Folks, it's been awhile since I posted something and there is generally no good reason not to. Let's face it, we're all busy trying to figure out what 2013 will bring to us.
I thought I'd share a point of view on a particularly interesting topic, "Innovation" or in my world, specifically, "digital marketing innovation" and how an organization can encourage it.
the cliche that change is constant is a nagging truth. With the daily barrage of information and ideas, how do we as business leaders fuel innovation and as a result growth? Digiday just ran a piece on just how Intuit does it and here are a couple of highlights:
1) Your organization should be somewhat dynamic
2) Develop processes and guidelines to facilaite regular cross-training or swapping opportunities. There is no reason to prevent a finance person to consider marketing and vice versa!
3) Make sure that you're collecting the feedback as staff swap roles, i.e. work with them to build case studies and learning
Here's the full Digiday article: Why Intuit Encourages Job Swaps
We all have a few "real life" examples of when we were required to modulate our approach in certain situations between putting a general manager hat on versus your expert hat on. Hindsight is 20/20 and while we take it for granted, you can learn a ton from past mistakes. In the end, I believe that you should be yourself and focus on doing the right thing.
The scenario is this:You work for a superb company, the company is filled with phenomenal individuals with a diverse set of cross-functional skills and experience. You're presented with a situation that needs you to press the pause button on your domain expertise and years of experience to support a solution a key collective of individuals within the organization is advocating.The right thing to do:Easily said than done and always consider the short and long term implications of your behavior as well as actions. Show that you trust your key partners and empathize so that their ideas coupled with yours could be a much more powerful alternative to consider. Key here is "empathy" and you'll see you'll elevate to the general manager approach and ultimately your colleagues will value your inputs.
Feel free to share your stories so that we can learn and be informed about how to improve our collective general management skills.
Indeed it has been awhile since I've spoke at a conference. So thanks to the folks at x+1, an innovative and agile enterprise business platform, I was invited to sit with Verizon and JP Morgan Chase's key advertisers moderated by Sarah Fay!
I think the key takeaway for me was the general management aspects of marketing, focusing on leadership, innovation, team building and cross-functional shared vision that could make or break an organizations efforts to build enduring marketing departments.
John Ebbert of Ad Exchanger covered the panel and the conference, NexTargeting. Hope there will be more as I had the unique pleasure to participate and meet some really terrific people: http://www.adexchanger.com/online-advertising/marketer-enterprise/
It's been several months since my last posting, so I'm overdue. This next topic though is an interesting one and of course we can all agree that anytime is a good time to review our respective professional development plans. We all work extremely hard for many different bosses, our teams, goals and objectives. I've found myself asking various different questions related to this and it's been useful in my quest to ensure I'm heading down the path that will ensure optimal success. I suppose the biggest question in my mind is, "Have I left an impression so far?" I'd say, "no" at the moment but I'm working on it!
How about you? I don't quite have visitors yet but hopefully someone will stumble across this blog and join in this conversation. I'm optimistic. So I'll leave us with a few questions and a couple of interesting measurement techniques. Would love to hear from you.
What is your life objective? (could be personal, financial and/or professional)
Are there specific and intentional strategies laid out for you to achieve your objective?
What investments have you made in achieving success? (Time, money, labor, coaching, and/or anything goes in terms of investment?)
How often or are you even asking yourself, "Am I doing all the rights things to ensure success?
How are you measuring success to achieve that objective? (It's OK if you're not sure about where you are, if you are, then it'd be a very good thing to revisit/reinforce it.)
The velocity of change in our personal and work arenas can be overwhelming. Of course if you have a framework that works either from business school or life experience, I'd love your comments as well.
Here's what I'd leave you all with, my principles:
Identify the right goals and outcomes: I use a basic approach to ensure there's a balance between me, my family and others.
Develop a timeline achieve to them: I will make sure that the timeline is realistic yet "aspirational" focused on both the now and the future.
Create a measurement plan: I will make sure the goals are easily measurable, taking into account feedback from key stakeholders mentioned in bullet #1.
I'm actively using this framework, it's easy not too complex and doesn't "hinder" me from achieving my objectives. The problem is, I'm a late bloomer, I only started this a year ago. Life, work and stuff will throw you curve balls, yes, one thing you can count on is that change is indeed a constant. Live with it, cherish it and most of all learn and apply and you will persevere in life and work.
Creating a personal brand isn't a new concept. I think it's important to note the following key points
1. Your personal brand should a natural extension of yourself
2. A brand is more perception than reality
3. Decisions and choices will affect your personal brand
I could say that a personal brand is the antithesis of an archetype though it cannot be so niche that it's no longer relevant. A few tips to consider:
A. Define A Brand Headline - What's the key headline that encapsulates you and ultimately your brand?
B. Establish A Brand Cheat Sheet - What are some key talking points that succinctly describe your brand profile?
C. Communicate Your Brand Consistently - Take A and B to the social and professional spheres!
I've oversimplified this but I think it's enough for you to at least get started on your personal brand. By the way, I could practice what I preach but I'm sure you've read or heard of the infamous cobbler and his shoes fable?
So, of course, I Google myself. Who doesn't? Well the other day, I went really deep into the results and found the NY Daily News article from 2000! I was clearly on some other planet, wow! It was fun reminiscing and so I thought I'd share this very embarrassing article.
You could say this was my 15 minutes, Phase 0. I had this idea that somehow this article would help me take a step back and disconnect. It worked for a few years.
Too much surfing leaves some New Yorkers trapped in the Net
By Eamon Lynch | Daily News Staff Writers | January 2000
The one big takeaway for me was, traditional media definitely had a place in the consumer journey whether us digitalites like it or not and we're now finally seeing this through greater online and offline integration in marketing, sales and operations.
If you made it to my portfolio then I've done approximately 50% of my job. I haven't figured out what to do to make the remaining 50% of work hum quite yet. My guess is that it will be focused on trying to keep you here as long as possible!
Maybe we'll discuss how to build a personal brand, how to accelerate a large organization to deliver on growth for the business, possibly some music and basics of digital, mobile, analytics and technology that's transforming our world of marketing.
While you're here, I'd love comments, topic ideas, and or just plain feedback.
Folks, it's been awhile since I posted something and there is generally no good reason not to. Let's face it, we're all busy trying to figure out what 2013 will bring to us.
I thought I'd share a point of view on a particularly interesting topic, "Innovation" or in my world, specifically, "digital marketing innovation" and how an organization can encourage it.
the cliche that change is constant is a nagging truth. With the daily barrage of information and ideas, how do we as business leaders fuel innovation and as a result growth? Digiday just ran a piece on just how Intuit does it and here are a couple of highlights:
1) Your organization should be somewhat dynamic
2) Develop processes and guidelines to facilaite regular cross-training or swapping opportunities. There is no reason to prevent a finance person to consider marketing and vice versa!
3) Make sure that you're collecting the feedback as staff swap roles, i.e. work with them to build case studies and learning
Here's the full Digiday article: Why Intuit Encourages Job Swaps 
