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Are you shaping the digital world with agility?
Digital leaders shape digital enterprise with agility. They are all about doing things better and faster; with elasticity: scale up and down seamlessly and resilience.
A digital organization is empowered by digital tools and relying on a winning combination of face-to-face and virtual initiatives. It involves the creation of an interactive multi-channel communication and sharing process to generate awareness about new digital tools and processes to help accelerate and secure workforce buy-in.
Are you leading in this area regardless of your role?
What is architecture and governance?
I love simplicity. Sometimes we just make things too difficult to understand.
This quote simply explains architecture (and why it is important) and governance.
Architecture is a belief system. And then governance is having the discipline to put that belief system into action.
— Ralph Loura, CIO, Clorox
How am I doing compared to a magical unicorn?
How am I doing compared to a magical unicorn?
We love to compare ourselves to those we know we are better than. It really makes us feel good. Seth Godin suggests there is a better standard. One the will make us feel uncomfortable.
Will we take up the challenge?
The easiest way to sell yourself short is to compare your work to the competition. To say that you are 5% cheaper or have one or two features that stand out–this is a formula for slightly better mediocrity.
The goal ought to be to compare yourself not to the best your peers or the competition has managed to get through a committee or down on paper, but to an unattainable, magical unicorn.
Compared to that, how are you doing?
Related articles
- Seth’s Blog: Learning how to see (sethgodin.typepad.com)
- Seth’s Blog: A diet for your mind (sethgodin.typepad.com)
Are the number-cruncher days numbered?
OK, full disclosure. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree. Yes, I went the Liberal Arts route in college. This can be an asset when puzzling through complex or ambiguous situations; innovating; communicating; and understanding the customer through the power of “observation and psychology—the stuff of poets and novelists.” Yes, I also write poetry. 🙂
Do you have a Liberal Arts degree? Has it helped you in the business world?
Nobody is saying that numbers-crunchers’ days are numbered. But the idea that having people with a strong background in the humanities—what Peter Drucker termed “Management as a Liberal Art”—can provide companies with a great advantage is gaining some real momentum.
via Drucker’s Lost Art of Management | The Drucker Exchange.
Powerful stories have impact. What are we telling our self?
Seth Godin has some great thoughts on the stories we tell. The ones we tell ourselves are so very important. What is our story? How frequently do we tell it to our self?
I know that marketers tell stories. We tell them to clients, prospects, bosses, suppliers, partners and voters. If the stories resonate and spread and seduce, then we succeed.
But what about the story you tell yourself?
Do you have an elevator pitch that reminds you that you’re a struggling fraud, certain to be caught and destined to fail? Are you marketing a perspective and an attitude of generosity? When you talk to yourself, what do you say? Is anyone listening?
You’ve learned through experience that frequency works. That minds can be changed. That powerful stories have impact.
I guess, then, the challenge is to use those very same tools on yourself.
What is the danger of starting at the top?
It is so easy to fall into this trap. As a buyer of technology, I can’t tell you how many times people thought if they just got to me they would get the sale. Even worse was when they actually thought they were going to talk to the CEO. Seth has nailed this one.
When making a b2b sale, the instinct is always to get into the CEO’s office. If you can just get her to hear your pitch, to understand the value, to see why she should buy from or lease from or partner with or even buy you… that’s the holy grail.
What do you think happens after that mythical meeting?
She asks her team.
And when the team is in the dark, you’ve not only blown your best shot, but you never get another chance at it.
The alternative is to start in the middle. It takes longer, it comes with less high-stakes tension and doesn’t promise instant relief. But it is better than any alternative.
Starting in the middle doesn’t mean you’re rushing around trying to close any sale with any bureaucrat stupid enough to take a meeting with you (or that you’re stupid enough to go to, thinking that a sale is going to happen.)
No, starting in the middle is more marketing than sales. It’s about storytelling and connection and substance. It’s about imagery and totems and credentials and the ability to understand and then solve the real problems your prospects and customers have every day. It’s this soft tissue that explains why big companies have so many more enterprise sales than you do.
You don’t get this reputation as an incidental byproduct of showing up. It is created with intention and it’s earned.
What is digital disruption?
What if someone with 1/10th your cost structure launched a full scale attack on your business tomorrow? Will you be a disruptor or be disrupted?
James McQuivey, VP at Forrester Research and author of Digital Disruption, discusses what Digital Disruption is all about.
Related articles
- Forrester Research Announces Upcoming Book: Digital Disruption (virtual-strategy.com)
- Meet the Digital Disruptor (greatfinds.icrossing.com)
- Digital Disruption (johnheenan.typepad.com)
What do you do when they don’t understand?
English: American entrepreneur, author and public speaker Seth Godin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is a great point. And technology really helps solve the problem. My blog writing tool (WordPress) has plug ins that recommend links, tags, photos and related articles for me. It is improving my writing (I hope). What used to take a long time to do manually is now speeded up and I can focus on what I want to say.
Many sources, from textbooks to websites, take the position that if you don’t understand a concept or a nuance, it’s your loss. I think that’s an strategic failure on the part of the writer. (I’ll give scientists and other professional writers a pass.)
Just recently (a decade or so) we opened two doors that change the way we communicate: we can link now, which means that any time you’re worried you’ve hit something too complex, you can easily link to more data and more explanation, and second, you can keep writing. Length (given appropriate organization) is no longer an issue.
At the same time, there’s an onus on the reader to look up words and references that are easily found in a search engine before giving up.
Ikea, then, should quit trying to jam nonsense instructions with no words on tiny sheets of paper and should instead post videos or detailed instructions in native languages online. Annual reports should get significantly longer (with better hyperlinked indexes), not shorter.
No one is going to read the whole thing, ever again. But we need to make it much easier to read the part of the thing that someone really cares about.
via Seth’s Blog: What do you do when they don’t understand?.
Related articles
- Meet The 22 Most Influential Advertising Bloggers (businessinsider.com)
- Visualizing How a Link Spreads Through the Twitterverse (hubspot.com)
- Hard Work or Smart Work? (gailschapergordon.com)
- Seven Tools I Use to Blog in Bursts (jonwellman.com)
Is your strategy as a non-profit one about tote bags?
As a non-profit CIO, former fund raiser and customer strategy professional, Seth Godin nails this one. Hhe personally did the opposite of this in his successful effort to help end malaria in Africa. Check out the blog to see the end of the story. Well worth the read.
1,500 pair of shoes were made based on the futuristic sneakers he wore in the original Back to the Future movie. So far, typical bids are around $4,000 a pair, and it’s certainly going to go up as the auction goes on. Figure they’ll raise $10,000,000, easily. Good for them.
The interesting lesson for me is that this fundraiser is 100% about the shoes. The charity is an asterisk. This is a branding and nostalgia exercise, with the opportunity for resale at a profit thrown in as a bonus. Tote bag marketing, without a doubt. The lesson for fundraisers everywhere is: if you have something like a celebrity shoe or a signed Chuck Close painting to sell, you should definitely go do that. The ends are fabulous, and there’s nothing wrong with the means to get there.
Related articles
- Retro remarkable marketing inspiration from Seth Godin (fastandremarkable.com)
- Seth Godin On Education (avc.com)
- Seth Godin on The Great Discontent (swiss-miss.com)
- Seth Godin Videos (insights-group.com)
What is the value of caring in the customer experience?
This is almost invaluable. And leave it up to Seth Godin to say it. People (and customers) know when we care about them. It can’t be replaced.
What if that is what we measured. It is worth thinking about.
Instead of out thinking the competition…
it’s worth trying to out love them.
Everyone is working hard on the thinking part, but few of your competitors worry about the art and generosity and caring part.
Related articles
- How to downgrade by Seth Godin (kennykellogg.com)
- Does your org chart lead to complacency or disruption? (businesstechnologypartner.wordpress.com)
- Seth Godin at Maker Faire NY: Art and Science and Making Things (foodiecitymom.com)
- Seth’s Blog – Seth Godin (spiceofyourlife.wordpress.com)
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