Return on Intention

Global warming is a topic that gets  lot of air time. I’ve seen Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and it sounded very convincing. I’ve also heard that the reason for the temperatures rising doesn’t have anything to do with global warming, but have more to do with outside circumstances surrounding the measurement tools used to collect the data. Personally, I think that paying attention to our impact on the environment and reducing our consumption of energy is the right thing to do whether we have a threat of  becoming extinct or not, but global warming isn’t really the point of this post. Accurate measurement is.

The saying goes “You care about what you measure”, after all how can you improve something if you don’t know how your doing with it, or whether your getting better or worse at it. In this example, climate change is what you care about, so its measured. To get a measurement you need a tool for collecting data and a system for analyzing that data into meaning. If you want to increase your businesses sales, you have to track the sales over time. This will tell you whether or not your improving or not. This doesn’t help much on its own, you also need to know what changes have taken place that can be used to explain the movement of the trend. A big problem with trying to identify the actions that cause the changes are to figure out what actually makes a difference and what doesn’t.

Assume that I try to see what has caused a 10% increase in my sales. The first thing I notice is that on the days my sales increased I wore a blue tie. I might be tempted to mandate that all sales people wear blue ties. While there is some data that indicates the color of your clothing can have an impact on how people perceive you and therefor have an impact on whether or not they want to do business with you, it is not a proven fact that my blue tie has anything to do with my performance. It might just as likely be true that I happen to wear my blue tie on the sames days that the state employees get their paychecks, so they are more apt to buy because they have the money now. So what impacts the increased sales, the tie or the cash on hand.

The most believable story I have heard against global warming is that the thermometers used to gather the temperature readings  are located near airports in most major cities. When the airports where built they were located outside of the city. As the cities grew, the large amount of concrete and asphalt from the city development crept closer to the where the temperature readings where taken. The concrete and asphalt held the heat from the day longer and raised the temperature of the immediate environment making the readings of the thermometers higher than they were previously. Whether or not this is actually the case, it illustrates the errors that can occur in metric gathering and analyzing. Check your metric gathering tools and see what other elements could effect its readings or your analysis of them.

There are more books published in a year then any human being could possibly digest. Business books are no exception. Whether it’s the latest marketing tactic book or the newest breakthrough in human resources, there will be a dozen books dedicated to the subject. I’m not complaining, I love reading about a subject from multiple view points ( I enjoyed both Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking and Think!: Why Crucial Decisions Can’t Be Made in the Blink of an Eye), but there is a pattern emerging in the business literature category. It seems no matter what the subject matter, there is a case being made for either a new position or promoting an existing one to the C-suite. The conference room is going to get crowded.

Whether or not every position that has had a case made for it reaching the C-suite actually gets there is up to each organization to decide, but the fact that the case is made so frequently suggests a few points to consider.

1. Most departments or professions feel under represented. The only reason to be part of the C-suite is so that your department has more of an influence on major decisions. This suggests that many people believe that their profession is either under represented or that other departments are taking more of the spotlight than they deserve. Everyone just wants to have a voice, right?
2. Interdepartmental communication needs some improvement. A persons belief that their point of view is over looked or at least not defended when they are not present is a good indication that organizations still suffer from departmental silos.

The strength of a brand relies on the ability of the organization to work toward a shared set of ideals and vision. Each department needs to be performing it’s function to support the goals of the organization. With departmental silos, it can be difficult to rally functions toward a common goal. As the economy returns to one driven by marketing instead of advertising, unity will become more and more important.

There is something magical about seeing presents under a Christmas tree. It doesn’t really matter what’s in the the colorful paper, whats really important is the feeling you get from knowing that someone cared enough to think of you. Make sure that those you care about know it.

A few decades ago, there was a Masonic lodge building in downtown Buffalo, NY that had the most beautifully ornate chairs in it. Many early members of that lodge were furniture makers and they applied their craft to decorate the room. These chairs were not only amazing to look at, but were also a grand sight to behold just by their sheer size. The furniture was built inside of the lodge and so big it couldn’t fit through the doors of the building. When the lodge moved to a new building, they had to cut a hole in the roof and get the furniture craned out.

In this age of mass production and Ikea, seeing ornate hand-made furniture really makes you appreciate the talents of man. Seeing work like this is a lot like viewing art. It’s inspiring to see what we as a race can create. Now imagine for a minute that when the lodge brothers got together in the early days they said “What we need is some furniture that can be swapped out of here into any other building quickly and easily, no matter what the building characteristics. We also need to make sure that they are very durable and inexpensive.”  If this was how it happened, the lodge room would be full of folding chairs.

There is nothing wrong with trying to create very portable and utilitarian solutions to problems, but be very careful what you are optimizing for. In the case described above, I think the best solution was the ornate hand made furniture. It make the room feel differently than it would if it was full of metal folding chairs. In this environment the way you feel when you enter is more important than the ability to move it out the door. When you are making your decisions about design and functionality, prioritize what you want to optimize for and develop your plans around it.

Whether you are a marketer, business owner or cubicle warrior it pays to understand people. Most of the really critical decisions made in organizations are related to the touch points, or the areas and means that an organization comes into contact with is stakeholders ( customers, employees, partners, etc.). Whether its a new market campaign or a revised company policy there is a high likelihood that the effort will effect people, so getting to know people is crucial for any professional.

This advice seems to be pretty self evident, but you might be surprised how many professionals forget this. It’s so easy to throw yourself into your work and spend all your time trying to get more done, all the while believing that it’s the most effective way to increase your value and your professional growth. Believe me and my 80 hour work weeks.

Its good to keep up with your industry, and just as Thomas Edison used to say “Genius was 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration”, so working hard is good too, but to really understand people you need to spend time with them. Get out of your safety circle of colleges and friends and meet some new people. It will give you a different perspective, and often, insight. Especially if your job is to communicate a message to a market (people) its good to remember that not everyone thinks the same way you do. Go find those people who think differently and have a conversation.

Part of Google’s philosophy is “You can make money without doing evil.” So far I think they have done a pretty good job. This philosophy is part of the Google culture, and we can only hope that it makes its way into all the decisions that Google makes. When a company can live its own philosophy and not just talk about it, that philosphy becomes a part of the brand, not because they say so, but because they live it.

So what does a company that is bent on “Not Being Evil” do for the holidays? They give a ton of money to charity. About 5 minutes ago I got an email from Google that looks like this:

Here is what it says if you can’t read it:

Happy Holidays from Google

Hello,

As we near the end of the year, we wanted to take a moment to thank you for the time, energy, commitment, and trust you’ve shared with us in 2009.

With sharing in mind, this year we’ve decided to do something a little different. We hope you’ll find it fits the spirit of the holiday season.

We’re looking forward to working with you to build lasting success in 2010.

Happy Holidays,
Your Google Team

When I followed the link, here is what I saw.

See Google’s Holiday Gift.

Thanks Google, for giving back.

I used to have a windows mobile phone. I was on Tmobile, and that was the most powerful phone at the time. Then the iPhone came along and I decided I had to have it (its no secret that I’m an apple fan ). As soon as my contract was up with Tmobile I immediately bought an iPhone. Boy am I much happier. There are some really cool features, but the by far the most important one is the fact that it browses the real internet and looks good while doing it. Many phones in mobile-internet-past browsed a different version of the web then you would see from your desktop computer. This version of the web  was much more restrictive and less useful, but now with the iPhone that web is gone.

On my old windows mobile phone I could browse the real web, but it couldn’t handle the display of it very well, making most of the web pages useless and unusable. I have been able to browse the web from my phone for about 3 years now, but it wasn’t until now that it has become usable, and that makes me use it even more. Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks so, there are now more iPhones in use than Windows Mobile phones.

The iPhone isn’t the only phone that browses the real web, most new smart phones are doing the same. This has some pretty big implications for the web, but it also has a really big one for brands. The web has just gotten more important because people can go see a website about a company they are considering doing business with from their phone right before a purchase. There are a few minor points related to this, like make sure that your website looks better than your competitors, and your website should still be usable on a small screen, but as the apps available on the iPhone remind us, the real point is to make sure your website is worth going to. Make sure it does something. There needs to be a reason for people to go to your website, and reading corporate speak isn’t a good reason.

So many businesses don’t even have a good digital strategy much less a good mobile one. With these new versions of smart phones and other mobile devices that can browse the web (ebook readers, ipods … cars) the webs importance will only grow greater. Give coupons, special content, up to the minute news or an experience that is worth the effort, and make sure it looks good on a small screen.

NOTE: As I was finishing this post, I had to go look for the ReadWriteWeb post I read yesterday to make the above car link point to the right place. As I was going through my Google Reader account to find the post, I ran across a post from Mitch Joel entitled What A Website Will Be… And Never Be that talks about the mobile web. It’s definitely worth the read.