Dodo Loves Marketing

If you want to be sure that you have started with the right three talents, study your best in the role. This may sound obvious, but beware: conventional wisdom would advise the opposite.

Conventional wisdom asserts that good is the opposite of bad, that if you want to understand excellence, you should investigate failure and then invert it. In society at large, we define good health as the absence of disease. In the classroom, we talk to kids on drugs to learn how to keep kids off drugs and delve into the details of truancy to learn how to keep more kids in school. ..more

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Required steps are useful only if they do not obscure the desired outcome.

Mark B., a manager in a large consulting company, was taking the four P.M. flight from New York to Chicago. His plane had already left the gate and was lumbering over to its designated runway. Suddenly_ the captain’s voice crackled over the intercom, announcing: “There is a weather ground stop at O’Hare. At this time, no planes are taking off or landing. Some delays may be possible. We’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything.” ..more

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Although great managers are committed to the concept of “fairness,” they define it rather differently from most people. In their mind “fairness” does not mean treating everyone the same. They would, say that the only way to treat someone fairly is to treat them as they deserve to be treated, bearing in mind what they have accomplished. Jimmy Johnson, the coach who led the Dallas Cowboys to two Super Bowl rings and who now manages the Miami Dolphins, captures their atti_ tude toward “fairness.” He made this point in a speech to the Miami players immediately after taking the reins from Don Shula: ..more

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There’s a great deal you can learn from spending time with your strugglers. You can learn why certain systems are hard to operate. You can learn why initiatives are poorly designed. You can learn why clients become unhappy. And over time, you can become, as some managers are, highly articulate in describing the anatomy of failure and its various cures.

Ironically, none of this is going to help you understand what excellence looks like. You cannot learn very much about excellence from studying failure. Of all the infinite number of ways to perform a certain task, most of them are wrong. There are only a few right ways. Unfortunately you don’t come any closer to identifying those right ways by eliminating the wrong ways. Excellence is not the opposite of failure. It is just different. It has its own configuration, which sometimes includes behaviors that look surprisingly similar to the behaviors of your strugglers. ..more

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These levels of achievement will certainly help redirect an employee’s focus toward becoming world class. However, the manager’s efforts at career redirection will be forever hindered if all of the pay signals are telling the employee to look upward.

Although each of us is motivated by money in different ways, the fact of the matter is that few of us are repelled by money. All of us may not hunger for it, but only a tiny minority of us find money positively distasteful. Therefore the simple truth is that it will be much easier for managers to redirect employees toward alternative career paths if some of those paths involve a raise in pay. ..more

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b. Satisfactions

Everyone breathes different psychological oxygen. What is fulfilling for one person is asphyxiating for another.

Great accountants love the fact that two plus two equals four every time they do it. Great salespeople get a kick out of turning a no into a yes. Great flight attendants gravitate toward the tired, angry business traveler or the boisterous school sports team at the back, because they enjoy turning around the tough customers. ..more

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1. MAKE SURE THE TALENT INTERVIEW STANDS ALONE

Recruiting can be a complicated process. The candidate has to learn about you, the company, the role, and the details of his compensation. You have to check his résumé, make him an offer; he may counter, you then resubmit your offer; and so the negotiating continues until finally you both feel comfortable enough to commit. This process is important, but all of it should be handled separately from the talent interview. ..more

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After an interview, send a thank-you letter to the person who interviewed you. If there was more than one interviewer, write the note to the one who has the power to hire you. Mail the letter that day so the person doesn’t have an opportunity to forget you. Now continue your job search, meeting managers and lining up interviews— keep working at it. Your goal is to have at least two or three offers to choose from.

When you get a job offer, generally by phone, thank the person sincerely. Write down the details; starting date, wage, hours, and so on. Tell the employer that you’d like to accept but you need a day to discuss it with your family. Now talk it over with your parents and some close friends. Compare the job offer to your original goals. Sometimes in the excitement of landing a job you can lose sight of your own best interests. ..more

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Wait a minute—didn’t we just do that? Kind of. But the real cost you need to count isn’t an arithmetic exercise. You must consider the cost to your nonfinancial priorities— school, family, church, friends, and future. The time and attention you pour into your work can damage things that can’t be replaced with cash. If the true cost is too much, set your plans aside. On the other hand, if you can start this new venture without sacrificing more important things, give it a go.

SELL, SELL, SELL

Launching a business is tough, but keeping it going is tougher. To survive, you must attract customers. Who are the people you’ll be serving? How do you land them as customers? Basically, there are three circles of customers: 1) people you know, 2) people who know the people you know, and 3) strangers. Let’s look at each circle. ..more

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In an age in which customers are scarce, any company’s best practices seldom remain proprietary. Business models are shamelessly imitated with inner corporate workings becoming public knowledge. Best practices travel at Internet speed.

People are becoming masters at imitation. If you don’t have a good idea yourself, you can always knock off someone else’s product. An imitation is not necessarily an exact copy. You use details to create a difference: the look, the product extension, the packaging—anything that can make the other company’s idea look less new And this is easier than it used to be. If once you could hold on to a secret formula for years or even decades, now it’s a matter of months or days before your competitors catch up and replicate it. ..more

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