Archive for category Vision
Thoughts on American Innovation
Typically in this space I try to focus on marketing and communication related topics. There are a number of other things that make up my day I leave out. For instance I frequently joke that I probably know more about industrial energy efficiency than any marketing professional in the state. I have enough professional development hours in certified energy management to cover 5 engineers this year alone.
One of the areas that I spend a lot of time with is innovation. As a part of my dual employment I set on 2 of the state’s largest innovation organizations and interact frequently with most of the other major players both statewide and nationally. It has given me a very in depth perspective of what America is doing to increase innovation.
Often, especially if the government gets involved, we struggle to practice what we preach. As a nation we have come to realize that innovation is about the only chance we to continue to be relevant as an industrial nation. So to help spur innovation we look at how companies in the past have become innovative and try to find ways to promote that. We look at processed brain storming for example. We try to make ideas systematic, if you follow step 1-24 you will churn out a shiny product that will save your company and a nation. We look at traditional models for idea investment. We encourage individual innovators to quickly patent and sell.
The problem with the American innovation initiatives is that it is no longer innovative.
This is not to say that American innovation is dead however. It is very much alive and, well, innovative. We are seeing something truly amazing happen with the social world beginning to take over innovation. It completely changed the way we communicate and market ideas and products. Now it stands a chance at changing how we make them in the first place.
One idea that I’ve fallen in love with over the past year is Kickstarter. It solves a couple of the major problems I’ve seen in my two years inside the innovation world. First there is the whole product market problem. Trying to gauge the potential market for a new idea is always difficult. Many innovators dump a lot of money into bad ideas only to discover no one wants them. On the flip side there are many good ideas floating around that people are hesitant to (or don’t have) invest money in development out of fear that it will not sell. By tying investment into the development with actual product sales these problems are eliminated. If a project meets the funding threshold the innovator gets their money and can gauge the potential market, or not. Plus good products usually get a decent amount of marketing coverage that you could not possibly buy.
The next big step is social collaboration among innovators. I don’t mean teams working on products, I mean products working better with each other. As APIs for digital products become more of a norm an entire industry of new products utilizing those APIs has developed. Soon you begin to have product hubs such as twitter, facebook, Instagram. I saw a number of products at SXSW this year relating to the photo industry that use these APIs to develop new products and if digital even kick out their own API.
This creates a world where as one product innovates other products around them innovate as well. It crosses both digital and physical product boundaries. Apple creates the iPhone and introduces the iOS API allowing for apps. Instagram takes this API and develops an app and releases their own API. Instant print cameras that were once dead take this API and use it to create a physical printer for instant photographs. If any one of these groups innovates the entire chain will. If Apple adds camera features, it enhances the other two. If Instagram enhances their app some of their enhancements can find its way back into the iPhone and the physical printer. The printer itself if successful causes both Apple and Instagram to innovate to support it more.
This is the type of innovation government should be funding and encouraging. This is the future of innovation in the US.
*Note, while I work for innovation organizations and help distribute some of this very government funding, my ideas are my own and as far as I know are not shared by any organization I am a member of.
Why relationships matter most in marketing
For a couple of years now I’ve been promoting what I call relational marketing. If you have never read this blog, essentially I take the approach of building and maintaining positive personal relationships with customers in non-direct sales type of way. I always value the relationship over the sale and I believe out of that approach you can generate more sales over time. The catch is, you must authentically care about the customer, not just pay lip service.
Over these couple of years I’ve pitched this idea in everything from job interviews to consulting gigs. A handful of people got it, most were indifferent and several outright mocked me. The few that got the idea have shown me examples over and over of how a company can succeed. The ones who mocked me are struggling to stay in business right now. Neither of these scenarios has anything to do with me personally I might add.
A couple of months ago I stumbled across @garyvee’s new book The Thank You Economy. The summary sounded good so I downloaded a snippet of the first chapter. It was right in line with what I have been trying to preach. I immediately preordered the book. I am about halfway through it and I have found confirmation to some ideas and clarity to others. I firmly believe this is the future of marketing.
At SXSW this week I had the chance to hear Gary speak and expand on some of his ideas. At dinner that night we happened across a get together by an interesting new company called Happy Cog. They were giving away copies of The Thank You Economy. I took one with every intention of giving it away. I thought about doing one of those book giveaway contest on this blog, but I struggled with that idea because I don’t think it fits the theme of this book.
About a year and a half ago I met @pstrack. He asked me to go to lunch with him to hear about what I do. I spend a minor amount of money on print every year. I am essentially a small fish in a small pond. Despite that Paul invited me out to his print shop for a tour. When I arrived Paul had a small board set up that said “Welcome Greg Henderson”. It made me feel like I was the most important thing in his day.
Over the past year Paul has never tried to sell me print, I give him my business because I feel like he cares. In this time he has not only gained my business but that of many others. He does this because he makes every customer feel like his interaction with them is the most important part of his day. As a result his business has grown, and he has become a good friend. If he sends me something I listen not because it is a slick email or postcard but because I know he wouldn’t send it to me if it didn’t matter.
I am giving him the copy of the book because I think he embodies this approach. He gets it. It is my way of saying thank you to him. I am giving him the book though with his promise that he will find someone else who shares this same vision that relationships matter and pass the book along to them. My hope is that this will keep going. If the book gets too worn to pass on either buy a new one or let me know and I will buy a new one for you.
Bottom line: Relationships matter. People matter. Don’t create a marketing campaign, create genuine relationship with people. Tell them you appreciate them and mean it. Once the relationship is there the business will be there.
Co-creating business
Posted by admin in Business, Communication, Vision on November 23, 2010
I am currently working on a larger paper trying to bridge the gap between interpersonal communications and business communications. My main stance is that if businesses treat all communication like interpersonal communication we can build better and more positive relationships. I am still working through the research but I wanted to share a bit with you as I am working on it. I will try to release the full paper when finished. This particular section is focusing on our relationships with our customers and clients and has been edited to speak to the blog audience.
Most often we think of interpersonal relationships as existing between two individuals. Most businesses however interact with their customers every single day. These interpersonal relationships can exist between businesses (or those representing it) and their customers. I believe that for small businesses to communicate excellently they create a social world with their customers.
Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM), which I have introduced here before, claims that our social worlds are co-created through communication with one another (Pearce & Pearce, 2000). CMM is considered a macro theory, looking interpersonal communication as a whole rather than specific communication instances.
CMM is traditionally applied to person to person interpersonal communication. In 1996 however a group known as the Public Dialogue Consortium (PDC) approached the city of Cupertino, CA to incorporate a more productive form of communication. Their goal was to apply this to the most important community issue, which was identified as the city’s rapid change in ethnic composition (Pearce & Pearce, 2000). I believe this case study is a clear example of how CMM can function between an organization and its customers.
To understand how CMM can be applied to small businesses and organizations I want to look at two main findings of the Cupertino project with interactions between my own business and its customers.
Communicate
First, the primary goal of the Cupertino project was a focus on creating conversations. To do this they took a communication perspective which consist of “viewing the events and objects of the social world as made.” (Pearce & Pearce, 2000, pg 408). This focus on creating conversations allowed them to later move the people to action.
In my current business we do training events and consulting projects for medium to large companies in the state. We do regular marketing activities such as email marketing and direct mail. The vast majority of people who respond to our marketing campaigns are companies that we have engaged in personal conversations with during the past year. As a result we have shifted the marketing approach to establish personal communication first and then follow with traditional marketing.
Engage
Secondly they created the means for relationships to form. PDC encouraged the city to create a new communication architecture. The city government began to participate “in conversations about residents’ concerns, their visions for the future, and the actions (to bring) desired futures” (Pearce & Pearce, 2000, pg 409). This allowed the city government to create a positive social world which both groups co-created.
Recently our organization introduced a new training service to our clients. We waited until we launched the service to tell clients about it. We held the first training event for it in November 2010 and we experienced a record low turnout for a new service. When promoting the event I informally questioned a few clients about why they were not interested. The two main responses I got were “it doesn’t match our company’s direction” and “it does not address our current business problems”.
What does this mean to business?
In the case example I showed some of the results of the Cupertino project and compared that with recent activities that I have experienced in my own business. I feel that the Cupertino project provides a bridge between understanding CMM as person to person and business to person. From studying this case I have developed two main findings.
First, by focusing on creating conversations and relationships with customers they are more likely to be compelled to action. With the Cupertino project engaging the citizens in conversation early the residents “saw a model for and experienced talking productively with members of other ethnic groups” (Pearce & Pearce, 2000, pg 409). In my own organization having conversations first with customers allows a discussion about how our services fit into their business model. This is not achieved well by mass marketing because it is not individualized to each company the way a conversation can be.
Second co-creating the conversation allows for the best possible product. In the Cupertino project they were able to listen to the citizens and hear their concerns and visions for the future. This in turn lead to the city leaders identifying various political processes that “were insufficient for most vexing issues” (Pearce & Pearce, 2000, pg 409). In the example of my business we rolled out a product without first having conversations with our customers to see if the new product was useful to them. As a result we wasted time and money on solely creating a product that our customers did not need.
For small businesses to engage in excellent communication with their customers they must co-create a social reality with them. Organizations that co-create their relationship with their customers in turn create the best outcome for both the business and the customer.
What should I do?
Posted by admin in Personal Branding, Vision on October 27, 2010
So I am going to take a break in the middle of my communicating better series to discuss something a little more timely. This unlike most of my other post is from the heart, not the head.
Nike this week, in time with the start of the NBA season, released a new commercial titled “Rise”. This features Lebron James talking about what people expect of him. Here just watch it:
Lebron ask what should I do, should I be what you want me to be?
I struggle with this. I talk a lot about personal branding which is essentially figuring out what should I do. Do I listen to what my friends tell me I am? Do I listen to my business partners tell me what they would like for me to do? Do I listen to others tell me my ideas are too revolutionary that I should give it up? Should I stop blogging due to the people who do not listen or keep doing it for the handful of people who do? Do I listen to people who say I am mediocre of the ones who have told me I can be great? What should I do?
A part of me wants to say that I should do what I want to do. But I know that is not actually possible. Our perception of who we are and what we should do is tied so deeply in the people around us that it is impossible to separate the two. Yet, I am at a crossroad in life and I need direction not contradiction. What should I do?
I am not satisfied with watching the flaws of the world around me. Every ounce of my body sees the problems and wants to explore ways to fix it. I am not sure people want to listen though. I will never be satisfied doing bad work though just because it is the only way that our narrow vision can see how to do it, there is something better. I can do better and we can do better. Together we can work to fix the problems with the business world or we can sit back as idle spectators and watch our world slowly crumble like the statues of ancient Rome. What should we do?
So do I take the leap I want to take, not knowing if I am jumping to a higher ledge or falling into a pit? If I did would my friends call me crazy, my business partners call me stupid and others ignore me. Or like the dust can we all rise up together to make this little city a better place? Maybe the state will move with it? Maybe we collectively can make something that impacts a nation? Or maybe we just make ourselves and our businesses a little bit better, but isn’t that still worth it?
What should I do? (feel free to comment)
The Social Bubble
Posted by admin in Social Media, Vision on October 12, 2010
A lot of people (for whatever reason) have asked me lately where I think social media is heading, or what I think the next big thing in social media is. Honestly most of the time I give them a pretty crappy answer because I have had a hard time facing what I believe to be the truth. Social media is a bubble.
Blowing up the bubble
The reality is that social media has become inflated beyond reality. Everywhere you look you see a social media startup, social media experts and social media links and references everywhere. I used the bathroom at a local bar recently and written on the wall was “For a good time follow @KerriJack” – ok so I might have made that last line up, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see it reach that level of hysteria.
In the 90’s we had the dot com bubble. Web was new; people were artificially inflating what the reality of the web was at that point in time. The web was awesome and all, as much as animated gifs can be, but the industry had not matured as fast as the hype. The bubble was inflated and it burst. The bubble of the ‘00s was subprime mortgages. On the surface it looks great, people went crazy over them. But the concept lacked maturity and caused it to fall apart and bring down the economy with it.
Inside a bubble
So why has social media grown so rapidly? At the heart of the matter really is humanity. As we transitioned into a digital age we suddenly became inside a bubble ourselves, separated from the world outside. We sit in offices and send impersonal emails, only speaking to people in meetings, and in this we have slowly lost personal relationships.
Along comes social media and it pops that bubble. Suddenly we find people again. We have conversations, share ideas and become a little more personal. We found out that we really like being around humans again. A lot. So we go crazy over social media. Suddenly someone says “hey, if I can connect with people, what if I can actually give my business humanity?” Great, human businesses are fantastic. There is of course the shady side of marketing which has begun to creep into the picture, but somehow we maintained our humanity and love it.
The bubble pops
Like all bubbles though this one is bound to pop. I think the big bubble of the early ‘10s to pop will be the social bubble. Believe me, I’ve made decent money off of social media consulting and have a hard time facing this reality just as much as you. If we are lucky it happens sooner rather than later. I believe like the dot com bubble we must come down to a realistic level of what social media is and grow maturely from there.
Like dot com, social media is not going away. I think in the future we will consider it a part of our digital lives much like a website, email address, cell phone number. We will share through it. However now that we have had a taste of humanity I think the digital bubble as a whole will deflate just a bit. We want to get out and be with people. @LRtweetup has shown us all that.
The Mesh Model
Posted by admin in Business, Improvement, Vision on October 7, 2010
So if you have been following this week I’ve discussed the new problem in business plaguing creative employees. As a result of this new problem creative employees are creating a new business paradigm by forgoing traditional employment and focusing more on independent work. This obviously has a big impact on business today and I would like to finish this series exploring that impact.
History Repeats
First off this is not the first time this sort of creative exodus has happened. As @pstrack pointed out yesterday in the comments his current business was a result of a similar movement. Us creative people tend to periodically throw a fit together and create movements. This has happened several times throughout history and this is nothing completely unique. History in business as well as everything else has a tendency to repeat itself. Such is the case here.
What was old is new
While this is a bit of a reoccurring theme and can quickly be dismissed as the same old movement, there is something different about this one. People are extremely connected, more so than ever before. In this new flat world it is essential to include this factor because it is very significant. Before when people left a business to go alone they would work hard, hire people under them, and eventually create a new small business of their own.
The mesh model
Connectivity changes everything. Now instead of having to go and hire employees, which is the biggest business risk of all, people can form connections with other people who possess the talents they need. I am going to step out on a limb here and suggest we could see a whole new business model arise from this new paradigm.
I call it the mesh business model. You suddenly have an abundance of highly connected independent workers who can form very loose alliances with each other. The business structure becomes very horizontal with each person operating independently while at the same time supporting each other. In this structure it is in everyone’s best interest to do the best job possible because they themselves are essentially the owner responsible for their independent company.
The vertical
The basic problem is vertical companies are dying and fast. In a vertical company the Peter Principle takes place often. You see people rise in a company until they are no longer competent for their position and that is where they stay. This is an old business model that cannot continue to survive in an increasingly creative business world.
In the vertical workers are motivated by respect and pay. Often respect is either not given because of a boss’s inability to understand the necessity of respect, or because the boss does not understand the contribution of the worker.
This leaves pay as the typical motivator. Pay is a business risk, companies hold out on paying more until it is more risky not to pay. In a good economy you worry about an employee leaving so to retain them you pay the more. As I showed in the first blog of this series companies have the upper hand and therefore do not have to continue to pay to retain. In fact the average company has decreased their pay to creative workers over the past 2 years.
The new business
So what does this mean for businesses moving forward? Actually I believe this will be a positive step for businesses that can embrace the change. Companies can lower their overall operational cost by contracting with creative individuals rather than having them on staff. They also are able to get higher quality work by utilizing people with specific talents required by the job.
For creative individuals this means having the ability to take control of your own success. You become paid and reworded based on the quality and frequency of the work. This improves overall worker moral, which also increases quality of work.
Overall for business I think this model combined with the changes in insurance coverage going on is going to lead to a shrinking workforce for companies. Inside companies structure becomes more horizontal. The factory style organizational structure becomes less viable and companies holding on to this structure will quickly lose their market share to companies tapping into a mesh business model.
Thanks for checking out this blog series. I hope to explore a mesh business model more in the future. Please let me know what you thoughts are and I will be sure to incorporate it into future post.
The New Paradigm
Yesterday I introduced what I see as the problem plaguing creative employees. I’ll admit the reality of it is a little dire. As a lover of history I’ve seen that whenever any situation arises that causes power to shift disproportionally to one side a paradigm change will occur in the situation to cause things to balance out.
The (un)employee
Such is the present case. You have highly talented employees who have become unemployed, disenfranchised or un-respected. As we explored previously in this situation employers hold all of the power. In this situation creative employees are taking the most logical step they can think of to correct the imbalance of power. They no longer become employees.
This crazy idea is taking off. Just this past week alone I’ve had 3 friends just outright quit. One of them said “I am just tired of working day in and day out to please someone who ultimately cares nothing about me.” A good friend @amybhole recently shared a similar experience:
“I’ve always been frustrated by how American workers are treated and the psychology that makes us think more hours in the office = a better work product. It’s especially bad in this economy, as employers act like lords who demand unending loyalty from their vassals in return for a measly wage that quite often only pays for a roof over our heads and a meal in our bellies.”
The New Model
Creative workers are taking control of their employment. Most of the creative types I talk to either have already started to branch out on their own or are thinking seriously about it. Most however are not burning bridges with their former employers. They are maintaining that relationship and taking on a portion of their previous work.
This idea is going well with organizations too. Now they are able to reduce cost by not paying for employee overhead or idle time. They can also break apart creative jobs and utilize individuals with specific talents. So for example one friend who branched off recently is retaining the former company’s website design and allowing them to outsource some of the areas that were not his strength.
As you can imagine, this new paradigm is not perfect and causes some issues. In the next post I will explore what the implications are for businesses and employees moving forward using this new model.
Wonder
I was thinking back the other day to when I graduated college. The president and I had become good friends at the time and it was special for him as well because it would be his last graduation ceremony as the sitting president of the university. It was a December graduation and in the May graduation he would as part of the ceremony introduce the new president of Ouachita Baptist University. He had already accepted a job as president of Samford in Birmingham, AL.
I had a lot of fond memories of visiting with Andy Westmoreland, but it was something more than that going through my head. Andy had been working for the previous year to help me get the job I wanted, working with CJRW in Little Rock. It all broke down shortly after graduation but for that moment when I shook Andy’s hand and accepted my college degree I had a very special feeling that I’ve rarely felt since that moment.
Wonder
Wonder about the opportunities that lay before me.
Wonder about the path that my life would take from that pivotal point.
Wonder about the great things that I could accomplish if I set my mind to it.
A few weeks later the job I had at the time was acquired by another company and moved to Florida, the last hope of going on with CJRW fell apart, and I became faced with the reality that the wedding I had planned for the summer would have to be put on hold because neither of us had a job.
Suddenly the wonder disappeared.
Over the next almost 5 years I’ve found that life has a way of sucking the wonder out of you. You stop dreaming and start struggling through tough decisions and let downs.
Then the other day it hit me out of nowhere. The struggles were reaching an all time high with work, grad school and everyday life.
For no apparent reason I stood in awe of the world before me and realized that I still have the opportunity to do something remarkable. I don’t have to struggle; I’ve got a chance to be more than what I am today. I can take the skills I’ve learned in the past 5 years, much like the ones I learned in the 4 years of college, and apply them to do amazing work.
One closed door cannot stop me, neither can 100. I have the chance to prove myself and make things happen, not wait for them to.
I started thinking about my jobs and businesses I’ve worked for and with. How sometimes we lose our sense of wonder. We get lost in the day today business of just getting to the next and we fail to imagine the things we can do if we just try.
Maybe when companies stop dreaming and get caught up in today things go wrong. They start producing more of the same products until someone from China does it cheaper. They start thinking about producing cars cheaper instead of better. They start spending more on drilling additional wells and spending less on safety. They want to make as much money as they can while things are going well, and when they are not it will be someone else’s mess.
Maybe that is what has gone wrong.
Just a thought
The Future of Work
Last week another example of how quickly and collaboratively ideas move thanks to the power of social networking, I unexpectedly found myself in the process of starting up a co-working location for Little Rock. To me this concept reflects where the future of work is heading. This is why I am interested in this project, and excited about the possibilities it brings to Little Rock.
To understand where we are going we have to, as often is the case, understand where we have come from. The idea of working for a large company in a big office building is a new concept in the history of the world, yet it is the only mass way of work that any of us know. However you only have to look as far as the late 19th and even early 20th century to see how this has not always been the case.
Historically people were independent workers. Individuals had various skills that they would sell out or trade other individuals in the community or general area. More successful independent workers would have a small business with a handful of wage workers under them, but by and large the corporate system that we understand today did not exist.
This all changed of course with the factory system, suddenly hundreds and thousands of people worked for the elite few who distributed wages and owned the company. The skilled independent worker became an unskilled factory line employee. You all know the story.
The factory system spread to ever area of our workforce. Sitting here now in my office I am a factory worker. True, I manage marketing and communications, but that is my widget that I build for the corporate structure. However if you are to believe Seth Godin in his book Linchpin, which I personally do, this system is about to change.
I believe the new system will look a lot like the old and forgotten skilled independent worker of the past. Instead of taking our skills to our neighbors however we will take them back to the companies we broke free from. Companies will essentially employ fewer and fewer workers, until all that is left are the people who own and run the place. We will work on contract, and we will be on contract for multiple companies at once. This system, I believe, works in the benefit of all. Companies assume less risk for workers, and workers will be less controlled by the fear of layoffs, firings and corporate bankruptcy.
The system will happen very slowly, for certain there will be bumps in the road, but more than likely we will never realize the transformation until we reflect back on the changes. In a sense it is already happening. I recently visited a company where they certainly do not use these terms, but it is exactly what they are doing. They review regularly how well the employee fits, how well they fit the employee and then they continue or discontinue the services. What really made it feel like this new system however was not the structure but the actual work environment. It looked very much like co-working.
The office was an open area where people worked on sometimes common tables. Most were working on different projects, but they would frequently discuss with others around them ideas on how to make each other’s projects better. This is the heart of co-working. See we realized something in working with others in a factory system. When a problem came up or new ideas were needed it was helpful to be in close connection with others to share ideas and brainstorm how to solve problems. This is the one thing that the previous system lacked.
My idea for co-working is just that. A friend of mine @Arlton has started a co-working location in Conway and looks to be very successful. I think this idea can be expanded on to serve more than just coders and designers, but any independent worker. With various types of course comes various needs, so what this will look like is still a bit of an unknown. But I am willing to figure that out.
If you are interested in keeping up with the initial exploration of a co-working site in Little Rock or want to get on the list to be a part of the interest meetings please follow @LRcowork.