How Marketing Can Lead Process Improvement

To keep their companies in shape, managers must explain to employees what customers experience and expect. The head of marketing is typically charged with gathering market research on customers and their expectations. Most heads of marketing that I've seen gather "voice of the customer" research for product design decisions, but they don't do enough to help employees understand what customers are looking for. They don't create an ethic of being truly customer-driven. Here are three ways they can.
1: The head of marketing brings customer research to life for employees by creating customer personas.
Most employees don't read customer research data; they don't find it compelling or interesting. But they do respond to stories, especially those that emphasize the importance of their role in the company and how it affects the customer experience.
Consider the case of "Al and Betty" at Grainger, the $7 billion distributor of facilities supplies. The company's U.S. leadership team realized that to get every employee to connect with customers, they had to find a way to give "the customer" a name and a face.
Their process started with the question, "Who are our customers?" The leadership team realized they had two types of customers. The first they named "Al," a facilities maintenance professional. His job is to ensure that a building is up and running, so he's motivated by time. He needs to get Grainger's products, such as pumps, power tools, and electrical supplies, quickly. The stick figure they created of Al has a clock.
They second they named "Betty." She's the purchasing manager at her company. She wants the best deals on the products and services her company buys. The Betty stick figure holds a dollar sign.
Grainger's leaders used Al to help employees in the firm's U.S. branch offices think about their service process from their customers' perspective. They explained how Al typically comes to a branch to pick up an order and wants to get in and out quickly. Other times he comes in with a broken product. Then he'll stand at the counter and work with Grainger's people to solve his problem. Because these are often complex, such as a part for a 40-year-old boiler, it can take 30-to-45 minutes to find the right solution.
By thinking about these two very different reasons why Al comes to a Grainger branch, office managers realized they had not designed the interaction to optimize both kinds of experiences. Now, branch employees are redesigning the experiences from Al's point of view, with the benefit of customers' ideas and feedback.
2: The head of marketing sponsors experiments with customers to improve their buying decisions.
Another way marketing heads can bring the customer experience into the organization is to develop a deep understanding of the customer's decision process and find ways to improve it. For example, one of the reasons Netflix has flourished is that it recommends movies you would like based on your ratings of other movies you've seen. Amazon.com does the same thing for books based on what other people have purchased. Assisting customers with their buying process can shift their relationship with a supplier from "vendor" to "partner."
Using tried-and-true process improvement techniques, heads of marketing can help their organizations co-create new processes and offerings with their customers and even involve suppliers. For example, Grainger has formed teams in brand management for each customer segment to identify solutions that result in quantifiable bottom-line improvement. Using continuous improvement methods, a team tests a new offer with a small group of customers first to see whether it resonates. If the answer is yes, the team then determines the most effective methods for building competence in their sales team to deliver the new offer to customers. Based on the small-scale test, they adjust and fully launch only when they have the right results on both tests: measurable positive customer impact and a reliable sales process.
3: The head of marketing spends time with employees who work with customers and is an advocate for them internally.
In a previous post on Customer-Centric Continuous Improvement, I wrote that the ability of a company to stay focused on process improvement depends on getting executives out of their offices and engaging with customers. More than anyone in the C-suite, the head of marketing needs to spend time with employees who touch customers and be the customers' advocate. For example, Bob Coggin, the former senior vice president of marketing at Delta Air Lines, had breakfast once a month with 12-16 employees who dealt with customers. He asked these Delta workers to tell him what they needed to deliver a better product. Once a quarter he hosted a session for all frontline managers and brought in customers who could sound off on their experiences with the company.
How have you seen the head of marketing successfully bring the customer experience to each employee?

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/09/the_role_of_the_head_of_market.html

Is Your Marketing Killing Your Consumer Electronics Product?

Every day, multi-million dollar consumer electronics products suffer the consequences of poor, lazy, ineffective, uninspired, unprepared, overly-technical, follow-the-status-quo marketing. Were it not for the intense media and consumer interest in high technology, the industry would be in big trouble. The products at retail are generally good, but the marketing ranges from atrocious to bad.

The consumer electronics industry is succeeding in spite of its marketing.

I define the most successful consumer electronics as those which have the most evangelists — passionate, high-energy communicators — among mainstream consumers. Based on my observations and experience, the most successful products in the industry are various Apple devices (the iPad, the iPhone, and the Mac), the Amazon Kindle, and the Netflix service. These three companies create more mainstream evangelists as a percentage of their total users than other companies. Think of the way these companies are talked about by your friends and family — more than likely you know an evangelist of one or more of these firms.

So, the question becomes, what separates them from other players in their markets?
First, the products share elements that elevate them above the consumer electronics commodity bin: all of them make people feel good, exceed already high expectations, and improve people's perceived quality of life.

But other devices that don't have evangelists also meet these three criteria for product excellence: consider HDTVs, digital cameras, even a good cable service.

So what's the difference between an iPad and a Samsung HDTV? Why does one create raving fans and the other create users? Why does the Kindle inspire a critical mass of mainstream consumers to tell everyone they know how much they love the Kindle, while Kodak digital camera customers simply takes pictures and stay quiet? (Have you ever heard anyone say they don't like their Kindle? I've talked to hundreds of people about it, and I haven't.) The Kodak camera is a great, affordable device, but the company does not enjoy mainstream evangelists.

The difference is marketing.

And while there are many actions that separate the best from the rest, after years of working with top consumer electronics brands as a marketing consultant helping clients brand, position and evangelize their products and services, I've realized that it all comes down to three things: knowing what your customers want, giving it to them, and then communicating about it simply and relentlessly.

Let's look at each one:

Knowing What Your Customers Want

Apple knows what its customers want because of its CEO, Steve Jobs. He has proven that he knows, on instinct, what will succeed with consumers. In fact, he famously avoids customer input and focus groups because he is so sure about his own gut feeling. But because your CEO is not Steve Jobs, you'll have to do talk and listen to your customers like crazy. This means qualitative, one-on-one interviews. They can be brief — ten minutes is often enough. But you must allow yourself the opportunity to probe and ask follow-up questions based on their responses. This eliminates online surveys and focus groups.

Here are 10 questions to ask:

1. Who in your home uses our product?
2. Why do they use it? (Leave it open ended, just like that.)
3. What do you do with the product?
4. What features do you use most? Why?
5. Which features do you NOT use? Why?
6. What's your favorite thing about owning this device?
7. What do you tell your family and friends about the device?
8. How does our product improve your life?
9. Describe our product using three descriptive words.
10. How does our product make you feel?

These questions get you away from technical specifications and move you towards the real-life value of your device.

I often conduct these interviews for clients — big brands, companies you hear about frequently — and I can tell that the findings are almost always surprising to my clients. The language consumers use to describe my clients' devices is simpler and almost entirely focused on the life-improving outcomes of the products. Out of 100 customers, maybe one or two talk about technical specifications, the rest focus on real-world emotional value.

Giving it to Them

In asking the questions, you learn what your customers want. The answers to these questions become the most powerful consumer marketing language you can possibly use. The words of your market are the best language for your market.

I can tell you about any number of my clients who have executed this approach successfully, but cannot elaborate here due to confidentiality. However, if you want an extreme example: Microsoft (not a client) did this recently with its wildly successful "I'm a PC" television advertisements. These were simple, straight-forward, feel-good, emotional and featured real people — happy, hip, pleased with their experience — talking about exactly what parts of a Windows PC improve their life. These were powerful commercials, allowing viewers to immediately identify how a Windows computer might affect their day.

Communicating Simply and Relentlessly

I've found that simple always wins in marketing. The less technical specification the better. In consumer electronics, "simple" is the answer to this question: How does this product improve people's lives? And relentless means you must never stop communicating. Even pauses are harmful. Look what happened to Palm, which, at one point, just stopped communicating with customers. In consumer electronics, if you stop communicating, gravity pushes you out of people's minds. The competition will pass you by in three seconds. You must innovate and execute your marketing relentlessly just to maintain the advantageous position you've attained.

If you've attained a space on retail shelves, I can say fairly confidently that your product is good enough to attain evangelists. The rest, the magic, is in the marketing.

Seven Personality Traits of Top Salespeople

If you ask an extremely successful salesperson, "What makes you different from the average sales rep?" you will most likely get a less-than-accurate answer, if any answer at all. Frankly, the person may not even know the real answer because most successful salespeople are simply doing what comes naturally.
Over the past decade, I have had the privilege of interviewing thousands of top business-to-business salespeople who sell for some of the world's leading companies. I've also administered personality tests to 1,000 of them. My goal was to measure their five main personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and negative emotionality) to better understand the characteristics that separate them their peers.
The personality tests were given to high technology and business services salespeople as part of sales strategy workshops I was conducting. In addition, tests were administered at Presidents Club meetings (the incentive trip that top salespeople are awarded by their company for their outstanding performance). The responses were then categorized by percentage of annual quota attainment and classified into top performers, average performers, and below average performers categories.
The test results from top performers were then compared against average and below average performers. The findings indicate that key personality traits directly influence top performers' selling style and ultimately their success. Below, you will find the main key personality attributes of top salespeople and the impact of the trait on their selling style.
1. Modesty. Contrary to conventional stereotypes that successful salespeople are pushy and egotistical, 91 percent of top salespeople had medium to high scores of modesty and humility. Furthermore, the results suggest that ostentatious salespeople who are full of bravado alienate far more customers than they win over.
Selling Style Impact: Team Orientation. As opposed to establishing themselves as the focal point of the purchase decision, top salespeople position the team (presales technical engineers, consulting, and management) that will help them win the account as the centerpiece.
2. Conscientiousness. Eighty-five percent of top salespeople had high levels of conscientiousness, whereby they could be described as having a strong sense of duty and being responsible and reliable. These salespeople take their jobs very seriously and feel deeply responsible for the results.
Selling Style Impact: Account Control. The worst position for salespeople to be in is to have relinquished account control and to be operating at the direction of the customer, or worse yet, a competitor. Conversely, top salespeople take command of the sales cycle process in order to control their own destiny.
3. Achievement Orientation. Eighty-four percent of the top performers tested scored very high in achievement orientation. They are fixated on achieving goals and continuously measure their performance in comparison to their goals.

Selling Style Impact: Political Orientation. During sales cycles, top sales, performers seek to understand the politics of customer decision-making. Their goal orientation instinctively drives them to meet with key decision-makers. Therefore, they strategize about the people they are selling to and how the products they're selling fit into the organization instead of focusing on the functionality of the products themselves.
4. Curiosity. Curiosity can be described as a person's hunger for knowledge and information. Eighty-two percent of top salespeople scored extremely high curiosity levels. Top salespeople are naturally more curious than their lesser performing counterparts.
Selling Style Impact: Inquisitiveness. A high level of inquisitiveness correlates to an active presence during sales calls. An active presence drives the salesperson to ask customers difficult and uncomfortable questions in order to close gaps in information. Top salespeople want to know if they can win the business, and they want to know the truth as soon as possible.
5. Lack of Gregariousness. One of the most surprising differences between top salespeople and those ranking in the bottom one-third of performance is their level of gregariousness (preference for being with people and friendliness). Overall, top performers averaged 30 percent lower gregariousness than below average performers.
Selling Style Impact: Dominance. Dominance is the ability to gain the willing obedience of customers such that the salesperson's recommendations and advice are followed. The results indicate that overly friendly salespeople are too close to their customers and have difficulty establishing dominance.
6. Lack of Discouragement. Less than 10 percent of top salespeople were classified as having high levels of discouragement and being frequently overwhelmed with sadness. Conversely, 90 percent were categorized as experiencing infrequent or only occasional sadness.
Selling Style Impact: Competitiveness. In casual surveys I have conducted throughout the years, I have found that a very high percentage of top performers played organized sports in high school. There seems to be a correlation between sports and sales success as top performers are able to handle emotional disappointments, bounce back from losses, and mentally prepare themselves for the next opportunity to compete.
7. Lack of Self-Consciousness. Self-consciousness is the measurement of how easily someone is embarrassed. The byproduct of a high level of self-consciousness is bashfulness and inhibition. Less than five percent of top performers had high levels of self-consciousness.
Selling Style Impact: Aggressiveness. Top salespeople are comfortable fighting for their cause and are not afraid of rankling customers in the process. They are action-oriented and unafraid to call high in their accounts or courageously cold call new prospects.

Not all salespeople are successful. Given the same sales tools, level of education, and propensity to work, why do some salespeople succeed where others fail? Is one better suited to sell the product because of his or her background? Is one more charming or just luckier? The evidence suggests that the personalities of these truly great salespeople play a critical role in determining their success.

The Three Ps of Online Indulgence

But you can manage the personal and professional risks of online indulgence by remembering the 3 Ps: Principled, Private and Planned. Here's what they entail:

Principled: If you're using the Internet to shield yourself from judgement by friends, family, colleagues or community, make sure you're not also violating your own moral code. Identify the ethical principles or standards you're going to adhere to in your private activities, whether it's the ten commandments, the Golden Rule, or a simple "don't hurt anybody." Be clear about the secret parts of yourself that you want to encourage, and find room for them to grow online, while avoiding sites or people who legitimate behaviors you know are unhealthy or wrong. You can take a principled approach to even the murkiest parts of your online life if you:

Write down your core principles for online behavior (or bookmark someone else's) so you can check in periodically and make sure you're not violating your ethical own bottom line.
Seek out online communities and activities that support parts of you that stay hidden offline but need a voice: gay teens, cancer fighters, aspiring poets and rape survivors are just some of the groups who have found a new source of understanding online.
Talk with your partner about what's okay for you to keep private online, and make sure you are both taking the same precautions to keep your private activities shielded from one another or the world.
Cut off communications if an online pal insists on asking for (or giving you) permission to indulge in behaviors that are unhealthy, hurtful or against your conscience.

Private: If parts of your online life conflict with your offline life and responsibilities, create a private online identity without links to any identifiable information (i.e. don't connect it to your Facebook account, main email address, social security number or credit card). This reduces your risk of exposure, and prevents you from inappropriately exploiting your professional status or privileges. Keeping your private online life private is not a small job, however: it takes real effort, knowledge and skill to achieve a reasonably secure level of anonymity (or pseudonymity) online. Some practices you may want to consider:

Choose a web browser that offers enhanced privacy options, and use it along with a proxy server.
In fact, get used to using an anonymous proxy server to keep the web sites you're visiting from tracking your IP address, and automatically delete your search history, cookies, logins etc. whenever you log out and/or at the end of every day, or erase your tracks manually.
Read up on the basics of Internet privacy by visiting the web sites of Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and follow their blogs for the latest news on technology or policy changes that could affect your online privacy.

Planned: Don't let a secret life creep up on you. Make sure you're making clear and conscious decisions about why and how you're keeping it on the down low. Remember that there's no such thing at 100% private. Anticipate the possibility of exposure. If you couldn't handle the legal, professional and emotional consequences of revelation, don't do it at all.

Notice the accounts and activities you are taking pains to hide (like the browser window you suddenly close when someone else walks into the room), and make sure you are handling them ethically and responsibly.
Whenever you make mistakes in patrolling the boundaries of your private online life (like accidentally leaving your browser logged into your secret email account), ask yourself if it's a sign that you want to change those boundaries.
If you're a senior decision-maker, think carefully about any private activities that, if exposed, would affect the share price, reputation or capacity of your organization.
If what you are doing privately online would have significant consequences for the people you love, you need their consent.

The point of the 3 Ps is to help manage privacy, not enable sneakiness. There are many legitimate reasons why people keep parts of their life separate or private, whether it's to find support for a stigmatized problem (like mental illness), community for a marginalized identity (like being transgender) or conversation around an embarrassing interest or topic (like your passion for Rod Stewart). The ability to connect anonymously is one of the Internet's great opportunities, and following the 3 Ps is the best way to ensure you don't abuse it. Do not employ these practices for behavior that is hurtful, unethical or illegal, or to avoid the consequences of bad decisions.

Of course, there is a fourth P in this story. But after all the references it's received in the Weinergate coverage, let's allow that P to simply remind us why the other 3 matter.

http://blogs.hbr.org/samuel/2011/06/in-the-juiciest-political-sex.html

Three Smart Moves Brought LinkedIn This Far

I joined LinkedIn in 2007. I can't remember why. After connecting to a few dozen people, I still couldn't fathom what the purpose of LinkedIn was, especially for an already-established professional. Yes, I knew these people, but to what end were we connecting on this site? But for some reason I stayed on for the ride, more as an experiment than in any effort to gain value. I was fascinated with the platform this company was building and wondered what its business model might be. Even after I gave up wondering, I kept adding links.
Fast forward four years and LinkedIn is a public company with a market cap of more than $9 billion and revenues of about $400 million. I'm shaking my head at how lucky its founder Reid Hoffman turned out to be. At the same time, I'm beginning to appreciate how he and his colleagues were smart.
First, why lucky? LinkedIn didn't create the very quiet tech market it was born into, but it definitely benefited from it. In 2003 there were no tech IPOs at all. The bubble had burst and no one was watching the young startup. Facebook was not a commercial entity until a year later. This gave the company time to stay under the radar as it figured out what it wanted to be when it grew up. To understand how valuable that can be, note the very different experience of Netscape, which went public in 1995. As I describe in more detail elsewhere (in my new book, Smart or Lucky?), Netscape had little time to plan its future before embarking upon one of Silicon Valley's most spectacular public offerings — and that's a big part of why it suffered one of tech history's most spectacular falls.
But LinkedIn's luck is only part of its story. There were lots of companies who started around the same time and never found a sustainable business model. Three smart moves in particular kept it from being a flash in the proverbial pan. They might even enable it to become a truly important company:
Smart Move #1. It shifted the focus quickly to infrastructure, relationships, and planning. Startups usually have their basis in a novel idea, and often the visionaries behind them want to keep coming up with cool ideas. LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman was not that kind of founder. In his previous role as an executive vice president of PayPal, he was the guy in charge of external relationships and the payment infrastructure that was the heart of PayPal's intellectual property. He came to LinkedIn with an understanding of what really matters to execution.
Smart Move #2. It drew up, and followed, a roadmap. In LinkedIn's early days, no one really understood what the company was all about. Again, it preceded Facebook. This was before the world went crazy with social networking. But it is clear that there was a well-defined roadmap in place. Hoffman and his team understood that there was a need for a real business-focused connection model, since in business, success is often driven by "who you know." And they had thought through what it would take to create a network to translate what people do in the physical world to the digital world. Revenue would come from advertising and from people subscribing to a tool for finding new business contacts. Certain steps would have to be taken to attract a critical mass of participants to the network, at which point its value would be easily recognizable and self-sustaining. The business plan behind LinkedIn would use this critical mass to build payment based services and advertising. It sounds obvious to say a startup should have a well thought out plan, but in fact this distinguishes LinkedIn from hundreds of other social networking companies that might have been just as lucky in other respects.
Smart Move #3. It stuck with its target market. Fast-growing companies often succumb to the temptation to expand into too many markets, rather than miss an opportunity. There were probably many helpful critics who told LinkedIn executives that they should add in a consumer play — after all, Facebook was growing like a weed. LinkedIn didn't do it. Sticking to the business plan of targeting the business market was the smart move.
Even the smartest moves, unfortunately, can't buy a company enduring success in a complex and volatile market. LinkedIn will have to make sure the next moves it makes are just as good. Now that it has cash in the bank, it will have to acquire the right companies that will help it expand its services and market reach. (It would do well to focus on businesses that are already well accepted inside enterprises highly concerned with security and privacy.) And it will have to integrate these acquisitions effectively — always a dicey proposition, and not to be left to luck.

Judith Hurwitz is President & CEO of Hurwitz & Associates and focuses on the business benefits of emerging enterprise technology including cloud computing, service management, and information management. She is the author of five books, including the recently published Smart or Lucky? How Technology Leaders Turn Chance into Success.

The Most Valuable People in Your Network

Too often new collaborative technologies — though intended to connect employees seamlessly and enable work to get done more efficiently — are misused in ways that impede innovation and hurt performance.
Age-old wisdom suggests it is not what but whom you know that matters. Over decades this truism has been supported by a great deal of research on networks. Work since the 1970s shows that people who maintain certain kinds of networks do better: They are promoted more rapidly than their peers, make more money, are more likely to find a job if they lose their own, and are more likely to be considered high performers.
But the secret to these networks has never been their size. Simply following the advice of self-help books and building mammoth Rolodexes or Facebook accounts actually tends to hurt performance as well as have a negative effect on health and well-being at work. Rather, the people who do better tend to have more ties to people who themselves are not connected. People with ties to the less-connected are more likely to hear about ideas that haven't gotten exposure elsewhere, and are able to piece together opportunities in ways that less-effectively-networked colleagues cannot.
If bigger is not better in networks, what is the actual impact of social media tools in the workforce? The answer: They are as likely to actually hurt performance and engagement as they are to help — if they simply foist more collaborative demands on an already-overloaded workforce. In most places, people are drowning in collaborative demands imposed by meetings, emails, and phone calls. For most of us, these activities consume 75% to 90% of a typical work week and constitute a gauntlet to get to the work we must do. In this context, new collaborative technologies, when not used appropriately, are over-loading us all and diminishing efficiency and innovation at work.
One study conducted by my colleagues Peter Gray of the University of Virginia and Sal Parise and Bala Iyer of Babson College that will soon be published in MIS Quarterly suggests that the same kind of networks important in face-to-face interactions also matter in social media. Peter, Sal and Bala studied a social-bookmarking system in a major consultancy. These applications, increasingly used in many knowledge-intensive work settings, allow employees to search on website bookmarks and tags other employees have made to their favorite websites and so see what these colleagues have been reading lately. It turns out this is a low-cost way of sharing information and knowledge that is rapidly overcoming many of the drawbacks of older generations of knowledge-management systems.

Peter, Sal, and Bala sought to discover whether these systems could help employees be more innovative at work by helping them connect ideas from different contexts. What they found was that innovativeness had nothing to do with the number of bookmarks accessed or even the number of people an individual connected to through the bookmarking system. Employees that were rated as more innovative didn't have bigger networks; rather, they had more bridging ties — ties that connected them to other employees who were themselves not connected.

The better-rated employees had networks that looked like Susan's — not Richard's — below:


Practically, this means we need to think about where our electronic links are taking us. If we are circulating too much with people we have known forever or people who themselves are all spending time in the same meetings and interactions, then we are not getting the performance impact we can from social-media tools. Bigger is not better. The magic lies in the new ideas and perspectives that can come from connections into different networks.
Rob Cross is an associate professor of management in the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia. His research focuses on how relationships and informal networks in organizations can be analyzed and improved to promote performance and innovation.

Why Can't Kmart Be Successful While Target and Walmart Thrive?

What drives some companies to succeed while others languish? Successful companies develop a system of a few truly unique capabilities that help them create differentiated value for their chosen customers.
Retailers provide many case studies in capabilities-driven success, one of the most compelling of which is the big discounter triad of Walmart, Target and Kmart. And in this fourth-quarter retail season, we thought it would be helpful to take a closer look at what really distinguishes these competitors because they provide valuable insight into the key components of a winning corporate strategy.
We believe that all successful companies — Walmart and Target included — know precisely how they provide value for customers. They make a deliberate choice about their "way to play" in the market, guided primarily by what those companies do uniquely well: their distinctive capabilities. We define capabilities not as "people capabilities," but as the interconnected people, knowledge, systems, tools and processes that create differentiated value.
They then select a set of products and services that best leverage those unique capabilities and optimally suit their chosen way to play. Most important, they avoid markets, products or services that require new or disparate capabilities, and thus threaten the company's focus.
Focus for us, therefore, is not about picking just one market, but rather about choosing one coherent way of competing. The true story about Walmart's and Target's success is that they have gone to great lengths to focus internally on building capabilities and product offerings that suit their way to play. Kmart, by contrast, has failed to develop a unique or differentiated way to play, and all that goes with it.
Let's take a closer look.
Walmart's success doesn't just stem from impressive logistics, aggressive vendor management and its position as a low-cost retailer. What really underlies Walmart's advantage is a coherent and differentiated approach to the market.

• Their well-defined way to play focuses on "always low prices" for a wide range of consumer items, from food to prescriptions to electronics.
• They support their low-cost way to play with an integrated system of capabilities, including: real estate acquisition; no frills store design; and superior supply chain management involving among others expert point-of-sale data analytics.
• Their product and service mix is kept tightly aligned with their way to play and capabilities system: avoiding big-ticket items (e.g., furniture or large appliances) where it has no cost advantage, or where new service capabilities might be required. And it innovates constantly within its chosen constraints: e.g., tailoring product assortments to local trends.

Target caters to a similar "money-saving" market, but offers a very different value proposition, focuses on different capabilities and has a different product portfolio.

• Target's way to play emphasizes design-forward apparel and home decor for image-conscious consumers. Everything from store layout to advertising to inventory conveys an eye for style.
• Its capabilities system supports this way to play with image advertising, "mass prestige" sourcing (with the use of private brand and exclusive offerings), pricing, and the management of urban locations.
• In product and service mix, Target is similar to Walmart in many ways, but Target satisfies the needs of its younger, image-conscious shoppers by stocking more furniture, clothing and exclusive designer merchandise than Walmart.

Kmart, the least successful of the group, is struggling to define its way to play, describing itself as a "mass merchandising company that offers customers quality products through a portfolio of exclusive brands and labels." Yet, that definition could describe just about any retailer. As a Walmart customer, you know you'll save money and still feel welcome. At Target, you know you'll get fashionable products at prices that feel reasonable. What, then, is Kmart's niche?
Walk through a Kmart store and you'll discover designers like Jaclyn Smith in the low-budget ambience of a warehouse. They carry Kenmore appliances, which may require high-touch sales assistance that many Sears customers expect and many Kmart stores lack. In short, Kmart has not established an identifiable way to play that reflects both customers' needs and its own capabilities. Harry Cunningham, the founder of Kmart, allegedly admitted that Sam Walton (the founder of Walmart) "not only copied our concepts, he strengthened them."
The lack of a clear concept about how to reach the market, in our view, is the single most important factor in explaining why Kmart's fortunes have fallen so far, compared to its two rivals. Without a clear way to play, and capabilities to support it, a company cannot achieve the coherence it needs to truly excel at what it does, and thus outpace competitors.

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/12/why_cant_kmart_be_successful_w.html?

You Can't Multitask, So Stop Trying

The year end is a busy time for almost everyone. As we use our smartphones to confirm online gift orders, we're also trying to wrap up those work tasks we should have finished in November. We feel overwhelmed but also productive, pleased with our ability to juggle so many things. In reality, however, that sort of behavior makes us less effective in our jobs and our lives.
Based on over a half-century of cognitive science and more recent studies on multitasking, we know that multitaskers do less and miss information. It takes time (an average of 15 minutes) to re-orient to a primary task after a distraction such as an email. Efficiency can drop by as much as 40%. Long-term memory suffers and creativity — a skill associated with keeping in mind multiple, less common, associations — is reduced.

We have a brain with billions of neurons and many trillion of connections, but we seem incapable of doing multiple things at the same time. Sadly, multitasking does not exist, at least not as we think about it. We instead switch tasks. Our brain chooses which information to process. For example, if you listen to speech, your visual cortex becomes less active, so when you talk on the phone to a client and work on your computer at the same time, you literally hear less of what the client is saying.
Why do we try?
Our brains are wired to respond strongly to social messaging, whether it is verbal or non-verbal. Knowing and improving our status, expanding awareness of our group, is important to us, and as a result information that helps us do that is often processed automatically, no matter what else we are trying to focus on.
Remote distractions, the ones aided by technology, are often unaware of current demands on us. People who call you at work, send you emails, or fire off texts can't see how busy you are with your current task. Nor can Twitter feeds or email alerts. As a result, every communication is an important one that interrupts you.
Also, we crave access to more information because it makes us comfortable. People tend to search for information that confirms what they already believe. Multiple sources of confirmation increase our confidence in our choices. Paradoxically, more information also leads to discomfort, because some of it might be conflicting. As a result, we then search for more confirmatory information.
What can we do about it?
Technological demands are here to stay. What can you do to avoid overload?
First, make an effort to do tasks one at a time. Stick with one item until completion if you can. If attention starts to wane (typically after about 18 minutes), you can switch to a new task, but take a moment to leave yourself a note about where you were with the first one. Then give the new task your full attention, again for as long as you can.
Second, know when to close your door. In the "old days," people did this when they had to work hard on something. Doing the same thing to the electronic equivalent is perhaps even more important if you want to be productive and creative. Set aside time when people know you are going to focus.
Third, admit that not all information is useful. Consider which communications are worthy of interrupting you, and what new data you should seek out. When doing a Google search, ask if you are just accessing links that confirm what you already believe or those that challenge those beliefs. Similarly, know the difference between social networks, which are likely to confirm your choices and therefore make you feel good, and knowledge networks, which might challenge them, and therefore help you make a better decision.

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/12/you_cant_multi-task_so_stop_tr.html?

Why It's Better to Be Smart and Wrong than Just Silent

I'm always amazed when I hear about smart, talented people going to their supervisors to ask for guidance using phrases like, "What do you think I should do?" Or, "How should I...?"
Let's assume that you've gotten to where you are in life precisely because you're smart, well-educated and have considerable experience in your field. Or, you're young, ambitious and a good problem-solver. Either way, the question, "How should I ____?" should never leave your lips.
As a young professional or junior executive, it's not crazy to think you won't know what to do all of the time. Having limited or bad information is a reality many of us face on a regular basis. What we do in that situation, however, is up to us.
When you're not sure what to do or how to proceed, don't start with a blank slate and ask for help. Instead, start with what you do know, state your intended direction (and rationale behind it) and then get the buy-in or feedback of your manager. I've suggested this before, but here's an example of how it could work:
Meet Jonathan, a young analyst at an accounting firm. Jonathan was working on building out financial projections for a start-up business and he was stumped. Jonathan didn't have good information for making revenue growth or profit margin assumptions. It would be easy for Jonathan to get frustrated and just call up his boss and ask him what to do.
But if I'm Jonathan's boss, I don't want to do the legwork for him to figure out what he should do. I want him to come to me with an opinion. I want him to put a stake in the ground and give me an idea of what he thinks he should do. I want him to lay out his argument for or against going in a certain direction or using a certain set of assumptions, and then get my feedback or opinion on whether that's the right course of action.
Let's say Jonathan comes to me and says:

I want to talk to you about the financial projections for the Zeller project. There isn't much information available from Zeller to help us build out revenue growth rates and profit margins. However, I've looked at some comparable companies, and I think a revenue growth rate of 4% a year is reasonable and a profit margin of 25% is a good ballpark number, and I think we should go with that. How does that sound to you?

If Jonathan is right and I agree with him, he's just showed me how smart he is.
If I disagree with him, he's still done himself a favor by demonstrating his thought process and making his opinion heard.
Here's what I might say:

Actually, Jonathan, I think 4% is probably low. Based on the company's product development efforts, I think you should assume a more aggressive growth rate of about 7% and hold margins constant at 22%.

How does Jonathan sound now? Does he sound dumb because I disagreed with him? He doesn't. Jonathan's analysis turned out to be wrong, but at least it had merit — it was well thought-out and based on research.
Even though I didn't agree with Jonathan, at least I knew he put some thought into the problem. His suggestion also likely made it easier for me to respond and give advice. I didn't have to run the initial numbers myself; I could simply integrate the additional information I had at my disposal to come up with a better answer. In effect, he helped me get part way towards the right answer.
Contrast this conversation with the one is which Jonathan comes to me and says:

I need some help with the Zeller financial projections. There's limited information available and I don't know what assumptions to use for revenue growth rates and profit margins.

What can I possibly think of Jonathan in this conversation? Is he smart? I have no idea. Is he lazy? Maybe. Is he a good problem solver? Your guess is as good as mine.
I'd take the guy whose wrong any day over the one who comes to me with nothing at all and asks me to do his work for him. So don't keep quiet. Put yourself out there. Think through your issue, come up with some thoughts or ideas around what to do and then put a stake in the ground. Being wrong isn't terrible. Being passive is.

Obama and the High Cost of High Expectations

There's an old saying that putting someone on a pedestal makes it a lot easier to get kicked in the head. I mention this because two years ago many voters put Barack Obama on a very high pedestal. Expectations went through the roof as crowds of people (even outside the U.S.) shouted that oft-repeated campaign slogan, "Yes we can!" For the first time in many years, Americans foresaw a president who would mobilize the nation to greatness. After the distress of the economic meltdown, Obama represented a fresh start, with new energy, excitement, and hope.
Fast forward to 2010 and the general public is finally realizing that, as president, Obama cannot walk on water. Just one look at his approval ratings says it all:

In less than two years, President Obama's approval rating has gone from 45% to under 30% while his "disapproval" index has climbed from 12% to 45%. And the seemingly solid legislative majority that ushered him in may fall apart after the November elections. Indeed, many voters feel as though they've been "kicked in the head."
Now in fairness to President Obama, almost every president for the past fifty years has fallen in the polls after the first half of his term. It's common for candidates to be elected by making inspiring promises and convincing voters that they can actually make good on them. In other words: Politicians intentionally create high expectations. The realities of governing, however — the trade-offs, compromises, and frustrations — dash cold water on those expectations. And despite any concrete accomplishments, often the disillusioned public tends to focus exclusively on what has not happened. The challenge for the president at this point is to alter the leadership role that he had two years ago: Instead of creating expectations, Obama needs to manage them. And his future success — including whether he wins a second term — may depend on how well he does that.
The same phenomenon occurs in organizations. New executives and managers often start their assignments with a platform of change; project initiators "sell" decision-makers on the benefits and returns of their proposals; stock analysts rate companies based on expectations created for them by the CFO; and consultants are hired because of what they promise. In other words, expectations are part of the currency of decision-making. Just like in an election campaign, if you convince the decision-makers (be they voters or hiring managers) that you can fulfill your promises, you get the job (or contract, investment, stock price, etc.). The challenge arises after you are "elected," and you can't follow through on all your campaign promises.
To reduce the risk of projecting higher expectations than you can deliver, here are three guidelines to keep in mind when creating those expectations in the first place:
Create an expectations map. Don't assume that all expectations are created equally, particularly when there are multiple stakeholders involved. For example, your new boss may be looking for different things than your new subordinates, peers, or customers. So before you commit, take a hard look at the array of expectations and whether they are aligned or contradictory.
Balance stretch with realism. To win a job or assignment you may have to convey a sense of excitement or promise to increase the decision-makers' confidence in your abilities. However, be careful not to over-sell. Think through what it will take to achieve your goals and fulfill expectations — and be prepared to temper those expectations with reality. Decision-makers usually appreciate being told the truth if you do it the right way. For example, companies that announce mergers or acquisitions by talking about the challenges of integration, as well as the benefits, are usually rewarded with higher stock prices.
Manage expectations from beginning to end. Managing expectations is not something to do only after disappointment sets in, or when your numbers go down in the polls. Stay in touch with your stakeholders, keep them apprised of progress, and let them know about the problems you're encountering and the solutions you are trying. It's easier for people to deal with bad news when they know it's coming — and may even help generate solutions. Surprises, on the other hand, will undermine confidence and make it even tougher to move forward.
There's a delicate balance between creating expectations that others will buy and expectations that you can actually fulfill. And if the gap is too great — as it has become with President Obama — then you run the risk of having your reputation (or that of your company) plummet in the eyes of your original supporters.
What's your experience with creating and managing expectations?

http://blogs.hbr.org/ashkenas/2010/10/obama-and-the-high-cost-of-hi.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Military Skill Sets Lead to Organizational Success

What value does the military have for an organization? World class, combat honed, and expansive skill sets in strategic planning, wargaming (competitor-on-competitor role play), competitive intelligence, leader development, rigorous standard enforcement, and innovation in execution are only a few of the cutting edge managerial skill sets that the military brings. Additionally, military veteran-to-CEO success stories such as Ken Hicks (Foot Locker), Bob McDonald (P&G), John Meyer (Acxiom), and Dave Grange (PPD) all credit military ethical foundations, decision making skills, practical leadership, and teamwork, and the focus of life-or-death situations that quickly developed them into decisive leaders focused on excellence, execution, and best-in-class performance.
For the organization, the value of the military-to-organization skill set transition comes when military skills and methodologies are translated into the context that creates the greatest value for the organization. Just because it worked well in combat or worked well for a military organization does not mean that it will do so for a civilian or commercial organization. A military technique must constantly translate the language, context, framework, and effectiveness of the military skills to the organization in which they now serve. Additionally, military skills must further be adapted to the organization as that organization transforms to position itself surrounding the factors of customers, competition, regulation, and other environmental influences. Just like combat, no environment, business model, or customer base is static — effective evolution is a must.
The military has a wide range of skill sets and proficiencies that business needs:
Intelligence: The military excels at systematic and ongoing analysis of competitors as well as how the operating environment influences the outcome and potential success of an operation. Additionally, a uniform, frequent, and ongoing intelligence effort provides a common competitive assessment to an organization. In an organization's leadership, how many leaders have a common view of competitive threats? How often is the competitive analysis updated?
Planning and Preparation: The creation of a timely, comprehensive, and structured plan is the hallmark of military operational planning. Many organizations do this well. However, what most organizations lack is the creation of multiple contingency plans, the use of wargaming or competitor-on-competitor scenarios, and mission rehearsals to ensure a flawless execution.
Execution: This requires the ability to rapidly adjust and improvise when an operation does not go according to plan. The use of Commander's Intent, a military planning and execution framework that describes the commander's description and definition of success, is an essential tool when operating in a dynamic and chaotic environment. When a plan changes, military personnel rapidly adjust their actions using independent action and initiative to meet Commander's Intent.
Team Leadership: The value of good leadership goes beyond the team being led. Good team leadership extends into leadership by example and positive role models that can inspire throughout the organization.
Subordinate Development: The military uses a process known as the performance counseling session employed by the immediate supervisor of a military member to address what soldiers, marines, sailors, or airmen did well, what they need to improve, and the plan of action to make them a better overall contributor. This inherent subordinate development process is of extraordinary value for an organization because it makes every employee in the organization better.
Military veterans and military techniques, when applied properly to an organization's culture and business processes, can bring value to corporations, non-profits, non-governmental organization, and educational institutions. All of these organizations can benefit in vast and immediate ways through the application of military skills to their operations.

http://blogs.hbr.org/frontline-leadership/2010/10/the-value-of-military-skill-se.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Villain or Hero?

The release of the movie The Social Network about Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg raises a good question about who succeeds in business. For the New York Times, quoting Gawker founder Nick Denton, it's the issue of "whether it is possible to be successful without being at least a bit of a brute."
Despite what you have probably read in the leadership literature, the answer to the question is almost certainly "no."
Even Robert Sutton's bestseller, The No Asshole Rule, has a chapter giving the brutes their due. He presents the evidence that bad behavior often leads to gains in personal power and stature as it helps individuals intimidate and vanquish rivals. At the level of organizational effects, he allows that it can motivate perfectionism and bring underperformers to their senses.
To those grudging compliments I would add another line of defense: People committed to an idea are often so focused on getting the idea implemented that they are insensitive to their effects on others. Their focus, persistence, and resilience blocks out anything that stands in their way — and the feelings of others belong in that category. That might be the story with Zuckerberg.
For that matter, it is probably a big part of Laura Esserman's success. She's the breast cancer surgeon and medical visionary who is featured in Chip and Dan Heath's book Switch and in a recent Wall Street Journal article (which by the way only hints at her achievement, because it covers just one of her four profoundly influential initiatives). Esserman is, by her own admission, quick to anger and sometimes hard on those who work with her. With 45,000 women in the U.S. still dying each year from breast cancer, she has an impatience for progress that is hard to begrudge. Sometimes that overrides her desire to be liked.

The fact is that people who get great things done are, like the rest of us, imperfect human beings. They have weaknesses alongside their strengths, and bad days interspersed with the good. They exhibit both appropriate and inappropriate behavior. This reality seems tough to accept. When I teach my course on power, students typically try to infer people's underlying motivations, decide if they "like" the characters we are studying, and determine whether individuals are "good" or "bad." This human leaning toward oversimplified judgments has a number of negative consequences.
First, it retards learning. Once people determine someone is "bad" or "flawed," they think they don't have much to learn from that individual. That's wrong — we should be focused on learning from all people and all situations. This is true because, as the research literature teaches us, we can learn as much from failures as from successes. It's also true because even a deeply flawed leader can have a strength worth emulating.
Second, characterizing multiply-dimensioned human beings into oversimplified categories like "good" or "bad" inevitably can only deceive us. It eliminates nuance and inappropriately reduces the complex nature of human behavior and social life. A reductionist view may make things seem clearer, but provides a not very veridical view of the world and the people with whom we need to interact.
Third, it resists useful revision. Once we categorize someone, we stop paying attention to their actual behavior and instead assimilate everything into our (already formed) judgments. That compromises our ability to interact effectively with those around us. For the "good," we become too trusting, not seeing the possibility of self-interested behavior on their part. As for the "bad," we foreclose the whole idea of interacting with people who might be beneficial.
Fourth and maybe most importantly, our creation of "heroes" or "villains" is potentially immobilizing. Author and teacher Michael Eric Dyson explains this eloquently as he reveals the dangers of lionizing leaders. Dr. Martin Luther King, for example, was flesh and blood, and "investing in King's perfection allows us to dismiss the humanity of the underregarded." Dyson notes that we would be better off to allow the man his imperfections because "with a more nuanced view of King in play, we should be inspired to create social change in our communities, armed with the belief that good things can be done by imperfect people." Similarly, commenting on the revelation that Jesse Jackson fathered a child out of wedlock, Dyson points out that "leaders cannot possibly satisfy the demand for purity that some make" and that leaders who believe they are heroes "often possess a self-satisfaction that stifles genuine leadership." Leaders, and others, who recognize that good and bad runs through every human being, are more likely to be prudent, not overconfident, and more humble.
It may be true that the search for, and construction of, heroes and villains is inevitable in literature and film and in life. One way to experience The Social Network is with the sense that we must consign Mark Zuckerberg to the one category or the other. But if we really want to understand social behavior, well enough to get important things done, we would be well served to recognize that the keys to success will never be as simple as that.

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/10/facebooks_mark_zuckerberg_vill.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29&utm_content=Google+Reader