”Meet The Driven” – five business/healthcare professionals who really don’t get to share much of their stories: they are asked a few cursory questions and afforded very brief answers with little actual dialogue, all in text appearing in an unnecessary flash format. If there are video interviews or podcasts, there are no links to that content.        

I think Marriott (for which I have long been a customer) squandered a good interruption marketing message only to fail to deliver what appeared from the message to be an interesting online community for “driven” business people. It still could be.

Please share your examples of successful interruption marketing that delivers a well-timed, engaging interruption message; that is, a message that does not merely yield a few moments of amusement, but actually yields a desired response.

Daphne Rose commented, “Like the plate spinners on the old Ed Sullivan show, GMs are gifted time managers. It’s second nature for them to keep everything in motion – successfully.” I agree for the most part, except that time management is not inate, it is/can be learned.  Reflecting further on the idea of the product marketer as a plate spinner I came up with some more observations beyond time management I hope you enjoy and ring true to you…

Product marketing managers understand project priorities and contingencies.  Taking time management to the next level, effective product marketers and managers will bring a project to a stopping point where it requires further input or feedback from others, leveraging that time to make progress on the next most important project. 

Product marketing managers engage in “serial focusing” while trying to avoid “multitasking.”  This is an important distinction.  Unlike “multitasking” in which only a fraction of your attention is ever really devoted to any particular task, “serial focusing,” like the plate spinner, requires you to devote your attention to the particular project at hand.  Of course, you are aware your available time is limited, so you discipline yourself to focus on it and take action.  Another analogy conveying the idea of “serial focusing” even better than plate spinning is a chess grandmaster playing a simultaneous match.

Product marketers and managers don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.  Did you notice how Mr. Brenn slightly botched his initial little trick in which he tried to flip a row of forks into a row of glasses?  The show (or “shew,” this being an Ed Sullivan Show video) must go on! It would have been most unwise to repeat the trick again immediately – he grabbed his dropped forks and successfully repeated the trick later after re-spinning those bowls.  All this was a small quibble, considering his big finish!

A great product marketer makes good decisions what plates are worth spinning.  It is critical to proactively identify, prioritize and act upon those marketing projects that will yield the results you, your colleagues in sales and executive management are looking for.  Erich Brenn would not try to spin an oblong turkey platter for obvious reasons.  Are there any marketing projects have you running around that fall in the ‘turkey platter’ category?  Rather than devote disproportionate time to it in its current form, it is much better to proactively refashion such a project into a more workably round plate.  Failing that, it is time to step away from that turkey platter!

Everything I know about        [subject]          

I learned from      [game/etc.]      .          

You just might have a new best-selling book (or at least a blog post) topic now!            

Ever since Robert Fulghum wrote about everything he learned in kindergarten, it seems like there is a lot of writing out there with a similar “Everything I know about…” theme – lots of it snarky parody, but many clever writings, too.    

Still, it’s easy to take the idea too far: unlike business, poker has a much higher level of luck that can’t be reduced through proactive work (think effective product marketing and management, etc.). In poker, it’s often better to be “lucky” than “good”!

Today poker is very widely regarded as very “cool.” That said, I have a great deal of respect for someone willing to share an “Everything I know…” insight using a game, pastime, hobby, etc. that is, well, definitely not perceived as “cool” by popular culture.            

For that I wish to honor Chad Henderson of Oklaholma City: Everything he needs to know about life he learned from…Dungeons and Dragons.  (Thanks to BoingBoing for their original posting on this.)    

I suggest Chad makes a solid case for why Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing games (played in-person, not online) might even have more useful life and business lesssons than poker!      

Watching his recent IgniteOKC talk, which I found offered useful insights from a marketing and personal branding perspective, and reading a bit more about Chad Henderson, he knows a thing or two about starting a business venture that is quite cool!  Read on…      

I also want to compliment “Izzy” who shared these valuable comments on Chad’s blog:      

I’ve used Dungeons and Dragons as a learning tool for my kids too! Their teachers have always been amazed at their vocabulary (but not necessarily their spelling). Also, they get a good feel for numbers and probabilities.      

Other things we learn from D&D:      

Group cooperation: groups can accomplish more than individuals
Roles: Everyone contributes to success and each person has their specific strengths
Choice: Sometimes moral choices override logic and tradition      

Checking elsewhere Chad Henderson’s blog, I see Chad has co-founded the Oklaholma City Coworking Collaborative, a cool venture which offers telecommuters, entrepreneurs, programmers, consultants, and other self-employed professionals an outstanding professional work envirnoment at a much lower cost than renting office space. Even better, in such a coworking environment (unlike a “hoteling” environment I was familiar with from once working for a consulting firm), you get to interact with a wide variety of creative professionals – in keeping with Tom Peters’ longstanding advice to get new marketing, business and other ideas by hanging out with people you might not otherwise get to meet. 

I confess I had not even heard the term coworking until reading about Chad Henderson’s venture, but I’m impressed. Come to find out, there are coworking sites not too far from me in Boston and Cambridge, Mass.  If you are familiar with coworking as a user, a founder, or both, please comment here with your insights! 

So, to summarize: a business venture co-founded by an avid player of Dungeons and Dragons, a game that requires creativity, imagination and the ability to work effectively as a team…yes, interesting, very interesting:

In related news, ABC’s Shark Tank
names a brand new cast:

Anybody can have ideas – the difficulty is to express them without squandering a (stack) of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph. - Mark Twain

Photo by: cayusa (Flickr CC)

Thanks to Bruna Martinuzzi, author of The Leader as a Mench, for sending me just before the holiday break a copy of What Matters Now, a free e-book compiled by marketing author and visionary Seth Godin.

Over 70 authors, executives, and entrepreneurs each share an idea, using no more than a couple of “glittering paragraphs,” for you to think about and act upon in 2010 and beyond.

Among my personal favorites that are food for thought related to marketing and personal branding:

As much as I am an advocate for blogging, being networked on LinkedIn, etc., author and entrepreneur Howard Mann shares his idea on being too Connected:

There are tens of thousands of businesses making many millions a year that still haven’t heard of twitter, blogs or facebook…Have they missed out or is the joke on us?…More megaphones don’t equal a better dialogue…

CEO Michael Hyatt on Vision:

Vision is the lifeblood of any organization…(but) in a down economy – particularly one that has taken most of us by surprise – things get very tactical…We are just trying to survive…When times are tough, vision is the first casualty. Before things can improve, it is the first thing we mist recover.

Marketing authors Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell on “the 1%“:

[Business success can begin] with a small – very small – group of self-identified fans within a category…It’s usually a small percentage of the tribe within a larger tribe who spread the word [about your product] – usually about 1 percent…The One Percenters are often hidden in the crevices of niches, yet they are the roots of word of mouth. This year, your job is to find them and attract them.

For many, many more succinct and inspiring ideas, get What Matters Now – now - via Seth Godin’s website.

It’s no earth-shattering statement, nor is it a flattering commentary on our society: ads featuring attractive, provocative women have a proven track record selling everything from cars to beer to men’s fragrances to hokey get rich quick real estate plans, advertised on hilarious late night TV ads in the 80′s.

But can it sell Business Intelligence software?

Should it?

There is a video ad that seems to think so, which I stumbled upon via a fellow WordPress blogsite “Integrate the Clouds.”

The ad in question is here (SFW):

“I know what you’re thinking,” says as the attractive model as she dives in a pool. Well, as a husband and father of two teenage daughters, I was thinking about the SAP BusinessObjects ad marketing team’s assumption that IT decision makers are all men (and that this ad is the right way to market to them).

In that light, the ad is a sobering reminder of how few women choose to pursue computer science degrees and careers in technology. Indeed, only about 9% of all CIOs are female. 

That said, why would any company risk alientating 9% of its market? Carve the BI/DW market up based on verticals, namely higher education, with women occupying about 25% of CIO posts, and suddenly this ad is risking irking a quarter of that particular vertical.