Processes

A great client recently asked me to outline my definition of success for their firm. I really enjoyed doing that, and below is a version that you can adapt to your own situation, putting your own stamp on it:

• Partner compensation equals or exceeds industry benchmarks.
• After that is achieved, you still 20% net profit.
• The more entrepreneurial employees are satisfied that their contribution to your gain is recognized and accounted for.
• Partners and employees in key roles will have already tasted competence in the area of your focus, or they will experience it within nine months of joining the firm.
• There will be few or no young employees who value variety over expertise.
• When employees talk about your firm, while still employed, their private comments will be complimentary.
• When partners and employees head out the door to work for the day, they look forward to the challenges, the companionship, and their participation in the overall culture.
• As a firm you will not require extraordinary people....

The marketing field is probably less process-oriented than any other among the professional services. Why do you think that is? Working in the field for many years and advising the same field for many more, I’ve come to that realization after noting several reasons why.

Why We Shun Process

First, you crave a freedom to explore, free of the “restrictions” you perceive in process. Second, there’s a need to identify personally with the work—it must stem from inside you rather than emerge from a more external process. You want to create the solution and own it. Third, your role is replaceable enough that you perceive an added value in keeping part of it mysterious. You want to be a magician or shaman or rain dancer. Fourth, there’s a thrill in diving into an empty pool and inventing water on the way down. It’s a drug high to face a blank sheet of paper with each project and, with as little help as possible, make something out of nothing, once again emerging as the hero. Fifth, it’s clear to me that the typical generalist, “full service” positioning that so many of you employ prevents and even promotes lack of process, since each new situation really is new. In other words, the solutions you arrive at are not benefiting from experience like they could, but are instead plagued by the experimental where those who pay your bills could be more victims than clients...

I've had a hand in shaping four of the software products out there, including the two with the largest installed base. And for ten years I've been clamoring for more transparency, enabled primarily by allowing a client to log into your project management software (that's not BaseCamp, by the way) and seeing the status of things. For one thing, why make the AE do that? Every client is different, and this would let them interact with the data on their own terms, with selectable update options to boot.

Why hasn't this caught on? Two reasons:

• Firms say something will take three weeks of work but they don't even start it until four days before the deadline, and this way the client would know that.
• Firms are afraid of interferance in the creative process, where I think it should be more collaborative and with no "big reveals" as we call them.

Anyway, I was chatting about this with a client of mine, Greg Daake, who has a firm in Omaha. He has been thinking the same thing, and so I asked him to write some thoughts on this. Here's Greg...

I was sitting down last week, thinking about how much difference it makes when you have a good boss. I realized, though, that much of good management is counter-intuitive. So I thought I'd take a few minutes to record a few observations while they were top of mind.

Before I do, though, remember the survey on the last email? It asked whether you were better or worse than average as a manager. A full 68% of you said better! You can interpret that one.

Here are the things I've learned interviewing nearly 14,000 people for the book I reference at the end:

• Any non-evil person can be a manager.
• Management does not make you special.
• Managers shouldn't always make more money than those they manage.
• There should be two career paths so that we don't saddle technicians (craft people) w/ management.
• Nearly all important information should come from an employee's direct manager.
• Why you were promoted, or why you promoted a certain person, tells a huge story.
• The biggest danger to your company is a very skilled employee who doesn't fit the culture.

Bill Baker (no relation) is nicer than I am, so don't pin any of my introduction on him. I recently spoke to an auditorium of C-level executives, and the title of my presentation was long but revealing: "The Happy Death of Branding, the Next Fad of Storytelling, and the Hopeful Rise of Alignment."

I guess that expresses my view of branding: there are a few firms really doing it, and the rest (and majority) aren't doing anything differently than they did before, but now they are calling it branding because it sounds upstream. There was no training in marketing, no classes, books, or even real processes. The typical four circles with the ubiquitous use of alliteration doesn't count and should be taken off your website.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with my view of branding, it clearly is yesterday's news, and storytelling comes up frequently. Rather than being marginalized even more, I think we ought to jump on this one early so that we don't relieve the word of even more meaning.

Bill (disclosure: a client) is one of the very few people really doing story telling. While the concept has been around since people wrote on cave walls, modern storytelling was really maximized by E+S (Envisioning and Storytelling) in Vancouver roughly three decades ago, a place where Bill was Chief Strategic Officer. Now, under BillBaker&Co he continues that great work with clients like GE, Relais & Chateaux, Johnson & Johnson, The Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, etc. Here are some of his thoughts on the difference between faux storytelling and real storytelling. Real storytelling is a very complex skill, and I can sit for days listening to Bill point out the subtleties involved. This is just the outer layer.

Here's Bill:

Good project managers are hard enough to find, and great project managers are rarer still. Thanks to Andy Crowe (Alpha Project Managers), though, we now have a peek inside the top 2% of project managers, based on a study of 5,000 of them as rated by their peers/clients. Not surprisingly, great project management requires a lot more than the ability to move a milestone.

Here are the top ten traits of project managers who are really making ideas happen:

Qualities of a Great Project Manager

• Command authority naturally. In other words, they don’t need borrowed power to enlist the help of others--they just know how to do it. They are optimistic leaders who are viewed in a favorable light and are valued by the organization.

Using a database of hundreds of firms in about 90 different metropolitan areas across North America, what are the three things that principals struggle with the most? You might recognize yourself.

 There’s not a lot to say on this subject, but management does seem to attract control freaks in inordinate numbers. My own experience as a control freak was a bit hilarious. I decided that it was time to research OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) tendencies, and so I went online and ordered three books. Right. Not one book, but three. As I explained this to someone, she just laughed, nearly rolling around on the floor. Ordering three books on obsessive compulsive tendencies seems to confirm the diagnosis before even cracking open one of the books, no?

The reason marketing firms fail is not creativity, location, or the marketplace. It’s management ability. Your firm is a direct reflection of you, and you must take responsibility for it. Here are the most common dozen mistakes we see marketing firms make. If you are managing a firm now, you’ll identify immediately. If you are an employee, this might give you some context for the decisions you may not agree with. If you are considering starting a company, this will help you learn from the mistakes of others.

A large percentage of the marketing community works at in-house departments within large corporations. The designers and illustrators and photographers and writers and strategists who choose to work in those settings do so for the opportunity, structure, benefits, predictable hours, career paths, and greater collaboration.

If you doubt that a large percentage of designers, for example, are not working for small firms, attend any conference in this field and just look at the attendee list. But in spite of their large numbers, they are underserved in some ways. All the craft topics are applicable, but there is very little advice on how to run a marketing department. How should it be structured? What systems will ensure good work that is also timely? How should that department be marketed?