Empathy is essential. Sure, that’s obvious for your life and your relationships, but also, although not so obvious, for your business. Empathy is putting yourself in the other person’s shoes: feeling what they’re feeling, imagining what it’s like to be them. Isn’t that the key to marketing and product development? Isn’t that also the single most important factor in leadership? Dealing with people? And business strategy? I think so.
I posted Empathy as a key to business success here a bit more than a year ago. What’s new about it today is Gandhi’s Neurons: The Practice of Empathy by Bruna Martinuzzi on the American Express OPEN Forum. She links to this fascinating video by Nova Science (PBS), which examines something called mirror neurons, also dubbed Gandhi’s neurons. The mirror neurons fire as we feel for others, or with others. Narrator Robert Krulwich introduces this as new science:
We humans are really good at reading faces and bodies. ‘Cause if I can look at you and feel what you’re feeling, I can learn from you, connect to you, I can love you. Empathy is one of our finer traits, and when it happens it happens so easily, perhaps because—and this is brand new science, this is just out of the lab—we may have some special circuitry in our brains that helps us whenever we look at each other.
It’s because of mirror neurons that “you can adopt another person’s point of view,” according to Dr. V.S. Ramachandran of the University of California at San Diego. He notes that humans are intensely social. We invent dances, games, groups… we eat together, we work together, and we talk. Language and culture come from imitation. He even suggests that it was a sudden advance in mirror neurons that spurred a jump in evolution to make us human.
So, as I said earlier, marketing? Product development? Leadership? I hope the connection is obvious.
I don’t know how the science of it necessarily helps us with the actual practice; but I find it fascinating, and when I saw this, I wanted to share.
(Note: this is a guest post by Megan Berry (my daughter), social media evangelist for Mobclix. It was originally posted on the mobclix blog.)
Avatar is a world-wide phenomenon and is currently the top grossing movie of all time*. How can you learn from its success and apply it to your own projects (even if they aren’t billion dollar movies).
Technology Matters. James Cameron first wrote Avatar in 1994, but he ended up tabling it until 2005 because he felt the technology wasn’t there yet. Figure out what your idea needs and how you can make it happen. If your current idea won’t work well, put it on hold and work on something else.- Love Your Idea. This movie finally came to fruition 15 years after Cameron’s initial idea. He didn’t just forget about it, he waited for his moment and made it happen. And now he’s very rich (er, richer).
- Get Fans, Not Just Viewers(/Users). Avatar was so successful because you didn’t just go and think “good movie” and go to sleep. You wanted to tell everyone you knew about it. After watching this movie I immediately started telling my family and friends they had to see it. Now.
- A Little Controversy is Good. Avatar’s a commentary on the war in Iraq. And our treatment of the environment. And a critique of the military. And advocates polytheism. And deals with racial issues. Or maybe none of the above, but it made you talk about it, didn’t it?
- Make it Beautiful. Avatar is a cinematic masterpiece. It’s gorgeous. Don’t settle for less with your iPhone app. If your iPhone app is the best looking thing I’ve ever seen I’ll not only use it but share it with everyone I know.
*Okay, so this actually depends on whether or not you count inflation. In any case, it did very, very well.
I just couldn’t resist sharing this. It’s called The Hierarchy of Digital Distractions, and it’s brilliant; and even better in full size, so you should click this link or on the picture to see the original. I got it from Ann Handley, @marketingprofs on Twitter. It’s from a site called Information is Beautiful, by David McCandless.
And it certainly depicts, way too accurately, the way digital distractions stack up for me.
(Image: by David McCandless, via Information is Beautiful)
Apple vs. Kindle vs. publishers, oh my. Do you know the background? It’s all over the web. And I posted here this week about how Apple and Amazon.com and Macmillan are wrapped up in an ebook battle. And it gets better. As I write this, Wednesday evening, the news is that Amazon gave in and put Macmillan back into the mix, but at higher prices. But I just checked the site and my favorite Macmillan book, Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded, is listed there as available through third parties only. So go figure.
I’m fascinated with all of this. Really, business strategy in action. Consider these questions, and ask yourself: if you were Steve Jobs, or Jeff Bezos, what would you do?
- Does Apple Computer block the Kindle app on its new iPad? The iPad runs iPhone apps, and the Kindle iPhone app works great. But does that mean iPad users can buy Kindle books for their iPad for $9.95, while Apple’s iPad iBooks cost $14.99?
Apple can block the Kindle app, of course. But what will users say about that? Apple users tend to take Apple as some public resource. They’re incensed when Apple acts in its own business interest instead of the public good. Would cutting off the competition be worth the dark side mask?
- Is Amazon.com seriously going to cut off its nose to spite its face? They took all Macmillan books off of Amazon.com because of a pricing and revenue share argument related to the iPad. But doesn’t that hurt the Amazon.com business proposition? Don’t we all go there to find the world’s largest inventory? And now they say they’re giving in, putting Macmillan back, and at the higher prices it demanded. What does that do for the Kindle pricing ceiling at $9.99? What happens to the $5 differential on iPad between a Kindle book and an iPad book?
- Do publishers gain by fighting either format, or either channel? Now Macmillan books are playing second fiddle at Amazon.com. It’s hard to tell from here, but it’s been presented as Macmillan squaring off against Amazon.com for a larger share of the revenue. That’s a bold move. Would you do it? How would you feel if you were a Macmillan author?
- What about Sony, or Barnes and Noble? These other ebook readers that were seriously planning to compete… are they just blown away? What can they do?
- Does this mean ebooks are finally for real? I’ve liked ebooks for more than 10 years now, read them on an early Rocket ebook reader, on a PDA, on a Kindle, and on my iPhone, as well as on a number of laptops. Are they finally going to get to critical mass? That would be nice.
- Do smart buyers wait for all of this to sort out? Remember the Sony Betamax format vs. VHS? You don’t want to invest on the losing side here, right? I finally bought Blue-ray HD after HD DVD lost the battle.
I’m enjoying the spectacle. I’ve got the Kindle, I’ve got the iPhone with the Kindle app on it, and I’ll probably buy an Apple iPad for its entertainment value, form factor, and long batterly life. For ebooks the iPhone Kindle app is still my favorite, so I’ll probably use the Kindle app on the iPad too, when I get it — if Apple doesn’t block it, that is. I don’t see how the bells and whistles of the new iBook reader can be worth the extra $5. But, since it’s not shipping for a few months anyhow, I’m going to wait and watch.
And I’m especially watching the strategy play out. Several of these big players can make bold decisions that will cut off competition and annoy the hell out of buyers. Is that the way it’s going to go?
(Image credit: from Mashable’s recent post on the eBook War)
(This is the fourth in a series of posts reviewing the fundamentals of planning, with an eye for how they’re changing over time. Part one was Form Follows Function. Part 2 was All Business Plans are Wrong. Part 3 was Cash Not Profits.)
I predict accountability is going to be an increasingly important issue as we head into this new decade. The old-fashioned tools of accountability, mainly physical presence, as in hours in the office, or days on the road, are fading. If for no other reasons, it’s because the world can’t continue to support needless commuting, an average of 51 minutes per day in the United States, and way worse in some of the larger cities in the developing world.
So what’s going to happen? We’re going to look increasingly for accountability as part of our real-world business planning process. The plan establishes the metric, and the regular plan review and tracking establish progress towards the metric.
It’s not just sales, costs, and expenses. It’s more metrics for more people, including lines of code, calls, blog posts, tweets, unique visitors, page views, minutes per call, presentations, proposals, emails processed, and so on.
Our tools will give us ever increasing metrics to use. I’m very biased about Email Center Pro, I admit, but if you’re curious you should look into the wealth of metrics it provides on team-managed emails and email addresses, like the sales@example.com or info@example.com. And everybody knows about Google and Web analytics, paid search, etc. And telephones and miles are completely trackable.
All of this becomes the concrete specific portion of the business plan, and it is then managed as part of the business planning process. That means that the plan lasts barely a month before results are reviewed. Managing the metrics is a multiple win when there’s regular review, because all the members of the team can easily look on together and see where things have to change. And why.
And that’s the future of planning: management.
To be honest, I thought it was a joke; irony, perhaps, or sarcasm. But no, to my surprise, I clicked on Love Your Business More Than Your Family, a column on entrepreneur.com, and he’s serious. Author George Cloutier says:
Your cell phone is for keeping in touch with clients and sales managers in the field, not for taking calls from your spouse throughout the day about what groceries to pick up on the way home. Cutting out early to take your kids to baseball practice three times a week, or picking up your Aunt Tilly or Uncle Ned from the airport, are unacceptable interruptions to success.
You can keep doing these things and waste dozens of hours each week. Or you can focus on the financial future of your business and work all day, every day. You are the only person responsible for fixing your business and making it better, and that isn’t going to happen while you take 14 personal phone calls a day and attend local Cub Scout meetings three-times a week.
That is extremely bad advice. I have absolutely nothing against George Cloutier. I’m even a fellow columnist on the same entrepreneur.com site, where I do a column on business planning. But sheesh, how can I read that, and not write about it? What would Bob Sutton (author of the book on business a**holes) say about this?
How wrong is George’s advice? Well, there’s no way to list all that’s wrong with it, but here at least is just a brief start on that list:
- It’s bad for your life. And business is to serve life, not life to serve business. Make no mistake about it; if you choose to “work all day, every day” do it purposely and knowingly, recognizing that you’re sacrificing your life for a business. Stay single and alone. Don’t ever have kids.
- It’s bad for your business too. You don’t manage a business, manage a team, make decisions, and get through the long hard days without balancing your life. People eventually blow up when they try.
- OK there are exceptions, but what if you aren’t one of them? What if you sacrifice everything and you don’t end up like Richard Branson, water skiing in the Caribbean with a naked model? Some totally obsessed people end up wealthy and happy; but obsession doesn’t create the success, and most of them are just lonely and full of regrets.
Am I exaggerating here? I should add that I’m not just quoting him out of context. He means it. He starts with an obsolete tale of an obsolete business school professor from about 40 years ago telling married students to give up because they couldn’t be married and successful. Here’s what he says about that:
He told them that a family would get in the way of their success, so there wasn’t much point in them taking his course. In the end he let them stay, of course, but he wasn’t kidding. That was his way of making an important point: If you’re going to be successful, you’ve got to love your business more than anything else–even your family.
And he finishes with this conclusion:
Often you will feel tremendous pressure to take time away from your business to devote to family matters. But in the end, the best thing you can do for them is to create the legacy of a business that is thriving and financially sound. When you’re retired, wealthy, and able to spend Valentine’s Day and other special occasions with your kids and grandkids at your winter home in Hilton Head, you’ll be glad you devoted so much of your time to your first love: your business.
Don’t believe him. I do hope that George is in Hilton Head with kids and grandkids. But if you or I follow his advice, we wouldn’t have anything at all to do on Valentine’s Day. Neither our kids nor our grandkids will be spending time with us. They’ll be with our ex-spouse and probably the step-parent who actually raised them. Skip the occasions, the practices, the parenting, and plan on being alone. And, unless you’re very unusual, regretting it. To paraphrase a line from Hello Dolly: “and on those cold winter nights, Horace, you can snuggle up to your cash register. It’s a little lumpy, but it rings.”
Life is way too short to lose to business. Bring business and life together, mind your balance, and be successful at both. That’s what entrepreneurship is really for.
(Image credit: by Loren Javier via Flickr cc)
(Important: late-breaking news. Since this was posted earlier today, Amazon has reversed its position on this. Macmillan is back, but with its own pricing on the Kindle. This is important. Here’s a link.)
eBook wars, you say? On one hand, it’s about time. On the other, wow, this is strategy in action. And interesting spectacle too. That’s why in athletics the championship games are more interesting: two big winners squaring off.
Mashable led over the weekend with Apple vs. Amazon: The Great Ebook War Has Already Begun, a post by Ben Parr, whose work I like a lot. Posted Saturday, it’s about Amazon and Macmillan. It’s hard to tell who’s making the move on whom here, but the announcement was that Amazon.com was removing Macmillan books from its web store:
According to the New York Times, the reason the books were pulled was the iPad. Macmillan told Amazon that it wanted to change its pricing and compensation agreement, upping the price of some books from $9.99 to $15 and splitting sales 70/30, the same model Apple uses for the iPhone app store and its upcoming iBooks store. Amazon’s apparent response was to flex its muscle and pull countless Macmillan books off the virtual shelves.
Last Friday I posted how the competition is win-win for all sides. We get a choice: Kindle books, just text, for one price, or Apple iBook books (pizazz) for a higher price. You get to decide. Ah, the magic of commerce.
But with Amazon.com and Macmillan biting off each other’s noses, it’s not so clear. Ben Parr wrote:
That’s why Amazon decided to use its biggest weapon, Amazon.com itself, against Macmillan to send a message to every publisher: If you don’t play by its rules, then you can’t be in its store. While a publisher can likely survive without the Kindle, the same cannot be said for Amazon.com. Publishers simply cannot afford to leave the world’s largest online retailer.
Who wins? In this case, the losers are Amazon.com and Macmillan, and all Macmillan authors, and anybody who wants to buy their books. Amazon? Don’t we all go there because we can find all the books imaginable there? And now we don’t? Although you can still buy Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded on Amazon.com, you can’t do it directly. They list it as available from third-party sellers, even though it’s one of the most important books of the last year. And here’s some irony: Priceless, William Poundstone’s analysis of free and fair value and all, is another victim.
Remember the old days, when things like this were about giving customers what they want?
Measurement, metrics, and accountability are everything. Except when they aren’t.
Yes, I contradict myself. No, I don’t mind. Contradiction and paradox are reality in business as in life. As soon as you develop a general rule, you find exceptions.
And I have posted here both the magic of metrics, and do we undervalue marketing we can’t measure. Like the old folk song says, both sides now.
So with that in the background I read with relish Management by Imagination on the Harvard Business Review’s The Conversation blog. Here’s the lead:
The perception that good management is closely linked to good measurement runs deep. How often do you hear these old saws repeated: “If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t count”; “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”; “If you can’t measure it, it won’t happen”? We like these sayings because they’re comforting. The act of measurement provides security; if we know enough about something to measure it we almost certainly have some control over it.
But however comforting it can be to stick with what we can measure, we run the risk of expunging something really important. What’s more, we won’t see what we’re missing because we don’t know what it is that we don’t know. By sticking simply to what we can measure, we come to imagine a small and constrained world in which we are prisoners of a “reality” that is in fact an edifice we’ve unknowingly constructed around ourselves.
The Harvard post goes on to question the more extreme exercises of metrics:
if you stick to measuring what you can already measure, you cannot create a future that is different than the past.
On the other hand, there’s no denying that the underlying mathematics of computing, as applied on the Web, are total luxury of measurement in today’s business world, especially when compared to what we all did as recently as the 1980s and early 1990s. Back then we’d spend the marketing money on ads and direct mail and such, and then hope for the best, waiting weeks and months to get at best a distorted view of results. Now we get clicks and conversions and return on investment almost instantly.
When I worked as a wire service journalist in the 1970s, the turn of a headline made a huge difference. So we crossed our fingers and hoped it would work. We’d find out the next day. Today the industry leaders like the Huffington Post test headlines, and adjust them, in real time.
Conclusion: I love the truth of case by case judgment of so much of real business. Know the rules, follow them when it makes sense, and break them when it makes sense. Paradox and contradiction are the spice of life. And good business.
Or, if you prefer, take this, straight from the Harvard blog, as a conclusion:
We need to get away from all those old sayings about measurement and management, and in that spirit I’d like to propose a new wisdom: “If you can’t imagine it, you will never create it.” The future is about imagination, not measurement. To imagine a future, one has to look beyond the measurable variables, beyond what can be proven with past data.
(Image credit: Vlue/Shutterstock)
(Note: This is part 3 of my planning fundamentals review. Here are the links to Part 1: Form Follows Function and Part 2: All Business Plans are Wrong.)
Cash flow is the most important mystery you have to solve. Cash flow is the real heartbeat of business. And unfortunately, cash flow isn’t intuitive. It’s tricky.
We think in profits. It’s part of our culture. Take the sales and subtract the costs and expenses, and if the result is positive, then hooray, we’re okay.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out that way. Because of accounting rules, sales are sales we made for this month, and costs are what it cost us to produce what we sold this month, and expenses are what we incurred this month. But — and here’s the brutal mystery and trickery of it — we might have paid those costs and expenses months ago; and we might not get paid for those sales until months from now.
So we can easily be profitable and broke. Not intuitive, but it happens a lot. Most product businesses need to spend on building or buying the product, plus packaging, assembly, and distribution, long before they can sell it. And most business-to-business sales involve waiting months to get paid.
If we could only get the research to prove it, we’d find that a surprising percentage of businesses that go under are profitable when they do.
Managing the cash flow, planning on cash flow ups and downs, is one of the fundamental purposes of good business planning. You lay things out in order: how long you wait to get paid, how early you have to build, debt repayments and capital purchases that don’t show up in profit and loss. And good planning helps you anticipate problems in time to deal with them. Go to a bank with a good history and a plan showing cash flow hills and valleys, weeks or months in advance, and the bank loves you. Try it on Tuesday because you’re going to miss payroll on Friday, and you’re out of luck.
For a good visual on the mysteries of cash flow, go to the free cash flow calculator at bplans.com (shown in the illustration above) and use the sliders to watch what happens as you vary the wait to get paid and inventory assumptions, even without changing profitability. Watch how much faster the cash deficit grows when your sales grow fast and you don’t have an all-cash business.
You might also want to read my 10 critical rules for cash flow post. And just a could of weeks ago I saw a good collection of 6 Tips for Improving Your Cash Flow on the American Express OPEN Forum.
There’s a sudden increase in what they’re now calling Boomerangers, according to MarketingCharts.com, in Young Adult ‘Boomerangers’ Head Home in Numbers:
More than one in 10 US parents with grown children say at least one of their adult sons or daughters has moved back home in the past year after living away, according to research by the Pew Research Center, which found that the recent recession has created a bumper crop of “boomerangers,” particularly between ages 18 and 34.
Why do we in the United States act like there’s something wrong with single adults living with their parents? That happens a lot in most other countries, and nobody thinks there’s anything wrong with it. Here, however, there’s stigma attached.
Why? Single people living alone vs. single people living with parents… who says one way is better than the other?
One thing most other cultures do better than ours is simple integration of generations. We separate generations. Kids with parents, teenagers with other teenagers, then college students, then single adults. Older people go into homes for older people.
Aside from the U.S., I’ve lived in Mexico, and I’ve lived in Austria. In both of those countries a lot of single adults end up living with their parents after college. It’s often a win-win situation.
