AbleBrains

Damaging Talent Acqusition Prospects: Over-Assessment

Been thinking a lot lately about effective methods for assessing the quality and fit of talent.  I've also been doing a lot of reading on the subject as the ability to attract and retain great talent is not only critical to the health and welfare of the organization but is one of those foundational skills that every leader needs.  What I've come to realize is that many organizations over assess their potential talent and in so doing, actually lose the very people they are trying to attract.

If you or your team members are doing the following, the wrong criteria for talent assessment may be in play at your organization:

• Are your talent assessors hypercritical of others? Are they unwilling to alter initial perceptions based further evidence?
• Do they miss on slow starters or on folks that are at first less expressive than others?
• Do they select primarily on surface characteristics?
• Do they tend to focus on current needs and expectations without factoring in future growth needs?
• Does the interview cycle take overly long? 

To this last point. Each organization has to find its right water level regarding length of time but DON'T over extend the cycle. Make it long enough so that everyone can vet the candidate but not so long as to drive down interest in the position.  I always wonder if we lose quality candidates because of the length of time it takes to vet a candidate. I assume some organizations use the "interview marathon" as a vetting process in and of its own right but I think that's wrong.  Especially in today's economy.  There's great talent out there and there's a lot of competition for that talent - moving too slowly, no matter what the level doesn't give candidates a good feeling about the speed and agility with which that particular organization moves.

Twitter Downtime: When Expectations Aren't Met

I'm on Twitter and I love it.  I love it because of the multi-threaded, real time social networking it provides me. I love it because of the opportunity to build new relationships with folks such as Sam Lawrence or Gia Lyons or David Armano or Erin Kotecki... I also believe in the customer experience a tool like Twitter provides.   It has multiple easy to use interfaces - that's a good customer experience, heck that's a great customer experience.  I like the extensibility of Twitter, the fact that an ecosystem of tools and related Mashups have sprung up to enhance the overall experience... There is one major problem with the experience tho and you all know what it is - the Twitter dial tone is frequently absent. And there's talk of the Twitterati moving to FriendFeed... why?

Inconsistency is a death knell to any customer experience.

Folks like you and me have expectations... for just about everything. How will our favorite restaurant be tonite?  How much traffic will there be on the roads?  How will our car drive? And how much uptime to expect from our online services?  Everyone has expectations.  Those expectations get set from our total experience with a service or product.  And when expectations are not met, over time they fall below an internal threshold (which only you know what that is) we seek alternatives, in everything in life, everything.  Twitter's downtime issues are no different, its users/customers have expectations around ease of use, portability, extensibility and availability.  Each of these affect the customer experience to more or lesser degrees but availability is a biggy! Twitter is an incredibly sticky tool not only because of its ease of use, portatbility and extensibility but because of the human networks that develop on Twitter - because of the relationships that are there.  But not even these great elements of a customer experience can withstand having our expectation threshold blown. Once doubt is sown, once expectations are missed, trust is blown.

Once trust is blown it doesn't matter if Twitter fixes its availability issues in a week or a year. Its already lost the opportunity it currently has. One might say, its already lost that opportunity for good.  Time will tell.

One Year Old and Not Dead Yet (The Parents)

Yes, our gorgeous triplets, Sydney, Molly and Giselle (listed in Birth Order) are just over one year old and we've survived (just barely).


Now I can't say that this has been the easiest year of my life but it has certainly been one of the most fulfilling.  As a matter of fact its been an 11 year ride so far.  Susan and I had been trying to get pregnant for 10 years before we were blessed. On top of that we also have a teenage son, he's 17, all growed up now and he presents his own set of challenges but being a parent of supertwins (as they are called in the parlance of the day) presents its own unique challenges.  So without further ado, I present to you my top ten list of things I've learned in my first year as a parent of triplets:

1. Don't negotiate with your spouse just do -- the more you do, the chits you will have saved up to negotiate on those days when you really need to :).  Also, both of you are working hard so if you have the energy to get it done, just do it.
2. Play Zone Defense, man on man DOES NOT work - we've tried man on man, "you take Molly, I'll take Giselle" - what about Syd? Woops, you have to play zone and when possible deal with more than one at a time.
3. Let your heart get big - as any of you know when having kids, you're heart swells, well imagine what its like - the love, the caring, the defender in you, how much thats multiplied with more than one - just let it be and enjoy it.
4. Don't get too attached to sleep but grab it when you can- there really is no substitute for a good night's rest, really sleep is in my Top 5 but I've learned to do with less for a period of time, as the girls got older we actually got to sleep more but I am more fulfilled and tired at the end of a day with them then any 18 hour work day could ever do to me.
5. The problem with Triplets is that someone always has a problem -- Giselle is hungry, ok got that, Molly is tired - ok got that, Sydney needs a change - ok done, you see, its never one and done.  There is always someone that needs attention - (play zone)
6. Get in Shape - we have 2 sets of stairs in our house and there are a lot of steps in each stairwell - when I go up and down - usually ten times a day, I'm carrying over 20lbs in each arm.  Staying in shape and staying healthy is good for you and essential for them.
7. Love your family but don't demand their help - let them give what they can give - I say this with all the love in my heart.  We love our relatives on both sides but really our families have no idea of the immensity of the work involved in taking care of three infants.  And we accept that and grateful for the help they have given us but you need to seek out other families with multiples if you're to learn how to do this right.
8. Burn out will happen - yup, both Sue and have each had our burn out periods, where you're just not thinking the way you should to resolve issues. When that happens the  other takes over.
9. No one thinks they can do this but everyone can - as we say to people who say to us, "better you than me" or "how do you possibly do it" our response is - what are you going to do, give them back?
10. I now truly understand the term "labor of love" - because that's what it is but to get all those smiles everyday, and kisses and to see them develop, its worth every bottle, every diaper, every trip to Costco (yuck!)

ITSMA Take it up a notch! Personalize Your Segmentation Approach

Chris Koch over at the IT Services Marketing Association has a recent piece on Segmentation/Personalization. Frankly, the piece was a little vague in that regard. While the article raises important issues I think it misses the mark:

Customer segmentation in most companies is starting to look like a hairy knuckle dragger, mired in a Stone Age era defined mostly by demographics. The successor on the evolutionary scale, segmentation by  vertical, is so commonplace that it is going to win as many battles for business as a Bronze Age spear.

I couldn't disagree more with this assertion.  The marketing scales have shifted dramatically over the last few years, with marketing as "science" far outweighing, marketing as "art."  Tools such as attitudinal segmentation, conjoint analysis along with measurements like Net Promoter Score are just a few of the arrows in the marketing quiver today that have moved marketing into the 21st century with a scientific hyper-targeting capable approach.

But then the piece goes on to talk about the need for personalization in B2B and how there is "a war between traditional and new marketers in B2B."  Again, I disagree. There is no war. Companies are simply on different points of the adoption curve but most if not all organizations "get it" .. they understand the need to be more scientific in their approach to their marketing.  Further, what I was expecting to see but didn't was how segmentation can be leveraged today to drive your web personalization approach.

Clearly a well-defined segmentation strategy is a cornerstone of a personalization effort.  If you understand your attitudinal segments and you understand how to deliver content that is specific to each segment, voila, you have yourself a personalization strategy.

Further, the article makes the following argument:

But as B2B marketers move to personalization—or personas, or role-based marketing, or whatever else you want to call it—they are encountering a big problem. B2B ain’t like consumer marketing. It is schizoid. The B2B “buyer” is really many people, from the CEO to the business user, from the CIO to the programmer. With so many different constituencies in the purchasing process (never mind the installation and long-term usage processes) and with many overlapping interests across these many groups (good project managers are interested in business value, just like the CFO), marketers can drive themselves crazy and drain their meager budgets pretty quickly.

B2B marketing to my way of thinking is not "schizoid." At any point in time during an enterprise buying cycle on the web, you are usually engaged with one specific individual. That one individual indeed collaborates with others and you have to make sure that you contextualize your arguments for the individual you are "speaking" to as well as being able to provide the collaboration capabilities so that they can jointly evaluate your solution at the appropriate time.  Remember, companies don't buy, people within companies buy.

And yes, Chris is right that there are multiple individuals that each play a role in the buying cycle, the researcher, the LOB head, the functional head, the C-level decision maker etc... and the way to deal with this "group personalization" effort is to understand where in the buying cycle each corporate prospect is at any one time. Where they are will dictate whose involved for the most part and will help you adjust your personalization strategy accordingly.

The Socio-Politcal Components of Learning

Bruce Nussbaum writes an incredibly thoughtful piece on the failure of OLPC.

The OLPC has consistently been lauded in the US in terms of its design and its technology, not its underlying education pedagogy. But it is the pedagogy that has always been the crux of the experiment and it is the pedagogy, in the end, that proved unacceptable to governments around the world because they felt it insulted and challenged them.

The lesson here is that however brilliant the innovation, it needs to be appropriate to the context and the culture. It needs to fit in and not be imposed. And it needs coalitions, teams, to support it. In fact, in the case of education, which is extremely politically sensitive in every country, OLPC should have developed both the design of the computer and the pedagogy with the Indian and Chinese teachers and administrators, not for them.

Without the implicit and explicit support of both the governed and the governing, social welfare initiatives, however beneficent, are doomed to failure.  Especially one as impactful as to suggest in some measure, bypassing the educational systems supporting 2.4 billion people in China and India alone.  Although OPLC embraced the constructionist theories of learning as part of the OPLC development strategy, (which is good because these theories have cross-cultural applicability), it seems that "selling" this applicability wasn't part of OPLC's "goto market" strategy.

Piaget, through the study of his own as well as other children created Cognitive - Development Theory. He proposed that children's thinking is qualitatively different than adults and he successfully demonstrated that children need to construct or reconstruct  knowledge in order to learn, therefore they need rich opportunities to interact with the physical world and with their peers. Papert on the other hand, also a constructionist, focuses not so much on the qualitative differences in learning at the various developmental stages but on the "art of learning", how children learn to learn and how children engage in conversation (ironic eh?) to drive self-directed learning. 

Self directed learning is a critical element of development but is just one of many educational vehicles which fuel a child's development.   Reflecting back on the the Chinese and Indian educational systems, surely they are capable of educating their youth, but the OPLC project would have made such self-directed constructive learning much more powerful.  Further, while both Piaget's and Papert's theories hold universal applicability, there are cultural differences, and perhaps the OPLC team did not do enough to place those differences in context of the specific cultures they were targeting.  Research suggests that it is possible to adjust for these cultural differences.

Starbucks Customer Experience Redux

A LOT has been written about the Starbucks Customer Experience and the companies' return to basics... re-training all employees on the core customer experience values that the company has driven in the past. Well I gotta tell ya, no amount of customer experience training makes up for a lack of product that is your bread and butter. 

Today, I went to catch the 8:03 train from New Canaan to Grand Central.  There is a little coffee shop right in the station and a Starbucks across the street.  I chose the Starbucks today because I wanted an extra strong coffee this AM.  I get on the line and notice its not really moving... hmmmm no announcements, no information being given out...

CE FAUX PAS NUMBER ONE - keep your customers informed!  Bad news is worse than NO News... ok, finally get to the front of the line, ask for my large coffee with a shot of espresso.. "oh Sir, we don't have any coffee right now but if you wait 5-10 minutes it should be no problem"... I got to the front of the line @ 8AM, train leaves @ 8:03... sorry, and I dashed, just getting to the train as the doors closed.   

CE FAUX PAS NUMBER TWO - ALWAYS, HAVE YOUR CORE PRODUCT AVAILABLE.   This Starbucks does a HUGE commuter business and really takes home the bacon on their commuter traffic.. so to not be able to support those customers (i'm not the only one who was left high and coffee dry) is not putting the customer at the center of your business and its not going to drive customer loyalty. Now I feel, "gee, what if they run out again tomorrow, I think I will just play it safe and buy my coffee at the station."

So...
CE Suggestion number 1:  You know those 12 cup "travel packs" that you sell?  Fill a few of them and keep them on hand for short falls just as this.

CE Suggestions number 2: Create a "Commuter Line", for those of us dashing for a train, we show our ticket, get on the line and get fast tracked service.  Think of it as an extension to your loyalty program

CE Suggestion Number 3: There really is no excuse for running out of brewed coffee, suggest that you look at the process and management of this particular Starbucks and refine.

During these rush rush times Starbucks has the opportunity to deliver a little (or big) cup of joy during the morning rush.. and that is afterall what they are selling... what a missed opportunity to drive affinity for their brand. Especially to non-fans such as myself.

Apple's Unique Place in the Market

Charlie Wood writes a thoughtful piece on why Apple (AAPL) doesn't face the classic Innovator's Dilemma posed by Clay Christenson in which:

Incumbent vendors typically compete by continually adding performance (typically in the form of new features) eventually overshooting the requirements of their target market and providing an opportunity for upstart competitors to provide a lower-cost "good enough" solution

Charlie posits that Apple has found a loop hole in the Innovator's Dilemma by competing on Design rather than functionality alone.

Their products feel right. And to their customers, "good enough" design will never be compelling, regardless of how high Apple sets the bar.

Yes, Apple leverages design.  But I believe Apple is placing a premium on something else, not Design.  To my way of thinking the that factor is the Apple Customer Experience. The company has truly put the customer at the center of everything that they do, from product development -- yes using design to create compelling, cool, and fun products that make the customer feel good - to customer support -- how much fun is it to go to a "Genius Bar" and oh by the way, continuing to immerse customers in Apple lore, culture and products throughout the experience, to the overall experience of visiting an Apple Store - either brick and mortar or online.

Design only gets you part of the way there.  Enterprises can create compelling hardware and software designs and can leverage design thinking to create novel solutions to big problems.  But if you leverage design with the ultimate goal of creating an innovative customer experience, that's the holy grail for building sustainable, innovative enterprises. Because when you put your customers at the center of everything you do, even things like product innovation which pleases your market, comes easier.

Only Marketing With Demographics? C'mon add some Fries to that Order

Robert Gorell over at grokdot.com  makes the argument that Social Ads leveraging Demographics for targeting is "silly" in that it really doesn't provide you with the precise targeting you require to drive the conversion rates we expected to see in this rich social world of ours. 

I was at the Facebook launch of Social Ads last November. Robert reminded me in his post of what  Zuckerberg said,

With Facebook you will be able to select exactly the audience you want to reach, and we will only show your ads to them. We know exactly what gender someone is, what activities they are interested in, their location, country, city or town, interests, gender [etcetera, etcetera]

Now, I've been a big proponent of Social Ads and the types of demographics it serves up for targeting.  However, its missing a critical element.  Attitudinal Segmentation.  Yeah, yeah, here goes Steve talking a about segmentation again, when will he stop.  I won't :) After all its not really a big deal that I have all these demographics at my finger tips to market to my constituencies. If I can't segment then into groups on a continuum of not only how likely they are to buy from me but also understand what personalized and relevant messaging they need as part of their conversation with me, then I'm flushing money down the marketing drain.

Attitudinal segmentation is the most powerful arrow in the marketing quiver today.  So why is it under-leveraged?  Because its actually the most scientific of the marketing sciences and its not very "creative" in the way we typically think of marketing.   So I think old school marketers tend to shy away from it.  In the B2B high tech space companies like Microsoft, Dell, Apple and SAP use attitudinal to find  not only the companies most likely to buy from them but also to understand what's critical to say during those conversations.

C'mon, what do you have to lose? Just customers.

Elemental Marketing: Designing Sociable Media

Ever have a term buzzing around in your head, & not sure why? Well I do now and I'm actually writing this post ass backwards, starting with the title and seeing where it takes me. You see, I'm praying in front of the laptop god hoping it takes me some where good, and I've been praying for guidance :) as I compile the strategies and tactics around SAP's marketing social media strategy. 

Out of this naval gazing, I've come to realize that this really is a an exercise in Elemental Marketing.  What media components and tactics should be combined at their most elemental - most fundamental levels to create something new and drive greater intimacy between SAP and its customers.  And these Elements align to what David Armano likes to call Micro interactions.  Like David, I'm a firm believer that an experience a customer has with a brand or with any one for that matter is the sum of the cumulative interactions (check out my post on the value of micro-experiences) they have with that brand over time.  Each micro-experience has to deliver value and provide an incrementally positive state of being for that customer.

And these elements need to be made "Sociable"  -- that is both paid and unpaid media, traditional and non-traditional must be made to work together, to coalesce into a 360 degree experience for a customer. Whether its social media delivering that experience or something else.   Being Sociable is more than being Social its as i said, all elements working together to deliver a superior experience to a customer.  To my way of thinking, Media being Sociable is more important than it being Social.  So my thoughts have moved significantly on this.  I was very focused on delivering a killer Social Media strategy for the Marketing team at SAP. No more. I'm focused on delivering a killer Sociable Media strategy... for sure, Social Media tactics are a key part of this strategy but my focus has shifted to not only the strategies and tactics but how sociable, how they fit together, derive synergies from one another and truly be a Whole greater than the sum of its parts.