Below is what Seth Godin has to say about doing more versus doing better:
The easiest form of management is to encourage or demand that people do more. The other translation of this phrase is to go faster.
The most important and difficult form of management (verging on leadership) is to encourage people to do better.
... which made me think (as always, Mr. Godin has the knack of making me think...).
In a media buying pitch that I led a few years back, the brief called for savings and efficiencies in the clients' media investments. We were up against the biggest media companies in the market - we were perhaps 1/5th the size of the smaller of these two agencies - having had a rather erratic presence in the market.
So we followed a different approach altogether: Instead of just running after "savings", we also ran after what others may call "dollarized critical intangibles".
We made use of qualitative panels, emergent online research methods, and panel of expert-observers to identify emerging trends, how these emerging trends translate to viewing patterns.
We made use of analytics and statistics to better understand the motivations behind the viewing patterns of certain target audiences. Using advanced stats, we narrowed down our prediction errors on the TV ratings.
We made use of our network to gauge how certain programs worked in other countries that are similar to our market - and tried to understand what, in those markets, made these programs work - or not.
We also crafted a prioritization strategy based on marginal return investments per geographic area - focusing on promising profit-areas instead of going on a "shotgun" approach to media planning.
We certainly did more than the brief - and we also did better.
The media pitch brief called for X% worth of cold-hard-cash savings at the end of the year. We delivered that - and beyond.
At the same time, we planned to deliver insights that resulted to even more savings - with measurable contributions to the companies bottomline.
These days, companies are once again focusing on the question, "So how much savings are you going to generate for me using your dealmaking capabilities? And how much are you going to charge for that?"
I say, companies should ask their partners instead, "What tangible business value can you deliver to my business that goes beyond savings this year and that will lead to sustainable competitive advantage?"
And realize that more is not always better.
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