marginally subversive

It's all about the experience...

I stumbled upon this interesting slide show on content marketing - at least that's how it was labeled on SlideShow.Com.  However, I think that it does cover more than just content marketing as a discipline.  It covers a far bigger, far richer view of the consumers' experience-sphere - and how brands can make/unmake their positions within this circle.

It's all about enhancing consumers' experiences of brands - that's the raison d'etre of media, channel, and messaging experts.  It's not about buying a TV ad or a print ad or a banner ad in some number 1 portal somewhere.  It's not about buying search keywords and optimizing them to the hilt.

It's about enhancing consumers' experiences of brands.

And I honestly think that content marketing - what used to be called (or is it still called?) "branded content and sponsorships" (though I think it's far more than that) - is one pillar that is currently underutilized in the media planning industry.

A lot of clients that I have spoken to about this have just one reply: "We are not a publishing company".  To which I say, "... but the mere fact that you are creating ads, buying media to send those messages into the market, and getting PR people and CRM writers to create campaigns - contents, essentially - don't these make you a publishing company?"

 

Content Marketing = Brand New Marketing?

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: media interactive)

Innovation

A thesis: Technologies designed to meet said and unsaid needs of consumers is what's going to drive innovations. 

Innovation is a careful balance between what consumers think they want now and in the near future - and what they have not yet thought about.

The real challenge is not really "meeting consumers' needs" - as made evident by surveys or any other "emotional, ethnographic research".  But creating technologies that enhance the experiences and lives of consumers.

Google did just that.  So did Apple's iTunes + iPod combo.  So did Amazon.Com.  They looked at how they could create better experiences for their consumers (and well, increase their bottom-line).  And they did succeed.

Simple.  Classic.  Elegant UIs.  That actually work.  And eventually get trusted.

Technology is important - but it is an enabler.  An important enabler.  But it's not the end-all/be-all.

Brands as Destinations

I was just thinking about 'destinations as Brands'.  The Hiltons and Conrad Hotels (which by the way are still tops on my list), Sheratons, and JW Marriotts.  Then started thinking about "countries as brands" - Singapore, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the Philippines, Malaysia.  And then the brands that take you there - Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Northwest, Emirates... - all of which are not entirely 'destinations' but surely are 'brands'.

Then my brain flipped:  How about thinking of it inversely - "brands as destinations"?  Does it hold?

Come to think of it:  some companies have called the 'retail space communications' as "the last mile that will make or break the deal between the brand and the consumer".  Some have thought of the "consumers' journey" or "path to a purchase".

From these, it seems then possible that "brands are destinations" in and of themselves, regardless of what categories they belong in.

But what would a brand as a destination be?

Hmmm.

For Coke: That sizzle, that 'bite' at the back of the throat that refreshes and gives me a break - however simple and short from the hassle of daily work.
For Kiehl's and Gillette 5Blade (whatever it is called) Shaver:  That smooth shave in the morning - with the minty, tingly feeling after.
For Mac:  That "can't wait any longer gotta be on my Mac" feeling every single night - in spite of being tired.
For my Sony PSP:  That "can't wait to advance to the next level and earn my black belt - even if it's only virtually" experience.
For the good old, H&L Milk in my fridge: That "please, I want to sleep now" feeling.

It seems possible.  And it could well be true.

Brands in themselves are destinations for consumers.  Brands are not just the tangible aspect of a 'product' - but also the emotional responses that a certain experience evokes out of and with the consumer.

Hmm.

"Problem at the Office?"

Every now and then, I'd get this question:  "Problem at the office?"  Largely, it is 'evoked' by the dark circles under my eyes.  (For the record: It is genetic.  Nothing I do can remove the bags nor the dark circle.  Believe me, I have tried.)

Image from BusinessWeek; illustration by Ray Vella.

BusinessWeek came up with this interesting article in their latest issue about problems at the office - and in addition, they looked at 'generational tensions'.  However, what really interested me was the similarities of themes underneath the different problems that we all encounter.

We strive for work-life balance.  And we try our best to maintain it by getting in touch with the Tech God or Tech Goddess in us (otherwise known as the nerd).  In doing so, we get dependent on technologies - and then suddenly, the very gadget that was supposed to empower us to achieve work-life balance is now a source of stress.  So we go to "new age seminars" and "zen seminars" - and tune out.  At first, there is the usual "I cannot live without emails and laptops and the internet and my BlackBerry..."  We get through that rather easily (at least in my case and a few friends') - what really is 'stressful' is the night before the return to work - and the first few weeks after work.  It's as if the world stopped - or accelerated? - when we were away.  One thousand emails unread - most of the were needed yesterday - or worse, the week before.

You get the picture.

Anyway, I think this piece was a good read.  It made me smile - and think.

As far as I am concerned, all these shall pass.  These are all ephemeral - and transient.  What is essential, as the Little Prince said, is invisible to the eye.

Or not.

agency executives are not doormats; we're people, too...

There is a fine, fine line between questioning a person's professional capabilities and attacking her/him personally.  There's also a fine, fine line between "client service" and being a "client's doormat".  Between service and slavery.  Between being demanding and being unreasonable.

For awhile now, I have been holding this thought in my mind.  A lot of marketeers think of agency executives (like myself) as "mere agency people" - "people who take my orders (or my boss') and get them done because we want to get things done".

For a long time, I have thought that this was the responsibility (the fault?) of agency people - both current and past players in the world of advertising, media and communications planning, and even research and other allied services.

Then it dawned on me that no, it's a shared responsibility.

We all have a shared responsibility to treat each other respect.

Agency executives ought to demand respect from their clients - and clients ought to respect their agency teams, regardless of whether they are from the media company, the research,or the creative teams.  No amount of "incompetency" is sufficient to warrant a 'personal attack'.  Specially if such attack is based on preconceived notions on races, genders, age, skin color, and types of passports.

Not because they deliver the goods and they get things done "the way we want to get things done".

But because it's the right thing to do.

Simply.

 

(Picked this up from Flickr)

We all come into this world naked.  And we all die, too.  We breathe the same air - and we look up to the same moon at night.  What makes you different is just in your head.  And life is too short to be concerned about your next bonus, the boss' accolades, or winning the next 'political bout' in the office.

 

(Photo from Flickr.)

Value Proposition versus Price Proposition

I have been trying to put a "dollar value" to my day.  This is part of my personal goal of setting up my own shop - an advisory shop for small to mid-sized entrepreneurs in Singapore and in other countries in Southeast Asia on how to break-through their respective markets and create compelling stories for investors. 

For the past several days, I have been looking at different ways of doing this.  I first looked at the idea of "direct salary costs" + "overhead/capitalization" + "preset profit margins".  But quickly, I saw the weakness in such an attempt.  My salary - or at least, my former company's salary - could not be a benchmark, because that is not necessarily the value that I can bring to the table.

I tried a different approach - benchmarking.  I started calling friends who have been in the business of consultancies (the closest I could get to "advisory") - and started to rack my brains in search of memories that could lead me to a number.  I then compared my credentials with their own credentials, their clients with my target clients... But then again, I realized,well, mine is an entirely niche target altogether.  My credentials - or anybody else's credentials - are not a sure-fire way to measure value.  And besides, how does one quantify the value of one's credentials - and those non-dollarizable values?

Then I recalled I had this book called "The Business of Consulting".  I started to look at the advice the author gave - and devised my own way of looking at how I should be charging - or perhaps, 'dollarize' my time. 

1. Start treating yourself as a company.  So list down all your possible expenses - knowing full well that you now are a company, not just an employee.

2. Determine how many days in a year will you be working to create noticeable value.  This may or may not be 8hour days.  There is no "number of hours" involved - the ultimate goal is "noticeable value-creation" for clients.

3. I had to be realistic - this would be a stressful endeavor.  So I figured there should be days wherein I will do nothing BUT nothing.  There will also be days when I will need to catch up on readings and learn new things.  And there will be days when I will have to market the company - well, that's also creating value, but not to the clients that I will be serving.

4. Only then did I arrive at a number.  It seemed high - at first.

5. I immediately tried it out with a trusted business partner - and told him what my rates are going to look like for the projects that I will be doing for his team.  Of course, I had to show him the value of the projects that I will be working with him on - and how these could potentially lead to better processes, better returns, better people.  He said yes.

So - value proposition versus pricing proposition?  I think looking at 'dollarization' from both angles is perhaps necessary.  "Pricing" however, tends to undervalue the "real value" - because "we have to be competitive, we have to get more sales volume, we have to get more pick-ups and empty the shelves, we have to have more sales units sold!"

So I am going to say, it's all about dolarization should never be driven by what's cheap, what's in the market, what the rest are doing, and what we think would make people buy ("People love cheap prices!" - to which I say, "Not really...")

And funnily enough, Seth Godin in his latest blog talks of this thing.  He says -

Your sales force and your customers may scream that you need to lower your price.
It's not true.
You need to increase your value. If people don't want to pay, it's because you're not delivering enough value for the money you're charging.
You're not selling a commodity unless you want to.

Coincidences.  How I love them.

(I would like to say "great minds think alike..." but then again, I don't think I can compare with THE Seth Godin...!  Haha!)

Your sales force and your customers may scream that you need to lower your price.
It's not true.
You need to increase your value. If people don't want to pay, it's because you're not delivering enough value for the money you're charging.
You're not selling a commodity unless you want to.

"it's nothing personal..."

One of the things that keep on popping in my head when I am thinking about management is an ex-boss' advice: "In business, don't take things personally; separate the personal from the professional".

In the years that I have managed and interacted with people in the corporate world, though, I have come to realize that it is inevitable that the "personal" will be separate from the "professional".  I also think that such categorizations are misplaced and misinformed.

Companies hire people - and people being people, they are imbued with their rationalities and their irrationalities.  The "personal" is not distinct from the "professional".  And vice versa.  Dealing with people means dealing with the whole and the totality of each individual.

Such rationalities|irrationalities come with the entire "talent resource" package.  Defining one from the other is rather impossible - because people are people.  And people are complex.

I don't know where I read this - but it's probably in one of the microeconomics or behavioral economics books or perhaps, in one of the management magazines that I have been reading:  (I am paraphrasing)

"It is the irrationality of people that makes it difficult to predict human behavior.  Rationality of individuals is an assumption - not a given - in any situation, such that when the assumption of rationality is removed, all bets are off."

Should we give up then?

I think not.

The essence of leadership, I believe, is at the core of this realization: that people are people.  And whatever leadership or management style or theory we adopt, it is never - and will never be - perfect.  It is only when we truly understand people as people can we lead, inspire, impassion, involve, engage, enroll people.

 

From kellypuffs, aptly called Rational-Colored M&M's from Flickr

The whining of Gen-X'ers...

This from BusinessWeek is so far the only compilations of why Gen-X'ers are unhappy and are considered to be a whiny bunch.  The truth is, there is far more to us being whiny. 

As one of "us" commented: "When we had new ideas at work, nobody cared to listen; now that we're 'old' and mature enough, everybody's looking at the Gen-Y as if they held the panacea to all our worries."  And oh, we do make a distinction between shareholders and stakeholders. 

Oh well.

And supposedly, the war for talent continues

In an earlier post, I wrote about talents, potentials, and Ferraris that are encumbered by speed limits that are imposed on them.  I have not really gotten to the point of accepting that an HR Manager - somebody high up the HR chain - would say something like "You may be a Ferrari outside - but here, inside this company, we have speed limits".

Oh well.  That is done.  The deed has been done - and I have stopped the hypocrisy.  Talent management is very prone to lip-service.  I wouldn't go as far as saying it is in the same league as "shareholders are our first priority".  But I guess, they're pretty near in the cliches that I have heard in the past.

Lest I be seen as a anit-corporate man, let it be known that I do like the corporate world.  We just need to be honest - and stop the pretensions that "people come first, then profits".  Companies train people so people can become more effective and efficient - and ultimately benefit the company.  Let's stop the charade about "we believe that our greatest assets are our people" - nope, it's the things that these people produce that companies tie in as "corporate properties unless these can be proven to have been done beyond and outside company hours and without any use of company resources".

OK.

Enough of that.

As I have said, I have ended the charades and the hypocrisy.

I am no longer that naive - though my naivete have indeed hurt me.  I guess, I was idealistic - and I had to learn the lesson.

- - - - - -

In Jack and Suzy Welch's latest BusinessWeek column, they were asked this question:

When you have a capable person to promote in your company but that person does not have appropriate tenure, is it better to hire from outside? — Natalia Salistean, Bucharest, Romania

The answer of the Welches: No.  And they continued to explain why tenure need not be a major, critical consideration.

To quote:

... why would any company put a high-performer through unnecessary paces just to satisfy a bureaucratic requirement? That uncompetitive practice is a throwback to the days when an employee's time served could, and often did, trump his value added.

- - - - - -

Well said.

Oh well.

marginally subversive thought of the day

People don't care about the technologies that they are using - they care about the brands that these technologies are powering. 

The brand promises - and engenders hope; the technology delivers.  If the technology does not deliver, the brand gets spanked.  If the brand does not deliver, the technology - no matter how good it is or how superior it is against its competition - won't survive.

Think MSN's Live Search - or better yet, Yahoo Search versus Google Search.  We can safely assume that all three are 'good' search engines - with the backing of great software engineers, academicians, algorithm designers, and specialists.  But why does Google dominate?  How did "Google it" become an intelligible sentence?  How did "Google" become a verb?

Or Creative Technology's ZEN products versus Apple's iPod.
Or Dell versus Sony Vaio versus HP versus Gateway versus Asus?

The brand creates the promise - that the technology behidn the brand does and will deliver.  The brand opens the door for technology to do its work.  If the technology behind the brand sucks, the brand suffers.

But it is the brand that starts it all.  And to paraphrase my former professor in Cognitive Psych would have said: No brand, never mind.

magazines and websites: round 1

I just got off the phone with the customer service of the only one magazine that I subscribe to - BusinessWeek.  The purpose?  To cancel my subscription to the magazine.

Don't get me wrong - I love the magazine.  I love reading it week after week after week.  I thought it had pretty good thoughts and viewpoints about current socio-political and economic issues in the US and around the world.  I was not perfect - I still read a few more other magazines that I could get my hands on.  But I thought it was a good starting point.

But then, I realized after having gone through several issues - "paper" and online - there was no significant difference.  In fact, when I tried to check out the latest paper-issue against their online-issue, I didn't see a big difference between what I wanted to read on-paper versus those that were online.

In fact, the one online was a lot more updated.  Perhaps, not as deep as I wanted the discussions to be - but still, good enough.

So I cancelled by BusinessWeek subscription.

Did BusinessWeek lose me as an audience?  Of their magazine, yeah.  But of their brand?  Nope.  I still will read their articles.  I am just going to do it online - and well, free.

I know some would think that this is no longer an issue - this thing about 'paper versus digital' media.  But I think one has yet to win over the other.  And in fact, it is possible for a brand to never lose in this battle.

If only media-publishers would treat their businesses as brands - real brands - in the same way that Coke, Pepsi, IBM, Dove, and Pantene are brands.

 

"I told you so!"

I am going to cut and paste this blog in its entirety - because I couldn't have written it any better.  All I can say is "This explains a lot!".

A New Power Principle?

Posted by: Jena McGregor on May 20

You may think it’s your boss who’s always the one messing things up. But according to new research in the journal Pyschological Science, people with lower-ranking titles are more likely to make errors than those with higher-ranking roles. That’s because, says Adam Galinsky, a study co-author and professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, the “executive functions” of the brain, or the gray-matter processes that override automatic responses, can be impaired when people are put in jobs with little power. In Galinsky’s study, which was co-authored by Pamela K. Smith, Nils B. Jostmann, and Wilco W. van Dijk, subjects who were randomly assigned to be subordinates had a harder time staying focused on goals than those who, by chance, were named to be managers.

The research isn’t the first Galinsky has done on the effects of power on performance. In another study, he had students sit down very close to electric fans blowing in their faces. Sixty-nine percent of those randomly assigned to be managers moved the fans, while just 42% of those named subordinates did. Galinsky believes such research helps confirm why employee “empowerment”—especially in health care, or high-risk factory jobs—should be much more than just lip service. Says Galinksy: “Lacking power impairs those parts of the brain that allow people to stay focused.”

I wouldn't really call it "power" though - it's "control" or the perception of the ability to make a difference and to control one's environment.  Once that is lost - all is gone.

when a door closes...

it remains closed until you dare to open another one.

One of the things that I have learned in life is that one can never rest on one's achievements - and failures.  One has to continue evolving, learning, and assimilating new things. 

When one has come to the point of smugness to say "I know all - and don't need to learn anything else", then that's when one congeals - hardened with cynicism or with complacency.

"The Dip" by Seth Godin - One Year...

One year ago, I stumbled upon The Dip by Seth Godin.

I wrote earlier about it (but well, deleted it together with the rest of my old blog, Organized Chaos) - and how I got something new out of it each time I read it.

Without knowing that it's been a year, I recently started rereading The Dip again.  Somehow, I felt compelled to re-read it as part of my attempt to understand and discern (a 'deep' word these days in this phase of my life) whether I should make a move or not.

And again, I got something new out of it:  If you can't be the best in what you do in a certain situation, either re-create and redefine the situation such that you can be in your top form or get out.

That's exactly what I did - I tried to redefine the rules with the hopes of redefining the situation I was in so as to get a sense of accomplishment, or being remarkable at the end of each day.

I failed.

So I got out.

A lot of my friends and even colleagues and former bosses told me I was making a stupid move.  It was - in one of my ex-bosses' words - what every one was looking for.  It was, as Nigel and Emily from The Devil Wears Prada (yes, that movie again) defined as "the job that a million other girls (and boys) would kill for".

And I could see where they were coming from:  I come in at 9am, I plonk myself in front of the PC and do my work, I log off at 6pm, head to one of my evening activities - Spanish classes, readings in Stats and Econometrics, readings in Philosophy, visits to the library, dinner with friends, partying and a little bit of drinking, and gym (not on the same night...).

But that, I told my ex-bosses and colleagues who still work 12-15-hour days, how I want my life to be.  I want to be able to use whatever talents I have been blessed with - and make full use of all the learnings I have gathered from 12 years of working with other people (making mistakes, perfecting processes, perfecting the art of asking questions and quantifying them, making sure that things are "perfect enough").

Anything short of that is, well, not for me.

Sure, it's also about the money.  But it's not just about the money - or even tenure or security or whatever else you can think of.

It's personal fulfillment - and the chance to be good and remarkable.

Seth Godin made a request - "take it off the shelf and lend it to someone".

I am sorry, Mr. Godin, I can't.  It just is too useful for me.  Don't get me wrong - it's not the best book I have read.  It's amongst the better books, for sure.  If I were to be stuck in an island for a year and can only bring 10 books, it sure will be one of those 10 books (alongside those books by NNTaleb and Mark Buchanan, and ET Jaynes).  I tend to be very protective of my books (you should see my apartment shelves - they're full of books).  I am happy, however, to tell others about it.  In fact, I have bought a couple of friends copies of your book.  And I would even gladly buy some of my friends one for their birthdays and anniversaries and farewells and all.  But sorry, I just can't part with my copy just yet.  Perhaps next year.

Getting in Touch with my Coding Side

I finally made it - write a program in Visual C++.

For some it might not be that much of an accomplishment.  But hey, it's been years since I last attempted to create a program.

The subject of the programming project was simple (no, it wasn't the customary "Hello, World").  I wanted a simple program that would be an implementation of a Monte Carlo simulation.  In my head, it was simple.  It looked logical when I created the skeleton of the program - the "algorithm", I think it is called.

What really got me was relearning all the keywords and the functions and the 'nitty-gritty' of Visual C++.  It's the translation of the idea into a real, working and workable program that got me stuck. 

(Oh, I do remember a little bit of C++ - then I realized whilst I was working on the program [it took me weeks...], Visual C++ keywords were quite different from C++'s.  So I had to go back to the drawing board and reword the program - only to find out in the end that I had the option of running ANSI-standard C++ within the Visual C++ environment.)

It was interesting.  Not only was it like a trip down memory lane - back when Turbo Pascal and Turbo C and PDP11 Machine Language were the 'basics' that I had to learn as part of my "Intro to Programming" and "Data Structures and Algorithm" classes.  It was also akin to learning a new language.

Would I have been a good programmer?  I am not sure.  Computers, software and their workings never really appealed to me - although I do want to "power-up" sometimes.

My Excel 2007, for example, are filled with macros (both recorded and built from scratch using VBA) so I can automate mind-numbing tasks.  Pivot Tables are my best friend now - and I am still looking for ways to maximize my use of them (because I know that I have not fully maximized them yet).  And after 1 week of being lost in Office 2007 - specially the painfully difficult "ribbon" - I started to get the hang of it.  And voila... efficiency.

Anyway, that's one challenge down.  And a few more to go.  There are still 'programming projects' that are swirling in my head - mostly things that would make my life a little, um, easier.  I hope.

Life - Dreams = Job

Star World has got this new trailer for Eureka, a TV program that I kinda like.  One of the lines that's included in the program promo was this equation:

"Life - Dreams = Job"

It is a reminder - at least to me - that it is dreams (hope, expectation, future) that ultimately drive us.  Dreams are what drives us to hope, to strive, to create something out of nothing.  To be something.  To evolve.  To grow.  To extend.  To reach.

For some, it is the quest of money.  Others, the quest for knowledge.  The others are driven by dreams of "ultimate happiness" - whatever and however they may conceive what "ultimate happiness" is supposed to be.

The funny thing about "dreams" is that it comes with whole package - corollary and ancillary stuff come with the package called dreams:  Hope, Expectation, the Future, Fun, Excitement, Change.

I for one thought I could just work for the money - and forget about dreams.  But then I realized that what really drives me to get up in the morning, soldier on to work, go through the challenges at work - mundane, complex, inane, or otherwise - collect my salary at the end of the month, and fill in my income tax returns is not the work itself.  It is not the company.  It is not my colleagues and how I appear before them.

It's all about my dreams.

For me, for my 'significant other', for my family...

I am still - after all the things I have gone through and the cynicism that I seem to emanate - a dreamer after all.  And I won't let anything or anyone rob me of my dreams - or even block the view.

 

Of PowerPoint(R) Presentations...

I have always been a tech-geek.  Not the "programmer" kind - but the one who maximizes all possible shortcuts there are in the software that I use.  My philosophy is completely opposed to RTFM - for me, the best way to learn something is to do it.  Experiment.

I never had PowerPoint training in the past.  When I first started working in 1995, PowerPoint was just starting in the Philippines.  I remember that I was still using Quattro Plus back then to do my spreadsheets and my charts, and print them on a "dot-matrix" printer.

(Okay, I am that old.)

But I immediately caught on.  I spent a whole week learning the in's and out's of PowerPoint - and how I can make it a support tool for me to communicate my ideas.  I learned through feedback from clients and colleagues that "anything smaller than 16points is really bad" - and "too much color on a screen is confusing".  I also learned that "people don't go beyond the title" - and "tell a story, stupid - not what's on the charts... people can read".

I also began to develop my own story-telling style - and in spite of my chart- and numbers-heavy charts (in succession, sometimes), I believe that I do manage to deliver a compelling story.

And the key to it all is having a story.

My former bosses would ask me to send over the presentation file to them - and then they would critique it.  And I wouldn't hear of it.  I would rather that I get them seated in front of my PC, and tell the story - why this chart precedes this chart and why this slide precedes this conclusion.

It's a story - and you can't get a story out of reading slides and numbers.

Of all my former bosses, it was only my latest boss - Jon T. - that actually 'got used' to my style.  He would see the file and immediately find loopholes in the story, suggesting how to further strengthen a case or whether a certain slide is not necessary to the story or is a different story altogether.

As I am mired in PowerPoint presentation preparations right now, I cannot help but admire people who present other people's presentations.  They get others to craft the story, get the file, and re-tell the stories themselves.  I am not sure how effective they are or how close the stories they tell are to the stories that I wanted to convey - I have not sat in any one of their presentations.

But it is quite interesting.

Some people, I believe, are able to craft stories out of nothing (well, not nothing... but out of the morass of numbers and charts).  And some people - upon seeing mere outlines and slides - get it and could retell it.

Frankly, I am not one of those who could retell another person's story - whenever I get a deck for presentation, a deck that was prepared by someone else, I always allot time for me to go through the entire thing - and rejig it.  The objective:  tell the story my way whilst keeping true to the spirit of the story.

Sometimes, I remove slides.  Sometimes, I do different things with the order.  And still sometimes, I add in my own interpretations.

But I can never present another person's deck.

I guess it's a talent that I don't have.

"All or Nothing" or "At Least Something, Not Nothing"

An interesting thought woke me up this morning:  Which is a better situation - having half-baked data and having "something" than nothing, or having nothing at all?

At first glance, some would prefer the "half-baked data" - it is better than nothing.  Besides "something is always better than nothing".  Right?

My first reaction is - no.

"Something is always better than nothing" is too overvalued.  That "something" needs to be qualified first and foremost - specially, and most specially, if we need to make decisions based on that something.  There is nothing far worse than making a wrong decision because "our data is showing this trend" - when the quality of the data is not correct.

It is perhaps the perfectionist and the disciplined in me to say "It's all or nothing, dude".  But I know that it's economically not viable in all situations.  However, saying that at least "we have something - better than nothing" - and taking satisfaction in that specially when it comes to crucial, critical factors that may drive a business - is also not acceptable.

"Perfect enough."

Those are words that I learned from Carly Fiorina's book.  And I think that's applicable in this situation.  Never cut corners - always conduct due diligence - always seek for perfection - and if there is the need to drop the human need for perfection because of reality, then drop it.

But because you've aimed for perfection, if you stopped 20% or 30% or 40% short of 100% perfection - you still have the confidence to say "Yes, we've got something... It is not perfect, but we've been duly diligent and rigorous".

Indeed, a careful balance - one that marketeers, decision-makers, and business executives ought to think about in these data-rich, information-flooded, yet "analysis-paralyzing" situations.

Photo Source: www.rwongphoto.com 

Seen on a shirt @ Adam Road Food Center

I can work for money - but that would be boring.

Not sure if I agree... but I am also not sure if I disagree.  Hmm.  Neutral?

musings on a Sunday

I cannot say that I have been very diligent lately.  The past few days have seen me trying to cut corners - only to be racked by an inner voice that states "This is not you.  This is not your work.  This is not worthy of you."

And the funny thing is, the voice - no, I am not schizophrenic - wins.  I would revisit all the areas where I did all my cutting-corners and redo them - all "motherhood statements" and all regurgitated analytics that I have been doing were all deleted and I re-started my report.

And the funny thing is, had I not listened to the voice (again, I am not schizophrenic), nobody would have noticed the difference.

The reports that I had initially generated would have met the standards of others.  It would have passed as a "profound view of life" (I am exaggerating).  If a 'hole' would have been found, I would still be able to find my way through it - it's numbers, I always thought, and I knew these numbers. 

Which was true.  I did know my numbers.  And I would have gone through the questions relatively unscathed.

But the voice won.

And I did what I had to do. 

"It's all about the packaging - and the selling."

Which is partly true:  If you packaged a concept right, if you considered whatever it is you're selling and the needs of the audience and the buyers, and present such a concept with commitment, the chances of getting through with a signed deal is good.

But there are some people - and perhaps, I am amongst them - who cannot stand by something that I judge to be below my own personal standards.

Personal Standards of Excellence.  I think that that is what's missing in our professional - and even in our personal - lives.  We believe that "if it's good enough, then it's good enough".

It could very well pass other people's standards - but not me.

I keep high standards - and I expect much from myself and from my team.

Dream big, work beyond reason, and deliver beyond what's expected.

That's the essence of Arete.