Lego’s Core Principles for Successful Interaction With Users

Based on its experiences working with the user community, Lego has developed a set of principles that summarize what it has learned about collaborating and interacting with knowledgeable users. Here is a brief excerpt from an article written by Yun Mi Antorini, Albert M. Muñiz, Jr. and Tormod Askildsen for the MIT Sloan Management Review. To read the complete article, check out others, obtain subscription information, and sign up for email alerts, please click here.

Image courtesy of Flickr user spike

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Be clear about rules and expectations. Without exception, the adult users who collaborate with the Lego Group have busy lives that involve full-time jobs, studies, hobbies, families and so on. When Lego began collaborating with adult fans, there were very few stated rules or expectations about how the process should work. This led to frustrations on both sides. Fans complained about being asked to consider cost and complexity when developing their designs and to adhere to building techniques that met the company’s tight quality and safety standards. Lego employees complained that adult fans pushed the limits of the company’s rules and regulations and that coordination was difficult because most of the adult fans had full-time jobs and worked on their Lego projects after business hours, at night. Lego learned that it had to be more specific about its expectations upfront, including when its projects would begin and end. The company also learned that adult users were more cooperative when they negotiated expectations with the Lego employees directly involved, rather than with Lego managers who were not directly engaged in the work.

Ensure a win-win. In collaborating with very engaged and skilled users who were contributing their ideas, it was easy for the company to focus on “getting the job done,” forgetting that the users had needs that sometimes diverged from those of Lego employees and that the collaborations themselves needed to be rewarding experiences for the users. Developing a win-win mind-set must be a priority. Lego management learned, as studies of innovators have found, that the intrinsic rewards associated with designing and building products are frequently more motivating than financial rewards.5 Recognizing this, Lego has tended to pay outside collaborators with a combination of experience, access and Lego products. However, users who participate in long-term projects or who provide services that are more like “work” are given a choice: they can receive free products or a more conventional stipend. In business partnerships between Lego and users (for example, in cases such as the architecture project and the sensors), various long-term, fee-based partnership agreements have been negotiated.

Recognize that outsiders aren’t insiders. Lego employees involved with the user community learned early in the process that while participants were indeed committed to the Lego brand and the Lego brick, they were also attracted to the sense of community they experienced with other adult fans. In fact, it is the relationship with other fans and the input and encouragement they offer that strongly motivate these users to keep raising the creative bar and keep searching for new and better ideas and solutions. User communities are not just extensions of the company — they are independent entities. As a result, members should be treated as passionate, experienced and talented individuals.

Don’t expect one size to fit all. Lego also learned early on that different users prefer different modes of communication, and different types of innovations call for different environments. As a result, Lego relies on many different collaboration platforms. The simplest are polls and electronic idea boxes, which allow users to give input on predefined topics. A more advanced platform, Lego Digital Designer, allows users to design virtual Lego models and create digital building instructions that can be shared with other users. It allows innovators with different skill levels to participate.

Be as open as possible. To protect confidential and proprietary information, companies customarily ask collaborators to sign nondisclosure agreements. That’s what Lego did when it launched its Lego Ambassador Program and began collaborating with adult fans. Lego learned two important things: NDAs were effective at preventing the collaborators from sharing information with third parties, but there were unintended consequences. Because Ambassadors took the NDAs seriously, they didn’t share their ideas with other adult fans who hadn’t signed NDAs. Today, Lego uses NDAs more sparingly, to limit information sharing with third parties only in narrowly defined situations — thus ensuring that collaborators are able to interact with each other to the maximum extent. Lego also attempts to maintain transparency in all matters related to collaboration. For example, it posts detailed descriptions of the criteria for and responsibilities of Lego Ambassadors on its own home page and on several community websites. And the company supports community initiatives aimed at improving idea sharing among community members and advancing innovation.

Cumulatively, the principles we have discussed here help Lego organize collaborations with users in a manner that balances the needs of the company with those of its users. These lessons are applicable to other organizations. Instead of regarding collaboration as something that needs to be managed exclusively by the company, it is fruitful to think of it as an ongoing dialogue between two allies. Both sides contribute important resources to a common purpose. Frequently, the two sets of resources complement each other and advance the conversation and collaboration.

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Yun Mi Antorini is an assistant professor of business communication at Aarhus University, in Aarhus, Denmark. Albert M. Muñiz, Jr. is an associate professor of marketing at DePaul University in Chicago. Tormod Askildsen is senior director of community engagement and events at the Lego Group in Denmark.

Untapped Talent: A book review by Bob Morris

Untapped Talent: Unleashing the Power of the Hidden Workforce
Dani Monroe
Palgrace MacMillan/Division of St. Martin’s Press (2013)

How to “grow” talent, whatever the size and nature of the “garden” may be

The title of this book is sufficiently vague to evoke several questions and suggest all manner of interpretations. Is talent untapped or underdeveloped? Is it unleashed by someone else or by those who possess it? Is it hidden or unrecognized? The answer to each of these questions is “yes.”

Now more than ever before, few organizations have the talent needed at all levels and in all areas of the given operation. Many (most?) of them lack the resources to hire the talent needed so they are challenged to develop it but first they need to identify the high potentials. According to Dani Monroe, for whatever reasons, “untapped talent becomes invisible and unrecognized or undervalued and minimized.” I agree with Darrell Royal that “potential” means “you ain’t done it yet” but Royal was an exceptionally astute judge of talent when recruiting players for his University of Texas football teams.

Monroe wrote this book to serve three separate but related, interdependent purposes: To help her readers gain a much better understanding of untapped talent and why it exists; then in Part II, she examines specific areas in which supervisors can have a direct and substantial impact by “mining and refining talent”; finally, in Part III, she examines characteristics she’s identified as “essential in great leaders as it applies to untapped talent.” It is worth noting that throughout history, all of the greatest leaders have had a “green thumb” for “growing” the people they need to achieve the given objective.

These are among the dozens of passages that caught my eye, also listed to indicate the scope of Monroe’s coverage.

o Scarce Talent: The Skills Gap (Pages 18-21)
o Discovering the Realities (30-40)
o A three-level model for organizational change (61-66)
o The Culture of Talent Stewardship (70-82)
o Spotting the Soft Skills (91-93)
o River of Life (103-107)
o The Three Rs (Resourcefulness, Resilience, and Resolve): Emerging from the Hidden Workforce (119-123)
o The Face of Resourcefulness (133-137)
o Building Resiliency (147-149)
o Resolve Is About Success…and Failure (156-161)
o The Path to Vision (169-171)

It is no coincidence that the companies annually ranked among the best to work for and most highly admired are also among the companies annually ranked as most profitable with the greatest cap value in their respective industry segments. They also have the greatest percentage of positively and productively engaged employees as well as the lowest attrition of valued employees.

Near the end of her book, Dani Monroe asks her readers to set their imaginations free. What follows is a series of defining characteristics of “a talent environment in which anything is possible — an ideal state.” Of course, none exists but many in the so-called real business world demonstrate many (if not most) of what she describes. Constantly tapping talent is their reality. “That’s the vision. Make it your reality!”

Weaving the Web: A book review by Bob Morris

Weaving the Web: the Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web
Tim Berners-Lee
HarperSanFrancisco (1999)

How and why, “if we have the individual will, we can collectively make of our world what we want.”

I read this book when it was first published (in 1999) because I was curious to learn more about the World Wide Web (Web) from its inventor. Recently, I re-read it while preparing for several interviews and was surprised to learn that, if anything, Tim Berners-Lee’s core concepts are even more relevant now than they were almost 15 years ago. Of special interest to me is this passage early in Chapter 1: “The vision I have for the Web is about anything being potentially connected with anything. It is a vision that provides us with new freedom, and allows us to grow faster than we ever could when we were fettered by the hierarchical classification systems into which we bound ourselves. It leaves the entirety of our previous ways of working as just one tool among many. It leaves our previous fears for the future as one set among many. And it brings the workings of society closer to the workings of our minds…Inventing the World Wide Web involved my growing realization that there was a power in arranging ideas in an unconstrained, weblike way. And that awareness came to me through precisely that kind of process…through the swirling together of influences, influences, and realizations from many sides.” These comments suggest precisely the process of integrative thinking that Roger Martin discusses in The Opposable Mind (2007).

I was especially interested in Berners-Lee’s concerns about the Web in 1999. For example, the challenges faced by con tract programmers to understand the human and computer systems; electronic incompatibility between and among computers and their operating systems; documentation storage systems; universal adoption of hypertext; servers of sufficient speed and flexibility; governance issues; ownership issues; ease of access to sources; adoption of the universal resource identifier (URL); adoption of simpler language, XML, to supercede SGML; national and international legal issues (e.g. intellectual property); ethical standards and business issues; creation of “social machines”; and development and dissemination of metadata. Many — but not all — of those issues have since been resolved.

Here in Dallas near the downtown area, there is a Farmer’s Market at which several merchants offer slkices of fresh fruit as samples. In that spirit, I share three excerpts from Berners-Lee’s narrative:

“In an extreme view, the world can be seen only as connections, nothing else. We think of a dictionary as the repository of meaning, but it defines words only in terms of other words. I liked the idea that that a piece of information is defined only by what it’s related to, and how it’s related, There really is little else to meaning. The structure is everything. There are billions of neurons in our brains, but what are neurons? Just cells. The brain has no knowledge until connections are made between neurons. All that we know, all that we are, comes from the way our neurons are connected.” (Page 12)

“To build understanding, we need to be able to link terms. This will be made possible by [begin italics] inference languages [end italics], which work one level above the schema languages. Inference languages allow computers to explain to each other that two terms that may seem different are in some way the same — a little like an English-French dictionary. Inference languages will allow computers to convert data from one format to another.” (Page 185)

Concluding paragraph:

“Should we then feel that we are getting smarter and smarter, more and more in control of nature, as we evolve? No really. Just better connected — connected into better shape. The experience of seeing the Web take off by the grassroots effort of thousands gives me tremendous hope that if we have the individual will, we can collectively make of our world what we want.” (Page 209)

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For those who are curious, Amazon provides this information: “Sir Timothy John “Tim” Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA (born 8 June 1955), also known as “TimBL,” is a British computer scientist, best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He made a proposal for an information management system in March 1989, and he implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet sometime around mid November. Berners-Lee is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the Web’s continued development. He is also the founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, and is a senior researcher and holder of the Founders Chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He is a director of the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI), and a member of the advisory board of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence.”

The Inclusion Dividend: A book review by Bob Morris

The Inclusion Dividend: Why Investing in Diversity & Inclusion Pays Off
Mark Kaplan and Mason Donovan
Bibliomotion (2013)

A brilliant explanation of the ROI of a workplace community within which diversity and inclusion are core values

If you were to ask ten different people to define the word “diversity,” you would probably get 7-10 different (“diverse”) answers. There are so many criteria to consider, including gender, age, ethnicity, generation, personality type, and nationality. Add nature and extent of relevant experience, capabilities, and “potential” and you have at least some idea of how difficult it is for business leaders to decide how to “invest in diversity and inclusion,” as Mark Kaplan and Mason Donovan advocate in this book. That difficulty is exacerbated by the changes in the business world that, in turn, change immediate and imminent needs to accommodate.

Credit Kaplan and Mason with possessing courage sufficient to attempt to explain what comprises a diverse and inclusive workplace, how to establish one, and then how to sustain one. They even suggest how to accommodate workplace dynamics such as unconscious bias, insider-outsider interaction (for better or worse), and dimensions of difference that can be either compatible or incompatible.

In the first chapter, they observe: “As employees of the twenty-first century, all of us live in three worlds of D&I that can seem to be incompatible at times. There is the civil world, which revolves around legislation regarding issues like marriage rights, equality of access, and equitable treatment. Then there is the academic world, where a theoretical debate persists across the fields of law, sociology, psychology, and business about equality and fairness…Finally, there is the corporate world. As students become employees, it is the corporate world that absorbs eight or more hours of their waking time most days, and the discussion is more narrowly focused on the best ways to create personal and corporate growth…While the internal challenges [in that world] are structural, process, and human, they also have an impact at the interface between the organization and its stakeholders.”

Kaplan and Mason focus the business case for diversity and inclusion, the challenges to achieving and then sustaining that, and what they view as effective responses to those challenges. Readers will appreciate their skillful use of various devices such as “Takeaways” and “Discussion Point” sections at the conclusion of all nine chapters. This material will facilitate, indeed expedite frequent review of key points later.

These are among the dozens of passages that caught my eye, also listed to indicate the scope of Kaplan and Mason’s coverage:

o A Long-Cherished Notion (Pages 5-9)
o A Quick History Case, and, The Business Case (9-15)
o Challenges to Creating Inclusion, and, Other Inclusion Hurdles (18-24)
o Three Key Areas for Inclusion (28-34)
o The RADIX™ Cycle (41-50)
o Unconscious Bias, and, Insider-Outsider Dynamics (61-64 and 66-69)
o The Individual, Interpersonal Level of Change (77-81)
o The Organizational Level of Change (86-94)
o Some of the Latest Research on Unconscious Bias (106-112)
o Systemic Bias, and, Reducing Unconscious Bias (113-120)
o Key Elements That Define Insider and Outsider Group Membership (129-140)
o Different Types of Difference (146-163)
o What Leaders Must Do (171-185)
o External Marketplace and Customer Data, and, Tools to Involve and Engage the Whole Organization (198-204)
o Tools to Create Systemic Process Change (208-210)

It is worth noting that the origin of the word “barbarian” can be traced back to Ancient Greece. Its original meaning: non-Greek. It seems basic to human nature to favor those who are similar in some way(s) and be wary of those who are not, who are “different” in some way(s). As Kaplan and Mason point out, there are four distinct levels of change “that all influence one another and share common space. When individual is coupled with the group/team, systemic, and marketplace levels, an organization can achieve a much higher return.”

I agree with Mark Kaplan and Mason Donovan that many of the decisions business leaders make “can be skewed if they do not first take the time to understand their biases and how they can be influencing any one of several levels.” In fact, the inclusion dividend is substantial for companies annually ranked among the most admired and best to work for and helps to explain why they are also among the most profitable with the greatest cap value in their industry segment.

The First 90 Days: A book review by Bob Morris

The First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded Edition: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels
Michael D. Watkins
Harvard Business Review Press (2013)

How and why the first 90 days in a new leadership position can sometimes seem like 90 minutes

This is a revised and updated edition of a book I read when it was published in 2003. Although much has (and hasn’t) happened in the business world since then, Michael Watkins’ insights are (if anything) even more relevant and more valuable now than they were then because the actions taken by those in a new role, especially one with more challenging leadership responsibilities, will largely determine whether they succeed or fail. “When leaders derail,” Watkins notes, “their problems can almost always be traced to vicious cycles that developed in the first few months on the job.” Ninety percent of those whom Watkins interviewed agreed that “transitions into new roles are the most challenging times in the professional lives of leaders.” They could be internal promotions, reassignments and/or relocations, or a new hire. These and other transitions are thoroughly discussed in the book.

These are among the dozens of passages that caught my eye, also listed to suggest the scope of Watkins’ coverage.

o Avoiding Transition Traps (Pages 5-6)
o Understanding the Fundamental Principles (9-12)
o Getting promoted (21-24)
o Table 1-1, “Onboarding checklists” (34)
o Identifying the Best Sources of Insight (54-57)
o Table 2-1, “Structured methods for learning” (61-62)
o “Emotional Expensiveness” (63-64)
o Planning for Five [Transition-Specific] Conversations (90-93)
o Planning the Expectations Conversation (98-100)
o Adopting Basic Principles (121-122)
o Avoiding Common Alignment Traps (141-143)
o Getting Started (146-148)
o Avoiding Common Team-Building Traps (167-170)
o Building Support for Early-Win Objectives (202-220)
o Understanding the Three Pillars of Self-Management (227-237)
o Table 10-1, “Reasons for transition failures” (245)

The information, insights, and counsel he provides in this book reveal what he has learned thus far about what he characterizes as “The Vicious Cycle of Transitions” and “The Virtuous Cycle of Transitions.” The former involves sticking with what you know, falling prey to the “action imperative,” setting unrealistic expectations, attempting to do too much, coming in with “the” answer, engaging in the wrong kind of learning, and neglecting horizontal relationships. (Please check out Figure 1-2 on Page 7.)

With regard to the latter cycle, the “virtuous” one, can enable anyone involved in a transition to create momentum and establish an upward spiral of increasing effectiveness. (Please check out Figure 1-3 on Page 8.) To repeat, this updated and expanded edition develops in greater depth and wider scope the core concepts introduced in the first edition. The objective in 2003 remains the same now: “get up to speed faster and smarter.”

Michael Watkins can help each reader to do that; better yet, he can each reader, especially those with supervisory responsibilities, to help others to do that. That achievement is indeed an admirable objective. However, we are well-advised to recall Thomas Edison’s observation, “Vision without execution is hallucination.”

Blogging on Business Update from Bob Morris (Week of 5/13/13)

 

I hope that at least a few of these recent posts will be of interest to you:

BOOK REVIEWS

The Lean Practitioner’s Handbook
Mark Eaton

HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Strategic Marketing
HBR Editors and various contributors

Weaving the Web: the Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web
Tim Berners-Lee

Untapped Talent: Unleashing the Power of the Hidden Workforce
Dani Monroe

The Inclusion Dividend: Why Investing in Diversity & Inclusion Pays Off
Mark Kaplan and Mason Donovan

The First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels
Michael D. Watkins

The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace: Know What Boosts Your Value, Kills Your Chances, and Will Make You Happier
Cy Wakeman

INTERVIEWS

Charting technology’s new directions: A conversation with MIT’s Erik Brynjolfsson
Rik Kirkland
McKinsey Publishing

Eric Schmidt on “Disruptive technologies”
Richard Dobbs
The McKinsey Global Institute

Brooke Denihan Barrett (Denihan Hospitality Group) in “The Corner Office”
Adam Bryant
The New York Times

COMMENTARIES

“If you think top executives have to have charisma, think again.”
Christian Stadler and Davis Dyer
MIT Sloan Management Review

“How to Listen When Someone Is Venting”
Mark Goulston
HBR

“How to Stop Going to So Many Meetings”
Management Tip of the Day
HBR

“How to stop the mediocrity pandemic”
Dave Logan
CBS MoneyWatch

“How the Internet of Things Changes Everything”
Stefan Ferber
HBR

“Several expert perspectives on data analytics”
McKinsey & Company

“Does it matter where you went to school?”
Margaret Heffernan
CBS MoneyWatch

“The coming era of “on-demand” marketing”
Peter Dahlström and David Edelman
The McKinsey Quarterly

“How to Influence People with Your Ideas”
John Butman
HBR

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To check out these resources and other content, please click here.

To subscribe via RSS Reader, please click here.

Does it matter where you went to school?

Here is an article written by Margaret Heffernan for CBS MoneyWatch, the CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the website’s newsletters, please click here.

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(MoneyWatch) Every year, Amazon (AMZN) hires hundreds of MBA graduates. Where they come from, they say, doesn’t matter as much as the way they think. According to Jennifer Boden, who runs their university programs, Amazon wants entrepreneurial thinkers who are good at using data to drive decisions and get new products to market fast.

She said that where you went to school didn’t really matter and that experience counted for more. I’m not entirely sure I believe this. The target schools she mentioned — Carnegie Mellon, Wharton, Michigan — are a good deal more famous for their quantitative style than their entrepreneurial flair. And it’s hard to imagine a true entrepreneur eager to join a company rapidly becoming famous for treating its low-level employees like robots.

But she makes a good point in arguing that jobseekers can expect too much from their school’s name or even from their degree. Thinking that the institution’s reputation will stand in for your own is always a mistake. I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve known (and sometimes hired) for whom getting into a big name school was pretty much the biggest achievement of their lives. They hoped to ride on that — and many did. But their work was never interesting and their leadership didn’t inspire.

We are rapidly approaching a moment in which the number of candidates with great degrees from great schools are plentiful — even over-supplied. What makes the difference isn’t your ability to get into these places or even to emerge with a decent degree. What matters is who you are and what you’ve achieved outside of the warm embrace of an institution. The true test of a great employee isn’t their MBA or their quantitative skills but their ability to see what is needed — in the company, in the market — without being told.

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Margaret Heffernan has been CEO of five businesses in the United States and United Kingdom. A speaker and writer, her most recent book, Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril, was shortlisted for the Financial Times Best Business Book 2011. Visit her on http://www.mheffernan.com/. To read Margaret’s articles for CBS MoneyWatch, please click here.

To read my interview of her, please click here.

Predictive Analytics: A book review by Bob Morris

Predictive Analytics: the Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die
Eric Siegel
John Wiley & Sons (2013)

The skills and tools needed to improve the accuracy of predictions of what will – and will not — happen

One dimension of the “Information Age” is the extent to which those who offer a product or service know much more now than ever before about those who are most likely to buy or lease it. Meanwhile, prospective buyers know more now than ever before about that product or service as well as about others with which it competes. The implications of this “blizzard” of information have wide and deep impact on marketing initiatives to create or increase demand for the given offering. The challenge to those in marketing is to obtain the information they need. Moreover, it must be accurate and sufficient as well as current. Only then can sound predictions be made.

According to Eric Siegel, however, “Learning from data to predict is only the first step. To take the next step and act on predictions is to fearlessly gamble…Launching predictive analytics means to act on its predictions, applying what’s been learned, what’s been discovered within data. It’s a leap many take – you can’t win if you don’t play.” How then to improve one’s odds? Read this book.

These are among the questions to which Siegel responds:

o Why must a computer learn in order to predict?
o How can “lousy” predictions be extremely valuable?
o Why a predictive model into a field operation? What are the potential benefits of doing that?
o To what extent (if any) do predictive mechanisms place civil liberties at risk?
o How does our emotional online (social media) chatter “flip the meaning of fraud on its head”?
o What actually makes data predictive?
o How does prediction transform risk to opportunity?
o Why does machine learning require both art and science?
o What kind of predictive model can be understood by everyone?
o What key innovation in predictive analytics has crowdsourcing helped to develop?
o Why is human language such a challenge for computers?
o Is artificial intelligence really possible?
o What is the scientific key to persuasion?
o Why is trying to predict human behavior a bad idea?
o How is a person like a quantum particle?

Siegel answers these and other questions throughout seven chapters filled with valuable information, insights, and counsel that enable him to explain how and why predictive analytics possesses “the power to predict who will click, buy, lie, or die.” In Appendix A, he cross-references “Five Effects of Prediction,” then in Appendix B, he cross-references “Twenty-One Applications of Predictive Analytics.” These two appendices will facilitate, indeed expedite frequent review of key material later. The best works of non-fiction are research-driven and that is certainly true of this one, as indicated by 61 pages of notes (Pages 228-289).

Until reading this book, almost everything I knew about analytics was learned from Tom Davenport, notably in two of his several books, Competing on Analytics (2007) and Analytics at Work (2011). He wrote the Foreword to Eric Siegel’s book and after noting that we live in a predictive society, suggests, “The best way to prosper in it is to understand the objectives, techniques and limits of predictive models. And the best way to do that is simply to keep reading this book.” I agree.

HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Strategic Marketing

HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Strategic Marketing
HBR Editors and various contributors
Harvard Busxiness Review Press (2013)

How the right strategy can help create or increase demand for whatever is offered

This is one in a series of volumes that anthologizes what the editors of the Harvard Business Review consider to be the “must reads” in a given business subject area, in this instance strategic marketing. I have no quarrel with any of their selections, each of which is eminently deserving of inclusion. Were all of these ten article purchased separately as reprints, the total cost would be $60 and the value of any one of them exceeds that. Given the fact that Amazon now sells this one for only $16.16, that’s quite a bargain. The same is true of volumes in other series such as “Harvard Business Review on….” and “Harvard Business Essentials.” I also think there is great benefit derived from the convenience of having a variety of perspectives and insights gathered in a single volume

In all of the volumes in the “10 Must Read” series that I have read thus far, the authors and HBR editors make skillful use of several reader-friendly devices that include “Idea in Brief” and “Idea in Action” sections, checklists with and without bullet points, boxed mini-commentaries (some of which are “guest” contributions from other sources), and graphic charts and diagrams that consolidate especially valuable information. These and other devices facilitate, indeed accelerate frequent review later of key points later.

Those who read this volume will gain valuable information, insights, and counsel that will help them to determine which business they are really in, how to create products and services that people need to get their work done and done right, how to get a bird’s eye view of their brand’s strengths and weaknesses, how to tap a market that’s larger than China and India combined , how to deliver superior value to their B2B customers, and how to resolve all issues between and among departments, especially between sales and marketing

Here are three brief passages that are representative of the quality of the articles from which they are excerpted as well as the quality of the other seven articles in this volume.

From Marketing Myopia, Theodore Levitt, Pages 29-56: “In short, the organization must learn to think of itself not as producing goods of services but as buying customers, of doing the things that make people want to do business with it. And the chief executive officer has the inescapable responsibility for creating this environment, this viewpoint, this attitude, this aspiration. The chief executive must set the company’s style, its direction, and its goals.”

From Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure, Clayton M. Christensen, Scott Cook, and Taddy Hall, Pages 57-76: “Thirty thousand new consumer products hit store shelves each year. Ninety percent of them fail. Why? We’re using misguided practices…Here’s a better way: Instead of trying to understand the ‘typical’ customer, find out what jobs people want to get done. Then develop [begin bold face] purpose brands [end bold face]: products or services customers can ‘hire’ to perform those jobs.”

From The One Number You Need to Grow, Frederick F. Reichheld, Pages 151-170: “Based on information from 4,000 consumers, we ranked a variety of survey questions according to their ability to predict this desirable behavior. (interestingly. Creating a weighted index – based on responses to multiple questions and taking into account the relative effectiveness of those questions – provided significant [predictive advantage.)

“The top-ranking question was far and away the most effective across industries [what Reichheld characterizes as "The Ultimate Question"]:

o ‘How likely is it that you would recommend [company X] to a friend or colleague?’

“Two questions were especially effective predictors in certain industries:

o ‘How strongly do you agree that [company X] deserves your loyalty?
o ‘How likely is it that you will continue to purchase products/services from [company X]?’

“Other questions, while useful in a particular industry, had little general applicability.” Reichheld then provides a list. The “number” to which the title of this article refers is generated by the Net Promoter® Score System, devised by Reichheld, discussed in this article and thoroughly explained in two of his books, The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth (2006) and The Ultimate Question 2.0 (Revised and Expanded Edition): How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer-Driven World, with Bob Markey.

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If you read nothing else on strategic marketing, read these ten classic articles from Harvard Business Review.

Amy Jen Su and Muriel Maignan Wilkins: An interview by Bob Morris

Amy Jen Su, managing partner and co-founder of Isis Associates, is an executive coach and speaker on issues of leadership presence and executive endurance that make a difference to a leader’s performance success. She has a proven track record helping senior leaders more clearly articulate vision, socialize their message, and build key follower-ship as well as consider the organizational capabilities and structures necessary for delivering on the vision. She has served on the faculty and senior coaching teams for formal leadership development programs across a variety of industries including biotechnology, private equity, management consulting, financial services, and public service institutions.

Her previous business experience includes working as a management consultant for Booz Allen & Hamilton where she advised senior executives of large consumer products companies on marketing and growth strategies. She was also a strategic planner for Taco Bell Corp when it was part of PepsiCo, instrumental in helping to launch Taco Bell into non-traditional points of distribution. Amy holds a MBA from Harvard Business School and BA in Psychology from Stanford University, graduating from both with honors and distinctions. Her additional background and certifications in integral coaching, yoga, and the Eastern philosophies provide for a unique high impact, whole-person approach.

Muriel Maignan Wilkins, managing partner and co-founder of Isis Associates, is an executive coach and leadership consultant with a strong track record of helping senior leaders and teams take their effectiveness to the next level. Muriel is adept at working with senior executives develop in the critical career accelerator areas of executive presence, role transitions, and relationship management. She has in-depth experience designing and leading customized leadership development programs, group coaching, leadership assessments and leadership team alignment efforts. She has served senior level clients across a number of industries including management consulting, private equity, biotech, financial services, retail and non-profits.

Before cofounding Isis Associates, Muriel’s executive management experience includes holding P&L responsibility as a Director at U.S. News & World Report, leading consulting engagements as a Manager for the strategy practice of Accenture, and being a strategic planner at Prudential. Muriel was recognized by the Washington Business Journal as one of metro-DC area’s “Top Minority Business Leaders” and is a frequent speaker on leadership communications issues. Muriel holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, a marketing degree from Georgetown University, and a leadership coaching certification from Georgetown University. Her nearly twenty years living in North Africa, Europe and the Caribbean give her an invaluable perspective which she brings to her work.

They are the co-authors of Own the Room: Discover Your Signature Voice to Master Your Leadership Presence, published by Harvard Business Review Press (April 2013).

Here is an excerpt from my interview of them. To read the complete interview, please click here.

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Morris: Years ago, was there a turning point (if not an epiphany) that set you on the career course you continue to follow? Please explain.

Su: The turning point came, when I was a management consultant, sitting in a team room one evening at 3 am cranking through a spreadsheet analysis on how to drive more margin out of a consumer goods product. And, I remember feeling angry and disappointed as this came after having received a performance review that said while I was a great team player and always got the job done, I should be aware of my presence and influence style especially around senior level folks who perceived me to be young looking.

As I pulled that all-nighter, there was this moment where I realized that hard work alone and technical capability were not enough and that perhaps I wasn’t in a line of work that was allowing me to bring my fullest value and distinction to the table. Fortunately, an accident, took me out of the workforce for a year during which time the vision and courage to become a coach came together as there was time to reflect on who I was authentically and how might I best impact others around me. The journey continues every day as I ask myself regularly – am I leading and living an authentic life? Am I impacting others positively?

Wilkins: For the first half of my career, I was successfully rising fast as a marketing and strategy executive. And then two things happened: (1) I realized that as an executive I desperately needed leadership development support that really applied to my day-to-day business challenges but I couldn’t quite find it anywhere, and (2) I realized that I had an entrepreneurial itch that had been there a long time and kept getting stronger and stronger. I suddenly became keenly aware that the only thing I had to lose was time. And so I left my corporate job, changed career course to focus on leadership development and started Isis Associates with Amy Su. I haven’t looked back since.

Morris: Now please shift your attention to Own the Room. When and why did you decide to write it?

Wilkins: When we first began our executive coaching firm, we found that the answer to so many of our clients’ developmental needs was to work on their presence. Not because they didn’t have it – in fact, many of them had strong presence. But they had not figured out how to take what they had mastered in a previous role and adapt it to the next level of responsibility. In addition, our own personal experiences played into writing this book. We had both received strong feedback about our presence early in our careers. Muriel that she was too assertive and needed to “tone it down.” Amy that she came off as too deferential and needed to “toughen up.” But it was feedback we didn’t know what to do with at the time. We’ve had our own journey in finding our respective Signature Voices and continue to shape it and adapt it as we grow as individuals and leaders. After years of working with thousands of leaders shape their leadership presence, we recognized that many others could also benefit from the same approach and strategies that we offer in the book.

Morris: Were there any head-snapping revelations while writing it? Please explain.

Su: We were finalizing the manuscript for the book when the Summer Olympics were on and not only were they fun to watch but there was interest given that throughout the book, we describe building presence as analogous to the conditioning of an athlete. There was one evening the gymnasts were on and we watched how when they stepped out onto the mat or bars, something happened, they were 100% present. This was the ultimate in presence.

They had spent years of their life conditioning and practicing everyday and when it was game time – they just went out and did their thing— instinct, confidence, and years of conditioning took over. This influenced how we ended the book to pull through the athletic analogy fully that like athletes we train and condition our mindsets, communications skills, and energy for presence but that once we step into that meeting room or conversation, it’s just about bringing our best and being present to ourselves and others in real time.

Wilkins: Maybe not a revelation but certainly a very strong reminder that came to the forefront as we wrote the book is how much attaining and maintaining your presence, your signature voice, is a lifelong journey. Writing a book with someone else, even someone that you know, respect and trust as well as I do Amy, can be an awesome experience as well as quite a challenging one. At times, it felt as though we were the protagonists as we struggled with making sure our individual voices were heard in the book while still honoring and respecting what we each brought to the table. We often found ourselves applying the exact frameworks we were writing about to ourselves! The experience made us that much stronger as a team and partnership. And it certainly enabled us to empathize and relate even more with our clients and all those individuals who would be reading the book one day.

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To read the complete interview, please click here.

Amy and Muriel cordially invite you to check out the resources at these websites:

Isis Associates home page

Amy’s Amazon page

Muriel’s Amazon page

Their HBR blog