I have a Jura coffee machine at home. I bought it because I love coffee and the Jura is a fantastic machine that makes GREAT coffee that is consistently, wonderfully, perfect.

When I turn the Jura on, it goes through a little routine that heats the water and cleans things out. It takes about 45 seconds. And then, it is … ready. I don’t have to guess. I didn’t have to read the manual to discover that readiness follows the heating-rinsing routine. The machine tells me. The little LED display goes from Heating, to Rinsing, to Ready.

And every morning I think – as I press the button and breathe deep – wouldn’t it be lovely if everything was so well behaved, and told you when it was ready for action. The idea, the plan, the presentation, the product, the team, the soufflé.

Sometimes it’s obvious. Most of the time, not.

Take the guesswork out. Test. Get out of the building, and test.

Put together your best version of the answer. Take it on the road. Talk and listen. Test.

What do you think? Is it ever too soon to test?

Image copyright: captainmcdan via Flickr

Neatly filed under Managing,Skippiness on June 18, 2009

Image copyright: pipiwildhead! via Flickr

At its simplest, life comes down to a series of choices, or more often, a parallel of choices.

After deciding which new market or new product to go for, two types of choice dominate the day to day: how should we prioritise our time? and, should we go with option A or option B (or C, D, E, or F)?

This is no time to sway back and forth. You have to make decisions.

How do you decide what to do?

As I was looking in to this I came across a speech given by YCombinator founder Paul Graham at the StartupSchool2008 conference last year, he dealt specifically with the “how do you decide” question. His answer?

Do whatever is best for your users. You can hold on to that like a rope in a hurricane and it will save you if anything can. You can pull on that rope and it will guide you through everything you have to do. Figure out what they want, make them happy doing more of that.

Is he right? Absoloodle! Any choices that are best for customers tend to be pretty good for getting customers too. And customers make everything else possible.

If I could though, I’d add “in the long term” to the end of Mr Graham’s sentence. Running any kind of sustainable business, especially one that skips, is about winning in the long term. So doing whatever in the long term is best for your customers feels better to me.

Whether you’re prioritising time or choosing a fork in the road, put the customer front and centre, think long term, and swallow the results.

Neatly filed under Managing,Skippiness on June 5, 2009

When I went to see Jack Welch speak on management, I knew what I’d be getting – candour, leadership, persistence, values – no need to explain, no sales pitch required. You had me at the name.

When I’m looking for a coffee and comfort in an unfamiliar town, finding a Starbucks makes me smile.

A brand that I know, like and trust is a short cut to the top of my short list – very often, it’s a shortlist of one. Nothing new there, brands are important, let’s move on.

If brands are important, how do I get one? How to build a reputation people trust?

Make a promise people care about – or, put another way, build a fantastic product that people want. I know that sounds so obvious that it’s hardly worth the pixels it’s displayed upon but a) there’s loads of rubbish out there, and b) there’s plenty of products, particularly technology products, that nobody wants or cares about.

Tell them you exist, in a language they understand – or, put another way, talk like you care about the customer rather than about yourself. The language you use to talk about your thing internally may be the same language that your customer uses externally, but it’s probably not. Use customer language, not marketing/management/leading/essential speak.

Deliver, deliver, deliver – or, put another way, fulfil your promises. We buy from people we trust, prove you deserve it and we’ll buy again and tell our friends.

Reputations are built around happy customers. Customers are happy when we do what we say we’re going to do, and we do it brilliantly.

Neatly filed under Keeping Promises,Making Promises,Skippiness on May 25, 2009

Image copyright: David Smith

Bringing a new product to market is an act of will. Just getting to the start line takes a heap of effort, sacrifice, and dedication to the cause. Maybe it should be an Olympic sport. An endurance challenge that requires entrants to master three disciplines:

1. Get the product ready for the market

2. Get the company ready for the product

3. Get the market ready for the product

Less new product development, more new product triathlon.

This site isn’t concerned with number three (that’s more the domain of the marketing communications industry and specialists in launch codes) so let’s look at the first two.

1. Get the product ready for the market.

This is most often filed under new product development, strategic marketing, or sometimes business development. Whatever the job title, sorting out market and product is a pretty good use of time – most of which is spent answering questions and making choices.

Some market questions
What market is the product for?
What problems do they have?
How big is that market?
What do they need our product or service to do for them?
How much pain are they in at the moment?
What would their life be like with our product?
How much is that worth to them?
What are their alternatives?

Which all helps when thinking about product questions
What is our proposition?
What features are in, and which are out?
What services must be part of the package?
What else do they need to get the value out of this product?
Who can help?
What colour should it be?
What about the name, the design, the price, the launch?
What about the price?
Did I mention the price?

Whether you’re a product or service business, questions like these fall into the “what’s in the box and who is it for” category and they form the foundation to the day-to-day work that follows, including actually building the product itself. With good reason too, a miss here can damage the product, restrict the market, or push your new baby to early retirement.

Now build the thing
If it’s a version change, a new edition, or any other kind of thing that’s almost exactly like all the other things you sell then it’s possible that this is enough. Just drop the new product into one of the product shaped holes that are normal for your company and, after a short recovery, you’re ready for the next event.

But, and just for emphasis, it’s a big BUT, some products are game changers. Not just in the market (which is nice), but in the company too (which you should expect and plan for), which brings us to the second discipline of the new product triathlon.

2. Get the company ready for the product

If you’re entering a new market, have a completely new new product, or have been missing a few targets recently, it’s worth looking at stage two. Questions here tend to range from significant to fundamental and some of them are likely to throw “the way we do things around here” into the air.

Some questions about what we do around here
Does this fit with our existing business model?
How can each department contribute to the success of this product?
Do we have the manpower to fully support this thing?
Do we have the expertise?

Some questions about how we do things around here
How does this change the way we sell and how we incentivise our sales team?
Where is the best place, or most convenient place for them to buy this stuff?
Is our “usual” channel the right channel?
Can our internal support functions cope?
How does this impact the rest of our business?
Can we deal with the demand that we’re expecting?
Where can we find the right kind of staff to pull this thing off?

Dealing with the answers helps to make the back end bomb proof and can be the difference between skippiness and misery for customers, shareholders and staff.

How to get ready for market

Getting ready to market a product means making sure you have a product the market wants and the company to deliver it. Put the time in, deal with reality and then put all your effort and creativity into stage three, get the market ready for the product.

Neatly filed under Foundations,Keeping Promises,Skippiness on May 22, 2009

Of course, there are times when you need someone for a job that has to be done right, or in a very particular way – if I’m in the market for a surgeon or an auditor I don’t want someone learning on the job – but most of the time experience is a poor relation.

So why do most recruiters hire on experience? Because they think it’s safe and cheap.

And they’re right, in the short run.

Safe and cheap? If someone’s made a living as a salesman, .NET programmer or marketing manager, if they’ve managed projects, PA’d or PR’d before, chances are they know the territory and can hit the ground at a trot, not stumble along, learning as they go.

Short run? If you’re hiring today and you need something done next week, contract it out. Hiring is a long term bet. Experience may make getting up to speed a little quicker, but the wrong kind of person is the wrong kind of person at any speed. Getting rid of problems costs time, recruitment fees, and the goodwill, productivity and attention of colleagues.

Hiring on experience is neither safe nor cheap. It won’t make the person fit the culture, pull their weight, perform to expectations, work as a team … it just means they walk in the door with some wear on their shoes.

Hiring good people is tough, there are no short cuts. If not experience, what?

Dee Hock, who founded VISA, wrote in Birth of the Chaordic Age,

Hire and promote first on integrity, then motivation, third capacity, fourth understanding, fifth knowledge and last experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities.

Jack Welch, of GE fame, wrote about Hiring in Winning which I’ll paraphrase,   

1. Integrity – “people who tell the truth and keep their word. They take responsibility for past actions, admit mistakes, and fix them.”
2. Intelligence – “a strong dose of intellectual curiosity, with a breadth of knowledge to work with or lead other smart people. … Don’t confuse intelligence with education”
3. Maturity – a “grown up. … withstand the heat, handle stress and setbacks, … enjoy success with equal parts joy and humility.”

Hiring is a huge step – for you and the newbie. Mistakes happen – beating 50% can be a challenge.

What do you look for?

Top of my list comes attitude. In the kind of roles I’ve hired for, there’s no routine. I look for the kind of person who crawls around under the desk to fix the wiring or borrows a screwdriver to fix the chair, and “that’s not my job” never lights up the Broca’s area of their brain.

After attitude, I’ll go with Hock and Welch.

Whatever you call it – integrity, do the right thing, the golden rule – this is the value with the most impact on skippiness.

Neatly filed under Managing,Skippiness on May 1, 2009