Getting It: Big questions. Are we brave enough to look for answers?

Helping us get it

Larry Kramer: C-Scape: Conquer the Forces Changing Business Today
Sigh. I've been collecting lists of 'c' words for about the last three years, trying to make sense of the changes that are happening in the way people connect to, use information and talk with one another en-masse. Larry Kramer has managed to condense all of my 'c' words into just four and write an whole book about them. I just about hug this book when I saw it on the shelves at the Whitcoulls at Wellington Airport yesterday, with the recent IABC World Conference fresh in my memory, and my brain working overtime to figure out where all its ideas fit. None of these ideas are new, they've been brewing since the dawn of online and gathering momentum as social media spreads from the fringes to the mainstream, but finally very clever people like Kramer are pulling them together in way that connects the dots and puts them in context. Curation, Consumers, Convergence and Content are the four words that Kramer has picked to describe the world we find ourselves in - "a world where consumers, not producers and marketers, make the choices, where content, not distribution is king, where curation becomes the prime currency of value, and where convergence continues to revolutionise every part of every business." A great read if you're looking to understand what's now, in some places, and what's next for the rest of us.
Ben Sherwood: The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life
Not a business book, in the strictest sense of the term, but its lessons are equally applicable to work as life. If you've been through life in Christchurch in recent months, you'll be fascinated by what makes for a survivor, why some people thrive and others fold and, astonishingly, the amount of control that we never knew we had in unpredictable and dangerous situations.
Howard Schultz: Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul
I loved this book, and with the dust just settling on February 22nd, it came at just the right time for me. I found myself torn between scribbling down great ideas for clients and great ideas for GT as, like so many other local companies, we ponder how the future might look in this crazy 'new normal'. What made this book such a great read was not just Schultz's successes, but his failures, and his wide open and realistic accounting of the culture change process. Anybody who has embarked on a change programme will tell you there's no such thing as a straight line, and that you can expect many, many things to go wrong before you stumble across a happy right. Schultz's candid telling of the ups and downs of his Onward project should provide great comfort to leaders who have hit the 'WTF Have I Done' stage of the change cycle and are having trouble keeping the faith.
Atul Gawande: The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
Boy, am I pleased I didn't read this one before I went under the knife. I'd have been intolerable... Not a marketing books, as such, but an informative and thought provoking read for just about anybody running a business. Gawande (a surgeon) looks to fields as diverse as the construction industry and aviation for lessons in keeping people safer through the use of very simple check-lists. Made me think of all the change management initiatives I've seen over the years launched with a whizz and a bang and that then fizzled out for the want of simple reminders and processes that gently nudge people towards compliance.
Walter Kirn (Author): Up in the Air (Movie Tie-in Edition) (Mass Market Paperback)
So as much as I'm hanging out for an iSlate (or whatever it ends up being called) I'm counting the sleeps til I can get to this movie. What's not to love about it? Just the product placement skills alone make this one a must-see, along with the exploration of how sophisticated loyalty programmes are at pushing the 'give me more' buttons of their corporate devotees. I devoured the book, which shares the big screen version's jaundiced - but oddly compassionate - view of all that is corporate life on the road today.
Patrick M. Lencioni: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Manga Edition: An Illustrated Leadership Fable
I started out reading this book on a plane, all hunched up against the window so nobody could see that that what I was absorbed in was, in fact, a manga book. I was so totally absorbed by the time we lifted off that I forgot to hide the pages for the rest of the trip. Cartoon or no cartoon, this is a book with a message that will resonate with anybody who works with teams of people (OK, so that’s pretty much anybody who has to go to work). Subtitled ‘An illustrated leadership fable’, the story follows the adventures of the SMT of a floundering tech company as it transitions from its founder/owner/manager CEO to an outsider brought in by the board to whip it into shape. The cartoon format, unique for a business book, adds, rather than detracts from the message. This is a great example of both the power of story telling in getting the message across and the increasing importance of graphics as a way to make those instant connections that go beyond words and cut through the clutter of our info overloaded world.
Martin Lindstrom: Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy
Now here's a guy at the cutting edge.

Lindstrom's game is Neuromarketing, which is so new my spell-check doesn't even recognise it as a real thing.

Lindstrom and his kind have gone as far as putting ordinary people in MRI machines to find out why we make the purchasing decisions we do, and what influences them.
This is the guy who did the research that showed that the actual brand is as much of an influencer on the enjoyment of drinking a Coke as the taste of of the brown fizzy stuff itself: totally dissolving the line between product and packaging, and proving the worth and value of brand beyond anything we had really understood before.

He also casts light on some of the strange and unusual things that happen when you move products out of focus groups and into the real world (think: New Coke); gives some great criteria for when product placement does and doesn't working (with American Idol as his case study) and gives a wonderfully elegant explanation as to why Pepsi tends to out-rate Coke in taste tests, but the tables are turned when measuring actual sales (turns out that people favour sweeter tastes when it is smaller amounts, but milder tastes when it's larger: taste testing involves tiny samples, the real world buckets full. Who would have thought?)
Lindstrom covers some new territory, as well as age-old marketing challenges, looking in some depth at the new consumer and how to get cut through in an overbranded, overhyped, visually overwhelming world. Watch out for sound and smell as the next two killer brand values.

To both get a taste of 'what's next' in the world of marketing, and answers to some of the oldest and most vexing questions we marketers ask ourselves every day of the week, pick up a copy. It's an enlightening and thought provoking read.
Lee Cockerell: Creating Magic: 10 Common Sense Leadership Strategies from a Life at Disney
As New Consumerism makes itself felt across every sector, Not For Profits and NGOs are struggling with straddling that charity/commercial divide.

More and more of the work I do seems to be about helping these organisations across a range of sectors, but primarily health, education, disabilities and social services - to connect with this new consumer environment, and importantly, bring their staff along for the ride.

Not being a great believer in management gurus (I'll make an exception for Seth), I'm usually pretty skeptical of how-to books, but this one from Lee Cockerell has some great points to make about how to help staff connect, and stay connected, with what your organisation stands for.
Cockerell was one of the founders of the Disney Institute, which runs half day, 3 day and 5 day courses on Campus at Disney sites (not that I'm thinking about doing one or anything...but the combination of Space Mountain and picking up some Disney learning is a lot to resist...) for business people, covering a variety of topics.

Can't get to the Mountain? Then bring Disney to you! One of the DI team will come and speak at your next event for US$12,000, plus per diem expenses, plus business class airfare.

Perhaps not quite the thing for that next NFP conference. Still, the book's a good read. And he uses some great real-life case studies to illustrate his points.
Seth Godin: Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync?
Seth Godin does it again! This one's a great overview of old/new marketing, and why there's no point in trying to mesh the two together.

Key out-takes - don't even try to bring old-media tactics online, and, the doozy: realise that we are living in a world where changing the marketing model has the potential to actually change the entire business - just think about how the entire travel industry has been turned on its head operationally, thanks to online marketing technology.

In classic Godin style, the chapters are bite-sized (perfect for a plane ride to Hokitika - you'll get through at least 5 chapters), and there's a handly 14-point list to help you see all the concepts in context.

The 14 points continue the themes of his earlier works, building just that little bit higher to give a true birds-eye view of the ever-evolving new economy and what its latest turns mean to businesses everywhere.

Six days on, I'm still working my way through my notes from last month's IABC World Conference.

I keep saying (and thinking) that none of these are new ideas. Smart communicators have seen them coming for at least the past five years. Smarter ones, even longer. But what is new is that we're now starting to see the case studies emerge from this new consumer/communications environment and evidence around what's working - a world where:

- 'us to them' and 'them to us' is no longer enough - 'them to them' is an integral component of any successful communication effort

- authenticity rules

- you can't capture minds without first capturing hearts

- content comes first, channel second

- content holds the key to connecting with the ideas that you and your customers/staff etc care about, and holding their attention

- a changing media landscape means content has to be sharper, smarter and savvier than ever to cut through the babble and make a connection

- your key influencers may well no longer be the people you thought they were

- a realisation that your greatest competition for slice of mind isn't information from the rest of the organisation - it's what's going on 'out there'.

- conversations are the point of story telling

- finally, we get it that staff are people too, and communicate with (not just to) them as respectfully and strategically as any other audience whose slice-of-mind and commitment we're looking to win.

What does it mean for you as a leader, a communicator, a business person, or all three?

What new skills/tools/resources do you/I need to bring ourselves up to speed with the new consumer and how they're connecting? These are just some of the questions we all need to be asking ourselves right now - whether we class ourselves as communication professionals or not.

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