Your customers as characters

Most organizations exist to sell something - a physical product, or some type of service, or a combination of the two. They spend tremendous amounts of time, energy, and resources creating these product/service offerings, perfecting them as far as it is possible, offering them for sale, identifying the target consumers for these offerings, and finally investing varying amounts of additional time, energy, and resources attempting to convince these consumers to make a purchase.

Sometimes it goes really easily for the provider - the product is new, even revolutionary, or it solves a problem in such a new, elegant, and powerful way that the product seems to sell itself. Think the original iPod, or later, the iPad. Or the product has an embedded, loyal, and rabid fan base just waiting to get the latest or newest version of the product. Think a new installment in a successful movie or video game franchise like Star Wars or even Angry Birds.

But for most products or services on offer, the customer needs some convincing - they have time, flexibility, other competitors' options to consider - the 'sale' is certainly not assured, and the difference between winning and losing often comes down to which not (only) has the better product, but which one actually understands the customer's problem more deeply, and can speak more precisely and convincingly about how their solution can solve that specific problem.

I know that sounds really, really obvious and basic, but I think that all too often providers can lost sight of that simple truism - focused too much, and sometimes single-mindedly on the product or service itself, and not how that product or service would actually exist in the customer's environment. Adding one more feature to the product, tweaking some minor element of the service package, or poring endlessly on ad copy, website design, or the 'tone' of the company Twitter account. When the customer has lots of options and choices, these incremental additions or improvements probably do less to sway decision makers than the providers like to think. Once the 'essential' or expected capabilities or services are present, and in a mature market they usually are, the provider that can connect, almost on an emotional level with the customer has the best chance of winning.

How can providers get better at making that kind of connection, and focus more on solving a problem rather than delivering a product?

This piece, about home furnishing provider IKEA's strategic approach offers at least one suggestion:

Göran Carstedt, president of IKEA North America, summoned his top executives to a large meeting room to share his strategic plan. They arrived prepared for a flashy PowerPoint presentation complete with charts and graphs. Instead, Carstedt told them a story about a mother. He depicted a detailed scene of her and her husband getting two kids off to school in the morning. She gets up, makes coffee, wakes up the children, makes breakfast, and so on. Then he paused and moved to the heart of the matter: “Our strategic plan is to make that family’s life easier by providing them with convenient and affordable household items in an accessible location. Period.

Carstedt, in short, wanted IKEA to enter the scene, to populate it with IKEA-supplied usefulness that customers would appreciate having in their homes as they conducted their daily lives. He wanted his executives, in effect, to write IKEA into their customers’ story in a way that improved the story for the characters that populated it. Brilliant! As Carmen Nobel, senior editor at Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, notes, “IKEA has made very clear choices about who they will be and to whom they will matter, and why."

That, in a nutshell, sums up why people might be inclined to go with an IKEA table or dresser or bed, from among the literally hundreds of available options. Thinking more deeply about how their products interact and exist in the flow of their customer's lives allows IKEA to rise above a simple provider of easily substitutable products. Somehow, just by thinking of themselves as a fundamental an important element in a customer's home, they are freed to think more fully, and holistically about the products and how they will play a role in the customer's story.

A good lesson to take to heart I think, for providers of all kinds of products and services.

Happy Tuesday!

VIDEO - For when you're certain you could do the other guy's job better

It can get pretty tempting to see someone struggling a little bit in a job, or maybe doing fine in a job that you just don't see as very difficult or challenging and think to yourself -

'Look at Jim Bob over there in Marketing or PR or Comms, (doesn't really matter what), anyone could do that job. Heck, they should let ME do that job for a while, I'd show them it's not that hard and I'd get some things done.'

Yep, it's pretty easy to critique from the sidelines, and it's really common, (you know you've done this at least once), to devalue the relative complexity and contribution of functions of the organization that from the outside seem kind of simple, so simple that anyone could do them. Never mind the fact that it is pretty likely some folks in Operations or Logistics are looking at YOU, Mr. or Ms. Talent Pro and are saying the same thing about HR and Recruiting.

Guys are especially guilty of this kind of hubris I think, and nowhere is that kind of misguided confidence/arrogance manifested more completely in the context of sports.  Most guys have played at least some sports in their lives, more watch professional and amateur contests on a regular basis, and still more 'retired' from their chosen sport more than a little disappointed in how far and how successful they actually were as athletes.

It was from this shared experience of frustration, combined with a good dose of the 'He isn't that great/that isn't so hard' I referenced at the top that led to video below, (email and RSS subscribers please click through), a basketball contest between retired journeyman NBA player Brian Scalabrine, and four talented, but definitely amateur players that all, to a man, must have been thinking - 'Scalabrine? He was a bum. He rode the bench for most of his NBA career. I can take him.'

Check the video below, (you don't need to watch the entire thing, a few minutes will give you enough a feel for what went down.

Long story short?  Scalabrine, the 'bum', and during his career one of the worst players in the league, and no longer in what passed for his 'prime', crushed the assorted challengers by a combined score of 44-6. 

And while the challengers were certainly not professional caliber players, they all tried out for the show to play Scalabrine and were vetted as talented amateur players. From the video you can tell they all were actually pretty solid - the kind of guys that probably dominate their local gyms or rec leagues. But up against NBA-level talent, even the last guy on the end of the bench talent, and now too old and slow to keep playing talent, they all were exposed for what they really are, a bunch of guys who now realize, if only a little, what an NBA player can do.

So what? So what that a few playground ball players lost to a just-retired NBA player? What's that got to do with me?

Maybe nothing. 

But for me, well I just like the little reminder that often even the worst guy at a given job might still be pretty talented at that job, and perhaps more importantly, just because a job looks easy doesn't mean it is, and that just anyone could do it.

Congrats White Mamba... 

After the storm is over

Millions of people and organizations continue to deal with the after-effects and devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy.  From the personal tragedies - a number of incredibly unfortunate deaths, injuries, loss of property, business interruptions; to the larger, more macro items like getting air travel resumed, major city mass transit restored, and determining if indeed the superstorm will effect next week's election, the storm will have a lasting and historical impact.

For many organizations in the Eastern part of the country, one of the residual effects has been not just damage to facilities, but also and variously, lack of power or other essential services, the inability for many employees to safely commute to the workplace, and the need for many employees to have significantly increased flexibility as they deal with the storm themselves, (take care of their property, stay home with school-age children, etc.). The fallout from the storm will continue for a while certainly, but eventually things usually return to 'normal'. Offices will re-open, the subways will resume running, kids will go back to school, etc., but for now, many organizations are kind of in a odd middle-ground between full operations and complete shutdown. Where possible, employees are being encouraged, sometimes even directed, to work from home, and are also being supported in their efforts to ensure their homes, families, and property are being attended to in this time of crisis.

In this time of natural disaster, both organizations and employees are being forced to think about work, the workplace, individual needs and responsibilites at home, and the relationships among them very, very differently. And I imagine most organizations, even if they did not have an articulated plan for dealing with a crisis of this magnitude, will eventually emerge in about the same place as they entered. It may take some time to repair damage to facilities, sales might be depressed for a bit as customers have their own issues to deal with, but pretty soon the clean-up will progress to a point where the storm will be behind us, and 'normal' will resume.

But the larger question I think is whether incidents like the recent storm will have a lasting impact on the way that many organizations think about work, how and where it is done, and the needs of their workforces, not just in crisis, but all year long.  

This isn't one of those horrible 'What can we learn about work from Hurricane Sandy' articles. Those are dreadful.

But rather this is just an acknowledgement that in these incredibly trying times for so many people and organizations we can see where necessity has brought out and shone a light on the best attributes of our nature. Whether it was health care professionals going to extraordinary measures to care for their patients, first responders (again) risking their own safety to protect life and property, and the innumerable businesses that have exhibited care, concern, and compassion for their teams - we are left with much to reflect upon.

Let's hope that after the storm has passed and the roads are clear, that we can take some time to think about how we can best continue to care for and support each other not just when unprecedented disaster strikes, but in the normal, mundane, and largest part of our lives. 

I hope everyone reading this is safe and warm and can even manage to have a Happy Halloween.

You look familiar...

Quick - without thinking too hard, or lingering over any of the individual profile pictures too long, take a look at the images below and tell me what would you say you are looking at?

Here are some logical guesses, (assuming you did not actually recognize any of these gents and figure it out already), take a look and pick the one you think is most likely to be correct:

A.  The members of the local school board from the nicest neighborhood in town

B. Your teammates from the Over-40 basketball league from the local YMCA

C. The highest ranking executives at a major, huge, colossal, global corporation

What do you think? Actually, all three options are pretty likely to be accurate, but the correct answer in this case is 'C' - take a look at the original, undoctored image below.

So you've probably sorted out by now the gentlemen pictured above represent the highest ranking executives at everyone's favorite mega-corporation, Apple, in the news this week for announcing a pretty significant shake-up in their executive ranks.

Do you notice anything about the picture?  Maybe that, I don't know, everyone in it looks pretty much like everyone else?

Do you care at all about that?

Does it matter?

Does it not matter because it is Apple, and well, everyone loves their iPhones and iPads?

I wonder.

These might be the next HR roles you need to fill (or perform)

It has become kind of edgy or possibly trendy, (my guess the first three times a new idea is pitched it is edgy, after that it becomes something else, and trendy was the only term I could think of in less than five seconds), to talk about Human Resources in the future in diametrically different contexts that the traditional ones most of us are familiar with. Think about how many times you've read about 'HR is the new PR' or 'HR (and more likely recruiting), is really Sales and Marketing', and even takes that advocate HR as the organization's owners of social media and internal collaboration and productivity initiatives. While sometimes these kinds of analyses and predictions about the evolution of HR are optimistic, (if occasionally sounding a little bit like wishful thinking from veteran HR pros just a little weary of FMLA claims and 401(k) migrations), if they are going to prove true, or at least directionally correct, then there are some implications for the roles that will be required in HR, and naturally, the kinds of skills the HR professional of the (near) future will need to possess.Mark Rothko - Untitled

What might some of those roles and skill sets entail?

Well, that sounds like a hard question, and rather than try to figure it out for myself, I will take the lazy route, and co-opt some examples from a neat piece on the Simply Zesty blog, titled 'The Job Roles You Should Be Hiring For', an examination of the roles, skills, and titles that are sought after in the Digital and Social Marketing space.

Think you know how to staff the HR department of the future? Or perhaps a more important question for you personally - Do you think you have the right skills for the potential evolution of HR?

Well, take a look at some of the roles and skill sets that the Simply Zesty piece thinks the modern digital marketing team needs and then think about your answers: (NOTE: roles and descriptions lifted entirely from this piece, please don't sue me)

Data Analyst - With a large amount of data being collected by brands across social profiles as well as more traditional data-gathering channels such as email marketing or phone lists, there is a pressing need for smart analysis of this data to ensure you reach your customers (employees) in the best way.

Futurologist - This is a slightly more adventurous hire and likely only really feasible for those companies with larger staffing budgets, but it’s an important one. With communications technology developing at the rate it is, there is a demand on companies to stay relevant and also impress their customers with the future-thinking stuff that gets talked about and shared, (by employees, perhaps?)

Designer - Most brands will have a designer or graphic design team already, but it is an important hire even for smaller businesses to bring an element of this in-house. The need for beautiful design for your website (or company career site), or product to live online is more important than ever. Where once it might have been enough to just have a website, then a mobile site, then a Facebook Page and then an app, now there is a need for these to be beautiful and responsive.

Creative Thinker - So not exactly a descriptive job title, but that’s sort of the point. While we get bogged down with the technological aspect of social media, it’s tempting to subject the creative process to the same process as you would approach a technological solution. This is an important role if you want to develop the kind of content that you see dream brands such as Innocent, Nike or Red Bull executing. Creativity should be as high on the agenda as marketing or sales, with proper investment made to get the best ideas you can

A Good Copywriter - One of the highest demands on a social media manager is the expectation that they will suddenly be an able copywriter, able to write just as effectively for email marketing, Twitter updates, Facebook Page copy, websites, online ads, etc. And while many social media managers will of course be more than adequate at this, given the amount of time they will spend across these different formats anyway, there is a huge difference between copy that just does what’s required of it, and copy that makes people stop in their tracks and think. Unless you’re making this a key role in itself, you will always get sub-standard copy that just does the former

There are a couple of other roles listed on the piece, but you get the idea I think.

If the conception, practice, and profession of HR is really going to morph to look more like marketing, PR, and digital advertising, then it seems logical the HR department of the future will at least partially be populated with the kinds of folks in the roles listed above. Whether or not people with those particular sets of skills want to actually reside in HR I suppose is a question for another day.

Today, I will leave you with these, simpler questions: 

So, do you have some or all of those skills on your HR team?

Do you have some or any of those skills yourself?