Prime Now, Prime Not

July 1, 2016 //
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I did a stupid thing the other day.

I packed for a trip to the UK from Ireland, and forgot the power pack for my MacBook Air. Realising the error of my ways, and with an hour’s juice left, I went online to see if I could get one delivered to me the same day. I had heard that with Amazon Prime Now you can get stuff delivered in big cities like London within the hour, which was perfect.

I couldn’t see any Prime Now offers for the charger I needed. Then someone told me that Prime Now was a mobile thing, so I needed to download the app. I couldn’t find the app, which was when that same someone told me I probably couldn’t see the app because I lived in Ireland where Prime Now was not available. No problem, I’ll change my country to the UK in my Amazon settings. Except that it’s not straightforward and you have to jump through a lot of hoops to do it.

No problem said that same someone, I’ll order it for you with my Prime Now app and get it delivered here to the office. Great, except that the app wouldn’t allow him to change the delivery address from his home to the office. Not a good first impression…

We gave up. I walked 3 minutes to a local electrical store, they had the power pack I needed, which I bought, and I was back in the office in 15 minutes.

You see, when your ecommerce technology fails your customers, they leave you and go back to good old bricks and mortar.

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Categories Customers, Sales, Technology

Reinvent

June 29, 2016 //
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The key to keeping your relevance and your message fresh to your target audience is to not be afraid of reinventing yourself and your company.

All the greats do it. Look at Madonna, who has undergone several transformations in a career that defies the average life span of music performers at the top of their profession.

From a corporate sense, it makes perfect sense too. If you position yourself as leaders in a certain field and you see the trends and developments in your industry moving to a new and fast-growing category that is allied to what you already do, of course you should reinvent yourself.

Certain things need to pre-exist for you to be successful. You need to have been a credible player in the previous industry. It needs to be a credible stretch from the old company to the new one. You also need to be credible in that new space. If the belief’s not there, the success won’t be either, and chances are you’ll flounder.

I used to work with a company whose boss positioned his company a certain way, and proclaimed it to be his 3rd global business. He then reinvented the company, rebranded it, and relaunched it as a new entity, with a new mission. It was also now his 4th global business. Same company, reinvented.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Strategy

What is a Product Roadmap?

June 27, 2016 //
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What do you understand by the term ‘product roadmap’? There are lots of definitions, some narrow and some broad, some internally focused and some market- or customer-focused. And how detailed should a product roadmap be? Should it pin your detailed colours to the mast, or should it be high level, allowing you room for manoeuvre?

I think that over time B2B customers have become somewhat desensitised towards product roadmaps. This is especially true in the software industry where the sheer complexity and number of moving parts, combined with the influences of individual customers, conspire to make roadmap projections aspirational at best and at worst downright misleading and fictional.

The pressures on the business in a dynamic landscape are changing all the time, and I’ve seen businesses where products or product enhancements have arrived 2 or 3 years after they were advertised to come on stream.

But back to product roadmap definitions. The one I use when asked this question defines a product roadmap as a plan of product or platform developments, delivered through a release mechanism – which could be a few or several times a year – through properly managed projects and programmes. After all, you’ve got to be sure that all the parts of the business can fulfil their element of the whole product solution. In other words, the roadmap should really be about when new releases are delivery ready, not sales ready. By all means seed the market, and build the demand to allow for the natural lag of a sales cycle, but publish your roadmap based around genuine availability.

Customers love to see detailed roadmaps, but only if you actually can commit to the associated timings, otherwise the trust quickly evaporates. Just like in sales, you’re only as good as your last quarter. Software development never seems to build in any buffer for the inevitable bumps in the road – probably because the front of the business is pushing for the earliest possible delivery date – and when those bumps occur, it’s very hard to get back on track. That’s why I fall back on the principle of under-promise and over-deliver to customers, and pushing back to the business. The customer comes first, so I’m in favour of high level roadmap pronouncements that strike the right balance between demonstrating progress and allowing wiggle room, so you can be on time, on brief, and maybe even on budget.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Planning, Sales, Strategy, Technology

Breaking the Mould

June 24, 2016 //
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Breaking the mould is one of the most underrated achievements I can think of. We’re so conditioned to conforming to the norms and adapting what’s already there to create something ‘new’. Which isn’t new, really. Then, when someone comes up with a truly different musical genre, device or way of doing something, you’ll hear people say, ‘well, that’s obvious, I could have done that.’

Yeah, but it wasn’t, and you didn’t! Maybe it was hiding in plain sight, but it’s only obvious in hindsight.

Have you been to Gloucester Motorway Services? It’s not like other motorway services. At all in fact. The building and landscaping is great, the decor is not at all what you expect, and the seating is comfortable. The toilets are clean and well kept. The food is lovely and reasonably priced. I’ve been in twice for a short break – it wasn’t there when I lived in Gloucester and I probably wouldn’t have gone since it was so close to home – and their decaff latte is probably among the top 3 cups of coffee I’ve ever had.

It’s got a farmhouse theme going on and sells some really nice products. It is, in fact, the complete opposite of a motorway services place. It’s genuinely breaking the mould. You’ll never look at one the same way again.

It takes an approach like this to make you realise that all motorway establishments don’t have to look like grimy monstrosities with toilets that resemble a war zone.

Oh, and it’s been awarded an architectural honour as well. A motorway services establishment! Awesome stuff.

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Categories Customers, General, Strategy

You Can’t Trust the Public

June 22, 2016 //
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Never work with small children and animals, as the adage goes. But what about the general public, can you really work with the population at large?

The Internet and social media has allowed members of the general public unprecedented access to the general public itself, as well as to the rich and famous who have hitherto been protected from meeting too many not of their kind. You only have to look at examples of the trolling of well known people by insignificant losers to see this phenomenal change in access and communication media.

You can’t trust the public as a whole with anything important – and I say that as a member of the general public. They’re not qualified and can’t be trusted to take decisions that are to the benefit of society. I’m not being anti-democratic here. It’s why we elect officials by the democratic process, so that – in theory at least – they take the tough decisions on our behalf, the decisions that benefit the community at large – the community that elected them – rather than specific individuals.

As a 2016 example of why you can’t trust the public, you only have to look at the poll to name a new, official scientific vessel. Some wise-ass suggests Boaty McBoatface and the public flock to it like a shiny new toy. Hilarious, if it wasn’t such a classic example of the public will.

I don’t mind general elections, even the first past the post ones. It’s referendums that make me nervous, because then you really are looking at an aggregate of individuals voting, almost without exception, in their own personal interests, and every single vote counts. Clever chap, that Maslow.

 

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Categories Communication, General

Not To My Knowledge

June 20, 2016 //
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I often qualify my answers to questions. It helps the questioner, I think, but also covers me to a degree.

One of the qualified answers I use most often is ‘not to my knowledge.’

If I’m asked something and I definitively know the answer, I’ll give my answer, pure and unadorned.

If I’m not definitively sure the answer to what I’m being asked is, I’ll append it with a ‘to my knowledge’. I realise this is somewhat redundant. After all, if I don;t mention them, who else’s knowledge were you expecting me to draw on?

My point when I answer this way, and the point I make now, is that in some cases you won’t have perfect knowledge, or it would take you too much time or effort to make it worth acquiring.

In this instance you go with what you know, and you move on.

Interestingly, one unintended output of constructing this post is realising that I hardly ever say ‘yes, to my knowledge.’ It’s almost always used with the negative response. Is this significant? Yes, possibly. Is it worth extending this post to explore why? No, not to my…anyway, you get the picture I think.

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Categories Communication, General

Statistical Sophistry

June 17, 2016 //
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Statistical sophistry? What on earth do I mean by statistical sophistry, other than repeating it for improved SEO purposes?

Well, one of the first things we should all learn about statistics is that you can pretty much use them to illustrate any point you like. People use them all the time, because they add a layer of credibility to an argument or case. We’ve all heard the phrase that 48% of all statistics are made up on the spot – feel free to insert your own stat as you read this – but the dangerous thing about statistics is that they can be created, skewed and twisted to serve any purpose. You only have to ask the global political establishment.

Then there’s the sophistry. They used to bandy the term about in Ancient Greece to draw the differences between genuine philosophers and thinkers and the sophists who argued for the sake of things, using trickery, guile and superficial nonsense to dupe their audiences. I originally typed ‘dope’ there my mistake; maybe the typo is more accurate.

The key to interpreting all statistics is to look behind the numbers. What do they really mean? How were they arrived at? What was the sample size? How rigorous was the analysis? How objective was the work, or was it done to justify a preconceived view? Often you can’t answer all these questions, but it still pays to look behind the numbers and peer into the ‘why is information being presented to me in this way?’ abyss.

Just because you use a stat, doesn’t mean it’s true. People who use statistics responsibly and clearly are edifying and educating us. People who use them to distract or obfuscate are not. It’s up to us to keep our wits about us to distinguish the true philosophers from the sophists.

 

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales

A Sense of Urgency

June 15, 2016 //
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A sense of urgency is the secret weapon of the self-starter. A self-starter adopts a sense of urgency because he or she understands that time is the most precious commodity, and wasted time can never be won back.

I try to instil this in my kids, with almost unwaveringly poor results. Whenever they’re asked to do anything around the house, or to get ready for school, they seem to head into a neutral gear, returning the aside I made to them once: ‘yes Dad, I’m on a sponsored go slow…’ They don’t buy into the concept of the sooner you start something and the quicker you do it, the quicker you can get onto something else. Either that, or they fly through jobs in a slap-dash fashion that necessitates a rework and the accompanying retort: ‘if only you’d done it right the first time, you’d be done by now…’

It’s all about balance. A sense of urgency – in work or play – combined with the right level of quality gets things done in the most effective way. Emptying a dishwasher, putting everything in the right place with no breakages and a sense of urgency gets the job done correctly in the least amount of time. This sense of urgency, using the dishwasher example, pushes us to group items for the same cupboard or shelf into one trip, so that we minimise aggregate journey time.

Of course, I’m not suggesting we fly around our daily work and house tasks like people possessed all day. Everyone needs downtime. Don’t get me wrong, I love to relax, and taking time out from work and play is key. But you can still relax well, relax effectively :-).

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Categories Customers, General, Marketing, Planning, Sales, Strategy

National Self-Interest

June 13, 2016 //
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People have a tendency to put themselves first before others, their company or club before others, and their country before other countries, which is to be expected. I always felt, somewhat idealistically, that when you were a professional soccer player you should be thinking country first, club second, self third. In reality, and especially the English Premier League, it’s the exact reverse of that.

When you have major events like referenda on participation in Europe, you would think that a tight federation would prioritise the continent or ‘mega state’ for the greater good. But, of course, there are degrees of tightness within the huge area and it’s almost always undermined by national self-interest. In fact, local self-interest gets ahead of both national and regional self-interest, so it’s pretty much business as usual.

The 64-thousand dollar question that many people wrestle with is this: is a large multi-country body like the EU right to want to govern us all at the risk of themselves becoming power hungry?

I don’t have a fixed view on this, but I would like to see more people and nations put the greater good ahead of their local fiefdom and themselves, and not be quite such ‘me feiners‘. This doesn’t look like happening any time soon, if this is anything to go by. Maybe that’s the point of nationhood in the first place.

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Categories General

Outside In

June 10, 2016 //
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Are you an ‘outside in’ person, or an ‘inside out’?

I’m not talking about advanced forehand strokes in tennis here; I’m talking about how you approach things in the world of work and life.

I’m an outside in kinda guy. I like to start from the outside, getting the big picture, understanding the whole, before I work my way in to the specific problem or task at hand. I do this because I need the context first. I need to know how what I’m trying to do connects with and affects the other pieces of the big picture. I find it difficult to do something in isolation.

Lots of people are inside outers of course. They move in the opposite direction to outside in folk and I suspect they also have different personalities, different jobs and different ways of working. They don’t need the context, they don’t want outside factors to impair their judgement, and away they go.

Both approaches have their pros and cons though, and I also suspect each type of approach is better suited to a particular job.

Which are you, an inside out person or an outside in?

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Categories Customers, Marketing, Planning
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