How I think about opportunities : A diagram for optimizing investments in energy and expertise.

Success and a good professional fit require alignment of key criteria 

I’ve referenced the Venn diagram above dozens of times. Its strength: simplicity. Its challenge: knowing where to set your overlap criteria because most opportunities don’t offer it all.  

The three circles and questions worth answering: 

1. Team: Does the team consist of daring thinkers who are capable of remarkable execution at scale? What are they known for and how do they prove it? How long have they been working together? How would you characterize the team’s culture? Are they good people by the standards important to you? Every aspect of your experience will connect to this.     

2. Role: How are you expected to help the team accomplish its goal? Is this work in your wheelhouse? How important is the role to the success of the team? Is the proposed role at an ideal level relative to your skills and experience? Does the role have upside from a scope, comp, and impact perspective? Are you excited about it? To quote Steve Jobs, “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”   

3. Idea: Is the core idea new and innovative or in need of resuscitation? How significant is the idea to the company’s top and bottom line? Is the idea in a growth category? Can you relate to the idea? Do you genuinely like it? In this case an idea can apply to an entire business, an org, a product or service, or an initiative. Idea-wise, I’ve had most of my fun on the frontier, not the farm.   

Add a data-driven lens 

On a scale of 1-5, rank each criteria relative to your goals and expectations. Larger numbers are better. If you’re considering multiple opportunities, compare them against one another both in total and as subsets of two. 

For example, if Project A ranks high on Team and Role but low on Idea, will it be worth your time? Will your role enable you to make the Idea more compelling? Is there a future Idea behind the current Idea that’s enough to compensate for a relatively low score? Do you anticipate the Team will continue supporting the Idea?  

Each Team + Role + Idea combination is worth evaluating. Your job is to identify the highest individual and combined scores you can because that’s where you’ll find the most overlap and add the most value. Be critical! Don’t self-rationalize by giving points away.     

This is about optimizing and not settling

Making circles is easy. Filling them in with informed perspectives gets hard. We know that for most people, a score of 15 (e.g. fully overlapping circles) isn’t possible. For you: What is and why? On a 1-5 scale, I look for totals greater than or equal to 12 with no category scoring lower than 4.   

The market is in a weird place right now. Times are getting lean. I hope you have the courage to invest wisely and the foresight to continue making long-term bets aligned with work you’re proud of.      

P.S. In case you’re wondering: 

According to Wikipedia (reliability 3.8 of 5..?), Venn diagrams were introduced in 1880 by John Venn in a paper entitled "On the Diagrammatic and Mechanical Representation of Propositions and Reasonings" in the Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, about the different ways to represent propositions by diagrams.

Make your proposition count.

👉 Link to additional blog posts and articles 

Not your accomplishments, your story : Seventeen clarifying questions I’ve asked and been asked during marketing and strategy interviews.

Because if I’m going to share with you my most precious commodity, I’ll need to know a few things. 

1. What have been the two most significant pivots in your career? How did one lead to the other? 

2. What is a strategy recommendation you made that transformed your company for the better? 

3. What was the a.) brightest shining moment and b.) toughest time in your career?  

4. What is a business decision you’d like back and why? 

5. What is undervalued in your current business and why? Could be a skill, an asset, a tactic, or an entire value prop.  

6. What is overvalued in your current business? 

7. What market-driven data point is fascinating to you?

8. What data point in your current business is more noise than signal and vice-versa?  

9. Who was your best coach and why? 

10. Who was your worst coach and why? (No need to name names; a description will suffice.)

11. Based upon your current understanding of our business, what are three things we should consider doing differently? 

12. If I were to poll 10 people with whom you’ve worked, what would they say you do as well as anyone they know? 

13. Describe a situation that was going sideways and what you did to correct it. How did you measure success? 

14. How would you grade yourself on the most recent launch of a product or service you led? 

15. What work environment brings out the best in you? 

16. What work environment do you find challenging? 

17. What are you striving to improve and how are you making progress? 

I realize question sets are often prescriptive; e.g. one person interviews for a specific trait or skill set and another something different. That’s simple divide-and-conquer and it makes sense. 

I also realize not every question listed above will be applicable to every role in our known universe. Some interviews are more technical and time is always a limitation. Feel free to modify as you wish. I will. 

Best of luck. Not that you’ll need it but it’s nice to have.

Link to additional blog posts and articles

In less than a blink : Every test is timed. The most important are very short.

I’m an avid note-taker. Two years ago, in a 5 x 8.5 unruled hardcover notebook, I jotted the following: 

It’s a quote from Annie Leibovitz’s MasterClass.  

Study and reflect, study and reflect. Work hard to develop perspective, intuition, and the skills to have agency over what happens next. Ask questions. Because when the moment - the test - arrives, there will be no announcement and not a blink to spare. 

Stories are in the tests. Sometimes they’re great.  

Again soon. 

Link to additional blog posts and articles

Systems thinking for customer stories : Want to land best-in-class stories at scale? Systems thinking helps.

Excellent or meh, every brand has customer stories. Trouble is, most stories lack scale because they don’t begin with the end in mind. They deliver opportunistically and piece-by-piece rather than strategically and start-to-finish. 

This is a post about stories but systems thinking sounds so left brain. What gives?  

Effective storytelling is a right brain act that benefits from left brain structure. Lacking structure, a story will wander and leave audiences wishing they could turn back time. Similarly, a shortage of systems thinking will limit the reach of evidence (a.k.a. stories) that can win more business.

You want customer stories to land, expand, and drive results, not ship then drift aimlessly. Think right and left brain: creativity and structure: better together.

Connect your brand strategy to customer experiences to story production and distribution. Connect them like they’re supposed to work together and fix them where they don’t. Then you’ll have a system. With any luck and a little skill, the system will reward you. It will turn your stories into competitive currency by making your one plus one - your stories and how you land them - greater than two. 

Observation

Systems thinking requires energy because collaboration and connections require energy. I’ve worked with teams where bringing it was a way of life. We worked holistically and outperformed. It wasn’t magic. It also wasn’t easy and didn’t happen overnight. I’ve also worked with teams that collapsed under disjointed processes and struggled to deliver. The standout difference between the two: commitment.

Implementing a system

Get prepared for storytelling greatness with the following questions. I recommend revisiting them on a semi-annual basis. 

• What are your goals and how do they support your business? Be specific. For example, if you’re driving demand, then how many and which types of stories will you need and over what period of time? 

• What do you have resources and expertise to deliver and why? Can creative or production partners help? 

• Who are your target audiences, why are they important, and what are they seeking from your brand? 

• Are you in a complex domain where long-form stories are needed, or does short-form rule the day? How do you know? 

• Do you need video stories, written stories, or both? Where’s the awareness, interest, and conversion value in each? What are the differences in production costs and time?   

• How many channels are you operating in? Why? To what extent does each channel require unique skills? 

• Who are your reviewers and contributors and editors? Are they prepared for the volume and variety of stories your team aims to produce?   

• How do you connect with your customers on a personal level and how can you make them want to work with you? 

• What are your sources of funding? How many stories do you have time and budget to tell?

• What tech do you need to organize, prioritize, produce, store, and distribute your work? 

• What processes have worked for you in the past? Which are worth repeating and which should be relegated to the dustbin? 

• What’s on your performance dashboard and is everyone moving in lock step? 

• …and more. In short, lay it all on the table and record your answers. Then share your answers with your org. By soliciting feedback, you’ll invite others to participate and help your system scale.

Here’s a graphic

It’s one of hundreds on the topic of systems thinking. Mine centers on the essentials for delivering customer stories at scale. With a few modifications, I can insert brand stories or product stories and many others. I can also dive into each individual category and generate layer after layer of detail and use systems thinking as a cross-team collaboration principle.

I’ve chosen a honeycomb because honeycombs are the most scientifically efficient packing shape. (Source: the internet) 

View fullsize

I realize the font is bee-level. Hopefully you can magnify as needed. Key takeaway: execute holistically and harvest the benefits.

Start-to-finish

• Systems thinking is about leveraging creativity not limiting it. It’s not easy but with some critical thinking and commitment, it doesn’t need to be hard.

• It’s how to give stories the airtime and reach they deserve.

• It applies to companies of all sizes.  

• If you don’t showcase your customers, who will?  

Gotta buzz. (Yeah.) Back soon.

Link to additional blog posts and articles

Osmosis Learning : Eight podcasts that have fueled my brain over the past four weeks.

1. Planet money. Because I’d like to retire before both of my knees give out. 

2. The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway. Ideas are good, good ideas are better. Prof G helps distinguish between the two. A+   

3. The Tim Ferriss Show. I especially enjoyed the Jim Collins (author of Good to Great and Built to Last) episodes but you almost can’t go wrong. 

4. Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. What’s life without a little comedy? Add smart commentary and we’re all in a happier place. Pick one and don’t for the love of all that is funny skip Conan’s preambles/monologues.

5. Whoop Podcast. The recent Kelly Starrett and Rich Roll episodes were great. According to Roll, “Action drives morale.” I couldn’t agree more. ++ The importance of physical and mental flexibility. It will save all of us. 

6. Noah Kagan Presents. Quick, punchy style and practical thinking on tech, marketing, and getting things done with hustle. His material is like an amalgam of 25 people I’ve worked with who are all good at what they do. This pod’s newer to me and a shorter-form gem supply. 

7. The Cycling podcast. The hosts delight in what they do and it shows. If you’re into two- wheeled travel, then tune in tout de suite. It helps free my mind and is a Cat 1 channel changer.

8. The Low Pressure Podcast. ’Tis the season. Glides into the ins, outs, ups, and downs of the ski industry with vernacular finesse. 

If you’re like ‘Hey thanks dude I already have a library of pods,’ then here’s a quote. Because nobody should leave this site empty-handed: 

“When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.” - Dalai Lama

Be well. 

Shorten up : When things go sideways as they sometimes will, return to the basics. They’ll keep you in the game. (I know you know this, but do you practice it?)

This is an intentionally short post

Competitors in every arena have a tendency to get fancy. To adorn their thoughts and movements with bling and as a consequence make their path to success more complicated than necessary.

Keep your margin for error small

When marketing misses the mark, it’s often when brands attempt to accomplish too much before their audiences are ready and/or before they’ve accurately identified the problem they’re solving. Another feature here and benefit there, then one more because why not (?) and in a snap they’ve lost their organizing principle and their message has spun out of control. They’ve widened their margin for error by introducing movements that increase risk but not the probability of achieving a high ROI or CLV.  

It’s similar to a long backswing in golf or tennis, when a player adds complexity in the name of progress and ends up spraying the ball in unintended directions. When this happens to me (and it has happened more than once), I shorten up by eliminating every movement that doesn’t accrue to hitting a solid shot. I ditch the bling and narrow the focus.

Here’s how I think about it with my teams

We give ambitious new concepts a try, extend when they work and shorten up when they don’t. Over time the shortening up gets shorter and less pronounced, the fine-tuning more fine. The tweaks you need to nail the shot/campaign/strategy become smaller and smaller, inline with your unconscious competence. The process accelerates success because you’re working smarter and taking intelligent chances. You’re managing your margin for error while at the same time driving positive change.  

Three reasons shortening up is a path to growth    

1. Remember: the longer the backswing, the bigger the (potential) whiff. That’s physics. Manage your risk-return profile (e.g. your budget vs your ROI benchmark) with savvy and adjust according to conditions. It’s effective.

2. The more straightforward (and frequently shorter) the story, the better your audience will be able to put it to work for themselves. That’s good marketing, from acquisition through retention. Inform, improve, and help. Don’t overwhelm.    

3. To win the game, stay in the game. That’s competition. Limit unforced errors and wins will follow.  

The basics: always in style, frequently nuanced, never as easy as they sound.

**

Also on the blog: Sand Mode, A Brand Statement, Unstuck Shortcuts, Creative Experiments, A CLV Restart, Workshop This Way

Mindset: Problems = Opportunities : Correctly identifying a problem is the first step. The other six are also useful.

A short list of field-tested marketing and communications recos.

1. For effective marketing content and campaigns, it helps to have real-world knowledge of the business problems you’re solving and how to solve them. This combination is less common than many perceive and often accompanied by under-quantified goals; e.g. CLV, CAC, ROI, product usage, and more. In other words: go, do, try, think, measure. You’ll be glad you did.

2. Expressing solutions in easy-to-understand language is a superpower. And it takes practice. I once worked with a CEO who walked the floor rehearsing his product’s value prop every day. Genius.   

3. Strategy accelerates in proportion to its comprehensibility. The teams I’ve worked with who invested a little more upfront earned a lot more later. Others got caught in thornbushes, often because of point 1, above.

4. Have a playbook and know your audience sequences + tactics. Lacking a playbook is like doing creative work without a brief. It happens and I don’t recommend it.

5. Customers every day, all day. They speak the truth and validate whether or not the problem you think you’re solving is really the problem you’re solving. Over the course of my career I’ve pivoted, reset, rebuilt, rewritten, and reinvented mountains of work to meet evolving customer demands.  

6. You’ve gotta have an offer and an answer to How does this make my life better? How is this solving my problem? Why is it worth it? This applies to every piece of content you produce and campaign you run.    

7. Always forward. Always. Because if anyone said it would be easy they were lying.

More again soon.