Business Week - Leadership Articles

Why Leadership Means Listening
Now Go Out And Lead!

People Who Need People

Interesting article on Talent management... Media Post

Life is indifferent; it's people who make it good or bad. It's time that agencies and sales organizations alike get serious about the people they have and start nurturing the people they want.

So where are the good people going to come from?

It's not going to be from other companies within the online space, though some amount of poaching and cross-cannibalization is inevitable.

a commitment to training and promoting new talent from within can breed a depth of loyalty not easily purchased with a paycheck.

People Who Need People

The Top Ten CMO List

From the ANA...

The Top Ten CMO List

The new frontier in personalization in marketing...

From the New York Times...

Billboards That Know You by Name

Brand re-launch/restage ↔ Image rehab

Heard a piece on NPR this afternoon about celebrities and their verbal/vocal ‘Faux Pas’, and the need for Image Rehab. The segment sparked a thought in my mind about Brand relaunch and Brand restages. Are we talking about anything different?

American Home Products to Wyeth
Consolidated Foods to Sara Lee

I have a number of those and then there is the positioning piece with and without name associations?

Porsche in the Volkswagen family
Hidden Valley Ranch from Clorox

Brands take years to build and endless effort to maintain, yet in today’s day and age the clutter makes it so much easier to rebuild an image. ‘Out of sight is out of mind’, applies to bad news as much as it does to brand perceptions…

Brands have a greater need for makeovers than most teenagers as they find the next opportunity to differentiate themselves.

Loyalty talk

I was reading the FastCompany WeBlog and found an IPSOS article (Global Ideas Vol-12).

Are You Building Brand Loyalty or Customer Loyalty?

Questions every marketer must think of for his/her brands.

Back to Davos... WEF 2007

Interesting perspective on World Business from CNBC Europe -

It is believed the new world economy is about - R3.

RESOURCES
RELATIONSHIPS
RISKS

all with the backdrop of responsibility

Other interesting perspectives and discussions in the blogsphere:
The Davos Conversation
The World Economic Forum Blog

How To Be A Disrupter

Forbes article by Dr. Christensen & Anthony

How To Be A Disrupter

Brands & Love affairs

I have read our brains have almost infinite capacity, over our lifetimes most people use less than a 10^th of it. I wondered if that was true of love as well? I started to think of all those broken promises, disagreements, break-ups, mess-ups, etc. etc. and wondered shouldn't all those bad, evil things clog the feelings for love? Of course there is always draino for the mind, meditation & vacation.

Recently on my day off I was looking at my little pup and had a sudden surge of emotions (I am a metro sexual, what do you expect?). I started thinking of all nasty things my pup did, the carpets she ripped, the furniture she chewed, the shoes she tore and socks she scattered... But nothing could stop me from the rush I was having. I just wanted to do something special for her, take her for a walk, play with her, buy her a new toy, give her a treat, you name it and all this for no obvious reason?

That evening I ruminated on my brands… All those we love so much and sometimes love to hate so much. I wondered what would it take to elevate those brands to where I was with my pup that morning?

Is our mind & heart also infinite? Can we grow our capacity to love without limits?

Whats a brand got to do for that pristine position in our hearts and minds? I guess its back to the drawing board.

StanfordKnowledgebase

Top 10 Most Read Knowledgebase Stories for 2007
1. What Should Leaders Do to Lead? [Details]
2. Startups Need a Special Sales Learning Curve [Details]
3. Calculating the Dollar Value of Brand Equity [Details]
4. Diverse Backgrounds and Personalities Can Strengthen Groups [Details]
5. The High Price of Internet Keyword Auctions [Details]
6. Employee Demographics Shape Successful Mergers [Details]
7. Time IS Money When You're Paid by the Hour [Details]
8. Loyalty Programs Can Be a Waste of Money [Details]
9. In the Battle of the Sexes, Men Play the Game [Details]
10. Researchers Calculate Risks of Terrorists Detonating a Bomb [Details]

Experience & Judgment

The two are often perceived complementary but I am quite confident each of us has run into someone (executive) who has the necessary experience but lacks the judgment and others who have demonstrate the sharp acumen with limited experience. Experience usually delivers judgment although there isn’t a guarantee of one from the other… but together they balance each other.

I have personified judgment as the tangible outcome from experience and a resume the tangible result of experience. A while ago I had referenced PIE (Performance, Image and Exposure) as my success model. It would be to ones better Judgment (performance, image) to identify their own success model and prioritize opportunities and options as they acquire varied Experiences (exposure).

Need a LOT to celebrate and LITTLE to get upset

Another one of my pet peeves… personally I get upset over anything and everything. If I stub my toe I get upset, if I can’t find my sock I get upset, if I wake up late I get upset, can’t find those keys I get upset, in short a lot of stupid reasons! The same is not true of celebration though? Hardly ever do I celebrate the opposites. Had a great day at work… that’s no reason to celebrate? Cooked a great meal, so what? Came up with a creative idea, no biggie? Getting promoted is different or finding something I really want to do does get some attention.

What a shame… I am not suggesting lowering standards or dreaming small by any stretch but the one thing I learnt from my muse was celebrating those small wins. Here is how it all happened… I was training my little pup, who is absolutely a genius but I wasn’t celebrating her wins. I taught her the classics ‘Canine American Companion’ would (I was told it is PC to say that, versus a dog owner), the high five, hand shake, hugs, kisses, etc. Each time we progressed she got a treat, celebrating those wins. But on the same front other acts were ignored… her restraint in dragging my blazer every morning, chewing my shoe, restraining to do her business inside the house. I bet she thinks it was too cliché now. The same is true of organizations in corporate America.

Life is too short; organizations need same food for their souls so CELEBRATE! Once again that’s not to say the fundamentals shouldn’t be solid.

Where The Bucks Are

Nicely done on FastCompany - the ones with a "calcified brand preference "...

Sidebar: A three-point plan for marketing to boomer women

1. Put people first.
Shift the focus in ads from the product to the prospect. Women are biologically programmed to be more interested in people than men are, and boomer women are especially interested in family ties and community involvement.

2. Convey empathy, not rivalry.
Ads that talk about outranking others and defeating opponents are great for guys, rotten for women. Emphasize collegiality, closeness, helpfulness, and consensus--values that resonate particularly well with midlife women.

3. Portray them authentically.
The older woman is more assertive, confident, and global in her outlook than marketers have given her credit for. A bonus: These attributes also work for midlife men.

Making Ordinary from the Extraordinary

Met someone recently and we both ranted and raved about our experiences. How much we enjoyed the environment, the organization we loved to belong to, the learning and the opportunities. I felt exuberant just thinking about the experience BUT… OH YES, BUT why was it that we were sharing this from outside the organization and not inside? He responded immediately and said because the organization makes “EXTRAORDINARY people feel like ORDINARY ones!”

I was immediately reminded of how I had explained to some one recently that an organization is like a coffee mug/cup. I am not kidding seriously an organization is like a coffee mug/cup, helps to hold coffee together, gives the fluid a FORM so one can consume it in a civilized fashion. Think about it… if that coffee was not in a mug/cup we the coffee addicts or enthusiasts would be slurping it from the floor or the table where it would be all spilt. A simple and straight forward analogy! I know what you are thinking, what’s so great about the coffee mug/cup?

The important fact lost in the translation is that every molecule of coffee is treated the same. The one that is filled with flavor is no different from another one that is not? Leaving the more MOTIVATED & FLAVORFUL molecule to break away from the cup and find something else to do? That being said there are plenty of unmotivated and flavorful molecules and an equivalent number of unmotivated and non-flavorful to thrive. There may still be some chance for the motivated and non-flavorful to find their calling, May be not in a coffee mug/cup?

f-LAWS (or flaws)

Another master piece from Dr. Ackoff...

Here is how the site describes the book name:

What are f-LAWS?
f-LAWS (or flaws) are truths about organizations that we might wish to deny or ignore - simple and more reliable guides to managers' everyday behaviour than the complex truths proposed by scientists, economists, sociologists, politicians and philosophers.

Management f-LAWS: How Organizations Really Worka new collection of over 80 f-LAWS.

Z List