Why I write blog posts… Practice, Practice, Practice – Real-Time Critical Thinking

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Someone asked me the other day, “Why do you bother writing a blog? No one reads it.”  So I thought about it for a few minutes, triple checked my visitor numbers to save my ego from shrinking too much, and I figured out exactly why I bother to write blog posts.  It’s practice.  Or as the book I’m reading currently, The Talent Code, would call it – “Deep Practice”.

critical-thinking

So here’s the thing, I have but one skill in life that differentiates me.  I’m usually able, through real-time critical thinking, to piece together needs or parts of a story to understand the larger vision for an idea.  Literally my old boss called me “the ideas guy”.  I honestly don’t have many unique ideas, almost everything I build out is a conglomeration of many different ideas and needs of stakeholder all rolled into one vision.  That’s what I do.  The thing about real-time critical thinking is that it doesn’t come naturally, it’s a talent I have because I constantly argue… with myself.  All day long I read and absorb as much information about as many things as possible, I read a lot of tweets and blog posts.  Unfortunately reading a bunch of information only arms you with the weapons for real-time critical thinking… it doesn’t exactly teach you how to use them.

There are only three ways I’ve found to actually learn how use real-time critical thinking – all of them are basically practice.

1.  Debate with the people around you.  The trick here is you need to work with smart people with diverse backgrounds, otherwise you won’t learn much in terms of point of view.  For example the Social Media team and entire E-Commerce team at Walgreens is filled with a ton of smart people, motivated by different things, with different perceptions of the world.  It’s a great group to talk to… but the key to it isn’t team brainstorms or over crowded meeting, it’s all about small group conversations.  The one’s that pop up by the coffee machine, or in my case the once that happen when I seemingly randomly walk around to people’s desks and pick their brains.  There’s debate to be found outside work as well (remember my point about diverse backgrounds), my girlfriend works in HR, I spend a lot of my free time with a friend group made up of Insurance Actuaries, most of my college friends work in health care or engineering, and I always have an open invitation to grab a beer with anyone if they’re willing to “talk shop”.

2.  Arguing with yourself is useful.  When I read articles I usually pause a number of times as I’m reading and take the points of the article and walk through all the different arguments in my head.  Most of that time this leads to me taking 20 minutes to read a blog post that should probably only take 3 minutes to read.  On the other hand it makes the information much more valuable to me… not only do I know the data, but now I know how to use it. (in theory)  Think of it this way.  If I give you all the variables (you read the blog post) but no equation what good are they?  The self argument is where I find myself discovering the sets of equations that the variables fit into.

3.  Blogging is the last part of this practice model.  If you’ve very read my blog, it feels a lot like I’m just talking.  (not exactly top class literature)  Often there are a few spelling or grammar errors too.  The reason for this is my writing style, which I learned while writing comedy sketches at Second City’s workshops, it’s basically improv writing.  Meaning you literally write your train of thought.  (Usually you don’t stop you thought to fix spelling or grammar…  Although, I am trying to get better with that.)  So for me, blogging is a form of deep practice where I can pick a topic and write on it… forming an argument and a point of view as I go calling on all the inputs I’ve had access to.  Working the brain muscle that also is used in meeting rooms and brainstorms, where real-time critical thinking is so important to getting the group past a white board of random thoughts.

So that’s my long way of explaining the purpose of my blog.  For those who read it and enjoy the content, thanks.  For those who don’t read it, no worries.

Thanks for Listening,

Zach West

Digital Branding Dilemma, Empires vs. City-States and Solutions Driven by Incentives not Logic

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So here is the dilemma.  Brands want to be “digital”, so the agency models who serve those brands have re-aligned to offer “digital” services, but the incentives that drive agency decision-making haven’t changed since the TV commercial was invented.  Now step back and look at the digital marketing universe in terms of the brands who use it – there seem to be two very clear approaches in play; Empire Building and City-State Refinement/Centralization.  (I’ll go into more detail on what the heck those words mean in a bit.)  Now here’s the issue… the production/services model of the “traditional” agency drives strategies of digital empire building, but time and time again we see the City-State brands winning online.

Building an “Interactive” Empire

Empire building is a fairly common practice in the business world.  Almost every business metric that measures a company’s performance is based in growth and expansion.  In the retail world it’s often driven by new markets entered by buying competitors or building new stores.  In tech it’s often driven by adding new features or building new product lines.  In the consumer packaged goods space its seems to be all about new flavors and new product types.  At the end of the day it’s about constant “growth”, which is often measured in locations, shelf-space, or installs.  So you can see how when a marketing team or agency pitches to its “business leaders” the idea of growth into new markets they love the idea.  The problem is… that’s not how the digital world usually works.  Last time I checked micro-sites are poor performers unless you are spending a ton of money to send people there, meaning they don’t retain customers rather only offer a single engagement.  Building a micro-site is the equivalent of building a store in a low traffic area, getting shelf space way in the back where no one is looking, or adding a new feature that only impacts 1% of users.  These concepts of growth aren’t going to work over time, rather only when advertised.

ancient-greece-mapThe core part to Empire Building is in the sales pitch, often to a large multi-product or services organization.  It’s very hard to sell in a “strategy” of “we need to continue building on our core properties”.  Rather everyone is happy when you pitch the idea of “expanding to reach new customers”.  The problem is that expansion strategy while sounding smart for business is often not, these concepts often involve building/creating many different destinations inside the digital ecosystem.  However the problem with that is the digital ecosystem is a portal to anywhere in one step – so every website/experience is just as easy to get to as the next.  This is a very difficult concept for most business owners to understand in large matrix organizations, because they don’t see the whole picture, rather they want something just for them.  You know just like in the “growth” oriented business model they follow.

Building a Centralized City-State

A Centralized City-State gets its model from the myth of a brand focused community.  It’s not that they’re aren’t brand focused communities in the world, it just that in 99% of cases your Facebook page isn’t one of them.  Centralized City-States are the brands who have chosen to keep things simple for the customer.  If you search the brand name, you’re only going to find 1 of everything, or you’ll only find the brand in places that directly connect with the brand’s core experience.  In this model the brand focuses on building long-term entities that represent the whole, rather than short-term campaigns that satisfy one part of the brand/company’s “growth” model.  These are the companies that stick to their guns around the idea of “one brand, one message”.  These are the brands that sometimes don’t even bother with social media, or only have one website, or use digital to extend their products rather than their marketing.

The model of centralization was the core of the first digital plan any company puts in place, just like every major power in history basically started as a city-state.  The first extension into digital is often one centralized experience, and often works pretty well.  But that’s the point when harsh decisions about “growth” come into play – what is the trade-off to building many different experiences?  Well I’ll put it this way, from a business perspective I completely agree with a “growth” model of building an empire, compared to history the most successful countries in the old world where larger empires that ruled many resources such as Persia, Rome, China, and even England years later.  That said, the digital marketing space doesn’t have the same resource limitations of the real world, rather it is an infinite space.  The only resource that is actually scarce is people, “users” is the metric that drives digital.  So if that’s the case, it’s not about the real world resources you have, rather the users you influence.  Now look back into history and identify from where the most influence on culture came… great cities were the great champions such as Athens, the City of Rome, the City of Paris, and the City of London – not the empires.

Agency Incentive Models

2012-Digital-Marketing-Cloud1So with those two concepts in place, I’m guessing its pretty clear which way I lean.  The problem I have is that the model from which an agency (the entities most often entrusted with spreading a brand) works in digital doesn’t align the clearly correct way.  Now I’m not saying agencies are bad, just disadvantaged by their incentives in the digital space.

Agencies are a supporting function to the client in most cases.  In a supporting role the entity in charge of the brand is often not speaking to one centralized stakeholder, rather working with many different stockholders.  In this model they often have a brand statement and concept they’re going to apply to all things around this brand.  The problem is while having a tag-line and look-&-feel planned out automatically solves for any centralization problems on TV or Radio, it doesn’t really address digital.  Enter now a number of stakeholder who each want their unique thing.  This puts agencies in a position of serving the client, rather than the client’s brand.  (In theory you hire an agency to say “No”, but their incentives over time will drive them to say “Yes”.)

Agencies are outside entities, this sucks for them.  They don’t really get the insider’s experience… often causing them to missing out on a lot of context that would help them in a situation where they have to protect the brand from a client.

Agencies are self-policing.  I’m not sure how this industry pulled this one-off, but they’re work is judged by their peers.  The way agencies are graded as “good” or “bad” is often determined by a number of awards that are given out by, you guessed it, other agencies.  This creates a major creative dilemma – awards, especially in digital, are given to the most “innovative” campaigns.  This is a problem because the agency in most cases can’t share their client’s results, so the definition of innovative is in the creative.  Meaning to win, creative teams are tasked with creating new experiences, the kinds that often require a new blank canvas to build from.  This drives agencies over time to push for empire building.

Agencies are a business too, this isn’t a bad thing just something that needs to be understood.  In order for them to make money they need to keep checks from clients coming.  It’s not that they need to keep getting more and more work, but that it’s a lot easier to retain a client when all of the various company stakeholders are happy and the company keeps winning awards.

Digital Strategy

I’ve covered a lot in this blog post, so here are the basic points summed up.

1.  Empire Building is a great business model, but it doesn’t translate to digital.  The digital world has only one scarce resource in the user, and because of that centers of influence have more impact than resource driven empires.

2.  Centralization of experience builds extended brand offering in the long-term – the most important of which is the retained user, who begins to view the marketing experience as a destination.

3.  Agencies who have simply translated the original model that works so well for TV and Radio to digital are starting to find it hard to succeed in their new matrix of incentives.

Finally I want to end on something I preach often.  The people in charge of digital marketing in an organization (all of them) need to be incredibly integrated into the business and its needs in order to produce strategic long-term results in growing influence rather than short-term results in one time visits.

Thanks for Listening,

Zach West

The Books I Read (Listened to) in 2012

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So starting this year, I made a resolution that I’d “read more”.  I quickly discovered the best way to actually do that was to listen to books on my phone while I took the train to and from work.  Below are the books I read (listened to) in 2012 and a short review of the book.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

If you’re in a tech related field this book is very interesting, and should probably be read.  If you’re not it really carries two basic messages – 1) With the power of your own will you can drive to your goals and 2) Anything is possible – see this link to fully get it: STEVE JOBS ADVICE

Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson

As it turns out Albert Einstein is the most interesting person I’ve ever read about.  Having only historical knowledge about him going into the book, I felt like I learned a lot about what life was like in his time along with what revolutionary really means.  It’s a very long book, but the story is worth that time.

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson

So I’m totally a history nerd – if you hadn’t noticed from my previous posts.  Ben Franklin to me is someone I never really got to know as a figure in history and the biography Walter Isaacson compiles is great.  Similar to the Einstein book its long, but the substance is very good – showing off a number of insights into Franklin’s various motivations throughout life.

Good to GreatGood to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… And Others Don’t by Jim Gollins

I’d encourage anyone I work with to read this.  Puts a lot of things in perspective in the context of working at Walgreens, but also at a large company that is growing.  (READ THIS)  Suggested to me by Jasbir Patel

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg

So the title of this book includes “Why We Do What We Do”… which if you know me is kind of my thing.  The book itself has a lot of good insights in it around how habits form and how they evolve, including a number of great examples of the theories at work.  Not something I’d see most people reading but if you’re in the business of building business it has a lot of great insights for a startup.

Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer

This book drove me to do what it’s title says.  I will admit that while listening to this book I had some of my better ideas of the year.  I couldn’t identify one specific thing it did for me, but I can identify the state of mind it provided me.  I’d encourage anyone in the ideas business read and enjoy it.

Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck — Why Some Thrive Despite Them All by Jim Collins

So I liked Good to Great so much that I got this book too.  It was just as good, complete with a number of additional insights on driving company growth and evolving the right way.  (READ THIS…TOO)

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin

Great Book, one that I plan to re-listen to again and again.  Suggested to me by Adam Kmiec

Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success by Ken Segall

This book basically was just a guy showing off that he knew Steve Jobs.  It had one good insight and its in the title… just make life simple.  Make the experience simple.  Make your decisions based on simple principles.

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries

If you in your life ever plan to lead or build a product/service that is customer facing please READ THIS BOOK!  This was a referral from my at the time boss Rich Lesperance.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

This book is a blend of the concepts covered in the Imagine book and the Habits book – making it a good read but not something filled with great “new” insights.

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

Do you work in Corporate America… if so this book is basically a guide to politics sourced from 16th century insights about court life.  A great read for those who want to “Play Chess, not Checkers“.

An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 by Robert Dallek

This is a history book, I’m a history nerd… so it worked for me.  Most people will find it dry.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

This is a behavioral sciences book on crack.  Read it and let it drive your creative side… you’ll be surprised at how you start seeing the tasks at hand.

The Talent Code: Unlocking the Secret of Skill in Sports, Art, Music, Math, and Just About Everything Else by Daniel Coyle

A book based in neuroscience, it has a lot of interesting points about how we evolve as humans to be able to accomplish great things with well thought out practice.  I’d suggest it to anyone in a growth period of their life as it offers a strong perspective on how to get the most out of the time you spend on something.

So those are the books.  My next books include Blink by Malcolm Gladwell and Truman by David McCullough, but I’m always looking for new suggestions so feel free to let me know others you think should be read.

Thanks for Listening,

Zach West

There is Great Power in Being Afraid

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You know that moment, the one that always happens right before a big event, when you get that little bit of adrenaline and you realize you’re getting a little nervous.  That is the moment that determines a great performance or a failure.  Nerves, adrenaline, and that moment of doubt are all symptoms of something none of us are immune from, “Fear”.  But those who acknowledge “being afraid” and then use it are the ones that always seem to perform best on the biggest stages.

Fight or Flight

When a human being encounters a situation that comes with extra stress the adrenals push out a burst of energy to support a brain function that determines if its time to fight through the stress or retreat from it.  See the human mind at birth is comes with a great piece of risk management software, over the course of your life it learns from examples around it and from personal experiences what risks we run from versus what risks we push through.  This risk management takes many forms – from deciding if you want to run into a burning building to save a loved one to deciding if you can figure out the answer to a hard math problem.  The fire examples pretty to understand, but the math problem… how is that fight or flight?  Conflict arises when every you can’t solve for an answer from will I die in that fire to what is the square root of 500.  When faced with a situation of conflict there is risk, the risk of not accomplishing the outcome you want.  So when you get a hard mental task like a math problem, just like a physical problem like a fire our minds look to fight or flight for an answer.  Mentally, most folks have the same problem – they hit the moment of “I don’t understand” (conflict) and when they evaluate fight or flight, they choose to retreat from the task and accept not understanding.  That consist mental willingness to accept misunderstanding will catch up to you because as you re-enforce that response and it will become a trigger for mental challenges – such as having the where with all to understand the importance of a grand event and being able to embrace it versus folding under the pressure.  (See my previous post: “I can figure out the point of anything“)

Turning Butterflies into Courage

While the Fight or Flight instinct is going to happen, it can be driven by rational thought not just by what you did last time.  When right before that big event you get butterflies in your stomach, those are the nerves that are triggered by conflict or the anticipation of future conflict… and they are a good thing.  If there is anyone out there who says they don’t get any nerves before major meetings, presentations, sporting events and so on are either lying to you, or their perspective makes them unaware of the size of the event.  Real people get nervous – a real people are set with a choose to use those nerves or fall victim to them.  Those who gain great power in being afraid leverage their nerves as the extra “courage” (fighting energy) to ask that question, to make that witty comment, to nail that slide, to throw that touchdown pass.  People usually only connect adrenaline with physically performing beyond your normal abilities, but it should be also understood that it increases your mental capacities.

Embrace your Fears, they make you Stronger

When you are afraid, you more alert to the world around you.  That added alertness makes you better able to understand body language, query your mind for data, and react with speed.  These are the exact things that in any mental competition define those who win.  So it’s not about being afraid, it’s about how “afraid” really just means “alert”.

Thanks for Listening,

Zach West

What I learned at this year’s Turkey Bowl…

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For the last few years, my family and a few other families have gotten together to take part in a Thanksgiving Football game.  Every year its a hotly contested game of inches, with quite an interesting crowd.  This year as in every year the host made two sets of rules – Rules for the Game and of course “Rules for Life”.  While I know no one cares about the game’s rules, here are the life rules… Enjoy.

1.  Men do not lie to men (yeah this should give you a pretty good idea of the host)

2.  Hold the door for others

3.  Be more than you can be (the host swears he came up with this line and the Army stole it from him)

4.  Lazy is not a way to live – do what I say not what I do

5.  Honorable people do what they say they are going to do.  Reasonable people expect them to meet their commitments! 

6.  Have fun at what you are, do what you enjoy and you will never work again in your life.

7.  Decide in life what you are, do you wait for rain or do you make it rain.

8.  Go out get involved and “give Luck a chance.”

9.  If they cannot look you in the eye or their mouth is dry, that means they lie.  (Looks likes rhymes make great life rules.)

10.  Growth through addition not subtraction.

11.  A poor man never hired me!  (Pretty sure this was a political shot)

12.  Shake hands firmly while looking them in the eye.

 

So I want to re-enforce I don’t condone all of these, but this should give you a flavor of the… well… way the host goes about his business.  On a lighter note… my team won this year.  (Helps to have a few top-tier high school football players on your team)  So all in all, a fun day of competition, and lots of heckling, but most importantly traditions.  The host was “loud”, the game was “heated”, and the drinks were “strong” – The Life Rules well…. they were printed and passed out as post game learning materials.  Long story short, Happy Thanksgiving – I hope your traditions are as unique as ours.

Thanks for Listening,

Zach West

#Sandy is quite a Social Storm, and Why That’s Great

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The ability of social media and technology to drive awareness is amazing.  From youTube sensation “Gangnam Style” – 592 Million views at the time of this post – to real world problems like a major hurricane heading to the Northeast.  I’m not going to do much in this article other than marvel at the impact social media has had already on #Sandy, and what it might have done on #Katrina.

In the past 7 days – October 22 – October 29 approx 12 CT vs. the 7 days leading up to Katrina.

Twitter:

~184,000 Tweets have been shared containing either the words “#Sandy”, “Sandy”, or “Hurricane”.

~0 Tweets were shared, as twitter wasn’t a public tool until 2006

Facebook:

Currently ~66% of the US population is on FB, with ~33% of those checking it daily

Versus in 2005, when in August the only people with Facebook were on college campuses.

Real time Photos:

Not only do we have all kinds of ways to reach people, but we also have a very powerful way to show what’s coming.  66%+ of Cell Phone owners have “smart phones” giving them the ability to report what they see to their social circles, literally.  (Every smart phone has a camera and an internet connection.)

Phones with both cameras and internet connections were not heavily adopted in 2005, there was no instant archive of what was happening.

What this all means:

I’ve said a number of times that “Perspective is Reality”.  For most of us hurricanes and other major events aren’t real, I personally have never been through one so how could I ever know how much it impacts a group of people.  And more importantly how could I be able to understand the urgency of the situation without a real-time perspective?  That’s why Social Media is a great thing, it offers the world instant perspective.  It offers a great conversation in which everyone can take part, where we can debate, show, and understand with the perspective of others.  For many people the awareness of what’s going on in the Northeast this week will be much higher than what they had during Katrina.  (Both the general population, and the folks that are directly in the path of the storm.)

Thanks for Listening,

Zach West

Play Chess, not Checkers – Does Your Decision Making Scale?

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Too many people want to make things simple.  When it comes to user experience this is correct, but when it comes to the rest of the world… it is just DUMB.  In meetings often the leader of the meeting will try to set up a simple problem and look for a straightforward solution to it.  I refer to this as “playing checkers” -

-Checkers is a very basic game.  The goal is clearly laid out – complete elimination of the opponent’s pieces.  The method in which a player can eliminate another player’s pieces is simple, you have to jump it.  There is only one form of attack, only one thing the opponent needs to defend against.  Often attacks are driven by an implied stalemate when a user has to make a move to put himself in harm’s way.  It’s a game in which often the winning strategy is reactionary and not planned out.

When you only see a problem in a bubble you run into a lot of issue later on.  One of the most familiar examples of this is in technology when the tech work is done by outside or outsourced firms.  When someone in a separate company from your own is given a set of tasks to accomplish, what is their perspective?  Well it is that of a checkers player – the task is straight forward, there is only one goal, only one thing the developer needs to defend against (not completing the task).  This creates a lot of risk to the overall project, if each individual part of the project is carried out by individuals who are not a part of the larger planning process, development is done without awareness of how this small part of the project and the way it is coded might impact the overall product.  When everything is simplified it often overlooks the complexity of the long-term impact of the work.

Another situation that happens a lot, is how people/personalities act in meeting rooms.  For example, that person who always acts like this meeting and this small part of the project is by far the most important thing happening in the world right now.  Context is critical to making good decisions, it’s also very complex.  Don’t for a second think things are always as simple as they look on paper.  This is what’s being overlooked by the person who can’t see outside of their current meeting.  Making decisions and working in a meeting based on context and not current events is what I would refer to a “playing chess” -

-Chess is a more complex game.  The goal is clear – kill the king.  The method in which a player can eliminate the king isn’t as simple.  Instead of every piece having the same capabilities, there are rather 9 different types of pieces on the board each with different capabilities.  The opponent can’t, as in checkers, quickly scan the board and see all risks based on one reactionary concept… Rather the opponent must now look at a lot of different risks that may be on the horizon, as well as think more than just one turn ahead as many complex risks may be developing.  It’s a game in which the winning strategy is dynamic and requires complex thought across many turns, both for the player and their opponent’s turns.  Chess requires a player to understand the context behind the moves on the board rather than just the risks offered by each individual turn.

So to bring this to a close, when thinking on a problem.  Don’t only look at the individual problem, dig into its context.  Why is this a problem, what is causing it, does it need to be solved soon, will it lead to future problems?  Then with that context layer in who’s providing the problem, asking all the same questions you just asked yourself but now from the other points of view in the room.  Next incorporate the contextual impact of the solutions offered, what are their after effects, what new problems will they create, does the solution impact other things?  Finally, close the loop of context and with a new perspective on the issue make a decision.

An old boss once said the following to me: “the reason I trust you in those meetings is because you’re playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers.”  At the time I didn’t understand the compliment.  Now, years later I’m realizing how important that way of thinking is.  Great ideas, great solutions, don’t come from brainstorms.  The best solutions develop out of the context: situational, political, technological, and personal.

Ever wonder if your decisions will scale?  Well here’s a better question – Do you play checkers or do you play chess?

Thanks for Listening,

Zach West