Perceptint Musings

When you’re dealing with an organization with more than a hundred thousand employees, it’s very likely you could end up bumping into a negative zone version of yourself or your team on any given day. Discovering others within your organization with a similar charter, goal, time-line, project or scope can throttle into a Monday morning like hot soup in your lap.

My team has had several instances lately of running into new internal people trying to solve similar problems to the ones we face. They have their own budgets, their own clients, their own agenda and our sudden discovery of each other usually leaves both groups puzzled. Did I just run into my shadow? Do we own this part of the business now or do they?

We’ve recently been in process of looking at vendors for a certain need.  We’ve had preliminary interviews with all of the companies we wanted to speak with. The next step for us was to find additional internal sponsors and then begin the RFP process. Right after we crossed the threshold of speaking to the first round of vendors, we discovered another group that has a similar goal related to the need we are trying to fix.

This group is already in the dog and pony part of the show with vendors. So now we’re quickly tagging along with them to see where they’re at, what they know, how far along they are in their process etc. We’re also hoping they don’t jump the gun and start down a path that we aren’t able to influence.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. I realized I need to start documenting our strategy for dealing with these types of issues. This is my first draft for handling these types of situations.  I’m very open to feedback and any thoughts you might have about this list.

Code of Conduct for Internal Comet-Like Collisions

1. Stay calm, you didn’t worry about this team or their projects before today
2. It is highly likely that the discovery of the other team(s) will be of benefit to your projects if you handle it properly
3. Begin an ambassador outreach program to this team at once
4. Get any and all background that you can and provide them with the same
5. Document their team structure, reporting structure, etc.
6. Make it official - do your two teams overlap and where? If they do, put it out there in the organizational mind-share.
7. It could benefit both teams and help management better plan future resource development
8. Look for opportunities to spread your buying power into theirs or vice versa
9. Keep in touch - don’t let your projects and day to day worries keep the other team out of your mental picture, you may need them and their expertise sooner than later
10. Share knowledge and learning’s often - you both stand to benefit from the others experience
11. Do you now have a bigger story to sell within the organization? It may be that the combined efforts of two teams produces better results than one team alone. If it does, tell people and sell the cross-over success. If it doesn’t and your tripping over each other, let people know that too
12. If a mirror image team within the organization existed for this project, there is a greater probability that there are more mirror teams for other projects as well

Keeping your cool is what it’s all about when things get wacky like this. Discovery and knowledge are a faster path to enlightenment than denial and worry.

Just because another project or team overlaps in your area of expertise doesn’t make you any less of an expert. If anything, it keeps the kettle warm underneath you and pushes that competitive corporate button that can help you excel.

So never fear the negative zone, its just part of some bizarre corporate duplication theory that physicists are just beginning to document. Until these scientists know more, you can operate in peace knowing that the collision of corporate anti-matter does not have to end with a big-bang.

When I took the dive this time, I swore my goal in starting this business was to keep myself smiling. My background in start-ups educated me to the level of work and dedication it will take to make Perceptint real and ongoing. What I was
striving for mentally was creating a job with a perfect blend of excitement, engagement, execution, and open-ended flexibility.

When I posted the bullet list that kicked the business idea for Perceptint into a reality, I believed I knew how my model would play out. I would begin an engagement with an ongoing client, dive in deep with them, and then resurface three months later, ready to take on another client or two. Basic risk analysis said my need to get more than one client was very high and should be acted upon with haste.

In the reality of those three months working as a digital marketing advocate for my first client, the client and I realized the engagement we had needed to grow. My time was proving to have more of an immediate impact than expected because I was providing more benefit to the team in the short term as an operational medic, helping stave off a world of fast moving bullets.

The digital marketing strategy of the client is in pretty good shape. It needs some sculpting, but overall it’s running on a well defined track. The world that is bleeding and suffering most is the internal pipeline tasked with getting all the digital marketing projects out the door. Second behind that is a need to tie together a vast mountain of campaign reporting data into a more digestible, public facing team data point.

The client employs well over 150,000 people across a variety of regions. As more of the organization wonders about digital marketing tactics, the need to satisfy those demands grows even faster. A group that a few years ago was managing fifty to one-hundred projects is now pushing close to one-thousand projects through a pipeline that has not scaled as much as needs.

My background in project management and delivery in the agency world means I am bringing new ideas about running production and forecasting into a group where these concepts can have a very rapid impact. If we implement it correctly, it should help them scale to meet ongoing demand, and help build a clear picture of the groups’ immense value within the very large world of the organization.

These are near real time additions to the work that I defined early in the client engagement. Some of the elements we identified for me to work on are coming to fruition now that we’re through the deep dive – building a centralized knowledge base using wiki technologies and creating the Vision Report for this group to help broadcast success, failure, what we’re learning and where we’re going.

The core information offering I put forth is also proving to be a helpful addition to the team. Technology reviews, being a better ambassador to IT, and helping them better understand their agencies and their need to better lead them are all becoming topics I am no longer selling internally in conversations.

At the same time that we knew the first engagement needed to grow, I also knew that my need for diversity in my business wouldn’t be served with another direct client relationship. My scalability in the consulting side would only be to add more hourly based projects for myself or begin hiring other consultants. I’m not ready to hire and I’m not ready to triple my workload, so…

Since I have the freedom to do it, I can toss the first growth model in the virtual waste bin. Sizing up the next chapter of the business, writing, publishing and speaking more - the true core of what will keep me smiling - are to be attacked
with haste and urgency.

The satisfying part is that I’ve laid out this plan with my client and they are whole-heartedly onboard. Part of their perception of my ongoing value is my presence in the organization as an outside thought leader.

Developing this flexible model of the insider/outsider within the organization engages both sides of my brain in a way that I was not expecting. Being an ER stabilizer and a surgeon in the same day pushes my thinking, keeps me nimble, and forces me to focus in ways I am just now discovering.

I’ll keep you in the loop as to how it all develops and give you tips from what I’m learning as they come along. As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.

© 2008 Keith Boswell

Growing up I was an avid Dungeons and Dragons player. It was the one place where I could attempt to do anything my mind could come up with. Having an overactive imagination since seeing Star Wars at age five, D&D gave me a freedom to explore any and all ideas freely. My wizards, knights, thieves and fighters could build, destroy, frolic or pillage, it just depended on my mood and the roll of the dice.

I often think of D&D when I remember some of the things that clients have asked me to help scope, build, market, or give feedback on. I have run into a very common misperception in the corporate world. It’s the idea that because certain activities occur on a computer, they can be magically generated with a few simple keystrokes.

I started thinking about this today after yesterday’s post on agency discontent. And it reminded me of all of the times I had been in situations that the best dungeon master couldn’t think up. Like the meeting where I was asked to help build a new travel site in the new .Net language from Microsoft.

It was 2000 and Microsoft had just written the .Net white paper, outlining their vision for online services and data communication. I had read the white paper several times and knew the concepts that Microsoft was talking about. Now here I sat with 3 travel agents, none of whom had worked in technology positions ever.

They had heard of MS .Net and wanted to use all of the cool new technologies that Microsoft had outlined. Email or phone updates if a flight was late, agents pushing and pulling offers at will, and their users finding it all as simple as making a sandwich to use. They had $500,000 to get their business going and they wondered if we thought they needed a CTO?

The folly that I could not get through to them was that the white paper contained not one ounce of code. It was a road map for Microsoft’s future, where they wanted to take online technologies. But they had $500,000, that had to get them some .Net. Remembering my job at Kinko’s out of college, I could only imagine some elaborate copying/binding job of the .Net white paper, and that couldn’t cost more than $5,000.

Marketers have to better educate themselves about the intricacies of the channels they want to explore or are currently using. It isn’t enough any more to say you want something and then be disappointed greatly when it doesn’t pay off. And agencies aren’t always the reason that a client doesn’t get what it expects.

I believe clients have to lead agencies to get the best and most valuable work produced. That means clients have to fully articulate their needs, their brand proposition, their desired outcomes, and their potential weaknesses. They have to own up to the expectation that they are the critical piece in any marketing programs success.

The agency might miss in terms of creative or execution for a program, but are they ultimately to blame? Any marketing program I’ve worked on required levels of client approval to move the project ahead at every step. If the client and the agency both thought it was a good idea, the agency alone shouldn’t hold the sole blame for failure.

The best marketing magic captures something that the agency and the client know to be true. It reflects the clients business, speaks to the right audiences, and appeals to the right parts of the brain to drive success. This is true online and offline.

Computers might enable a whole new world of data driven opportunities, but that still doesn’t mean these things just magically happen. Today’s complex marketing programs take a great deal of work, a dedicated drive to see them to completion, and talented people to make them sparkle. A dice and imagination just aren’t going to get you there like the old days.

Have you experienced the sense that people think things online just happen? Have you seen it produce a problem within an organization? Your comments and thoughts are appreciated.

There was a great article published at iMedia Connection last week by Justin Berton called “How to survive the age of client discontent“. The article talks about 2007 being the year that a number of creative agencies lost some of their biggest clients because of the growing expectation on the agency to really impact their clients business through integrated campaigns.

It also offers tips for agencies to focus on to stay on top and retain their accounts. The article rang some pretty loud bells for me because I spent 2007 inside an agency where I routinely heard clients call for more strategic work, better leadership, and new and innovative ideas.

That discontent and sense of needing to do something about it is also what lead me down the path of creating the role of a digital marketing advocate. In my mind, for clients to truly start succeeding, they need someone inside with an agency perspective. They need to understand how an agency think. And they need to be prepared to lead their agency more.

I think so much of the discontent out there being felt by agency clients is fueled by the misguided expectation that because we’re spending money online we should be rolling in its benefits. This type of attitude is what built the first wave of the web and it was fueled by a rushed expectation of success by default. Because we spent money online, it should be coming back to us tenfold.

But letting the agency lead the client into this new world puts unrealistic blinders on the agency and the client. They both focus less on what they can do, and end up talking more about what they would like to do. It also means that the agency doesn’t get a true shot at success because they are always trying to outdo themselves rather than focus on delivering against the work they’ve already booked.

My goal for 2008 is to help more agencies succeed and for clients to feel less angst and frustration towards them. For an agency to really succeed today, they need savvy clients who partner with them in a true spirit of mutual success.

Did you find 2007 to be a tumultuous year for you or your agency? As always, your comments and thoughts are welcome.  

Yesterday was one of those rare days where I felt completely overwhelmed by technology. I had been sick for most of last week and online very little. When I found myself at my computer yesterday morning, I had this numbing feeling that I couldn’t keep up.

For 13+ years I have read at least one hour a day about technology and digital marketing. In that time, the pace of change has never slowed down. If anything it has gotten faster. I’ve seen clients go from the most rudimentary websites all the way to running some of the most sophisticated marketing campaigns they’ve ever embarked upon.

I’ve seen standards and new buzz-worthy applications come and go on a regular basis. I’ve seen great ideas go the way of the dinosaur because they had great technology, but no business sense. Does anyone still long for Kozmo the way I do?

I’m feeling much better about it all today, but it made me think - how are we all keeping up with the rapid pace of change? If something I recommended six months ago is no longer applicable because the technology has changed or is no longer around, I have to keep my clients prepared for change.

Here’s my basic outline for keeping things straight:

1. Focus on the tasks at hand. This means making sure you are still good at everything you are already doing like email, paid search, etc.
2. Keep a laundry list of things you’ve heard about and need to explore
3. Read about digital marketing and your industry every day. Spend a few minutes investigating the buzz
4. Look for case studies if the buzz on a technology picks up to anything louder. Having practical applications to understand how marketers are using a new platform or technology help put it into a project perspective that most of us and our clients can understand
5. Don’t let buzz pressure force you into something early. Moving into new channels and opportunities takes careful planning and expectation setting. Don’t move too quickly and get bit when you could get rewarded
6. Have something ready to say to the higher-ups. It’s inevitable today that someone in the marketing department will get that dreaded call from the CEO or another executive asking why we aren’t already doing “insert buzz application here”? You need to have a standardized response along the lines of, “We’re actively looking at that as a new channel and here’s what we know” to “We’ll add that to our channel investigation list and get back to you ASAP.”

How is your businesses keeping up with the changes and do you feel these same pressures in your position? I’m very interested to start a conversation about keeping it all in order. How do you or people in your organization deal with it? Any and all comments are welcome.