“You didn’t make that up. I heard that / saw that / wore that 20 years ago….”

One of the art directors I used to work with when I was in the advertising industry commented on retro styling. His observation was that new designers would explore new and different concepts for a goodly part of their careers and then stretch for something fresh. They would go back to what was current at the start of their careers and put a different shade of polish or spin on it. (Must work, I’ve just bought a retro set of golf shoes….)

But are there any perils to be considered in an age where copying, slightly changing and republishing / repurposing existing content and ideas is the norm? One could argue there are pro’s and con’s - and where does a blatant copy (sampling) end and a subtle copy begin.

And music certainly isn’t the only industry for this to occur within - the parallels for business in terms of revisiting existing concepts certainly hold true. New concepts ebb and flow, but often come back to a simiar essence, painting a different spin on existing approaches. Here is how we create value - fresh buzz words plus 3 interconnecting circles and a graph with Value on it with a diagonal line heading upwards to the right.

Got a view? What do you like / hate about our greater than ever capacity to use other people’s ideas? I would love to get your comments…

In a meeting today I was talking with a client who has a particularly dry sense of humour, and a great philosophical perspective on ensuring successful delivery of projects. We were talking about change management.

His simple and insightful comment was this:

“You have two tools you can use for change management - they are a carrot and a stick. You can dress it up any way you like, call it anything you like, and do as many Powerpoint presentations as you like - but at the end of the day, every change management process is about a combination of a carrot and a stick”.

I’ve got to agree…..

Today I was trying to explain why organisations sometimes almost compell their managers to do stupid things - or certainly why it might appear that way to people further down the chain.

1. The glance analysis - the solution to someone else’s problem can often seem obvious. That can be due to the person not seeing the wood for the trees - but also can be from not really taking the time to understand local conditions before passing judgement.

I once had to endure a conversation from a person from Melbourne (nothing against people from Melbourne, on the whole I have found them very nice…). He was seeking to make some changes to the way an industry association operated in WA - and make a takeover bid for all the other related organisations in WA - and run it all from 3000 miles away. He then also proceeded to tell us how little we knew about how to run such an organisation. It was one of the first dinners I’ve been to where 4 or 5 normally mild mannered people were ready to belt someone they have never met before.

2. The flick pass - email management (or mis-management) can allow for easy flick pass of a task (generally with a comment attached adding to the workload). People in management roles are often so time poor that the constant barrage of email encourages sending an email onto someone else rather than stopping the email and really thinking about whether the task should be done. Whilst it may not win you friends, sometimes it is worth asking the question of the sender, “If I simply couldn’t get to this due to other commitments, what would be the downside?”. Or send them a quote for an hour of your time….

3 Conflicting goals - ever wondered what is the real goal the firm is interested in? Generally there is a terrible conflict between organisation goals eg. growth versus profit now…

So, what do you think? Add a comment below about some of the dumb things you have seen organisations do to their people (or their customers…)

I don’t there is a great parallel for business other than when your confidence is up, and you are well prepared, you are unbeatable. Similarly if your confidence is down, you are unwinable.

Anyway, Bill Daring calls from the UK. “Bill, so… I don’t follow the cricket, how are your boys doing?” - knowing full well the Aussies had completely thrashed their lads here in Australia.

“That guy, Mike Hussey - that we played golf with - he did very well….”

“What? When did we do that?”

“The Vines…. this reminds me of Jason Little, AND David Beckham!!!”

Bill Daring came back to Australia briefly in 2002 and very generously shouted me to a golf game held by the Rugby Business Club of Australia at the Vines Resort.

At the game were various sporting celebrities on various holes with the idea that they would also take a shot, and if it was better than yours, you could take that shot.

Whilst I knew AFl reasonably well, I confess to being pretty uninterested in other codes (other than basketball).

So, a very pleasant chap took a fairly ordinary shot on a long par 4, and whilst I didn’t hit it down the middle, I certainly got some distance on a (fortunately) very wide fairway.

Given this guy was supposed to be our elite sportsperson helping us to lower our score, I asked (for a bit of stir and in a jovial way), “So… what’s so special about you then?”

This guy said, “well, nothing really…”

It was then that one of my playing partners gave me a fairly abrupt nudge. “That is Jason Little - he represented Australia 3 times as one of the Wallabies and is one of Australia’s greatest rugby players….”

“Well, Jason, I’m pleased to meet you, but I’ve never heard of you - I think you need a vanity website!”

He entertained a brief conversation about it and was an absolute gentleman. Of course Bill Daring said, “this reminds me of you not knowing David Beckham”

When I first went to the UK in 2000 to meet the kmp.co.uk crew, Bill kindly took me for a bit of a tour around the North of England. We visited a “Manor Hoose” (the aristrocratic way of saying house).

We went into Manchester and drove around Old Trafford. He said to me, “THIS is Old Trafford”. I said - not trying to be a smartarse - “looks like an Aussie Rules ground but smaller…”. I didn’t have any idea how important that ground is to many people nor any idea of the history….

We went back to his place but on the way took a detour. “Here is where Posh Spice and David Beckham live…”

My response was, “Who is David Beckham?”

I am surprised he didn’t just push me out of the car there and then! But the Vodafone commercials hadn’t hit Australia so I truly didn’t know…..

Having discovered your strengths, it is time to think about what your point of difference. In advertising parlance, this is the unique selling proposition - and the difficulty is trying to refine the many things you offer into a simple phrase of about 4 words.

A good place to start is thinking about your friends and colleagues, and the positive things they bring to your business and personal relationship. Once you start doing that, you can get a good sense of how you would like people to talk about you.

Let’s take an example: we have a really great bunch of project managers in our team at the Consulting Division of Ross Human Directions, but each brings a difference nuance and skill to this particularly difficult role. One absolutely prides himself on delivering projects on time and on budget. He has never delivered a project that wasn’t delivered on time and on budget. He also particularly delights in his ability to be able to project manage, team lead, undertake business analysis and cut code - basically every role in a team. We have another that is particularly good at really, really difficult projects - those with complex requirements, tricky stakeholders that can be a bit vague with their requirements. He is particularly good at nailing these requirements down and ensuring nothing is vague prior to build.

We have another that is great at delivering projects - but also particularly strong at mentoring staff. Another is particularly good at bringing parties together, being flexible and meeting all parties needs.

As you can see, all sorts of different skills sets, and what we work on matching our clients and project managers for best result.

Have a think about the people around you in the same way and pretty soon - at least in a business context - you will have a great idea how you would like people to think of you.

I was chatting with Bill Wallace about marketing ideas, particularly given he has recently joined a new consulting business, and I wanted to understand what it was all about. More on that later, but one of the many key points that came out of the conversation was that it is really is necessary to pay attention to yourself as a brand. In other words, how would someone else articulate your value or understand your personal traits in a business and social context.

I read in Harvard Business Review an interesting article, and it suggested asking some colleagues for some frank feedback on things you do well. It suggested not asking about the things you don’t do well - primarily because human nature can easily tend towards the negative and focussing on improving those things you don’t do well. Chances are you will waste your time and you are much better spending the time working on being the best at the things you do well. If you are interested in this, see Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham - a very good read.

It is a good place to start, but expect that:
1. People whom you think would respond to that sort of request often don’t
2. You will be surprised - generally pleasantly so - about strengths you didn’t realise you had.

If you can concentrate on really working hard on those things you do well, you are bound for success.

One of the things that I found interesting in the way we conducted presentations to clients was Bill’s uncanny nack of teasing out and confronting the hidden issues that someone that he had never met before would open up to him. It really was a case of drawing on a lot of experience.

The essence for our approach was drawn from Spin Selling. The Spin Selling Fieldbook and Major Account Sales are required reading if you want to understand the process of creating opportunities and realising them in sales.

If you have not come across it before, SPIN covers 4 key parts to a sale:
Situation: what are the facts you need to know about a customer and their environment to determine if your product will be a fit for their business. In application development terms, this might be a question like, “are you a J2EE or .Net shop?”. Best to do your homework prior to seeing a customer if you can, so that you don’t spend the meeting like an interrogation.
Problem: Having established the environment, the trick is to explore problems that the customer might be experiencing. You must have thought about your product and service, and the types of problems it solves for customers. Again, such a question might be (again, in application development terms..), “Have you been having trouble implementing the latest flavour of .Net?”
Implication: Generally this is where the probing is really starting to add some value for the customer - as much as it may be causing a bit of discomfort. For example, the above question might have yielded a response such as, “yeah, a little but we will be ok and just grab a book or google it..”. You then need to be able to ask the question, “If you do that and it doesn’t work out, what is implication on service levels for your customers?” or other similar question that probes the next level of depth - the aftermath of the course of action going pear shaped.
Need - payoff: At this point, a great outcome is the client saying, “I hadn’t thought of that, I need to get that sorted out. At this point, the next question is, “well, if we able to eliminate that as a problem for you, what would that do for you?”

Notice that during this process you have not been selling or even talking about your product at all? This is the hard bit for most salespeople who get trained up in the product, grow to love it, and want to share their passion about their product to the customer. The customer, of course, is only interested in their own problem. If you focus on closing in a complex sale, chances are you will be nowhere near as successful as you could be. So, grab those Spin Selling books, I highly recommend them.

Some shortcut key points:
1. Business Development Processes if you can systematise you process, you have a more rapid way of fulfilling on customer enquiry. I have found that by responding with a solid proposal quickly, you stand a much better chance of success. Many companies do not really track the time from enquiry to delivery of proposal, conversion rates, or the time to develop a proposal and aim to shorten it.
2. Market Segmentation - you just simply can’t sell to everyone, but the question becomes who to really focus on, and in depth.
3. Analytics - Looking at what data you capture and making sense of it
4. Database clean up and management - and integration. In your business you probably have a bunch of people referred to in different parts of your business as customers, clients, debtors, creditors (if they both buy from you and sell to you) - and probably all in different databases, accounting systems, and email clients.
5. CRM - the big question here is “what does CRM mean to you?”. Technologies have been fantastic at undertaking demos on product that seem to solve all of the problems - it is the implementation of the technology AFTER people and process issues have been resolved that delivers success. Our experience is that this needs to be very much customised to the individual company rather than trying to the meld the company to the software. As I run a business specialising in application development, I do have a bias here - but in many cases is cheaper and more effective to build software for purpose as a core business system rather than buy something with features you will never use.

I once had a meeting with a guy that was supposedly a leader in the whole ebusiness area.

He opened the meeting by saying, “I don’t subscribe to that pay the vendor for work model…”. He didn’t particularly articulate how we should get remunerated for what we were doing, but we held our breath and kept listening assuming it would come.

The meeting got more interesting when we got to the specification of what he wanted.

“We are gonna deliver something… in Jan’ry.” (Bear in mind this was late November and nothing had been started..)
“Yeah, we are gonna deliver somethin.. in Jan’ry, Feb’ry, sometime, and its gonna be gooood….”

Jan’ry Feb’ry became part of the kmp venacular - whenever there was a crap specification - or no specification - or someone that clearly didn’t have a clue. “Jan’ry Feb’ry, it’s gunna be gooooood…” said it all.