The Art Of Magazine: Volume 11 by The Art Of

LEADERSHIP | LEADERSHIP FOR WOMEN | SALES | MARKETING

The Six Deadly Sins of Leadership Jack & Suzy Welch

10 Rules for Brilliant Women Tara Mohr

How to Use Your Body to Win Sales Mark Bowden

The Art of the Brick Mitch Joel

RUBIN

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ITâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S ENOUGH TO BEGIN

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WHY YOUR GREAT IDEAS KEEP GETTING TURNED DOWN: AND HOW TO FIX IT David Burkus

DEAL WITH THE EMOTIONS ON YOUR TEAM Liane Davey

THE SIX DEADLY SINS OF LEADERSHIP Jack & Suzy Welch

WHY FACEBOOK AT WORK MATTERS Charlene Li & Jon Cifuentes

10 RULES FOR BRILLIANT WOMEN Tara Mohr

A VIEW ON WINGING IT Peggy Garritty

ITâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S ENOUGH TO BEGIN: FIRST STEPS Gretchen Rubin

KEY IMPERATIVES FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF WOMEN BUSINESS LEADERS Cheryl Cook

HOW TO USE YOUR BODY TO WIN SALES Mark Bowden

ACTIONABLE SUMMARY: ESSENTIALISM John Petrone

THE NEW SALES PLAYBOOK John Jantsch

THE ART OF THE BRICK Mitch Joel

HOW TO MANUFACTURE DESIRE Nir Eyal

TURNING BACK TIME Martin Lindstrom

LET THE ELEPHANTS RUN David Usher

WELCOME TO THE FLICK GENERATION Mitch Joel

SHINY OBJECT SYNDROME Tom Fishburne

FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS Charlene Li

Page. 16

New York Times Bestselling Author, Founder & CEO of Altimeter Group

Gretchen Rubin

Page. 24

#1 New York Times Bestselling Author of The Happiness Project, Happier at Home & Better Than Before

Mark Bowden

Page. 32

Communication Expert, Performance Trainer & Bestselling Author of Winning Body Language

Avinash Kaushik Mitch Joel

61 Page. 44

DigitalJoel Marketing Evangelist of forMirum Google & Mitch is the President Bestselling Author of Web Analytics & Web (formerly Twist Image), Bestselling2.0 Author of Analytics: Hour A Day & CTRL ALT Delete Six Pixels An of Separation

The Editor’s Letter Scott Kavanagh, Editor “Change might not be fast and it isn’t always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped.” - Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Business Over the past twelve months, The Art Of has had a number of opportunities to work with and learn from Charles Duhigg, New York Times Bestselling author of The Power of Habit. In doing so, I’ve become absorbed with habits and how they impact various aspects of business and life. This spring at The Art of Leadership for Women in Toronto we are thrilled to feature blockbuster author Gretchen Rubin. In her latest book, Better Than Before, Gretchen investigates the multiple strategies she’s identified that help us make and break our habits. Rubin helps us understand that habits are the invisible architecture of a happy life, and when we are able to change our habits, we are able to change our lives. In studying the habits of successful business leaders, I came across a collection of common themes. Both continuous learning and mentorship consistently rise to the top of the list. I’m a strong proponent of mentorship and in my experience mentors don’t need to be experts. The very act of talking to someone else can help you find creative solutions to your business challenges. I’d love to hear your feedback about this issue, our conferences and The Art Of in general. If you have a chance, please send me an email at scott@theartof.com Helping you succeed, Scott Kavanagh

The Art of Magazine features

exclusive content from bestselling authors, corporate visionaries and leading authorities in the business world. Our magazine is published quarterly with features and insights on marketing, entrepreneurship, sales, leadership and innovation. For more information visit: theartof.com/magazine

EDITOR Scott Kavanagh PUBLISHER Christopher Novais CREATIVE DIRECTOR Joey Van Massenhoven HOW TO REACH US The Art of Productions Inc. 46 Sherbourne Street 3rd Floor Toronto, Ontario Canada M5A 2P7 ADVERTISING Ron Bester - Director, Business Development 416-479-9701 ext. 322 ron@theartof.com SUBSCRIPTIONS Visit: www.theartof.com/magazine Email: magazine@theartof.com Call: 866-992-7863 (In U.S.A and Canada) Write to The Art Of: Subscription Services 46 Sherbourne Street, 3rd Floor, Toronto, Ontario, M5A 2P7 Our subscribers list is occasionally made available to carefully selected firms whose products or services may be of interest to you. If you prefer not to receive information from these firms, please let us know at privacy@theartof.com or send your request along with your mailing label to The Art of Productions Inc, 46 Sherbourne Street, 3rd Floor, Toronto, Ontario, M5A 2P7 PRINT PARTNER Dollco, The Lowe-Martin Group Printed in Canada. Canada Post Publications Mail Agreement Number 42343517 C2012 The Art Magazine is published quarterly by The Art of Productions Inc. All rights reserved. Opinions expressed do not necessarily represent those of the publishers. No part of this publication may be used without written permission from the publisher. Subscription rate is $30.00 annually.

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WHY YOUR GREAT IDEAS KEEP GETTING TURNED DOWN:

AND HOW TO FIX IT David Burkus

There is a common misconception about great ideas, whether it be new products or new pitches. Often when presenting the new idea to the world, it is too easy to believe that the world will adopt it on merit alone. We want so badly to believe that if the idea is good enough, it can be pulled from the lineup easily and will scale as rapidly as our excitement for it. We want so badly to believe the cliché that “if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.” In my book, The Myths of Creativity, I label this misconception as the mousetrap myth, after this exact cliché. I’ve struggled to verify the proper source of the quote. Many credit Ralph Waldo Emerson but there isn’t any reference to mousetraps in what would have been the closest quote from Emerson. Emerson, being a poet and author, probably experienced all to well the opposite effect—the truth—that new ideas struggle often to get attention, let SPRING 2015

alone scale. Great ideas get rejected all the time. Consider historical examples. On May 29, 1913 in Paris, Igor Stravinsky debuted perhaps his greatest work, The Rite of Spring ballet. Up until that point, most ballets were graceful and elegant, full of traditional music. Rite was different. Stravinsky had written intentionally inharmonic notes and arranged around pagan themes. Within minutes of the show’s start, the audience began to boo the performers. Supporters rallied against the discontented audience members, and the show quickly degenerated into an all-out riot. Before the first intermission arrived, police had to intervene to calm the raging crowd. During the second half of the performance, riots broke out again. Surprised by the reaction, Stravinsky fled the theater before the show even ended. Of course, history would vindicate Stravinsky. The Rite of Spring is now

regarded as a milestone in the history of ballet and musical composition. Yet, even this legendary idea was initially rejected, which likely came as quite a shock to Stravinsky after he spent years crafting and refining the piece. Stravinsky isn’t the only one. William S. Sims presented an innovative new firing method learned from the British to his superiors in the US Navy 12 times, each met rejection. It wasn’t until the 13th try, when Sims appealed to President Theodore Roosevelt, that his improved method was recognized. Researchers from Kodak invented the world’s first digital camera in 1975 but, their superiors refused to let them pursue it—a decision many say was the first signal of Kodak’s eventually bankruptcy. At the famous Palo Alto Research Center, engineers from Xerox developed the first personal computer, but across the country at headquarters the senior leaders decided that it wasn’t a fit with their existing business model.

LEADERSHIP

“The bias against innovative ideas exists because we only have our past experience to judge an idea’s utility” This isn’t a new phenomenon either. In ancient Greece, Socrates was actually recorded arguing against the idea of writing information down in books as a useful means for conveying knowledge. The sage asserted that we ought to resist the written word because it would reduce our memory. He may have been correct about the memory, but think of the irony that, had Plato not have written down his debate with Socrates, we wouldn’t know that Socrates was against writing. These aren’t just comical anecdotes about smart people doing dumb things. All four of these examples are part of a larger revelation: humans aren’t that good at recognizing genius ideas. We say we want new, out of the box thinking, but when we’re presented something outside of the box, we fail to realize its true ingenuity. Researchers led by Jennifer Mueller at the University of

Pennsylvania found that humans actually hold a bias against innovative ideas. The researchers investigated our perceptions about creative ideas, especially when faced with uncertainty. As part of their study, participants were divided into two groups, with the only difference in the groups being uncertainty about pay (one group was told the exact amount, one group told they could be making the exact plus an undisclosed bonus). The participants were then asked to take a battery of tests, some judging their explicit beliefs about creativity, innovation, and originality and others designed to examine the assumptions behind their explicit statements. What Mueller and her team found was that, when in uncertain situations, individuals often claim they like new and original ideas, but underneath the surface lies a hidden bias against these exact ideas.

This bias can even cause individuals to make poor judgments about an idea’s potential. For an idea to be truly innovative, it must be new and useful. The bias against innovative ideas exists because we only have our past experience to judge an idea’s utility. So while it’s easy to recognize a new idea because it doesn’t fit in past experiences, it’s a lot harder to see that ideas potential because we only have past experiences with which to compare it. So how do you keep your great ideas from the fate of Stravinsky or Sims? Innovation researcher Everett Rogers may have some good advice. Rogers was the theorist behind the diffusion of innovation curve and the man who coined the term “early adopter.” He studied the ideas that made it through the diffusion curve quickly and found that they shared five things in common:

1. Relative Advantage To what degree is an idea or product perceived as better than the existing standard?

2. Compatibility How much is the idea an apparently logical extension of the status quo?

3. Complexity (or simplicity) How easily can people to understand the new idea or use the new product?

4. Trialability How effortless it is for the target audience to interact with the new concepts or experiment with the product?

5. Observability How noticeable are the results of people trying idea to observers When these five factors are met, the public’s reaction to the idea is a little more like the mousetrap cliché suggests. As such, the five factors make a useful litmus test for judging

if an idea is ready to be presented to the world. Despite your excitement about your new product or pitch, take an unbiased assessment of the idea against these five factors and you’ll

have a good gauge of whether your excitement will transfer. If it doesn’t meet the five factors standard, you may have to go back and build an even better mousetrap.

David Burkus is the author of The Myths of Creativity: The Truth About How Innovative Companies and People Generate Great Ideas. He is also host of the podcast LDRLB (pronounced “leader lab”) and assistant professor of management at Oral Roberts University. 8

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DEAL WITH THE EMOTIONS ON

YOUR TEAM Liane Davey

Our attempts to keep emotions out of the boardroom are making us less effective. The emotional among us are trying to stifle feelings that eventually come shooting out in counter-productive anger or tears. The cerebral are making decisions without understanding the emotional subtext. Relationships suffer, decision making suffers, business suffers. THE NEED TO BRING EMOTIONS INTO THE EQUATION There are three reasons why making emotions transparent is the right thing to do. First; emotions ARE in the equation. If your team is comprised of humans, emotions are affecting the decisions you make. Even (or maybe especially) after someone asserts in a booming voice “Let’s take the emotions out of it,” the emotions are still in it. Second; attempts to stifle the emotional aspects of an issue don’t work.

Facts get skewed to support undisclosed emotional biases. Passive aggression builds and causes mistrust. Eventually emotions boil over and someone starts yelling or crying. Third: emotions are the clues to a deeper and even more important layer that affects decision making: motives, values, and beliefs. By exploring the emotional issues, you get access to the critical information about the underlying motives.

THREE BENEFITS OF VALIDATING THE EMOTIONAL DATA IN YOUR DECISION MAKING Great individuals and great teams treat the emotional aspects of a decision as data, distinct, but equally as valid as the intellectual facts. The benefits of validating and working with emotional data alongside intellectual data are numerous. Here are my top three:

LEADERSHIP

Dealing with emotions improves decision making. You are subject to profound biases. From basic attentional biases to subtle prejudices, your decisions are impacted by how you feel. Making the emotional aspects of a decision explicit, allows you to deliberately balance them with

the logical facts in the case. Exposing emotions increases your ability to control their impact.

Dealing with emotions explicitly makes things faster. You might think that dragging emotions into an argument will slow you down.

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On the contrary, the issues your team has been revisiting without resolution are the ones with emotional subtext that has never been addressed. Exploring the issue fully (both intellectually and emotionally) will get you to a much faster resolution.

Getting emotional issues on the table strengthens trust. When emotions skew decision making,

it creates confusion and suspicion on your team. It’s clear to everyone your position doesn’t jive with the facts, but there isn’t sufficient information about the source of the disconnect. In the absence of the emotional data, teammates ascribe all sorts of unsavory motives for your behavior. The result is that trust erodes and the team starts to come apart.

If you’re ready for the era of high performing teams, you better be ready for the uncomfortable, messy, complex world of emotions. What you’ll find is that validating emotional data reduces the discomfort and complexity and puts your team in a position to work with a complete set of information required to make a good decision.

THE APPROACH SPOT Watch for incongruence between words and body language. If your teammate is talking a good game while closing their body language, withdrawing eye contact, or getting red in the face, start digging.

SAY Acknowledging what you’re seeing. “Stephen, you’ve stopped mid-sentence a couple of times. What’s going on for you?’

the chair), or dismissive (rolling eyes, turning away from the team).

REFLECT When you see or hear the emotional layer, stay calm, keep your tone level and ask a question to draw your teammate out. “I get the sense you’re frustrated. What’s behind your frustration?”

PROBE

SEE

It’s not the emotions you’re really interested in, it’s the next layer. Emotions come out when values are violated. Tread carefully at this point, because it’s likely that your teammate doesn’t recognize their biases and isn’t aware how they are affecting the discussion. Make your response sound like you’re testing a hypothesis. “Is it possible that you’re frustrated with the time we’re taking because we’re placing too much weight on the people impact of the decision and you think we need to focus only on what’s right for the business?”

Tune into the feelings and emotions. They will come out in language, particularly in extreme words or words that are repeated. “We are always backing away from the important decisions!” Body language will also provide clues. Determine if they are angry (leaning in, getting more tense), discouraged (dropping eye contact, slumping in

If your hypothesis is right, you’ll probably see relief. They might even express their pleasure “YES, EXACTLY!” You can sum it up “We’ve talked about closing the Edmonton office for two years and you’re frustrated because you believe that the right decision for the business is obvious.”

LISTEN Listen carefully to the response. In the example, Stephen might say “we have a $2 million budget shortfall.” Separate out facts from opinions or judgments. An example would be if Stephen said “we can’t afford to keep the group in Edmonton.” That tips you off that emotions and values are involved.

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SUMMARIZE

REPEAT You’ve now helped your teammate articulate the values he thinks should be guiding this decision. The most likely scenario is that your teammates will now be clear on why they are disagreeing. Three people might jump in, all talking at once “WE ARE TALKING ABOUT PEOPLE WHO HAVE GIVEN THEIR LIVES TO THIS ORGANIZATION!” Here we go again…use the same facts, emotions, values structure to help them express their points of view.

RESOLVE Once everyone is working with the same three data sets (facts, emotions, and values), you will be clear what you need to solve for. Although taking the time to draw out the feelings and the beliefs might seem slow at first, you’ll see that issues can be discussed and then resolved. Without acknowledging what’s actually behind people’s arguments, you will go around and around and struggle to come to resolution. THAT’S slow!

Liane Davey is the Vice President of Global Solutions and Team Effectiveness, Talent & Leadership Development at Knightsbridge.

LEADERSHIP

www.pwc.com/ca

Leading through change

Millenials are redeﬁning the global workplace: the most educated, tech-savvy generation in history — and with signiﬁcantly different expectations than their predecessors. As the boomer generation exits the workforce, competitive advantage will increasingly depend on understanding what motivates your people, and making that work for your business. How are you planning to lead through change and get ahead of your competition? © 2014 PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, an Ontario limited liability partnership. All rights reserved.

The Six Deadly Sins of

LEADERSHIP Jack and Suzy Welch

BEING A LEADER IS PERHAPS THE HARDEST CHALLENGE ANY OF US WILL EVER FACE. NO MATTER HOW LONG WE WORK AT IT, PRACTICING THE RIGHT BEHAVIORS IS A NEVER-ENDING TASK. KNOWING – AND AVOIDING – THE WRONG ONES IS TOO. THUS, WE OFFER THE FOLLOWING SIX COMMON LEADERSHIP PITFALLS: 1. NOT GIVING SELFCONFIDENCE ITS DUE Self-confidence is the lifeblood of success. When people have it, they’re bold. They try new things, offer ideas, exude positive energy, and cooperate with their colleagues instead of surreptitiously attempting to bring them down. When they lack self-confidence, it’s just the opposite. People cower. They plod. And they spread negativity with every word and gesture. But all too often leaders ignore (or neglect) this very basic fact of the human condition. Why is anyone’s guess. Perhaps they just don’t understand that it is part of their job to instill selfconfidence in their people. It may even be said that it’s their first job. You cannot unleash the creative power of individuals who doubt themselves. Fortunately, some people seem to be

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born with self-confidence. Others gain it from life and work experience and come to a company fully loaded. Regardless, leaders can never stop pouring selfconfidence into their teams. The ways to do so are myriad. Make sure goals are challenging – but achievable. Give effusive positive feedback. Remind your direct reports of what they do right. We’re not saying that leaders should blindly extol and exalt. People know when they’re being gamed. But good leaders work relentlessly to find ways to instill self-confidence in those around them. They know it’s the gift that never stops giving.

2. MUZZLING VOICE Perhaps the most frustrating way that leaders underperform is by over-talking. That is, they act like know-it-alls. They can tell you how the world works, what corporate is thinking, how it will backfire if you try this or that, and why you can’t possibly change the product one iota.

Sometimes such blowhards get their swagger from a few positive experiences, but usually they’re just victims of their own destructive personalities. Ultimately, the company ends up being a victim too, because know-italls aren’t just insufferable, they’re dangerous. They don’t listen, and that deafness makes it very hard for new ideas to get debated, expanded upon, or improved. No single person, no matter how smart, can take a business to its apex. For that, you need every voice to be heard.

3. ACTING PHONY Can you spot a phony? Of course you can – and so can your people. Indeed, if there is one widespread human capability, it is sniffing out someone who is putting on airs, pretending to be who they’re not, or just keeping their real self hidden. Yet too many leaders spend way too much time creating personas that put a wall between them and their employees. What a waste.

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Because authenticity is what makes people love you. Visibly grappling with tough problems, sweating the details, laughing, and caring – those are the activities that make people respond and feel engaged with what you’re saying. Sure, some people will tell you that being mysterious grants you power as a leader. In reality, all it generates is fear. And who wants to motivate that way? Now, obviously, authenticity is unattractive if it’s coupled with immaturity or an overdose of informality. And organizations generally don’t like people who are too emotionally unbounded – i.e. so real that all their feelings are exposed. They tend to tamp that kind of intensity down a bit. And that’s not a bad thing, as work is work and, more than at home, allows us to maintain some privacy. But don’t let convention wring all the authenticity out of you, especially as you climb the ladder. In time, humanity always wins. Your team and bosses come to know who you are in your soul, what kind of people you attract and what kind of performance you want from everyone. Your realness will make you accessible; you will connect and you will inspire. You will lead.

4. LACKING THE GUTS TO DIFFERENTIATE You only have to be in business a few weeks to know that not all investment opportunities are created equal. But some leaders can’t face that reality, and so they sprinkle their resources like cheese on a pizza, a little bit everywhere. As a result, promising growth opportunities too often don’t get the outsized infusions of cash and people they need. If they did, someone might get offended during the resource allocation process. Someone – as in the manager of a weak business or the sponsor of a dubious investment proposal. But leaders who don’t differentiate

LEADERSHIP

Imagine a team winning the World Series without champagne spraying everywhere. You can’t! do the most damage when it comes to people. Unwilling to deliver candid, rigorous performance reviews, they give every employee the same kind of bland, mushy, “nice job” sign-off. Then, when rewards are doled out, they give star performers little more than the laggards. Now, you can call this egalitarian approach kind, or fair – as these lousy leaders usually do – but it’s really just weakness. And when it comes to building a thriving organization where people have the chance to grow and succeed, weakness just doesn’t cut it.

5. FIXATION ON RESULTS AT THE EXPENSE OF VALUES Everyone knows that leaders deliver. Oratory and inspiration without results equal…well, a whole lot of nothing. But leaders are committing a real dereliction of duties if all they care about are the numbers. They also have to care about how those numbers came to be. Were the right behaviors practiced? Was the company’s culture of integrity honored? Were people taken care of properly? Was the law obeyed, in both letter and spirit? Values are a funny thing in business. Companies love to talk about them. They love to hang them up on plaques in the lobby and boast about them to potential hires and customers. But they’re meaningless if leaders don’t live and breathe them. Sometimes that can take courage. It can mean letting go of a top performer who’s a brute to his colleagues, or not promoting a star who doesn’t share her best ideas with the team. That’s hard. And yet if you’re a leader, this is a

sin you cannot squint away. When you nail your results, make sure you can also report back to a crowded room: We did this the right way, according to our values.

6. SKIPPING THE FUN PART What is it about celebrating that makes managers so nervous? Maybe throwing a party doesn’t seem professional, or it makes people worry that they won’t look serious to the powers that be, or that, if things get too happy in the office, people will stop working their tails off. Whatever the reason, too many leaders don’t celebrate enough. To be clear here, we do not define celebrating as conducting one of those stilted little company-orchestrated events that everyone hates, in which the whole team is marched out to a local restaurant for an evening of forced merriment when they’d rather be home. We’re talking about sending a team to Disney World with their families, or giving each team member tickets to a show or a movie, or handing each member of the team a new iPod. What a lost opportunity. Celebrating makes people feel like winners and creates an atmosphere of recognition and positive energy. Imagine a team winning the World Series without champagne spraying everywhere. You can’t! And yet companies win all the time and let it go without so much as a high-five. Work is too much a part of life not to recognize the moments of achievement. Grab as many as you can. Make a big deal out of them. That’s part of a leader’s job too – the fun part. SPRING 2015

WHY FACEBOOK AT WORK

MATTERS

Charlene Li & Jon Cifuentes

Facebook’s new workplace collaboration tool might not offer anything new, but its billion-plus user base makes it a threat that competitors can’t ignore. Facebook is actively testing a new product called Facebook at Work, designed to help groups of users collaborate, share documents and manage projects in the workplace. Here’s what you need to know about it:

• The new app is currently being tested on a handful of companies in a pilot program. The selected companies all have at least 100 employees to test the app’s limits. While the general public will be able to see the Facebook at Work app in the Google Play and Apple App stores, only the pilot companies will get to download and use it.

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• Users can upload documents through groups, but there won’t be any significant document editing or collaboration capabilities like there are in Google Docs or Office365.

• However, users can integrate their personal accounts, but only as a means of switching back and forth. You won’t need a personal Facebook account to set up Facebook at Work.

• Anything you do on Facebook at Work is internal and only shared with coworkers. It doesn’t bleed over to your personal Facebook account.

• It’ll look and feel much like the regular Facebook UI, including familiar features such as user profiles, news feeds, messaging and groups. SPRING 2015

The Perception Problem Facebook’s entry into this market is fraught with challenges. One is that many people like to keep a separation between work and personal activities in social channels. Most of you are here on LinkedIn to conduct business, and keep Facebook to personal postings to family and friends. Facebook at Work will be asking people to be comfortable using a “personal” site in a business way -- something that will be hard for many to adopt. Issues of trust, confidentiality, etc. will need to be addressed both by Facebook and employers. Second, there’s plenty of competition. And then there’s the problem of perception. Facebook is often seen as a destination at work to ‘get away from work.’ In our experience, making the business case for social networking in the workplace can be really painful, especially in regulated industries where data protection and trust is paramount. Just a few years ago, more than half of US companies blocked Facebook in the workplace. Now, Facebook faces the tough task of convincing business leaders that a true business use exists for this to deployed, and IT leaders that their data is safe.

marketplace crowded with minnows. Even the de facto business social network, LinkedIn, has less than 25% of Facebook’s audience at 323M active users and can’t be used for effective workplace collaboration. Enterprises could potentially have a hard time keeping employees on Chatter, Yammer, or other internal social networks when the Facebook interface is already so familiar and functional. In other words, how much do you really have to train your employees to use something that comes naturally to them?

Business Outlook With so many active players in this space, it’s clear Facebook at Work won’t be seen as a huge revenue driver for the firm, and it shouldn’t be. But it does send a strong message to the larger competitors in the space, which is exactly why Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce, particularly need to take notice. They need to be geared up to address the sheer volume of users Facebook can bring to the party and really focus on their strongest value propositions: document and workflow collaboration for the first two,

collaboration for the purpose of sales for the third. They simply can’t compete as a business personal profile. Facebook invented that game for consumers, and the enterprise tilt is a no-brainer. As for LinkedIn, Facebook at Work doesn’t have as much impact because LinkedIn doesn’t currently have an internal enterprise product or solution. But this will put a significant dampener on any internal efforts that may be in the works. While enterprise players need to take Facebook at Work seriously, the irony is that Facebook at Work is a small fry in the scheme of everything else the company is doing. The business model for this product will likely be subscription-based as enterprises won’t tolerate an ad-based business model for a work tool. For Facebook at Work to make a difference against a backdrop of estimated 2014 revenues of $12 billion, it would have to be massive. Everything we’ve seen indicates that Facebook is merely dabbling in this space for now. Our take: it’s a smart strategic move in the short term to distract enterprise competitors from their more consumer-oriented efforts.

Why It Could Work So why do this? Easy, they can. Facebook has been using this tool internally for the last four years, and think it’s robust enough to launch for the general public. “We have a long history of successfully connecting people and connecting businesses,” said Elisabeth Diana, corporate communications director at Facebook. “It’s a worthwhile test to explore.” Facebook’s 1.35B user base gives this ‘test’ real firepower. This instantly makes it a whale in an enterprise collaboration

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LEADERSHIP

10 RULES FOR

BRILLIANT

WOMEN JOHN JANTSCH

I coach brilliant women, lots of them. Dedicated, talented, brilliant women.

Tara Mohr

Most of the time, they don’t know their brilliance. They are certain they “aren’t ready” to take on that next bigger role. They are more attuned to the ways they aren’t qualified than to the ways that they are. They are waiting for someone to validate, promote or discover them. Sound familiar?    It’s time to step up, brilliant women. Here are ten principles for owning your brilliance and bringing it to the world:

1. MAKE A PACT No one else is going to build the life you want for you. No one else will even be able to completely understand it. The most amazing souls will show up to cheer you on along the way, but this is your game. Make a pact to be in it with yourself for the long haul, as your own supportive friend at every step along the way.

2. IMAGINE IT What does a knock-the-ball-out-of-the-

LEADERSHIP for WOMEN

park life look like for you? What is the career that seems so incredible you think it’s almost criminal to have it? What is the dream you don’t allow yourself to even consider because it seems too unrealistic, frivolous, or insane? Start envisioning it. That’s the beginning of having it.

3. GASP Start doing things that make you gasp and get the adrenalin flowing. Ask yourself, “What’s the gasp-level

action here?” Your fears and a tough inner critic will chatter in your head. That’s normal, and just fine. When you hear that repetitive, irrational, mean inner critic, name it for what it is, and remember, it’s just a fearful liar, trying to protect you from any real or seeming risks. Go for the gasps and learn how false your inner critic’s narrative really is, and how conquerable your fears.

4. GET A THICK SKIN If you take risks, sometimes you’ll get

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a standing ovation, and sometimes, people will throw tomatoes. Can you think of any leader or innovator whom you admire who doesn’t have enthusiastic fans and harsh critics? Get used to wins and losses, praise and pans, getting a call back and being ignored. Work on letting go of needing to be liked and needing to be universally known as “a nice person.”

5. BE AN ARROGANT IDIOT Of course I know you won’t, because you never could. But please, just be a little more of an arrogant idiot. You know those guys around the office who share their opinions without thinking, who rally everyone around their big, (often unformed) ideas? Be more like them. Even if just a bit. You can afford to move a few inches in that direction.

6. QUESTION THE VOICE THAT SAYS “I’M NOT READY YET.” I know, I know. Because you are so brilliant and have such high standards, you see every way that you could be more qualified. You notice every part of your idea that is not perfected yet. While you are waiting to be ready, gathering

more experience, sitting on your ideas, our friends referenced in rule five are being anointed.

the results, rather than following it wholesale.

9. RECOVER AND RESTORE 7. DON’T WAIT FOR YOUR OSCAR Don’t wait to be praised, anointed, or validated. Don’t wait for someone to give you permission to lead. Don’t wait for someone to invite you to share your voice. No one is going to discover you. (Well, actually, they will, but paradoxically, only after you’ve started boldly and consistently stepping into leadership, sharing your voice, and doing things that scare the hell out of you.)

8. FILTER ADVICE Most brilliant women are humble and open to guidance. We want to gather feedback and advice. Fine, but recognize that some people won’t understand what you are up to (often because you are saying something new and ahead of your time). Some people will find you to be not their cup of tea. Some will feel threatened. Some people will want to do with your idea only what is interesting or helpful to them. So interpret feedback carefully. Test advice and evaluate

If you start doing the things that make you gasp, doing what you don’t quite feel ready to do, and being more of an arrogant idiot, you are going to be stretching out of our comfort zone–a lot. Regularly do things that feel safe, cozy, and restorative. Vent to friends when you need to. Acknowledge the steps you’ve taken. Watch your tank to see how much risk-taking juice you have available to you. When it’s running low, stop, recover and restore.

10. LET OTHER WOMEN KNOW THEY ARE BRILLIANT Let them know what kind of brilliance you see, and why it’s so special. Call them into greater leadership and action. Let them know that they are ready. Watch out for that subtle, probably unconscious thought, “because I had to struggle and suffer on my way up… they should have to too.” Watch out for thinking this will “take” too much time – when the truth is it always has huge, often unexpected returns.

Tara Mohr is the founder of the Playing Big women’s leadership program and author of Playing Big: Find Your Voice, Your Mission, Your Message, named a Best Book of 2014 by Apple’s iBooks. Click here for the 10 Rules for Women Workbook for active ways to apply each rule to your daily life.

CLEAR A PATH BY WALKING IT, BOLDLY.

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A VIEW ON WINGING IT Peggy Garritty What does it take to be a great leader? It’s a question I get asked often, along with, “What’s it really like to work with all those men?” Younger women especially are curious about my role and how I got to where I am today. And I’ll admit, the answer escapes me. Hundreds of books have been written on the topic, and I’ve read lots of them. While there are some good tips amidst a host of clichés, no one has unlocked the secret of what it takes to be a great leader. I felt the same way when I owned my own business in the past and did a lot of writing. People would ask, “How do you become a good writer?” And the only answer I have is, “You just do.” An article by Pamela Druckerman in the New York Times got me thinking: maybe this is the answer. The article was about things you learn in your 40s. I’m well past that age, but I’m always curious about what people think – especially younger people. Here’s what she said that really got me thinking: “There are no grown-ups. Everyone is winging it, some just do it more

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confidently.” Everyone is winging it, making it up as they go. Some just wing it better than others. That’s not much comfort to people aspiring to become leaders, let alone great leaders. In fact, it could put hundreds of business schools and leadership consultants out of business. The real question then is how can some leaders wing it better than others? Here are some things that I’ve learned as I’ve been winging it throughout my career.

HAVE A PURPOSE Daniel Pink is right. People are motivated by being part of something important. Putting in hours to collect your monthly pay cheque is a pretty hollow way to live your life. But if your team has a purpose to believe in, it inspires outstanding work. At ATB Financial, we’ve just begun to tell a new story – not a vision, mission or values – but a compelling story that describes who we are, why we are, and what we aspire to as a company. And it’s amazing

how it resonates with our team members and inspires them to do an even better job of serving our customers.

HIRE GREAT PEOPLE - people who are smarter than you are. Not only does it take the pressure off you to be the smartest person in the room, it elevates everything. The conversations are brilliant. The results are amazing. And your job, as the leader, is to set the direction and let people loose. I’m blessed to work with an amazing team of talented and creative people, and they constantly surprise me with the ideas I’d never have thought of.

LEAD WITH PASSION You have to care about what you’re doing and the people you’re doing it with. Leadership is never easy. It consumes a big part of your life. And if you’re not passionate about what you’re doing, it’s a pure grind. Often when people ask me about my role as a leader, they’re coming from two places: those who are truly curious and aspire to a leadership role, and those who say:

LEADERSHIP for WOMEN

I’d never want to do what you do. That response always surprises me. Because I genuinely love what I do.

YES, IT TAKES LOTS OF HOURS AND IT CAN BE STRESSFUL Yes, there are tough times and difficult decisions to make. But those times pale in comparison to the joy of working with amazing people and being part of something I truly believe in.

PARK YOUR EGO Leadership really isn’t about you, it’s about the people around you and the results you achieve. This one really hit home over the past week. I’ll confess to being a curling fan (how can people think it’s boring?). During this year’s Brier – that quintessential Canadian event – John Morris started the week in the skip role, the leader of Team Canada, the guy who makes all the decisions. And they got off to a very rocky start. Midway through

the week, he decided to relinquish his skip role for the good of the team, and they went on to win the Brier. I’m not suggesting leaders should give up when times are tough, but if you relentlessly stick with something just because it’s your idea and you need to prove you’re right, chances are you’ll fail to see the obvious solutions in front of you.

HAVE FUN EVERY DAY People ask me why I’m still working at a time in my life when I could be comfortably sitting back reading a good book. The answer: I laugh every day. Having fun at work is one of the principles we live by at ATB. We do crazy things, have Friday afternoon dance parties, play tricks on each other, and share funny videos… and we also do serious work and achieve outstanding results.

AGE HELPS Being a woman in a senior leadership role, especially in a bank, is enough of

a challenge, but combine that with most often being the oldest person in the room, and it’s a double whammy. But I’ve come to see it as a gift. I’ve seen and experienced lots, so I’m rarely surprised. I no longer feel the pinch of ambition or the pressure of having something to prove. Decisions come easier. I don’t care as deeply about what people think – my skin may have more wrinkles but it’s not nearly as thin. One last thought on winging it as a leader… be open to possibilities. Sounds like another cliché, but I’ve met too many people who rigidly follow a path that’s leading them nowhere. I’ve never had a career path, never aspired to leadership for leadership’s sake, never known exactly what I want out of this crazy life we lead. I’ve been winging it all my life, and lately, with more confidence than ever. Peggy Garritty, Senior Vice President, Reputation and Brand, ATB Financial

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IT’S ENOUGH TO BEGIN FIRST STEPS

Photo Credit: Michael Weschler

GRETCHEN RUBIN

The most important step in creating a habit is the first step. All those old sayings are really true. Well begun is half done. Don’t get it perfect, get it going. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Nothing is more exhausting than the task that’s never started, and strangely, starting is often far harder than continuing.

LEADERSHIP for WOMEN

That first step is tough. Every action has an ignition cost: getting myself to the gym and changed into my gym clothes can be more challenging than actually working out. That’s why good habits are a tremendous help: they make the starting process automatic. Without yet having a name for it, in fact, I’d invoked the power of the

Strategy of First Steps as I was starting to write my book Better than Before. I’d spent months reading and taking copious notes, and I had a giant document with a jumble of material about habits. This initial period of research for a book is always exhilarating, but eventually I have to begin the painstaking labor of actual analysis and writing.

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Future-Gretchen will spontaneously start a good new habit, with no planning and no effort necessary; it’s quite pleasant to think about how virtuous I’ll be, tomorrow. But there is no Future-Gretchen, only Now-Gretchen.”

What was the most auspicious date to start? I asked myself. The first day of the week, or the month, or the year? Or my birthday? Or the start of the school year? Then I realized that I was beginning to invoke tomorrow logic. Nope. Begin now. I was ready. Take the first step. It’s enough to begin. Now is an unpopular time to take a first step. Won’t things be easier—for some not-quite-specified reason—in the future? I have a fantasy of what I’ll be like tomorrow: Future-Gretchen will spontaneously start a good new habit, with no planning and no effort necessary; it’s quite pleasant to think about how virtuous I’ll be, tomorrow. But there is no Future-Gretchen, only Now-Gretchen. A friend told me about how she used tomorrow logic: “I use a kind of magical thinking to procrastinate. I make up questionable rules like ‘I can’t start working at 10:10, I need to start on the hour’ or ‘It’s already 4:00, it’s too late to start working.’ But the truth is that I should just start.” It’s common to hear people say, “I’ll start my new habit after the holidays are over/I’ve settled into my new job/my kids are a little older.” Or worse, the double-remove: “I’ll start my new habit once I’m back in shape.” Tomorrow logic wastes time, and also it

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may allow us to deny that our current actions clash with our intentions. In an argument worthy of the White Queen, we tell ourselves, absolutely, I’m committed to reading aloud to my children, and I will read to them tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow—just not today. The same tendency can lead us to overcommit to responsibilities that take place in the comfortably distant future— but eventually the future arrives, and then we’re stuck. My father-in-law has a mental habit to correct for that kind of tomorrow logic. He told me, “If I’m asked to do something—give a speech, attend an event—I always imagine that it’s happening next week. It’s too easy to agree to do something that’s six months off, then the time comes, and I’m sorry I agreed to do it.” When taking the first step toward a new habit, a key question from the Strategy of Distinctions is “Do I prefer to take small steps or big steps?” Many people succeed best when they keep their starting steps as small and manageable as possible; by doing so, they gain the habit of the habit, and the feeling of mastery. They begin their new yoga routine by doing three poses, or start work on a big writing project by drafting a single sentence in a writing session.

As an exercise zealot, I was pleased when my mother told me that she was trying to make a habit of going for a daily walk. “But I’m having trouble sticking to it,” she told me. “How far are you going?” “Twice around Loose Park,” she told me, “which is about two miles.” “Try going just once around the park,” I suggested. That worked. When she started smaller, she was able to form the habit. Small steps can be particularly helpful when we’re trying to do something that seems overwhelming. If I can get myself to take that first small step, I usually find that I can keep going. I invoked this principle when I was prodding myself to master Scrivener, a writers’ software program. Each day gave me a new opportunity to push the task off until tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’d feel like dealing with it. “Start now,” I finally thought. “Just take the first step.” I started with the smallest possible step, which was to find the website where I could buy the software. Okay, I thought. I can do that. And then I did. I had a lot of hard work ahead of me—it’s a Secret of Adulthood: things often get harder before they get

LEADERSHIP for WOMEN

by tackling more instead of less for a certain period, I get a surge of energy and focus. easier—but I’d started. The next day, with a feeling of much greater confidence and calm, I watched the tutorial video. Then I created my document. And then—I started my book. However, some people do better when they push themselves more boldly; a big challenge holds their interest and helps them persist. A friend was determined to learn French, so he moved to France for six months. Along those lines, the Blast Start can be a helpful way to take a first step. The Blast Start is the opposite of taking the smallest possible first step because it

requires a period of high commitment. It’s demanding, but its intensity can energize a habit. For instance, after reading Chris Baty’s book No Plot? No Problem!—which explains how to write a novel in a month—I wrote a novel in thirty days, as a way to spark my creativity. This kind of shock treatment can’t be maintained forever, but it’s fun and gives momentum to the habit. A twenty-one-day project, a detox, a cleanse, an ambitious goal, a boot camp—by tackling more instead of less for a certain period, I get a surge of energy and focus. (Not to mention

bragging rights.) In particular, I love the retreat model. Three times, I’ve set aside a few days to work on a book during every waking hour, with breaks only for meals and for exercise. These periods of intensity help fuel my daily writing habit. However, a Blast Start is, by definition, unsustainable over the long term. It’s very important to plan specifically how to shift from the intensity of the Blast Start into the habit that will continue indefinitely. There’s no right way or wrong way, just whatever works.

Excerpted from Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Life. Copyright © 2015 Gretchen Rubin. Published by Doubleday Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

LEADERSHIP for WOMEN

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The more hunches you follow. The more bars you raise. The more weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re inspired. Dell salutes the entrepreneurial spirit in everyone. The Dell for Entrepreneurs is now in Canada!

Dell.ca/Entrepreneurs

KEY IMPERATIVES FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF WOMEN BUSINESS LEADERS Cheryl Cook, Global Channel Chief, Dell

Canadian organizations of all sizes, in the public and private sectors alike, need successful women to serve as role models that inspire others. Conferences like The Art Of, digital and social media platforms, and initiatives like the Dell Women Entrepreneur Network (DWEN) play an important role in enabling women to build critical personal and business networks. These face-toface and social opportunities allow people to actively share stories across technology, business, government and philanthropy, which may help inspire the next generation of women to become entrepreneurs, inventors, CEOs and leaders. At Dell we know that awareness needs to translate into action. It’s not enough to just talk about encouraging

LEADERSHIP for WOMEN

women in the workplace – it’s vital that leaders are the drivers of this change. The leadership team at Dell understands that the inclusion of female talent at every level is not just a ‘nice thing to do’ but that diverse teams drive tangible business benefits. This helps the rest of the organization feel a stronger sense of purpose and activates opportunities to encourage and promote the inclusion of female talent. As a woman leader for one of the fastest-moving vendors, I often get asked my advice on how others can grow and expand their sphere of influence when moving into a leadership position. I know how important it is to keep up with the constant changes and stay on your feet to be aware of everything around you. This can be challenging at

times when you are moving in a hundred different directions. When you get a chance to slow down, it’s always a good idea to re-evaluate your strengths and weaknesses and where you are headed in your career path. My top five tips for women moving into leadership positions are explained below.

BUILD RELATIONSHIPS BEYOND YOUR SPHERE OF INFLUENCE Relationship building is very important in any industry in the business world. Take that next step and build strong relationships with leaders in other areas of the business, such as the CIO and CMO. For example, I’ve always worked closely with Dell’s CIO, and what Dell IT has learned from running

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Dell’s business on Dell solutions we pass onto our partners and customers through trainings, new solutions, and more. You never know what you may learn from your peers in other lines of business. Don’t forget networking within your line of business and nurturing those relationships is very important, as you may do business with those people down the road.

INSTITUTE A SCORECARD Be transparent and routinely self-assess your team. Every quarter, we analyze how we’re doing on a detailed scorecard and then share those results and review what we’re doing well and what we need to do better. Since I took on the role of Dell Channel Chief, I have shared the topline takeaways of these selfassessments with colleagues, customers, partners, and the public via my blog. This ensures that we are always striving to be the best we can be and deliver the best solutions to our customers.

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DEEPEN YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT LIES AHEAD Invest in training and certifications so that you can be a trained expert and trusted advisor across a full breadth of products and solutions. This involves gaining a deeper insight into how industry “megatrends” are changing both technology decisions and business decisions. Once you have this information under your belt you can become a trusted advisor to your colleagues and customers on these hot issues in the industry.

CULTIVATE THE NEXT GENERATION Mentorship programs are a new trend we are seeing within corporate environments. Whether they are formal or informal, both parties can grow from the experience. I am a big advocate of sharing my past experiences, whether they were successes or failures. Discussing how I came to those results, whether it’s the

right decisions I made or how I learned and grew from failures. We are also seeing women resource groups within large organizations (such as Dell) that provide opportunities for networking with similar career-minded women in organizations and at industry events.

PUT YOURSELF OUT THERE Most importantly, take risks. Staying in your comfort zone will not allow you to experience new things or grow in your career. Do something once a day that scares you and don’t be afraid to fail. Making mistakes in your career is one of the biggest learning opportunities. If you make a mistake, accept it and grow from it. Overall, I suggest learning from everyone and everything around you. Be a sponge and soak up knowledge everywhere you can --you can learn something new every day. These are just a handful of tips and tricks I recommend to get ahead in your business, but I’m sure there are many, many more.

LEADERSHIP for WOMEN

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How to Use Your Body to Win Sales! Body Language to Stand Out, Win Trust and Seal the Deal Every Time You Speak

Mark Bowden Whatever you are selling, regardless of whether you are a big corporation or a small to medium sized business, and regardless of whether you are offering a product or service: we all know that customers like to buy from companies and people they believe they can trust. Customers like to have confidence in their initial brand experience before they are willing to consider taking a chance on buying. The sales professional is an integral part of that experience. Customers need to feel that the sales professional they are dealing with has credibility before they leap into making a purchase. How can we judge confidently the credibility of anyone we are dealing with? Say what you like, but in my experience we all trust what we see above all else. And so do your customers! However, when most of us are preparing to sell, or getting others geared up to sell, how much time do we spend helping to raise confidence levels around the content of the pitch

SALES

vs time spent becoming more confident with our delivery and within that our own human behavior? How much time are we taking to really look at how our human behavior will win that trust we need to get the

sale? Today we live in a world where the customer will often know more than any sales pro about the product or service and how it rates in the marketplace – we all have the tools to diligently carry out online research – and consequently the

CONTROL THE CONVERSATION, COMMAND ATTENTION, AND CONVEY THE RIGHT MESSAGE – WITHOUT SAYING A WORD

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time has never been more perfect for us to refocus some energy into improving how well a sales team performs from a trust perspective even more than a content perspective. Understanding h o w y o u r organization’s salesfocused staff can visually communicate trust to their customers and prospects—with the best body language—is a major factor in getting potential buyers on side. Using the right nonverbal signals increases a sales professional’s likeability and subsequently the likeability of the product or service that they are representing.

This, in turn, can help elevate your sales team members, and so your business, into what I call the “friend” status in the mind of the buyer. If this friend status is not achieved then it is most likely a sales professional will fall into the category of “indifferent” in the eye of the buyer, and just not been seen or heard by the prospect—fatal to a successful sale. The sales professional also could well hit the “predator” category for the buyer, which means both they and what they are selling can get easily thrust into a negative frame from which the customer will retreat, or could feel inclined to

become aggressive towards. The only category left to fall into is “sexual partner”! There is no doubt that in some cases sex sells… however this may not work long term, and for many the connotation does not fit with their brand! So instead of pitching the content around your product or service to an audience’s intellect, here are five top tips for any sales professional to use when looking to win sales with their body language by talking nonverbally to the customer’s primitive brain in a way that wins trust:

The time has never been more perfect for us to refocus some energy into improving how well a sales team performs from a trust perspective even more than a content perspective.” SPRING 2015

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PUT YOUR BODY ON DISPLAY When talking with potential clients or customers, let them see you : move out from behind obstructions, pull your chair back from the table or step away from the speaker’s lectern if you are

presenting—in short, display more of your body. Your prospects needs to see your body and body language to decide what they think your intentions and feelings are towards them.

The less you show, the more they makeup those feelings and intentions, and tend to default towards the negative.

for their benefit. This is a universally recognised “friendly” gesture and instinctively puts you in a friendly

and trustworthy frame of mind for the potential buyer.

SHOW YOUR HANDS Keep your palms open with nothing in your hands to let others know that you mean no harm and that you are there

SPEAK FROM YOUR BELLY Place your hands in what is called the TruthPlane; a term I’ve trademarked for the horizontal plane that extends 180 degrees out of your navel area, to display a sense to your prospects

that you can be trusted. Bringing the audience’s unconscious attention to this vulnerable area of your body will make them feel that you are very confident. By assuming this physicality, you will

feel confident too. Watch how the really welltrained and trusted news anchors use this technique on TV.

RAISE THE BAR ON ENERGY Show your prospects you are excited by your product or service by raising your hands to your chest level, aka the

PassionPlane, when you speak. This sends your own heart rate up, and your prospect will mirror this physical

reaction by getting excited about purchasing as well.

STOP READING AND START LEADING Don’t try to read other people’s body language consciously for so called “buying signals.” Generally, most of us stand little more than a 50/50 chance

of getting it right. Instead, concentrate on influencing your audience—your buyers—to mirror your simple and positive nonverbal behaviour, and they

will be extremely likely to trust and engage with you every time you sell.

Use these five body language techniques yourself, and introduce them to your sales team to use, and you will increase your prospects’ trust and confidence in you and your people and seamlessly your credibility that of your organization and your product will flourish.

Mark Bowden is a body language and behavior expert and the creator of TRUTHPLANE®, a communication training company and unique methodology for anyone who has to communicate with impact. Mark travels all over the world to give keynote speeches and train groups.

CTIONABLE SUMMARY

Summary written by John Petrone

ESSENTIALISM by Greg McKeown

Only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter.1” - Essentialism, page 10 In a hyper-connected world filled with endless opportunities to pursue, Greg McKeown’s approach in Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less provides a roadmap to help focus our energies on high-impact activities.

Following his essentialist dream, McKeown left law school to pursue a career of teaching and writing. He started his own leadership and strategy company, guiding individuals and companies to focus on the most

critical priorities. The end result of his willingness to pursue his highest contribution is this book, which describes a blueprint for taking back control and directing our lives to make the most meaningful impact.

but better so you can achieve the highest possible return on every precious moment in your life.” How many of the tasks that get added to our to-do lists are absolutely vital? McKeown believes that by focusing on fewer pursuits, we can concentrate our energies on those with the biggest

influence and increase our happiness and productivity. It’s about continuously asking, “Am I investing in the right activities?” The key idea is eliminating the non-essential to make time for what is important. Focusing on what’s vital starts with choosing how to spend our time and energy.

Less But Better So what exactly is essentialism? The author defines it best as “a discipline you apply each and every time you are faced with a decision about whether to say yes or whether to politely decline. It’s a method for making the tough trade-offs between lots of good things and a few really great things. It’s about learning how to do less

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Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at your highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.” - Essentialism, page 5

Exercise the power of choice

If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.” -- Essentialism, page 10 Our options are not always within our control but our ability to select among them is. Choosing how to spend our energy and time is difficult because it involves trade-offs and that means saying no to something. “The reality is, saying yes to any opportunity by definition requires saying no to several others. We can either make our choices deliberately or allow other people’s agenda to control our lives.”

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So how do we go about having the courage to make better choices about what we do with our precious time and energy? Our first task should be to increase our level of comfort with saying no. It is not a rejection of the relationship, but merely a dismissal of the demand or request being asked of us. When we say no, we’re saying no to the request and not the relationship. He also advocates following the 90 per

cent rule, which entails only saying yes to the top ten percent of opportunities. It involves identifying a set of critical criteria or attributes and assigning a score between 0 and 100. The only opportunities pursued would be those that score a 90 and above, disregarding everything else. It is easier to say no when you know what you want. Scheduling time to figure out what we want is one of the key themes to leading an essentialist life.

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Make time to escape and explore life The prevalence of noise: Almost everything is noise, and a very few things are exceptionally valuable. This is the justification for taking time to figure out what is most important. Because some things are so much more important, the effort in finding those things is worth it.” - Essentialism, page 20 Scheduling time to focus and reflect is hugely beneficial in figuring out what the best use of our resource should be. The purpose of choosing and making trade-offs is so we can focus and concentrate on our highest priorities. That is the ultimate aim of an essentialist. McKeown believes in the importance of “deliberately setting aside distractionfree time in a distraction-free space to do absolutely nothing other than think. We need space to escape in order to discern the essential few from the trivial many.”

Only once we’ve cleared our mind of the clutter can we focus on what our biggest contribution will be. What’s important now? Can you confidently answer that question and feel like you’re working on the most meaningful priority in your life? In order to make essential choices in our lives, we have to ask the right questions. We can only ask the right questions when we’ve taken the time to pause and reflect what we really want in our lives. There is a mistaken belief that we can have it all and multi-task our way

to efficiency and productivity. McKeown makes a clear distinction between multitask and multi-focus. While we can text and eat, or check email and clear our desk, we cannot concentrate on two things at once; we can only focus on one thing at a time. Master the power of choice and don’t be afraid to make the tough decisions. Concentrate your energies on your high impact contributions. You just may find your path to an essentialist life. How will you take back control and direct your life to make the most meaningful impact?

This book summary was written by John Petrone on behalf of ActionableBooks.com

THE NEW SALES PLAYBOOK John Jantsch

Recently, I was asked to present my ideas on how salespeople can best compete in today’s sales environment. A great deal about selling has changed over the last few years, but mostly what’s changed is the way people buy and that’s what you have to understand in order to thrive in the world of selling today. (Oh, and by the way, pretty much everyone sells something.) Buyers don’t need salespeople

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to provide information, they need salespeople who can provide insight, shed light on problems they don’t yet understand, and in general be so useful as to be seen as a consultant rather than the worst version of that person they got caller ID for. In order to compete today, you

must understand that your first job is to completely change the context of how you and your product, solution and organization are seen by a prospective customer. In order to accomplish that adopt the following three attributes as core components of your sales playbook.

SALES

BUILD AUTHORITY First and foremost you automatically change the sales context when a prospect finds you as opposed the other way around – I like to think of it as reverse prospecting. In order to do this,

you must start publishing, curating, and sharing useful information. You must find ways to get invited to speak in front of audiences filled with prospective clients and you must be “optimized” as an expert when people

go searching for answers. Your consistent participation on sites like Quora, in appropriate LinkedIn Groups and Google+ Communities can greatly aid your expert brand.

Deconstruct community I n t e r n a l

a) Priorities

E x t e r n a l

d) Content

b) Culture c) Alignment e) Presence f) Touchpoints

Generation Know

Conversion Trust

DECONSTRUCT PROSPECTS One of the ways you can thrive in the world of sales today is to make competitive intelligence a core competency. In order to be seen as an invited guest, you must be able to demonstrate your ability to provide insight and help prospects look at problems they don’t even know exist. When you can do research using a tool like RivalIQ or BuzzSumo and expertly point out glaring gaps in a prospect’s business you can gain invitation to help them better understand a specific issue before you ever try to sell them your global solution. The diagram below is a tool that

SALES

Try

Buy

Experience Repeat

describes some of the many ways to look at a business and its community. When you deconstruct a prospect’s world based on the elements below you have the opportunity to potentially understand more about a prospects’s challenges than they themselves understand. Add the competitive landscape and you are prepared to offer invaluable insight.

BE USEFUL The final element of the new sales playbook is to look for ways to be useful. This shouldn’t be as counterintuitive as it is to many sales people, but being useful quite often has little to do with

Refer

C o m m u n i t y

your product or service. Being useful may be unearthing research data that helps a client better understand their market. Being useful may mean introducing or connecting your client with someone in your social network that can help them address a personal issue. Being useful might be using a tool like BuzzSumo to help them build a list of prospective industry influencers – even though none of these things are directly related to the widget your company makes. Being useful is one of the best ways to make a business case for changing the context of how you are seen by prospects and that’s how you dominate a market today.

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Grow your customer relationships

DIGITAL MARKETING

Be in the moments that matter 52%  digital ad spend this year in: 5

with one marketing vision

Investments in digital marketing 2012

26.5%

MARKETING OPERATIONS

2015

50.5%

increase 6

Create amazing campaigns with real impact CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

“Mobile has the

potential to transform every element of the business” 3

“The global CRM software market grew by 13.7% to reach $20.4B last year” 4

Innovate along the journey 15% of Global 1000 organizations have customer engagement initiatives underway 7

$$$

MARKETING ANALYTICS

63% of marketers would invest Bring your customer into focus

“CMOs must shift from data volume to data variety” 1

more in social 8

12.2%

7.1%

Today

In 3 Years

% budget spent on analytics 2

Learn more at microsoft.com/marketing Follow us

@MSFT4Work_CA linkedin.com/company/Microsoft

1. Pattek, Sheryl, et al. Predictions 2014: B2B CMOs will juggle data, brand, and organizational investments. Forrester, Inc. December 19, 2013. 2. The CMO Survey. CMOSurvey.org. February 2014. http://cmosurvey.org/results/ 3. Husson, Thomas, Julie A. Ask, Carrie Johnson, Melissa Parish, and Emily Kwan. Predictions 2014: mobile trends for marketers: navigate beyond the hype to drive near-term results. Forrester, Inc. January 13, 2014. http://www.forrester.com/Predictions+2014+Mobile+Trends+For+Marketers/fulltext/-/E-RES109681 4. Gartner Says Customer Relationship Management Software Market Grew 13.7 Percent in 2013. May 16, 2014. http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2730317 5. Stokes, Tracy, David M. Cooperstein, Shar VanBoskirk, Laura Ramos, Alexandra Hayes, and Elizabeth Perez. B2C marketers must turn fragmented marketing budgets into business budgets: B2C 2014 marketing budget trends. Forrester, Inc. December 12, 2013. http://www.forrester.com/B2C+Marketers+Must+Turn+Fragmented+Marketing+Budgets+Into+Business+Budgets/fulltext/-/E-RES106341 6. Beck, Jennifer S. Predicts 2014: digital marketers create new rules of engagement. Gartner, Inc. December 6, 2013. https://www.gartner.com/doc/2634017/predicts--digital-marketers-create

THE ART OF

THE BRICK WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO FOR A LIVING?

Mitch Joel

As a parent, this is the question that we most fantasize about. As an adult, this is the question that we often reflect on when work gets tedious or we’re simply ready for a change. On a recent flight, I was watching the science fiction movie, Interstellar. There’s a

MARKETING

part in the movie (don’t worry, this is not a spoiler alert) when one of the characters says that once we become parents, our role changes, and all that we are is the memory of our children. All of us grapple with who we have become. The work that we do defines

us. We attend events put on by The Art of Productions, because we continually want to do, think and be more in our lives. Over the years, work has become much more than the place that we go to earn living. Work has become the place that we go to, because we’re hoping to

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be contributing to the world… and not wasting our time or clock-watching. Imagine, if your recently-graduatedfrom-University child said to you that they wanted to build things with LEGO for a living. I can’t remember when I first heard of Nathan Sawaya, but I knew his work long before I knew the artist’s name. It was a large sculpture. It was all yellow. It was a human torso that was tearing its chest apart, spilling the insides out on to the table that the sculpture was sitting on. It was all made of traditional yellow LEGO bricks. That sculpture stopped me dead in my tracks. It was very evocative… almost disturbing. Still, it was made of LEGO. Those clickable bricks that little kids play with. Those little bricks that get jammed into our feet at two in the morning when we’re trying to get a glass of water from the kitchen. Was someone making a joke? Was this serious art? A great piece of art does this. It moves you. Emotionally. Physically. It gets you thinking. After you experience it, you can’t stop thinking about it. Delving online to discover who had created this piece - and if there was any more where that one had come from - you discover Nathan Sawaya. Sawaya was a corporate attorney in New York City, until he decided to leave that life to become a full-time artist working with LEGO bricks as his medium. “It has been over ten years since I left the law firm to become a full-time artist,” said Sawaya during a recent conversation from his studio in New York City (he has a second studio in Los Angeles). “LEGO is extremely popular and an important part of culture these days. When I first started doing this, LEGO was not as popular as it is now. Back then, I would get emails from people who were very interested in doing what I do. Now, the idea of becoming a LEGO artist is not that far-

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fetched. A lot of people are out there, using their bricks and supporting themselves professionally with a business that is LEGO-based in some way. Don’t kid yourself, it has taken a while for the art world to really accept the idea of LEGO as an art medium, but now those same skeptical galleries are knocking on my door.” Sawaya had LEGO as a child (like most of us did). It was something that was always with him. He would tinker with the connecting bricks in an attempt

to mold their square shapes into the images that he had in his mind’s eye. This child-like sense of wonder and discovery is something that never left him. He would hide bricks under his bed in college. At one point, he wondered if he could do a large scale object out of LEGO. If he could build a pencil out of LEGO, he began to wonder if he could make one that is eight feet tall. With that, his art began to change towards themes, emotions and, eventually, the human form.

MARKETING

While Sawaya has a relationship with the LEGO company, he is not employed by them. Like you and I, he purchases all of his bricks. The difference, of course, is that he purchases pieces by the hundreds of thousands, and he stocks his studios with millions of pieces so that his work can get done. All of the pieces in all of his works are regular pieces of LEGO that anyone can buy in any LEGO store. Sawaya is officially recognized by LEGO, and is the only person ever to be certified as a LEGO Master Builder and LEGO Certified Professional (yes, those are both real designations and serious designations that bring with it lots of employment opportunities). Over the years, he has created a lot of highly recognizable pieces including a seven-foot long replica of the Brooklyn

Bridge, a life-size t-rex dinosaur, a sixfoot-tall Han Solo frozen in carbonite (for the Star Wars nerds) and, most recently, those cute little Oscar awards that were made out of LEGO for the annual event. His exhibition, The Art of the Brick, continues to tour the world and he has published two bestselling books. In short, he takes this toy very seriously. “When I discovered that creating art out of LEGO bricks was going to be my career, I decided that I wanted to take on sculptures that would really inspire people… and move me in creating them,” said Sawaya who is known to think about art elements in his work like spatial perfection and complex concepts. “I have to tip my hat to those folks in Denmark. They have made this

product that the world loves. Not just kids. It is very multi-functional. The possibilities are endless. My art studio has over four million bricks in it. It allows me to explore when I have an idea, but I do want to push the envelope and come up with something different. The goal of any artist is to captivate your viewer for as long as you can. You want people to sit and view your piece - or even think about it - for longer than it took you, as the artist, to create it. In my case, this means weeks and months, so I’ll see what I can do to make that happen. Even with that pressure, I am so profoundly thankful that this is the work that I get to do.” Now that you know Nathan Sawaya’s story, let’s ask the question again: what do you want do for a living?

Mitch Joel is President of Mirum – a global digital marketing agency operating in close to 20 countries (formerly Twist Image). His first book, Six Pixels of Separation, named after his successful blog and podcast is a business and marketing bestseller. His second book, CTRL ALT Delete, was named one of the best business books of 2013 by Amazon.com.

Lead with Knowledge Online Marketing Courses Learn from marketing experts using the latest technologies in an interactive and flexible environment. Online courses are designed for marketing professionals looking to gain knowledge, expand their network and accelerate their career.

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HOW TO

MANUFACTURE

DESIRE NIR EYAL

Editor’s Note: This article is adapted from Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal. Nir blogs about the psychology of products at NirAndFar.com. Type the name of almost any successful consumer web company into your search bar and add the word “addict” after it. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Try “Facebook addict” or “Twitter addict” or even “Pinterest addict” and you’ll soon get a slew of results from hooked users and observers deriding the narcotic-like properties of these web sites. How is it

that these companies, producing little more than bits of code displayed on a screen, can seemingly control users’ minds? Why are these sites so addictive and what does their power mean for the future of the web? We’re on the precipice of a new era of the web. As infinite distractions compete for our attention, companies are learning

to master new tactics to stay relevant in users’ minds and lives. Today, just amassing millions of users is no longer good enough. Companies increasingly find that their economic value is a function of the strength of the habits they create. But as some companies are just waking up to this new reality, others are already cashing in.

First-to-Mind Wins A company that forms strong user habits enjoys several benefits to its bottom line. For one, this type of company creates associations with “internal triggers” in users’ minds. That is to say, users come to the site without any external

prompting. Instead of relying on expensive marketing or worrying about differentiation, habit-forming companies get users to cue themselves to action by attaching their services to the users’ daily routines and emotions. A cemented habit

is when users subconsciously think, “I’m bored,” and instantly Facebook comes to mind. They think, “I wonder what’s going on in the world?” and before rationale thought occurs, Twitter is the answer. The first-to-mind solution wins.

Manufacturing Desire But how do companies create a connection with the internal cues needed to form habits? The answer: they manufacture desire. While fans of Mad Men are familiar with how the ad industry once created consumer

MARKETING

desire during Madison Avenue’s golden era, those days are long gone. A multi-screen world, with ad-wary consumers and a lack of ROI metrics, has rendered Don Draper’s big budget brainwashing useless to all but the

biggest brands. Instead, startups manufacture desire by guiding users through a series of experiences designed to create habits. I call these experiences “Hooks,” and the more often users run through them, the

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more likely they are to self-trigger. I wrote Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products to help others understand what is at the heart of

habit-forming technology. The book highlights common patterns I observed in my career in the video gaming and online advertising industries. While

my model is generic enough for a broad explanation of habit formation, I’ll focus on applications in consumer Internet for this post.

successive desire engines, users begin to form associations with internal triggers, which become attached to existing behaviors and emotions. Soon users are internally triggered every time they feel a certain way. The internal trigger becomes part of their routine behavior and the habit is formed.

For example, suppose Barbra, a young lady in Pennsylvania, happens to see a photo in her Facebook newsfeed taken by a family member from a rural part of the state. It’s a lovely photo and since she’s planning a trip there with her brother Johnny, the trigger intrigues her.

possible, while simultaneously boosting the user’s motivation. This phase of the Hook draws upon the art and science of usability design to ensure that the user acts the way the designer intends. Using the example of Barbra, with

a click on the interesting picture in her newsfeed she’s taken to a website she’s never been to before called Pinterest. Once she’s done the intended action (in this case, clicking on the photo), she’s dazzled by what she sees next.

TRIGGER The trigger is the actuator of a behavior—the spark plug in the engine. Triggers come in two types: external and internal. Habit-forming technologies start by alerting users with external triggers like an email, a link on a web site, or the app icon on a phone. By cycling continuously through

ACTIONS After the trigger comes the intended action. Here, companies leverage two pulleys of human behavior—motivation and ability. To increase the odds of a user taking the intended action, the behavior designer makes the action as easy as

VARIABLE REWARD What separates Hooks from a plain vanilla feedback loop is their ability to create wanting in the user. Feedback loops are all around us, but predictable ones don’t create desire. The predictable response of your fridge light turning on when you open the door doesn’t drive you to keep opening it again and again. However, add some variability to the mix—say a

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different treat magically appears in your fridge every time you open it—and voila, intrigue is created. You’ll be opening that door like a lab animal in a Skinner box. Variable schedules of reward are one of the most powerful tools that companies use to hook users. Research shows that levels of dopamine surge when the brain is expecting a reward.

Introducing variability multiplies the effect, creating a frenzied hunting state, activating the parts associated with wanting and desire. Although classic examples include slot machines and lotteries, variable rewards are prevalent in habit-forming technologies as well. When Barbra lands on Pinterest, not only does she see the image she

MARKETING

intended to find, but she’s also served a multitude of other glittering objects. The images are associated with what she’s generally interested in—namely things to see during a trip to rural Pennsylvania—

but there are some others that catch her eye also. The exciting juxtaposition of relevant and irrelevant, tantalizing and plain, beautiful and common sets her brain’s dopamine system aflutter with the

promise of reward. Now she’s spending more time on the site, hunting for the next wonderful thing to find. Before she knows it, she’s spent 45 minutes scrolling in search of her next hit.

some combination of time, data, effort, social capital or money. But unlike a sales funnel, which has a set endpoint, the investment phase isn’t about consumers opening up their wallets and moving on with their day. The investment implies an action that improves the service for the next go-around. Inviting friends, stating preferences, building virtual assets, and learning to use new features are all commitments that improve the service for the user. These investments

can be leveraged to make the trigger more engaging, the action easier, and the reward more exciting with every pass through the Hook. As Barbra enjoys endlessly scrolling the Pinterest cornucopia, she builds a desire to keep the things that delight her. By collecting items, she’ll be giving the site data about her preferences. Soon she will follow, pin, re-pin, and make other investments, which serve to increase her ties to the site and prime her for future loops through the Hook.

INVESTMENT The last phase of the Hook is where the user is asked to do bit of work. This phase has two goals as far as the behavior engineer is concerned. The first is to increase the odds that the user will make another pass through the Hook when presented with the next trigger. Second, now that the user’s brain is swimming in dopamine from the anticipation of reward in the previous phase, it’s time to pay some bills. The investment generally comes in the form of asking the user to give

SUPERPOWER A reader recently wrote to me, “If it can’t be used for evil, it’s not a superpower.” He’s right. And under this definition, habit design is indeed a superpower. If used for good, habits can enhance people’s lives with entertaining and even healthful routines. If used to exploit, habits can turn into wasteful addictions. But, like it or not, habit-forming technology is already here. The fact

that we have greater access to the web through our various devices also gives companies greater access to us. As companies combine this greater access with the ability to collect and process our data at higher speeds than ever before, we’re faced with a future where everything becomes more addictive. This trinity of access, data, and speed creates new opportunities for habit-forming

technologies to hook users. Companies need to know how to harness the power of Hooks to improve peoples’ lives, while consumers need to understand the mechanics of behavior engineering to protect themselves from unwanted manipulation. What do you think? Hooks are all around us. Where do you see them manufacturing desire in your life?

HERE’S THE GIST: • The degree to which a company can utilize habit-forming technologies will increasingly decide which products and services succeed or fail. • Habit-forming technology creates associations with “internal triggers” which cue users without the need for marketing, messaging or other external stimuli. • Creating associations with internal triggers comes from building the four components of a “Hook” — a trigger, action, variable reward, and investment. • Consumers must understand how habit-forming technology works to prevent unwanted manipulation while still enjoying the benefits of these innovations. • Companies must understand the mechanics of habit-formation to increase engagement with their products and services and ultimately help users create beneficial routines.

MARKETING

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Brand perception is in your customers’ hands. How will you respond? Imagine this: it’s 8:30 AM and you’re in

transit to work. Your mobile rings. The caller ID says it’s your central office. You answer, expecting to hear your manager or a colleague with a question, but you’re wrong. It’s an angry customer, and you’re not in a sales or support role. What do you say? How do you handle it?

Over the next 3 years, social media is expected to become the number one channel customers use when connecting with their brand. (The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2013)

Successful digital marketers will harness the forces of "social, local and mobile" to create direct, lasting relationships with customers. (Gartner, Inc. 2013) After seeing a brand response to an online review, 71% of consumers change their perception of the brand. (Bazaarvoice, 2014)

42%

of users on Twitter expect a response to their issue in under an hour (The Social Habit, 2012)

46%

Approximately 46% of online users count on social media when making a purchase decision (Nielsen, 2012)

This is what happened to Linda, an employee at Microsoft. The customer immediately began describing in detail the issue with her product. She had been expecting a return phone call from customer service because her Xbox 360 was malfunctioning. Desperate to talk to someone who could help, she had dialed a Microsoft extension at random and been connected with Linda, who had set her work phone to automatically forward to her mobile. Linda could have brushed the customer off, explained that she wasn’t helpdesk, or that she didn’t have the right tools with her to assist, and all of these things would have been true. Customer service would have been the department with the right knowledge… except the customer had sought out a Microsoft employee for assistance, and in that moment she didn’t want customer service. She wanted a Microsoft employee who cared enough to help.

How will you respond? In today’s business environment more than ever before, it’s your customers who are in control of your brand. With ubiquitous social networking, online reviews, and instant communications, brand perception evolves at Internet speed. Word of a bad customer interaction or PR mishap spreads quickly. This is why forward-looking companies seek to actively respond to customer perceptions and brand-impacting events.

Your customers expect you to respond to their concerns right now in a way that’s relevant and personal.

Linda’s experience may not be typical, but it reflects a very real trend: your customers are passionate about their brand experience. A positive interaction with a customer like this can create a loyal advocate for life. A bad interaction, on the other hand, can mean a lot more than one lost customer. It can turn into a real problem as the word spreads via social media and word of mouth. And the customer doesn’t care if you’re away from your desk, or if the right person to help works in another department, or if you need a whole team to weigh in before you can take the right action. So how do you respond in record time?

Challenges turn into opportunities Olivia is a Microsoft employee who’s passionate about her work and who cares deeply about workplace diversity and inclusion. She’s proud to work for a company with a strong diversity policy. She knows that Microsoft considers its position as a good global citizen to be an important part of its brand. So when she read in her morning news stream that several global companies had spoken out publicly supporting diversity in regard to the 2014 Sochi Olympics, she wondered if Microsoft had an official statement on the issue. She went to the company’s Yammer stream and started asking around.

Coming up with an appropriate and timely response to an evolving and controversial news story is a huge challenge.

What followed was an energetic and open discussion of the issue. Readers quickly tagged colleagues at Microsoft as the discussion ballooned across teams and geographies. Diversity leaders and HR staffers weighed in, as did multiple product teams. By the start of the next working day, there was an official response from the Diversity team at Microsoft, posted in the Yammer thread and on the company’s public website.

Coming up with an appropriate and timely response to an evolving and controversial news story is a huge challenge. The ability to bring in multiple people from across the company with different opinions and areas of expertise is vital to responding quickly and intelligently to what’s going on in the marketplace and the world.

The shout heard around the company All of which brings us back to Linda and the unexpected call from the very frustrated customer. Linda apologized to the customer and explained she was in transit to work, promised to help, and asked for her contact information. As soon as she arrived at work, she logged onto the Yammer network and posted the

symptoms of the customer’s problem. To Linda’s surprise, person after person replied symptoms of the customer’s problem. To Linda’s surprise, person after person replied to the Yammer thread, including the general manager of Xbox support—who to the Yammer thread, including the general manager of Xbox support—who offered his own phone number in assistance. Several other people offered to contact offered his own phone number in assistance. Several other people offered to contact the customer, and when Linda followed up with the customer a week later, the issue the customer, and when Linda followed up with the customer a week later, the issue had been successfully resolved. had been successfully resolved. That incident became a shout heard round the company. The internal Microsoft That incident became a shout heard round the company. The internal Microsoft network ran a news story, and the saga of Linda’s Yammer thread spread high and low. network ran a news story, and the saga of Linda’s Yammer thread spread high and low.

Responsiveness ResponsivenessatatMicrosoft Microsoft

Responsiveness is the touchstone of a modern, customer-centric organization. That’s Responsiveness is the touchstone of a modern, customer-centric organization. That’s why Microsoft has launched a number of initiatives aimed at reaching customers in why Microsoft has launched a number of initiatives aimed at reaching customers in a more direct and personal way. One social customer service effort is the new a more direct and personal way. One social customer service effort is the new Answer Desk, a phone and chat-based customer support alternative. Microsoft is a Answer Desk, a phone and chat-based customer support alternative. Microsoft is a global company, so support is available in English, French, and Spanish, with more global company, so support is available in English, French, and Spanish, with more languages coming in 2014. And one of the goals behind the new languages coming in 2014. And one of the goals behind the new Microsoft Stores was to provide a way for customers to get Microsoft Stores was to provide a way for customers to get in-person assistance when traditional support options just won’t in-person assistance when traditional support options just won’t do. There’s even an internal site where Microsoft employees can do. There’s even an internal site where Microsoft employees can submit service requests for their friends and colleagues. After all, submit service requests for their friends and colleagues. After all, as every tech employee knows, you become your family’s helpdesk as every tech employee knows, you become your family’s helpdesk when you take a job in a technology company. when you take a job in a technology company. When Microsoft acquired the Yammer enterprise social network, it When Microsoft acquired the Yammer enterprise social network, it not only expanded our portfolio of services, it transformed how we not only expanded our portfolio of services, it transformed how we communicate and collaborate internally, adding an important communicate and collaborate internally, adding an important component to the tools that we use today in our efforts to become a component to the tools that we use today in our efforts to become a more responsive, 21st-century company. And we’re adding new more responsive, 21st-century company. And we’re adding new social capabilities all the time, like the new Microsoft Social Listening social capabilities all the time, like the new Microsoft Social Listening service that makes it easier to track, measure, and respond to brand service that makes it easier to track, measure, and respond to brand perception on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. perception on social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

Responsiveness Responsiveness isisthe thetouchstone touchstone ofofaamodern, modern, customer-centric customer-centric organization. organization.

Social Socialenterprise, enterprise,responsive responsiveenterprise enterprise

The days when a select group met in a boardroom and made all the decisions about the company’s brand and The days when a select group met in a boardroom and made all the decisions about the company’s brand and public persona are long gone. Today it’s your customers as much as you who determine how you’ll be perceived in public persona are long gone. Today it’s your customers as much as you who determine how you’ll be perceived in the marketplace, which is why you have to be fast to respond with interactions that are personal and relevant. the marketplace, which is why you have to be fast to respond with interactions that are personal and relevant. That’s why Microsoft is taking a leading role using social tools within the company and without. We understand That’s why Microsoft is taking a leading role using social tools within the company and without. We understand that our brand functions in a dynamic world, and to manage it we need to be responsive and engaged. that our brand functions in a dynamic world, and to manage it we need to be responsive and engaged. Now ask yourself, what will you do if an angry customer finds your number? With social tools these days, if you Now ask yourself, what will you do if an angry customer finds your number? With social tools these days, if you don’t help, you’ll probably hear about it. And if you do… you’ll hear about that, too. don’t help, you’ll probably hear about it. And if you do… you’ll hear about that, too.

microsoft.com/enterprise microsoft.com/enterprise

TURNING BACK

TIME MARTIN LINDSTROM

Facebook recently wrapped up a promotion tour designed to lure U.S. publishers to deliver their news feeds to Facebook. Since Facebook’s 1.4 billion users give it the world’s biggest platform, this move, if successful, would define the very future of news delivery. People in the world of branding might feel a tinge of déjà vu when they hear this. Can you hear the whisper: “private labels”? Sell us your merchandise as cheaply as you can. In return, we’ll label it with our brand name and sell it in our stores.

MARKETING

Supermarkets love the private-label concept, since it transfers consumer loyalty to them. Manufacturers hate it, since it leaves them stripped of all consumer loyalty and in possession of only one remaining strategy for leverage: price. What does this have to do with news? Well, think about the last time you bought a newspaper. Chances are, you hardly remember. I love the free New York Times, but when the system tells me my quota is up, I don’t reach for my credit card. Instead, I open another browser to get

access to another round of articles. “Come on, Martin,” you may be saying, “what’s wrong with you?” Sorry, that’s just how I’ve been trained -- and I’ll bet you have, too. In the early 1980s, the worldfamous Swiss watch manufacturing industry faced a crisis similar to that confronting the news industry today. The Japanese were running with the idea of the commercial quartz wrist watch. Within one year, 66% of the analog watch industry died. What was the Swiss manufacturers’ response? They did something

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surprising. Every major player in the Swiss watch industry joined to launch an operation called S-W-A-T-C-H. That’s right. The disposable plastic watches were born in 1983. Today, the Swiss supply content to almost every watch manufactured in the world. Rumors claim that even the Rolex contains Swatch parts. The Swiss watch industry is thriving. What would have happened if the Swiss had been unable to align themselves? An entire industry would have vanished overnight. But we were talking about the news, weren’t we? Is the news industry’s solution really that simple: alignment? Let’s rerun the Swiss approach, using the news industry as our guinea

“No more free news for Google News. No more Facebook news feed. If you want the news, you’ll need to pay for it.”

pig. Imagine an alignment of the entire news industry. Not totally improbable, considering that the entire industry is on the brink of collapse. With just five dominating companies joining forces, 80% of original-content news would be locked in. The five common-front news houses would need to agree on just one move: no more free news streaming. The result? No more free news for Google News. No more Facebook news feed. If you want the news, you’ll need to pay for it. There would be a deafening uproar, followed by creative attempts to secure free news. But before long, consumers would realize that news costs money to produce. They’ve realized it in

Scandinavia, where news houses aligned and the “free news” button disappeared. Overnight, the ballgame would change. This wouldn’t solve every problem; monetizing the online world would still be an ongoing challenge. But for the first time in a long time, the news houses would find themselves in the driver’s seat. The clock is ticking! AOL and Yahoo! are already creating the illusion of real news by hiring the likes of Katie Couric. But these online media outlets still have a long way to go before they truly own news production. The Swiss showed it’s possible to turn back time. Now let’s see if the media can put the news back in the bag.

THE

LIST

12 BOOKS ON OUR R ADAR

Let The

ELEPHANTS RUN DAVID USHER

CURVED LINE THINKING The rise of the start-up and start-up culture is changing the way business thinks about planning, and about the straight lines of business plans. Steve Blank, Silicon Valley serial-entrepreneur and academic, writes:

Business plans rarely survive first contact with customers. As the boxer Mike Tyson once said about his opponents’ prefight strategies: ‘Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.’”

These days, powered by the Internet, small teams of entrepreneurs are able to build giant businesses by utilizing the agile thinking of the modern start-up. It looks a bit like this:

1: Idea for a business 2: Build a minimal viable product (MVP), the smallest possible version that can still viably test the idea (minimal features). 3: Go out into the world and test the MVP with customers to see if it works, how they react and collect feedback. 4: Based on the feedback, implement fast iterations and push out new features quickly. 5: If it’s working, and traction and retention are growing, continue. 6: If it’s not working, it’s time to pivot and radically change direction. This new breed of entrepreneur has learned to think and react quickly, to follow the curves of the creative process where they lead rather than just march to some predetermined, arbitrary place.

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The destination is visualized but not written in stone. The discoveries made along the way have immense influence on the course of the journey. Some of today’s most famous new companies

started out doing something else. They had an idea they thought would work but changed direction midstream to focus on something completely different. They followed the path where it led.

MARKETING

NOTORIOUS PIVOT INSTAGRAM

This viral photo app, which sold to Facebook for $1 billion (said with an Austin Powers accent), started out as a location based service called Burbn.

YOUTUBE

Was a video-dating site called Tune In Hook Up.

PAYPAL

Began as a cryptography company that exchanged money over PalmPilots.

TWITTER

Was originally Odeo, a platform for podcasting.

A NEW REVOLUTION In a world where a company’s business model can stay the same year after year, where you can count on stability within your discipline or industry, where you know that your job will still exist five years from now and it is very possible that you will be employed by the same company for most of your life, it is easy to consider time spent on creative thinking as an expense. Everything is stable. Just keep doing what you are doing because it’s all running smoothly. Why invest in new ideas when everything is golden? What could possibly go wrong? I was signed to EMI Records in Canada for ten years and in my time there I watched them go from almost four hundred employees down to around thirty. It was a slow, painful descent that finally ended when EMI was taken over by Universal in September 2012. Through the years I kept thinking, why don’t they do something? Why can’t they innovate themselves out of this mess? They have the resources, they own the product, and they have this immense infrastructure. In retrospect, given the kind of company EMI was and the corporate

MARKETING

culture they had, winning the war in the new digital environment would have been almost impossible. EMI had been doing the same thing since it was established in London in 1897. They found artists, recorded their music, pressed that music onto vinyl or plastic, and then distributed, marketed, and sold those flat discs to the world. By 1997 they had built up an intricate worldwide distribution system and large physical manufacturing plants to make their compact discs, all controlled by a traditional hierarchical management structure. Their business was based on a model of scarcity. Music imprinted on physical discs had value because there were a limited number of them. No shiny disc, no music. Once music could be digitized, compressed, and transferred anywhere in the world in seconds, that scarcity disappeared. In the age of the Internet and the age of digital, 90 percent of the infrastructure EMI had spent a hundred years building became irrelevant almost overnight. They were a company that had been doing the same thing over and over again, very successfully, for a century.

They had no real need for radical creative thinking within their company because their business model had stayed pretty much the same. When digital hit, they suddenly needed to come up with radical innovative solutions and rapidly change. Traditional big businesses are like giant cruise ships. They turn very slowly and they have to plan those turns well in advance so they don’t crash into the shore. Expecting EMI to be able to adapt quickly enough to the changes that were happening almost overnight is kind of like expecting crocodiles to climb trees. It was impossible because it simply wasn’t part of their nature. In the Internet age, where everything is moving so much faster, you need to weave innovation and creativity into your company culture. This is a long-term project. Creativity is something you have to learn and slowly breed into your DNA. You can’t slap it on at the end as an afterthought when you suddenly realize you need it. Opening up your imagination to new ideas doesn’t just happen by chance or by luck. It takes work and commitment. It takes investment. To some, the idea that we need to invest in our imagination

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might seem peculiar at best. It’s an odd concept, investing in the imagination. Who has the time or money to spend it wandering the curves of creativity? It turns out that many of today’s most innovative and creative companies do, and they have actively moved their companies to invest in creativity and the imagination of “the curve.” At Google, 20 percent of an employee’s time can be spent working on personal projects that interest them. These are exploratory projects born from an individual employee’s imagination and curiosity. Gmail, Google News, Google Talk, and AdSense all began as personal employees’ side projects and were developed on company time. In a talk at Stanford University, Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice-president of search products and user experience until July 2012, revealed that half of all new product launches at the time had

originated from the Innovation Time Off entrepreneurship program. Apple followed suit and in 2012 launched their own more limited Blue Sky program, which allows selected employees to

take two weeks a year to work on personal projects outside their normal responsibilities. But this isn’t a new idea. Since 1948, 3M has encouraged its employees to spend 15 percent of their time working on their own projects. 3M is one of the most innovative companies in the world, making over 55,000 different products and launching more than a thousand new ones each year. While Google, Apple, and 3M are all massive companies, the idea of allotting time for creativity is not just for big corporations. This is an idea that works on any scale. It’s not rocket science. If you want to be more creative, you need to invest time in the process of creativity. If you want to find innovative solutions, you need to spend time innovating. It is the same process, whether you are a global company, a small business, or just a person.

Editor’s Note: This article is adapted from Let the Elephants Run, By David Usher.

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WELCOME to the

FLICK GENERATION

Mitch Joel

Mobile ads are not Internet ads. Mobile ads are not like other ads. Marketers can say whatever they want about advertising. Many brands feel that it is all about the message being consistent across all platforms. Other brands believe that the message should be contextually relevant within the myriad of platforms and channels that their messages now

appear. There is a case to be made for both sides. As a consumer, how often have you clicked on a mobile ad… by accident? I don’t even have puffy fingers, and I find myself doing it… and being frustrated by it… with a frequency that is bordering on embarrassing. As a

marketer, my gut reaction is always the same: “whoops… that was a total waste for the brand, and it’s going to throw off their analytics. Still, what we, primarily, see when it comes to measuring advertising on mobile platforms is the same as advertising on the Web.

Advertising success is classified like this: • Was the ad served? As long as the ad was served, the impression is counted. • Was the ad clicked on? Also known as the click-through rate. There is some kind of intent, because the consumer took the action of clicking. • Was the ad acted on? Also known as a conversion. This doesn’t have to be a sale. It could be a download or any form of lead generation.

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MARKETING

Does this make any sense for mobile? This fails dramatically when it comes to mobile devices. We have a complex enough problem, when it comes to defining what a true impression is. There are viewability, deliverability and a host of other issues when it comes to online advertising. You will see ugliness like this: Google admitted that more than half of the ads that it serves are never seen. From a consumer perspective, they live in the flick generation, when it comes to their devices. They’re not staring at a computer screen, they’re flicking their way through a mobile experience. So, impressions from a branding perspective may make sense, but we’re talking about a fraction of a second as the scroll

flicks down a newsfeed, unless brands can create something that will make a consumer stop and stare. If you’re looking at clickthroughs on mobile ads, just refer yourself back to the top of this article. I’m willing to bet that if you’re in the fifty percentile of being lucky enough to have your ad viewed, that over half of those clicks (maybe more) are mishaps, mistakes and frustrations that, possibly, create a negative brand impression. As for conversions, every business professional should read the AdWeek article, Facebook Ad Clicks Are Shifting to Mobile, so Why Aren’t Conversions? that was published in January of this year. Here’s why: “’The

disparity points to the value in Facebook advertising being closer to television or print than performance-marketing channels,’ he said. ‘Clicks on mobile ads are greater than desktop ads, indicating Facebook mobile ads are a great way for a retailer to build brand awareness and reach consumers on mobile devices. Consumers are not device or channel exclusive. They move from search to social sites.’” What we’re seeing is a consumer demonstrating intent in a mobile ad, but driving the acquisition/ conversion on their PCs. The reason why is obvious: consumers are on the go and don’t want to do the work, or the user experience is too clunky for the platform.

Are mobile ads dead on arrival? Absolutely not. This is a fertile territory, and something that every brand must be focused on. That being said, here is a more simple way to gauge and measure success:

• Was the ad engaged with? This gets us out of the impression-based game, and it gets us away from the wrong people clicking on an ad by mistake. It also speaks to the flick generation. Yes, each platform will need to better define what “engaged” means, but it’s a start. It could be based on time, interactions, etc… • Did the ad generate an action? Not all ads need to have something beyond the message that it is presenting. If a brand is looking for lead generation or a download, this is what needs to be measured. Who cares if they clicked or anything else? Was the desired action taken and completed? This is the only metric that matters. • Was the ad shared? This would be the ultimate question. Because it’s mobile, and because mobile is primarily a social/search-based form of engagement, shouldn’t brands focus on ads, media and content that people want to share, talk about and promote in their feeds? Mobile makes sharing ideas fast and easy. Great brands and supporting ads could find a huge win in this.

A subtle shift… a big shift. It’s easy to compare both types of measurement, and see similarities. It’s more of a philosophical approach to how to think about mobile in the right context of the user experience. Will

they flick past, and if they do, what will grab their attention for that brief second? How can you capture a quick action, in a world where consumers are not comfortable converting in mobile?

Can the ad be a piece of content that is worthy of sharing/talking about/ saving for later? This is the new creative imperative that all marketers should be thinking about.

MARKETING

SPRING 2015

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SHINY OBJECT SYNDROME Tom Fishburne

Marketers love chasing the shiny new thing. It seems like every week, we learn about a new technology, social network, or media platform that promises to be the next big idea in marketing. We sometimes get so enamored by the shiny new thing that we forget the fundamentals that the business goals come first. The shiny objects that we come across are only worthwhile in terms of whether and how they enable us to reach those business goals. The value is in what the shiny new thing enables, not the shiny new thing itself.

MARKETING

Last year, a marketing friend was asked, “What’s your Snapchat strategy?” Not only did the question automatically assume that Snapchat was a fit for the brand, the question implied that the brand would develop a new strategy for Snapchat rather than ask how Snapchat could enable or amplify the brand’s existing strategy. The question put the cart before the horse. Any successful marketing program takes sustained energy and commitment. The cost of perpetually chasing the shiny new thing hits all of the other priorities

that have to be put on the back burner to make room for the shiny new thing. If we try to do everything, we won’t do anything particularly well. Of course, brands can’t stay static and our best laid marketing plans have to be adaptable. It makes sense to assess new marketing opportunities as they come along. But we have to keep that exploration in context. There are no magic bullets in marketing. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how marketers should navigate the shiny new things that come along.

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