A delicate balance between efficiency and exploration

You are SO busy.

You find yourself deleting every incoming email that isn't absolutely necessary to read. Maybe it has become your policy to do so.

You've become great at saying no – to every committee, volunteer opportunity, maybe even every industry podcast.

You have lunch at your desk.

You put off meeting the person from the company or organization down the street (or across the state) who thinks you may have working synergy. Hey, you don't even take the phone call.

The fact is, you may save yourself valuable minutes every day.

But you, and we all, have lost something, too, and that is the freedom to stretch your mind and enlarge your base, grow your idea bank and enrich your network of people, ideas and opportunities.

When I started van Schouwen Associates way back in 1985, it was still relatively easy to get a meeting with a prospective client, even if the time wasn't right to do business. People were comfortable talking for a few minutes, and holding out the possibility that they might someday work together – or not. They read materials sent to them – even, sometimes, direct mail flyers! They accepted phone calls.

Now, many people find themselves the recipients of too much of nearly everything… from emails, texts, calls, and social media alerts to demands on time, talents and resources. In many professional disciplines, we're expected to do more with less, respond faster, create better results, and to avoid mistakes and waste, at all times and at all costs. It's hard even to take a vacation day "unplugged."

But… again. We've lost something. It would be great to make room, talk with different people, listen to new ideas, have contact with groups from which we may learn, or may just enjoy.

Here's a proposal: Where you can, and where it may add some value or color (to your day or your life), I urge you to open the door, read the email, listen to the podcast, attend the meeting, or agree to volunteer. Create the time to explore new ideas, new paths, new relationships. Work and life can be a little broader and richer... even if it is less efficient by a small factor.

Make one change

As a lifelong sucker for the new year's resolution, it's not surprising that I'm also an advocate for using January 1 as an inspirational start point for business change. However, just as a list of five or ten personal resolutions is hard to remember, let alone to achieve, let's agree that in business too, less may be more.

Start with one important change you want to make. Make it the challenge, concern or irritant that:

A) keeps you awake nights

B) makes Monday mornings tough to face, or

C) drives you to drink... or whatever.

For some business owners, cash flow or profitability rises to the top. For others, it may be the long hours they perpetually work, or an employee that is a perpetual challenge. Maybe you need to write an employee handbook, or promote or reassign a key staff member. Whatever it is, you've been putting it off.

Once you've identified your #1 trigger, the real work begins.

Let's take a complex example first. Cash flow and profitability is a big issue. What is the first and most important step you can take to improve your company's financial situation? Write it down. Write down subsequent or supplemental steps as well. Don't know what the first step is? Do some research, or get some help. This blog and many books on the topic will help. Try Six Steps to Creating Profit for starters. Your accountant may have recommendations for improving your numbers as well. Then, get to work.

In some cases, the change you need to make is less complex but difficult for other reasons. Take the example of working overly long hours. You've probably developed the habit over years. Again, break the problem down. Figure out why you are working too much, and what you can do about it. Do one thing to reduce the hours you work on a regular basis. For example, leave work an hour earlier one or two days every week. Or delegate a few additional tasks to staff members.

When you have addressed your most important single change, or at least have set the desired change in motion, you can move on to a second challenge.

While this approach may sound overly simple, it works well. Business owners have a raft of everyday responsibilities, so big changes tend to get pushed back. By focusing on one important change at a time, you can make it happen faster and more surely than if it remains one item on a long list.

Here's to a happy, productive and successful new year.

Post adapted from Michelle van Schouwen's article in Succeeding in Small Business.

Before you launch: Imagine your product has failed. Conduct a pre-mortem.

Positive thinking is great. Blind spots... not so much.

“What could possibly go wrong?” is certainly a question that merits asking during any product or project’s development. However, a managerial technique known as the pre-mortem takes the process a critical step farther.

The pre-mortem process in three easy steps:


“We haven’t launched this product yet. But let’s imagine that it’s a year after the scheduled launch – and the product has failed. Okay, everybody, what went wrong?”

To give your team the opportunity to answer this question as thoroughly, as thoughtfully, and in as many ways as it merits, you’ll want to follow a process that encourages prospective hindsight, a method of thinking as if something has already happened.

First of all, set aside two hours. Sure, you are busy developing the product. Make no mistake (yes, that’s a play on words) you are NOT too busy to perform a pre-mortem, which is far less painful and expensive than the potential post-mortem you will perform when and if the product fails. Start with a two-hour meeting. Select a facilitator.

Second, have everyone in the room begin by independently writing down all the possible reasons for the product’s failure. Have each participant read one reason from his or her list, and repeat the process until all potential reasons for failure have been vocalized. Meantime, the facilitator writes down every reason.

Third, discuss.

And, finally, post-meeting, plan and make changes to accommodate what you’ve learned through exercising prospective hindsight via the pre-mortem. This may require additional team meetings. Again, it’s time well spent.

The research on pre-mortem effectiveness:

Harvard Business Review reported that “Research conducted in 1989 by Deborah J. Mitchell, of the Wharton School; Jay Russo, of Cornell; and Nancy Pennington, of the University of Colorado, found that prospective hindsight — imagining that an event has already occurred—increases the ability to correctly identify reasons for future outcomes by 30%.” Using prospective hindsight allows team members to think out some of the lurking problems that haven’t been brought into the light of day in ordinary planning meetings. It slows the rush toward completion to allow more balanced perceptions to arise.

******

“Why did our product and its launch fail?”
Participants' sample answers


We failed to market aggressively and one of our competitors then seized the market advantage as if we hadn’t been first.

We didn’t ask the market if it was interested in this product – and no one was.

 We didn’t make sure the technology worked seamlessly. Early fails damaged our image.

 Production was too expensive, and we tried to charge more than the market would bear.

 A recession killed demand for “extras” and our product wasn’t a must-have.

Consumers slammed it in reviews.

 Our CEO cut the budget just as we launched and we didn’t get to trade shows.

 We didn’t train the sales team to sell this complex offering, so they kept selling the old stuff instead.

 

 

 

After 30 years in business, I'm learning from startups.

We all understand the need for fresh thinking and continuous improvement.

Of course, continuing to generate new ideas and improvements demands that one also seeks sources for inspiration.

I am fortunate in this regard to have found a wellspring of new and original thinking in the principals of entrepreneurial start-ups. In recent years, I’ve become involved in organizations whose mission is to further entrepreneurial success. One great example is Valley Venture Mentors (VVM), a Western Massachusetts organization providing “support to the entrepreneurial ecosystem.”

At VVM and other groups, I have the privilege of hearing early-phase new business plans that entrepreneurs are pitching or submitting for review. Sometimes, I offer counsel on launching ideas, products and brands. Often, I learn at least as much from the process as I impart.

Much of what is true for startups is also important to longer-established businesses. Lessons in “what makes for a successful startup” that have made a lasting impression on me include the following:

Focus is important.

Daniel Goleman, author of Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, claims that the ability to focus is the primary predictor of both professional and personal excellence and success. The entrepreneurs who most often succeed demonstrate this ability to both see and remain committed to the overarching goals they set.

Flexibility is important, too.

Yes, focus is great, but focus at the expense of the ability to regroup, redirect and (to use an overused phrase) pivot can go beyond persistence to become foolish stubbornness. When do you know a plan is not working? Thomas Edison famously said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” Sure, but more often, 10,000 failures indicate that it’s time to seriously tweak, pivot or discard.

The best entrepreneurs combine the ability to focus with the ability to continue generating ideas.

This is why we see so many serial entrepreneurs, who develop a company, sell it, and then develop another. And if an idea doesn’t quite work, they can often refashion it into one that does.

No entrepreneur should be an island.

During business plan reviews, many a seasoned businessperson will offer advice – on concept, phasing, financials, regulatory and testing matters, competitive scene, and more. Not only does the entrepreneur learn something, the rest of the review participants often do as well. There are a lot of really smart people out there, with a great deal to share if you have the willingness to hear it.

This is still a great world full of wonderful ideas.

Many of the business plans I hear are confidential, so just let me say… world health, the environment, education, communication, and a multitude of other burning needs give us the opportunity to improve the world. If indeed the world does improve, I bet it will be in large part thanks to the efforts of focused, flexible, imaginative, and well-mentored small and growing businesses and, of course, their fearless leaders.

Quiet day at the office?

Workplace cycles vary, of course, but it is certain that in offices and plants across the US and beyond, the impending holidays impact the pace one way or another.

If by chance you inhabit one of the many workplaces in which the phone rings less and less in the days surrounding Christmas and New Year's Day, and your email yields mostly retail shopping offers and spam, do not become disheartened! (If  you were feeling disheartened, that is.) A faster pace will resume soon enough.

Instead, if you are a part of one of the quiet-for-Christmas offices, take a moment to breathe. Then ponder all the things you wish you had time to do during the year. If you are like many of us, those things may completely escape your mind when you actually have time to do them. (Energy begets energy; slow times can dull the brain.) If business gets quiet in the next couple of weeks, and you are in the office anyway, consider...

-Thinking the big thoughts. Visioning (here's Inc's nice summary of the process). Start by asking yourself about your goals for next year or for the next five years, then listing the steps you may need to take to achieve them.

-Reading. Some of my favorite recent books that are either about business or relevant to business include:

Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work – Chip Heath, Dan Heath
Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard – Chip Heath, Dan Heath
Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman
Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success – Adam M. Grant
To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others – Daniel H. Pink
Leading Change – John P. Kotter

-Getting unstuck. One business consultant whom I admire employs Einstein's quote, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." Could you benefit from some fresh perspective or support? Consider a business or life coach, CPA, advisory board, or friends who are in business or who understand your goals. You deserve this, even if it costs money or involves seeking a type of support you've never before used. Now may be a good time to start the process, while you have the time and space to think clearly.

-Taking a break. It's too easy to forget to take sufficient time with family or friends, or just to get away from it all.

All of us at vSA wish you refreshing, rejuvenating holidays.

 

Inspiration in the workplace

Inc. today featured an inspiring article, Why Everyone at My Company Has One Job Title, which included this email excerpt from a now-deceased co-founder of The Nerdery:

"Our job titles are designed to empower us, not to limit us!" Bucklin wrote. "Put your business card on the desk in front of you...This card does not define you. You are a Co-President. You are bigger than your defined role, and you are much more than your job title. Play your part—transcend your job title, be a hero."

Inspiring employees goes one big step beyond motivating them. And inspiration is of course hard to create, especially in an era when "jobs for a lifetime" seems to many people an antiquated prospect, and when even the assurance of job security is shaky at many firms.

Inspiring employees also demands a lot more than rudimentary job security and longevity. It demands some mix of the following:

-Feeling that the job matters

-Knowing that the company cares about you

-Having challenging, meaningful or exciting work to do

-Wanting to do great work

-Looking forward to what is ahead

-Enjoying the ride - not counting the hours until the next weekend or holiday

For some people, inspiration comes easily. For others, it may never come. From our own experience at vSA, a certain "pride of authorship" comes into play. We genuinely love doing things well. To each vSA associate who... created a great website, built a powerful marketing program for a client, got our internal tracking processes in line, wrote a highly original article, solved an onerous technical problem, brought in a good client, or helped a good client make the world a little better... you have inspired me. I hope in some measure you, too, have been inspired.

Take the night off - and read about thinking

A book that nudges you into thinking in a whole different way... in this case, about thinking itself ... is a great way to get those synapses firing.

Treat yourself to an evening (or two) with Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman; the preceding link goes to a review I particularly liked, so I'm not going to attempt to improve on it here. A friend recommended Thinking, Fast and Slow via Facebook, saying it caused a "paradigm shift" in his own thinking. I am particularly taken by the concept of the systematic mistakes and non-logical thought processes to which most of us succumb. Just one example: Test subjects are more likely to opt for surgery if told that the “survival” rate is 90 percent, rather than that the mortality rate is 10 percent. Mind you, not all of us fall for this one – but as you read, I imagine you'll find yourself nodding ruefully at times!

Kahneman explores the strengths and (more important) the limitations of heuristics (experience-based techniques for problem solving) and reveals some of the limitations on our "System 1" or "nearly automatic" thinking. While it is imperative not to have to rethink everything from the ground up, it became apparent to me as I read that taking care not to over-assume and speed to resolution on problems might serve a purpose professionally and personally.

I'd enjoy hearing your take. Me? I'm questioning my snap assumptions... that is, when I remember to take the time to do so.

Google and go: Information demands innovation

[caption id="attachment_1275" align="alignleft" width="120" caption="Has CERN detected a particle traveling faster than light speed? If so, it could change the world."][/caption]

A client commented wryly the other day that the Web as an informational resource is a mixed blessing. Like many other technologies, light-speed access to information has accelerated the pace of business and, much like the evolution from from courier to FedEx to fax to email and beyond, has created higher expectations all around. Ready access to information has made thorough competitive research easier... in fact, it has also made it imperative. This is how a new opportunity transforms into a baseline expectation. Everyone has the same opportunity and so doing business becomes more demanding than it was in more blissfully ignorant times.

Twenty six long years ago, when van Schouwen Associates opened its doors, competitive research (especially for smaller to mid-sized client firms whose budgets had their limits!) was typically a drawn-out and inefficient affair, depending variously on resources such as customers with opinions, loose-lipped sales reps and slyly procured sales literature and price lists. Information was often scanty and in some cases dated or seriously imprecise. But oddly, life was easier because the bar was set lower. We didn't intend that; we weren't lazy. It was just the way things worked.


The challenge today is that, with the exception of not-yet-released products that have been developed with dedicated attention to secrecy, it is possible to find out a great deal about other peoples' products and services, marketing messages, pricing, and the strengths and weaknesses of any competitor's offerings. It is often easy to reverse-engineer technical products. Why? In part because it's all on the Web.

Well, nearly all of "it" is on the Web. A frequent discussion the van Schouwen Associates team has with its clients involves what to include and what not to include in that very public forum. There are several layers of potential privacy clients can employ, including:

No privacy: Placing material out in the public arena online

Moderate privacy with potential for leakage: Offering material protected by passwords (often permission-based passwords with expiration dates and renewal requirements)... plus additional layers of security

Higher privacy but not perfectly secure, just ask Congress how leaks happen: Material that isn't put online anywhere, period.

Today, companies typically have (or should have) vast information about their competitors and their market opportunities. This is excellent.

Vast knowledge (or access to same) has also made business all the more challenging even as it presents clear new opportunities.

At vSA, we (and of course, our clients) know – more than ever before – exactly how high the bar has been set. So does anyone else who cares to look.

Result 1: Increasingly, products developed with insufficient regard to what is already on the market FAIL where once they might have succeeded. Less competitive services do the same because the customer's process of finding a better deal – the best deal – is pretty easy. Just Google and go.

Result 2: We expect that this universal access to competitive information will continue to yield impressive improvement in business innovation. Innovators and marketers have to work harder... and harder... and smarter.

What a career!

It's the dog days of summer, but there will be no lolling about here.

van Schouwen Associates has a career opportunity available... for the right person. We want a strategic communications professional to join our writing and PR team. WELL, you may say, that should be an easy position to fill.

Nope. In fact, looking for the right person to fill this job opening gives the existing vSA team a new appreciation for what we do every day. And it gives me a new appreciation for the team we have. The job opportunity requires a person who can:

-Face undaunted the task of QUICKLY learning to communicate intelligently about client specialties that may range from geothermal engineering to patented building supplies, aerospace quality management to investment planning for the wealthy.

-Write like Ernest Hemingway about said topics.

-Edit like... oh, I don't know, A.M. Rosenthal?... about said topics.

-For media relations initiatives, pitch to diverse, extremely busy editors, employing a keen understanding of what each editor, each venue and each readership needs right now.

-Switch between topics, disciplines and client needs at a moment's notice. And again. And...

-Genuinely enjoy working with clients who are smart, busy, facing pressures and deadlines of their own, and who trust vSA to create and implement strategic marketing programs that perform... programs that perform extremely well, no matter what the climate.

-Come up with great program ideas and innovations for clients.

-Work social media in B2B, financial services and other wilderness expanses.

-Work with the rest of us.*

Are you the one? Do you know the one? Be in touch...

*We're fun. Naturally.

I hear you want to be a thought leader.

It is easier said than done, of course. But, if you are in a position in business, government or another sphere in which being inspirational or trendsetting is key, it may well be worth the effort. (Plus, some people would rather lead than follow, no matter what.)

A thought leader is somewhat snidely defined by Wikipedia as "business jargon for an entity that is recognized for having innovative ideas." (This link leads, nonetheless, to a good article that is worth a few minutes if you're interested in the topic.)

Being a thought leader goes beyond a few light bulbs of inspiration. It involves having an in-depth understanding of some key aspect (or many key aspects) of your field. These may include the technologies, people, and trends involved, and the direction in which this field may be going. A thought leader also has opinions on which way things should be going, and these are generally (optimistically!) based on more than quick judgments. Typically, a thought leader also knows what others have been saying and feels no compunction to be in lockstep with the other thought leaders, nor to disagree with them. Being a thought leader takes nerve.

There's also (hello? anyone out there??) the issue of being heard over the noise. How can one be a thought leader if one has no followers? If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear... It's pleasant to think that some thought leaders would express their opinions because of a clear intellectual or ethical compunction to do so, even if no one or hardly anyone is listening. Even if there will be no book sales. Or speaker fees. But most leaders want followers. Being a true thought leader eventually demands that you have (although not so formally named) "thought  followers".

There is also the question of forum. A thought leader can start small. She can be the manager of a group. She can give seminars, write articles, give speeches to small groups. She can blog. Being a thought leader demands that you find a medium or multiple media in which to express your insights.

But most of all, the thought leader needs insights. Vision. Education. Breadth. The person most likely to become a thought leader has all these. The thought leader also enjoys a clarity of thought process that, while not an infallible defense against errors in tactics, strategy or advice delivered, allows cool reassessments and logical course changes when required. Generally, that clarity of thought will also inhibit the leader from speaking about an opinion until he is PRETTY SURE that opinion is valid. This is not always the case. Take Pat Robertson's many quotes.

A thought leader need not always be followed. Should not always be followed. That alone is a reason either to become one or to focus on being an independent thinker, sifting the insights of many, swallowing none of them hook, line and sinker.

Five best uses for a microsite

[caption id="attachment_916" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Simonds International Microsite, www.neveryieldtosteel.com"][/caption]

Why develop a microsite when you already have a corporate site? There are a number of situations in which a microsite can be an unbeatable marketing tool. Here are five best uses for a microsite:

1-You are running a specialized promotion or contest. Examples may include: an offer that you're making in specific geographic regions and/or to specialized market segments. For example, one of our clients created a B2B promotion for just a few southern cities in which sales had been lagging. All sales and marketing outreach led small business owners from these cities to a microsite that offered business tips and allowed firms to compete for regional recognition... all while promoting our client's best products for small businesses.

2-You have a new Web application or service that deserves its own Web presence. Examples include: training, certification, relevant calculators, product life cycle assessments, competitive comparisons, product specification/product selectors/e-commerce, or specialized product catalogs. The sky is the limit here!

3-You are running a specific advertising/marketing campaign and want to test its success in bringing respondents to your landing page - a microsite allows you not only to track responses but also to continue the conversation or even clinch the sale on the spot.

4-You want to communicate actively with customers and prospects, creating a special place for them to speak or be recognized, through vehicles such as customer-focused case studies, awards, testimonials, Q & A, real-time communications, or other personalized content that develops and sustains relationships between your firm and your customers.

5-You want to entertain, engage or inform customers and prospects on a site that does not overtly promote your products, brand or services as the main corporate site may do. However, consider that you need to plan to "hook" these prospects at some point, so some (even subtle) branding and a link to your main company site are often in order; this is also an important consideration for search engine optimization (SEO).

Your thoughts and experiences? We'd enjoy learning from you.

Naptime has been canceled.

As I compose this post on a lovely summer afternoon, financial headlines include phrases such as "market swoon" and "U.S. Economy Is a Complete Disaster".  That's arguable, but nonetheless, it's no time for business professionals to close their eyes, not even for a moment. Here's why:

We're doing it all. Productivity continues to be high, because there are fewer people doing more jobs, working longer hours, coming up with better ideas. If we don't remain at the alert (or if we don't hire back some of those people we've ushered to the sidelines) production will fall and our ability to respond to opportunities quickly will drop.

Prospects and customers say "maybe" and "no" more easily than they say "yes". We must stay on our toes to give them reasons to move forward with us. They'll save money. They'll save time (which is money). They'll be more productive (which is money). Or they'll feel happier (which is more important than money sometimes, eh?). Get to yes. Argue with the going wisdom of the day, with the "we have no budget" or "we're not planning to do that until 2011" or "we have a supplier already." Invite your prospect to look at a situation through new eyes and improve results.

We're operating in a new environment. Picture yourself trying to perform everyday tasks in a weightless environment. Your cereal floats away. You can't move from here to there the way you used to. Doing business today is similar. People don't often pick up their phones unless they expect your call. They may make decisions by doing research online rather than talking to people like you. They do without, or they do things themselves. (How many major corporations have taken to creating their own sales materials, for example, or simply have no current materials? Oh, there's nothing more impressive than the sales rep drawing the new automation system on a frayed paper napkin at Burger King to show to a key prospect, I'll tell you!) Take the time to dream up new ways to help your prospect, and to speak to his or her real concerns, which are very likely different than they were two years ago.

Since you're wide awake anyway, walk away from the lagging crowd. Think for yourself or find a fresh new adviser or partner with whom to share ideas. Figure out how to develop, value, sell, and build market share for your product or service. Learn about the new tools and techniques, motivations and buy signals that work in a strange new world, even as the pundits wring their hands and your competition slumps in its seats.

By the way, coffee helps.

One question every person in charge should ask

There is not much of a silver lining to the Gulf oil spill, but people in charge – whether entrepreneurs, executives or longtime business owners – can garner valuable wisdom from one of the many mistakes that made the disaster more likely.

Potentially, busy with the severe recession, the financial sector bailout and the fight for a national health care plan, the Obama administration missed at least one ball it should have been keeping in the air: effective regulation of the oil industry in general and of deep-water drilling in particular.

The potent lesson for those of us in charge? There's a question we should ask ourselves often, and that we should grant ourselves the mental space and creative license to answer: What am I missing?

It's natural and tempting to get on a track and follow it, or to create a plan and execute it without taking the time and energy to step to the side and take stock - frequently. Are you missing opportunities? Not alert to certain dangers? Letting issues, people, money, or projects slide while you deal with everyday urgencies and tempests in a teapot?

It's true that people in charge have many of their best ideas while driving, showering or taking a vacation. Extend that freedom of mind into your everyday routine. Assign or put aside routine tasks to facilitate your own creative thinking. Read a business book on a new topic. Ask yourself if there's anything on your mind that you're not dealing with (it's often right there below the surface). Access your right brain.

What am I missing? I'm glad I asked myself. I'll ask again. And again.

Neither here nor there

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Telecommuting, flex time and virtual business models are all the rage. Outsourcing projects rather than committing to long-term staff additions is popular now, too. No surprise there. The current state of the economy (I can barely wait until we're no longer using that phrase quite so often!) demands efficiency, forces uncertainty, and makes available some stellar candidates with whom to work. In other words, a lot of great people are out of their former 9-5 salaried work routines. Even the 2010 census work is moving faster than expected because of the availability of outstanding temporary labor. Oh, that's not much of a silver lining, perhaps, but there it is.

These new ways of working bode well for some businesses, and for some individuals. Streamlined processes, virtual meetings, work from anywhere (okay, let's not text from a moving car - work from almost anywhere) are a boon for the highly motivated, organized and talented. But what about everyone else?

One of the concerns many thought leaders express about the new economy is that it yields work for the best, brightest and most driven (now including all that consulting, flexible positions, telecommuting, and other non-traditional arrangements). It also continues to offer a range of service work that, at least for now, requires a human presence (from health care to fine cooking). And there are still a number of U.S. manufacturing jobs, although that number continues to dwindle.

But what else? There's a gap, likely to continue broadening, where there used to be more jobs for the rest of the workforce. As the economy continues to shift, what happens to the worker who needs the structure of an office to maintain motivation? The person who shows up for the assembly line? Where are the jobs for the capable person willing to work steadily all day or night but simply not constituted to come up with lots of big ideas, manage time completely independently or work alone? If you've ever been an employer or a manager, you know that these people make up the majority of many a workplace – that's the way the world is and probably always has been.

This week, Time magazine's article The Workforce: Where Will the New Jobs Come From? provides hope that there will be new jobs. That's good. But for any leader or citizen who hopes to see the economy truly thrive again, there's that other question, not so easy to answer. Will there be enough jobs for the great majority of working class and middle class Americans who do well working for a company, who respond to expectations set by management and who would like to put in a good day's work for decent pay, then head home to their real lives? That's a lot of people, and we all need to put our imaginations to work to make sure our economy continues to fully employ and value what continues to be the majority of the population.

Continued funding programs for better roads and bridges? Encouraging young people to go into trades such as plumbing or electrical work, in which shortages are predicted? Putting more adults in the schools to work with the kids? Opening more child care centers, which require staffing? Offering real live tech support? Human cashiers at the supermarket?

What could work and be valuable? What do you think?

Sent box: Important client emails. In box: Salmonella, it's what's for dinner.

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So much work, so little time. On a good day, we'll reach out or get back to five or ten clients and prospects with consulting documents, articles, interactive marketing efforts, design comps, and estimates. Plus, we'll respond to several dozen more clients and associates about business-related matters, and initiate contact with a few companies we'd like to get to know. Much of this happens by email.

Some days, what we get back bears so little resemblance to what we send out that we must naturally assume that our emails got scrambled and sent to the wrong recipients, and that in return, we're getting emails meant for someone (who???) who wants to know:

I See Website You Need to Meet

Work from Home for $10000/month!

Start Your Heart Automatically

There are only a few reasons I can fathom for this disconnect, the first being a technical glitch so mysterious that even the most universally admired computer wonks (and you know who you are, don't you?) can't figure it out.

The second is that vSA works at a pace so much faster than ordinary humans that our missives shoot out almost as if into the future, and it therefore takes some time for our recipients even to receive them. Asynchrony of time, we'll call it.

The third, less likely, is that our clients and prospects are variously busy; occupied with other, even more urgent projects; or, in rare cases, disinterested in what we've sent. While this is difficult for us to imagine, we've heard from other professionals that they've had the same impression.

It's sort of like parallel play among small children - I email you what I'm thinking about. You email me what you're thinking about. The emails are like two ships passing in the night. This year, some of our marketing programs are fun - really fun. We're hoping this transitions the ships passing in the night to ships honking, waving and shouting words of affirmation to and fro: "This is great! Gotta do it again!"

I'll be waiting at my in box, smiling.

Complacency vs. strategic planning and action

Are you tired of hearing the words, "No one could have predicted..." and variants thereof? I am, because the consequences of people in positions of responsibility not thinking outside the box and not planning and initiating appropriate action are often extreme. Here are just a few examples that should be etched into our collective memories:

Predictable given the mood of the public-Scott Brown's election and the resulting likely (if temporary) demise of comprehensive health care reform: Putting your personal politics aside for a moment, imagine you are President Obama, Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid - it's okay, it's just for a minute. Obama should have become more involved, and Congress should have moved faster - before the Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority.

Predictable given geological and infrastructure facts-Haiti's disaster: Construction with few building standards built on a fault line. An airport with such small capacity that only a few planes can be there at any one time. Add one (predictable) earthquake and we have the tragedy we see today. Worst thing? It could happen again.

Predictable given economic facts and indicators-The collapse of the housing market and the too-big-to-fail banks and our subsequent economic woes. As I've mentioned in this forum in the past, my father, a retired schoolteacher, accurately predicted the housing market collapse a couple of years before it happened. It's hard to believe bankers, economists and politicians lacked the same data.

Predictable given clearly inferior engineering combined with neighborhoods below sea level-By now, what we knew and didn't act on following Hurricane Katrina should be obvious. But guess what? We still haven't fixed the problem with the levies, even as we rebuild below sea level in New Orleans.

Those are political issues that affect the world. Complacency and inaction are enormous factors in business, too. Consultatively, vSA always urges business leaders to step outside the box to think the big thoughts and then to act on them as needed. We all know how easy it is each day to pursue the latest deal, address the most recent 200 emails and just try to stay afloat keeping up with the urgent. However, it is hardly cliche to remember this: Do not overlook the important in favor of the merely urgent.

Thoughts, examples, strategies?

Dangerous complacency

I hope Martha Coakley will win the Massachusetts Special Election today, I really do.

As I voted for her this morning, I was struck by a feeling that she needs all of us to pull her feet out of the fire and that, to some extent, she has earned this close race through her lackluster campaign. This is not to say she won't be a good senator - she's been a good attorney general. She simply isn't experienced as a politician running for election, and she appeared to somewhat take this election for granted once she'd cleared the primary.

To the Coakley campaign, Scott Brown probably appeared at first  to be an upstart without a chance. Martha Coakley's campaign missed the mood of many Massachusetts residents - residents tired of the bad economy, worried about what health care reform will actually mean to them and impatient with the Obama administration. Brown painted Coakley as an insider and himself as some odd combination of good lookin' cowboy and down-home neighbor. In fact, he's more conservative than is a match for Massachusetts. Boston.com published a January 10 article citing important examples: "Last week he embraced waterboarding. Last month he expressed skepticism that climate change is being caused by humans. He has even denounced two national proposals that he supported in Massachusetts as a lawmaker - mandatory health care coverage and a cap-and-trade system to cut global warming gases." Great.

Martha Coakley, I hope you win... despite yourself.

Communication that resonates - how it happens.

Imagine for a moment that the communication in question isn't marketing. Imagine you're at a social event, talking with a stranger you'd like to know. What will keep this stranger talking with you? Will allow him to become intensely interested in what you have to say?

Talk about a topic in which the other person is very interested. ("Oh! You collect spiders?")

Not only BE truthful and sincere - project it. Interestingly, even when you ARE being genuine, people don't always believe it, probably because they have been exposed to so much that is false.

Hear and respond to the other person. Answer his or her questions directly, rather than swerving back to what you wanted to say anyway. Eventually, you can get to your message, but don't force the matter prematurely.

Inspire curiosity. Be interesting enough that the person wants to learn more, and to continue talking with you, and to resume the conversation another time as well.

Now - let's get back to the discipline of marketing. The principles are the same, but the barriers are higher. When you have something for sale (or, shall we say, "skin in the game") you face the challenge of appearing biased. Gosh, wonder why! So it's all the more important to project that you are telling the truth. The type of communication we've described above is a slower, more authentic way to build relationships than old-school hit-me-over-the-head-with-it marketing. But IT WORKS. Banks and financial service companies need solid relationships with customers and clients. So do companies whose products require a major commitment of time or money, or a switch to a new technology platform. So does your company, I'll bet.

Think about the many types of communication you employ - from speaking engagements to webinars, editorial coverage to white papers, social media to sales meetings. Each of these can be studied and, as necessary, retooled to more clearly and effectively speak in an authentic voice.

In a time when trust is rare and business is still recovering from a nasty year or two, is it worth your time to make sure your communications resonate? At vSA, we're voting yes-absolutely-yes, and the nature of our clients' communications increasingly reflects our focus on building trust as we build their brands and sales.

Marketing asymmetric ends of DNA strands to Qatar using advanced SEO.

Is it just me, or is business getting extraordinarily complex?

Oh, it's just me?

I'll pretend I didn't hear that. Because here's my thesis: nothing is easy anymore. Only the strong will thrive. Just as jobs for low-skilled labor are as scarce as flowers on Mars (or has that changed, too?) successful careers for high-skilled professionals in marketing, technology, industry, and the like are not for the weak of spirit.

Top five reasons why Work is So Complicated Now:

5- The oversupply of really smart people, devising new stuff. Innovations are everywhere.

4- Global everything, with all the cultural differences, language barriers, legal obstacles, and heavy competition that brings. (Leben ist schwierig.)*

*Life is difficult (German).


3- TECHNOLOGY.

2- Related to #3, new communication techniques, and a startling abundance of information sources, some of them reliable. Who can possibly read it all? Or remember 50% of what one would like to know?

1- Energy. And I don't mean alternative. I mean the kind that you and I need just to keep up, let alone lead the pack.

How does a marketing professional serve clients brilliantly, especially when staffing is short, budgets are tight, and careers can live or die by short-term ROI? Few people can glide by for too long anymore without hard work. (And yes, I suspect that once, in a faraway time, perhaps the 90s, some mythical ad people could do just that. Probably they had talent, or charm. Something like that.) In a profession that has at times received and on a few occasions even earned the dubious distinction of being composed of hot air (yes, marketing, unfair as that may seem) the air has cooled, at least for the moment.

Now, working smart is critical. Just for starters, keeping up with industry news and trends is a marketing must. At vSA, we've become selectively engaged with Twitter, for example. We can use it to quickly get the word out about news of interest to important editors and our clients' prospects. We've also seen that our clients can sometimes benefit as much by having customers make positive comments about their products on Facebook and post engaging videos on YouTube as they do from certain trade shows. More than in the past, we feel the need to monitor even relatively recent vSA work to assure that it's up to the minute: for example, some Web applications we created to help clients sell online four years ago need to be updated... already and probably not for the last time.

But we have an additional responsibility as well. Outside of subjects that are clearly "of our industry," it's become more incumbent than ever to follow world news, fast-changing consumer trends, the mood of the nation, the day-to-day state of various segments of the economy, and more. Today I learned something more about Total Recall, a Microsoft research project based on the prediction that an archive of an individual's digital data, largely generated without much of that individual's thought, through GPS, cell phones, cameras, credit cards, health records and everything else he or she does, will someday create a pretty comprehensive record of that person's life... and will thus change the way humans use and recall memory. Concepts like that, when they achieve traction (aside from being in my opinion pretty creepy) are always appropriated by business and marketing interests. So we marketers need to know about them. I also learned today that some prominent economists are concerned that the Obama administration has lost its way in pushing for regulatory reform of the financial markets and that these same economists fear that another economic collapse may be just scant (really scant) years away. Mmmm, hope they're wrong, but better bear it in mind.

My point is that to be truly excellent as a high-level consultant in marketing today requires vision, diligence in meeting world situations face-to-face and the energy to continue to understand the ways people want to communicate now - and what these people want and need to hear. No hot air.

What's the difference between caution and paralysis?

Boston Consulting Group is just one of the voices we've heard recently warning us of the dangers for companies of becoming wildly optimistic in the face of a few positive economic signs. Its study Green Shoots, False Positives, and What Companies Can Learn from the Great Depression "warns CEOs to guard against the kind of hasty optimism - based on an excessive reliance on one or two promising indicators - that undermined some companies during the Great Depression" according to a press release from the firm.

American Public Media's August 3rd Marketplace show featured a segment on navigating the upturn, in which Standard & Poors Chief Economist David Wyss says mistiming the end of the recession can be a fatal mistake. He warns that "The danger is that in some industries if you sort of stay in self-protect mode too long, you're going to miss the upturn completely and end up losing market share. More companies go broke in the upturn than they do during in the recession." However, he then goes on to say that he doesn't think the fabled upturn has arrived yet. Hmmph, he's probably right.

So, what's a company to do? We ask our clients to separate risks too big to assume in uncertain times from sensible business moves that have a way-better-than-even chance of paying off. As a marketing firm, we've watched with dismay as some clients have chopped budgets and then complained about anemic sales. (In case you wonder, we ourselves have navigated through client budget cuts by taking on a larger number of clients, including a number of new ones, balancing out the reality that most companies are spending less than they did in 2008, and in some cases, probably less than in 1908.) We've used more media relations and other PR, more Web surveys, more grassroots marketing, and a lot fewer big splashy campaigns to get the job done for clients.

Where one Downturn Downfall comes in, we believe, is in paralysis. If revenues are shrunken, sure, reduce spending somewhat. But don't cut off all your outreach or you will be forgotten by an uncaring world. And if your company can't seem to decide what product to introduce in this tough market, or when to introduce the thing, GET TO WORK ON DECIDING. If sales are down, sell harder. Sweat still works if you combine it with smarts. The fact that the company down the street announces its sales are down 30 percent, or even the fact that your own company's sales were down 45 percent last quarter, is not adequate reason to assume that you will inevitably match this depressing performance going forward. Expect more, just don't spend all your mythical earnings yet.

The economy is an orchestra. It does take a combined effort to make sweet music, sure, and we're an earplug-worthy cacophony right now. But each musician - from Acme Ant Traps to Toyota - has a singular part to play. Your mother was right. Practice your music longer each day, focus, be open to inspiration, and improve your - and all of our - performance.