WinMarkets - Ideas that Create Value
SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 2008

Good Comeback Line

Mr Ellison has been characteristically dismissive of VMware. He recently compared the company to Netscape, and predicted that Microsoft would quickly eclipse it as it did the browser pioneer. For good measure, he added that the base layer of software on which virtualisation depends, called a hypervisor, was so simple that his cat could write it.

Ms Greene’s tart response, delivered during an interview with the Financial Times at VMware’s Silicon Valley headquarters: “If his very smart cat could write it, my very smart tortoise could write his database.”

Nice.


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Random Ideas

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MONDAY, JANUARY 14, 2008

Holder of the Vision Carries the Flame

No one ever comes up to me and says they believe in my vision for Rubicon. It’s not that they say they don’t. It’s just that people wait until something’s already a reality before “believing”. And that’s good. Vision, after all, is vision for a reason. Someone has to believe in something long before it becomes reality. They are the holder of the flame. They believe in it long enough for it to become reality. In some ways, that is the primary role of a leader. To hold the vision and incubate it long enough for it to become a reality in the market.

I sometimes want someone to come along and believe in my vision as much as I do. Because that would make it feel same, comforting, real. It would be validating. Which would make it easier for me to believe. There’s an irony in that feeling.

And, I know better.

Now I think I should settle for people not taking down my vision. People who kind of give me a look like “what makes you think you can do it?”. I have a girlfriend who I love dearly who even goes to the point of asking that question in just about every flavor there is. I call her my challenger.

For any of you holding on to a vision, I say disregard anyone who says you cannot make it; fake the confidence, believe in it as if it was already in the rear-view mirror until it is; Never give up; Continue making an effort no matter what, and remember to envision the outcomes as done when you are talking to people on what they will do to carry the flame.

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Entrepreneurship & Game of Business

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SUNDAY, JANUARY 13, 2008

What is this Strategy thing?

Some of you already know that I’ve been working on some book ideas. One book I’ve wanted to write for some time is on strategy — not the 80,000 foot level of theory that a Porter or Hamel does well. But the thing that a GM or VP who is living it could actually use when their in the middle of the mess/ opportunity / business situation.

And of course there’s only a gazillion books on strategy. So what could be said that hasn’t already been said? I hope I (or a member of my team) really figures that one out otherwise, no book.

But to me…

Strategy is about the combination of ideas + selection criteria (what’ll work for that organization and time) + people’s resolve to move forward.

Thus the strategy process has to enable all 3 parts.

Ideas.
Strategy is not about choosing amongst known items; it is figuring out new options, figuring out what really matters and then designing a new future. Of course that has to be analytic, but it also has to be grounded in the stories and lore of what has already been tried, what has failed… Not just for that company but for the industry. What is that saying: History repeats itself and those that think they are in a brand new situation are fooling themselves…the same is true for strategy. Every strategy has in one way shape or form been done. The key is to figure out what could be done in this situation and how to avoid / change the factors of failure.

Selection.
What most people miss is that after all the ideas are gathered and brainstormed, there needs to be whittling process. It’s not about saying one is bad or one is good but about figuring out what in this context / time / company / leadership / whatever makes sense for this company. Because all the “right” strategies in the world could be applied to any business but what makes it right for them is really about leveraging their core strengths today. So it’s about discernment certainly to figure out what is a company’s strength today. And what are they clearly not able to do. And then to look at that clearly, without bias to think about what makes sense. I suppose in some way it’s the role of a parent to a child or a teacher to a student. The parent or teacher sees things the child or student doesn’t. Not because the child is stupid or the student ignorant, but both are learning and are too close to the situation themselves to have some perspective of what true gifts / strengths / abilities they should place their leverage.

People stuff.
When teams and executives bring us in, what they need is the answers, fast. Typically they are not bringing us in cause they have it all together. It’s cause they need something – something to win. And that is never a comfortable space. We know that when you invites us to the table, you need us to contribute and become committed to your success. We respect what you’ve done, and then we hope to bring something to the table that brings you to another level of results. We are truthful, passionate and professional. We certainly maintain confidentiality…Give you a working solution, not just more data or many options. We certainly don’t disrespect the competition. We always respect people. Respect is key; We think that every one has their gifts and not everyone has every gift. We believe in the power of unbelievably talented people creating something amazing together. We believe in people. Sometimes I use the word faith in this situation. I believe in the fundamental goodness of people because I am faithful. Nobody out there is failing because they’re stupid; they just don’t have the same facts, abilities, perspectives as what they might need. We help them to at least know what we can offer, and then we have some faith that the right things happen next.


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Business Strategies

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SATURDAY, JANUARY 05, 2008

The WSJ Interview By-Product

I got interviewed this last week by the Careerjournal.com (owned by / sister site of the WSJ) on “how I got here”. It’s one of my favorite articles to learn about other people and so I agreed to be interviewed. The journalist asked about “what’s next?” and it’s had me thinking (once again) about that question.

Should I grow the type of work by adding a new specialty, add more consulting talent, think about acquiring another firm or its assets, merge with a similar but more established good firm like Chasm, and the list goes on. The choices are many. People — clients, other CEOs, jealous grad-school buddies seeking a job — have approached me for years to ask the “when are you getting bigger?”, “are you growing fast enough?”, “You’re still just 6 core people, how do you plan on growing?”, “When will you begin to really grow the company?”, “Why have you decided not to grow the company?”

For the first 7 years of Rubicon, I would probably mumble something in the hopes they heard what they wanted to, and would simply stop asking. I had no idea what size was “good”, whether we were “big enough” etc. Uggh, what a question! It’s equivalent I would think to being asked by others “when are you going to have another child?”. Yes, you have one but certainly you want more, is the inference. You must want more.

Now, in year 8 of leading Rubicon, I have an answer.

Well, I have a directional answer.

At the root of the question is what is right size and growth strategy for the company. People assume our size is not right. I get the perspective that many, many people believe that bigger is better, yet frankly I’m not convinced. No man-related joke here, but sometimes bigger is not better.

Here’s my answer to the question: I want to grow without “growing”

What that means to me are things like this:
I never want to get so big that we take work for the sake of work.
I want all of Rubicon-ites to have a real joy and passion for what we do. The people who are here have to really love and really get strategy at the deepest level. I want our customers to get a group of people who like this strategy stuff enough to keep doing it for a while. We’re not just looking for the next gig or looking to land a gig at one of our clients.
I love the idea that when a client needs us again, we can effectively have enough context so we can add more value. We need to price and build the business so we’re around for round II of the market expansion plans.
I want us to keep advancing what we can offer. But not about “more”. Rather than doing more, I want to keep finding ways so we keep adding loads of value (and offload stupid costs).
I want to leverage the best of talent, every where.
I want our customer depth of relationship as well as base to keep growing.
Certainly, I want our revenues to keep growing. Because our value-add is growing.
I always want our customer satisfaction to stay high and if possible, grow!
I want us to create the right impact at the company, division, industry and perhaps even the personal level — such that they achieve the transformation they were seeking towards their goal.


I’ve intentionally set up our business so our headcount doesn’t need to grow linearly with our key business deliverables. We’ve been finding key parties that can help us scale without losing quality. We’ve been streamlining all the places in the business so we don’t waste our time and ask clients to pay for it. We make things clearer, simple, and thus we eliminate headaches on all sides. I want that to continue.

Our partnerships are growing. I wish I could announce a few but it always takes longer than I’d like. By setting up partnerships, I’m making sure to vet the right solutions and then do good handoffs to people who can really deliver with their model the highest value. There’s a firm out there than can create scalable readiness inside a firm by training and advising them to have one framework on how product management is done. That firm is one I want to highly recommend and leverage.

We could hire “business development” people to focus on the revenue side, or we could simply continue to deliver unbelievably strong strategy and ask our base of clients to refer us to people like them. I don’t want to spend in marketing or sales. I want to focus on doing great work and creating advocates. Passionate customers who really get the value we created for them will get us where we need to be. Create delighted customers and this will yield to great value over time, not just a quarterly or annual blip. And I would recommend that — if you are building a business — you realize you are going to make a series of choices about what is “enough” and what makes you “successful”. My advice: It’s important to distinguish the point of value-add and then to stay true to it.

Let’s be real about the tension all this creates. Do we need more people today? Absolutely. We could use another person or two right now, with a couple new capacities I’d like to see on our core team. But it’s okay to be stretched. At this point, you’re on the edge. And, the edge is where you are forced to be creative. It’s where your decisions are sharper and more informed. You make calls because you have to, not because they are convenient. “We can’t do this right now because that is more important.” Being at the limit forces you to think about value and we think that’s a great place to be.

It would be a little flippant to say I want to be the best in the category. And at one level it’s true. But it doesn’t capture the essence of we’re seeking.


This is the kind of growth I want: The kind that builds and maintains great value in the world. Value not just in money but in relationships, in the quality of ideas — the things that people remember for years and years. Enduring value kind of growth.

Hope your New Year is off to a great start.

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Entrepreneurship & Game of Business, Learning

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FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2007

Happy Labor Day Weekend

It’s a gazillion degrees here in Los Gatos California which should make Labor Day weekend quite, um, interesting.

So in the spirit of not wanting to think about work for a bit, I have something fun to share.

Here’s a picture from their site, in the lava color.

puttyworld_1928_3716894.gif

I think this would make a “work” tool to handle long meetings where people talk for way too long about things everybody else already understands.

Thanks to G.H. for bringing it to the meeting this afternoon. It’s a sign of my own professionalism that I didn’t go over to her, and see if I could bribe / cajole / steal for it.

Have a great long weekend. Come back ready for more fun.

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Random Ideas

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THURSDAY, AUGUST 30, 2007

Involved vs. Committed

From this NYT article, comes this quote:

“There’s a difference between being involved and being committed. To be an athlete you must be committed.”

and this one also:

“Commitment is a state you find yourself in when the gun goes off.”


I love the running metaphor as I get back into the whole fitness thing and start thinking of that part of my life differently.

But the reason the idea caught my eye today is really more about current thoughts on the dynamics of teams.

What makes a difference between someone who is involved on the team, and another who is committed to the success of the team? And is it alright to have someone simply involved? And then as a leader, are there things any of us can do to create or inspire and perhaps even mandate commitment? Or does it start with the person, and what they choose to put into the game.

The quotes above suggest to me that commitment is something each of us choose to bring to the game. And as leaders, our role is to choose who gets on the team in the first place but trying to adjust attitude after the fact is equivalent to trying to change one’s spouse after one has gotten married. Seems like both a bad idea and a way to drive yourself insane.


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Entrepreneurship & Game of Business

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SUNDAY, AUGUST 26, 2007

Where to Look When Performance Breaks Down

This came from an email from a Rubicon Insight reader, Parvez Ahmed, today and thought it was worth sharing with you …



“When it comes to improving performance, most organizations’ problems can be traced to their inability to think and talk together at critical moments.”

— Paraphrased from William Isaacs’s book Dialogue, p.3

Consider this:

What passes as “communication” in most organizations is nothing more than people talking AT each other. Firing different opinions around a room with little structure to productively move any action forward. The dialogue is dysfunctional - meaning that it doesn’t produce a deeper understanding of the issues at hand. Eventually, when a decision must be made, it’s often the person who has spoken the loudest, longest, or with the most conviction that wins - whether it was the best idea or not.

When I share this idea with potential clients they often say, “Yes! That’s exactly what happens in our organization. How can we change it?” My first answer is that it takes time and commitment (and usually help from a professional like me). My second answer is that they can begin the process right now - by exploring their own contribution to the dysfunction. Good dialogue can be boiled down to 5 key elements - Listening, Respecting, Suspending, Voicing, and Inquiring. When dialogue breaks down, it’s usually because one or more of these are missing between the players involved.

Try this:
Think of an unproductive conversation you’ve recently had. Consider the following questions to see where you might have been contributing to the problem.


1. Listening - Did I truly hear what the other person(s) said?

2. Respecting - Did I respect their opinions - even if I didn’t agree with them?

3. Suspending - Did I suspend my own opinions long enough to create an opening for new perspectives?

4. Voicing - Did I say what I truly thought and felt in a responsible way?

5. Inquiring - Did I probe for clarification when things weren’t clear?

When you find that one or more of these are missing, experiment with ways to bring them into the conversation.


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Learning

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FRIDAY, AUGUST 24, 2007

A friend sent this to me today


By letting go
It all gets done.
The world is won
By those who let it go.
But when you try and try,
The world is beyond winning.


-Lao Tzu


(my question: does this mean you just set your bar really low so you can declare victory because you have no goals that have failed? Or that by not owning stuff so much, what needs to happen, happens?)

Enjoy the weekend, all.


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Random Ideas

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Standing Apart: How a Blender Creates Affinity

While we know that online marketing (viral videos, 2nd life participation, user-generated content, as some of the new tools) are “way cool” , what we don’t know is whether it’s worth doing and why. There’s absolutely no data to go on. After all, who hasn’t read the fortune article about 2nd life where. Companies like Sun, IBM, Cisco were retreating.

Making investment decisions is an art. It’s knowing what works, for what purpose. A great marketer needs to know what to do to drive awareness, consideration, preference and purchase as part of a mix of knowing what is relevant to the audience, what works, what is cost effective, and ultimately what delivers results. But what if we don’t know what results we’re looking for. If we don’t know what the new online tools can achieve, then it’s definitely hard to measure it right?

The rules traditional marketing were shaped by what could be accomplished using one-way mass media. Now that Internet media enables two-way communication, the whole idea of moving customers through a structured consideration process needs to be revised and a new way of looking at what are we doing online.

It’s all about engagement:
The central goal of online marketing isn’t awareness, it’s engagement. And the five key tools to produce engagement are affinity, personality, community, co-creation, and advocacy. Engagement at the broadest level is getting the customer involved with your company, with your products and often, with your people. You want your customers to get to know your organization, its values and services. When customers like what they see and experience, the relationship deepens and it leads to affinity. Thus what was once a distant relationship becomes personal. Another way to same thing perhaps is to say that “Personality replaces traditional brand marketing”.

And for a moment, let me define personality. Personality is how your company interacts with the world, both emotionally and rationally. The company’s personality must be both distinctive and genuine. Unlike a brand image, it can’t be faked. Your company’s culture constrains the personality you can build online. For example, a company that tells its employees, customers, partners and the public that it’s green then doesn’t recycle its tech waste is going against its personality. This behavior is inconsistent – and it can also harm your firm’s ability to develop a community.

I keep finding companies that are able to use the web to get their personality across and in the process stand apart. Really stand apart. At a lower cost and a better ROI.
logo.jpg

Here’s a great one: Will it blend.com (Thanks to Ben Matheson for the intel.) Blendtec has find a way to make a blender interesting, by letting users suggest what to blend, and then of course learn about the blender behind it all. Take a look at the one blending an iphone. This is the longest I’ve thought about a blender since, um, let me think, ah — ever! and that’s when online marketing is really effective.


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Branding, Go-to-Market Strategies, High-Tech Case Studies

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THURSDAY, AUGUST 23, 2007

The Buying Experience: Part of the Brand

What is it like to buy your product?

And how is that supporting your brand promise? When some people thing of “brand” they might think of the stuff that the PR team or the corporate marketing team does to create a tag line or the pretty slicks of stuff to “position” the company. But a brand is (and I know you readers have heard me say this before so my apologies for being redudant!) more than the fluff. It is the ultimate integration of everything a company does. It is the packaging because the ease, simplicity, etc of “getting the product” is part of the experience. Yes, it also includes the stuff that the analyst relations and PR team pay attention to. Of course, it has to include the product design and features. It also gets conveyed in the way your sales force sells the thing. It is everything that, when added up, creates an impression of what the company believes.

In other words,
Brand Objective = What you believe => What you do (across everything…) => Reality of what customer experiences = Brand Perception by Custtomer

Which gets me to what your product is like to buy.

Is it being sold by a surly teenager, a condescending socialite or a passionate fan?

Los Gatos, my town, is about to open an Apple Retail store downtown. It reminds me how different the Apple experience will be from shopping experience to be had at Circuit City. One environment is painstakingly planned and controlled for maximum results – with incredible dollars-per-square-foot productivity. The other is designed for a series of quantity sales – the equivalent to quickly turning tables in a fast food restaurant. The price may be about the same, training of employees similar, yet the Apple experience clearly attracts both employees and customers for whom the buying experience esthetics are critical.

By the way, if lots of discounting comes to mind when you think of the name of the company (particularly if it’s a retailer) the buying experience itself is probably discounted. Elegant purchasing experiences are often the result of training and discipline. It may appear that the salesman at Ferragamo just happened to know the right color to go with your Chanel jacket, but don’t believe it. You had a seamless, delightful transaction because there were hours of training and years of experience behind it. At Ferragamo, the quality and workmanship of the sales process is equal to that in the products. It’s the reason why I really, really, really want to go back to the Bottega store or the Cartier store for my birthday. It’s not rational. It’s emotional. I know it’s going to be a good experience. I know the feel of the leather, the smoothness of a zipper, etc will all be stuff I’ll enjoy. And for sure, I’ll really enjoy the purchase experience. (The Bottega’s sales person’s name in SanFrancisco is Tom.)

What’s the look on your customer’s face after they’ve purchased your stuff? Is it this?

HappyBuyer.jpg

How much thought are you putting into your buying experience? Should you rethink it?


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Branding

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