Fail, fickle or pivot?

This great article on job hopping by Jaclyn Schiff is a really useful way of looking at rapid career changes both for conversations with potential employers and with yourself too.


As someone who is curious and demanding of myself to do the best possible work I can contribute to this world, if I don't think role is right, I change it. But I feel terrible and like a bit of a failure every time I do it, because it is not what we're meant to do.


But by the same token, I simply cannot lead a life without constantly striving for the place where I can make the most contribution. I just don't work that way.


Thank you Jaclyn for presenting job-change as a step towards where you are meant to be, a choice, rather than failure or fickleness.


Notes:
* For people who have many diverse interests, which can be a driver of regular job change, you may find Barbara Sher's book Refuse to Choose book a helpful way of ordering your interests and doing as many of them as you want. It's amazing. 
* A post on job hopping from a younger Chinese perspective - Flyleaf
* Image source 

What's your hidden population?

I spend a lot of time working in different parts of the city and often it's most efficient for me to just find a cafe to work in between meetings.


Time and again places claim to have wi-fi (McDonalds, Starbucks and many smaller cafes) but it is in name only, with the non-functional reality leaving me silently enraged or worse, wondering through the cafe balancing my open laptop trying to chase signal strength. 


I wonder, what would a place that offered guaranteed high speed wi-fi in every location achieve? And what is the size of the hidden population that suddenly would flock to these stores on a regular basis? According to IDC the mobile workforce was 29% of the population in 2008 and is estimated to reach 34.9% or 1.2bn by 2013. 


There are an increasing number of organisations servicing the mobile worker such as Roam, The Hub, select Regus locations. In the U.S. Chick-fil-a not only offers Wi-Fi but a few locations have turned their play areas into business meeting rooms in order to accommodate the increasing demand.


So, perhaps this isn't the most hidden population, but the point is - what percent of the available traffic for your store would come back again and again if you absolutely committed to meeting their needs, every time? 


You? Why not get ethnographic and watch the behaviour in your store or showroom, what can you see that people aren't saying? Look for behaviour of people making things fit their needs. Is it someone pulling out their own USB stick? Struggling to find a place to put their shopping? Students from the nearby university that check the menu and then keep walking? What's your hidden population?

A powerful prelude to successful business change: the humble hunch

Recently I worked with an organisation which helps very large institutions positively change, and do so with speed and clarity. One of the interesting ways they do that is that they give credence to hunches. 


A hunch, or an intuitive reckoning, is a short-hand way for us to make sense of the information we have at hand and what this information might mean. Malcolm Gladwell explores a similar concept in depth in his book Blink, where he describes decision making on an even shorter time-scale, two seconds. He calls it rapid cognition. Pschologists call it 'thin slicing' or 'Rapid Primed Decision Making', which includes elements of pattern recognition and analysis. Gladwell explores examples of when using hunches can work, and when it should be approached with caution.
In business and in life we are taught to make decisions based on a more is better approach to information.  Making an effort to understand your situation, your customers, more deeply is never a bad thing. But the stasis that comes with too much information, the many consulting points of view can be. Because no decision is by default a decision to continue as-is. And the world never stays as-is. 


To move forward a business needs to make a decision and act on it. Using a hunch doesn't mean the hunch has to be right (although it is useful if it is, which is where having experienced heads together helps), it just needs to get you in motion. Scientists do it all the time, putting a stake in the ground as a hypothesis then actively working to prove or disprove it and its useful application along the way.

It's not easy to let go of the fear of moving in the wrong direction, wanting a little more information before we make a decision. When used by experienced professionals, however, hunches can be a very powerful way to act accurately and rapidly. An example from Gladwell's book is the Cook County Hospital, which deliberately uses hunches to diagnose chest pain. If it can be used in life and death, surely it can be used in some business decisions?


When used by people with less experience in a particular area, hunches can still tap into powerful insight around an issue, adding a fresh perspective to an or leading to new entrepreneurial ventures.

What makes the use of hunches by this organisation really powerful is that they then pair it with a form of rapid prototyping. Once they have a hunch, they describe that hunch or the how that hunch would play out into a real customer experience, directly to potential customers and other experts. Often, they play it out to other businesses facing a different view of the same challenge as a form of practical validation, gaining practical advice as to how this challenge has been successfully addressed in other ways. They rapidly prototype not products but ideas. 


Summing up this method:
1. Work up one to three hunches based on a team session with some experienced people and some different thinkers that may challenge the thinking in new ways. Start big, narrow down rapidly.
2. Validate the hunches with the ultimate decision-maker, the customer, as quickly as possible. If it turns out part of the hypothesis is wrong, they rapidly pivot the idea, often directly with the customer to make it right. 
3. The final but essential ingredient to add to this method is collaboration. One person working alone doing the above can have and present powerful ideas. A team of people doing this together, bringing people along with them, can create a movement. Think about how you can bring people along with you and your ideas develop.


The same applies not to just large organisations, but can apply to our daily life. My hunch: Using hunches for just one day will make me 20% more effective in my work. Now, to test it...


You? What do you think, is the use of hunches too risky? Or do you have ideas on how hunches can be used in an even better way? 


Please note: The company described in this article is very discrete, although they do work with some of the world's biggest brands. Please contact me directly if you would like an introduction. 

Talking only buys you so long...

It's funny how eventually, employees talk. Eventually in companies with questionable behaviours and management styles people who joined because of the 'talk' find they don't like the walk. So they too walk.  And increasingly talk, through sites like Glassdoor.com and the interconnected work force via Linkedin and other social media. 


This has been brand mantra for some time, with authenticity being a overt ingredient of powerful brands for the last 10+ years. 


People manager and HR teams also intuitively know that authenticity dramatically affects teams and the the HR function.  


I wonder what would happen if we had a HR / Brand team mash-up? Rather than doing the standard brand touch-point mapping and prescribing recommendations to make people all sing along we instead allowed things to get...messy. And passionate. And bi-directional. 


I think both teams would benefit massively from some frank, creative and fun conversation about how we can make the whole organisation walk the talk. The pay-off? Gain and keep amazing people that will drive your business success.


Organisations are inherently imperfect but some great examples in the right direction include Zappo's, Carman's and Thoughtworks. 


You? How do you make your company walk the talk?


Image credit: Openpresswire

Margin mud wrestling

I'm currently reviewing the performance of a major consumer good brand in the UK. It's very clear that together, FMCG and retailer companies have created a mighty interesting situation for themselves. In a bid to be number one, either product or retailer, they have price promoted their pants off. 


So now they are naked, with only a shred of margin for protection. 


In some respects the customer is a winner, with cheaper prices. But combined with private label, the resulting 1-4 brand category leaves very little room for innovative new products and economy-stimulating small business. A similar situation is facing the IT industry. I am all for market forces and pressure to force brands and retailers to innovate, adapt and streamline to be the best. May the best brands win. But as brands fight it out, there's a whole lot of margin being lost with the resulting instability for businesses and jobs. 


So perhaps the analogy is less standing naked, shreds tactfully poised and more...mud wrestling. 


It would be naive to think that it is an easy thing for manufacturers and retailers to have completely open, honest and productive conversations about what next. 


But I think that those that manage these conversations well, will win. 


Both sides have smart, customer focused people - if we stopped wrestling, perhaps we could create smarter, more resource efficient businesses that delight consumers. On both sides of the ring. 


Flickr image credit: Filippo Venturi

A lessen in expectation and passion from Joan Collins (or rather, her audience)

Attending an event at the glorious Theatre Royal Haymarket today, a Master Class with Joan Collins, it was a reminder about passion. And about people. 


Funnily enough it wasn't from Ms Collins (who is absolutely an inspiration in terms of determination, pragmatism and traffic-stopping legs at any age!). Rather, it was after, speaking to people involved with the Master Class, the theatre and acting in general. They have their own language, what to me would be famous actors are master practitioners and dramatic practice becomes the craft. 


People have enormous, life-dedicating passion to the craft. But if I passed them on the street, or saw them in-store I would type-cast them as an X-type consumer. 


It was a vivid, candid and razor witted reminder that people are not defined by their 'type', they are defined by their passions. 


I wonder what you find if you ask some of your customers about their passions? 




*The Master Class is about to do some even more exciting projects - I recommend you learn more about this very positive organisation supporting London Youth and sign up for updates at http://www.masterclass.org.uk/. 

The bollocks club

The what?

Yes, the bollocks club.

I propose this as a new introduction into your marketing decision making process.

Pick the biggest nay-sayers you can find. Ideally, non brand-loyal customers and potentially some of your sales team who need to sell this into your key accounts.

And run your new campaign idea past them.

What did they say?

Does your idea pass through the bollocks club and makes good common sense? Did it make sense to them? How did it make them feel? Do they think it is genuinely new?

Or are you just convincing yourself that this new angle for differentiation will be heard, understood and acted upon (i.e. your product bought or new, raving fans collected).

It's just another way of sense-checking if you have marketing myopia.

I am not saying that you have to do what this groups says, by any means - it is your job to lead people to new thinking and perceptions about your brand and potentially even the market.

But what it will do is give you the honest answer before you spend £10m on a new campaign. So you can choose before, not realise after how people will act as a result of your campaign.

You? Do you have your own version of the bollocks club? What does it look like?