First 100 days

One of the key challenges of the first 100 days is to listen, and to be seen to be listening.
One way to do this is to ask the same questions of all your internal stakeholders.

This conveys a sense of consistency, of rigour, and of fairness...

Writing in CIO magazine, Sam Aruti quotes Carole Hymovitz quoting Kevin Sharer... who asked all his key staff the the following 5 questions when he walked in as CEO of Amgen:

1. “What do you want to keep?�
2. “What do you want to change?�
3. “What do you want me to do?�
4. “What are you afraid I’ll do?�
5. “What else do you want to ask me?�

Just as your first 100 days is a changce for you to inject fresh energy into a business....so it will be a chance for your team to push their agendas and frustrations. If carefully managed, this can be a good thing.

Any new executive will be subject to misled by internal factions...but you can help control the signals you get
with structured questioning...

Posted by Editor at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

How to gain companywide recognition that you are making a significant difference in a staff role.

1. Plan your approach.

This will differ based on individual circumstances, but the principles involved are:
a. Making decisions on where you will aim to get airtime to merchandise your unique contribution.
b. Prioritizing what you work on to maximize your visibility and importance in delivering the overall business imperatives.
c. Working out how the team / individuals skill sets can blended with the top business needs and your functional responsibility.
d. Being aware of those in the organization who rate / do not rate the team / individuals and why, and how important their voice is in the organization.
e. Identifying those individuals / teams/ agencies who can help the team / individuals deliver.

Suggested approach:
• Take the top priorities for the total business. Work through what are the top contributions the team will make in the next year. Consider where the individuals own personal skills are best displayed/ deployed.
• Create a matrix of business priorities vs. your team's contributions. Gap fill your planned contribution based on the skill sets. Ask yourself where are the strengths best leveraged? Consider how best to market the unique contribution, skills and perspective.
• Consider the skills and abilities of the individuals / agencies / teams you are able to create and how best to leverage their capabilities.
• Create a plan that only you and your team can truly deliver. Merchandize its benefits to stakeholders in terms most meaningful to them.

2. Be aware of stakeholder agendas vs. your role.

Work out what the original vision foryour role. Review whether this agenda is still appropriate both for organization and for the individuals. What is the current agenda for your role?

Consider line manager's perspectives vs. your role. Many will find issue with any staff roles because they perceive they have :
a. More limited accountability- not Profit and Volume responsible
b. Shorter reporting lines through to senior management than they do.

Other staff roles may have been established longer and have developed own ways of working with stakeholders / senior management etc. It may be worth understanding what works for them and adapt this for your role.

Suggested approach:
• Understand each stakeholder's issues relevant to the team / individual and their contribution, work out how to
a. Resolve their issues
b. Express your role / contribution in ways meaningful to them.

• Benchmark existing practices and adapt vs. your own skill set.

• Have regular feedback sessions with key stakeholders- this forces them to recognize you are trying to address their agenda, provides a regular forum for relationship building and face to face time.

3. Build relationships, diagnose issues and help solve them with line management.

Suggested approach:
• Aim to dispell the myth that you are an out of touch HQ overhead! Avoid spending days in the office badgering teams for data to populate fancy charts. Target 1-2 days out of the office each week with line management. Get out and meet the teams. Find ways of helping them. Build a groundswell of support and appreciation that you are a valuable resource for them.

• For each key line management /other stakeholder decide what desired response will be and devise a plan to deliver. e.g., 'I really appreciate Ms. X's sorting out the XYZ issue for me. I appreciate we would not have done what we have done without her.'

4. Contribute to business discussion in the following areas where your staff role objectivity can be a
major benefit:

• Consumer / Customer Champion. E.g. acting as customer independent watchdog, feed back comments from opinion formers; articles; TV and radio etc.

• Competitor Intelligence. Use your staff role to assess competitors objectively; feed back on competitor intelligence.

• Innovation. Present innovatory new ideas; show better ways to do things; develop new service ideas.

• Culture & Values Championing. Contribute overtly to the culture of the business. Find new services for employees in line with values.

• Watchdog. Use the fact that you are staff and not line to be independent and challenging.

Posted by chris at 4:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Achieving consensus around marketing intentions first requires mutual understanding between marketers and their peers. And understanding requires a common langauge. NOT a private language.

All industries have them of course, their own private languages. With good reason.

An agreed lexicon can be very helpful to insiders - to rapidly convey meaning and share common experiences.

However, private languages are also used to obscure and confuse, to maintain secrecy; to distinguish group members from outsiders; or simply to have fun.

The language of marketing - brand essence, segmentation, value propositions, lifetime values, suffers from the worst of every form. In the private langauge of IT, there is at least consensus over what' html' actually means.

Marketing's fuzzy language both excludes others, and confuses itself. There are as many definitions of branding as there are marketeers. Savvy smart marketing director talks the language of customers and the language of the balance sheet.

Save the marketing-ese for the team meetings, or conference platforms.

Posted by robyn at 1:19 PM | Permalink