Tag Archives: advice

October 17, 2012 · 11:07 am

The P.O.D.

When I go chat with prospective clients, one of the things they often ask about is my point of differentiation.  What makes me different from any of the other consultants with whom they’re speaking?  That’s a great question each of us needs to be able to answer whether we’re trying to sell consulting services, to get a new job, or to sell a product or service in our current jobs.  If you can’t answer the question, you might want to spend a few minutes and think about it.

In any event, among the things I believe make me different are the business experiences I’ve had over the years in both traditional and digital media.  There aren’t a lot of us who were senior management in the “old” world and transitioned into the “new” one.  We usually end up talking about a few other areas – intelligence  vision, style – but the one thing I like to emphasize is keeping a focus on the business and not on the tools.

I’ve written about it before as have others.  It’s still a surprise when that prospective clients asks “how do we get good at  (pick one – the web, Twitter, social media, SEO)?  The answer is always the same – you don’t, because that’s not what you’re trying to do in the first place.  Using those tools is just a means to an end.  What you’re trying to get good at is your business and to use those things to do so.  I guess that’s a real point of differentiation because many of them hadn’t really thought about it before and the other folks with whom they’re talking seem to have spent an awful lot of time on tactics and very little on goals and strategy.  Ready, Fire, Aim.

We need to stop confusing the end with the means.  “Likes” don’t equate to sales unless you’re structured to make them do so.  Does this make sense?

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September 25, 2012 · 10:38 am

I’m Sick

This may be a bit more incoherent than usual today.

Common cold

Common cold (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have a foggy brain, a stuffy nose, and body aches.  That’s right – a common cold.  Not unusual, you think, but it really is for me.  Since I stopped commuting to work and flying all over the place, I’ve been sick exactly one other time.  That’s right – one cold in five years (until now).

I’m not sure where I got it although I was in a lot more large crowds over the last week than normal.  Maybe the guy with whom I slapped palms at the Springsteen show last week had a cold.  Maybe it was someone I greeted at the wedding we attended.  Maybe it was someone I was near at the market.  Who knows?  However, it’s good business point.

You can’t (and don’t want to) avoid interacting with other people.  I’m not sure how you do business without doing so.  However, it turns out about 80% of contagious diseases are transmitted by touch.  That’s right – the best protection from the common cold and flu is frequent hand washing.

Our businesses run the risk of infection – something that disrupts their normal functioning – if we don’t take the time to make sure they’re “clean” – that we’re not off-track, that the team is all in sync, and that the contact with outsiders hasn’t done something to disrupt that.  Think of staff meetings or check-ins with your team as a good hand scrubbing.  That sort of communication can prevent a lot of  what ails many businesses.

Now I’m going back to bed.  After I wash my hands….

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August 22, 2012 · 8:36 am

Good Results

There’s an expression one hears in sports sometimes that a final score is a good result.  It doesn’t pertain to your team winning (which I guess is always a good result).  Instead, it means that the outcome of the match is in line with the way the game was played. The team that dominated the game won even if it was a sloppy match or something unusual like an own goal kept it closer than it should have been.  Ugly play didn’t get in the way of the outcome.  You hear the expression in boxing too.  It means that there was no lucky one-punch knockout or the fight was stopped by a cut on the person who was winning.  The “right” guy won.

I had the same thought when the whole controversy about Jordyn Wieber happened during the Olympics.  Even though she finished fourth during the qualifying round she couldn’t compete for the all-around gymnastics gold because international rules only allow two competitors per country in the finals.  This was seen as a bad result – she played well and yet she wasn’t allowed to continue (one could ask why no one complained about the rules in advance of the Games when the US had such a deep squad but hindsight is always perfect…).

Maybe it’s the notion of fairness that’s inherent in thinking something is a good result.  That’s certainly part of it but I think it’s a bit of a misplaced focus too.  There’s a golf expression – “it’s not how, it’s how many.”  That means it doesn’t matter if you hit a soaring perfect shot to 3 feet or if you skull it along the ground to the same place.  All that matters is the final score.  As Bobby Orr said, forget about style; worry about results.  Here’s the thing: business outcomes often aren’t fair.  Idiot self-promoters get great jobs and smart, quiet people languish.   There’s a lot of focus in business on style, on “how” instead of “how many.”  Are those a “good result?”

We might ask ourselves how many good people or excellent opportunities are we overlooking because they don’t fit into our idea of perfect.  Winning ugly is still winning, right?

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