Marketing Influence & Thought Leadership

Startup Leadership in Turbulent Times: Company Values, Customers and Employee Morale Have Never Been More Important

Today, perpetual optimism is the force multiplier, now more than ever (Colin Powell, My American Journey). These are perhaps the most turbulent days of our lifetime, rampant uncertainty about the global economy, our jobs, our friends and families’ livelihoods, health care, education, global warming and to make things worse a weakening US dollar. These are the times that bring out the best and the worst in leaders. Leaders that have built their house on a rock of integrity, trust, and customer loyalty will weather the continuing storm. Those that rely on illusions, gimmicks and fear mongering and have already lost sight of their customers will sink deeply and quickly into the abyss. If you have ever witnessed a ship sinking the rats are the last to swim away from the vortex. This week’s reading is HBR’s, Drucker Centennial, What Would Peter Do? Is the title and as you all know, I am a huge Drucker fan.

Over the course of my career I often thought that participating in a startup was an adventure and it always reminded me of going on research cruises. Although several weeks at sea might seem short, activities and events at sea are accelerated at paces unimaginable, so it is actually a great metaphor. At the beginning of a cruise there is always uncertainty and doubt about the weather, the equipment, but most importantly the people. And unless you have personally handpicked all of your crew/employees, you have no idea how people will adapt and what leadership actions you will execute during your business voyage. There is really no difference in a startup or small business today, in some cases you need to act rapidly and effectively, in others time is your friend and using your best gut judgment is king. The really big difference is there is no day to day nausea of sea sickness to deal with in addition to lack of sleep, but that may not be the case for many employees today.

How Employees Think & Act in Turbulent Times

·         Employee thinking revolves around leadership:

o   Do I have confidence in the management’s decision making?

o   Do I trust the company and leader’s value system and integrity?

o   Are our leaders empathetic and understanding?

o   Is there fairness in decision making across the organization?

o   Can I trust the company’s business model?

o   Is my job safe?

 

These are all vitally important human issues today that seriously impact performance, productivity, innovation, attrition and your ability to conduct business. Dealing with them in an open, honest and fair environment will only deepen employee loyalty over the long run.

I have learned that there is no more powerful radical in the organizational equation than the negative power employee. They must be identified, controlled and/or expelled from organizational culture if necessary. This is the most important task of the sea going scientist manager, and the same goes for startup management. Negative power people will destroy the very basis of your management foundation and have the potential destroy your relationships with employees, customers and partners alike. On every ship I sailed on over a course of ten years there was always at least one negative power person.

 

·         Some employee actions in turbulent times revolve around:

o   Loyal employees persevering and maintaining focus and culture.

o   Lack of management trust results in a serious lack of morale.

o   The negative power people and managers wreak havoc by poisoning your relationships with employees, customers and partners.

o   New siloed political groups emerge across the company.

o   The best employees seek other opportunities, leaving behind a culture not favorable to the high performers.

o   Fear uncertainty and doubt creates apathy that drives down productivity and kills innovation.

·         How many of you have identified and dealt with the negative power people, I would like you to comment and share your management tactics.

 

Net/Net

 

One day I saw a bumper sticker that said, “There is no government like no government and then I thought to myself well if that is the case what about, ‘there is no management like no management.” There are many dysfunctional companies that creep and even some the cruise along with weak and unsupportive management cultures, in the end they almost always fail. One of the hallmarks of successful companies today is great management culture with a clear voice and vision of the future. Those are the companies that attract and keep the best because their managers are clearly focused on establishing and managing people to their highest abilities. Successful managers today need to be more sensitive to the human needs of employees, they are part therapist, mentor, teacher, but most of all they are fair and drive the best from the best. Being tough on employees that are challenged with work and family issues in these times doesn’t work, have more frequent one on one discussions with employees and most importantly preserve their trust. They will be there for you when the going gets tougher.

  The Personality of Fish: Killer Whales in the Sea of Cortez

 

 would have thought there would be Orcas in the Sea of Cortex well here is proof, this picture was taken two weeks ago about 50 miles off Puerto Penasco, in Sonora Mexico. The Marine Mammal Protection act of the 1970’s has been one of the only regulations that have had significant impact on the marine mammals in the US. In the Sea of Cortez marine mammals are alive and well, during the course of our eleven hours at sea we encountered more than fifty whales in addition to huge pods of dolphins and a small pod of killer whales. These animals are at the top of the oceanic ecosystem and appear to thriving in North America, this is extremely good news for our oceans.

Marine mammals, especially whales are like fishing boats that harvest nearly twenty four hours a day, they herd schools of fish and at times blow large clouds of bubbles underneath prey to concentrate them. They feed on plankton, bait fish and sometimes in the case of the Killer Whale they will separate a baby whale from the pod and feed upon it. Whales in general are some of the most unstudied creatures on earth and many of their habits and migratory patterns are unknown, especially their communications. I am sure that many of you who have encountered a whale remember the almost human look that a whale eye casts upon you when it looks up from the ocean. In these turbulent times, be understanding when your employees cast a worried eye in your direction, be a leader with compassion and great selling and marketing in Q4!

 

The B2B Social Media Olympics, Sponsored by Penn State’s ISBM & a Chance Meeting with George Bush Senior

Pennsylvania State University’s Institute for the Studies of Business Markets (ISBM http://isbm.smeal.psu.edu/ and part of the SMEAL College of Business) is another example of academic thought leaders who are working directly with industry to understand and capture competitive advantage in B2B marketing. Ralph Oliva, the Executive Director is what I call a “cosmic bondini” in that he connects the dots between what industry needs, and addresses those needs by building his network and foundation on rocks called research and B2P networking. Ralph, brother of my friend Vinnie Oliva at Gartner, assembled one of the first ever B2B conferences focused on social media. This ISBM conference was genius in the sense that it not only presented research that clearly shows where social media is going; but also provided speakers and practitioners that are actually doing it! HELLO!

Those practitioners included myself and Robin Carey of Social Media Today, Rick Short of Indium, Jeff Hayzlett of Kodak (see him on YouTube) and Cisco’s Doug Webster, in addition to several consulting organizations. One particular consultant/social media guru, had the audacity to actually get on stage and admit that they don’t even blog, wow are u kidding! This conference is one of the first I have ever seen that provides insights into how to execute a B2B social media strategy that addresses the bottom line, sales.

For background reading on thought leadership see Thought Leadership is Key to Marketing Communications Today at: http://www.thesocialcustomer.com/blog/PeterAuditore1/site/posts/

Net/Net: The Barrier to Executing B2B Social Media Strategy= Company & Org Culture

As Drucker always said “there is no strategy without execution,” and after spending last week with 100 marketing CMOs, directors and managers from more than fifty companies and organizations, I can tell you that most of them are far from executing any social media. Although many of the companies were from the manufacturing and the services industries they don’t get that B2B social media is simply another way of getting closer to their customers, partners and suppliers. Their company cultures are stuck in the mud of the antiquated four Ps of marketing, intellectual property protection discussions, and are threatened by the change of represented in the social media landscape that is downright scary to them.  This again harkens back to what I said multiple times last year about how social media can drive competitive advantage and most importantly sales. Get it!

I had the pleasure of keynoting this conference at the Houstonian hotel last week with my partner in crime Robin Carey. We presented SNCR research on how social media peer groups are rapidly becoming trusted decision support tools, and discussed the development of our famous MyVenturePad best practices in social media marketing case study. Here is a quick overview of the most important presentation that hit the spot.

Best Conference Presentation: Rick Short of Indium

Imagine if you were the marketing guru for a company that makes solder and solder paste how would you leverage social media?  Well Rick has been doing it for nearly five years now, Rick and I presented last year at the BMA conference and his formula for success with social media can be summed up in what he calls the three Cs and I love this:

• CONTENT        2          CONTACT        2          CASH

Rick’s story is indeed a best practice in B2B social media and he provided a roadmap to executing it. Rick has now convinced seventy of his company’s engineers to blog regularly on their areas of expertise and they are driving revenue from the people that read their blogs. He used one specific example of how an engineer was blogging on an obscure metallurgy topic and as a result the potential customer came to them because Indium has more content on the Internet about this area through blogging than any competitor, so they were viewed as an expert. In spite of the fact that Rick Short was there to tell them just how his company, Indium, makes money from social media, many conference attendees still did not get it, amazing.

A Chance Meeting with George Bush Senior

It is not often that I meet a President and have a conversation with one, but it was indeed fun to meet President Bush one of our kinder and gentler Presidents in Houston. While sitting out front of the hotel having my afternoon cigar, I noticed two secret service people open the door to the veranda I was sitting on, and out of a side door to my surprise emerged George Bush and his cane. For an older guy he looked great and vibrant and as I arose to shake his hand as he approached me and said “hi I am Peter from California, nice to meet you President Bush.” He looked at me and said, “You are enjoying a cigar” and I said “yes my grandfather told me that the man who smokes the big cigar has his life and plans well in hand.” (That is because usually when you light up a cigar everyone around you that does not smoke exitsJ)  George laughed and said “nice,” and then I said “we need to change this Cuban situation.” ‘George said why? George W likes cigars what should I tell him?’ I said “tell George W this, “Cuban cigars smoke up to twice as long as others, and they often taste like chocolate, nutmeg and other wonderful flavors and they are really smooth.” President Bush said, “I will, nice to meet you Peter.”

There is an awful lot more I could tell you about this conference but the net/net is most companies even today don’t understand the value of social media and don’t know how to use it, their competitors will. Until next time I wish you great marketing and selling in the millennium.

 

 

 

Thought Leadership and the Social Customer

The social media tsunami is significantly impacting the world of communications, marketing, sales and how we currently engage with influencers. This change mandates that we reassess current engagement models and the importance of individuals and their influence in social media peer groups (SMPG). Social media is more than a phenomenon and it has created new and viral forms of influence that are changing the way purchasing decisions are made in nearly all industries, including information technology. Social media is the new word of mouth marketing and advertising platform. The good news about this change is that it is allowing us to identify and better understand new and old influencers and their followers. For the influencers and thought leaders it is a panacea that is enabling transformation and innovation of their own business models. New social media influencing mediums, such as blogging and SMPGs /peer networks can provide a simplified method for evaluating and effectively scoring the overall importance of influencers in the purchasing decision making process. However, it is not the true sum of their influence within your ecosystem.  

Evaluating the Importance of Influencers

Who are your thought leaders and how do you evaluate their level of importance in your ecosystem?  This is perhaps one of the most important questions asked during discussions on thought leadership with colleagues and also when I present at social media conferences. At SAP we have developed effective systems and process guidelines for assessing the influence of thought leaders and have created “influencer scorecards” that assess the importance of influencers. Our ability to accurately assess the scoring value of each influencer requires an in-depth knowledge of their activities, reputation, standing in their firm or university and business model. We have assigned weighting values to parameters that we have identified as important, blogging is just one channel of influence.  The scoring parameters will vary depending on influencer type, for example, IT analysts include a parameter for influence within their respective firm and luminaries include a parameter for reputation.

Some Influencer Types

• Academic Influencers, university professors and their consulting arms.
• Business Influencers, by product or market focus.
• ITIR Influencers-traditional analyst firms and boutiques.
• IT Industry Thought Leaders, Geoff Moore, Don Tapscott etc.
• Industry Influencers, by vertical market segment or industry.

 

(A Business Influencer is a combination of consultant-analyst-author with in-depth industry expertise that focuses on the business value of technology and consults with LOB and IT and/or runs a systems integration software organization that often implements technology solutions in Fortune 500 or SME companies and organizations.)

Example Academic Influencer Scorecard

Weighting Parameters       0-5	Thought Leader One	Thought Leader Two	Thought Leader Three	Thought Leader Four	Thought Leader Five	Thought Leader Six
Author	5	5	5	5	5	5
C Suite Consultant	5	5	5	5	5	5
Independent Consulting Organization	1	3	1	5	2	1
Research Depth	5	5	5	5	5	5
University Rank	5	5	5	5	5	5
Speaking	5	3	5	5	5	5
Press Appeal/TV	5	3	5	3	5	5
Venture Capital Involvement	?	?	?	?	?	?
Geographic Reach	5	5	5	5	5	5
Blogger-Twitter	5	5	0	0	5	5
Score	41	39	36	38	42	41

 

The BIG team has intimate knowledge of all the thought leaders in this scorecard after working with them for several years now, and as you can see they are all nearly at the same level of influence at the C suite level of companies.

Guidelines for Key Weighting Parameters

• Author-has published at least two books and HBR articles etc.
• Blogger-is a regular blogger and has Twitter following.
• C Suite Consultant-consults regularly with C suite executives.
• Independent Consulting Organization-separate from University, Innosight, Keystone Strategy Group, etc.
• Research Depth-recognized expert in field conducting regular primary and secondary market research
• University rank-renown University, one of Top 50 in US example.
• Speaking-regular speaker in field of expertise
• Press Appeal /TV-Quoteability-PR friendly and TV appearances.
• Venture Capital Involvement
• Geographic reach

 

The influencer scorecard is not meant to overly simplify and/or provide a mathematical formula for assessing influence, but it is a good general framework from which to begin evaluating thought leaders. The social media tsunami has certainly changed the overall dynamics of influence in our businesses and its impact on brand and sales has yet to be measured. And thought leaders are seminal players in the social media landscape.