Category: CEO

In the graduate marketing management course that I teach at St. Edwards University I spend a significant amount of time presenting the traditional marketing frameworks.  The Four P’s (Product, Pricing, Placement, Promotion), SWOT analysis (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats), and Michael Porter’s Five Forces analysis (Threats from other Similar, Threats from New Entrants, Threats from Substitutes, Supplier Power, and Buyer Power) are some of the frameworks that we talk about and debate.

These are traditional ways of analyzing a business, product, service, or market area.  These have existed for quite a long time – certainly before the Internet had the incredibly disruptive and seismic impact on traditional market delivery methods such as print advertising, radio, PR, and events.

Additionally, I spend a considerable amount of time talking about market communication goals and execution using the traditional framework of Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion.  These also are very established focus areas for marketing execution.  They were established back when ad agencies were setting metrics and goals for expected performance from different types of marketing communications.

In reviewing these with the students, the question was asked – ‘How relevant are these frameworks given the growth of social media, social marketing, and the changing vehicles/power of traditional communications vehicles such as newspapers, magazines, and events/tradeshows.

My answer is that these frameworks are even more important than ever before!  Frameworks exist to help bring order out of chaos.  The more convoluted and disparate the communications vehicles and methods become, the more profiliferation of user-driven communications and marketing (see Yelp for an example), the more that the traditional frameworks can be used to help organize that marketing efforts and needs.  If you are a restauranteur seeming to lose ground based on LivingSocial, Groupon, Yelp, etc being used by your competitors, then using tools such as a SWOT analysis or a Five Forces analysis may help you organize what the appropriate market response should be.

Using the Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion model can help you determine the most appropriate and cost-effective way of marketing the response.  Maybe offering a promotion through LivingSocial IS the right way to get people to try your products (Conversion), maybe getting a local food reviewer to review the product and posting it on social media sites may be a good approach (Consideration), or maybe sponsoring a local charity will raise the visibility of your business (Awareness).  Understanding this model can sharpen your market response and focus the dollars that you spend.

In this time of social media proliferation, shifting advertising and marketing vehicle power, and constant solicitation of the marketing dollar, it is MORE incumbent on marketing organizations to rely on the traditional frameworks.  Rarely have they had as much relevance as they do now in this state of marketing chaos.

In this global marketplace where parties can be separated by distance, communications is a critical capability for success.  Where, in the past,  basic communications interpretation tools such as seeing the other  person’s expression or hearing the inflection in the voice would help clarify communication misunderstandings or mistakes, the dependence on email, texting, and even video chatting has exposed significant issues for those that haven’t mastered the skills of communications techniques.  Similar to developing new processes – communications skills require good execution before relying on technology to streamline the activity.  Failure to master the rules of great communications skills runs the risk of technology magnifying the shortcomings in a person’s communications.  While it sounds esoteric, there really is a method for ensuring strong communications skills.  Here are three basic rules for communications excellence:

1)      Communicate frequently and regularly.  Consistency gets people comfortable with the tone, inflections, and how information is structured and processed.   Regular communications creates a psychological conversation between the sender and the other person that makes it easier over time to exchange ideas without having to second-guess the other person’s message.

2)      Focus on quality of message.  Learning to communicate clearly in 50 words what takes many people 500 words is an important skill.  Shorter, high quality messages tend to be received and remembered better by the recipient than long, wordy communications that ramble.  Also, shorter impactful messages are better received when communicating frequently and regularly.

3)      Ensure that the message is dependable.   It only takes one or two material mistakes for credibility to be destroyed.   It’s important to not only be confident and correct in the message, but in many cases, it’s important to defend the message with citations.  One of the reasons that news articles and research papers cite sources is to establish credibility.  This focus on delivering dependable messages accomplishes two things; 1) it makes the sender do the appropriate discovery work to ensure that the communication is correct, and 2) it establishes with the receiver that the sender has tried to ensure that the message is correct and gives them a point of reference for the dependability of the message.  For example, conveying a request for a feature for a new product has much more weight if the feature request is backed up with specific customer feedback.  The more reliable the messages are then the more trusted the messenger becomes.

You may wonder what this has to do with mobile computing devices and tablets.  In some ways, it is exactly what mobile phones and tablets excel at – being tools for communications excellence.  Tablets bring multiple communications tools together in one device; email, text, chat.  Many tablets provide additional tools; video chatting (Skype and iChat), cameras, voice, video.

These tools, in conjunction with wireless capabilities, provide a great vehicle for communications excellence.  Within the tablets’ messaging tools there is the ability to provide frequently and regularly.  The cameras, video, and data capture capabilities help focus on quality of message as well as allowing for capture of information which highlights the dependability of the message.

Tablets enable a new level of communications, whether through form based applications that capture information and transmit them in a structured way , or as messaging platforms to help automate the basis of communications excellence; frequency, quality, and dependability.

It seems like daily there is news out about mobile computing and communications that confuse and confound.  The mobile environment has so many different facets; the communications networks and their voice and data architectures (3G/4G/LTE/WiMax/etc.), device manufacturers creating devices that are hard to distinguish (Android tablets, anyone?), and software offerings that seem to be all over the map (applets, Software as a Service, Cloud-based, etc).  What does it all mean and how does anyone make sense of all this noise?

In researching for a speech that I gave on the future of mobile computing I realized that there are three fundamental ‘pillars’ driving the mobile computing and communications world and they are dependent on each other and inter-related in many, many ways.  These pillars have one added dimension which affects them; the geographic and international differences that exist for each of these columns.  For example, wireless network capabilities are at different stages of capability and readiness in different parts of the world.  The number of internet-enabled users in Asia far outnumber the North American internet-enabled user base and this has dramatic impact on application targeting.

The three key ‘pillars’ are Wireless Networks (both in-building and wide-area), Application Delivery (SaaS, Cloud, local, etc), and Mobile Devices (tablets, smartphones, netbooks, ultralight notebooks).   Each of these are directly impacted by geographic differences – either by the state of the technology environment in those geographies or by the sheer number of users and potential users in those geographies.

My intent with this blog area is to try to apply the impact of new anouncements based on the framework of the three pillars or geographic ramifications.  Hope that you find them interesting.

With Steve Job’s recent medical leave underway there has been a lot of focus on Tim Cook, Apple’s number two person for many years.  While Tim has stepped in several times in the past to run the ship while Steve was out for his medical treatments, this time it appears to have hit home to the reporters and analysts that Mr. Cook may actually be needed to step into the number one spot on a more permanent basis.   The industry pundits appear concerned.

There is really something to this Number Two to Number One thing.  It IS different.  I don’t believe it’s about vision or strategy though.  I believe it’s about the span of control and intense spotlight that the number one person has to contend with.  What few people seem to be aware of is that the companies with strong management teams at the top do well because of a strong number one AND a strong number two.  Rarely is there a number three with the same breadth of organizational control (it would just be a top heavy vertical organization if they did).

There have been a number of number two players that have taken over – Craig Barrett at Intel is one example but I would add executives like Kevin Rollins at Dell (you can argue about how those turned out but for several years they were very successful).  Tim Cook will be just another in a line of number twos that end up in the top spot.

I have some empathy for his current situation because I, like him, was a ‘perrenial number two’ in the companies that I worked for and even the company that I co-founded.  I would tell people that I liked being number two and they would snicker.  As much of a control freak as I am people really just didn’t believe that I didn’t want to be the top person and assumed it was false modesty or some game that I was playing to not look to ambitious to the number one person.  It wasn’t a game.  There is a definite role for a strong number two that enhances the game of a strong number one and it was a role that I cherished.  (By the way, being a strong number two to a weak number one doesn’t go well and doesn’t last long).  I’ve spent the last two years going through my own transition from COO to CEO – even though it’s on a very different scale, and there are some things that I’ve observed about the transition that may be worth watching here.

There are several advantages to being number two; 1) there tends to be less internal focus on number two and it’s easier to get the facts and the pulse of what’s going on as a number two (not a lot of yes-men to number twos!), 2) externally there is less pressure on a number two as industry analysts, press, etc tend to focus on number one (anyone know who is number two at Microsoft, GE, IBM, etc?), and the role of number two tends to be an execution role so there is a lot of opportunity to roll-up the sleeves and dig into meaty problems and work them to resolution – without people being intimidated by the top guy being involved.  If you look at Tim Cook’s history those are roles that he appears to have played very, very well.  It doesn’t diminish Steve Job’s accomplishments in any way or Tim Cook’s.  Together they appear to have been good for the company.

Stepping out into the top role is a massive change.  Tim Cook will need to be able to deal with the focus.  It can be intense and unnerving for someone who is not an externally driven person.  He will need to find a number two that complements him.  Having two number twos at the top or only a number one also doesn’t work very well (see Compaq post-Canion, or Microsoft now with the loss of the Gates/Balmer team as an example).

Tim Cook has been a real success as Apple’s number two.  The role that he will be taking on is much different than what he has been doing.  The analysts are right on watching this closely but I don’t believe it’s about ‘Vision’.  I believe it’s about the significant personal shift from being Number Two to Number One.

Let me know what you think.