Good To Great

I have just read the Jim Collins big seller – Good To Great. A few people in marketing , Norwich business people and MBA colleagues, have mentioned the book to me.

I was surprised when I finished reading the book that there is actually quite a lot of criticism about the book. It is true that some of the conclusions such as the benefits of level five leadership are not spelt out in great detail. What exactly is a level 5 leader? Then there is the fact that many of the companies cited as “Great”…….. are no longer even “good” or even in existence in some cases!

But I actually really really rate the book. It is easy to read and easy to understand, and personally I intuitively understood even the conclusions with less clarity such as the Level 5 Leader. The most compelling outtake from the book to me, is the importance of getting the right people to buy into your vision. Jim Collins uses the analogy of a bus…… get the right people on the bus, then let them work out where they should sit, then you can work out where you can go! It may sound strange, or perhaps obvious, but that conclusion helped me to crystallise my thoughts on a number of projects I have worked on in the past and am currently engaged in.

Below I have summarised the books conclusions:-

- Level 5 Leadership: Leaders who are humble, but driven to do what’s best for the company.

- First Who, Then What: Get the right people on the bus, then figure out where to go. Finding the right people and trying them out in different positions.

- Confront the Brutal Facts: Confront the brutal truth of the situation, yet at the same time, never give up hope.

- Hedgehog Concept: Three overlapping circles: What makes you money? What could you be best in the world at? and What lights your fire?

- Culture of Discipline: Being able to stay entirely focused in a changing, challenging environment

- Technology Accelerators: Using technology to accelerate growth, within the three circles of the hedgehog concept.

- The Flywheel: The additive effect of many small initiatives; they act on each other like compound interest.

As a marketing consultant in Norwich I get involved in some of these areas more than others, but I do think they are a robust set of principles to at least influence business management.

Predictably Irrational

I have just finished reading Predicatably Irrational – The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions. I enjoyed the book although personally I think in places it is rather predictable and that some of the findings seem fairly rational to me!

The format of the book also can become a little repetitive. Every chapter is basically, I thought this or questioned that, so I did an experiment with some MBA students, and here is the result that you were not expecting (or sometimes expecting in my case!).

The areas I found most interesting were around people’s perception of price and how this can be dramatically altered by creating a different environment or a different set of benchmarks for what the price should be. The exploration of why things hold more value once we own them, and why price is different to cost were also interesting. Less interesting were some of the chapters around human behaviour, which to me were fairly obvious conclusions – we are animals and therefore sometimes we don’t behave to a mathematical pattern which is entirely predictable. The observations about honest and human behaviour are also interesting but again in my view perhaps not so radical. More interesting was the research around our decision making and how peer groups can affect that. Overall some useful stuff, (from the perspective of a Norwich marketing consultant) particularly when considering how to stimulate sales or build a new proposition for potential customers, but not as exciting as Freakonomics!

So, you open your fridge and someone has left some Coke and some cash.  If you are thirsty maybe you will take the Coke, but if you need some cash, you still don’t pinch what’s in the fridge.  Predicatably Irrational…… you tell me?!!

Norwich City Of Culture Bid

What a shame Norwich didn’t win the City of Culture bid. Following the impact in Liverpool, who won the European Capital of Culture in 2008, clearly it would have given the city a great boost at a difficult time. The competition was tough, Birmingham, Sheffield and Londonderry are all great cities. I haven’t been to Londonderry, but I have visited Birmingham and Sheffield many many times and they are terrific places full of culture. That said – so is Norwich. We are smaller, perhaps a little more remote, and at times perhaps a little slow off the mark. On the other hand, we are independently minded, original, entrepreneurial, friendly and welcoming, imaginative, creative, successful, skilled, and knowledgeable. We have a great heritage of buildings, of places, of events and celebrations. We have some great musicians, artists, writers, photographers and actors. We also love coming together and have a history of producing great food and drink in all manner of different ways. Norwich has two amazing Cathedrals, two beautiful rivers, a historic market, a castle, a superb and technically advanced university, and one of the most respected Art Colleges outside of London. We also spent considerably less money on putting our bid together than the other cities did.

Although we didn’t win the honour, I think the process reminded a lot of people just what a special place Norwich is, it got a lot of the arts community in Norwich talking and working together, perhaps marketing Norwich properly for the first time, and it laid the foundations to make Norwich a city of culture not for one year but on an ongoing basis.

Freakonomics!

I have just finished reading Freakonomics. What a thought provoking and interesting read. When I first became interested in Marketing professionally I did dabble a little in economics and this book reminded me what a fascinating subject it really is. The writers describe economics as the study of incentives: how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. It asks the question, what is the precise incentive needed to trigger an exchange between two people? And the scary thing is that the incentive required may not always be what you think it is. By looking at a wide range of topics (including gun crime, sumo wrestlers, education, and the naming of children amongst other things) some unusual comparisons, and some clever contexts, the book demonstrates how deeply you have to look at things to truly understand the correct incentive to offer up to make something happen.

The book is fun in places, but difficult reading in others, perhaps because there is a side of human nature which is disappointing to us all. Easy to read and very thought provoking…. I recommend!

What is leadership?

I heard a great quotation last week. You become a leader with great leadership qualities when you can see “the whole vision in glorious Technicolor!” I love this phrase because I think it sums up so neatly when a great leader is able to do. Something inspires them, excites them, makes them passionate, makes them focus, and then they are off. They move into a different “gear” because ignites those qualities in them. They do not rest until they have reached their goal, no matter how long it takes, and no matter what gets in the way.

When I think of great leaders, I think of Winston Churchill, Earnest Shackleton, Nelson Mandela, J F Kennedy, and Ghandi. What seems to unify all these great people, and all the other great leaders there are in life, is having that vision, sticking to it, relentlessly communicating it, and pursing it without compromise indefinitely.

For me, if you want to be a great leader you must possess these qualities. Perhaps you don’t have them all the time, and in all circumstances, but for a particular project or cause, something is ignited that brings those qualities to the front of the persons mind. I don’t think you can teach someone to be a great leader but I think you can provide the opportunities and environment for leadership to naturally flourish. I think anyone can become a great leader, but they need to find the cause that brings it out of them!

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Build A Brand In 30 Days

I have just started reading Simon Middleton’s book – Build A Brand In 30 Days. I met Simon a few weeks ago when he gave a presentation to my Common Purpose team in Norwich. By coincidence I met him on the train the following morning, and again in the evening at his book launch in Waterstones. Simon is a great communicator and is able to really inject enthusiasm and passion into his discussions and presentations about branding. That ability to really capture the attention and imagination of an audience is such a great gift to have.

I have only read the first three chapters of the book, but I like the easy to read style and language, and the relevant examples that make it easy to translate his ideas into story’s people know and can relate to.

Personally I am not sure that you can build a brand in 30 days – even if they are spread over a longer time period. That is because I don’t think one person can build a brand. I think brands are built by consumers, consumers who pester customers to buy on their behalf – even if that is just another part of their own conscience, and customers who demand more from their brands. Perhaps more products, features and benefits, perhaps better packaging design, perhaps better language or tone of voice which suits them, or perhaps a simple demand that the brand pulls itself together! The greater the enthusiasm with which consumers and customer do this, the more powerful your brand is. I have been privileged enough to manage some great brands – but I never thought I owned them or built them. I did some stuff to keep them in good shape, to keep them engaging with their audiences, and to keep them relevant. Perhaps I did help in some small way to build them, but I was only a small part of an architectural team, the people who did the building were the guys how bought the products, who emailed me when my products weren’t quite good enough, who mentioned the irritations in something that wasn’t quite right, who said when they did or didn’t like our advertising, and who pointed out when a competitor was better than us.

I like Simon’s book and thoroughly recommend it, and I shall be writing more about it from a different perspective in a couple of weeks, but if you don’t own a brand (apart from you own – watch out, this is going to be Simon’s next book!) you can still help to build one. Choose the product you love – enthuse about it to your friends, find out more about it and how you can help it to grow…. what do you get in return? A small emotional stakeholding in something that as it grows and you see it appearing in more places you will be proud of!

A News Room In Norwich

On the last but one day of my Common Purpose course I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to visit a news desk for a local TV broadcaster. It was a great opportunity to get behind the scenes of how a story can become news and news can become a television broadcast. The first things I noticed were 1) the energy of the team, their enthusiasm and excitement, and 2) the audience’s natural scepticism and negative perception towards the media.

The process of making news is interesting. Information comes into a news room from all kinds of sources, about all kinds of things (business, politics, economics, marketing, Norwich, Norfolk, the UK, celebrations, people, history, etc etc), sometimes by investigation, sometimes by a third party, and sometimes just through observation. News can come from twitter, from a press release, from a phone call or email, or from a spokesperson. Every potential piece needs to be assessed and this is where the editing and production team have such an important role. They must consider if the piece is newsworthy to the audience, have they got the relevant facts and figures, the different perspectives of the story, and where does it fit into the programme format. Above all the editing team and producers must seek to protect the integrity of their programme and reporting, perhaps even their brand.

In any business this would be challenging. In most of the businesses I work with information typically comes from the same familiar sources in the same format – the source and format of information received by a news reporting organisation is rarely the same. If this doesn’t make the challenge big enough, you often have only a few hours to pull your entire product or presentation together. Again, in the typical businesses I work with, a presentation would take some weeks to build and the information that underpins it would have been analysed for several months.

Whatever you may think of the media in the UK, I think we should at least acknowledge the great accomplishment that is a news at six, or a news at ten, every day, every week. It’s never late – it’s never not half an hour, and there is usually something of interest in there somewhere!!!!

Rebrand or Reposition?

Perhaps it is just one of those coincidences, but recently I have heard a lot of people talking about Rebranding. “We’re about to rebrand”, “We’ve just rebranded”, “We’re going through a rebrand” or my favourite “We rebranded a year ago, but it was a disaster so now are going to do it again”!!

I am always very worried when I hear the phrase rebrand because I think it is nearly always misused and should be considered very very seriously before any business undertakes such a thing. To be really clear, I am not even sure that you can rebrand. I think you can redesign the expression of your brand, and I think you can reposition your brand, and you may do either of these things for perfectly valid reasons, but you cannot rebrand. You can throw your existing brand away and start again – but I am not sure the agencies that seem to be recommending a rebrand would recommend that with such enthusiasm and confidence.

So if you are getting feedback that your brand is becoming out of date, or tired, or slow to react, or boring, or out of touch, what should you do? A rebrand? NO! Listen to your customers and consumers, and ask what is wrong. If it is the product, work hard to update it. If it is the tone of voice of your brand, refine it and perhaps modernise it (do this only based on your customers feedback), if it is the look and feel of your packaging, consider updating the design. My point here is do not rebrand – the values of your brand should still hold true, but do consider improvements to the relevant areas of expression of your brand to keep it relevant and engaging to your audience. This is not a rebrand, or even a reposition – it is at best a refresh to the shell!

Alternatively you may be losing sales, your market may be shrinking, and even worse your share of market may be shrinking at the same time. Should we rebrand? NO! It will do absolutely nothing to improve the position you are in. I don’t want to look at all the possible scenarios which could be driving this unfortunate position in this post, but one may well be that your market is reaching the end of its natural life. A rebrand will not change that – a reposition may do though. A reposition is not about throwing your brand away, it is about making it relevant in a different context. Just as you dress differently when you go to work, when you go to see friends, or when you go to a wedding. People are always rebranding, by changing the style of language they use, the way they dress, the things they talk about. My favourite example of a reposition is Lucozade. When my grandparents were in their 70’s Lucozade was a drink for them, it gave them the extra energy they needed as they were getting older. Today I drink Lucozade, it gives me the energy I need when I go running or swimming. Lucozade has always been about giving energy, inspiring people to perform above their expected performance, but when older people realised they got more benefits from retiring early and playing in a park with their grand children than they did from drinking Lucozade, and as younger people appreciated the benefits of exercise and started to buy gym memberships, a reposition was needed – not the dreaded rebrand!

Leaving Microsoft To Change The World!

Throughout my life in business I have always been aware of the question, could we do what we do with business, what we do to make money and deliver share holder value, to change the world for the better? Could we use the skills we have to instead of selling more widgets, get more food to people who need it, or instead of becoming more efficient, could we help communities that struggle to grapple with famine become sustainable? On a different level individuals often seem to struggle to balance the demands, stress and focus required from high profile jobs with the enjoyment and reward they want from of life. I think it is generally accepted now, that the one who earns the most if perhaps not always the one who is happiest. Alongside or perhaps because of this dilemma, there is also the new idea that is not realised because it means sacrificing too much, or taking too many risks, or is simply just too scary to contemplate seriously.

Leaving Microsoft To Change The World is the story of one man who left a high paid job, the stress and financial rewards that went with it, and perhaps to coin a phrase followed his heart instead of his head. The book is a great story of someone who had an idea, an inspiration and felt confident enough, or compelled enough to make it into a reality. John Wood came face to face with the lack of education in the third world during a well earned holiday and decided to do something about it. To most people that would perhaps involve giving a donation to a local charity – but that was just not big enough for John. He left his high paid job at Microsoft and began sending books to children in Nepal so that they could read, learn, and become inspired to realise their potential. The idea flourished and soon a few books became a library, then one library became a school, and then several schools, then hundreds, and then hundreds in several countries. John Wood had found his calling in life and by making a massive leap of faith, having the courage of conviction, had managed to help hundreds of thousands of children across the world with an education. In doing so he went from having a job and having a life that never seemed to compatible to simply having “found his place in the world” as he puts it.

The book is a great insight into many things. As a marketing consultant in Norwich and someone who is interested in some of the voluntary organisations marketing Norwich, I was most interested by John Wood’s drive and motivation, the way he used his business knowledge in a charitable organisation, how he was able to move from managing a big team of people to working for a start up organisation, the mistakes he made as well as the successes. He openly shares how he learnt on the move, how he improvised, made the most of all his skills, and reinvented himself. The book is inspiration, a motivation, and perhaps a challenge, as well as a good reference for anyone who is considering starting a not for profit organisation or start up business.

It is also a great read and one that I thoroughly enjoyed!

Sustainable Communities

Throughout the general election the national media has led us, or certainly me, to focus on national issues when trying to decide who to vote for. Now before I go any further I want to state that this is not a political blog, (it is about my thoughts as a Norwich marketing consultant) in fact I work hard to try and keep my personal views on politics away from the work I do as I think it can get in the way of positive working and collaboration. When trying to decide how to vote, there is so much coverage about the state of the country’s finances, the challenges in education, the state of our NHS, the need to deal with an aging population, and of course the sensitive subject of our foreign policy in the Middle East. With all this to consider, I find it easy to completely overlook the fact that actually you are not voting for a party to govern as a whole, or for the next Prime Minister, but for a local candidate to represent the community in West Minister, and work on behalf of constituents to improve the local environment for everyone. This means considering a completely different set of issues to decide who to vote for. There is local crime, concerns about street lights being turned off for half the night, the need for better local services for parents with young children, the still pressing issue of dualing the A11 and improving train transport links into London.

Last month I went to an event where I heard from a guest speaker from Inspire East. Inspire East have developed an interesting model demonstrating what they believe is necessary for a sustainable community and I think it is pretty comprehensive. Whilst the model can be used to build a new community or a new community based organisation, it can also be used to evaluate existing communities – and perhaps their strengths and weaknesses. By looking at the relative focus of each aspect of a community as they describe, one could draw conclusions about the culture and society of the community. Interesting stuff!

Although the model is primarily aimed at community development, I also think the model could be used as a template for the key considerations of a board in a business organisation. There are other models and papers that tackle the subject of an optimised board but this is a good start – and I like the colours!