First 100 days

When I was learning my first trade at the Military Academy of Sandhurst, I was taught that three essential elements in taking an enemy objective were to plan:
The route in
The route through
The route out
I was reminded of this earlier in the week when coaching a marketing exec about to take up a big overseas role. The reminder came because the concepts are in fact applicable to how you approach a new job in the context of an overall career plan.
Plan your route in by considering what the best approaches are, what approaches to avoid (or at least if you are forced to take a sticky entry route be aware of the consequences - e.g. having to sack half your team!). Think what resources you bring with you that will help and also what resources you have that you can leave behind - don't carry around that unnecessary baggage of irrelevant past experience. Also think what resources you can call on from other sources (in military terms, get the artillery and engineers to support you!) for instance a coach or a mentor; or just someone who has worked in that part of the world before.
Plan your route through by identifying the crunch issues that you will have to address, now or at some time in the future, and what issues you can bypass and leave to the reserve troops. Think about how to get your team facing up to the issues - attacking the dug-in machine gun post head on might seem brave and glamorous but it does not go down well with the troops! And remember that one objective of the route through is to avoid unnecessary casualties or expenditure of your resources. So have a plan for how you will sustain yourself and your team. Moreover, look for opportunities on the route through to actually increase your resources; so think what the job will add to your experience, to your capabilities, to your self-awareness. Make a conscious plan for how you and your team are going to be a stronger force once you have got through the position.
And of course plan a route out. In other words, think about how success in this role will give you a springboard onto the next level of your career plan. Don't loose sight of securing this position, but give some thought to the next objective and make sure you end up pointing that way! There would have been no point in Montgomery fighting through the Ruhr on his way to Berlin only to come out facing Paris (check the map!).

Posted by david at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Richard Scoble has playfully placed his details in his blog, on the premise that google will be able to locate them...and thus his details can be available for anyone who needs to contact him...

Here they are:

Robert Scoble’s email: rscoble@microsoft.com
Robert Scoble’s cell phone: 425-205-1921
Robert Scoble’s mailing address: 1 Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052
Robert Scoble’s birthday: 1/18/1965
Robert Scoble’s best friend: Dave Winer
Robert Scoble’s significant other: Maryam Ghaemmaghami (married November 2, 2002).
Robert Scoble’s offspring: Patrick Scoble (born January 14, 1994).

Setting aside the debate about the searchability of this numerical data (and there's a big debate about that!), the logic is intriguing.

Not just the end of yellow pages, but also the end of outlook?

And also the end of recruitment 'exchanges'. Marketing Directors! Just put your CV out there in your blog...metatag it with all your key achievements...and see what happens...

In a sematic web/web 2.0 era, data, knowledge, and even social connections are increasingly commodities.

The smart headhunters will have to be in the insight and experience business...

Posted by Editor at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Michael Watkins writes in his book'The first 90 Days of the 7 vicious cycles new leaders can fall into.

Based on his work in 'transition acceleration' with Johnson and Johnson, he cautions against:

1. Riding off in all directions
2. Undefended boundaries
3. Brittleness
4. Isolation
5. Biased judgement
6. Work avoidance
7. Going over the top

It's the 'work avoidance' that interests me. Watkins is referring to the ostrich tendency to bury your head rather than take the big decisions, or of deckchair rearrangement as a mechanism to buy time.

Watkins counsels executives to be honest about their decision process - especially with themselves.

What starts out as a righteous desire to avoid the quick wins itch , by avoiding a rush to judgement can easily look like dallying...and swiftly become it. Decisions are declaration of strategic intent and commitment.

Real decisions involve the irrevocable allocation of resources, as John Caswell is fond of saying. How many of the 'decisions' marketing directors make fit this criterion?

Posted by Editor at 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(and this really is an unashamedly FMCG view!)

Over several years of involvement with marketing careers, I have found that marketers aspire in general to one of two career outcomes. Either they want to stay close to brands, products and consumers; in other words they want to stay as marketers. Or they aspire to some form of general business leadership role as “General Manager� or “Chairman� of a company. For these latter people the route through marketing is precisely that – a route through to some other form of business leadership role. Some people have said to me that they want to keep their options open and that they aspire simply to a senior role down either path. And clearly there are some people who are talented enough to build the capability to be great in either role. However, it is my contention that truly successful general business leadership is distinct from great marketing leadership, and that each separate role require distinct and different competencies and experiences; in other words they belong ultimately to separate career paths.

Consider this:

As CEO of a regional European business you are appointing a new general manager for one of your major markets. Two promising candidates are proposed, both from a marketing background and both with a strong track record. One of them is a great brand developer, having developed consumer mixes for the region supported by great advertising. He has worked in the relevant country and has some experience of consumer activation marketing. His most recent role has been as regional brand director for a portfolio of brands. The second candidate has an impressive track record as a marketer within local companies. She has some brand development experience, has also spent several years working in sales and had one assignment in logistics management. Her most recent role was as marketing director in a medium sized territory. Pretty obvious which one would get the job, isn’t it?
Reverse the scenario, and assess the candidates for the role of SVP Brands across the region. Once again, the answer is pretty obvious.

Now although this might sound like an invented scenario, in my experience I have found it all too common. The tragedy has been that each of these two individuals would have thought themselves worth a crack in either of the roles; and neither of them would have considered their likely progression into the very senior role with anything like enough forethought and planning.

It is a competitive world, if you will allow me the cliché, and natural talent combined with a successful track record in “marketing� is not always going to land you that top job – because there might always be someone with equal talent and a more appropriate track record. So, figure out what you aspire to be as a marketer, and then plan your career development accordingly!

Posted by david at 10:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

(or to be more positive, a proper career plan can help you to work out what new roles are most likely to be right for you.)

I have spent much of the last 6 years or so advising and helping marketers with their career and personal development. There have been two major features that I have found running through this work. The first is that marketers are very ambitious – no surprise there, and no different to people that I have worked with from other functions. The second has been that most have had little clarity over their longer term career objectives, therefore even less clarity over how the various roles they take fit together into a coherent career plan; and this has been different from many people I have worked with in Finance and Supply Chain.

SO the first piece of work I always try and do is to identify a career objective – this does not have to be a lifetime objective but it should be sufficient to give you a perspective over 7-10 years, or 2-3 jobs. The second step I take is to work out a detailed framework of conditions around that objective – the experiences and skills it is likely to require, the commitments that must be made, the relationship between professional and personal development, compromises that must be considered, opportunities that can be created.

These two steps are important when taken together because while the objective expresses a longer term ambition and is a source of motivation, the framework gives a set of measures against which any new role can be assessed. Furthermore the framework informs on what roles should be sought out for the next or second-next step. For instance, I have worked with several aspiring and ambitious young marketers with lots of home country experience who have wanted to take on regional or even global roles at a future point. An obvious element in their framework should be to get some international experience outside of their home country – obvious, but often overlooked I have found. Furthermore, the implication of getting international experience is most probably a commitment to moving self and any partner or family away from the home country along with any compromises that this might engender. None of this is rocket science, of course, and whenever I start to do the work with individuals I tend to get the sort of “why did I not think of this before� response; but the point is all to often, that it has NOT been thought about before. In that situation, and in the absence of proper career planning, the siren call of the exciting new job tends to overwhelm sober reflection on whether any new job is in fact a step in the right career direction. On the other hand, if you are clear about the career objective and plan the framework that is going to help you achieve this objective then you are more likely than not to make the right steps for your future.

Posted by david at 6:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)