Cause the Bosses Just A-Wrote Me a Letter

It’s the time of year when many annual reports are published. If your company publishes one, take advantage of the opportunity to get a better sense of “what matters” in your business. Read the management letter where the company’s senior leadership goes on record with its take on past performance, future aspirations, and the priority efforts that are expected to get your company where it’s going.

Afterward, ask yourself how your efforts fit with and contribute to the priorities. If you don’t clearly see or can’t logically make connections to what you’re focused on, you’ve got some work to do to link to what matters in your business.

The Periodic Table of Corporate Behavior

Just as with a chemical periodic table, go ahead and use this handy reference to determine the "corporate behavior formulas" of both good co-workers (the An2PoFCr who is a regular blog reader) and bad (the PFl4 that's like a bad penny). Simply click on the chart to get a full sized version. Feel free to post your intriguing combinations as comments or suggest new behaviors as your encounter them. And thanks to Sally for her help in rounding out the initial list!

Guest Blogger John Burton – Complementary or Complimentary?

I’ve known John Burton for a long time, and we’ve worked together closely during various phases in our careers. He’s a strong, multi-dimensional strategic thinker, and it was great to see him at the BMA presentation last week. Here are his thoughts on the reluctance companies demonstrate in hiring a mix to people to spur diversity in strategic thinking:


I had the pleasure of hearing Mike’s strategic perspective presentation last week. One point he made struck a cord with an idea I have been thinking about in recent weeks – Do companies make hiring decisions to be complimentary or complementary?

Mike mentioned that an aspect of “awakening strategic thinking” is a having good blend of participants. You need some that have experience, some with strong functional knowledge and a few with dynamic, creative energy. This is just like basketball, where you need to blend a point guard with shooters and big men. In both cases, the key to success is to have people play complementary roles in the process, creating a bigger whole than any one aspect can bring on its own.

However, a business sometimes forgets this point when putting together its leadership team, especially when it comes to sales and marketing.

A business was recently going from small company to major player in a fragmented business service segment after a number of acquisitions. Leadership knew it needed to add strategic marketing and sales resources to help position the company for continued growth. After defining a senior position and recruiting candidates that fit the bill, they backtracked and decided to hire someone whose primary background was sales management.

Why? They felt they had to have someone the new person’s most important direct reports (regional sales VP’s) would respect and feel comfortable with. In essence, they went for the candidate that would get “compliments” for being familiar versus someone that would “complement” the organization by bringing new skills and insights.

Sometimes, success comes not from creating a comfortable, “complimentary” environment, but putting a team together that forces everyone to live with a little discomfort. – John Burton

Change Your Character - Brand Extensions

Several folks from our creative / planning team were at John Pepper’s Baker University marketing classes for an ideation session on their class project: brand extensions for the Apple “iBrand.” There was a lot of energy from the students in the two classes as we did three ideation exercises (based on analogies, randomness, and transformation) and a round of prioritization in less than 50 minutes!

As a result, we have a slightly different approach this week to "Change Your Character." We used it in the classes as an exercise to look at how prominent marketers use brand extensions, then had the students apply the ideas to Apple. If you’re faced with a brand extension challenge, you too can turn to these brands, generating three possible ideas for each of the brand extension approaches below:

• New products allow you to experience the brand in different places (Starbucks)
• Licenses the brand to various companies (Martha Stewart)
• Introduces smaller versions of its products (Oreo)
• Offers related merchandise for users of its main product (Harley-Davidson)
• Finds new uses for its product & introduces brand extensions (Arm & Hammer)
• Lends its name to subsidiaries serving different market segments (Marriott)
• Extends its brand with a fee-based online presence (NASCAR)
• Lets you experience new products free & then sells them to you (Starbucks)
• Offers slimmed down versions of its main products (Special K)
• Offers products complementary to its main line (Fruit of the Loom)
• Changes certain visible “ingredients” of its product (Oreo)
• Takes a piece of intellectual capital & uses its theme in other product & service categories (Jimmy Buffett)

Thanks again to John for allowing us to come work with his students! I learn something new every year that we’re able to incorporate right into our planning efforts, and this year was no exception. We’ll be back!

“If Your Name Is Brown, Why Is Your Color Orange?”

The title question arose at the Business Marketing Association presentation Thursday. It’s usually preceded by, “Why do you wear orange socks?” The answer speaks to three principles important for a creative perspective:

• Accepting Contradictions - I’m proud my name is “Brown,” but the color has never been prominent in my life, despite saying & hearing the color’s name every day.
  
  With this contradiction (being Brown, but not brown), it’s no wonder I wound up at a company named Yellow whose brand color is orange. The contradiction escaped me for several years. Senior management didn’t care for orange, so there was little evidence of it. And even though I was more oblivious than accepting of this contradiction, the result was the same!


• Taking Advantage of the Unexpected – When Greg Reid took over as CMO and said, “If our most asked question is why’s the name Yellow if our color’s orange, let’s do something with it,” ORANGE start showing up everywhere. The marketing staff even wore orange socks to our strategic plan presentation.
  
  That triggered a friendly competition with another employee to sport the most orange (socks, shirts, shoes, backpacks, cups, etc.). I became known for wearing orange socks daily. When “Fast Company” profiled us and called me the Cal Ripken, Jr. of orange clothes for the socks, the connection strengthened. Taking advantage of this opportunity, I co-opted the company’s brand as part of my own. ORANGE became MY color.
  
• Look for Strategic Connections – Speaking on innovation, I researched what orange represents and found it matched my topics: creativity, balance & harmony, strength, enthusiasm, excitement, happiness, healing, vigor, and success. I used orange even more to link my personal brand and key presentation themes. An added bonus? I didn’t have to buy a new non-orange wardrobe & business accessories.

Now when asked about the color mismatch, I simply say, “I’m like an M&M – brown on the inside, orange on the outside!”

Get Smart – Four Quick Ways to Improve Your I.Q.

1. Don’t multi-task – focus on one project at a time with your full attention.
   
2. Surround yourself with smart people who will challenge you.
   
3. When someone tries to pass a problem or question to you, ask for their recommendation or point of view before you comment.
   
4. Pray for wisdom that can be used to benefit others and pay attention when your prayer is answered.

Strategic Thinking FAQs

Doing a lot of presenting on "strategic thinking" has generated a number of interesting questions about the subject. Many of the questions have prompted posts on the blog.

To make it a little easier to track down answers, here are some of the most asked questions about strategic thinking with links to previous posts that address each topic; simply click on the original date to go to the post.

• My boss wants me to be more “strategic”? How do I do that? (1/10/2008)
• What are some characteristics of solid strategic thinkers? (12/1/2007)
• How can I help myself to look at situations from different perspectives? (2/14/2008)
• Our strategies sound really complicated and nobody knows what they mean/ Shouldn’t you be able to actually do something with a strategy? (12/26/2007)
• People at my company are stuck in how we’ve always done things. How can we get past that? (12/5/2007)
• People are busy on day-to-day responsibilities. How can I get them to make the effort to work on strategy? (3/12/2008)
• I’ve got to come up with some new ideas at work. How do I go about it? (3/11/2008)
• How do we get “bigger” ideas? (3/10/2008)
• What are the reasons for timing strategic thinking exercises? (2/1/2008)
• Once you have a good idea, how do you sell it to management? (12/10/2007)
• What do you do if you ideas aren’t working out successfully? (2/28/2008)
• If something doesn’t work, how do we make sure we improve next time? (3/3/2008)

Please let me know if you have additional questions that can be answered in future posts!

Change Your Character – Succeeding in Unfamiliar Situations Like an Improv Comedian

We’re all faced with the need to perform seamlessly in unfamiliar situations. Who faces a similar challenge? Improvisational comedians. They’re routinely faced with accepting and working with information presented by the audience or other performers and, with no chance to prepare ahead of time, getting people to laugh.

So let’s apply an improv comic’s approach to help us do a better job in new situations that require thinking on our feet. An improv comic:

• Actively solicits input from the audience and others around them
• Listens closely to other participants for information & clues
• Quickly assesses the underlying structure of the situation
• Becomes comfortable with not being able to figure things out ahead of time
• Is open to spontaneity
• Depends on instincts
• Offers information and clues to others to help them co-participate successfully
• Works with and builds on information supplied by others
• Is able to employ a variety of talents to advance the situation
• Refines the process as new information is determined

Identify three new ideas for each of the approaches above that you can adapt to improve your own performance when you can’t prepare ahead of time.

Note – for the previous post on how to use the Change Your Character technique, click here.

Do You Have What It Takes (for a Marketing Plan)?

Here’s a checklist you can use in considering a new business opportunity or campaign to assess whether you’ve addressed critical elements of a marketing plan. It’s especially helpful to use in business environments where you have non-marketing people driving product launches or efforts without a full grounding in how a strategic AND implementable marketing plan will increase the probability of success.

For each question, choose whether the most appropriate answer to each question is: YES, NOT SURE, or NO. If there is one NOT SURE or NO answer, the basic elements of a marketing plan aren’t in place. Ensure all the questions are answered satisfactorily and understood by the organization before deciding to launch the effort.

• Is there a clear business objective for this effort?
• Do we know the market's size and growth rate?
• Do we know our current revenue, profits, and share?
• Do we know the competitors and their strategies?
• Do we know who the customer / prospect is?
• Do we know customers' current and future needs?
• Do we have an estimate of our expected revenue, profit, share, etc?
• Do we know and can explain the service features?
• Do the features match customer needs?
• Do we know what the pricing levels and structure should be?
• Do we know what we want customers to think about it?
• Do we know how a customer will find out about it?
• Do we know what the necessary sales effort should be?
• Do we know who and how it will be implemented?
• Do we have all potential metrics in place?

“Sloth is the New Genius”*

*This is Holy Week for Christian denominations, so I hesitate to write in support of certain strategic benefits of sloth, one of the seven deadly sins, but here it goes:

There’s a phrase written on my office whiteboard: “Sloth is the new genius.” That was my reply once when someone complimented me on having apparently anticipated a project’s “new” new direction and deliverables well in advance.

Actually I had ignored several weeks of activity on the project’s “new” direction because it just didn’t make strategic sense. Instead, I stuck with the direction we’d been working on for months since it was clearly a solid approach. When everybody came to their senses and returned to the old plan (which was now the “new” new plan), it only looked as if I had been really smart and proactive. It was anything but that. I’d simply done nothing on the project and placed attention on other efforts while everyone else frantically tried in vain to change course.

Find yourself getting caught amid constantly changing direction? If you do and a new one doesn’t make sense, rather than going with the flow maybe you should just do nothing.

Be careful though, because as befits any deadly sin, there are major risks and potentially heavy penalties in a slothful approach. Guess wrong and if things don’t ultimately swing back to the original strategic path, you could find yourself corporately dead. But if you understand how the morphfiends in your business life operate and can read the situation correctly, your strategic slothfulness can keep you out lots of corporate silliness. It’s your call.

It’s Spring Break – Time for Travel Tips

A number of younger business people have asked over time about travel tips. I’m a moderate business traveler at most, but in honor of all the travel starting up this weekend for spring break, here are some of the heuristics that have been very helpful and productive:

• Think ahead about the best location to stay relative to where you will need the greatest time advantage (i.e., you have an early flight, so get closer to the airport or you’re making multiple calls during the day, so stay near the final one).
• Visualize the days you’ll be away to think about what to pack – where will you be, who will you meet, are you likely to get your clothes dirty or unable to be worn again during the trip?
• Try everything possible to just do carry-on luggage. Pick one color theme for the trip so you can mix and match with fewer clothes. If you do check bags, make sure that it doesn’t infringe on the time or travel plans of others.
• Roll your clothes to maximize luggage space and use Downy Wrinkle Releaser to dramatically reduce ironing on the road. A related tip – if you have a clumsy spray bottle, pour its contents into a smaller 3 oz. bottle and carry the spray bottle that’s too big for the 1 qt. plastic bag without any liquid in it.
• Always have an HBA bag already packed just for travel – don’t spend time to have to think through everything to take. Also have extra cell phone and computer cords dedicated to travel so you don't have to think about remembering them.
• Check in online, look for better seats, and print multiple boarding pass copies just in case you misplace one.
• Carry a basic 6 foot extension cord with you. It can get you access to a full outlet at an airport because you can help two other people get access to power also.
• Take water and something to eat on ANY plane trip – just in case. And once at the destination, assume you won’t get fed by someone else – take care of yourself, getting some familiar food to minimize the impact on your system of traveling.
• To the extent possible, make plane time your own – use it for the tasks and activities you do best when uninterrupted. For me, that's “creative time.” Be ready with reading material or something else to do with the inevitable down time you'll have.
• If you don’t have GPS, get Google Maps set up on your PDA. It’s wonderful to help you navigate a new place or find something close by.
• Figure out your surroundings – know where the nearest drug store, grocery store, convenience store and/or Wal-Mart is in case you have general needs, particularly after hours. Also ask first if the hotel has extra HBA items you may need.
• Make sure the hotel clock is set properly to AM and PM times. Same with the alarm. And get a wake up call, just in case.
• Don’t work every minute; get some time to relax & refresh spiritually! Try to see something new on every trip (but don't deviate from your old standbys on crucial services, i.e. ground transportation, lodging, drug stores, etc.).

Thanks to the "editorial group" who reviewed the list and added some new wrinkles to it (got to get more of that Downy Wrinkle Releaser!). Please leave your comments on travel tips (here's a website with some additional ones too), and safe travels next week and beyond!

Making Every Occasion an Event

While in South Florida, I had dinner with Dave Brown (no relation) who introduced me to my wife and was our boss on the student activities board at Fort Hays State University. We later went to Southern Illinois University as a result of Dave introducing us to his former student activities boss from grad school.

It’s embarrassing that it’s been twenty years since we’ve seen each other because Dave was the first strategic mentor in my career. I learned a number of very important lessons from Dave that have served me incredibly well since; they can probably benefit you also:

• Whenever you’re bringing even a few people together, it’s an event and you should make it special. Under Dave’s tutelage, I produced small coffee house performances and a 5,000 person concert. No matter how many people were attending, he emphasized making the event something memorable. That perspective shaped me to view every meeting or presentation, no matter how small, as an event where there’s a duty to create a memorable experience.
  
• You have to plan and manage the whole host of details for any event. Dave demonstrated the discipline of planning and producing large events. It became quickly clear I wouldn’t get into concert production (Kansas City’s most well-known promoter told me to forget it, because “you start at the bottom and work your way down”). Yet when another mentor entered my career later, and our company started producing large events, I was able to step into a production and on-stage role seamlessly even though I was a market research guy. That opportunity has profoundly shaped my career the last 10 years.
  
• Create a huge vision and stick to it amid all odds against you accomplishing it. Dave created an incredible, nationally-recognized concert series at a small Western Kansas college, attracting an unbelievable string of #1 chart acts. He did it with an often hostile university administration that completely missed the significance of his accomplishments in gaining attention for the university. It was audacious, but it was the right thing for the school, and Dave was going to make it happen no matter what.

There’s a host of other things in my life that Dave shaped, but within this short post, he accounted for me meeting my spouse, making the introduction that ultimately led to me getting a nearly free graduate education, turning me into an “event person,” and paving the way to successfully seize one of the biggest opportunities of my career.

All I can say is “thank you,” and let’s stay in better touch Dave. And if you have a strategic mentor and haven’t done either of these two things lately, I’d suggest you locate them and do the same!

Change Your Character – Attracting Thinkers as an Event Planner Would PLUS A Special Bonus

Another question at last week’s conference was on getting reluctant people to participate in strategic thinking efforts if they don’t want to spend the time or are skeptical about its value. Barring a management directive, you can’t force participation. Instead, consider two other approaches.

First is the Wednesday “Change Your Character” exercise. Professional event planners face similar challenges. They’re under the gun to produce great events and make sure that people want to show up for them. They accomplish this with their event by:

• Having multiple events of different sizes at different times to attract different groups
• Planning the event’s timing so it doesn’t conflict with other priorities
• Tying the event to an already scheduled activity
• Holding the event someplace new – in a more convenient or a unique location
• Broadening the invitation list with new participants and guests who usually wouldn’t be invited
• Confirming well-known guests personally and communicating their participation to others
• Creating a compelling invitation – ensuring invitees know all event details and the benefits of attending
• Inviting people in sufficient time for them to commit
• Making it easy to RSVP in the affirmative
• Calling invitees to confirm attendance and reminding them about the event a week before
• Creating attractive networking and relationship building opportunities for attendees
• Giving certain invitees specific roles to perform at the event

As usual, come up with 3 new ideas for each event planner technique to get people to come to a strategic thinking session. (Click here for more background on the Change Your Character exercise.)

Here’s the bonus on this challenge - Five approaches that we’ve used to secure participation from people reluctant to invest time on strategy:

• Collect strategic input with online exercises – Allow people to participate without a meeting. Use this for SWOT exercises, gauging opinions, and soliciting perceptions on future industry dynamics.
• Secure a little bit of time with a clear objective – If you can get 45 minutes of a group’s time, select an exercise and a prioritization approach that will fit the time. Make sure you’re clearly moving toward your objective within the session.
• Do strategic thinking for non-participants – Find out what non-participating stakeholders want to accomplish and do the strategic thinking for them. Package the outcome in a recommendation or executive summary, pitching the results to demonstrate strategic thinking’s benefits.
• Work with who you can get – If you have a small but diverse group interested in strategic thinking, hold a session with them. Ensure that you clearly deliver results and create a buzz about it afterward.
• Reference sell – If someone senior has seen beneficial results from strategy efforts, ask them to contact your reluctant thinkers, recommending they find time because it’s worth it.

Use these five approaches and the event planner techniques to get your foot in the door for more strategic thinking within your business. And to gain a better perspective on the advantage of thinking about even small business presentations as events, check out tomorrow’s post.

Cultivating Many Ideas with Potential

Following-up yesterday’s post on the challenge of finding the next BIG idea, use this alternative approach to generate many ideas with potential for significant business impact:

1. Use market-driven insights, brand objectives, and strategic leverage points in your business to identify a few specific areas to consider for possible innovations. Think “a dramatically lighter, more compact laptop computer” instead of “big improvements in computers.”


2. With a cross functional group, employ a wide variety of ideation techniques focused on your innovation target. (Don’t know any techniques? Consider an outside facilitator, Google innovation creativity techniques brainstorming tool for hundreds of thousands of source links, or email me for a list.) Your goal should be generating and recording at least 1,000 possible ideas - in a day or over a period of time.
   
3. Have the same or another cross-functional group select 100 ideas seen as having potential promise for significant business impact.


4. Apply the 5 questions* below to each of the 100 ideas, generating at least one new idea from each question (net result - your 100 ideas should become 500+ ideas):
   “How could we make this idea as _______________________?”
   - DRAMATIC as a Broadway show opening?
   - COOL as the design of Apple products?
   - EXCITING as a triple overtime basketball game?
   - SIMPLE as a baby’s rattle?
   - FUN as a blockbuster comedy movie?
   * The important point is the question form; they’re designed to get larger and different thinking than is typical. If there are other “orange” words more appropriate to your product or services, revise the questions.
   
5. Using the 500 new ideas plus the original 100, have people select 75 that they believe have breakthrough potential. For more background on prioritizing ideas, visit this previous post.
   
6. Narrow the list further using a potential impact (minimal to dramatic) vs. implementation ease (very easy to difficult) grid. Be on the lookout for dramatic ideas with slight implementation difficulty. These could be strong prospects for big ideas whose implementation hurdles can give you a development window advantage versus competitors.
   
7. Pick a manageable set of strong ideas for development. No guarantees that you now have a big idea, but there’s a higher probability they’ll emerge from this type of effort.

Want another way to judge ideas with “BIG” potential early on? When someone says an idea aloud in a group, two reactions often suggest ones with great potential:

• A noticeable “Oooooh” from others, usually followed by a breathless silence as the idea sinks in.
• The idea’s met with loud laughter, signaling it pushes outside comfort zones and triggers a nervous response.

There you have it. Best wishes in finding a lot of ideas with GREAT potential!

Looking for the Elusive Big Idea

At last week’s Market Research & Consumer Insights session, someone raised an interesting issue – ideation efforts at her company are perceived as unsuccessful because everyone’s looking for the “next big idea,” and it hasn’t emerged yet from one of the sessions.

Given the circumstances, it’s not surprising that a big idea is elusive. What’s happening at her company is a very subtle form of pre-judging new ideas that’s blocking creativity and a vibrant flow of ideas. Putting the phrase “next big” in front of “idea” sends a clear message: Don’t suggest an idea unless it’s going to be BIG.

The problem is nobody knows if a new idea will be BIG. And if that’s the standard before an idea can be voiced, chances are most ideas will never be mentioned. A big idea is a lot more likely to emerge from among a thousand possibilities than from a tiny trickle of ideas already pre-filtered (potentially multiple times) to only those that feel BIG before they’re even suggested.

Tomorrow’s post will instead highlight an alternative path intended to generate a lot of possibilities from which many potentially high impact ideas may emerge.

Guest Blogger Brad Barash - Taking the Queasiness Out of Research Reporting

I'm excited to have Brad Barash from Decision Insight in Kansas City as the first guest blogger. Brad and I worked together for a number of years, and he was the creative force behind a video called, "How to Kill a Business." It remains one of the best examples I've ever seen of portraying research insights in a fun and incredibly memorable way using video. So when it comes to expertise in communicating research reports in unique, impactful ways, he knows from where he speaks!

When Mike asked me to write about communicating research results, one word quickly came to mind:

Regurgitation.

What a great word. So vivid. So unmistakable in its connotation.

I cannot think of a better word (unfortunately) to describe the typical research report. Too often, the “writing” in reports is simply regurgitation of the data on the slide (“17% of respondents _____”). That’s not delivering insight. That’s dumping data. (Regurgitating, dumping… may be coming from different places, but the result is the same!)

Our job as researchers and marketers is to tell a story, not report data. We should be writing the column on the sports page, not simply delivering the box scores.

There is a reason most reports don’t feel like a cohesive story. Researchers are too quick to create charts and graphs. Then, the charts and graphs are put in “chronological” order (i.e. question 1 on slide 1, question 2 on slide 2, etc.). When you do this, you are confined to a structure that is rarely conducive to telling the best story.

To go from data dump to story, use what I call the “note card puzzle” approach. First, scour the data, and write every key finding on a separate note card. At this point, it is OK to simply regurgitate the data point onto the card.

Then, physically put together the cards that “fit” together, or those that point to a consistent theme.

From there, come up with no more than 3-4 key themes, or big picture “insights.”

Next, re-sort the note cards across the key insights as follows:

• Support one of the key insights
• Contradict one of the key insights
• Spurious (do not support or contradict any of the key insights)

Ideally, there are few contradictory data points. If they do exist, first find out if they truly contradict the insight. To understand how to sort through meaningful data interpretations, check out this article by Richard McCullough. (This should be required reading for any researcher!)

If there are meaningful contradictions, then the key insights likely need to be revised. Most often, however, you are left with some spurious data points that should be buried in the appendix. And, with the “supporting” data points, you have a structure that makes telling the story simple. Key insight 1 is _____, and here is the data that supports that; key insight 2 is ______, and here is the data that supports that, etc.

One final trick to telling a story: do NOT use statistics or data in your headlines. Quick Example:

• Page 1 - Key Insight: The Jayhawks are a solid pick to win the National Championship this year.
• Page 2 - Headline: They are a veteran team.
  Support charts/graphs: % of upperclassman relative to other contenders
• Page 3 - Headline: They have won big games already this year.
  Support charts/graphs: # of wins vs. ranked teams
• Page 4 - Headline: They are balanced, so they can overcome a poor game by any one player.
  Support charts/graphs: scoring averages of starters relative to other contenders
• Etc.

Here’s hoping this example does not make any non-Jayhawk fans regurgitate! But, notice how there is no statistic in any insight or headline. The data that is reported simply supports the writing. -- Brad Barash

Forging a Stronger Relationship With Your Research Company

I'm at the marcusevans Market Resarch & Consumer Insights conference today talking about strategic thinking and the opportunity that market researchers have to contribute to broader strategic success in their companies. One of the keys to delivering on this promise is to have strong relationships with your key market research partners.

Several years ago, I sat down with our main market research company to address what was wrong in our strategic relationship. Taking the approach that we both had faults leading to problems in our relationship was a constructive way to get both of us back on track. The “Ten Things” list can work for almost any market research relationship. Fell free to use or adapt it with your marketing partners:

Ten Things - The Foundation to a Strategic Research Relationship

1. Be a “thought partner” with us. This is a two-way street – we’ve got to treat you like one before you can do what it takes to become one.
2. Your energy and passion for what you do (and your intellectual curiosity) need to be evident.
3. There’s a difference between researchers who think they’re researchers and researchers who see themselves as business people. It’s tough to explain the differences, but they’re readily apparent. We need researchers who think like business people if we are to be successful.
4. Understand our business more deeply than from just the numbers that you see. If not, we’ll never get to where we must go.
5. Bring creativity to questioning, analysis, and reporting (and any place else in the process). That means generating new ideas to produce breakthroughs on mutual efficiencies, high impact insights, easy to grasp reporting, and actionable recommendations.
6. We must put information into context. We can’t afford to just report numbers or even changes in numbers. We need to get to insights. What does it mean? What do we do about it?
7. We have to get beyond reports that show charts and have bullets that merely say what is on the chart. We have to offer our audiences relevant insights. That takes pulling information from various sources (including people) and analyzing, talking, and identifying relationships among everything we’re looking at.
8. Look outside our industry or outside research circles for ways to report information. Review Edward Tufte, Richard Saul Wurman, and others. Are there movie scenes that help us get our points across? Magazine ads? Always ask the question: “What’s that like?”
9. Communicate proactively - let’s make sure we talk and we’re all clear on things before moving ahead. That may mean a phone call instead of an email.
10. Exhibit strong attention to detail – that way we can get beyond fact & spell checking and spend our time on delivering insights.

If you can get to this point with your research partners, you’ll truly be doing COOL WORK that matters and that can change your company and your industry. WOW!!!

Market Research & Consumer Insights Conference Update

Pineapples aren’t necessarily associated with Miami. But pineapples are symbols of hospitality, and that was in full evidence at the marcus evans Market Research & Consumer Insights conference yesterday in South Florida.

As conference chairperson Dr. Daniel Thorpe from Wachovia pointed out, there was a lot of incredible research talent in attendance! Beyond Dan’s look at ROI (which will be featured in the May 2008 Harvard Business Review), there were strong presentations from:

• Jennifer Nelson (J&J Consumer Healthcare Products) – Developing new insight capabilities
• Kimarie Matthews (Wells-Fargo) – Using Customer Loyalty to drive change
• Nancy Robinson & Kate Muhl (iconoculture) – Insights on Moms among young boomers, Gen X, and Millennials
• Dave Mazur & Dan Teeter (Nissan North America) – Transforming the market research function

I covered strategic thinking for market researchers and will be covering some specifics from the conference here soon.

Change Your Character – Get Into Growth Mode

It’s early March, so spring HAS to be just around the corner (I HOPE!). Spring’s a time for new growth as farmers focus on the upcoming growing season, ensuring that they’re taking all the necessary steps to increase the yield from their efforts. So thinking about business opportunities that you need to grow and exploit, who better to delegate your creative thinking to than a farmer who is experienced at proven ways to grow and harvest successfully.

Remember, use the great growth techniques below that farmers use and generalize how you may be able to apply each of them in at least 3 ways to generate new growth ideas for your opportunities.

• Researches the best crop to plant for the land & environmental conditions
• Prepares the soil
• Plants the crops at the proper time
• Waters the crops to stimulate initial growth
• Fertilizes to ensure maximum growth
• Protects the growing crops against insects and other adverse conditions
• Buys crop insurance in case problems environmental problems develop
• Harvests the crop when it’s ready
• Follows market information on crop prices to know when and/or how to sell what’s harvested
• Sells the harvested crops
• Rotates crops periodically to keep the soil healthy

Happy growing with your new ideas; remember it’s less than a month until spring!

Note – for the previous post on how to use the Change Your Character technique, click here.

Lazy Days of Winter - Provoking Quotes on Thoughts

When you don’t have anything interesting to say about thinking and research, step aside and let people who do have something to say take the floor:

• "When you invite people to think, you are inviting revolution." - Ivone Gebara
  
• "It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious." - Alfred North Whitehead
  
• "There is no God-given right way to do a survey. Lots of decisions, made at every step, can influence the results." - Stanley Presser
  
• "Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" - T.S. Eliot
  
• "If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research." - Albert Einstein
  
• "Well, it's two o'clock. And that's quitting time in the research department." - Todd from the Research Department in "Dilbert" - Scott Adams

It’s Great to Learn from Your Mistakes…Once!

Something happens to take you off plan. Sometimes it can’t be avoided…the first time.

But how do you avoid getting your plan derailed a second or third time? One way is by revisiting implementation efforts that go awry and addressing questions such as those below, turning the answers into lessons that you and your team can use in the future to guide your actions:

• What happened?
• What was the root cause – really?
• Was there a backup in place? Yes or No? Did the backup fail as well?
• What were the indicators that there would be a problem? Did we notice or ignore them? Will the signals likely be there next time in a comparable situation?
• Was available information not gathered or processed?
• How did we deal with missing information?
• In what ways might the situation differ next time?
• If we think it was “back luck,” how do we create “good luck” next time?

These few questions will go a long way toward providing a foundation to improve your performance next time. For an insightful, more in-depth look at various types of mistakes and the personal perspective and processes to address them, check out this essay from Scott Berkun. And while you’re doing so, poke around on his website. I just started, and it looks like there are a lot of cool ideas to discover!