Change Your Character - Attracting Customers as a Celebrity Attracts Fans

Of anyone in society, celebrities readily attract the public’s attention, drawing fans to themselves. While it can be trying for celebrities, we’d probably all like to attract customers in business with the same type of fervor and interest.

So let’s take a look at why fans are attracted to celebrities and revisit the Change Your Character exercise. Apply each of these reasons fans are attracted to celebrities to a situation where you’re trying to draw customers to your brand.

Fans see celebrities as:

• Having attractive characteristics that they want to be around
• Being familiar because celebrities are seen all the time in the media
• Approachable
• Likeable
• Friendly
• Having the ability to change someone’s life if they knew each other
• Getting lots of attention that others can bask in
• Wielding lots of influence & power

The goal is to generate 3 new ideas for each of the items above. Click here for a refresher on using the Change Your Character exercise.

25 Ways to Change Your Character

Nearly every week since the start of the year, the Wednesday feature has been “Change Your Character,” a great technique to generate new ideas by delegating a challenge to someone who you wouldn’t typically think about selecting to do your work. This lateral thinking approach uses someone in a completely different line of work to help you look at your own situation with a fresh perspective.

As a refresher, here are the steps:

1. State the business challenge that you’re addressing – it could be an opportunity, a problem, a new process or approach, etc.
2. Pick who you want to work on your situation. This could be a real person, a fictional or cartoon character, or even another business that faces an analogous situation.
3. Once you’ve identified who you’ll put on the job, list 8 to 10 approaches that the person, character, or business uses to address opportunities or challenges.
4. Using the 8 to 10 approaches, apply them to your situation to generate at least 3 new ideas each for solving it.

The Wednesday feature does steps 2 and 3, allowing you to focus primarily on step 4 – idea generation. As the weekly feature moves to less frequent appearances, here’s a handy summary of the 25 columns that you can bookmark for use in successfully addressing future opportunities. Within each category, the situations and characters covered are listed, along with a link to the original article.

Strategy

• Disruptive Strategy – Bart Simpson
• Competitive Strategy – Terrorist
• Competing Against Bigger Players – Wee Willie Keeler
• Getting People to Participate in Strategic Planning – Event Planner

Relationship & Brand Building

• Lead Generation – Police Detective
• Identifying Good Prospects – Baseball Scout
• Growing Business Opportunities – Farmer
• Building Business Relationships, Strengthening & Maintaining Business Relationships, and Improving Challenging Business Relationships – Self-Help Advice Columinst
• Customer Service Approach – Babysitter
• Communicating Intangible Ideas – Garrison Keillor
• Brand Repositioning – Donald Trump & Madonna
• Creating Product Extensions - Successful Product-Extending Brands

Team Building

• Creating Excitement – Cheerleader
• Training & Developing Others – Great Teachers

Management & Problem Solving

• Managing Priorities – Air Traffic Controller
• Preventing & Dealing with Problems – Firefighter
• Diagnosing & Curing Problems – Doctor
• Project Turnarounds – Turnaround CEO
• Trimming Waste – Fitness Trainer

Professional Skills

• Improvising in Unfamiliar Situations – An Improv Comedian
• Generating a Variety of Potential Solutions – Castaways from Gilligan’s Island
• Clear, Concise Writing - Reporter
• Simplifying Things – Forrest Gump

Just a note - I used Bart Simpson recently, and it worked very well. Give it a try and have great success Changing Your Character!

Change Your Character - Fixing Problems as a Turnaround CEO

There is always the potential for a business, a project, or even a personal situation to run into difficulties. In the business world, a frequent answer when something goes wrong is to call in a turnaround CEO to fix it. Using well-tested techniques, their goal is to quickly diagnose underlying problems, correct them, and return the business to solid performance.

This week, consider delegating a broken situation you have to a turnaround CEO and let them take a run at fixing it. Try to generate three new turnaround ideas for each item below as a turnaround CEO would:

• Identify the most critical problems
• Bring in unbiased consultants to help fix things
• Make fact-based decisions
• Look for smart & simple steps to take right away
• Bring in their own people to run the company
• Ask lots of questions
• Cut costs in a dramatic fashion
• Uncover hidden problems in the business
• Secure needed resources
• Write off bad operations

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

Change Your Character – Training as the Best Teachers Do

We can all recall great school teachers who made otherwise boring subjects come alive and taught lessons that shape us still.

We’re all teachers in our own ways. There are people that we work and interact with daily who look to us for both technical learning and life lessons. Let’s explore great teachers’ approaches and see what they can teach us about our teaching roles. Great teachers:

• Present challenging concepts
• Are passionate about their subject(s)
• Use vivid stories to illustrate lessons
• Ask you about the subject area even outside the class room
• Are true to the principles they teach
• Teach heuristics to master & use the content
• Make complex topics understandable
• Are interactive
• Make learning fun and rewarding
• Don’t simply give answers away for the asking
• Are still actively learning themselves
• Have a love for the material / topic
• Adapt to students’ various learning styles

Identify three new ideas for each of the approaches above that you can adapt to become a better teacher to those around you. Note – for the previous post on how to use the Change Your Character technique, click here.

Today’s Get ‘Er Written Approach – This involved taking an idea and shifting it. I originally planned to do something specifically on the Montessori approach (which may still show up someday), but couldn’t get it to work. The focus then shifted to teachers in general and some of the great educators that I’ve had the honor to learn from during my schooling.

This post is dedicated to Dave Wessling, for so many reasons. May he rest in peace.

Generating Leads As a Police Detective Would

Based on a reader's recommendation, the request for your comments on what works and doesn't work on the blog is being sweetened. One person who offers a Plus-Minus-Interesting-Recommentation comment on the Monday, June 16 post by next Monday, June 23, 2008 will be selected to receive a copy of the book, “Why Business People Speak Like Idiots: A Bullfighter's Guide” by Brian Fugere, Chelsea Hardaway, and Jon Warshawsky. So please share your perspectives! Thanks!


Police detectives are responsible for identifying and developing leads, often with little actual information to go on, and successfully solving cases. The challenge is not unlike the effort required to find and develop solid leads for business development purposes.

Next time you’re faced with that task, delegate your challenge to a police detective and see how their methods could help you solve the case of the missing customer. Detectives:

• Interview witnesses & knowledgeable people for clues
• Gather evidence
• Check for & analyze fingerprints
• Perform forensic analysis
• Search databases for suspects in previous similar cases
• Work with other related agencies
• Tap phone lines
• Conduct surveillance
• Ask the public for help

Once again, try to generate three ideas for each of the police detective approaches above. And be careful out there!

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

A Week of Struggling for Simplicity - Change Your Character – Forrest Gump – “Simple Is as Simple Does”

No matter what you think of the character, Forrest Gump’s approach to the simplicity of life found him at the center of most major events of the second half of the twentieth century. When striving to simplify some of your complex problems, it would be interesting to see what possibilities would emerge by applying his outlook. Try it, seeking three new ideas from each of these perspectives that Forrest Gump applies:

• Listening to his mother’s advice
• Not having a lot of expectations
• Being open to new experiences
• Seeing all people the same, without prejudice
• Not making demands on others
• Not being judgmental
• Finding the good in negative situations
• Maintaining a positive outlook
• Being loyal to his friends
• Following simple philosophical principles
• Doing the basics that make a significant impact
• Being good hearted and generous

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

Change Your Character – Bart Simpson, Chief Strategy Officer

There’s been perhaps no greater disruptive force to come on the scene in the past 20 years than Bart Simpson. And in a business environment where disruptive strategy might be the only thing you can do to gain a near term advantage, couldn’t we all learn a thing or two if Bart were the Chief Strategy Officer at our company.

So as a result, let’s kick Bart upstairs and see how disrupting life in Springfield can be applied to disrupting competitors and markets. Try to generate at least 3 new competitive strategy possibilities from each approach Bart employs:

• Having an “in your face” attitude
• Not being restricted by respect for authority
• Displaying a very sharp wit
• Showing some signs of good behavior and character
• Using a healthy dose of street smarts
• Making friends with less popular people
• Devising elaborate and complex pranks
• Continually getting into something
• Playing jokes on people over the phone
• Mooning people
• Displaying some unexpected talents
• Becoming easily distracted from the task at hand
• Using an alias to hide his part in creating mayhem
• Reveling in his mischief and rebellion

One caution: using Bart Simpson in the Change Your Character exercise will lead to ideas that could be illegal, immoral, or create such bad PR that you’d never pursue them. Yet, those possibilities may have the seeds of really great strategy. Use the Shrimp exercise discussed in a previous post to turn outlandish Simpsonesque ideas into more practical ones.

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

Change Your Character – Letting Cheerleaders Support Your Team

It can be daunting to build excitement within a team that’s faced with maddening business challenges. Fortunately, if you face such a situation, you can delegate your duty to a cheerleading squad to help you out in the ways that only a cheerleader can by:

• Exhibiting a winning spirit
• Being a great team member and leader
• Going to camps & clinics to improve their performance
• Dressing in team colors
• Inviting people to join with them in the cheers
• Focusing on motivating others – both the team and the audience
• Smiling all the time
• Using a variety of talents to perform the cheers
• Performing catchy, easy to remember cheers
• Cheering for the team, no matter what
• Having cheers suited to specific situations
• Including a mascot as part of the squad
• Being active during the game and during time outs

O – K.
For each idea above,
Gimme three ways,
The squad will cheer your team up,
On any tough day!
YEAH!!!

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

Change Your Character – Managing Multiple Priorities As an Air Traffic Controller Would

Air traffic controllers shoulder tremendous public safety responsibilities. They have to process various information sources and flawlessly coordinate many airplanes trying to move through the same airspace.

Change “airplanes” to “priorities” and “airspace” to “resources,” and it all of a sudden sounds a lot like having to manage competing priorities in business.

To get a few new ideas, delegate your project and priority management challenges to an air traffic controller and see how they’d handle it. Shoot for 3 new ideas from each method below that air traffic controllers use:

• Undergo rigorous training & certification
• Employ a specific organizational method
• Follow rules to keep things separated from one another and avoid conflicts
• Remaining flexible while applying the rules
• Incorporate & process information from various sources
• Maintain an orderly flow of activity
• Communicate precisely
• Communicate regularly with everyone in their areas of responsibility
• Speak in special terms & language known by participants
• Display exceptional listening skills
• Visualize what they’re controlling
• Continually monitor each element of a situation without overly focusing on any single one
• Focus on preventing potential future problems
• Take breaks to deal with stress and to refresh their perspectives
• Stay current by practicing / using their skills regularly

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

Change Your Character - What To Look for in Prospects

Baseball scouts review many talented players, narrowing prospects through successfully anticipating which have the talent to perform at the highest levels of the game.

You can benefit from generalizing their selection criteria in the “Change Your Character” exercise to strengthen the prospect assessment criteria that you’re called on to perform in your job. Your prospects may be employees, customers, vendors, or other parties in business. Baseball scouts look for the following types of characteristics in their best prospects:

• Have strong interest in success
• Are always aware of what’s going on and what the right thing to do next is
• Are dedicated and loyal
• Are easy to be around and are strong influencers
• Can make things happen & produce consistently
• Have the skills to turn apparent failure into success
• Field whatever comes their way
• Never give up
• Will follow through and give everything they have

Next time you have to develop criteria to assess prospects, identify three new ideas from those used by baseball scouts. And to get more background on how to use the Change Your Character technique, click here.

Change Your Character – Exercise to Reduce Waist and Waste

For this Wednesday’s Change Your Character exercise, let’s look at exercise and doing it successfully. Specifically, someone exercising usually works with a trainer trying to trim their waist.

So let’s think about how we can apply a successful exerciser’s approach to trimming waste in a business setting. A successful exerciser:

• Sets a realistic, aggressive goal
• Works with a trainer to increase their knowledge, accountability, and results
• Exercises regularly
• Varies the workout to stay motivated
• Pushes to achieve better performance all the time
• Tracks and records their activity
• Consumes less food
• Monitors food intake by counting calories
• Measures progress toward the goal

Next time you’re charged with reducing something at work (costs, unnecessary process, re-work, etc.) generate at least three potential new ideas for each of the steps above to help you improve your odds of successfully trimming fat.

Note #1 - Today's post is dedicated to Jenn Oxler, my trainer for the past two years. With her help (and her repeated questions about my food intake), I've lost nearly 30 pounds and have gotten into the best physical shape of my life. Thanks Jenn!

Note #2 – for the previous post on how to use the Change Your Character technique, click here.

Change Your Character – Writing Like a Reporter

Amid too much jargon, the state of business communication isn’t stellar. We could all benefit from delegating a writing assignment to a great reporter to see how they’d approach it to ensure it’s as clear, concise, and memorable as possible. Here are some of the things a good reporter is going to concentrate on during a writing assignment:

• Interview people directly involved in the story
• Use multiple sources of information
• Write in order to gain attention right away
• Put the most important things at the start of the story, followed by supporting material, then background information
• Address fundamental questions – who, what, where, when, why, and how
• Use specific, concrete examples
• Have an editor who reviews it and makes changes

In addition to identifying at least three new ways to incorporate each of a reporter’s approaches to improve your writing, here’s a bonus book recommendation - do yourself a favor and track down a copy of “How to Take the Fog Out of Business Writing” by Robert Gunning and Richard A. Kallan. It’s a precursor to “Why Business People Speak Like Idiots: A Bullfighter's Guide” and is a short, straight-forward guide to dramatically simplifying your business writing.

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

Change Your Character – Competitive Strategy

In terms of competitive strategy over the past thirty years, a variety of villains has been able to create damage, wreak havoc, and end lives (all defined as success for them) by very often using non-traditional & apparently illogical techniques.

Despite how reprehensible their approaches are, they provide the basis for identifying potential competitive strategies in business. Here are potential approaches to plug into the character exercise to identify new competitive strategies:

• Be very low profile
• Conceal your appearance
• Stay in hiding
• Move around continuously to evade detection
• Select an attention-getting target
• Plan out all variables in the competitive attack
• Work through a network of loyal followers
• Patiently wait for the right moment to act
• Do things differently each time to avoid detection
• Conduct attention-getting attacks
• Frighten large groups of people
• Publicize your motives
• Create the perception of future potential moves

Again, this isn’t advocating being a villain. But it is suggesting that variations on many of their planning techniques can be used legally to compete in business with a high degree of surprise and effectiveness.

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

Change Your Character – Fighting Business Fires Like a Real Fire Fighter

The phrase “fighting fires” gets thrown around pretty casually in business. For real fire fighters, however, it’s a highly skilled, dangerous endeavor focused on both prevention and ensuring public safety amid life threatening fires.

In this week’s Change Your Character exercise, let’s see what fire fighters can teach us about stopping the non life-threatening challenges we face in business; brainstorm 3 potential ideas for each of the fire fighting approaches listed below:

FIRE PREVENTION

• Performing community outreach & education on fire prevention
• Training with real fire situations
• Inspecting buildings to ensure susceptibility to fire is reduced
• Having a special number for people to report problems

DURING A FIRE

• Getting to the scene of the fire quickly
• Bringing specialized equipment and proper tools with them
• Using resources at the scene
• First finding the fire’s origin
• Identifying potential risks
• Rescuing people in danger / harm’s way
• Locating casualties / people injured & providing assistance
• Analyzing the fire for potential future trouble spots
• Removing the fire’s source of fuel
• Addressing self-preservation

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

Change Your Character - Wee Willie Keeler

Since it's "Hit 'em Where They Ain't Week," it was only natural that this Wednesday's Change Your Character exercise focuses on Wee Willie Keeler.

Wee Willie Keeler was a great baseball hitter in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and at 140 pounds and maybe 5 feet, 4 inches, one of the smallest players ever in professional baseball. Beyond his impressive performance (lots of hits, hitting & bunting in unusual ways, rarely striking out, hitting sacrifices to advance runners, being part of five championship-winning teams, etc.), he is best known for his success mantra, “Hit ‘em where they ain’t.”

Keeler is certainly a great example of someone small making the most effective use of resources and talents to beat much larger and more substantial competitors. His approach to baseball can be a great help when you need to succeed against bigger competitors. Go ahead and delegate your challenges to him as he:

• Focuses on being more productive
• Does things to be able to perform more consistently
• Takes steps to rarely fail (or at least less than his competitors)
• Takes advantages of competitors’ weaknesses and gaps
• Concentrates on how he could help others advance to help his team win
• Embracing an unconventional & hard to defend against approach to execute his role
• Uses a smaller asset (in this case, a bat) than was thought practical
• Helps the team succeed as a collective group

So figure out where your competitors are positioned, take a practice swing or two, and smack the ball right between them to advance your brand teammates!

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

Change Your Character - Having Garrison Keillor Sell Intangible Ideas

Many people struggle with selling intangible ideas, benefits, and points of view. If you have a discomfort with abstractions, it’s difficult to modify your communication style to create a picture in someone’s mind of something that doesn’t physically exist.

One person who does a wonderful job of that on a weekly basis is Garrison Keillor along with the cast of “A Prairie Home Companion” radio program. Every Saturday afternoon, they bring to life a whole host of situations, characters, and even products that are completely fictional. So for today’s Change Your Character exercise, let’s delegate our task of conveying intangible ideas to them and see how the cast would approach the task by:

• Writing a script
• Incorporating rich, vivid language
• Featuring reoccurring characters
• Employing a variety of entertainment formats
• Telling stories
• Acting out skits with multi-talented performers
• Booking guests to help act out the stories
• Interviewing guests
• Intermixing real and imagined entities (sponsors, characters, etc.)
• Mixing comedy and drama
• Incorporating sound effects
• Having a band play music and theme songs
• Performing in front of a studio audience that provides real reactions to the material

Step right up to the microphone and share three new possibilities for helping your audience visualize intangible ideas based on each of the techniques above. If you need an additional push, try some Powdermilk Biscuits – they “give shy persons the strength they need to get up and do what needs to be done.”

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

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!

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.

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.

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.