Perfect Speed

I am working on a project these days with a lot of effort around balancing speed of delivery with level of testing, design iterations, and QA.

The easy way to say that is: What is the right balance of speed versus perfection of output?

There is parity-of-knowledge in our world; if you use available resources you can know what your competition knows. Quality has been a cost of entry for decades. Even innovation it could be argued is now much more of a price to complete.

So what is left to leverage? How to edge the competition? Just a few thoughts:
1) Radical innovation. Everyone focuses on innovation but not everyone can find a real breakthrough or has the nerve to take the risk.
2) Rapid, incremental, innovation. Google uses this with their constant flow of beta products and versions.

I think the second option is more attainable for many enterprises. Here are a few points in that direction:

• Go to market when you have a core concept. Don’t wait to flesh out every conceivable issue.
• When to pull the trigger on a program or product? As soon as you think you will not have negative impact.
• Build for change by using the most open technologies you can.
• Listen to customer reaction as much as you can via measurement, discussion, and monitoring.
• Iterate often.

There is a version of this approach that will be the "perfect speed" for your team.

There is much more here to explore.

J

Idea Smelting - Devil or Savior?

I started reading The 10 Faces of Innovation. Only a little ways into the volume so far, but already have run across a very interesting point. The author’s, from IDEO, take the position that playing the “Devil’s Advocate” during creative or innovation sessions is damaging. The language they use is very strong, they are passionate about this. They actually ponder situations where they might tell such a role player to “Go to Hell.” This is obliviously just a play on the devil theme, but I find it telling nonetheless.

Let me take a different slant on this. I hold that when played intelligently, honestly, and with care this role is extremely important and helpful. The key skill needed to play this role is an ability to “ask the hard” questions. This is about seeing pitfalls, dangers, gaps, or unnecessary risks. Without this skill/role failure can loom. Over the past 15 years I have seen many ideas pushed through to execution without any rigorous challenge.

Similar to the way metal can be purified from raw ore via smelting, so too can a cleaner more effective initiative be birthed by taking an unchallenged idea and putting it through the “fire” of a devils scrutiny.

This “idea smelting” needs to be done at the right time and in the right way. There is no doubt that this book holds some great insights, I have already found the redefined roles a stimulating concept. However, I think devil needs to get his due.

Here are some golden rules I would propose to make playing this role effective:

1) Do it at the right time. If done while ideas and concepts are in early stages, creativity and innovation could be squashed. Reserve comments in these stages to only critical flaws in thinking.

2) Offer alternatives. Don’t simply shoot holes, ask “what if we do x instead of a”. Assuming the ideation is going in a good direction generally, this is about steering and less about quashing.

3) Look for gaps. Ideas have a better chance to come to fruition if the gaps are noticed and addressed by the team before they are socialized more broadly. A more complete idea is better than one with holes, right?

4) Don’t just play one role. I agree with the authors that changing hats is a positive, needed skill. By playing other roles and thinking from those POVs, the devil can come across as less of a “naysayer”. Perception is half the battle.

5) Don’t get married to your positions. Just like all input to a collaborative process. Devils need to be flexible and prepared to go with the energy and flow of the group.

6) Pay attention to the room. If there are less mature, emotional, or insecure players on the team, perhaps the devil needs to play his role offline or in a separate session with more senior team members only.

J

STILL on the Frontier

What is important about a digital marketing program? ROI, ROMS, brand metrics? Yes and much more. Do those things usually change the game? No. Do we care about changing the game? Sometimes, right? When we are heads down building, winning, running, fixing; then probably not. When we look at our careers, when we blue sky, when we have off line chats; then yes, we think about if we are having real impact. Two points in this quick post:

1. There are not enough of us that are actively moving to change the game. Yours truly included.

2. Digital marketing is not about things and results anymore. Yes we still build “things” such as pages and we do need to hit target metric numbers. But that is not where the game is.

Notice I say that we need to “actively” move to change the game. I think many in the industry are trying, but what are we doing to build relationships, environments, and situations that allow it to happen. Again, its so heads down now. Business is good, staffing is a huge challenge, and many of us are locked into “rolling up the sleeves”. The new boom is about the expansion of “Traditional Interactive”. All good. But can we invest more in expanding the borders? Invest margin, time, people, dare I say invest a little client-equity in this? We are the pioneers, we are still on the frontier; I for one want to live like it again.

One concept that holds a lot of promise for me is this: digital marketing's shinning stars and hot spots are not about numbers; they are about shock waves, concussion, viral, they are social catalyst and enablers. Obvious ones are the social sites like YouTube, Face Book, and the bunch. But what about non-digital brands, are they making noise here? Can they? Some are. Many more can by wrapping their heads around this difficult concept: impact in digital marketing is best achieved by paying more attention to the periphery than the center. I will talk about this in a post coming soon:

Digital as a Verb

J