Web Strategist Lab

Today’s Mashable headline is “Nokia CEO: Why We’re More Relevant Than Ever”

C’mon. If you have to say you’re relevant, you’re not. You can’t press release relevance. It takes a miracle of marketing savvy and guts to “commercial” yourself into relevance (Exception: movie trailers).

Relevance exists in the consumers’ and critics’ minds.

It’s the inverse to the idea: If you have to explain why you’re funny, you’re not.

The New Law of Development:

A genius idea messily executed will always beat out a bad idea perfectly executed.

Corollary:

It’s far cheaper to invest in good project management than good idea creation, so businesses will always lean towards the latter over the former.

I need a pithy title for this. Maybe I can leverage Seth Godin’s cache here and call it Seth’s law, so long as it can be the Ellis Corollary. Thoughts?

Someone asked me, in the middle of what I assume to be a caffeine-fueled rant about something or another, the kind where people think my head will fly off from sheer enthusiasm like some meth-addled cheerleader, how I deal with constrains and limitations.

Is there anyone who works without constrains and limitations? Anyone with an endless budget, a team of programmers and writers and artists at their disposal, a minion who follows them collecting every stray thought down in a moleskin notebook that is latter transcribed into digital form, and 27 hours in the day?

Can I have your job?

It doesn’t matter what the job is, there are limitations and constraints. Even top people at Google, who have more resources at their disposal at a moment’s notice than I may have in a lifetime, are constrained by branding, culture, and methodology. Consider the designer at google who has to justify that exact shade of blue by creating five permutations, running them all through multivariate testing simply to show that that is a pretty and effective shade of cobalt.

There are legal limitations (the Feds will break down your door and haul your butt to a prison in Nova Scotia (yes, that’s how serious they are: they are going to imprison you in another country) never to be heard from again), cultural limitations (sorry, we can’t say we’re the best at that because the owner is uncomfortable bragging about that…), resource limitations (sure, we’ll build that for you just as soon as our army of a million developers at a million workstations arrives), and even personal limitations (my watch only has 24 hours on it, and if I don’t sleep for some of them and see my wife for at least two of them, I’m going to be spending a lot more time looking for a new place to live…).

You can choose to hate them. You can choose to understand and appreciate them, or you can learn to love them.

You remember Mad Men’s first episode, right? Where Don has hit a wall of limitations. No more talking about how healthy cigarettes are, or how safe they are, or… anything. He’s trapped by the limitations. Frankly, I’m guessing he came up with his last 17 cigarette campaigns between drinks because there were so few limitations. And you know what? I’m guessing they were boring campaigns. Maybe .7% cleverer than anyone else’s (because he’s the hero of the story, duh), but still run of the mill.

When Don hit a limitation, he was forced to move in a new direction and grow creatively. He had his “It’s toasted” moment. He realized that his limitation was everyone else’s limitation and moved to where he realized they were all going to go, but be the first one there. Limitations allowed him to find new ways to be creative.

Limitations actually build creativity. Necessity of the mother of invention, and necessity’s sister is limitation (I am now tired of typing the word limitation, for the record).

Love your limits. They show you how to grow.

I’m just going to dive in with no preamble, so here goes.

A company’s organization and culture is often a function of it’s size. Here’s what I’ve learned working in companies of various sizes:

1-2 People. Single-Owner or Partnership.
Because one or two people are the only people, they have to do everything. Smart companies figure out how to carve out a little time to outsource the things they aren’t good at (billing, marketing, etc), though most companies wear the “I’m too busy working to think about how to work better” badge like a medal and don’t grow as fasts they want. Usually, this leads to burnout.

3-7 People. Personal Business, Mom and Pop Shops and Hobby Businesses all fit into this group. This is an extension of the previous group in that the owner(s) still do everything, but now they have a little help with the things they hate doing or the things that are most profitable. Owner can take an occasional vacation, but really, they are just a bigger version of the single-owner. Burnout a real issue, as is employee morale: unless you’re a family member, you’re probably an hourly employee and you’ll be lucky to see a raise or benefits.

8-40 People. Small Business.
The company has turned a corner and figured out how to “go pro.” The employees are salaried with benefits or are contractors. The owner will still work had, but now they’ve built a platform on which they can rely more. Will take annual vacations, maybe even hold company picnics and Christmas parties. The company os almost completely flat – the owner has direct knowledge of every price of business going on every day and everyone reports to the owner. The owner has figured out how to delegate tasks, but not necessarily responsibility or control. Owner will ask questions of front line staff, and use that information to challenge their manager. In reality, the owner is often everyones manager, which can create confusion if everyone has an extra boss to please. A successful organization needs to teach the owner that either the owner needs to learn to delegate power, or become a silent partner (think back to every dot-com and how they replaced the initiator with a seasoned CEO. The issue at this size, as you grow isn’t tech savvy or vision, it’s the ability to let go of direct authority with losing control of the company).

40-100 People. Medium Business.
Successful businesses who get to this stage have built a management structure that mostly cordons off management from front-line staff (not in a bad way: this makes sure that owner/CEO can communicate through channels, and maybe gives access, but doesn’t interfere with day to day business (they will instead talk to the department heads and figure out problems and solutions that way). Successful medium companies have found a niche that’s profitable enough for everyone to profit from working there. They are small enough that they only outsource when it makes sense (payroll, specialized marketing, etc) because they can hire quality people internally. owner/CEO has time to pursue other ideas and ventures with much less risk of burnout.

100+ People. Large Business.
My only experience with large companies are as a low-level contract employee or through case studies and magazine articles, neither of which I trust enough to build an opinion here on.

This is a whole lot of late, and I’m doing it in a Starbucks (at least I’m sitting by the fireplace, natch!) so it will be a little messy.

The Obvious Choices

Linchpin by Seth Godin.

The Little BIG Things by Tom Peters

Switch by the Heath brothers.

Rather than review/gush all over these individually, I will just say that Seth and Tom have become institutions. Seth has finally written the book he was always hinting at in all his others (message: stop following my instructions and just figure it out! It’s a mystery, but it’s not impossible to figure out). Which may or may not be a killing of the golden goose for him (he could have spent his life pounding out books that walk you through marketing ideas until he was too senile to write them himself; he could have become the Dear Abby of the marketing world. Instead he threw the curtain back, revealed that you were your own wizard, so stop your bitching and get to work). Seth, I know you read this (I attended your seminar in Chicago), so let me say this: keep writing these big books! Stupid like pamphlets and workbooks are for the lesser minions to write. You need to to write bigimportantthoughtprovoking books! Pease!

Tom is coasting, but Tom coasting is like most of us sprinting for miles. He has lived at this level so long, it doesn’t even look revelatory anymore. I mean, can anyone ever top the simple idea that The Work Matters? Not going to happen. He reminds us that we are people and that they way we spend our time should not be about personal profit in the financial sense, but more about pride and love and passion, out of which financial success will come. The press release, the blog post, the web page, the memo, the spreadsheet, the project sheet, all these things we make can be more than just following the rules, it can be magic and love and excitement and interest. If the work really matters, then why the he’ll are you doing this crap?

The Heath brothers, who made a name for themselves with the “this is how a lay person should think like a marketer” book Stick, have switched to a new word: Switch. How to change. Yourself, your office, your coworkers, your relationships, your habits, the nature of how we make changes is that minor topic they cover. They cover it well, with a smattering of persuasion psychology, lizard-brain neurobiology, and rules of thumb. The remind us yet again that work like is part of life, not some separate thing that happens eight-ten hours a day we would like to forget after it’s done, but that it’s all connected, so take the lessons you learn outside work and use them inside it and vice versa.

Books I Loved This Year That I’m Too Lazy to Look at what Date They Were Published

How Did That Happen? By the guys who brought you the “set expectations and validate them” books Oz and Emerald City, comes a book with a lot less gimmick and a lot more real. No need and reread the first two, just skip to this one which summarizes the first two in about ten pages (re-confirming that most business books are 90% filler to part you from your money). The main idea is that we need to stop blaming and start working. Ironically, the person who suggested the books to me is probably most in need of adopting the lesson. Of course, who knows what some of you would say about my book suggestions.

Reread Art of Possibility and Three Laws of Performance. I think I’ll read these annually. I need to re-hear these messages constantly.

Tribal Leadership. The book Logan and team wrote before three laws of performance. More case studies, smaller ideas, but more “doable.”. It’s the book I would recommend to pele who weren’t ready for the big ideas in three laws.

Winning by Jack Welch. I agree with every nasty thing Tom peters has ever said about jack welch. He’s the devil’s project leader, as far as I can tell (sorry Jack Donaghy). But this is a peek inside his warped mind. The tools can and should be used for good, not evil. I expected to scan it, but instead read every word. Totally not the self-aggrandizing crap the first book was, this one is really a workbook on how to get the most of of teams, assuming you don’t care about them as people.

Rework. I suggested this to my boss and he seems to have missed the point. To paraphrase his response: if you’ve started a small business, this is all 100% obvious. Yes, but if you are a cubicle worker, and haven’t learned these lessons, they are invaluable.

Thanks Jerry Pollio at CMT Marketing for saying such nice things about The New Rules of Engagement!

His book is any easy read with lots of good, viable and useful search optimization information. By the way, this book helped him land a great position

You can purchase The New Rule of Engagement at Lulu.com.

In yesterday’s Wall Street journal, Gary Hamel reveals “Management’s Dirty Little Secret,” that most of the actions a manager takes, even those in pursuit of an engaged workplace, are more likely to stifle enthusiasm than anything. He talks about the amazing new results of a survey to show this.

What this survey reveals is that Mr. Hamel (and, to be fair, most management experts) has never been a real employee. Everyone who has a boss knows that most of their job is to avoid the boss, avoid their wrath, avoid their eyeline, and even to avoid their interest. Most employees know that bosses are like Baby Huey, taking interest for the moment in something shiny (Ooo… an intranet! Ahh… we need a CRM system! Mmmm…  personalized URLs!), turning it into a “PROJECT” that you are now responsible for (and all the requisite administrative burdens therein regardless of intent or return), and wander away to the next shiny thing. Woe unto those who’s bosses are interested in what they are doing.

This, of course, discounts the idea that some employees need that kind of supervision to get things done. But most of the people I’ve ever met in the “creative class” (the survey indicates that as knowledge workers become commoditized, the real value is in those who can be creative in finding solutions) are self-starting, self-motivating people who want to do amazing work, but have to be overly concerned with the interference of their boss.

So maybe Mr. Hamel is just waking up to the fact that employees, the ones on the front lines talking to customers, the ones coming up with new products, or the ones actually doing the work are a valuable part of the process and should be treated as such. Praise onto thee, company who knows how to encourage and respect their employees!

Okay, just a short post on what I’ve been reading this year. This list is certainly not comprehensive, but maybe it’ll give you some ideas on what to read next.

Maybe this is the year we start re-writing/re-thinking the laws of marketing and business. Not just because of the economy and the crap that’s been happening the last few years (okay, on second thought, maybe they aren’t unrelated), we’ve started to move beyond the “Four P’s” and “Centralization v. Decentralization” conversations that have dominated the landscape for decades. Let’s get to the business of selling and leading by understanding. Yes, Covey got there first, but he’s a cult leader because he wants you to buy his Covey-branded organizer. This is a broader movement, taken by many in different directions, but under the banner of “Not better marketing, better products because of better understanding of the audience” and “No more ‘Us v. Them’ because we are all ‘Us!’”

Best Book of the Year: The Three Laws of Performance by Steve Zaffron & Dave Logan. Maybe the thing I like best about this book is that it is 200 pages. It doesn’t dawdle. It doesn’t try to impress you with a million examples. It’s not trying to pad the story along. It’s written with the confidence of two people who aren’t trying to curry your favor or win your respect. They know something you don’t and are willing to tell you if you’ve got the ears to listen. I want to send this book to every manager I’ve ever met and say, “No! Really! There is a better way!”

Fierce Leadership by Susan Scott. I know, crazy, right? Managers should stop parsing words and covering their asses, get their hands dirty with the “employees” and show some real candor. Maybe the name of this new era should be called “The End of Ego.”

Brain Audit/Masterclass by Sean D’Souza (psychotactics.com). I can’t tell if this guy is insane or just insanely great. It’s a tough call. Either way, he’s eating his own dog food with a big fork laughing the whole way home.

Tribes by Seth Godin. What else could I say about this book that someone else hasn’t (which is probably the antithesis of the internet, right)?

Web Analytics 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik. Google should invent a pop-up application that’s embedded in Google Analytics a la “Clippy” that’s just an animated head of Avinash telling you what to do next. It will be full of chirpy wisdom that sounds like it was recorded by a helium-addled Robin Williams but actually help you. It will tell you to look for your BFFs and study your bounce rate. I will admit that I will repeatedly go to the definition page just to hear him tell me what the definition of a bounce is and crank the speaks up.  This guy is the Oprah of Web Analytics. If you aren’t reading him, you are only pretending to know what you’re talking about.

The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators by Eric T. Peterson. About as “getting your hands dirty with details” as a book can get, but it is full of smart ideas on how (and what) numbers to present.

The 50th Law of Power 50 Cent and Robert Green. I know. I didn’t think it would be any good, either.

Honorable Mentions:

• Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne.
• Cult of Analytics by Steve Jackson.
• Same Game New Rules by Bill Caskey (Despite it being from 2003).

Hey! Where the hell is Tom Peters? I miss that maniac.

So, I finally figured what I needed to do to get things rolling (That sentence has been nominated as the “Most Vague Opening Statement (Blog Category, Over-35 Year Old Division)”) and hunker down and get it done. What did I do? I wrote a book.

The New Rule of Engagement: Actionable & Effective Web 2.0 Strategy for Non-Profits is self-published through Lulu.com at the moment. But I’m not planning on making it available just yet. The plan is to give it away to 50 Chicago-based non-profits during the holidays and try and build awareness that all these new ideas floating through mashable.com are not just for the dot-coms and the large enterprises. They can be done effectively (and in many cases better) by a non-profit with a little guts to try something new.

Once I send them out and try and create offline engagement, I’ll probably make it available as an electronic book, but I’ll have to see what my options are.

Not having written anything that substantial in many years, it was nice to see that I still know how to put these sorts of projects. I really love writing, but I tend to get caught up in the “surely someone else has thought of this” internal dialog and shut things down before they happen. And who knows, maybe this thing will die a quiet death and I’ll know that maybe I’m not as good as I think I am and have to take a new approach. But until that happens, if you know anyone in Chicago who needs a great (and published!) web strategist,  send them my way.

Oh, I also “wrote” a book called “The Perfect Notebook” which is a variety on the Muji Chonotebook (“variety” in that it uses some neat ideas it proposes and that it will be available online and not just Tokyo and NYC boutiques).  Once things get settled, I’ll shoot and market that and see what I can make happen.

That just seems like a simple maxim.