Disruption Tour --- Run To Survive

Failure: a case study...

Full article from Imediaconnection.com here...

You've heard the phrases, "fail first" and "fail fast," haven't you? The NextStage CRO explores the relationships among failure, innovation and expanding your market.

Readers who are familiar with NextStage's Principles or who have heard me speak on the topic know I put a lot of trust in failure. Salespeople show me case studies of their product or service helping others and my response is "Give me the names of three to five companies or people who've used your product or service and failed. I am much more interested in knowing why and how they failed."

It's not that I enjoy failure. I don't. I do enjoy knowing if my situation is similar to the situations of others who've failed. I don't think less of the product or service, I simply know it's not for me and I've saved lots of time, money and frustration by asking some unpopular questions.

I apply this methodology when I'm working with clients, as well. I'll ask lots of questions during the discovery phase of the engagement and lots of the questions are around what didn't work and why. I encourage people to share their failures because we can only safeguard against future failure by acknowledging and understanding failures in the past.

Now is the time for turning...

Adapted from a prayer by Jack Reimer

To everything there is a season, and an appointed time for every purpose under the heaven.
    Now is the time for turning.

There leaves are beginning to turn from green to red and orange.
    The birds are beginning to turn and heading once more towards the south.

The animals are beginning to turn to storing their food for the winter.
    For leaves, birds, and animals, turning comes instinctively, but for us turning does not come so             simply.

It takes an act of will for us to make a turn.
    It means breaking with old habits. It means that we have been wrong, and this never easy.

It means loosing face; it means starting over again; and this is always painful.
    It means saying "I am sorry". It means understanding that we have the ability to change.

These things are terribly hard to do. But unless we turn, we will be trapped forever in yesterday's ways.

From callousness to sensitivity, from hostility to love,from pettiness to purpose, from envy to contentment,

From carelessness to discipline, from fear to faith,turn us around, and bring us back towards each other for in isolation there is no life.

The Permissions Mirror

Are you aware how marketing “surround sound” is affecting your customers?

When was it you even thought about your Permissions Mirror?

OK---why am I ranting---well here is a personal story. Since it is an attractive time to refinance my home, I applied for home refinancing. After agreeing to share my credit score with the refinancing company, I was bombarded, over a two week period, with more than 70 (yes 70) telemarketing calls to my home. Additionally, I have received no less than 50 refinancing solicitations in the mail, 40 email promotions along with 10 annoying calls to my mobile phone.  NONE of this “surround sound” attention was authorized by me “the consumer.”  NONE of it.

Give me a break---and BOY was I PO’d!  (harsher words are more appropriate) 

Then a day later, I bought a piece of merchandise from an apparel mail order company.  Their name is one of the nation’s most trusted brands. Hmmm---now I am receiving catalogs (so many my mail box is stuffed) from companies I do not know and do not want to do business with.  Please!!!

Did the company I love to do business (or maybe used to love) ask me for my permission to do any of this?  NOPE!  But they did it. Yup!

Will they continue?---keep reading---

And what’s worse, I just don’t know how to shut off this stuff.  I thought I did but what used to work (even being in the business) just doesn’t work anymore and if you think the DMA (Direct Marketing Association’s Mail Preference File) can help; think again.

Imagine how frustrating this must be for your customer without insider information?

Of course, you know why this is happening --- it’s all about MONEY --- lot’s of it, as companies like the refinance and the apparel company are being paid handsomely (up to $3+ for every name on their 12 month database) to tread on permissions or more sadly to abuse them.

Oh--- Geez--- I forget to mention above that I signed up for another company’s electronic e-newsletter and, I shouldn’t be surprised, I am already receiving electronic offer after offer, which has now turned into several every week.

So after analyzing all this insanity including my mailbox glut, annoying cell phone solicitations and mountains of email, I started to wonder when did business STOP looking into its Permissions Mirror?

And as a consumer, I began to wonder, when did I give them permission?

Who did I give permission too?

Which companies took my permission from me?

Will I ever be able to get my permissions back?

Who will help me get my permissions back?

In Phil Rosensweig’s book “The Halo Effect and Eight Other Business Delusions That Managers Face”, Phil discusses nine management delusions.  I am presenting the second group of three below.  Recall last week, I presented the first group.  You can review them at http://thegies.typepad.com/runtosurvive/thegiesrevision/index.html

Delusion Four: The Delusion of Connecting the Winning Dots.
When Data Companies feel they have been successful doing just what they want to do with people’s data/permissions and they have been doing it with more and more frequency over the last 15 years or so --- why won’t they feel they can be even more successful trampling on consumer permissions in the future?

Delusion Five: The Delusion of Rigorous Research.
Does anyone believe the existing Data Companies are going to give up their data ownership position and give control back to the consumer? If you were a CEO wouldn’t giving up control/ownership of your consumer data scare the livin bejeebees out of you? If you were also making a small fortune on the sale of data or were using data to leverage your business model would you give it back to your customer---Heck no!?!

Delusion Six: The Delusion of Lasting Success.
The promise of a data blueprint model for lasting success is attractive but not realistic. So what if a disruptive innovation came into the data marketplace that acted as a catalyst for changing consumer’s permission? Who would be the disruptor? Who could spur this disruptive movement forward?

As Austin Powers says --- It’s The Consumer Baby ---

Till Next Time.
Onward---Upward---Believe---
Jeffery

P.S. If you are interested in hearing more about how you can take part in an Innovative Disruption focused on the consumer permission model drop me an email or post a comment and I will be happy to share how a growing number of people are working to bring about permission change. You can also learn more about the Disruption Tour by downloading a PowerPoint presentation from my website at http://thegies.typepad.com/runtosurvive/speaking_engagements/index.html

Would Like Being Paid For Your Permissions

Post From Jeff Giesener (thegies)
May 6, 2007.

YouTube, the video-sharing site purchased last year by Google, said on Friday that it would begin placing ads alongside clips from some of its most popular contributors and share revenue from those ads with them.

“In the marketplace, you often hear people talking about user-generated content in a disparaging way,” said Jamie Byrne, head of product marketing at YouTube. “This is content that really has merit and is of equal value to the professional content that is contributed by some of our partners.”

Now Google is evoking a simple and common data sharing model. One that is not new or rocket science. Now imagine if you (The Consumer) could be paid for your permissions...

What is a permission - the right for a marketing organization to contact you on any level of marketing whether it me snail mail, email, cellular, RFID or any other future digital signature mechanism.

So how many consumers would opt-in or our for only relevant messaging delivered to them only on their preselected digital methodologies like email, cellular, payless payments, RFID, BioMetric, Face Recognition? How many more would opt-in if they would also receive "revenue shares" for appropriately controlling their permissions? How many marketers would also adopt such a program?

Certainly marketers costs would go down, their responses would go up and the permissions tipping point moves to the consumer where it belongs.

Consumers would deal with more relevant communication messaging and only from merchants they choose to buy from.

Let's talk about this...Send me a comment...?

Thegies...ReVision -- The Halo Effect

From the book The Halo Effect---by Phil Rosenzweig, Mr. Rosenzweig retells a story about the great Ted Williams, the Red Sox outfielder, once said there was one thing he always found irritating: With runners on base and the opposing team’s slugger coming to the plate, the manager walks to the mound and says to the pitcher, “Don’t give the batter a good pitch, but don’t walk him, “ then turns around and marches back to dugout. Pointless said Williams. Of course, the pitcher doesn’t want to give the batter anything good to hit, and of course he doesn’t want to walk him either. The pitcher already knows that! The only useful advice is “in this situation, is it’s better to throw a strike because you really don’t want to walk this hitter, “ or, it’s better to walk this hitter because in this situation, you really don’t want to throw a him a strike.” But at the end of the day Baseball Managers find it easier to ask for the best of both worlds. 

I often speak about The DOOM to ZOOM timeline, which our research has determined to be between 9-15 years of a company’s business cycle. Within the timeline a business will have 3-5 years of ZOOM, 3-5 years of ARCing and a possible 3-5+ years of DOOM. Of course the ARC is the most critical component of the timeline.

As such, it is important to not only discover ahead of time “the when” of the ARC period but also when is the right time to step in and provide corrective action (innovation) for the organization to move itself around/miss the ARC period and into the next ZOOM loop. If the organization can’t see or chooses not to see or worse ignores the ARC window it will soon head directly into a DOOM loop.

And a DOOM Loop is never pretty and in most cases results in shuffles of senior management along with people in all of the departments getting hurt. It is especially tragic for these non-C-Level people since they had very little control over the decisions.

So on my last plane ride, I caught up on some reading and read Phil Rosenzweig’s new book, “The Halo Effect and Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers.” The author has no problem disrupting and debunking company myths, long held management thoughts and theories written by some of the biggest management book authors including those written by Peters and Collins (In Search of Excellence and Good to Great).

But what I also walked away with is that Rosensweig’s theories go a long way to explaining why companies who believe they are ZOOMing can also quickly ARC into a DOOM loop without ever seeing or sensing the Doom Loop. He calls it the Halo Effect. In Good to Great a ton of time was spent discussing who and where people should sit on the bus. But frankly very little if any was spent discussing where should the bus be going. And from my perspective if you don't know where you are going your bus can easily tumble off the cliff. 

So over the next three newsletters, I will share Mr. Rosensweig’s Nine Delusion theories. 

But I’ve already tested his Halo Effect Theory. It was simply amazing to witness his theories come to life during several speaking sessions I gave recently. During my Q&A sections it was interesting to witness a company’s Halo and how proud they were to present it.

But now armed with new questions these same ZOOMing companies (or at least they thought there were ZOOMing prior to the Q&A) were asked simple follow up questions around the Nine Delusions (I knew them they didn’t) and it was interesting to watch how quickly they folded their ZOOMing cards. Using his Delusion tools helps companies see around the corner and determine where their business should be going and or who is/could be gunning for them.

Mr. Rosensweig identifies nine delusions, which your business could be “smoking” and in this newsletter I will share three of them. The remaining will come to you over the next several weeks.

As a fun test, simply check off if your business is traveling down any of them---Here are excerpts from Mr. Rosensweig’s book---

Delusion One: The Halo Effect

“The tendency to look at a company’s overall performance and make attributes about its culture, leadership, values and more. In fact, many things we commonly claim drive company performance are simply attributions based on prior performance.” 

Delusion Two: The Delusion of Correlation and Casualty

“Two things may be correlated, but we may not know which one causes which. Does employee satisfaction lead to high performance? The evidence suggests it is the other way around.” 

Delusion Three: The Delusion of Single Explanations

Many studies show that a particular factor – strong company culture or customer focus or great leadership leads to improved performance. But since many of these factors are highly correlated, the effect of each one is usually less than suggested. 

Back to your company---as you invest Big Dollars in your business whether to expand your physical store, web marketing or dials into your call center, does your organizational blueprint enable your company to prevent itself from falling into the delusion traps above?

How can you tell?

Well simply --- measure the important stuff. Forget about measuring everything. First collectively, determine and AGREE where you business constraint is? And then focus all your measurements on ONLY solving this constraint. Those who are familiar with the Theory of Constraints (TOC) will say nothing else (but solving the constraint) really matters. And when you develop a measuring methodology make sure you benchmark against the delusion guidelines in Mr. Rosensweig’s book.

So let’s consider some simple measuring sticks if you have determined you have a sales constraint.

1. Do you know the visitor count to your home page? Use this tool--- www.alexa.com. Then compare it to your competitors.

2. What is your defection rate off your web home page? Use your stats package and then skip over and find the same information about your competitors at www.compete.com.

3. How many pages and page views are your visitors seeing? Tool--- www.compete.com Also check out your top 3 competitors with this tool.

4. What is coming in the mail from your competitors? Use this tool--- www.usmonitor.com

5. Do you know what your response rate was for your last offer? Use this tool--- Best practice source coding and order capture at point of sales. Tool: check out www.whosmailingwhat.com

6. What is your shopping cart abandonment rate? Tool: Break your shopping experience into 3 trackable steps. Assign unique URL’s for each.

7. How many leads are you converting from your acquisition program? Tool--- Benchmark---How close are you to closing 9% of your leads? Experience www.linkedin.com

8. Does your retail channel capture, mine and analyze Lookers and Leavers (LL’s), Serious Shoppers, First-time Buyers and Transients (people who come in and leave your store and who are lower in priority than LL’s)? Tool--- Data mining and segmentation check out www.crosscountrycomputer.com

9. Do you track the number of store visitors and who converts to buyers each day? Tool--- www.shoppertrak.com

10. Are you tracking what these store visitors are buying on a retail sales per square foot basis? Tool--- www.envirosell.com

11. Do you know who your customers are? http://thegies.typepad.com/runtosurvive/speaking_engagements/index.html

12. How are callers handled in your call center. Tape all calls both in and outbound. Tool: www.calibrus.com

Yes--- so many questions---you may be saying so little time---(by the way I hear that so often) but go back to your business and look for the delusions. reating great ideas without the methodology of solid testing, execution, and roll out is perhaps equivalent to smoking your own Halo Effect. So why am I on my soapbox---because as Thomas Friedman says about what happens next---Flatten or be Flattened.

Till Next Time.
Onward---Upward---Believe---

Jeffery

Differentiating In The Double Bang

In my last two newsletters, I mentioned attending a lecture given by Bob Kierlin, Founder and Chairman of Minnesota based Fastenal (Nasdaq:FAST). The Fastenal Company sells bolts, nuts, screws, studs, and related products though its 2,000+ stores. Mr. Kierlin discussed several simple lessons that made his business successful. I want to share his third lesson, which is to "Differentiate Your Business." Mr. Kierlin discussed "how it is certainly a struggle to sell undifferentiated bolts and/or screws."  Actually they realized early on they couldn't differentiate the product line, but they did realize that they could differentiate themselves by offering their customers exceptional customer service.  He said, "We execute exceptional customer service at each of our 2,000 stores, our call center and website. We expect each of our channels to deliver upon the company's deep-rooted customer service promise." Differentiating in the environment of the Double Bang--- (Brand Commodization and Web Centricity) But when I asked Mr. Kierlin how Fastenal's customer service mission plays out in the broader web centric space he said "he preferred to have his business focus on more of a personal relationship approach."  He indicated his business was leveraged on personal relationships developed at the store level and from in/outbound telephone support.  He wasn't bullish on the web being able to replicate these relationship drivers. So using Fastenal as a jumping off point, let's circle back to your business and challenge how well you are doing at differentiation? Then let's raise the issue of how well your organization is protecting itself from the "Double Bang" which is the intersection of the forces of commoditization and web centricity? Quickly---can you pinpoint your positive points of market differentiation? How are you communicating them? Do you know where to find your customers and how to convert them to buyers? How are you speaking to your customer universe? Are you enabling your customers to share your brand? How would you rate against the above questions? First, if your brand isn't differentiated in some significant and sustainable way it won't make much of a lasting impression. Second, you must assume consumers are connected: they talk among themselves. Marketing and business development campaigns must recognize and leverage this. Talking at consumers doesn't work anymore. Providing consumers with the tools they need to understand, experience, and spread the word about your brand and your products and services does work. The new beachhead for smart marketers/business owners isn't traditional advertising, banner ads or email pushes. It isn't even better customer service across multi-channels. The new beachhead is tapping into social networks, advocating and stimulating buzz around your brand/service. Dave Evans from Hearthis.com says ---"We're experiencing the equivalent of a sonic boom; the velocity of personal messages in social networks now exceeds the rate of dispersion for thousands of commercial messages. Just as you can't hear the sonic boom until after the plane has passed, consumers don't hear your message until long after their friends, colleagues, or other social connections have already told them about you. It used to be consumers found out how good or bad your product was after they bought. Now, they learn all they need to know before." So I ask you --- how will your organization innovate through the "Double Bang?"  How will your organization maximize this new wave of web consumerism? If you watch smart web businesses/marketers they are creating and using tools that connect consumers and facilitate talk. They are driving educational marketing, bloging, stimulating advocates/supporters, buzzmeisters; investing in advergames, campaigns in virtual reality, Facebook, MySpace, wiki's, social spaces, and video mash-ups just to name a few. Certainly if your brand is speaking to Generation Y you already know this. We are seeing the signals that will flip the branding paradigm away from big brand power players to the power of single keyboarders with limber fingers sharing away. If you are not in the process of acquiring this intelligence, your "brand toast is burning." It is just that simple --- You've got to get to them before you hear the next sonic boom (which is your competitor taking your brand place at the table) by playing with your customers in the sandboxes where they play, giving them the tools to voice their views openly and candidly and help them share your brand. Until Next Time. Onward---Upward---Believe--- Jeffery

Thegies...ReVision...Listen To Your Businesss

n my last newsletter, I mentioned a lecture given by Bob Kierlin, Founder and Chairman of Minnesota based Fastenal (Nasdaq:FAST). The Fastenal Company offers bolts, nuts, screws, studs, and related products though its 2,000+ stores.  Mr. Kierlin started Fastenal in 1964 with five investors each putting in $7,000 a piece. The company does more than 1.2 billion in sales. Mr. Kierlin discussed how his company continues to innovate and he offered the group several simple lessons that made his business successful.

I want to share with you his second lesson, which is to "Listen To Your Business."

And it was certainly evident by Mr. Kierlin's responses to follow up questions that the meaning of  "Listening" to him was all about measuring the important things in his business.

It was inspirational to hear Mr. Kierlin's speak about Measuring because I/Direct Contact has been talking with clients about business metrics for years. We are also passionate about setting up Balanced Scorecards that deliver the "Listening Tools" that company innovation is built upon. Measuring, Balanced Scorecards and Listening Tools are the platform for measuring RESULTS.

So was it a coincidence that I recently came across an article written by Ken Magill for DirectMag.com about measuring business success?

In the article, Ken discusses innovation and defends his opinions by suggesting innovative growth is tightly tied to measuring.  Ken further supports his position with additional research conducted by Jupiter Research.

Ken writes, "Ahh---measuring. Yes the quantifiable, unemotional, accurate attempt at measuring business things. Actually what we are supposed to be accountable for in our businesses. You know---Results."

So here is my "KISS" question ---What are you measuring? And I am not speaking about getting a broad-brush answer or guesses. Do you know what it costs your company to acquire a customer or piece of business? Do you know what it costs your company to measure the important stuff?

In fact, will it surprise you to learn Jupiter Research determined that when given a series of fairly obvious success-gauging metrics to choose from-such as revenue per customer, average order size, customer acquisition and conversion rate, sales per book and costs per book - and further when asked which of these metrics are used on used on a monthly basis 50% of business-to-consumer marketers and 56% of business-to-business marketers, picked "none of the above."

As Ken says---"let's just let those facts just sink in for a moment" ---

Yes, can you imagine --- none of the above and unfortunately --- yes --- this is very consistent with our/Direct Contact findings when we begin a client engagements.

So here is a conversation that must be taking place between managers and Chief Marketing Officers (CMO's) across the country:

CMO: How's the e-mail marketing going, Bob?

Manager: Really great, Susan.

CMO: That's great. What's our revenue per subscriber these days?

Manager: High. It's very high.

CMO: Wonderful! How high? Can you peg a dollar figure to it?

Manager: Well, not really. We don't measure our campaigns that way.

CMO: Oh, well that's OK, I guess. What's our e-mail customers' average order size?

Manager: Average order size?

CMO: Yes, Bob, average order size: the average dollar amount our customers spend per order. What is it?

Manager: Oh, right! That average order size! Of course! Well, it's about average. You know, somewhere between high and low --- Right about --- you know, um. --- in the middle.

CMO: Bob, you have no idea what our e-mail customers' average order size is, do you?

Manager [Bob now [pointing over the CMO's shoulder]:
Oh my god! Susan! Look out behind you!!

CMO [jerking her head around in fear]:  What?!     What is it?!

(A sole of a shoe is now heard running in the distance) [thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump]

CMO Bob? --- Bob? Damn, he's gone again.

CMO How does he disappear like that?

But to be fair to the CMO's and the Bob's out there, David Daniels, the Juniper Research report's lead author, said the measurement problem seems to mainly stem from a lack of resources rather than ignorance on the part of business organizations.

Well that's good, better to be under resourced than ignorant I guess --- but Mr. Daniels also says --- "I think the big syndrome here is 'I've got to make the donuts,'" referring to the 15-year Dunkin' Donuts television ad campaign in which sleepy-eyed "Fred the Baker" says: "Time to make the donuts."

Although I hear David, his excuse doesn't hold water.
And it doesn't hold water for ZOOM companies who have figured out how to Make the Donuts without excuses.

So here is your second "KISS" test --- if you are finding and/or hearing from your organization that your people do not have the time or resources to "make the donuts",
I would suggest that you interpret this as another signal your organization is headed away from the ZOOM Loop and into the DOOM Loop.

Mr. Kierlin's said it best --- when you listen to your business and you do not hear answers to the key measurement questions --- it isn't time for Donuts! ---
it is time to get help now!

Till Next Time---
Onward---Upward---Believe---
Jeffery

Only Four Words

Over the last several weeks, I have written about Direct Contact’s Innovative Process and how we assist organizations to remove the bottlenecks that slow or prevent their innovation opportunities. We call it the ZOOM to DOOM Loop cycle.

Part of our Innovation Process is to assist organizations to simplify what they do and or enable them to step back to “see the water that they are swimming in”.

As a side bar, last week, I participated in a speed-networking event (which I highly recommend an event like this for anyone who wants to improve their ability to sell themselves) and a colleague who works in marketing communications and who also attended the event suggested after hearing my elevator pitch that I should simplify my pitch and use the following…. Direct Contact Helps Companies ZOOM.

…Simple, easy to remember, innovative and directly on point.

Her comment also enabled me to see the water I should be swimming in.

Then interestingly enough the following day, I went to a lecture given by the Chairman Bob Kierlin, Founder and Chairman of Minnesota’s based Fastenal (Nasdaq:FAST). The Fastenal Company, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the sale of industrial and construction supplies. The company offers bolts, nuts, screws, studs, and related products though its 2,000+ stores. Mr. Kierlin started Fastenal in 1964 with five investors each putting in $7,000 a piece. The company currently does more than 1.2 billion in sales. During the session, Mr. Kierlin mentioned how his company continues to innovate and he offered simple lessons.     

When asked what he felt was one of the lessons he learned that made him successful in business?

Mr. Kierlin mentioned… Don’t constrain your people.

Obviously, both of these lessons hit home as I have written a ton of words indicating just how important the people component is to a ZOOMing company.

Additionally, what I enjoyed about Mr. Kierlin’s lecture was his simplistic approach to doing business and his ability to economize on his thoughts to make his points. Mr. Kierlin eloquently did it all with just four words. Amazing… and behind his words it shows how successful he has run a ZOOMing company for over 50 years.

So here are my take aways from his lecture…

Can you say what your business does in 4 words?

Can your people (Sales, Marketing, and Operations) say what they do for the Company in four words?

Are they constraining their people? Are you constraining your leadership team?

If you and your leadership team would struggle to move past this exercise or worse you begin to hear silence in their response …

As Mr. Kierlin’s said succinctly suggested in his lecture…Get help right away!

Till Next Time---

Onward---Upward---Believe---

Jeffery

ReVision...Rules of the Sandbox

Our last newsletter post discussed our business process for generating change management intelligence within an organization. It described how we facilitate organizational change by asking thought-provoking questions both vertically and horizontally across the organization. See my last post for our series of due diligence questions ---

Our Q&A experience has taught us that if significant organizational change issues are found, but left unchecked, they will lead the company right into a DOOM Loop.

So in today's newsletter post, I will highlight how we move the organization through the second level of our change management process. We call this mapping process the "Rules of the Sandbox".

Using the concepts that are part of Rules of the Sandbox organizations can not only look at other organizations more clearly but also identify internal corporate and operational Sandboxes and who owns them.

So the Rules of the Sandbox process and discovery sets in motion a new organizational trajectory; one that will most likely highlight the political issues that can be effecting the company at various organizational levels.

Essentially the Rules of the Sandbox are tools that are designed so that the organization can more clearly see the water it is swimming in".

Continuing the water illusion - when an organization uses the Rules of the Sandbox process - leadership gets the opportunity to stand back and see the political debate that goes on within the organization. Leadership can easily identify the dysfunction, which further enables leadership to smell just how polluted the water within these Sandboxes has become.

So you may be asking what have we found when we enable formalized Sandbox play? Well quite a bit --- here are some of our findings ---

It energizes organizations --- enabling voices at all operational levels to be heard. Getting the organization to respond to dissident voices is another topic for another post!

It provides visibility for the company to discover and explore all of its Sandboxes and see their interplay. It also shares which Sandboxes are destined to ZOOM and/or which are potentially negatively ARCHING and/or moving to being trapped in a DOOM Loop.

It highlights that DOOM Loops factors do not have to be pervasive within all companies Sandboxes and that some critical Sandboxes that could be ZOOMing are being weighed down or being blunted by the DOOM Loop Sandboxes.

It can elevate the dysfunction in the underbelly of the organization (often hidden in its many manhole covers) and provides better visibility to the where it exists and who owns them.

And for even more positives --- after conducting many of our due diligence assignments, what is often brought to the forefront from the Rules of the Sandbox exercise is the frustration of the teams that are hidden within the "Silent Middle" of the organization. And it is here in the Silent Middle where some of the most talented people work and where the solid organizational work is done.

So for many reasons the Rules of the Sandbox process provides a cleansing and a cathartic exercise for the Silent Middle and for the company. It often also provides a release to the many choking points contained within the organization, further propelling the organization forward for the first time in months if not years.

So here are some tips to try in your organization following the Rules of the Sandbox process ---

Why not facilitate a meeting to define the number of Sandboxes in your organization and compare them to the official organizational chart? Also during this session determine who is leading them and if that knowledge elicits any surprises?

Then determine which specific Sandboxes are helping the organization ZOOM and which are causing the organization to slip into a DOOM Loop.

FIRST HINT - If you do the math( do you mean the bottom line?) without emotion you will realize that the numbers are the numbers.

SECOND HINT -- If your DOOM Sandboxes are greater than the ZOOM Sandboxes--- ACT NOW!

Till the next time---

Onward---Upward---Believe---

Jeffery

ReVision....Process Growers

Last week we discussed Process Killers, which is the second of the Silent Killers that send companies into a DOOM Loop.

The three Silent Killers are:

People Killers

Process Killers

Innovation Killers

In last week’s newsletter article, I documented several case studies, which elicited interesting feedback. You can see some of the feedback at my new Blog www.Thegies.typepad.com. Some of the posts however went to the heart of solving the case studies presented and as such I have held them back to enable the door to remain open for more of you to respond with a post.

Over the last several weeks, you have told me People Killers and Process Killers are certainly not unique nor are they isolated to the few case studies that were presented last week. Additionally, you have indicated that organizational challenges around the ZOOM to DOOM scenarios are happening at all company levels and no matter what size of company or industry. Your posts also clearly show that all of this frustrates the “bleep” out of you – and as such you are mad as hell about what “they” (they to be determined later) are doing to your organization and to your job.

Certainly this feedback resonates with our consulting work around organizational process improvement and typically is one of the reasons it is propelled forward.

My experience further shows firms would rather have change be facilitate from outside the organization than from within its ranks. At least that’s what the last 25 years has taught me/us. – So with this issue -- Bam -- we will take the newsletter up a notch and I hope thismore tactical approach will provide a more detailed level of understanding on not only the strategies bring change management to organizations but also the tactics.

From your comments, it sure looks like many of you are at a crossroads about what to do about moving your company out of a DOOM Loop. Certainly the doom atmosphere and to some degree personal attitudes from the middle management about their personal job concerns and safety should they step out to highlight obstacles doesn’t help your organization ZOOM. Just the opposite! And to this point how easy have you made it for your middle management to speak publicly about the Doom Loop your company is experiencing.

So how do we begin an engagement and how do we get so quickly get to the kernel of what the organization’s Silent Killers are? Well, we begin engagements with a series of trigger questions that meet a typical first objective, designed to elevate innovation obstacles. Here are some warning signal questions:

Is the organization having a turnover problem? What is the average tenure of Senior Leadership? Is the organization not turning over senior or mid level leadership? If these exits are not occurring not happening?

If there are exits where are they are occurring? What level are these exits occurring? Are they across the entire organization or weighed more heavily to one area?

Does your HR department know (“really know – really seek to know”) why these exits are happening? If Human Resources has this information how has it passed up the chain of command? How far up the chain of command has it gone? What are the actions that were taken if any?

Does Human Resources have a Senior Leadership position in the organization? Is Human Resource function part of the leadership organizational chart? Who does Human Resources report too?

In the areas that have long-term leadership tenure how often are these leaders seeking outside resources for help in running their businesses?

Are the people wanting to move up the leadership ladder finding no next level-up positions open for them? What is the organization doing about these ceilings? Are your talented people signaling the organization they are impatient for more openings?

Are these people requesting to meet above or outside of the immediate chain of command to tell their story? Are these people then being directed back to their superiors without giving them a chance to be heard outside of the chain of command?

 

Obviously this is an intense line of questioning and it requires open access to many if not all levels of the organization. If you can’t access the answers because of lack of cross border bandwidth that is an bigger signal for your organization and shows how Senior Leadership is not in total support of the ZOOM effort. So pulsing through this routine of questions enables a significant amount of due diligence to be gleaned from the organization and certainly an action list of next steps towards the ZOOM.

Now a question for you and your organization: If you take your organization through this line of due diligence questioning, how do you score your organization? Are you “smelling what is cooking” in/for/or around your company? Would you peg your company in a ZOOM Loop (3-5 years), Arch Loop (3-5 years) or a DOOM Loop (3-5 years)?

Till Next Time –

Onward---Upward---Believe---

Jeffery