So You Wanna Know About eMarketing?

With such poor use of English you’d imagine this to be a post by Stame, but no, it’s me, the patron of this blog and this is the title of my latest eBook available here. As you may or may not know, I am non-exec Chairman of an eMarketing Agency, Quirk. They have written an excellent book that explains and educates people about eMarketing in much more detail. It is available as a free download and based on it, and other educational tools they have, they offer an on-line accreditation for aspiring digital marketers.

My eBook comes at eMarketing from a different angle – my angle. In other words it is mostly aimed at the ‘Old School’ marketer (like me a couple of years ago) who wants to understand eMarketing and what’s so different about it compared to the marketing they have grown up with. In the next two sections I give an insight on how to develop an eMarketing strategy and argue the case for having an eMarketing agency of record rather than going through your ad agency. Have a read (it’s only 50 pages) and let me know what you think.

I admit that my secondary target for the book is the ‘new school’ of digital marketers. I have learned the hard way that many of them (my Quirk colleagues being the exception, ahem) don’t understand what we ‘old school’ don’t understand. The have grown up digital and don’t get why we don’t think like they do and visa versa. As you might have guessed, I make a case for the best of both worlds – the basics of business and brand strategy still have a place in the new digital world.

So do you ‘wanna’ know about eMarketing? Well you should, so start with my eBook and then read Quirk’s so you can actually learn how to do it.

The Art of Negotiation

Amazon lists no fewer than 225,000 books on negotiation. Remember my view on this – the more books there are, the more important the subject and the less likely that any one book can ever give you the answer. Negotiation lies at the heart of business. As Chester L. Karrass said (the title of his book), “In business as in Life, You Don’t get What You Deserve, You Get What You Negotiate”. And if you don’t understand the art of negotiation you will get what you deserve but not what you want. Negotiation is a business art everyone should understand and want to try to improve on. My experience is that very few do.

If you want to spot someone who does not understand even the basics of negotiation – and is therefore likely to be easy prey assuming you do- try this simple test. Go through the concessions or terms you want them to accept one at a time and see if they are dumb enough to comment on the first one. If they do you know you have a rank amateur in front of you. You never comment on a list of concessions until you have them all out on the table. Until you are sure you do you just say nothing or perhaps ask a question, ideally “Anything else you want?”. If you have any skill you then run the negotiation so as to get as much information about a) why the person is asking for something and b) how important it is relative to the other things they are asking for.

A seminal piece on negotiation is ‘Getting to Yes’ by Messrs Fisher, Ury and Patton. It was first published, and I first read it, in 1981. I re-read it as a summary from GetAbstract (a very good summary, well done guys) and was reminded just how wise it is. This is where you should start – the summary or the full book. It merits consideration as one of my top 10 business books of all time.

Just like you can always spot someone who has had media training if you have had some yourself (Good morning, can I start by saying that our deepest sympathies go to the relatives of the family who died as a result of the fire at our factory) anyone who has read ‘Getting to Yes’ will spot that you have also read it. They will see how you are trying to focus on interest areas rather than pre-determined negotiating positions, they will notice that you introduce the idea of objective criteria to judge the eventual outcome, how you ask a lot of questions and use silence as a weapon. “You do your most effective negotiating when you say nothing”. But it doesn’t matter – you will both get to a better outcome if you understand and apply the principles of ‘Getting to Yes’. Actually, the most dangerous thing in negotiation is someone who understands nothing about it.

Settle Down – We are all Traders at Heart

If you are feeling seasick they tell you it helps to look at the horizon. If these astonishingly bad economic times are making you feel sick the equivalent of looking at the horizon is to take a long range historic view of the world. That is what William J. Bernstein does in his book, ‘A Splendid Exchange – How Trade Shaped the World’. Bernstein goes back 15,000 years to the origins of trade and tracks it all the way through to the present day. This fabulous book thoroughly entertains the reader with fascinating insights and perspectives on how trade developed. It explains what drove trade throughout the ages, who the key players were, both nations and individuals, the set-backs and the unintended consequences, the evolution of trading routes and value add exports. As the author says “Globalization, it turns out, was not one event or even a sequence of events; it is a process that has slowly been evolving for a very, very long time”.

But how does it help with economic sea-sickness? What comes though very clearly is that we are all born traders. Our natural instinct is to exchange goods, services and of course ideas. Nothing ever has, nor will ever, change that. However bad it feels right now, the global trading community has weathered much worse storms. One unintended consequence of trade was the spread of disease. The Conquistadors brought small pox to South America and wiped out the Aztecs. Trade with Asia brought the Black Plague to Europe and wiped out an estimated 100 million people. Toxic debt has spread financial instability and wiped out a few banks but it feels pretty insignificant in a historic context. It will prove to be a temporary blip in the progress of global trade.

Columbus and Vasco de Gama opened up mind blowing trading possibilities as a consequence of their explorations respectively West and East  – all achieved at a time when most of the world, aside from the educated few, thought the world was flat. The internet is doing the same thing right now, at a time when most of the world thinks it is analogue.

You can’t trade without banks and a monetary system so we can stop worrying about their collapse. They will never collapse they will just evolve – albeit with painful consequences for some in the process. And without wishing to stray into dangerous waters we can stop worrying about the growing schism between the West and Islam. The prophet Muhammad was born into a tribe of traders and Islam was the engine behind global trade up to the 17th century – it may well become so again. The Infidels and Islam will find an accommodation eventually because they want to trade with each other. We should, of course, learn the lessons of history. Bernstein quotes Frederic Bastiat, “When goods are not allowed to cross borders, soldiers will”.

Protectionism is never the answer. The Great Depression of the 1920’s resulted in congress passing the short-sighted Smoot-Hawley Tariffs only to replace them 4 years later with The Reciprocal Trade Agreements under the free trader, Roosevelt.

The evolution of trade when looked in retrospect has been incredible – literally incredible since at any point in history no-one would have believed what was going to happen had they been told. From exchanging animal skins to exchanging perfumes and oils to exchanging silk then cotton to exchanging human labour and slaves to oil and now to buying books over the internet from amazon. From the Greeks to the Persians to the Spanish, Dutch, English, Americans – with the Chinese there throughout. From mules to ships to trains to planes to the ether. The evolution of trade has been both remarkable and relentless.

We are all traders at heart and we will continue to find new things to trade in new ways. Columbus faced worse storms than this – just focus on the horizon.

The Secret of Success – Contender for Top 10 Business Books?

Malcolm Gladwell is a great writer and a true thought-leader. I chose to include him and his first book, Tipping Point, and stuck with that choice even after the publication of his second book, Blink. His third book, Outliers, may in fact be his best book yet. No-one can argue the influence of Tipping Point. It propelled Gladwell to being one of the world’s most highly sought after and highest paid speakers and writers. The notion of there being a Tipping Point in how ideas, including new business ideas, catch on has itself caught on like wild fire. Mark Earls, featured on my site, takes issue with some of the social science behind Gladwell’s theories but even Mark would acknowledge the power of Gladwell’s work in reshaping thinking in the business world.

I actually prefer Outliers although I hate the title – it is positively misleading. This book is about the secret of success and, in a similar vein to Freakonomics, another of my Top 10 Best Business Books, it takes a closer look at the data and facts that lie behind freakish success. As Gladwell puts it “Success is not a random act. It arises in a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities”. He then sets out what these are based on a series of true stories stretching from Bill Gates and The Beatles to Korean Air (whose story was originally about spectacular safety failures).

You could criticize Gladwell for stringing out these stories and it is true that no detail or flowery description is spared in first saying what appeared to happen, then showing what really happened and the lessons to be learned. I forgive him for this for two reasons. Firstly, he is a writer and so like all writers he wants to paint a picture in words, which he does very well. You get drawn into the stories, you get to know the people and their lives. Secondly and most importantly, he has to spin the story because if he did not the conclusions would seem trite and they are anything but. They are powerful and very important – to blow the denouement of the book, Gladwell’s point is that if only we could see past the myths and apparent blind luck we could see that with the right opportunities and circumstances we could help create a million Bill Gates.

I always like to give people the summary, the 2 minute version, because that is my thing – I like to give the maximum return on the time you spend to learn about business. You then make up your mind whether to invest more time to learn in more detail. So here they are, the 6 key points, but they will sound trite, even platitudinous.

Here is the secret of success:-

1. Be born at a certain time – e.g. people born in the first quarter of the year do better simply because they are older than their school peer group.
2. Spend at least 10,000 hours getting really, really good at something – as Bill Gates did because he luckily had access to a computer, which was rare at the time, and he was a geek.
3. There is an IQ threshold of 130 – above that other things come into play like being a divergent thinker – in the same way that above a certain minimum height other things determine how good a basket ball player you are.
4. Your family circumstances are key – middle class kids grow up empowered, with a sense of entitlement and in a home full of books.
5. Your cultural legacy is key – Asians have a much harder work ethic because they come from a rice growing culture (much, much more demanding work than growing other crops as they did in Europe i.e. 3000 hours work a year versus 1200). On the other hand they tend to respect authority too much and that accounted for Korean Air’s appalling safety record until they brought a westerner in to get Pilots and First Officers to work as partners.
6. In one sentence success comes down to chance and opportunity plus hard work, persistence and experimentation.

They may not sound earth shattering but Gladwell’s point is that if we see success in this way, we can stack the odds to create much more success in the world. Simple but very well argued and very powerful. The title could have been “Outliers i.e rare success stories need not be rare” – ok, not that catchy. The sub title of the book, “The Story of Success” is catchier but again misleading – these are the facts not just the story of success.

I like Outliers a lot and if you enjoy reading a well written book so will you. I won’t change the book against Malcolm’s name in our Top 10 Best Business books list just yet – I will wait until you and other business people regard it as more seminal that Tipping Point. I think you might. Success is everything in business – and this book is all about the secret of success.

Is “Hot, Flat and Crowded” a Business Book?

Thomas L. Friedman’s book ‘The World is Flat’ won the 2005 inaugural Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the year award. This award recognizes business books that offer, “the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues, including management, finance and economics”. You can check out the judges panel, the shortlists and subsequent winners on the FT web site for the awards. I am keeping an eye on this for additions to my Top 10 Business Books (to read before you waste any more shareholders money) feature. My criteria go beyond just being insightful, although I agree this is important. I look for durable, seminal best sellers that a broad range of business people found to be useful and I ensure that consistently great writers and thought-leaders have at least one of their books represented. Having read Friedman’s latest book, ‘Hot, flat and crowded’ I think he deserves to be on my  Top 10 list (which is actually 25, now 26, books)

But is ‘Hot, Flat and Crowded’ actually a business book? ‘The World is Flat’ dealt with the new age of globalization being ushered in by the technological revolution and its implications for more than just business. However, its relevance and value for anyone in business is unquestionable and it deserved its accolades in this respect. In ‘Hot, Flat and Crowded’ Friedman broadens his view to look at the convergence of 3 global trends (crises in the making) of globalization, climate change and the population explosion. He details how we got where we are, just how bad it is and what we need to do about it. By ‘we’ he means very specifically America and that is a criticism that could be leveled at him. Friedman is very explicit that as world leaders only the USA can lead the way by driving the green revolution he advocates (implores) his countrymen to join.

Friedman is a good writer and is very well connected, travelled and read. He rams home every aspect of his message – the history, the status report and the diagnosis – with numerous anecdotes, analogies and bits of evidence gleaned from a dazzling list of experts. It is shocking, alarming and often entertaining but a second criticism is that it is long winded. In my normal style I will encourage you to read the book itself (it is a good read) but will also summarize the main messages.

Our dependence on oil combined with exponential population growth and in particular a burgeoning middle class who all aspire to live ‘like Americans’ means we are doomed unless we (America) changes track and leads a green revolution. Oil is creating dangerous levels of CO2 and putting power and money in the hands of undemocratic extremists. The weather and the politics are fast approaching the stage of being hazardous to our survival. In fact one of the main issues is that whilst we are programmed to think linearly the convergence of ‘hot, flat and crowded’ is creating exponential leaps into dangerous and unchartered waters.
Up until very recently there have only been 2 of what Friedman calls ‘Americums’, that is a block of circa 350 million materialistic, ambitious, wasteful consumers – America obviously and old Europe. In just a couple of decades there will be 8 or 9 and that is totally unsustainable.

He offers many different aspects of the solution but there is one central theme. We have to replace oil as far as possible with widely available sustainable energy sources. The place most motivated and most able to do this is America. Rather flippantly he describes a talk he gave in China where he actively encouraged the Chinese to carry on developing along traditional lines based on dirty fuels and widespread pollution because this will give the USA the head start it needs to develop the green technology it can sell to the world and thus reinforce its position as world leaders.

International readers may not share his mission that America must lead the green revolution but he is convincing about the overall problem and solution. We used to rely on coal/steam and horses. We now rely on oil. This must change and fast. Being optimistic by nature I believe we will. There is no reason to believe that with the science and technology available to us now, let alone what might be just around the corner, we have the tools to wean us off oil. (Check out Amory Lovins on TED.com if you don’t believe me). There is now a sense of urgency, probably heightened by the financial crisis and a growing realization that it can never again be business as usual. Friedman’s book is a huge best seller and one must therefore believe has made a major contribution to the global ‘wake up call’ that is needed. Go to any airport, take any flight and you will find someone with their nose buried in this book.

Is it a business book? Yes it most certainly is for two reasons. Most of the noses buried in this book belong to people in business and fundamentally it will be business, American or otherwise, that will lead this green, sustainable revolution. Why? Because as Friedman points out, there is big money to be made out of the green revolution just as there was in the industrial revolution that caused the problems in the first place. It may be arrogant and myopic to assume that the money will all be made in America, however.

Business The McDonalds Way

Paul Facella worked at McDonalds for 33 years rising from crew member to senior executive (not unusual  – 7 out of 10 McDonalds executives rose through the ranks). He published a book this year, “Everything I know about business I learned at McDonalds” which wins first prize as a statement of the obvious. It is the only place you worked Paul – the more impressive title would have been “Everything I learned about business I learned FROM McDonalds”. And of course Paul groups his learning under 7 headings which, unoriginally, he calls ‘the 7 Leadership Principles that Drive Break-Out Success’.

They cover:-
Honesty and integrity
Relationships
Standards – Never be satisfied
Lead by example
Courage: Telling it like it is
Communication
Recognition (motivation through recognition of staff service)

It makes you wonder why lying, smug, dysfunctional bastards with no principles, who constantly sit back and let others do what they can’t be bothered to do while taking all the credit and none of the blame just never seem to make it in business.
This is very unfair to a book we quite liked. McDonalds is a great business and Facella’s war stories are worth reading, especially the ones about the marvelous Ray Kroc, the man who had the sense not to be the eponymous founder, preferring the brand name McDonalds which he thought sounded more homely because he liked the Scots.

McDonalds did two things brilliantly.

Firstly, they introduced assembly production to fast food (just like Henry Ford introduced it to car manufacture many years before) but instead of hiding it away at the back of the restaurant they made it totally transparent. They have that much admired obsession with quality which Kroc enforced ruthlessly (he once publicly shut down a restaurant that failed to meet his high standards on an inspection visit) but if your kitchen is completely open to view – a goldfish bowl – it gives no opportunity to drop your standards.

Secondly they put into practice ‘recognition’, the most powerful form of motivation, so powerful it can transform the most callow of youth into responsible, confident, polite citizens with a strong work ethic and ambition.

One of the most popular reprints ever from the Harvard Business Review is ‘One more time: How do you motivate Employees?’ by Frederick Herzberg. He makes this exact same point, that recognition both formal and informal (preferably both) is what really encourages people to do their best. McDonalds made it the cornerstone of their business model. To pay hamburger wages and get cordon bleu service is a very clever thing to pull off.

What McDonalds have not done so well is adapt to changing consumer attitudes and needs. They were not entirely honest and full of integrity when it came to their food’s nutritional value. Ray Kroc apparently once said that he did not know what food McDonalds would serve in the future but was certain they would be selling more of it than anyone else. He started out as a milk shake salesman (he was 52 years old when he spotted the McDonald Bothers hamburger store and had this idea about a national fast food chain) so he was not wedded to burgers. A man with his vision may have spotted the need to evolve the food at McDonald’s a little sooner than they did.

10 Best Business Books to Read (before you waste any more shareholders money)

It seemed such a simple idea. Do a bit of research, get recommendations from a selected list of business experts, check the business book best-seller lists and come up with the definitive list of 10 business books everyone should read (before they waste any more shareholders money). Well it turns out it is not that simple.

Start with the best-seller lists  – there are a lot of them, Amazon, HarperBusiness, Forbes, New York Times and they don’t agree with each other. And do you mean, ‘of all time’ or ‘recently’. More importantly you have to edit the lists to get to genuine thought-leaders rather than the highly topical, self-help, or ‘get rich quick’ titles. Current best sellers are any titles that help you get rich quick, digitally, sustainably, in a recession.

Do you include biographies (Warren Buffet is a winner) or profiles of ‘great organizations’ (Google is popular but then so was IBM 20 years ago)? However, if you do a bit of sensible editing you can get to a useful list. So then you take the pulse of a reasonable sample of business leaders and experts to get their favorites. Just because a book is a best seller does not mean real shakers and movers found it interesting and useful. It is worth remembering that more than 85% of all business books are bought but never actually read – what does that tell you? So  you ask the experts about what they not only bought but read and found useful -  Valuable? Up to a point. What you find is that people are very different and make some very esoteric choices. I don’t just mean “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu which is of course about war not business but has important lessons or Machiavelli’s “The Prince” which is about conniving politics – ditto. No I mean really esoteric. One of my favourites is ‘Longitude’ by Dava Sobel – essential reading for the serious innovator.

Finally, someone we really respect, Judie Lannon, editor of Market Leader, makes a killer point. Do you mean titles or authors? She then tells me of several writers she likes rather than any individual title e.g. Charles Handy.
Not so simple after all. But when was anything worthwhile meant to be simple? So here it is, 25 not 10, essential Best Business Books everyone should read. How was the list compiled? Combination of all of the above. These are best sellers by thought-leaders, of durable value, highly rated by a broad sample of business experts and I have made sure that the consistently good writers have one of their most famous books included.

They are in alphabetical order!

Barbarians at the Gate – Bryan Burrough
Behind the Scenes in Advertising – Jeremy Bullmore
Blue Ocean Strategy – W.Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne
Built to Last – Jim Collins and Jerry Porras
Competing for the Future – Gary Hamel & CK Prahalad
Competitive Advantage – Michael Porter
Eating The Big Fish – Adam Morgan
Emotional Intelligence – Daniel Goleman
Freakonomics – Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubnr
Funky Business – Jonas Ridderstrale & Kjell Nordstrom
Great to Good – Jim Collins
In Search of Excellence – Tom Peters et al
No Logo – Naomi Klein
One Minute Manager – Kenneth Blanchard & Spencer Johnson
Purple Cow – Seth Godin
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People- Stephen R, Covey
Technology’s Long Tail – Chris Anderson
The Age of Unreason – Charles Handy
The Essential Drucker – Peter F. Drucker
The Great Crash 1929 – J.K. Galbraith
The Innovators Dilemma – Clayton M. Christensen
Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell
The New Age of Innovation – CK Prahalad & MS Kishnan
Up The Organization – Robert Townsend
When Giants learn to dance – Rosabeth Moss Kanter

You won’t agree – I don’t entirely agree and I compiled it! There are several titles in this list that are there because there sales are stunning and they were seminal, not necessarily because they are the absolutely best title on that topic. You must have spotted some terrible omissions.