Category: Business

Open To Growth

A thought-provoking article in the New York Times caught my eye today. There’s a new book out that’s pointing to an insight I’ve felt, but been unable to put words to, for some time now:

“Society is obsessed with the idea of talent and genius and people who are ‘naturals’ with innate ability,” says [Carol] Dweck, who is known for research that crosses the boundaries of personal, social and developmental psychology.

“People who believe in the power of talent tend not to fulfill their potential because they’re so concerned with looking smart and not making mistakes. But people who believe that talent can be developed are the ones who really push, stretch, confront their own mistakes and learn from them.”

In this case, nurture wins out over nature just about every time.

While some managers apply these principles every day, too many others instead believe that hiring the best and the brightest from top-flight schools guarantees corporate success.

The problem is that, having been identified as geniuses, the anointed become fearful of falling from grace. “It’s hard to move forward creatively and especially to foster teamwork if each person is trying to look like the biggest star in the constellation,” Ms. Dweck says.

So many people are afraid to say “I don’t know” or admit to a mistake. Especially people in leadership positions. And yet, the ability to learn from errors and grow from them is probably one of the most critical skills of all in maintaining your edge. So why do we, as a society, value infallibility so much?

Who 'Owns' Social Media, Another View

I had to think long and hard before asking Jeremiah Owyang to include me in his “List of Social Computing Strategists and Community Managers for Enterprise Corporations 2008” post.

Although it’s always nice to see your name in print, and I am proud of my role at Adobe, I have a fundamental disagreement with Jeremiah’s suggestion that social media needs to have a senior strategist in the command chain of an enterprise in order to properly embrace this new challenge. This echoes some of the discussion I’ve seen on other marketing and social media blogs and even on Twitter about “who owns social media” and how to bring social media into the enterprise.

From where I sit, that sounds like an attempt to graft typical command and control structure onto something that should be far more organic and integrated into a company’s existing systems. And frankly, an awful lot of what’s being said out there is starting to sound like a load of self-referential justification and/or an attempt to sell one’s own particular products and services. I’d go so far as to say that if your company needs to create an actual person or group who “owns” social media, you’re screwed before you even start.

Social media is not a silo. It’s not even all that new. People have been having conversations on the Internet since the Internet got started. The only problem is that it’s taking time for businesses and people that are used to the old methods of mass communication to truly understand the fact that things work a little differently here.

I’m biased, of course, but I think Adobe is doing a pretty decent job of navigating these waters. Some groups are adapting faster or more thoroughly than others, of course, but we’ve got people throughout the company blogging, Twittering, making videos, interacting on Facebook, and generally getting with the post-Cluetrain approach to communication. And I believe we will continue to move in the right direction.

Getting back to my original point, though, I had to think about what the implications were of putting myself on a list even though I don’t necessarily agree with the underlying premise. Obviously, I opted to be listed, since aside from the issue of “ownership” I fit the role as Jeremiah listed it, but I’m also putting up this post as a counterbalance.

Learning From "GhostBusters"

Winston Zeddemore: Ray. If someone asks if you are a god, you say, “YES!”

ZDNet’s new Social Media blogger Jennifer Leggio posted an interview with Twitter‘s Biz Stone this weekend.

What does that have to do with GhostBusters? This:

Q. Finally, the big question seems to be… is Twitter considering a paid model?

A. No. Not for the usage we are talking about now. It is very important that Twitter remains free for people to remain connected. Some people are suggesting a paid model so that we can improve the service but money is not our issue; we have plenty of money. It’s about getting the right architecture in place and boosting reliability. We want to keep it free.

Biz. Please. Right now, Twitter is a God. Do you realize how lucky you are that people are BEGGING you to take their money? Shut up and take it.

You don’t have to roll out a SLA and a full suite of fee-only tools for the paying customers. Start small. Let people pay $25 a year to have a little icon next to their photos (al la Flickr Pro). They will do it gladly and it won’t eat a lot of development cycles.

You’re not going to be in this spot forever. Take advantage of it while you can.

When Great Is Not Enough

We all tend to see the world through our own lens, that’s a given. UX people think UX is the most important thing in developing a product. Developers think that great programming is the secret sauce. Entrepreneurs think that if you’re not at a startup, you’re a loser. Marketers think that without marketing, you’re toast. Others say that “Marketing is the price you pay for creating mediocre products”. And on and on it goes.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years in this business, it’s a sense of perspective. In this case, it means remembering this:

It’s not just about building insanely great products, it’s also about building an insanely great company.

And to do it, you need a balanced team with a firm grasp of not just the nuts and bolts, but also the bigger picture.

The history of the Valley is littered with stories of people and companies who couldn’t get the balance right — great ideas poorly executed, slick promotions that couldn’t save a piece of crap product, great products ground into the dust by badly-managed companies, and many more besides. Success is very, very difficult.

Fail to keep your sense of perspective, though, and it’s that much harder to achieve.

Interesting or Compelling?

Over at Mobile Opportunity today, Michael Mace makes a point that’s true not just for technology products, but for virtually any kind of product development:

Very often tech companies will fall in love with a concept that is compelling to people in the company, but not to non-technologists. They’ll convince themselves that people will want it because, well, they ought to want it.

A related problem: A company will come up with a product that’s nice, but doesn’t really address [a pain point]. You know you have this problem when someone in the company says that need a marketing campaign to explain to people why they should want the product. The really good products need marketing for visibility, not persuasion.

I think this is the underlying problem behind most failed web applications. They do something interesting, as opposed to something compelling.

What makes this whole problem especially tough is that you can’t just ask customers what they need.

Emphasis added.

I’ll add the caveat that the line between visibility and persuasion is not cut-and-dried. Look at the advertising for the iPhone. Most of the spots are product demonstrations. Clearly, you’re raising visibility by showing what the product can do, but isn’t that also a form of persuasion?

And as always, one person’s “eh, interesting” is another person’s “OMG must have now!” But even so, the point is valid.

Two Great Reads

Seth Godin is widely considered to be a must-read blogger, but like everyone else, he has his ups and downs. This winter I’ve found his blog to be a little less inspiring. Not bad, just … blah. On the bright side, whatever lull he might have been going through seems to be over, because within the last week he’s put up two excellent posts:

1) The Three Marketing Levers
Fear, Hope, Love, and brand associations.

2) Soggy
Another look at why it’s so hard to get things done in business.