Browsing Category

Leadership

Attitudes, Latitudes and Boundaries: A fractured reality

Pew research’s pulse presentation on attitudes on capitalism and democracy post the berlin wall collapse has some interesting insights by geography and cohort groups. The change in attitudes and opinions are expected for the most part, but interesting nonetheless to look at.

Pew Global Attitudes – Public Opinion Two Decades After the Fall of the Berlin Wall

View more presentations from Pew Research Center.

Capitalism and democracy a disappointment to people of former communist countries (dvorak.org)
Why was Berlin the key to the Cold War? (slate.com)

November 11, 2009 by Jon Gatrell

Exit Strategy: Sue Gartner for $1.696B

I’ve seen a good deal of crazy valuations and market activity to boost share holder wealth, but sometimes you should just choose the maintenance increase. Ultimately it appears ZL tech doesn’t realize that not all revenue generation ideas or exit strategies should be prioritized solely by the top line opportunity value. I mean the return on investment is pretty straightforward and simple: legal fees under say a million and a crazy $1.696B top line.

I can see the retort when question on the top line estimate:

Even after negotiations it is still a $600M pay day. Add in some contingency legal fees and the net is like $400 or like a gabillion times more than current revenues.

So while ZL clearly admits a short coming in marketing, which is the reason they aren’t leaders, thus the law suite, they might want to spend some time reflecting on the Ability to Execute concept when this is all over.

Below is a simple overview how marketing and branding just might influence a given organization’s placement in any given magic quadrant.

Gartner Influenced by Marketing

View more documents from spatiallyrelevant.

Many thanks to Hub Spot Marketing for their grader tools.

October 31, 2009 by Jon Gatrell

Where has all the civility gone? Public Speaking isn’t easy already

One of the early discussions I remember in terms of learning how to act in public was taught to me on the Muppet Show. It was a weekend night and I was probably like 6 years old and the conversation went something like this:

ME: Why are those Muppets interrupting and mean?
Mom: Well son, some people are just jackasses
ME: Yeah, it’s just Rude
Mom: If you don’t like something just leave, since other people might be enjoying it and it would be disruptive to those people.
ME: These courtesy, kindness and respect things are so complex.

One of the most challenging things for people to do is speak in public and it is not getting any easier. For some the larger the crowd, the more stress. Others don’t flourish well in small interactive groups and some people are just plain bad at speaking, but they did have the courage to get up there and apparently have the ability to write a good abstract. Regardless if they got the slot they may have some experiences to share and more than likely have something you can take away. Good or bad, you should take some lessons away from most pitches.

I get the opportunity to speak occasionally, I’m horribly mediocre and I ultimately appreciate the thoughtful feedback and the posts on Twitter as well to learn from. I think as audience members, we have an obligation to allow the speaker to present his or her materials and provide constructive feedback.

#dontembrarassurself indeed! But, apparently I’m a little old school and this is not cases in today’s social media world and it’s ok according to Jeremiah Owayng, in fact you should just deal with it and adopt some new skills which will even further limit/intimidate more speakers from sharing their content/ideas. Here are his recommendations:

Prepare More Than Ever. – This is one I buy without issues, not being prepared is a lack of respect in some aspects to your audience.

Know Your Audience’s Social Technology Adoption. – While interesting for a technology conference, not that relevant – really. If you have good content and are prepared, technology adoption shouldn’t be in your thinking. You should just be thinking KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE.

Monitor the Backchannel While Speaking. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Guy Kawasaki keynote a large conference, he monitors the body actions from the crowd and commands attention of the audience, he’s making micro-tweeks to his presentation to engage and react. Just as speakers do this in the real world, they must be monitoring the verbal, explicit reactions in the backchannel like Twitter or a chat room. Ask coordinators to display a monitor on stage facing you to see hashtags, use your mobile phone, or have your computer on stage to quickly see the stream. – I wouldn’t recommend this, stay focused, tell your story and feel the vibe is complex enough, plus the online chatter gets multiplied by folks that aren’t even in the room. Noise to signal team. Real-time content/conversation adjustments to unknowns typically doesn’t have an upside. If they are a known entity that you can actually physically see in the room and not some random in the hallway, you may be able leverage it into the discussion. Could be fun for all if integrated well.

Develop Backup Resources to Monitor. Some speakers have told me this is nearly impossible for them to do as they are focused on presenting content, here’s two tips for you. Speakers who are unable to monitor the backchannel should have a buddy attend the speech, sit in the front row, or off stage, and indicate if there’s something out of the ordinary they need to respond to. If your speaker content is rehearsed –it should be second nature to present it. Scoble is known for taking “Twitter breaks” during his presentation every 15 minutes to gauge the audience feedback. — If Scoble is doing it must be a great idea, social media sourcing at it’s best. Cite a social media personality and a ok speaker, naturally and who has the ability to integrate the stream into his pitch. We call that part of his shtick, Gallagher smashed watermelons, Carrot Top had weird props and Scoble does real-time online sentiment integration/adjustments. I wonder how many people can pull off that speaking prop?

Interact with the Audience: If your speech is going well, a majority of the tweets will be echos of what you’re saying then retweets. However, some speakers should monitor and look for questions, comments, or interesting new information that would add to the presentation. For example, at the Web 2.0 expo, I saw an audience member say my panel was boring on twitter, so I immediately shifted to Q&A which kept the audience interest. It probably was boring for that person, but I wonder if others were digging where you were going?

Practice Two-Fisted Speaking. In the future, we may start to see presenters with two devices in hand: the presentation clicker in right hand, and cell phone in right hand, monitoring the flow of conversation. Once this is a universally accepted reality we will have distracted audiences, speakers and slowed flow of information sharing and learning. People will adjust the tempo, the tone and miss the message/run out of time. Remember, not all people learn from reading and for some, these conference things are learning events, not filler until the Google party.

At the end of the day, public speaking is definitely in transition and the real-time conversation is out there, but use it as feedback, just as the comments you get from event after your presentation is rated. Learn from it, integrate it into your next pitch and try to continuously improve.

Vote with your feet and side on trying to add value to the discussion, rather than jumping on the Twitter sentiment bandwagon. The funny thing about negative comments, is they encourage more – not sure why. In all fairness, Jeremiah was really cool which his outreach. Empathy is so much better than criticism.

I guess we all like a good beating, kinda like fights in high school. I think we should all find a way to encourage active participation and sharing of information in real-life, we are just a little too good at it from behind a keyboard. Myself included.

Full Disclosure

I check twitter about 50% of the way through when presenting to an audience which would more than likely tweeting – know your audience.
I tweet at conferences – good and bad
I leave presentations, rather than watch a train wreck
I also fill out the survey and always try to find something positive to say in the additional comments

CONSULTING NICHE ALERT: Effective Presenting in a technology enabled world. This could be the new Social Media Guru segment.

Understanding Influence; the Chris Brogan Effect (myventurepad.com)
Twitter may be a tool but it’s not a machine (socialmediatoday.com)
Facebook Vs Twitter Round 2: A Comparison Of The Top Users (allfacebook.com)

October 10, 2009 by Jon Gatrell

Cross-Functional Diplomacy aka Product Management

: Image via Wikipedia

So with all the UN hub bub in NY a couple of weeks ago and Obama and Michelle’s plea for the Olympics in Chicago, it got me to thinking about the role of diplomats and in general diplomacy on the world stage. Then after a couple of beers I thought that on a much smaller scale that product managers are effectively corporate diplomats.

Ultimately, Product Managers are given some mission to drive forward, with little or no authority or ownership of the resources to accomplish a task which is kinda like a diplomat. PM need to do things like increase profit, revenue or “on time delivery” from bar napkin estimates and executive talking points. Kinda like taxation and political promises.

PM’s try to push agendas, negotiate the scope of product releases and define what is important for our stakeholders through release planning activities, roadmap development and corporate strategy sessions.

Granted not every meeting for a product manager is a positioning initiative or platform for moving the agenda of the business forward, but many are and the negotiation/tact required to deliver on the strategic needs of the product and/or business is often a negotiation. A negotiation where all you may have is the promise for a future feature or prioritized defect for the next sprint.

There are other ways to look at this negotiation, a friend of mine, Tim Davis over at Techlinks, used to refer to it as “horse trading”. A negotiation which if we aren’t careful ends up with poorly prioritized activities and features which may serve one stakeholder, but doesn’t deliver on the overall needs of the product – that’s the horse trading part. I’d probably use the horse trading concept, but as a political science undergrad I have a little more comfort in the diplomat comparison.

As corporate diplomats, when you get the opportunity to move a product, project or team right way it is often done with indirect authority and without direct ability to influence actions outside of the of negotiation/deal making. So when we get an opportunity to turn the dial a little we do, since those opportunities are not frequent and require some patience, not unlike diplomats.

I’m not saying all product managers are opportunist who take the opportunity to speak for 96 minutes at a general assembly, but we do try and take our 3-4 minutes where we can to try and impact change/drive the agenda forward and at times take a little liberty with the “All Employee” email lists.

Hold on a second, let’s baseline what a diplomat is since I’m bouncing around a little:

diplomat (plural diplomats)

A person who is accredited, such as an ambassador, to officially represents a government in its relations with other governments or international organisms

(figuratively) Someone who uses skill and tact in dealing with other people

So under both items 1 and 2 it may be easy to associate a product manager to a diplomat. So the translation is fairly easy – government = company. So what diplomatic missions do Product Managers go on?

Accreditation Drives Influence

Product Managers should be by their very existence in a company accredited to carry if not the corporate strategy, at least the product strategy throughout the organization. The nations in which they travel are the internal cross-functional groups which are required to be successful in the marketplace – sales, marketing, support, development and the leadership. Product Managers are taking issues in the marketplace and relating them tactfully to the key stakeholders. The I realized, not all product managers carry the same charter or accreditation, I was reminded of this the other morning when I was a Starbucks with a friend that happens to be a CEO and the conversation went something like this:

ME: Blah… How was that last round of golf… blah

CEO GUY: Blah… Blah… We really need to get out on the course… blah… How’s the new gig?

ME: New gig is great, every place has a different view of product, so it makes it fun. Doing some real PM work again and strategy too.

CEO GUY: How many product managers do you think can actually drive strategy? What 1 out of 10 – if that.

ME: I think the better question is how many product managers have the charter? Do they drive strategy, P&L or even market requirements. In your company what titles do you have in product management”

CEO GUY: Technical Product managers, business analyst types or what they are now calling product owners. In fact we are going so far as considering product owner the new official job title. Then we have general product managers and the director of product management. The director is the only one who has the closest thing to P&L accountability, we don’t really have that skill in the organization, so we don’t really require it in earnest.

ME: OK so you haven’t given them the charter to manage that way, I understand. Do you have Product Marketing?

CEO GUY: No, there is a enough complexity with managing the organization to understand product management, so we don’t need another not well defined or understood role. I Think only 3 people actually know what we expect from the director of product management.

So just as diplomats can execute on a topic or theme, they don’t have the charter to negotiate anything out of scope, so you sometimes just need to keep track of the chits. So not only are you the dimplomat your are responsible for remembering what favors you have out and which could be called in for the next real. So you ask yourself questions like – Are you up or down with support right now?

What you can do is as much predicated on the charter, as it is on the influence, credibility and trust you have with the other nations/cross-functional groups. For diplomats, there is a zone of acceptable execution and negotiation by the nature of your rank/title, the geography they cover and perhaps a functional/departmental definition – such as being associated with agriculture or energy if you were a diplomat. The same is true for product managers – if you are the product manager of old crusty shit, then you probably have less influence than the product manager of cool hope for the business shit. Multiply that by title or rank and you have some math result which means something like you have more pull on cool strategic stuff, than old declining revenue streams.

While I don’t have a pithy little close on this piece, I think the metaphor of diplomat has helped me understand that directional successes in product management are just as important as explicit success with metrics, revenue and general market execution. Thinking about it, without a focus on moving the organization directionally towards a goal the ability to have repeatable and scalable success is a challenge, so try a little diplomacy and chit management.