Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

How to Practice a Culture of Innovation

“Creation is the most valuable part of learning,” says Dave Perell#. Getting started is key. You could remix or re-frame ideas. Remixing paves the way to learning. Re-framing ideas is a useful cultural practice to take them further.

    This has been a positive outcome of the web — facilitating serendipity and providing access to people (almost) anywhere in the world.

    A creator mindset enriches interactions. When we move with the movement of ideas, we gain momentum; when we resist it, we get stuck.  

Cultures embrace and resist change

    Our thinking is often the product of mainstream culture. Culture and cultural signals or norms influence us greatly. Cultures are designed to both embrace and resist change, based on compatibility, readiness, and speed.

    When the rate of cultural change is non existent, the tribe provides the cultural context. In this environment, individual thinking is not seen as useful. Organizations used to be very homogeneous. Even with the broad adoption of social media, there's little variance, except across departments. But silos block serendipity.

    Individual thinking is not prized on the other end of the spectrum, when the rate of change is maximum. In an increasingly complex and changing world, we go with the flow to fit in and manage uncertainty as if it were risk.

    Eamonn Kelly and Steve Weber say there's a delicate balance between risk and uncertainty in a changing world#. They say that businesses today need to balance avoiding the downsides of risk and embracing its opportunity.

    Value is beyond incremental improvements. They say:

The world has always been a complex and uncertain place from the perspective of anyone trying to create value over time. But without inappropriately flattening out the past and indulging in the fantasy that the “good old days” were simple and straightforward, we should acknowledge the obvious fact that business today is indeed faster-moving, more interconnected, increasingly global, and both bigger and broader than it has ever been. Moreover, competitive pressures frequently lead to radical changes in our business models and ultimately generate unanticipated problems.

 

[...]

 

As the pace of change accelerates, many executives have the very understandable feeling that uncertainty and risk are increasing at a faster rate than is quantifiable and manageable.

    Organizations typically pay attention to their internal and market environments, and less attention to “the world of political dynamics, economic growth, technological development, social and demographic shifts and changes in the physical environment.”

    These external factors are a blind spot. Yet they're a useful context to explore for innovation. Unanticipated problems can create the opportunity to try new ideas.

    We should learn to distinguish between uncertainty and risk. Because it will help us understand how the dynamic nature of risk has changed our work.

Problem-solving is the test ground of innovation

    All the easy problems are taken. Problem-solving now involves few certainties and right answers. But there's never been a more prolific context for finding new problems to solve due to the rapid change we're experiencing in so many industries.

    This has been going on since 1944. In On Living a Revolution Julian Huxley says:

“Whereas at the beginning of this period (300 years ago ) the rate of new discovery and invention was such that the digestion of a major change extended over the better part of a century, it has steadily increased until the process of digestion must now be accomplished within a decade. 

This is something new in history. The better part of a century is a long human life-time, and within that span, adjustment both personal and social is comparatively easy. 

When the time available for digestion of a change is reduced to a single generation, then, though individual adjustment is more of a problem, social adjustment is still not too difficult. 

But once the rate of major change has overtaken the rate of social reproduction, and is down to a half or a third of a generation, a new and formidable problem is introduced. The individual himself is asked to recast his ideas and his attitudes once or even twice within the space of his active working life.”

    [h/t Peter] The accelerated speed of change has vast implications. With Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation now coming for our cognitive jobs#,  we need to reinvent our professions to cooperate with machines, rather than merely cope.

    By far the most challenging aspect of this rate of change problem is that we're also called to rebuild our identities. Each of us seemingly sits alone on top of a mountain of everyday decisions and actions for which there are no easy answers.

The upside

    There's an upside to the discomfort of individual change and reinvention imperative. One that sits in the middle between social thought with public distribution and private thought with individual challenges.

    Networks of collaboration are the business equivalent of community building in the social sphere. They provide us with a cross-skilled group gathered around a project. This construct creates a mechanism to build momentum and protect individual thought at the same time.

    Instead of fighting or adapting to the disruption brought about by innovation, cross-skilled groups accelerate it to get on the other side. The group dynamics that engage with collaboration facilitate a cultural shift where independent thinking has value.

    Distributed networks are also more resilient. Many organizations have spread their risk across the globe — diverse suppliers, partners, customers, and new ideas and processes are all opportunities to remix and re-frame business practices.

    We've known about the necessity to revolutionize ourselves since 1935. In The Harvest of Victory, Esme Wingfeld Stratford says:

“Life is the adaptation of creature to environment. 

In the pre-human past the tempo of that adaption has been limited, so that a revolutionary change in the environment has always meant the death to the species. 

Man, in the Machine Age, has contrived to revolutionize his own environment – an unprecedented feat. The crucial question is whether with discourse of reason will enable him to perform the equally unprecedented task of revolutionizing himself. 

Failing that, his civilization, and possibly his species, are doomed, if only for the reason that the energies he has succeeded in exploiting are incomparably swift and potent to destroy than to benefit, and if not controlled by adequate intelligence, will inevitably do so.

    Coping strategies, while useful, don't provide significant and sustained advantage. It's more useful to open up and listen, to create our way into the future, building on networks of ideas and people.

 

[more book recommendations here]

Brand Building Toolkit, Personal is the Best Form of Personalization

Personal is the best form of personalization and is stronger than a faceless company brand today. Connection is a result of interactions that over time leads to trust and often love of the kind you cannot bribe.

    We respond to knowing whose hands or thinking have made something. Influencer marketing is hot because it's about human impressions. Friends and people we trust are our closest influencers. Facebook's organic reach continues to decline.

    While many mainstream brands distributed through retailers are declining, many direct to consumer products are connecting with people. Publishing on your own domain is still the best way to build relationships with your customers.

    My web hosting company is offering a sweet deal this week — up to 75% off on new shared hosting plans and upgrades. I switched to SiteGround two years ago and have not looked back.

    If you're in the market for a fast, affordable WordPress hosting company, take a look at SiteGround. If you sign up, I get a small referral fee. I don't recommend many things, and I waited two years to have enough experience with three different domains on this service to tell you.

    So if you're going to be a publisher in 2019, I cannot think of a better way to start than with a low risk commitment to a hosting company that makes it easy. Get your account now until end of day on Cyber Monday to take advantage of the 75% off special.

 

We Have two General Models of Storytelling. One is Ancient. One is New. It is Only a Matter of Time Before they Collide.

 

We're all storytellers with an audience. Telling stories is how we make sense of our lives.

    Stories have an infrastructure of data and information. When things change in the data — we have more, or different inputs — the story gets updated. Whoever is able to find more accurate information that is up to date and reliable and can connect the dots and see the hidden patterns has an advantage.

     The essence of all storytelling is the way events change, says Christopher G. Moore#. Whoever owns the digital storytelling platforms wins. He puts forth an interesting thesis.

    Today we have two general models of storytelling, he says:

1./ the ancient model familiar to many is local, personal, based on low information, on sharing personal reports, it's anecdotal, it focuses on actions that changed behaviors and lives, talks about things like courage, or warns about disloyalty, etc.

    Typically the storyteller is a member of the community, we're audience and storytellers at different times. There's a a psychological safety and payoff in this model. We merge facts with anecdotes to share beliefs, dreams and aspirations, light the imagination. These kinds of stories helped weave the community together.

2./ the new model started developing after WWII with the advances in computer science. Hence began a model of storytelling based on scientific inquiry and Methods. With the ability to process large data sets, we have been able to discover new patterns.

    Some industries like banking, medicine, and transportation have invested heavily in this model of storytelling. We call this model predictive. This kind of story is not really personal, it's about a larger number of people like you who share your fears and needs.

    Algorithms are better at digging and finding patterns in large data sets. They don't need to worry about the necessities of life.

    The two types of stories are like oil and vinegar, they repel each other. Says Moore:

We have a generation who are getting their stories from the global library, and the international group of story-tellers are transmitting stories that may conflict or contradict what they learned at home or school. As storytellers compete for the attention of an expanded global audience, the stories essential to sustain local cultures are threatened. Stories that inspire are no longer exclusively based on local elites, celebrities or events.

[...]

The statistical story has disrupted and threatens to displace the anecdote.    

    But at the same time we have a hard time shedding the subjective story. Because it feels more real. This is interesting because since the early days of social media we've been noticing how people relate more readily with a person — a representative of a company — through their subjective voice vs. a brand or company.

    The reason why we feel more connected to a subjective story is that it influences our emotions. The statistical story keeps changing based on updates and fixes. We have a hard time connecting to that. But the statistical story can make us more efficient, improve our decisions.

We’ve never had a period where the global population has been under intense pressure to shift their identity and reality from myths, legends, and fables and embrace a radically different kind of storytelling with a new rank of story-tellers.

    Which is why we're resisting and retrenching into the personal and local. Imagine telling your children a story bout probabilistic outcomes! The one thing anecdotal stories teach us well is the topic of being human.

    We're witnessing the clash between the two storytelling models. I found the article stimulating, I had not thought about story in this larger context.

 

Customer Lifetime Value

 There's a reason why you've been on hold with customer service for an hour says the Wall Street Journal, that company may have decided you're not profitable. It's one of the stories I shared in the most recent Learning Habit issue.

    Algorithms determine Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) by keeping a tally of how much money a customer spends. It's important to remember that CLV is about profit and not just revenue. Companies determine the CLV of a person as a score. The score may include geography — the zip code of where we live — and the number of returns we make.

    What else could be part of the score? Some algorithms may include website and customer service interactions, social media activity, marital status — many of the things marketers asked for years in warranty cards and contests, for example — in addition to transaction records.

    In theory, CLV is a prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer. But is it not missing something?

Crippling flaw in CLV

    Michael Schrage says#:

Innovation must be seen as an investment in the human capital and capabilities of customers.

[...] serious customer lifetime value metrics should measure how effectively innovation investment increases customer health and wealth. Successful innovations make customers more valuable. That’s as true for Amazon, Alibaba, and Apple as for Facebook, Google, and Netflix. No one would dare argue that these innovators don’t understand, appreciate, or practice a CLV sensibility.

    In other words, what has the company done lately to keep customers coming back for more? This is the value of a brand to a person or fan. When done well, companies can partner with customers in creating value. Cost reduction, advocacy, product ideas, feedback and data sharing are just some of the upsides.

    Part of the brand reinvention of a business where we grew revenues to position it for an acquisition included partnering with the ultimate users of our products to gain insights on the state of the market. That qualitative information helped us shape our forecasts and quantitative tracking.

    This kind of valuable personal involvement tends to get lost in all the talk about engagement in social. An overlooked yet effective marketing tactic continues to be making the customer better. In fact, investing in customers increases their value to the business.

Other dangers of CLV

    What happens inside the organization should not be discounted from CLV. It's not a number plucked from thin air, it's the result of a calculation we make based on the business we run.

    Bill Gurley addresses other dangers of overly focusing on customer lifetime value for Internet businesses. My observation is that once we find a formula, we typically become enamored with the formula and forget where it came from and that the point is not the formula but the behavior we're trying to predict.

    Data looks back, we're terrible at making predictions, especially when emotion is involved. Gurley# has “reasons to avoid worshiping at the LTV altar.” Some of his points are useful to seeing a broader definition of customer lifetime value:

• It's a tool, not a strategy — confusion of output and inputs. Things like average revenue per user (ARPU) and customer acquisition costs (CAC) are outside our control.
• The model to calculate CAC is confused and misused — for example, customers who seek out a business on their own or as referred by others should not be calculated as a cost. Many discount “revenues” rather than marginal cash contribution. All future variable costs of supporting the customer should be part of the equation to estimate future contribution.
• Business is not physics, the formula is not absolute — complex adaptive systems cannot be modeled with certainty.
• CLV variable tug at one another — imagine a balloon. When you squeeze in one area, the air moves to another. Raise prices and you increase churn, increase customer service support and cost goes up. The problem keeps moving because it's very challenging to have cheaper, faster, and better all at once.
• Purchased customers underperform organic customers — this is almost on every metric. Once businesses are done pampering the top customers according to their definition, they'll likely need to buy more customers to replace those that have walked away because they were treated poorly (as in not deemed valuable enough).
• Marketing dollars could go to the customer — in servicing the customer, giving the customer a better reason to buy more. This is value left on the table when a business follows the premise that CLV is entirely the responsibility of customers. Jeff Bezos says, “More and more money will go into making a great customer experience, and less will go into shouting about the service. Word of mouth is becoming more powerful. If you offer a great service, people find out.”
• An obsession on formulas is blinding — effective public relations, social media, and word of mouth require more creativity and an open mind. They reward businesses with some of the best reach money can't buy, the spontaneous testimonial and recommendation of customers.
• Tomorrow never arrives — focusing overly on the past, as in data about purchases, and the future, as in lifetime value, discounts the potential value of a simple single action and decision today.

    The problem includes timing. Which is as much art as science. Few things in life are certain. While CLV can be useful. What's the lifetime cost of getting value wrong?

 

Ignoring 2 Billion Internet Users is a Missed Opportunity

 

Of the 4.2 billion people online in the world#, only a little over 2 billion are on Facebook (mostly mobile use#.) This is not an overlooked opportunity. Access is not the same as reach ― especially the kind of reliable reach a business builds by creating value.

    Other means of communicating and interacting with clients that have not gone out of fashion and are algorithm-free to deliver value to brands and clients (win/win) are:

• Websites ― an ad-free product experience easy to underestimate, including product updates.
• blogs ― subject matter expertise, behind the scenes that humanize a business, translating technical and scientific information, building authority (both for search and expertise), developing a strong point of view and voice.
• communities ― learning with customers, discovering answers to common issues, opening the door to peers supporting peers, product and execution ideas, good will. evangelism, advocacy.
• mailing lists and email ― direct connection to topics of interest, signal intent.
• word of mouth ― recommendations, reviews, value-driven influence.
• events ― learning with customers, building community, face-to-face interaction, signal intent.

    It's not an exhaustive list of purpose and meaning. But likely a good starting point for organizations that want to expand opportunity beyond the 2+ billion users of social media. We all want to better our lives, improve our lot. Especially younger people want brands to make their lives easier#.

    People want to read honest communication about products and services, they expect brands won't let them down and will act with integrity at all times#. Having nothing to hide is not the same as being intentional about doing the right thing, and saying something useful#.

“Seventy percent of people around the world believe brands’ motivations to share is based upon self-centered desires to increase profits, rather than part of a sincere commitments to their customers.”

    Identity, communication, and growth are interdependent. To move others, we need to own our communication, and meet halfway in understanding what's on people's minds. it's not just as simple as a translation process. Identity is involved. 

    But all of this, including eCommerce where applicable, is in service of a solid business model and a marketing strategy (complete with margins and costs) that works for your specific brand(s) and market(s).

    What you choose to share in social media and online (review sites, forums, communities, etc.) depends very much on the value you get. That includes a broader array of online media, as applicable, as well as face-to-face interactions in store and at events.

    We're often so focused on task at hand, and context at hand that we overlook opportunities to get help, or learn something new.

    Case in point, just last week in talking with a woman who comes to the same Barre studio I go to we discovered she's looking to take her small business to the next level. I'm quite familiar with her client base, their key questions, and health options.

    All communication is persuasion, those started by organizations, and by customers and clients. But not all communication is helpful when it's not consistent, useful, and integrated into a cohesive conversation. Experience is a form of impression, but we don't get to share it when we're not focused on strengthening relationships.

    Facebook is indeed not the only game in town (there's overlap with social media use#). There's more to digital than social media... and more to solving real problems.

    Bonus points for thinking about identity as a lens to understand the web.

    More on #storytelling next...

    

Social Media is Growing up, Good News for CMOs

 

Every second, 11 new people sing up to use social media. Think about that for a moment. The world has four billion Internet users#, and more than three quarters of them are active in social media, thanks to more affordable smartphones and mobile data plans. 

    Nearly a quarter of a billion new users came online for the first time in 2017. In the U.S., where smartphones, tablets, and desktops have been ubiquitous, the people tuned into social media are approaching 70 percent of the population#.

    It's a mature market. And a well formed habit, with frequent check ins ― in fact, daily for about three-quarters of users on Facebook and 60 percent on Instagram.

    This is good news for CMOs who are tasked with the creative and more recently the analytic aspects of company's growth. Social commerce is bringing together aspects of branding and relationship building with transactions.

    It's also creating the need for new skills, and capabilities ― risk management and leadership are likely a new addition for CMOs who have been expanding their role to include business innovation, customer experience, and financial savvy.

    A look quick at the landscape.

Where and what are people doing in social today?

    On the desktop# they're on:

• Facebook (46 percent) reading news and checking in with friends/family (9 percent posts, 5 percent interaction), which means that organic reach is a pipe dream.
• YouTube (20 percent) connecting with influencers and product reviews
• Reddit (18 percent) in online forums, think word of mouth
• Instagram (1 percent) because it's mobile native, though Stories are becoming desktop friendly. What's interesting is that though mobile posts are still hovering at around 10 percent, interaction is hovering at around 94 percent.
• Twitter (8 percent) on desktop sees a total activity at around 81 percent, but interactions have dropped to 1 percent.
• Pinterest (2 percent)
• LinkedIn (1 percent)

    Visual engagement dominates. Instagram's is quite high with relatively little posting. What looks best? Beauty ― 27 percent of posts and 32 percent of interactions ― Auto and active wear also have a favorable ratio of interactions to posts. Brands that use user-generated content and influencer tactics do well.

    Brands with limited product assortments and those that are less enticing visually ― such as explain why sectors such watches & jewelry and CPGs have a smaller interaction to share of posts ratio. Retail brands likely invest in channels where the conversion is more proven.

        In 2015, Pinterest introduced buyable pins, and brands found that the average order value what the highest of all social networks at $50 per order#. Because brands make it easy by highlighting popular products, featuring sales, and explaining shipping, 68 percent of users shop or find a product in 2018#.

    With such good penetration of social media, especially in the U.S., it's not surprising that people are starting to shop using Instagram’s shoppable accounts (41 percent of brands adopted them) or Facebook's Shop Now button (17 percent of brands use it).

    In addition to product discovery, potential people are also looking for customer service.

What are brands doing in social?

    The categories taking advantage of the content/commerce integration are retail, beauty, fashion, active wear, and consumer electronics.

    In customer service Twitter is still king. Having a team there is a good investment for brand management. 67 percent of people have used a company's social media site for service, compared with 33 percent for social marketing#.

    Just like with site's uploading times, people reward prompt responses. Poor social media practices impact brand image, and the bottom line. Leading brands have created a proven process to know how to handle inquiries in social ― private vs public ― and have the power (and evidence) to make things right.

    Positive wins over negative. The customer is always right, even when the details may be fuzzy. Responding to feedback is a good way to build relationships. After all, we like positive reviews. They have power. Mobile conversion increases by 133 percent.

    Brands that have been consistent in using social to improve their overall customer experience, make every customer special... and count.

    Though it's convenient to use Twitter for people and brands alike, many still experience how customer service in social is not fair, and may get expensive for problematic issues. T-Mobile is an example of a brand that reaches out to answer questions, concerns, or to address disparaging tweets.

    Brands selling consumer electronics, active wear, beauty products, retail, fashion, and auto have upped their customer service activities on Twitter between 2016 and 2017. While CPGs, and beverages have decreased them.

    I still remember when eCommerce site social discovery went mainstream.

What are the key social commerce trends?

    Sales revenue from social media were greater than $30 million in 2015#. In February 2016, US retailers surveyed by RIS News and Gartner attributed just 2% of their revenues to social commerce. But the estimated $50 million sales in 2016# tells a different story.

    “Social media is growing up. Which is why I'm writing about social again ― it matters to business, and even more to brands.”

    Below, I highlighted some trends I've seen in the last couple of years.

    It's a small world. Product reviews have sway ― think Amazon, where 90 percent of people check them before buying. 67 percent of women still consider online reviews very influential when they purchase from a brand they know. 43 percent of people check then for an item they purchased, to compare their experience to that of others#.

    Social targeting has a dark side. Those pesky retargeting ads that follow you around can be spooky. But some companies have been doing it well.

    Brands like Wayfair are dependent on digital media to drive traffic to their mobile apps and websites, because they're online-only brands (business model.) In 2016, Wayfair, the home good retailer that gets 10 million unique page views every month in the U.S., sold more than 7 million items from over 12,000 brands.

   Targeting becomes easier after product discovery. For that, they used Pinterest. They were one of the first retailers to use the pin it button on their site. It also helps that they have a sound understanding of target customers, perfect for Pinterest. The company upped its game in 2018 with AR/VR collaboration#.

    Online relationships are becoming more personal. Brands that do well here solve a real problem. It's the problem that drives who is attracted to the brand. This makes it much easier to get to know the people you serve, including the reasons why they use social media/each channel.

   “This is why Instagram is doing so well. It's simple... and relatable.”

    User-generated-content (UGC) has a role here. Brands that focus on showcasing how their customers experience a product or service, or their lives are better (engagement) with a curated appearance (accessible) are very appealing ― at the tune of millions of followers.

    Influencers play a role. But brands need to become savvy about who is influential for their customers. It's 2018, we're been talking about this at least since 2011... yet so many are still getting it exactly wrong. It's the brands' responsibility to figure out what works. (This conversation deserve its own post.)

What are the implications for CMOs?

    The role of the CMO has been expanding in the last several years. Technology has been a trend for a while, but it wasn't until recently that it really became a focus for marketers. Data and analytics is the reason. In 21015, Scott Brinker said:

The “marketing technologist” label is simultaneously a big tent and an emerging field. It’s a big tent because it includes people from digital marketing, marketing operations, IT, software product development, ad operations, and agency creative technologists. Their official titles, backgrounds, and job descriptions vary tremendously.

Yet there’s a unifying bond between them — applying technical talent and capabilities in the pursuit of brilliant marketing. [...] It’s an emerging field because, as a percentage of people working in marketing and IT, these hybrids are still relatively rare. But they’re multiplying, rapidly.

    We're all familiar with operational types of technologies ― email, enterprise resource planning (ERP), networks (including security) ― and the need for CMOs to have a good working collaboration with CIOs and CTOs who have been on the front lines of operational tech for decades.

    Strategic technologies may cover manufacturing and distribution, but also involve the systems we use to find customers, service clients, and optimize the product/service value chain. Building efficiencies is part of the work. The more important part is to keep connecting all technologies to solving a specific problem.

    Over the last decade, corporate leaders have been expecting CMOs to elevate their activities from brand and marketing campaign management to business growth and revenue generation for the whole organization#.

    CMOs expanding skills and capabilities. This means:

• becoming a customer expert ― do we have an understanding the whole customer journey? Are we partnering with other leaders to execute strategy?
• making marketing that makes business sense ― how does marketing support the goals of other groups and executives? How does it translate into financial language?
• complementing the art with the science ― does the team have the right capabilities and skills? Are digital/quant people collaborating with traditional/qual people? Are different points of view being heard?

    To these I would add a more specific consideration for leadership skills ― they come into play not just with growing and running the team, but also with a C-level mindset to run the company.

    Finally, especially due to social media's revival ― and its usefulness as a testing ground for product innovation and community building (not just reach) ― risk management seems not far on the horizon. A few years ago, it was about developing an understanding and appreciation of risk communication.

    With social media taking on a bigger role in commerce, the ability to analyze risks and expected value. Social media keeps people connected, especially in extraordinary circumstances... and today, much of Twitter and other social networks qualifies for surprise. CMOs can make this good, or it could be bad news.

 

Additional Resources:

Understanding Audiences in a Connected World

The Many Faces of Marketing

How a Culture of High Performance, Radical Honesty, and the Motto ‘we’re not family’ Drives MarTech Choices

 

Sizing up the Problem

If innovation is part of your goal, then how you work and who's working on the problem matters even more. The first questions to ask are what's the size of the problem we're trying to solve? Then figure out the scope and who you need in which role based on it.

    Design the organization so that every function contributes to advancing toward the goal. Talk about what needs to get done, and time frame. Use feedback to highlight what works in the moment — hey, what you just did there was great. Do more of it.

    Stop doing everything else that doesn't create value around solving the problem. Seems simple, right? Not easy to do. But starting from the problem gives you a strong chance to change culture. Because it means your behaviors shift based on something concrete.

    Patty McCord was the chief talent officer at Netflix for 14 years. She helped create the Netflix Culture Deck# that got 18 million views.

    “Actual company values are the behaviors and skills that are valued in fellow employees.” Hard work is not important, results are. Brilliant jerks, no need to apply. Focus on performance and responsibility, rather than rigid process. These are three good reasons people liked the deck.

    Setting the appropriate context around the problem controls for the solution more effectively than trying to control the people working on it. Strategy, metrics, assumptions, objectives, clearly defined roles, knowledge of the stakes, and transparency around decision making are all ways to embrace context.

    Size of the problem matters a great deal in a technology company. In that kind of organization, you plan six months ahead. What does the problem look like in six months and how do we get the right skills to work on it?

    It's easier to have honest conversations with people when you're working on a defined context and time frame. You also know who you're missing on your team. It's based on the deltas in skills/experience.

    The video below from Recode's 2018 Code Conference (h/t Fred Wilson#) also spells out an important point about sizing the problem to hire the right person for the role. At minute 11:42 McCord talks about how companies keep hiring the same people they already have.

    Honesty and feedback are the tools of knowledge workers.

 

 

Google and WPEngine: Building Platforms Inside Businesses for the Long Term

Two technology announcements this week that impact marketing. Google is retiring AdWords, the word, and DoubleClick, the name. StudioPress (Genesis) was acquired by WPEngine. Beyond the need to find and hold on to product value, which I'll talk about further down, they're both interesting in different ways.

    Wearing the business consultant hat: Whether you're an entrepreneur, a business owner, in an agency, or in a group inside an organization, marketing happens more and more online. It involves both owned presences to serve earned mentions and attention, and paid support to bring the right people to you — wherever they happen to be.

    Maybe you also build community around a business problem or issue you help solve. Certainly both organizations who announced today to varying degrees of fanfare, are of interest to their communities. In both cases, it's the community of users that has made the products a success.

    In the second case, it was the community that helped advance the product to where it is today.

Google goes for simpler brands and solutions for advertisers and publishers

    From the company blog announcement#:

We launched AdWords nearly 18 years ago with a simple goal—to make it easier for people to connect online with businesses.

[...]

A lot has changed since then. Mobile is now a huge part of our everyday lives. People quickly switch from searching for products, to watching videos, browsing content, playing games and more. As a result, marketers have more opportunities to reach consumers across channels, screens and formats

    You may recall that Google launched new AdWord features in April. Larry Kim at Wordstream helped us make sense of the new enterprise class tools#. Name aside, the tools would be available to all advertisers with any size businesses and annual budgets.

    If your business runs multiple campaigns, you'll be able to take advantage of feature improvements like:

• bulk actions
• automated bidding
• enhanced reporting
• “your own lab”

    A competitive bid for Google? You bet. But they led the announcement with Mobile App marketing. A market worth at $29.5 billion in 2017, according to Gartner. The new features promised better targeting, more ad impressions, better re-engagement, and app analytics measurement. No new identifiers and Android gets serviced first.

    For people like us, apps are just answers to questions or needs. So on the user end of things it means helping us discover, download and engage with more of the apps we want and need. 

    These feature translated into app marketing benefits by Kim means a better position for Google ad targeting and analysis in the mobile app industry. Doing what Google does best with a focus on mobile apps. Part of the April announcement covered features that are not going away.

    You see now why this week's announcement started on mobile. Keep reinforcing the message — more opportunities to connect with customers.

    Hey, Google also helps marketers connect the customer journey. In other words, the marketin platform play. Completing the picture, Google is re-introducing its ad brands as part of suite — Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform, and Google Ad Manager.

    Team collaboration on top of a unified platform where to run, measure, and optimize Google Analytics and former DoubleClick ads. From the announcement#:

These new brands reflect all of the ways that we help advertisers connect with consumers and make it easier for advertisers and publishers to choose which products are right for their businesses.

    In some circles the conversation was about Google having a long way to go to bring the pieces together. Each product likely reflecting the process within the company's organization structure (as in the image above.)

    But the idea is to combine ads, data, and measurements... and maybe start bypassing agencies for digital ads. For the companies already going direct, things will become easier. 

WPEngine is acquiring StudioPress, the makers of the WP Genesis Framework

    “There's much concern and gnashing of teeth in the Genesis community after WPEngine promised that Genesis would work better on their platform than anywhere else,” says Chris Baskind#. It was a poor choice of wording. Their largest acquisition and a gesture of support to the WordPress community.

    My sites are built on the Genesis Framework, a couple of the new ones are gorgeous. (Except for this blog, haven't moved it yet) I'm quite attached to what happens to it. There's my disclaimer. Me and 1 million others. So it's also a scale for growth play.

    From the announcement#:

This success is due to the efforts of the Genesis community that’s risen up around the quality, design, and leadership set by the Genesis core team, particularly the lead developers Brian Gardner and Nathan Rice.

This world-wide group of developers, engineers and digital marketers has done a wonderful job of building, maintaining and evangelizing the framework over the past ten years, and continues to support it via online forums, including a community-sponsored Facebook group that boasts nearly 10,000 members.

While StudioPress deserves the credit for inventing and evolving a robust and user-friendly product, the Genesis community has catapulted that product into the leadership position it has enjoyed for years.

    While the WPEngine is trying to assure everyone that all is well. The official announcement has many words about the company's commitment and thank yous to the community. But little in the way of the practical aspects we want to know.

    Developers are looking to Brian Gardner#, literally the architect of the Genesis Framework. Brian is going to WPEngine with the theme. They know and trust him. He wouldn't be doing this if it weren't good for the Genesis community. A good guy in tech, according to many.

    Many developers also host with WPEngine. They're great, they say. Only issue for working with small businesses and budgets is they are super expensive for multisite plans. “But you get great performance and even better support for the bucks.”

    On the more speculative side of things — the community is thriving, Genesis will remain an independent project. In fact, they promise to support and improve it in their announcement. If you use Genesis, you'll likely see many improvements in the theme and lots more theme offerings. 

    “I expect this will mean Genesis becomes a cutting-edge Gutenberg developer,” says Chris. Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, wrote enthusiastically about it#. He announced the product roadmap at WordCamp Europe. I've been using it on a secret site, super helpful.

 

    Who knows, down the line, WordPress' parent company Automattic could be interested in WPEngine.

 

    Automattic own the hosted platform WordPress.com, and have been looking for a way to better integrate with self-hosted WordPress.org sites. Their recent acquisition of Atavist#, a company working on a content management system for independent bloggers and writers, which also lets you create a paywall and build a subscription base didn't get much notice.

 

    But the potential that Automattic create “a seamless portal to manage subscriptions to multiple publications. And this could lead to less advertising and better content.” Means that WordPress could become very Medium-like in the future. It will be a nice creation platform with built-in eCommerce, paywalls, forums, and premium themes.

    

    It would make sense for them to buy a major WordPress host. At that point, Genesis will become the WordPress theme house brand, with Gutenberg as WP core. With many of these platforms, you start building the product with the community, but you need more resources to grow it.

 

    Google has resources galore, but now needs to consolidate its own pieces onto a platform, make it easier to buy and use their product for marketers. Rebranding makes product signaling sense.

 

    Technology is inescapable —  it affects our lives as customers, investors, employees, and it benefits our work more when we take the time to understand it (or at least the implications of what's happening.) I look at it as a user, but also as a business consultant.

 

 

 

[image via Bonkers World]

How to Uncover Opportunities in Business Trends

 Most organizations and brands don’t develop and communicate their full business and product value consistently. There's never time to do it all, or know it all. Business size varies, but the appetite for growth is ever present.

    From my experience — 50 percent corporate (mostly global brands), 50 percent agency / consulting — 100 percent customer focus is hard to pull off in action. B2B and B2C have gaps in different places, even with the best of intentions.

    The gaps are there because we're constantly negotiating trade-offs — what technology to buy and implement when, who should be on our team, and how we get work done. The closer we are to the problem, the more it impacts us. The more we focus on it and the ramifications for us.

    If you work inside a large organization, your problem is likely breaking through silos to coordinate effort, getting on with many others to make the approval process smoother, and deliver on time. Everyone ultimately reports to the people who buy our products and services, but internal customers may create a certain distance from having a direct sense of what matters to the people who use our product.

   Maybe a metaphor helps. While the speed of change is harder to feel standing on the deck of a large ship, aboard a small sailboat every new wave and wind direction keep us on our toes. The closer we are to the problem, the more we learn what works to stay afloat.

How businesses respond to trends

    Every day, small business owners and entrepreneurs are close to more than one problem that could make or break them. This is true across the board — online and offline. Technology keeps changing how people research, learn, compare, and buy products. Changing expectations and trends affect everyone, but some people feel them the most.

    Entrepreneurs and small businesses feel the trends with accelerated pace, yet every organization should be on the lookout for new market developments. Trends have the potential to influence a market long-term. They're the observable things that happen as a result of consistent actions over time. Easier to see them looking back then looking forward. Because it's hard to predict exactly what happens as a result.

    In Megatrends, John Nasbitt says that each new technology, to be successful, must be coupled with a compensatory human response. Thirty years later, we can tell the trends because they endured in our culture. We can then safely assume that technology acceleration has impact on the human side — even when its effects may be delayed in some areas.

Today, customers drive the need for increased investment in the parts of marketing that are closer to the business — product, service, and company behavior

    All trends signal a rise in expectations that companies will walk the talk and deliver on the glossy marketing promises, the offers, promotions, and all that jazz. This could mean improving product and how we work. But often it's about doing better at communicating what is already there.

    Some trends that have been accelerating in the last couple of years:

• transparency — this doesn't just mean coming clean about business practices. Clarity about who we are and what we do creates value. Making a good product that people need is a more important part of marketing. Doing something newsworthy a better path to good PR. 

Transparency makes the trust leap possible. It helps the people who have the problem, and it helps a brand stand out from the noise of shiny objects and clever positioning. In a sense, trust is the new transparency.

• personalized experience — where companies and customers co-create the elements in the relationship. Many established organizations had user groups and forums where people helped each other with answers and support.

In 2011, Amazon rolled out Ask and Owner feature in product pages. “From a product page, customers can ask any question related to the product. [...] We then route these questions to owners of the product,” says Bezos. “In addition, Amazon also emails owners - Email questions come from 'Amazon Answers' (answers@amazon.com) with the subject line, '(First Name): Can you answer this question about (product)?'”

There's a case for customer communities. Customer communities work because they make a business smarter and the experience more valuable for everyone. In fact, reinventing the customer relationship drives growth.

• high-touch service — the more we're online, the more we want and need to get offline with people in real life. Evidence of this trend is the proliferation of in person events, which is why it's both difficult to know about them all, and near impossible to capture them in a system so people can discover them.

High tech calls for high touch as compensatory value. Instructions manuals, guides, playbooks are good tools, but they're still do-it-yourself and require energy to figure out how to apply them to very specific situations. They're often more useful as leave-behind and reminders or cheat sheets after a workshop. Customers are our heroes, and we are the guides.

• tailored services — the concept of concierge services is fairly established in the travel and entertainment industry. There's a place for it in digital environments in the form of ambient concierge to orient and reconnect business with people by addressing specific knowledge in hands-on formats.

There are other applications of this concept.

Rather than focusing on solutions in search of a problem, successful small businesses and consulting agencies form around a problem and help address it at every step. The ultimate do-it-for-me experience is one hand-crafted for a specific organization.

As technological development accelerates and permeates human cultures, the value of individually hand-crafted items rises. The interest in owning hand-made items, and in making things with one's own hands, increases in parallel.

Globalization and localization are in conversation with each other — each force pulling its weigh as the laws of physics would dictate. Why? Because where we live and what happens there matter to us as much as the possibilities of expanding our horizons and trading all over the world.

     It's not an exhaustive list, but it can help us move in the right direction of realizing more value for customers and the business. We can benefit from a more inclusive culture and an open mindset. But beyond inclusion, we should seek opportunities to make an impact and influence outcomes.

    If you need a hand with multi-cultural, multi-channel strategy and execution, product / service market alignment and communication, I wear many hats and can hit the ground running. 

 

P.S.: Get new updates/analysis on the impact of technology in our lives

I write a high-quality, weekly newsletter covering what's happening in technology, focused on business, culture, and mental models. 

 

 

Habits, #Fail, and Speeding Tickets: The Value of Motivation

Motivation is how eager we are to take action. Someone else can also give us a reason to do something. It's a condition and it's an act. It's one of the most useful tools we have at our disposal. Pleasure, pain, hope, and/or fear ignite it. We can use several strategies to awaken intrinsic motivation.

    In a world filled with external stimulation and prompts to act, becoming more aware of and awakening our intrinsic motivation can help us gain clarity on the type of information and experiences we seek. Motivation is a key component of our behavior, and the most difficult for organizations to understand.

    When turning ideas into products or services, technology can answer the question of how easy something is to execute. Are there too many steps, is it consuming too many brain cycles? Marketing supports the triggers, the final impetus to click on something and/or buy.

What gives habits their power?

    B:MAP. "Behavior (B) happens when Motivation (M), Ability (A), and a Prompt (P) come together at the same moment," says behavioral scientist BJ Fogg#. He spends 50 percent of his time in the lab, and the other 50 percent teaching innovators Behavior Design in workshops and has developed a mini program to work on Tiny Habits, small behaviors we can change using only 20 minutes a day.

    I'm a believer in the power of habit, and tried Tiny Habits when he first developed it out of curiosity. Something that is super easy to execute introduces us to success. When the ability's threshold is low for a specific task/behavior and the trigger is there, we decrease the motivation involved. In other words, we just do it.

    The most enduring kind of changes start with baby steps that we keep taking until they become part of us, something we do automatically. This is what gives habits their power over us.

What makes a product fail?

    Too much friction. Friction is anything that gets in the way of completing a task or using something. It can be due to several reasons — we're using a product or service for the first time, so we don't know exactly how it will go, the functionality is not intuitive and easy for us. Some friction may also be the result of a design decision, to help us take things one step at a time.

    Friction answers the question of how easy is it to use? And partly also, what would make me click, download, and try it in the first place. We can optimize the technology, making it more intuitive, and improve our prompt or call to action.

    But the biggest reason why a product fails is motivation. To fix this we need to dive deeper into understanding customers and product users. If our customers install or sell the product, but don't use it, it's even more important to understand motivation for ultimate users. Because in this case, we may be creating friction by not providing the right information to them.

    In the screen technology industry, what's easy to install may be less optimal for ultimate users of a video and sound system, for example. Or in construction, we want to appeal to general contractors and retail channel, but if homeowners don't know they could have more durable, or soundproof, or healthier drywall, if all they're aware of is mold resistant, they may miss out — and us with them.

What keeps us from getting speeding tickets?

    Feedback loops do. The true power of feedback loops is not to control people but to give them control. They give us information we're missing about a situation, so we can snap out of our automatic pilot mode and decide a course of action.

    Imagine driving way over the speed limit on a residential street or through a town. Coming from the highway, it's hard to realize we're going too fast. But a visual prompt, say a sign flashing back our speed to us in big red letters, makes it obvious. We do slow down.

    Feedback loops are great for solving problems, for example fixing online experiences or bugs. For example, FullStory# is a software that records all of the user’s interactions leading up to the person’s decision to leave. Even better when we're creating opportunities with feedback loops.

    A feedback loop involves four stages:

1. the data, a behavior or evidence
2. relaying the information to the person in a context that makes it emotionally resonant or relevance
3. the paths ahead the information illuminates, or consequence
4. and the moment when the individual can recalibrate a behavior, and take action

    Then we measure action, and the feedback loop can run once again. Social networks use red buttons in a Pavlovian kind of way, to keep us glued to the interaction, to teach us to keep coming back. It works because our posts and actions in social media are tied to our identity.

Conclusion

     Every day we have a limited number of opportunities to accomplish what's on our plate. Motivation, like willpower, uses up our energy and can be finite. There are several things we can do to ignite our intrinsic motivation, create value for our work and lives.

    As product and experience designers we need to dive deeper into motivation because it holds the keys to value for customers. Ability and triggers or prompts can take us only so far in providing usefulness. Understanding the real problem we're solving comes before eliminating friction in the experience.

    We can use feedback loops to reinforce the information people need when they need it by providing evidence of a behavior that is specific and timely, so they can course-correct. Motivation is a valuable component of our strategizing.

 

Resources:

Build Better Habits, Starting with Willpower

The Power of Habit: How we do What we do in Life and Business, Charles Duhigg

Why do we put off tasks?