"Be yourself, but always be your better self." -Karl G. Maeser
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#lifehack
This month, I presented at the luncheon series for the Portland Chapter of the American Marketing Association (or AMA-PDX). The presentation that I delivered has been reconfigured into an eBook which is now available for free download.
This ebook outlines three approaches for finding inspiration for your business or products in the most unlikely places and shares some case studies. From Charming Charlie retail stores, to the National Basketball Association (NBA), to "So You Think You Can Dance?" on FOX, the stories illustrate how to find new approaches, broaden your perspective, and to make the most out of all of your experiences.
Feel free to share this post and the eBook with others that might be interested. You can tag me on Twitter @jenniferdavis.
"Everyone has a game plan until you are punched in the face." -Mike Tyson
What if someone combined a pizza place (like MOD) with the business model of Tom’s shoes? For every pizza sold, one would be given to a hungry person (through a school, at a homeless shelter, through service agencies, etc). I bet people would pay a little more for their pizza knowing they are helping a good cause. Plus, it could make people choose your pizza place over others when corporate events and birthday parties came around. It would taste good and make them look good while they are doing good.
Someone should do this. And tell me about it. You’re welcome.
"We neither shun growth or idolize it. We view it as a by-product of achieving our other goals." -McKinsey & Company
"Staying relevant means being willing to run a different business every few years" - Katherine Power
"The single best way to keep your talent is to keep your word." -Art Gensler
"Technology, when well-implemented, endows us with super powers." - Samuel Hulick
Elon Musk is afraid of artificial intelligence. He supposes that when the robots take over they might make us housecats. Or maybe we already are?
Recode Decode's podcast interview with the co-founders of Numenta suggests that fears about artificial intelligence are wrong.
“Words! Words! Words! I’m so sick of words!
I get words all day through;
First from him, now from you!
Is that all you blighters can do?”
- Lyrics from “Show me” from My Fair Lady
A study at Harvard, asked subjects to cut into a line of strangers waiting to make photocopies. When they asked simply if they could use the photocopier (saying “Excuse me. May I use the machine?” for instance), subjects were successful 60% of the time. However, when a reason beginning with the word “because” was added (“May I use the photocopier because I’m in a rush”), the request gained instant credibility, and compliance skyrocketed to 94%.
What’s more amazing, it didn’t seem to matter what the given reason was (“May I use the photocopier, because I need to make copies”), compliance remained at about the same level, 93%.
This is a lesson in persuasion that all of us can apply. Giving people the benefit of an explanation makes us more influential. I highly advise against giving a dumb or non-sensical reason (“I need to make copies, because I need to make copies”). I imagine that would help your cause today, but hurt your credibility long term. But giving people the courtesy of a reasonable and relevant “because” will make all the difference.
"Helping hands are happy hands." -Timber Jim Serrill
Paying attention. Looking at the data and patterns. Facing the reality. Drawing conclusions. That is when insights happen.
"It's easier to be brave when you are not alone." -Amy Poehler, comedian, actor, best-selling author, and mother (who knows her share of terrifying situations)
The passage below was first written in 1955 by Anne Morrow Lindbergh in her book “Gift from the Sea.” They were brought to my mind recently in the horrors of this past week.
As a bit of context, Anne was born in 1906, and was married to Charles Lindbergh, was herself an aviator, acclaimed author, and mother. This would put her grandmother’s era (which she referenced below) in the late 1800s.
She writes:
“The world is rumbling and erupting in ever-widening circles around us. The tensions, conflicts, and sufferings even in the outermost circle touch us all, reverberate in all of us. We cannot avoid these vibrations.
But just how far we can implement this planetal awareness? We are asked today to feel compassionately for everyone in the world, to digest intellectually all the information spread out in the public print, and to implement in action every ethical impulse aroused by our hearts and minds. The interrelatedness of the world links us constantly with more people than our hearts can hold. Or rather – for I believe the heart is infinite – modern communication loads us with more problems than a human frame can carry. It is good, I think, for our hearts, our minds, our imaginations to be stretched, but body, nerve, endurance, and life-span are not elastic. My life cannot implement in action the demands of all the people to whom my heart responds. I cannot marry all of them, or bear them all as children, or care for them as I would my parents in illness or old age. Our grandmothers, and even – with some scrambling – our mothers, lived in a circle small enough to let them implement in action most of the impulses of their hearts and minds. We were brought up in that tradition that has now become impossible, for we have extended our circle throughout space and time.”
I can not speak for my great-great-grandmother, but I wonder if her trials and that of her immediate circle were more manageable and more actionable than what we face today, as Anne supposed. Today, we have the world's tragedies pitted against the same body, nerve, endurance, and life-span that could shoulder a lesser load, but crumble under the weight of today's news cycles and headlines. Or at least that is how I have felt this week.
In times like this, I want to go back to my immediate circle. Where actions can be taken and progress felt. Start there and fan out again, as I have strength. My compassion is strong. My conscious is pricked. My empathy is stirred. And my weakness is revealed.
If you are a start-up, how do you talk about your business? Are you building a company? Hatching a company? Founding a company? Planting a business? Disrupting an industry? What does this say about where you are focusing your time and energy?
If you are in a more established company, what language do you use? Are you growing a company? Managing a company? Leading a company? Transforming a company? Leading a turn-around? Scaling a company? Leading a team? Building a sustainable business? Are you creating wealth for shareholders?
If you are exiting a company or business, how do you describe that? Are you divesting? Are you stepping back? Are you stepping away? Are you implanting an exit plan? Are you just not showing up anymore?
The words you use matter. Think about how you describe your business and what that says about you.
This weekend, some of our friends were having car trouble. They had ruled out a dead battery or a low gas tank and they resigned themselves to call roadside assistance. The tow truck arrived and before it was hitched up, the technician did some trouble-shooting. He then shimmied under the car and tapped the starter with a hammer. It started right up. If they had gotten a bill for this service incidence, the invoice might have read:
$1 – hammer tapping
$499 – knowing where to tap the hammer
Never undervalue experience.
Each of us have had similar experiences when bringing in an expert has made all the difference. Costs avoided. Disasters averted. Downtime reduced. Customers delighted.
And yet, we all romanticize the do-it-yourselfer. Those Pinterest-fueled upstarts who can tackle professional-grade projects and make it look easy. There are television networks to celebrate their accomplishments. These shows give us confidence. Maybe even over-confidence. After all, we are seeing huge transformations in a 30 minute show. A few time lapse videos between the opening credits and the big reveal. That is certainly true in the personal world.
But it is also true in the professional world. Sometimes executives find it tempting to think they can do marketing, business development or even legal work, without trained experts. It is an all-too-common scenario to over estimate our own abilities and our time and to experience “Pinterest fail” type experiences in the work world.
So, when do you call in an expert?
1. When the risk of being wrong is extreme.
This obviously applies to litigation or regulatory compliance issues or any area where specialty knowledge is required, but it also applies to areas where the strategic risk is high. If you can experiment with little impact, then, by all means, feel free to do so. When you need a decision that is warranted or that requires technical expertise, call in the guru.
2. When time is of the essence.
Do you have a limited market window to get a product to market before big competitors sabotage your chances? Then you might want a professional sales and marketing team with industry experience who can hit the ground running. If you want to avoid delays in getting your product certified, setting up an efficient assembly line, or launching a new website, find someone who has done the work before and has a proven track record.
3. When you are better suited for other priorities.
My grandpa, who has a contractor, told a story about how a doctor client of his took vacation time to paint his own house instead of hiring someone. If he had worked that week, he could have paid a painter and had money left over, plus ended up spending more time than a professional. “It’s hard to beat a man at his own craft,” he would say. Each one of us has things that we are great at and the more time we can spend doing those things, instead of doing a mediocre job, that others could do. Know what you are good at focus your time there.
This article was featured on LinkedIn Pulse.
"Don’t say 'yes,' just because saying 'no' is scary."
- Isabelle Roughol talking about Volkswagon engineering cars to cheat emissions test instead of admit that they fell short of their public emissions goals
“Unable to reach the lofty PR goal, engineering chose to lie rather than disappoint the boss, which is how every other corporate disaster begins,” she continues.
Software as a Service (SaaS) is all the rage today with companies like Salesforce.com racking up huge profits and trading multiples, and companies like Microsoft introducing their own versions of the same. The same is true with people turning data insights into a business model (data-as-a-service or analytics-as-a-service). But the “as-a-service” business model isn’t new. Here are some examples of other products that have been sold as a service.
Alcohol-as-a-Service (AaaS): a bar
Food-as-a-Service (FaaS): a restaurant
Equipment-as-a-Service (EaaS): equipment rental and staging
Personal-hygiene-as-a-Service (PHaaS): beauty salons and barber shops
Reading-as-a-service (RaaS): story time at the library
Exit-as-a-Servce (EaaS): what a doorman does when you leave the hotel
Wayfinding-as-a-Service (WaaS): what the hostess does when she shows you to your table
Shelter-as-a-Service (SaaS): a hotel or even Airbnb