Wine 2.0

If you want a stunning example of what a Web2.0 marketing approach looks like (or rather, how it should work) look no further than Stormhoek.com, the website of a small South African winery.

The website is basically a blog, with links to a YouTube channel and a MySpace page.

Hugh MacLeod (of GapingVoid fame) is the marketing brain behind it all.

With a miniscule budget and heavy competition, he's managed to very successfully promote the Stormhoek brand (going from zero cases to 200,000 cases in the UK in about 2 years).

Read through the posts and learn how he leverages the passion of wine making and how he communicates and amplifies his brand's message. Watch how he spreads the word of his brand in new, innovative, 21st century ways.

Note the authenticity.

Note the lack of sales pitch. (Heck I couldn't even find a listing of their brands on the site!)

And while you're there read the Smarter Wine Idea post.

And count your lucky stars that you aren't a competing brand manager.

Apple Innovation thru the Ages

If you were to put together a slideshow depicting product or service innovations from your company over the years, what would it look like?

A Mac fan put up screenshots on Flickr and Macenstein made this YouTube video from them, showing Apple's product and service innovations over the years. Note that Apple's earlier days aren't well represented, but the constant stream of new products is pretty impressive.

How does your company measure up?

The Macarena and the Internet

The folks who run the Wayback Machine have been archiving websites since 1996. If you're interested in taking a trip down memory lane, give it a try.

To give you a point of reference, "The Macarena" was the #1 song that year.

I checked out a 1996 version of a company website where I worked and even then, the marketing folks were trying to build an online community. If you "signed up" for the e-newsletter, you were entitled to a free customized product.

Twelve years ago, some smart marketing folks at my Alma mater, understood the potential value of building web "communities".

But back then it was more of a mailing list, than a community.

What did your website look like back then? Has it changed much?

Death to Death by Powerpoint

I've been spending a lot of time recently, reading about how to create and deliver a more effective presentation. One great resource is Garr Reynolds' blog, Presentation Zen. I have yet to read his book, by the same name, but it's on my wish list.

An affiliated resource is this Squidoo lens created by Seth Godin.

Garr's mission in life is to eradicate those "Death by PowerPoint" presentations that we've all attended (or given).

I'm now starting to think that my presentations would be more effective if I flashed back to elementary school, where each of us had to conduct a "Show'n'Tell" class. We brought in something from home (our only visual aid) and spoke about it for five minutes. The success of each presentation rested solely with me and my classmates, not the "thing" we brought in for the presentation.

Later in life, somehow the roles got switched and we began relying more on the visual aids than our own verbal communication skills.

For many of us, PowerPoint became a public teleprompter.

And that's when presentations became "deadly".

It seems to me that one way of determining whether PowerPoint slides are "overwhelming" the verbal message is by showing the slideshow to a complete stranger. If they can glean the message from the slideshow, chances are your message is relying more on the slides than your verbal presentation.

If you take a look at slideshows of renowned presenters, without benefit of the actual live presentation, chances are you'd have a hard time determining what the message was. And that's because the slides are used to punctuate a point, not make a point.

Words are scarce. Illustrations are simple. Graphics/photos are eye catching, sometimes stark and sometimes unexpected. Great presenters' slides don't tell the story. They serve to illustrate it.

Take a look at a slideshow done by Seth Godin in 2000, about his new book (at the time) called "Unleashing the Ideavirus".

Without the commentary, without the "story", this is simply a collection of eclectic slides. If however, you were able to see Seth's presentation, I'm betting you would come away excited by his vision for marketing in a Web2.0 world.

Here is a short video clip of Lawrence Lessig talking about "Video is the new Democracy". Notice his presentation slides as you listen to the short speech. Very few words per slide, written in an old typewriter font (his trademark). The audience focus is on him, his words, his message, not his slides. In fact, a copy of the slideshow wouldn't be particularly helpful to anyone who had not attended the presentation.

Watch.

So the next time you need to present, think about PowerPoint slides like the garnish on a great meal. The "meal" is you and your speech.

Owning Outcomes

It seems to me that great I.T. organizations go beyond solid infrastructure management and on time, on budget project completion.

These things are important, but don't matter if the people using the new processes and transactions aren't effective.

Business outcomes matter.

It's the difference between installing technology and meaningfully improving business process outcomes.

It's ironic that every major system project is ascribed big business benefits - more anticipated sales, reduced expenses, more inventory turns, reduced cost purchasing transactions, more accurate or faster accounting.

Yet if you look how your company measures their I.T. function, how many of you provide bonuses or raises based upon whether the initial project benefits were achieved?

If you're like most companies I've seen, the answer is not many of you. I.T. is generally measured on two things. Helpdesk (how quickly you fix things that break) and Project Management - delivering the project when you said you would (and for the price you quoted).

I.T. is in a unique position to really help achieve business benefits and yet we seldom volunteer (or are called upon) to do it. Your I.T. staff knows which users "get it" and which don't. They know which sites are trying to work around the system "to make thngs more efficient" and are actually doing the exact opposite. They know how many P.O.s are being automatically three way matched and how many are overidden.

They know who is entering data accurately and who doesn't. They can tell from the Helpdesk calls. They can tell by running simple queries against the system. They can provide this information to line managers and they can provide comparative reports, so one site can be placed "in competition" with another for process excellence. They can easily see how purchases are being coded and classified. They have visibility into each sites accounting practices and can tell whether they're using accounts as planned.

But it isn't done that often. And too many times, process outcomes fall short of initial expectations.

Ask your Project Managers what they might do differently if their salary increases or bonuses were based on achieving original justification improvements.

Their answers might surprise you.

"Owning outcomes" places I.T. in the same lifeboat with the business. They'll start thinking about post go live reporting metrics (how well we're using the system). They begin to address more effective training, instead of writing user manuals.

To paraphrase Johnny Cochran:
"The project don't stop 'til the benefit's got."

And that's a good thing.

Keep the Toaster Away from Your Bathtub.

My son's best friend struggled with his Pre-Calculus class, and when his classmates couldn't help him better understand the subject, his parents got him a tutor.

They didn't buy him a different textbook.

If my daughter has trouble with an application on our home PC, she doesn't reach for a manual, or look up the answer on the Internet, she seeks personal help from my son or myself.

At work, when a co-worker struggles with a computer problem they tend to ask a peer for advice before calling the Helpdesk. This phenomenon happens so often, it has been given a name - "shadow support". Consulting firms have spent time trying to quantify how often "shadow support" happens in our workplace. Answer: It happens all the time.

And it's expensive.

When my team was deploying a new enterprise system, we asked our employees how they would prefer to be trained. Almost unanimously, they preferred "one on one" training. In second place came classroom training. Third place was peer-based training (a train the trainer approach). Finishing dead last, was the dreaded user manual.

Unfortunately, when you need to train 1200 people, who are dispersed across the country, most forms of face to face training aren't an option. And so you go off and write the dreaded user manual, comforted by the fact that you did the best you could, given the time and resources restraints.

(Aside: I know what you're thinking. Why survey employees if you couldn't provide their first choice as a solution? Answer: We were lobbying for more training resources and needed the survey results to back up our request. We were denied.)

In our case we created online (web based) screenshow training lessons for each application transaction, with screenshots of each cursor movement, complete with text documentation. We combined this with a "train the trainer" delivery approach. Our employees could step through each transaction from anywhere, 7x24.

We also provided an entire training environment, where employees could sign onto a practice system and test out their knowledge. We developed user groups so peers could communicate with peers as they adopted the system. We provided cheat sheets and printed documentation. We even built process discussion forums on the company intranet. We personally trained the Helpdesk staff. The Helpdesk Manager also brought in 3rd party system experienced staff for go live week.

In retrospect, I'd give our training/support efforts an "A" and (generously) score our training outcome as a "C". Our results were better than simply issuing a user manual and summarized "cheat sheets" - but not by much.

That's a tough pill to swallow. The success of any implementation is measured by anticipated business results (faster accounting close, more inventory turns, fewer outstanding receivables, better purchasing or whatever...) post implementation.

And positive outcomes depend entirely on how well your employees understand the work processes and use the new system.

So what have we learned so far?

1. People prefer to be personally trained (one on one) by other people.
2. Most companies can't afford the time, resources or money to do #1.
3. Most "affordable" training methods aren't as effective as we'd like.
4. Project outcomes are almost entirely dependent on how well your employees understand the new processes and use the new system for transactions.
5. A strong "Training effort" doesn't guarantee that employees actually learn.
6. For new system implementations, I.T. owns the training challenge and is responsible for the outcome.

If you're a Project Manager, you might be seriously tempted to take your next bath with a toaster.

Before you do that, let me "float" a different idea. (Pardon the pun.)

About six months ago, I came across a book by Dan and Chip Heath, called "Made to Stick" which cites six rules for effective communication. After watching a video of Dan Heath presenting at BIF3, I learned he was a co-founder of a company called Thinkwell, which provides supplemental teaching services for Professors and Teachers.

When a respected communications expert gets into the training business, I was curious to see his approach. And after spending a few minutes on the site, I knew the approach I was going to try for my next system implementation.

In fact, Thinkwell uses an approach I've blogged about in the past. (Hint: Check out my previous posts; Hooked on Video and Stop Writing Manuals.. as examples.)

So here's your homework.

1. Check out Thinkwell's website as an example of how experts train "visually".
2. Pick a training topic. Ask your Helpdesk which questions they get the most. Use your first video to answer these questions.
3. Download CamStudio (or spend a couple hundred bucks to purchase video creation software).
4. Create a web based training video. As you create your video, CamStudio captures everything you see on your monitor and includes audio, so in essence, you create the feeling of one on one personal training. If your Business Analysts create the training videos, you also put a voice (or face depending on how sophisticated you get) to the I.T. support function.
5. Monitor the results and ask for employee feedback.

I'm betting that you'll find that video training is more accepted by your audience, is faster and cheaper to produce than writing and editing detailed user manuals and is fun and easy to generate. And best of all, I believe it will be more effective.

Put the videos on your company's intranet to make them available anywhere and anytime. If you find that this approach works for your company, you might also link the videos into your enterprise systems "Help" feature and combine this delivery method with a system certification test to make sure that employees truly understand the content.

Let me know if it works for you.

And keep the toaster away from your bathtub.

What Your Business Can Learn from the Porn Industry

Hugh McGuire has a great post today at HuffPo entitled "Porn Knows What It's For. Do You?

It's another slant on Guy Kawasaki's business advice to "Make a Mantra". Make a Mantra (instead of a mission statement) sums up what your business does in three words or less. It's your company's reason for being.

So, if your answer to the question is any of
a) Make money
b) Serve shareholders
c) Serve customers

you're not getting the point.

Customers come to you to solve their problems. And they're willing to pay you for the product or service.

So if you can't craft a mantra for your company, it's very likely you're unfocused - just like the music industry who spend all their time on DRM (digital rights management) and attempting to sue their customers, instead of finding a way to better connect us to our music - to eliminate all barriers instead of erecting new ones.

The entire music industry has failed to make a mantra and they're suffering the consequences. The digital age never threatened that industry.

Industry executives who didn't appreciate what their industry was for, did.

The 24 Hour Rule

Guy Kawasaki has a great blog today - a New Media Workshop: What to Do When the Conversation Turns Ugly.

I won't repeat the key points here. Guy is eloquent - read his original blog.

But I did notice that his advice rings true for any ugly conversation - not just social media ones. Everyone receives flaming emails from time to time. The same tactics and advice apply.

My version of how to handle "ugly conversations" is to instantly write a snarky reply and then NOT SEND IT. I allow myself 24 hours to calm down, regain my composure, then go back and edit out all the four letter words and emotional language.

I think that the 24 hour delay response also subliminally says "I've given consideration to what you had to say and here's why you're wrong."

If the goal is to communicate with your adversary it must be done calmly.

If you take the bait and ratchet up the rhetoric and emotion, you both lose (unless it was the email flamer's intent in the first place, in which case only YOU lose.)

Political season provides real life examples of how to handle personal attacks. Watch Mike Huckabee the next time one of his Republican colleagues takes a personal shot. He never gets angry. In fact, he puts on a big smile and plays "the bigger man".

It works.

Heard of TopCoder?

If you're like me, you've probably never heard of TopCoder. I recently discovered the company when the company's founder, Jack Hughes, introduced his company at BIF3.

TopCoder is a "no shore" (their term) based software company. They enlist a highly skilled virtual army of developers from around the world and pit them against one another in virtual competitions to create great code, quickly.

By employing a methodology framework and reusable components, their goal is to quickly deliver, well designed, error free code, faster and cheaper. Developer teams self organize, self-manage and are pitted against one another to create the best product possible.

Hughes believes that by taking motivated (self-enlisted workforce), allowing them to volunteer for specific assignments, and by competing against all other developers, that both the virtual employee and TopCoder's customers win.

Since the community has access to a library of pre-built software components and continually adds to the library as projects are completed, each project continues to add to the overall toolset, making the next project easier and faster to develop.

This cycle, Hughes believes, leads to truly, faster, cheaper and better software. And apparently they've convinced some large Internet players. AOL is a customer.

Given the number of local want ads I've recently seen for Java programmers and .Net experience, TopCoder could make a lot of sense as a solution to a meagre, locally available talent pool.

[Disclosure: I have not personally used TopCoder, but if I had a need, would probably give them a try.}

Dan Heath on "Thinking Inside the Box"

Dan Heath (co-author of Made to Stick) makes the case for "Thinking Inside the Box" in this video from the Business Innovation Factory.

If ever you need inspiration or motivation or just want to enjoy the presentations of innovative and thought provoking leaders, spend some time at either BIF (Business Innovation Factory) or TED (Technology, Innovation, Design) - two of my favorite websites.

Is Your Marketing Department Focused on the Mission?

Yesterday, I wrote a blog called Advice to my Alma Mater, after I stumbled across the website of a former employer. Their website was well organized, transaction optimized and completely antiseptic. To my mind it didn't reflect the customer passion that I KNOW they have.

If I were still working in a Marketing capacity for the company, I might have made a poster like the one (I created) above (featuring Seth Godin's blog photo) to remind my team of Seth's message that Job #1 is to be remarkable.

After all, if you build an enthusiastic (and vocal) customer base and begin to achieve "Top of Mind" status - the first place people want to visit for great shoes or ice cream or car repairs, it makes spending a large portion of your day on improving your search engine rankings less important.

Too often, we focus on the tasks (like SEO) and forget the mission.

Advice to my Alma Mater

I recently came across the website of one of my Alma maters. It's been many years since I've worked for them and during that time, they've grown significantly (mostly through acquisition).

It was interesting to view the catalog company's website "as an outsider". While it is well organized and comprehensive, it doesn't really reflect the company's "personality", nor all of it's capabilities.

In a Web2.0 world, online presence needs to be more than a well organized store. One needs to make every effort to build a customer community, to foster trust, to build confidence, to gain permission to have an ongoing conversation.

In the old direct marketing model, "having a customer conversation" meant mailing another catalog.

I have never worked with a more customer oriented group. They always went above and beyond to address customer needs. If you didn't find exactly what you were looking for in the catalogs or on the website, they'd make every effort to find it for you. If you called in your order, customers saw that.

Their online presence masks that great attitude.

Effective online presence needs to reflect your business "personality". Your website needs to tell your story, educate, enthuse and motivate customers. Great websites are like the difference between an enthralling novel and a dictionary. While both are books, one features a well told story and the other is a list of words and definitions.

Engaging customers is not an easy task. For a direct marketing catalog company, the benefits can be enormous. The "old" direct mail model is to mail as many catalogs as you can afford - to the point where the sales profit barely covers the cost. That way you build a customer list, which you then mail and mail and mail to drive sales.

Web2.0 can change all that. But it takes time and commitment.

My Alma mater has decided to focus on transaction efficiency, rather than relationship building.

They're experts at search engine optimization, product indexing, product presentation, affiliated regulatory compliance information, cross-selling, effective shopping cart checkout. If you visit the website, chances are excellent that you'll find what you're looking for.

It looks as if the I.T. department built the website - not the marketing folks. Now I know that's not true, but from the outside, that's what it feels like. I do know that their marketing department is filled with very bright product managers, each responsible for product selection, presentation and promotion.

No one within the Marketing department has responsibility to promote and build a customer conversation. And that shows.

In fact, the website landing page doesn't include any photo of a single employee!

So my advice to my Alma mater would be:

1. Tell your story. You are much more than your website displays.
2. Put someone in charge of building a customer community, of maintaining a blog, of managing the customer conversation. Done well, it will engender loyalty and allow you to reduce traditional catalog mailings!
3. Make your website personable. People like dealing with people, not machines. And you have a lot of great people.
4. If none of this advice makes any sense, try reading a Seth Godin book.

Good luck guys.

The Origin of Change Management

It strikes me that while change management as a business objective has always been with us, nothing coalesced change challenges more than indoor plumbing.

The challenges of getting men to put the toilet seat down are eerily similar to those facing anyone who has to lead change in a business environment.

One has to tackle;

1. Old Habits

2. A WIIFM (what's in it for me?) proposition

3. Moving behaviours from selfish to selfless.

4. Helping others understand the "bigger picture".

5. Fear of change

6. Ignorance

7. Negotiation

8. Constant behavioral reinforcement.

For almost a century, men have been training women to master the art of change management.

And many women would argue that it has been going on much longer than that!

Symphonic Leadership

[Via Guy Kawasaki's blog]. Thanks to Bert Decker (Executive Coach) who prepares an annual list of the 10 Best & Worst Communicators, I came across this compelling video.

Decker's 10 Best Communicators List for 2007 includes a former cellist, now musical conductor, Ben Zander. The short video below demonstrates his amazing communication skills. His talk contains some gems on the subject of Leadership.

This short (8 minute) video demonstrates why he deserves to be on the list.



In an odd coincidence, yesterday I blogged about The Even Keel - a tribute to Tony Dungy's leadership style. Well, guess who also made the 2007 Best 10 Communicators List.

Maybe, just maybe, effective communicating has something to do with effective leadership.

The Even Keel

If there is one person in professional sport that exemplifies a management style that is an "even keel", it is Tony Dungy, coach of the Indianapolis Colts. Unlike many others in his profession, he doesn't scream or yell at his players. He doesn't jump up and down on the sidelines. He is the epitome of calm, cool and collected.

And VERY effective.

His style enables his players to "play within themselves" - with the focus on each person doing their job - focusing on their individual responsibilities, and not getting caught up excessively celebrating touchdowns or beating themselves up after a missed play.

It's a lesson we can all take to work each day.

I was taught the lesson after a particularly frustrating day during an ERP implementation. I was reporting progress (or lack thereof) to our Executive Sponsor.

After detailing the recent project travails and our proposed solutions for getting back on track, he sensed my huge frustration and anxiety and said something that has stayed with me ever since.

"Things are seldom as good as you think or as bad as you think."

It was his way of telling us that we'd be more effective managers by keeping an even (emotional) keel.

And of course, he was right. We worked through our challenges and resolved the problems of the day. While they seemed extremely important at the time, I honestly can't remember what the problems were, in hindsight.

This perspective has helped me through the business highs and lows that accompany all our careers.

If you think about it, the term "Crisis Management" is a bit of an oxymoron. It pairs effective leadership with emotional panic.

Not a great combination.

So (briefly) celebrate wins and don't dwell on the losses. You'll end up a more effective manager by maintaining that even keel.

The Last Word

Ryan at 37signals, blogs today about his positive customer experience with T-Mobile. He identified three aspects of his support experience that all Helpdesk Managers can benefit from.

While the first two observations are what I would consider "table stakes"...
1. Don't make the customer wait.
2. Care about the customer's problem.

It's his last observation that doesn't occur often enough in the "I.T. world".

3. When the problem was fixed, I heard it from them first.

Too often, I've seen Helpdesk's fail to notify their customers when the problem was resolved! In our effort to fix things, we left out the most important task - letting the customer know!

I would make one further suggestion to T-Mobile.

My personal experience with Helpdesks, is that many times, the agent feels the ticket is closed, once they feel problem is resolved. In actual fact, the ticket isn't really completed until you've resolved the issue, notified the customer and the customer confirms it's resolved.

The last interaction is essential, because it sends the message that the ticket isn't closed until the customer says so. Too often, Helpdesks close tickets prematurely, in an effort to "keep their stats up" (time to resolve issues) or under the assumption that the problem was resolved.

Now in many cases, once customer problems are resolved, they aren't particularly responsive to confirming the resolution. Hey it's fixed... I'm onto other things.

So provide a negative option:

"We believe that we have resolved your issue [describe the issue]. If this is NOT the case, please let us know immediately and we will continue to work on a resolution. If we do not hear from you, your ticket will be closed in 5 days."

Always give your customer the opportunity for the last word.