I wish I was as Perceptive as my Car

I have a new car, and it has some wonderful features on it, really clever stuff to make driving safer and easier.  You've probably seen some of these types of new offerings - the cars that park themselves and have all kinds of new voice-activated functionality and push-button starts.

While all that is interesting, my new car has one specific feature that I wish I possessed, and specifically, I wish I had it for my sales career.  That's an odd statement to be sure - that a car knows how to sell.  It'd put fear into the hearts of used-car salespeople all over.  Obviously the feature it has isn't designed to for selling, rather it's designed to see things that the operator doesn't.  The car has a blind-spot, side-looking radar capability.  It tells the driver visually and audibly when it isn't safe to change lanes, and this very handy especially when the driver doesn't see the other vehicle.

The car uses technology to gain a perception advantage over what people can see, and perception is pretty important when you're driving.  I'd suggest it's also important in sales.  When we sell we tend to focus on what we know, or need to find out.  There are times when we don't see the other things going on around us, and our focus is a disservice to our skills.  If you don't think this is true, take this little test - I certainly failed the first time I saw it, and I'm guessing you may as well.

So why don't we see what should be obvious ?  The answers are many, but I'll put forth that in a sales campaign what we're doing is moving as quickly as we feel comfortable towards an outcome that favours us.  We don't take our eyes off of the players and issues we've identified as important, and see what is really going on.

There is good news here though - and it also comes in the form of assistive technology.  While the automobile offers blind-spot radar to help me drive, in a sales sense I can use something like the TAS Group's Dealmaker, and invoke the Coach Me functionality.   I've been around this software for almost six years, and it doesn't 'teach me' to sell, but it still helps me see the aspects in my sales campaign that I'm not overtly paying attention to - I can proactively deal with issues before they kill me.  It highlights vulnerabilities and I know that I can move faster and safer with Dealmaker to accomplish what needs to be done.

The nature of my work is to help companies deploy this solution to enhance their own sales efforts and in the very many engagements I've had, I have never come across a single individual that possesses this 360 degree perception in sales -  but, that's to be expected.  After all, none of us come with blind-spot radar as standard equipment.

Clown Auditions

I'm not from there, but I still look on in dismay at the early US Presidential positioning and jostling. From wearing claims of sexual abuses as a badge of honour, to the inability to string together three coherent thoughts.

I know many Americans that are astute, capable and broad-minded.  Any one of them could do a better job that the current rabble standing atop the podiums.

Where are all the intelligent people, and why don't they think this job is worth applying for ?

Objectives for Parenting & Managing

You'd think these might be very different - the objectives you have to successfully parent your child, and those for managing people in your organization, but I might humbly suggest there are many similarities.  Let's start with what we're aiming for as parents.

Firstly, it's an interesting exercise I suggest you undertake as well - coming up with parenting objectives.  It's not something we normally do as our kids are always a work in progress, and the very personal nature of the relationships we share means laying out a structured approach is often not viable.  It doesn't speak to the nature of the role of parents as loving caring, guiding etc - or so it would seem.  While that is a valid perspective, I'd offer a different view to say that if you don't have defined objectives then there's little chance of taking the right steps to achieve the desired end result.  It becomes very grey and hard to pin down.  And while I do like to have a defined set of goals, the magic is clearly in how you go about realizing them, it's not ever about employing an unnatural structure upon your parent-child relationship.

So here goes - what I'd like to have as objectives for my child - rearing.  I've expressed these as capabilities the child should possess as outcomes of my/our efforts*.

1. The ability to think for themselves.
2. The ability to know the right thing to do when presented with a murky situation - morally.
3. An ability to understand and pursue that which makes them happy.
4. Respect for their fellow human being, and their opinions with which you may not agree.
5. A capability to construct a compelling argument in favour of what they believe in.
6. An appreciation for the natural world.
7. An ability to bring all your abilities to focus, and an understanding of what you're capable of.

There's a few more as well that get into the emotional and spiritual side of an individual, but for the purposes of this discussion, I'll leave these out for now.

Now - let's switch gears and look at the same list above with an eye on how to manage staff.  An ideal manager has compassion and an appreciation of what each of their people can bring to the table.  Ideally, we have a set of personal development objectives for each individual as well, as ultimately it helps the organization if your employees are exceptionally capable.

Do any of the above list of 7 criteria strike you as unnecessary in an employee, or perhaps as non-core goals in terms of staff development..?  You're free to think as you wish about the list here - it is personal to me* in a number of ways, and reflects values, experience and so on that I think are goal-worthy.  My point here is to stimulate in you the same thought - create a parental list of what you'd aim for, and compare that to what character you'd like to see exhibited in your staff.  Does it match..?  If not why not ?  Secondarily, what are you doing today to achieve this outcome.?  

Building great people -whether children or lieutenants- is rarely accidental.




** you'll note some asterisks above.  I need to acknowledge that raising children is often done as part of a team, and alignment on goals and objectives is pretty important.  You can imagine the issue if opinons differ here.  Similarly, the development of staff is rarely done in a vacuum in a workplace, so getting the same message out is critical there too.   The core points above work with both single and team direction I believe.

"Occupying" Value

The movements are now breaking up, and some are lamenting the loss of this voice of young democracy. However, the contribution has already been made - the leftover tents and urban encampments now being evicted in cities throughout the west are but echos of the value they created.
Whether you agreed or not, understood or not, or paid attention of not, what we witnessed in places near and far was the perception of a lack of fairness that some in society felt. They espoused leadership, a single voice and demands, and in some ways resembled the screaming child stamping their feet on the ground, unclear as to the instigator that brought them to their cold lonely vigils.
Value judgements aside for a moment, we can all personally relate to a feeling of being mistreated, deservedly or not. Often we quietly vote with our opinions, or wallets or in other ways, swearing never again to take that course of action. This is what we saw I'd suggest - on a scale that resonated far and wide. Websites started, social media kicked into gear and news and support materialized from those around us. It was our neighbours, kids we knew and we recognized them. Insofar as they weren't denounced or thrown out on day one, they received an outpouring of support for something none of us knew we cared about. It piqued our curiosity and we empathized with those that raised their voices, to highlight their perceived injustices.  This was democracy and freedom of speech in its truest form - we may not agree with them, but we'll defend their right to be heard.
So, now it's over. Popular media says it accomplished nothing. Do you believe that ?   I don't.
It brought the discussion about the distribution of wealth in society into our living rooms, and into a US presidential election.  It's very "grass-rootedness" and lack of defined agenda never mixed up the message.  It was brilliantly un-organized.
This key message isn't something we're supposed to be discussing by the way, there's many in powerful positions that could lose significantly if the covers get pulled back on this.   We all know it's not pretty, and we've had the discussion in various arms-length ways in the past, from CEO pay packages, to Enron-levels of greed to needing to bail out a country due to lack of fiscal responsibility.   But all these situations and discussion dance around the fundamental issue that there's cracks in the system of capitalism, and it's not a self-repairing model.  Something should be done to address the concerns of the 99%, as history tells us this is where revolutions are born.
Value ?  I think tremendous credit is due to our Occupy friends for raising the discussion to one that's being had openly now.  That's not just a valuable contribution, that's a responsibility that's been passed onto all 100% of us.

Going Vertical

I think Amazon is currently the coolest company in the world.

Now that's a judgement of mine that changes, depending on how well a company is executing a strategy, and how clear it is to others what it is that they're after. Ideally, a well executed strategy results in an industry game-changer, and catches others off guard...Nintendo's Wii or Apple's original iPhone and now Siri are amongst the best recent examples.

Amazon is doing this now and it's dead-clever.

They have for a while now been at one of the spectrum of the technology play that so many other companies are involved with. Only instead of building consumption devices (pods, pads, laptops, tv's etc), they've been building up content. What Amazon saw (I'm guessing) was that there was only one other player in the space that had content, and coincidentally, it was doing the best versus the others. That player of course being Apple.

If you think it's all about the design and elegance and white earbuds contributing to Apple's success, think again. They have the largest depth of Apps out there for their family of 220M+ iOS devices, at almost 470,000 unique offerings. That compares to the 270,000 unique offerings for the Android world - and they have a larger mobile share overall than Apple. My favourite company to pity - the nice folks at RIM with their Blackberries, thought it was about enterprise email far too long and stumble into the content breadth offering at 35,000 Apps. So, Apple has an advantageous long tail of Apps. Add to that the dominance of iTunes and it starts to become clear what powers the Apple steamroller. Great devices, deep and wide content and some degree of manufacturing efficiency mean the other tech players can't match them. Wonder who owns Samsung Galaxy Tabs..? Me too.

No doubt the good people at Amazon see this, and thought long and hard about how to emulate and take down these companies, to be leaders in the space. The key was content. Amazon happen to have a little bookstore of their own, and if books=music, then it starts to be about the consumption rate, not the technology interface if you're looking to monetize the space. Notably, it isn't about the devices, a fact few have noticed.

That was all fine and reflects the status quo until recently. In fact, Amazon weren't particularly noteworthy until recently. I'm guessing that was the plan. Some time back I bought a Kindle reading App across my own devices and it's better than anything native out there. Amazon was 'co-ompitioning'. Recently however, Amazon showed us what they are up to, and it's astounding. Firstly they unveiled the Kindle Fire which drops the price floor out of the tablet/reader market. Suddenly these are cheap and potentially commodities - beware HP, Sony, Apple etc. Secondly, Amazon announced they were willing to bypass publishers and BE the publisher and the retail storefront for authors. That extends and locks in interest into their content. Then, as icing to the cake, they announced they were willing to lend (as in free, as in library) books as well. Amazon's done a check-mate type move in content, and have marginalized the technical move so many others had focussed upon. They are device agnostic, and have scuttled the tablet market as a by-product of their strategy execution.

It's about the content, and if my crystal-ball on this is correct, this move singlehandedly changes the landscape in this space. Amazon has gone vertical, and unlike the attempts before this (Time Warner + AOL for example) they have a clear solution set for those in need of instant gratification.

In the future, we'll see cheap commodity tablets made in China, Apple as 'record' label for artists and Google moving to secure a major content play - I'm guessing a TV studio such as NBC Universal. All that will help others catch up to where Amazon is today..let's see what they do next.