Digital Marketing at Its Best

I am very impressed with Guitar Center's digital marketing capability.

A few days ago, I searched for a PA system on their web site.

Today I get an email with a special offer for a Bose PA system.

Their must have identified me through a cookie, took into account the subject of my search, and immediately generated and emailed me a special offer, all without any human intervention.

Wow.

Honey, I shrunk the meeting!

After yet another prolonged and wasteful meeting, I came up with an idea for an elevator-style pitch meeting. Just think about it. If an entrepreneur can explain to a VC in 30 seconds what his or her company does, why can't a corporate employee give a status update in 30 seconds or less?

Here's how you would go about shrinking your meeting in 6 simple steps.

1. Find somebody with a stopwatch. Ideally, this person is the boss (you'll also need to sell the idea to him or her first). The boss may choose to delegate the stopwatch duties to a corporate peon (that's what interns are for!).

2. Anybody presenting in the meeting gets 30 seconds. This will force people to think hard about what they want to say during the meeting and focus on the most important messages. No more verbose Powerpoint slides!

3. As people speak, everybody just listens and takes notes. No questions are asked until the last presenter is finished.

4. After every presenter is done, a 5-10 minute Q&A session follows (the duration depends on the number of presenters; 5 presenters - 5 minutes). Everybody in the room gets an opportunity to ask one question in 30 seconds or less. They can ask any presenter.

5. The presenter has 30 seconds to answer the question.

6. After the questions are asked, the meeting is over. However, the room should remain booked for another 10 minutes to allow people to connect directly.

Try this approach, shrink your 1 hour time-sucking meeting into a 15-20 minute high-impact communication session and share the results on this blog. To gain additional inspiration, listen to one of my band's songs Stupid Meetings.

Getting Things Done

It has been a while since my last post - good things happening at work, bought a house, and life has been very busy. Luckily, a conversation with a co-worker reminded me of the importance of "smelling the roses" - in order to grow, one must make time to reflect, and the blog is a perfect medium for outloud thinking and reflection. Reading is another area that suffered - I've been trying to finish Getting Things Done by David Allen for a couple of months now, and I am still only half way through.

That said, the book added immediate and significant value to my life by suggesting a very simple concept: filing. If you are reading this at your desk, chances are you have random papers here and there, and they seem to linger and plant strong roots encouraged by the blueish light of the computer screen. I've had this happening at work to some extent, but the situation was much worse at home, as the amount of paperwork on the loose was balancing between irritating and overwhelming.

The filing approach advocated by Allen rests on the following premise: if something (like a piece of paper) can be dealt with in under 2 minutes, it should be done immediately. Otherwise, it needs to be either thrown away or filed (I am somewhat oversimplifying so read the book to get the complete picture).

The filing system must meet two criteria:

1. Filing is easy and quick. This is accomplished by having your filing cabinet, blank paper folders, and labels within reach so the entire process takes literally seconds.

2. Things you file can be easily found. This is accomplished by sticking to a straightforward alphabetical system.

I already had a filing cabinet and only had to buy a box of folders and labels; in the next day or so a giant, shapeless pile of miscellaneous papers, from bills to post cards, has disappeared into the drawer, purged and organized, and since then finding that fishing license or an expense receipt has been a breeze.

One caveat: I also use Neat Receipts for anything that can be scanned. This brings down the amount of papers to be filed, and Neat Receipts has a pretty good search capability so finding things in it has never been an issue.

Bottom line: get a filing system in place, and you will stop wasting time trying to find an important document. You'll just open your filing cabinet, and it'll be right where you think it is.

Getting Things Done and Presenting to Win

I started reading Getting Things Done by David Allen and found that his approach to planning has a lot in common with Jerry Weissman's Presenting to Win.

According to Allen, when you plan, you want to brainstorm first and then organize your ideas. Weissman preaches that you should think of all things you might want to cover in your presentation and then organize them into logical blocks.

Two books on two different subjects, and yet the path to success is the same in both. Nabokov once said that the entire body of literature has 10 universal stories (love, hatred, betrayal, etc.), and each new book is merely a variation and a combination of those ideas. Drawing a parallel with commonalities in professional, non-fiction books, I would think that when more than one book talks about the same principles, there's a chance that those principles might be universal. When I throw in the fact that each of the two books in question led many people to new heights in their career, there's a good chance that these principles are universal and should be studied and practiced.

I am only one quarter of the way through the book, and the learning has already begun! More to come.

The Boomerang Theory

I had a great, very educational lunch with a friend of mine Josh today, and he talked to me about boomerangs. Here's how the conversation flowed:

Josh: What would you expect to happen if you threw a boomerang?

Sergey: I would expect the boomerang to return to me.

J: How do you know it'll return?

S: Well, that's what boomerangs do.

J: Have you ever thrown one?

S: No.

J: If went to the field now, how much money would be willing to bet that the boomerang would return?

S: How about 5 bucks?

J: How about $400,000?

S: I wouldn't. I have never thrown a boomerang, and throwing it may require a technique I don't know.

J: Ok, so what would you do if threw a boomerang, and it wouldn't come back to you?

S: I would fetch it and throw it again, trying a different way of throwing it. I don't know what the difference would be. Maybe I would flick my wrist more.

J: And if it failed to return again?

S: I would try again and do something different again.

J: So eventually the boomerang would come back?

S: Yes.

This brief conversation desribes 2 critical components of success:

1. In order to succeed, one must be willing to fail. The boomerang (a new business, career, girlfriend) may not fly on the first attempt. What you learn from this experience is a way to throw the boomerang that doesn't work.

2. In order to succeed, one must do something different when trying again. When you try again, you have to change the way you throw the boomerang.

In other words, succeed by not being afraid to make mistakes and learn from them.

A Secret Weapon for Building Strong Teams

I am reading an excellent book called Unlock Behavior, Unleash Profits, by Dr. Leslie Braksick. The book talks about using behavioral science to bring about desired behaviors at the individual and organizational level. Correlating the content of the book with my professional experience in the PM field, I realized that most Project Managers miss out on a great opportunity to make their projects more successful by not taking advantage of the behavioral science.

In my career as a PM, I often see my fellow PMs focus on budgets, timelines, requirements management, scope management, issues logs, risks, and a million other things related to the project. I rarely see PMs focus on professional growth and development of their team members. In matrix organizations, team members don't report to the Project Manager, and PMs assume that professional growth and development of the team is not their responsiblity. Moreover, many feel they have little control over the team members' performance, since they hold neither the carrot nor the stick and thus can't adequately reward or punish the team members to optimize their behavior.

Fortunately, the behavioral science provides us with two mechanisms that don't rely on the ability to give or to take away tangible rewards. The mechanisms I am talking about are Feedback and Shaping.

For every behavior, there's an antecedent (a trigger) and a consequence. Feedback is one of the forms of consequences; it can re-enforce a desired behavior or lower the likelihood of an undesired behavior. Feedback doesn't cost money; you don't need to control a person's salary or bonus to give it. Yet, it can yield amazing results if done right.

While I would highly encourage you to read Chapter 5 of the book to get a comprehensive review of the feedback process, here's a quick summary of what constitutes effective feedback, in Dr. Braksick's view:

1. Make it specific. Don't just tell somebody they did great. Focus on details.

2. For every piece of constructive feedback, give 4 pieces of positive feedback. Remember, positive feedback re-enforces behaviors you appreciate. Constructive feedback is often aimed at stopping or changing behaviors you don't appreciate.

3. When providing constructive feedback, focus on the issue, not on the person.

4. Deliver feedback soon after the behavior occurs; otherwise, you may forget the details, and the person on the receiving end may have difficulty recalling the details of the behavior.

5. Be sincere. If you don't mean it, don't say it, as your tone of voice and your body language are likely to give you away, even as your words paint a different picture.

6. Give feedback often. It is free; it gives you the power to influence other people's behavior, and people will view you as a leader.

7. Avoid giving no feedback. No feedback is the worst option you can opt for. It neither re-enforce nor blocks a behavior, leaving the person guessing whether what they did was good or not.

8. Don't refrain from providing people with positive feedback. Remember how good you felt the last time someone gave you a specific and sincere praise? Make a day for other people by helping them feel noticed and cared for.


More in Shaping coming soon...

Ensuring Success of Intranet Implementations Through Behavioral Changes

The thought of the day: the ROI of Intranet implementations can be measured by changes in behavior.

As a consultant, I've witnessed and participated (guilty as charged) in numerous Intranet projects that were initiated and executed without a clear understanding and definition of KPIs, which would define the ultimate success or failure of the project. When the economy was good, companies could afford some inefficiency, and healthy revenues were sufficient to cover pet projects, projects related to performance reviews, or “everybody else is doing it” projects.

Welcome to 2009. Sales are flat; layoffs hit the best of the best, and analysts are cautiously pessimistic. For a savvy consultant, this is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate their thought leadership to the clients and assist with choosing projects that will deliver measurable value.

I already wrote about the importance of thought leadership for a professional services firm as one of the enablers to charge premium rates and avoid “who’s cheaper” competition. During an economic downturn, the thought leadership in helping choose the right projects by defining KPIs and identifying a clear path to reaching the targets is how you can carve out a niche for yourself; instead of having to beat competition in a bidding war, you will create your own playing field and will be the only player on it for a while.

Another way to look at this is to go beyond cost and ability to execute as selection criteria for vendors. It is very hard to sell a $100,000 project to a client unless you can make a clear case that the project will save or earn as much, with a relatively short payback period. With a sold proof of expected ROI, your client will have a much easier time selling the project to their boss and will also earn some points as a strategic thinker with management skills written all over them.

Now, here’s the challenge. Defining KPIs for Intranet projects is tricky. It is something that the best of the best struggle with, as I’ve personally witnessed. One of the reasons for this struggle is that Intranet projects aren’t directly tied to revenue or cost reductions. You build a new Intranet portal for an organizational group or department, and in the end the same number of folks are doing the same jobs with the same level of efficiency, bringing in the same kind of revenue.

The second challenge is that simply saying that Solution X will save every user 10 minutes a day or Y millions of dollars a year falls on deaf years. While the savings may look impressive, the cost of labor doesn’t change, and the client still has to figure out as to how to translate the 10 extra minutes to more revenue or lower costs. Unless you can help them and come up with a clear plan leading to improvements in the bottom line, your solution is half-baked.

Let’s take a step back and forget the technology. Instead, let’s focus on one of the key success factors of any project – a change in behavior. When something new is introduced in an organization, the natural expectation is that somehow it’ll change the behaviors of people affected. This new factor could be a new strategy, a new process, a new organizational structure, or a new information technology. Before the new element is introduced, the company identifies the behaviors it seeks to change and creates a vision for the future behaviors it wants to form through the change. When the injection of the new element is completed, the outcome is very clear: the new behaviors are either there or not. The Intranet implementations should follow the same rules, and here’s how you, as a consultant, can help your client with Intranet implementation and help yourself win more business.

Identify the behaviors your clients should promote. This is your chance to show your knowledge of the client’s industry and bring to the table some best practices that exist, or better yet, will exist in other organizations or other parts of the company. You don’t need to engage in a complex business process re-engineering exercise (sounds old school, doesn’t it?). The client is not paying you for this; unless you are trying to sell millions of dollars worth of technology services, your sales budget will be fairly limited. The good news is that organizations in a particular vertical or market segments have lots of similarities so you won’t need to re-invent the wheel on every engagement. Instead, you want to identify a handful of key, fairly generic behaviors that would be applicable in 80% of the situations. Examples of these behaviors might include:

• Seeking help from other people in the organization. Every organization has a lot of tribal knowledge. Documenting this knowledge takes time and can be expensive; in addition, a quick phone call with 1-2 questions is often all the help seeker might need. Therefore, you want to encourage a behavior of finding an expert in a particular area and instantly connecting with them.
• Sharing knowledge with co-workers and/or clients. I blog, because I believe I have some ideas that could benefit others. I get satisfaction from knowing people read my blog posts. I blog, because I am building a thought leadership image of myself that ensures that my clients feel good about paying premium rates for my services.

Now that you’ve identified the behaviors you will help your clients promote, let’s take a quick de-tour into the behavioral science. The ABC model of creating behaviors looks like this:

Antecedent -- > Behavior < -- > Consequence

The antecedent is a trigger. Anything that prompts the behavior to occur is an antecedent. For instance, if James the Manager asks her subordinates to actively seek help from other co-workers, that’s an antecedent. An antecedent may or may not lead to the behavior; in fact, antecedents contribute only 20% to the behavior occurrence. The other 80% is driven by the consequence. If the consequence is positive after the behavior takes place, the person is very likely to re-engage in the behavior, and vice versa. If Jennifer the Account Representative listens to James and tries to seek help, she will look at a) whether the help was pertinent and got her over the hurdle she was facing and b) how easy it was to find the expert she needed. Therefore, if your solution paves a smoother road to positive consequences, Jennifer will be more likely to ask for help and thus perform the behavior James expects.

Now that you understand that you need to identify behaviors that will positive affect your clients’ business and tie your solution to the consequences of the behaviors, let’s come up with measurable KPIs for each behavior. Many times I’ve seen situations where a project is started without defining specific and measurable results that will determine the project’s success or failure. As a famous Chinese proverb goes, if you don’t know where you are going, you are unlikely to get there. Unless you know what your Point B is, how will you know that the client has reached it? How will the client be able to communicate to their boss that the project is a smashing success unless the definition of success is agreed upon up-front, without ambiguity?

Using the examples of behaviors above, here’s how your KPIs might look:

• Seeking help from other people in the organization. If your solution reduces time it takes to find an expert in a particular area, resist the temptation of calculate the amount of time you save the company. It is not only meaningless, but also doesn’t show an increase in the behavior the client is trying to promote. Instead, you could use metrics like the number of searches for experts and the amount of time each search took. While the former should be defined together with the client, the latter is part of the value proposition tied to the solution you are selling.
• Sharing knowledge with co-workers. I use Blogspot for my blog. Whenever I insert an image into a post, the formatting gets all screwed up, and I have to go through the text and waste my time manually deleting blank lines Blogspot adds between paragraphs. Then there’s the promotion aspect. I want people to read my blog, and once I make a new post, I go to Yammer and Twitter and tell the world I wrote something new. My KPIs could be the amount of time it takes to post a blog entry and the number of promotional appearances the new entry makes on related sites.

The type of consequences we have discussed above is referred to as Negative Reinforcement. A negative reinforcement occurs when a consequence that might otherwise block the behavior is removed. In both examples, we are removing the inconvenience of spending too much time to complete a useful task.

While the negative reinforcement does lead to a change in the behavior, it only leads to just enough behavior to avoid the negative consequence. In other words, if an employee needs to find an expert to seek assistance from, they’ll be more likely to use the Intranet solution that shortens the path to Point B. The behavioral science teaches that it is a positive reinforcement (adding a reward consequence) that can truly promote the behavior. Hence, in addition to measurable negative reinforcements such as time savings, you need to identify positive reinforcements and develop a program that will promote them to the target audience. Only this way, you will have a truly comprehensive solution that will include technology and a plan to ensure the adoption.

Going back to our examples, the positive reinforcements could take the following form:

• Seeking help from other people in the organization. The reward of this behavior is information that benefits the seeker. So glorify this consequence. Have a communication plan in place to explain the correlation between the behavior of seeking assistance and company goals. Allow for a feedback loop so people can post thank-you notes when they receive useful information. Build a mechanism to convert the tribal knowledge exchanged between two people into searchable content.
• Sharing knowledge with co-workers. Get a rating system in place so people sharing knowledge with co-workers can get feedback on their contributions. Tie the knowledge sharing to annual reviews. Give public praise and acknowledgement to active contributors and exemplify their contributions in front of their peers and bosses.

Summary

Companies have difficulties measuring the ROI of Intranet implementations. A savvy consultant can overcome this challenge by using his industry expertise to identify desired behaviors that will benefit client organizations should they choose to use the consultant’s solution. In order to ensure the client’s success and win the business, the consultant should propose a comprehensive program of antecedents and consequences that will lead to the desired behaviors. Establishing KPIs for consequences to measure and evaluate the outcome of the solution implementation will help the client quantify success; establishing a program of positive consequences and removing negative consequences will ensure the high adoption rate of the solution.